Elder Adam Ray Allen's adventures in the New York, New York City Mission!!

Buenos días!  I swear I keep telling myself the mission cannot get any better, but every week it seems to improve. But hey, no complaints over here. We had some straight MIRACLES in Brentwood. We were blessed with 4 people who were ready to make the commitment to be baptized, and now are planning 4 baptisms for the end of December and beginning of January. The members of the ward have been a huge help and the relationships we are forming with them are awesome.  So almost forgot that Thanksgiving was last week, but yes mom I got fed more than I needed. We had a dinner at our bishops house, also got the best tamales ever from our recent convert and her husband, and to top off the night went to a Domincan throw down. The domincan one got me. My stomach felt like I had spent the whole day at Disneyland. But the plus side is that I kept it all down unlike last year. 😂 My stomach has gotten 10 x smaller, so putting down a lot of food isn't even an option any...

Buenos días familia y amigos! I don't think I have ever been this tired before, but hey no complaints because I'm loving it! We had 4 exchanges this week, lots of driving, and even more teaching and finding. I got to go on splits with my trainee, Elder Cuevas (Who is a straight beast), and also Elder Palmer (Who is also a beast). So needless to say, this week was pretty sweet. One thing I've been thinking about lately is how we should confront challenges when they come. It's inevitable that all of us will pass through hardships, and sometimes that hardship will seem impossible to overcome.  There's a story in the old testament about two men named Joshua and Caleb. They had made it out of Egypt with Moses and the Israelites, and were sent by Moses to go scout out the promised land with 10 other men. When the men returned with immense amounts of berries and all manner of food, most of them were saddened because the land was overrun by a pe...

OUR RACCOON FRIEND TRYING TO MOVE IN!  So another quick week gone here in Brentwood, with tons of meetings, exchanges, and new facebook initiative that is being rolled out in our area here.  MTC GROUP! We had Elder Haynie from the 70 come into town for a mission tour, and he is the man. He came to our MLC, and dropped some straight fire on us. Literally, roasted us pretty well. So basically after that Elder Mansfield and I were pretty pumped just like the rest of the Zone Leaders and started kicking it up a noche in different aspects of the work that have never been focused on before by this mission.  One thing I loved that he brought up before he started talking about mission numbers was something about obedience in the mission. He said, "the tragedy of disobedience is that you go home the exact same way that you left."  It's so true! The biggest changes I have seen in myself have come when I am living the gospel of Jesus Christ in it's e...

Hola! It's been an eventful week here on long Island with transfers, meetings, lots of driving, and even more teaching. My new companion is Elder Mansfield from Vernal, UT. Super cool guy who has been out just about the same time as me, and he is awesome. We've already seen some cool stuff happening in the area and we're excited to keep it going! We went running this morning to the beach, and got a nice picture of the sunrise, I'll attach that at the bottom 😉 We've had some awesome lessons this week, but one that we had on Saturday night was sweet. We went and ate dinner with this family we had recently found, and after we ate and chatted for a little (during which they asked us 1 million questions about our lives and if we can drink coffee AFTER the mission) we had one of the best and most powerful restoration lessons. I've realized throughout my time here that the restoration of the gospel means nothing to people until they fully understand...