Gooood morning!!
I ate cold cereal this morning for breakfast!! (Haha sorry I think I'm hilarious) Do you ever just knock on an elderly man's door and he notices that your hands look cold and give you his gloves because you left yours in Edinburgh? You should try it sometime! Nice people are so nice! This week was a week AND A HALF!! As far as the relativity of time goes, this week was over before we knew it! On Wednesday we went to Edinburgh for the All Scotland Christmas Conference, we spent Thursday in Glasgow for exchanges, and on Saturday we went to Paisley for interviews! I've noticed I really don't spend a lot of time in my emails talking about what I actually do throughout the week, I just get really philosophical and expound on 15 seconds in 1,500 words. Which I sometimes do in lessons on accident ha ha haaaaa...yeah.
SO! If you wanna know what an average day looks like in the life of Sister Allen, YOU'RE IN LUCK! Here is my Tuesday in expanded form:
On Tuesday I made gingerbread cookies in the morning and we went to a nearby town called Dreghorn to teach Jordan! He's still the best in case you were wondering, and we had a fun lesson about the gospel of Jesus Christ!
We ate our sandwiches and apples in a dark narrow alleyway to protect us from the wind because the library was closed and there aren't any other public buildings for miles in any direction, then chapped up Dreghorn for a bit and saw our good friend Paul. We went to the Scott's house and shared Light The World + gingerbread with them and their neighbors who came over.
We hopped on a bus (or two) and visited Davy, our BFF with the greenhouse. He made us chocolate cupcakes and amish bread, and we brought him some gingerbread and talked about temples and the nativity story. And THEN we went to ANOTHER nearby town called Kilwinning and ate THE BEST Mac and Cheese with the Russo's. Brother Russo is from New York and they know how to COOK!!!
And THEN (just in case you thought the day was over) we went back to our own lil neighborhood on the harbourside and knocked some doors. A family answered the second to last door and said that they weren't interested unless we were singing carols. When the door was six inches from shut, I panicked and starting singing O' Christmas Tree and long story short we got a return appointment and they're super nice. And then we went home and packed for Edinburgh!
There you have it! Proof that I actually DO do missionary work on a daily basis in case you weren't convinced.
Conference was the best! We got a posterity photo of my trainer, my trainer's trainer, etc etc because my grandma, Sister Clark, goes home in February! In case you were wondering why my eyes were so squinty, it's because I was crying for one half of conference because the spirit was so strong, and the other half because I received updates on the people I was teaching in Bridge of Don and was so happy!!! My face looked like I had been dunked in the Firth of Clyde after Sister Cox, my old Sister training leader, told me about Lidia.
One sunny afternoon as Sister Powell, Sister Paiva, and I were sprinting for a bus, I slowed down long enough to make a comment about the weather to an older woman we passed. She didn't speak English, and I thought it might be Spanish so I called Sister Paiva back who was a few hundred feet ahead of me at this point. We ended up going to her home, and Sister Paiva single-handedly taught her the restoration over the course of a couple visits. I couldn't understand her and she couldn't understand me, but she said that the morning I talked to her she had prayed for help and knew when we met that we were sent from God to help her. She said there was a light in our eyes that she needed in her life. As Sister Paiva taught her about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, even though I couldn't understand a word of the conversation the spirit was so strong it brought us all to tears. She thanked us over and over again for being her angels and a beautiful friendship was born.
And then I moved to the other side of the country.
Sister Cox said that she has continued to progress and has been attending church and has repeatedly mentioned the fruits of the spirit in her life and how much her life has changed since meeting us all because of the spirit and gospel of Jesus Christ!!!
And that, brothers and sisters, is why we should never underestimate the power of a kind word! ....Or just slowing down to talk to someone when you're out of breath.
I saw a cool spiritual thought in another missionary's email that they stole from another missionary's email by Elder Anderson, who said, "You can count the seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed."
Keep planting kind words and seeds because you never know what'll happen!!!
Try it and see! I double dog dare you!!
On that thought, there are a LOT of cute dogs here.
Love ya! Keep lighting the world! You're the bestest of the best. Really truly.
Sister Allen
