Hey there!
I figured I owed you all an actual email for the first time in a hot minute, so here am I, reporting for duty! This CoronationVirus thing isn't going to stop me from spreading God's love to all nations!
About that, before I begin, since I know you might have questions: You've probably heard rumors about the way that CauliflowerVirus is affecting European countries. Some of you might even know your geography well enough to know that I, in fact, am serving in Europe! I am alive and well, and our mission is still out proselyting until the work is done. We said a tearful goodbye to our senior missionaries, along with many of our missionaries with underlying health concerns that place them at high risk this week. Luckily, achy knees and acne didn't place me in that category! Please keep our departed missionaries in your prayers, please. Their hearts are hurting right now, even if their lungs aren't.
We have plenty of food in our cupboards in case disaster strikes and like our dear prophet remain optimistic for the future!
Without further adieu, “Begin at the beginning," the king said gravely. “And continue on until you reach the end, then stop.”
I'll send my favorite CologneVirus meme to whoever names the book that's from! Extra points if you don't use Google.
The good faaaaar outweighed the bad this week, as always. I think God always tips the scale in that direction as long as we want him to.
It's springtime (my favorite season), Easter (my favorite holiday, RIP Christmas), you can buy Cadbury mini eggs (as I do, every single week), and the sun is shining through my window at 6:30 every morning saying something along the lines of “Good morning Sister Allen! Get up! Get up! It's time to play! Come outside and play with me!”
So we do! I've began jump roping every morning, much to the delight of our Romanian next door neighbor who likes to sit outside and smoke and watch us make a fool of ourselves. (See attached video if I remembered to send it)
One morning as I was hop skipping n jumping I saw a black wad of fabric in a gutter and said “is that my glove?!” for like the 10th time in the past week since I lost it like 10 days ago and IT ACTUALLY WAS. I prayed I would find it and felt peace about it, but had no luck. It was a gentle (but hand numbing) reminder that God loves his children and will do the very best thing for us, but it won't always be when we're expecting it to. Keep that in mind these next few weeks, folks!
We led out a fairly normal week, chapping grumpy old men, petting a lot of dogs and the such, and were only mildly interrupted with scary phone calls from the mission home a few times. Sister Pugmire had to make a fateful decision to go home or not due to some medical concerns, but we're both here and enduring to the end.
Due to her decision to stay, we were able to keep working the rest of this week, which placed us in the path of some incredible people! I'll tal about them more next week, but we met an incredible family on Saturday. I'm 60% sure they let us in as a joke, but they were all in tears as I said the closing prayer and long story short just really needed the Book of Mormon in their lives. They're 9 year old daughter just won the national Irish Dancing competition and performed for us, we sang all our favorite hymns together, and they kept asking if they could come to church and we had to tell them it was cancelled. BUT, remember the glove? God's timing is PERFECT. There is a lesson to be learned here.
I keep blaming Satan for this whole ChickenVirus thing, but how rude is that of me? I realized that God is in control here, of course he is. I encourage each of you to study plagues in the scriptures this week. Remember the promise. Remember who it's from. A great starting place is D&C 84.
He taught me something about tribulation this week, as I watched people flocking into the usually dormant stone church on the high street yesterday. He taught me a valuable lesson when our atheist friend texted us and told us he was praying for us. He's in control here. Of course He is.
I encourage each of you to watch the video President Nelson released a couple days ago about hope. Notice he's not rebuking anyone for not doing Come Follow me in days past. He's inviting us to start now and partake of the blessings fully. He's reminding us of who's in control here. Of course he is, he's our prophet.
Listen to him, hear him, and REVEL in this time to slow down, shut down, and refocus. And do try to only use 2 squares of toilet paper every time.
No XXX because we're not allowed to hug during the crepetationVirus,
-Sister Allen
Mom Note: About an hour after P-Day ended we found out that Sister Allen and the rest of her mission is now on quarantine. If you have a minute you could email her spiritual thoughts, funny stories, etc to keep her going. And I'm sure if you have any thoughts on how to do missionary work from her flat you can pass them along! Let's keep all the missionaries in our prayers! Her email is bailee.allen@missionary.org
