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Well this week has been busy but great! Elder Bishop and I have been working hard out in the flaming hot country! Its been like 90 degrees out this week! We had an answer to our prayers though! Well from the first week I got into this area of the great and wonderful Walkerton Elder Peck and I have fasted and prayed for a dear sweet family! Well Elder Bishop has now been here for a transfer and a half and we are seeing the answer to these prayers. We are now teaching a family! The mother and father and their 4 kids! The oldest kid is 11 followed by a 10 yr old. With the two youngest being 7 and 4! Ah it was a joy to teach them the Plan of Salvation. The kids were active in the lesson with questions and reading. They all wanted their own copies of the Book of Mormon! The oldest kid even committed his family to be at church next week! Sweet! He said oh yeah we will be at church next week! the mom is the one who we have taught before and she agreed along with the rest of the family to read Alma 32 this week together as a family! Just as the gospel is made to do! To bring families closer together! With this family learning together, and coming to know of the happiness the gospel brings together. It is clear how much closer they will come! The mother made a comment at the end how they dont gather around the table and stay there that long ever unless there was food on it, she herself was amazed at her kids and their learning minds! Then on Sunday there was a Canada Conference! President Uchtdorf, Elder Ballard, Sister Stevens and Elder Pace spoke to us! Oh it was wonderful they all talked about strengthening your own testimony and the role of helping others gain one after your own! Oh and President Uchtdorf spoke for 50 min! Yeah no joke, there was an hour left to the meeting when he got up and I was worried it would only be an hour and a half not the complete two hours, but nope he did it, and it didn't really feel like it! It flowed so well and kept me listening to the whole thing! It is such a blessing to have such humble, wise, loving church leaders who speak to us today what Jesus Christ Himself would say to us. Well thank you for all your support.
love,
Elder Allen

Woot Woot!

Well this week has been great. Elder Bishop and I have been looking for new people to teach, we didn't find any real progressing people but we did find a few potential people to teach. I got mail this week, ah its been so long since I have got a letter in the mail and after walking around out in 30 degrees which is like 80 F plus 100% Humidity, it was a great way to just lay down on my bed and read it and relax. Oh, and one day before we came in we swung out to the lake to get some pictures so I hope you have a great time looking at those. Then after a fun week of hanging out with Elder Bishop in the Walkerton area, we went to London for an area Conference. Due to this being President and Sister Middleton's last transfer we had three Zones at Zone conference instead of our one! I was also able to meet up with old friends as you can check out in the pictures! At the conference president Middleton gave a great talk on the difference of the Light of Christ and the Holy ghost! And Sister Middleton got me my Dear John cake. When an Elder gets Dear John-ed by their girlfriend or in other words gets dumped or their girlfriend doesn't want to wait for them anymore! So if they call Sister Middleton, read her the letter. She gives them comfort words and then the next Zone Conference brings them a cake of their choice. And as for me I chose a strawberry cheesecake! Oh yeah and man is it good! Oh and guess what Elder Allen wrote in his journal for about half of the week, hopefully this week it will be a 100%. I am like a new person not having to take that medicine! I have energy once again and its great. Sad thing is I have to go see another doctor because it looks like the meds didn't work, or I have something else wrong, ugh why is it always me! I also gave a talk on Sunday on member missionary work! Hopefully the branch will start working as a team and bring lost sheep back or bring new sheep in! As it has been told by President Hinckley member missionary work is the way to go! Thank you all for your support I love you!
Elder Derek Allen.

Pictures!!!!!

This week was great. Erica was Baptized and oh it was so good to see her do it. There is just so much joy when I was singing "when I am Baptized" and seeing tears in her eyes and not just hers. but to see the Spirit of truth touch her daughter and Grand- daughter too. The Spirit was so strong there at her baptism. It was just such a blessing to our prayers. Also Sam brought his girlfriend who isn't a member to church too! Ah what a great way to end a transfer. Even better I was able to talk to home on the phone yesterday it was great to talk to my family again. Now its picture time. Ok so half of these are at the Farm we work at on Wednesdays. This week the District Leader was traveling me, so he is there instead of the wonderful Elder Bishop. Other ones are random pictures taken.

Love you guys!
-Elder Allen

Well this week was tough, we pushed through everything though. I went to the doctors this week and that was crazy but as it turns out I have an infection and I have to treat it for the next 21 days! Ok so the fun story for this week is once again on the farm. We get there thinking we would be finishing the hedge only to find out that we are instead cleaning out horse stalls! And not just any horse a Stallion! We had to prepare the green house with new fertilizer which come from the horse stall! Wow this stuff was beyond smelly it was horid! Yet it needed to be done. this week is going to be fun though we will be having a movie time at the farm, he is going to make pizza and we are going to watch the restoration and eat pizza! Hahaha! Ah yeah we didnt find anyone new to teach really, but Erica is getting Baptized on Sunday and plus I get to call home. It will be mothers day! Happy Mothers Day everyone. Oh this is also the last week of this transfer, but I dont think I will be leaving anytime soon!

Love,

Elder Allen

A poem for my Mother

My Mother
You suffered in the beginning to bring me into the world...
Why? Because you loved me from the start.
You still kept me around even through all my young fits...
Why? because you knew I was young and you still loved me.
You listen to my learning mind when I always asked what if...
Why Because you wanted me to learn and become something you knew I could be.
You punished me when acting up, even though it hurt you to see me hurt...
Why? Because you wanted me to become a respectable man one day.
You got mad at me when inhaling my food at the dinner table...
Why? You wanted me to have manners so one day I could find a wife.
You gave me advice on dating, even though I sometimes didn't listen...
Why? You wanted me to be worthy to take a daughter of God to the temple.
My mother, my mother...I will honor you forever. . .
Why? you did so much for me, and well mom, I love you!

Two Weeks of Wonderful...

Ok so I will try to get this all in, if only I was a better typer! Ok so this is just great. The day after my last blog entry we went to a Farm where we've worked every Wednesday since then. At the Farm we trimmed hedges. And Mitchell the guy we have been trying to get in contact was there! Sweet! Well, we spent about 2 hours trimming the cedars he wanted us to trim. We only got one side done! Then we were called in for lunch by the dinner bell. Holy smokes I love farms! running in for our feast we find everyone in the kitchen. It was a huge old farm house table with nice table settings. Well we sit down and have a feast, with potatoes that were out of this world and steak, veggies, and a salad! Oh my was it good. There were 8 adults besides Elder Bishop and I and two little kids! Some of the farm hands look like the were from the 1820s! Then in the middle of the the meal questions come up. Elder Bishop and I had the chance to answer the question, which led into the first discussion. It was great teaching so many people at once the ideal teaching situation with them asking questions and it being an enlightening conversation instead of a lecture from the missionaries! There was however one point when the majority of the crowd got a little disrespectful to the topic at which we were discussing. Then to our surprise Mitchell calls everyone to be quite and tells them they are out of line. My insides jump for joy, to see someone showing respect for the amazing message of truth we share. Well the lesson went well and Mitchell actually asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon, because he wanted to do just what we invited to read and pray about it! We left them 3 copies of the Book of Mormon and an intro to the church DVD. It went well and we were very uplifted for the rest of the day. Thursday was a down day we really didn't get much done, we had horrible planning and did our weekly planning pretty much all day! Friday was District meeting! Out here in the mission we are given areas to cover and 2-4 areas make up a district. so we met with the other missionaries and I gave a lesson on finding when we teach, teaching when we find! This meaning when we are walking around talking to people we are teaching them right then and there something that applies to them, for this being the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and we all being children of God it is so easy to do. Then other part of it the finding when we teach, is the hard thing, asking people we teach if they know of others who can use the message we share. We then went to Port Elgin, the northern part of our area. there we taught Sally and her Mom, the Gospel of Jesus Christ (faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) with Brother Vickers who took us out to eat after the lesson to a place called Craby Joe's. There I had a wonderful T-bone steak. Saturday it was crazy it snowed! Ugh I thought I was all done with that stuff! Anyways it took more than that to keep Elder Bishop and I away! We headed over to the Franklins where we chopped wood, Wow what a work out my back was hurting for days after that! I was splitting logs for two hours! We then went down to work in Clifford, yet Elder Bishop had to use the washroom so we stopped at the Kebicks who let us in and bless Sister Kebick seeing us all bundled up made us some Hot Cocoa, with marshmellows of course! Then we went tracting in the the area for a while, then back to the Kebicks, because brother Kebick was coming to our next appointment! Our next appointment was way far down south part of our bondaries in a little town called Moorefield. Back at the Kebicks sister Kebick had wonderful soup waiting for us. She also told me to bring my pants back the next day so she could fix them, so my blue suit is all good now, my black suit needs new pants, they split one day when I was going down to say a prayer... awkward! Well in Moorefield we met with a mother and her daughter, the daughter seemed to be realizing what we were talking about more then the mom. The appointment however went for an hour! Church was great, I love Choir practice we sang great music with wonderful tenor lines! Then after church we went back to the Kebicks for a wonderful supper, that got all over me! Ugh now I need to take my suit to the dry cleaners! Monday I went in to email and well the computer deleted my blog entry. My preparation day was back to normal I was able to get letters in the mail made a few cards and started on an explosion box of favorite pictures and quotes for the Kebicks as a thank you for fixing my suits! At six we went to the Staff's home to get Erica back on the stop smoking program, I am proud to say she has stopped again and is set to be Baptized on Mothers day, so I will be able to tell my mom all about it then on the phone. On Tuesday we went to one of the families in our branch to help take down an electric fence that is around the Llamas! Things I do on my mission I tell you! We then ran home to change then went to talk to Erica! Who was doing great! Then we went to another Farm home for supper! I dont remember what we ate but I do remember there was fuzz coming off the salt shaker top... where the salt was suppose to come out! Haha! Oh boy! All of our appointments bombed for the rest of the day so we set up another one in Walkerton. There we taught a great lesson to this lady, who wanted to talk to her husband about meeting with us again. Wednesday was another fun day on Mitchell's Farm we finished the other side of the hedge. We didnt get much teaching in. We did find out that the workers are half and half on our message and they talk about what we teach with each other when we are not there! So, that is great! Then that night we taught the young man how to make a Mr. Noodle stir fry! Thursday we went to Port Elgin, where we met with a bunch of families! Friday was a finding day! We didnt have any appointments set so we just went out among the people! Saturday we met with the Mom and daughter once again which went great, it was there that the spirit confirmed my thoughts on the mother and daughter. The mother is not getting what we are teaching and the importance of the message but the daughter is and is showing signs of progression. Sunday we taught a lesson with a new Investigator! It was a great week, whew! I got it all in, well most of it! Hope you all are doing well too!