December 23, 2013

hey yal!

Man isn't Christmas amazing!!!! I absolutely love it! past 3 days have been 75 degrees round 1-3pm then it cools down at night so it doesn't feel weather wise like Christmas but it totally is! People are still grouchy and don't answer back when you say Merry Christmas but that's ok too cause its still Christmas no matter how much these crazy people try to hide it! haha

We had to speak on Sunday for the branch? lol 15 people there between 2 wards... lol with 8 flights home that day and another few today and tomorrow lol so our ward is officially at zero! hahaha but that's ok. We just barely got a Christmas and Christmas eve dinner lol so we lucked out there! Got a package from the Smith's. They had people write on like grocery lists and sent em.... Brandon Giles was hilarious. He was like " thanks for that letter you wrote us from bishop. I'm like you except your grammar is terrible." Super funny.... I guess I haven't gotten smarter in grammar lol.

alotta people really just are debby downers here with the holidays.... I've gotten more slammed doors this Christmas than like the rest of my mission haha its weird. Californians are ridiculous!

Thanks sooo much for the extra cash! My Pumas I left with are so about dun lol the're almost sandals now. Christmas should be good.... we can have missionaries spend the night so we'll be havin fun!! haha even our apartment complex is empty.

This week it was hilarious.... me, Hardy and Call took out this crazy large stump with only a mauler and a trench shovel and a ton of sweat. it was a blast!!! I love service and fun stuff like that!

Can't wait to see yal Wednesday! We're going for 3pm here so that's like 4ish there? Not sure but that's when I'll be on!! hopefully it'll work well.... if not we still got one more try before I get home HAHA! yal are awesome ....love you so much! Can't wait to talk to yal! and open your gifts! Celtic Women is amazing CD. Haven't stopped listening to it since I got it. Fish is tired of if but that's ok its my Chevy and I can beat him in an arm wrestle lol ;) see ya in a bit!

-Elder McAllister

December 16, 2013

Hey Yal,

So our zone went up another companionship after transfers. 16 comp or 32 missionaries... biggest zone in the mission by like 8-10 missionaries haha we're leavin everyone in our dust! its so much fun. We have so much activities together and we just have a blast all the time! love it!! So the sisters that cover with us are really bothering me.. well just one of em.... she's the kind that has to do it all herself and if she didn't do it, its not right and she has to be in charge and etc you get the picture.. she totally takes our teaching pool and starts teaching em and in WC throws us under the bus.... grrrr I was hoping she woulda got transferred but nope didn't happen... oh well I guess I gotta learn something here. maybe long suffering. or maybe I'm supposed to humble her who knows. but its really bothering me. I don't like it when people take my work.... I'm ready to be done with singles ward too. They're just not concerned with missionary work and its hard. but its ok cause it gives me lots of free time to spend strengthening the zone and helping em out! plussssss ready for this..............................

.......GOT MY NEW CHEVY CRUZE!!!!  SEE YA JAPANESE TINFOIL!!  oh man is so awesome I totally want one if I cant afford a truck. its saweeet!!!!!! I like am worried about it when we lock it up for the night and go in our apartment. like I just love that car! haha its so nice... in fact I get to drive it as soon as I'm done here! heck YES!!!!! hahaha so happy. aint drivin a prius anymore!

Speakin of cars, it was sweet ....we were down at the mission office and President has taken over the whole church parking lot with crown vics like 30 of em. The ward has to park down in the neighborhoods, its hilarious! A few of us convoyed a bunch to different mechanic shops and it was hilarious because they were ex cop cars so they had the bumpers and spotlights still. So funny all the people were slowing down near us. hilarious!

Yes as we got in my beloved chevy today, the UPS guy stopped and so we sat for a few minutes and boom there it was!!! so happy!! haha thanks so much... can't wait to open it! and I wont open all the presents early like I may or may not have done last year...... haha whoops!

Yeah so church is canceled for 2 weeks, so we're gonna try and mooch off everyone elses dinners and such haha we might be dead in the water for a few weeks... but I got my Chevy so its all mickey mouse.

So we met with all the family ward bishops and got a huge lists of LA to visit now which should hopefully keep us busy. hopefully.

Its getting super cold here..... like a wet cold that cuts to the bone... its ridiculous... Colorado isn't cold at all compared to this nonsense! but that's ok, I've got my Chevy :) she keeps me warm! haha

Fish is turning out of his shell which is good..... slowly. but some times he comes out of his shell too much and says some really out there things at dinners....... and everyone gets quiet and looks at him and then we all bust out laughing its funny.  He's really tryin to fit in and I know the zone is really starting to trust him and such so its good.

Call's now in PA1st so we still get to see him but not like it used to be. every things quieter now lol. 

We have no dinners for the week after this and the one after that.... haha its ridiculous! singles ward is a ghost town!

The zone's going over to our old Bishops for Christmas breakfast which should be super fun... we'll probably Skype there unless a better opportunity comes up.... its Palo Alto so I assume its better wifi for a 7 mil dollar home. just guessing lol..... their roads are terrible though.

Love you all so much!! Learned in church if our faith isn't being challenged, its decaying and not growing. So hard times are good :) Love you all ..... keep the faith

Hurrah for Israel!

-Elder McAllister

December 9, 2013

Hey yal,

Transfer time again but I'm stayin put :) E. Call is moving to Palo Alto 1st ward with E. Hardy and Steve Young and Dick Perry and Marc Zuckerburg(facebook guy)... pretty lucky kiddo. So it'll be just me and Fish for the next bit. I'm excited, it'll be good because then he can't hide behind me and Call and will have to get outta his shell.

Its so cold here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! idk why!!!!!!!! the humidity I guess but man there was ice today and we ran 3 miles.... what were we thinking?????? but we ended at a warm McDonald's so it worked out haha! but man it was freezing... plus our apartment's from the Nephites so the windows are paper thin and so we have all sorts of random things taped to the windows to keep the heat in haha luckily we have our own furnace so we got it blasted to 78! haha

Yeah so in running today I came to the realization I am super outta shape..... like insanely.... so we'll see hopefully I can get into a routine and start bulkin up!..... intimidate some mean crotchety white people of Palo Alto haha.

The work is ultra slow. Our 1 investigator is now in China so we have contacted roughly 2000+ people and lots of service to try and show the Lord we need investigators along with many fasts and prayers. So a guy came in from the streets named Tyler yesterday and so hopefully things will start to go for him that'd be so sweet!!! He's a Tyler so that's already off to a good start!

Man life is so good. I love this zone..... they are the bomb. Working so hard and calling down miracles. If we were a city, we'd be brought up next to Enoch's. I love em so much. AHHH!!!! never been happier and never had more fun and never had this hard of an area before too. Singles wards are totally different ball games. Its interesting to see the Lord bless us tremendously in some ways and then tell us to grow and not help as much in others.

Oh so I got a card reader so I can view files on SD cards now and I saw all the pictures you sent like eons ago......they were awesome! I couldn't help but smile my way through em all and laugh at some of em. Yal are the best! ever! love how the 3 of yal are always laughin and huggin. puts on the illusion that you all love each other.. sneaky snakes! haha just kidding! I love it! cant get enough and man have you seen Duke? Gosh he is awesome! best dog ever! what would yal do without him!? Its like having a piece of me because basically we have the same attention span so basically we're the same. I'm just less furry. hahahahaha Man I love you guys. so excited for Christmas!!! How amazing and strange was the Christmas devotional?!?! E. Nelson's talk was basically a Mormon message already and I just love the song Silent Night. I could fall asleep to that every day!

Life is so good! I can't get off of that! like yeah we struggle but God is so good! Oh funny story so the sisters were supposed to teach Gospel Principles and asked us to just start it. so I got up and started it and they went and sat down and didn't move when I said they were up.... so I got to do an improve lesson on prayer which wasn't bad but it was bad haha oh well it was super funny. gotta keep my A game on I guess.

So there's this thing called the crèche and its 400+ nativities from around the world. super cool the stake puts it on and we help with that for like 10 hrs... plus had Zone Training meeting and idk how but the Lord helped me apply the waldo canyon fire to missionary work it was so cool! I always try to share fire stories for my time I have to teach.... its way fun! so if you hear any send em please!

So Christmas stuff that I've been thinkin about lately. So being Silicon Valley you know how cool a MacBook Air would be for school?? that's not christmasy but maybe we can talk a deal or something when I get home. Speaking of school is there anything more I can do to help? I'm so excited!!!! me and E. Anderson cant stop talking about it hahah its so fun!

I think what would be way sweet for Christmas if possible would be like a speaker, like an ihome but works with an auxiliary cord because then we can plug our DVD player into it for CDs and when missionaries come over with their mp3 players we can listen to em too :) and bring it to the gym on Pday for volleyball!! Jenna btw I've gotten my hits down real well so watch out cause I'm gettin trained by Tongans! hahaha

So church is canceled for the 21st and 29th cause everyone is gonna be home.... so idk what we're gonna do lol but this area never ceases to surprise.

Love yal so much.... have great week! This gospel is so true! Prayer is amazing!!! We can talk to the most powerful being in the universe! who controls the universe and all 3000000000000000 trillion billion stars in it! We can talk to Him personally one on one amego el amego and he listens and cares! That's soooo cool!! and it just blows my mind that that is our potential. That's the potential we have as children of God. How amazing is that. How amazing is Christ? Christmas spirit just hit me. The Savior and Redeemer of all mankind we get to celebrate His birth. That's an honor and a privilege and a blessing to have thoughts of Him always in our hearts this season. I love it. Christ is our big brother, way better than I could be or that anyone could be. We learned about gratitude in church. A quote was "Our hearts should break in gratitude whenever our thoughts turn to the Atonement of Christ" and that's still an insignificant amount of gratitude compared to the sacrifice Heavenly Father made and Christ made. That's like someone builds you a house and pays for whatever you want for the next 100000 years and you just point out the house wasn't the color you wanted. no bueno! I'm going to be more grateful and be a more positive and happy and grateful person :)

Love yal

-Elder McAllister

 

**Here are some pictures another Mom sent to me last month...kept forgetting to add them to his posts.  The middle 2 I believe are from Thanksgiving.  This first one is a service that gave as a Zone to a man who needed help cleaning out his garage.  The last one is typical Tyler...playing with fire.  It's the firefighter in him I guess

 

December 2, 2013

hey yal

Wow I am so happy! I love talkin to yal! This week was crazy. E. Call didn't know we eat dinners all day Thanksgiving so he loaded up like 4 plates at the 1st one and practically died the next 2.  So funny!!!!!!!!!!! He was dying. He didn't eat for the next 2 days.  

Our investigator Wei is going to china for a month......... hopefully we can face time him for lessons.

Please apply for me..... I haven't had time to look stuff up! I wanna go to USU so bad. Hopefully E. Anderson has a room open for me cause that'd be sick! The Lord is totally preparing the way for me to go to USU. 

Christmas stuff- a nice football.

                         - some ties

                       - sweaters are now legal with the new dress code rules.

                        -some long sleeve white shirts.

                       - cant think of anything else right now.... thanks for keepin me in mind!

Life is super good. I've got pictures going your way super soon.  Thanks again for the food and package, I love em cookies! 

So I agree, it was pretty cold the other night. I had to put a jacket on when it got down to 45 one night. I can totally see your pain and sadness with the 14 that's comin. hahahahahaha!!! CALIFORNIA baby!! hahahah sorry had to rub that one in a bit.

Transfers comin up the 10th... we'll see how the zone will change..... I'm hoping not much because I love everyone here so much! Its so much fun here.

So we knew all the singles were outta town this week so we just carpet bombed the main citys with contacting and between the 2 sisters and us 3, we talked to 1400+ people about the gospel in a week. Pretty sweet..... the WC of both wards were super impressed and hopefully they realize they are slacking in giving us people to teach.  

You guys are awesome! Went to print pictures off today and saw all the pictures you put on my card when you sent it back! only super small versions of em but hey it was cool to see!!

I love it here so much! I wish things wouldn't change. My life right now is perfect..... absolutely perfect.

Love you all so much! 23 days til Christmas. My last Christmas out here.......!!! what?!? SEE you all then!

-Elder McAllister