Cuscotopia. Complete with a waterslide.

Well, I will not lie and say this week has been easy. It has hands down been the hardest of my entire mission. But, in turn, I have learned a lot, prayed a lot, and tried to change. I thought I would be leaving Sicuani Wednesday morning, but the president didn{t want us traveling on new year{s cuz everyone was drunk. Soooo we left the afternoon before. This week… man. Let{s break it down… shall we?

Wednesday---- shuttled trainers, their trainees, and all their suitcases from the terminal to the house, to the house, to the terminal. All. Day.

Thursday--- just a couple drop offs at the terminal, then an 8 hour meeting at the mission home with Zone Leaders and the other 4 Sister Training Leaders. Funny story, I stood up to walk to the bathroom cuz I felt dizzy, and FAINTED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MEETING! We don{t have a pensionista, and I was stressed, so I couldn{t really eat anything, so I just passed flat out on the floor in the kitchen. Luckily my companion was with me and caught me. Next thing  iknow, Sister Harbertson (president{s wife) is over me and her pensionista is holding my legs up. Super embarrassing, but that{s my life so whatever haha. They were the only ones that saw it.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday---- Lots of walking, and rejection, and getting told we worship the devil and other things that people say about us. Very… very… trying week. We had a grand total of ZERO lessons with less actives or investigators. We met a lot of members which is cool. They{re nice. But very very very different from Sicuani.

My job as a Sister Training leader (since Dad asked) is to shuttle people around with they have transfers, help the hermanas with companionship problems, go on transfers in some of the zones in the mission, and I{m sure other things that I{m not aware of yet. We{re like zone leaders of only Hermanas. I will be traveling 4 out of 6 weeks every transfer, which means we only have 2 weeks in total to be in our sector to work. IT{s a weird transition, but I{m getting the hang of it.

Also, OUR HOUSE IS AMAZING! We have a kitchen, fridge, MICROWAVE, oven, and 3 showers that have hot water as long as no one else is showering. The view is beautiful and it{s across from the chapel. I LOVE IT. A major upgrade from sicuani. BBUT we don{t have a pensionista yet. So I have to cook again. I forgot all my recipes, and have 0 desire to cook after working all day. I{m getting the hang of it. Who would have thought I went to flipping Culinary School? I stopped telling people so they wouldn{t ask me to cook for them. Yeah sorry… I don{t know how to cook. Haha. Do you want pb&j? I{ll hook you up, don{t even worry. Also, French toast. But not much else. Aint nobody got time for that. 

I still love my mission and I{m not coming home until October. Just a hard transition. 

 love you all. be good. Please write me little emails if you have time. maybe pictures too. 

Love, Hermana Allred

1-- saying goodbye to Yony (the member we thought was an investigator. 

2-- The members of the Corrales family that could come over before I had to leave. 

3-- Cruz family. Adreana (my Goddaughter) gave me a little barbie. cuz I{m a barbie haha.

1-- Esther after I told her the news that we both had to leave in an HOUR to Cusco. She was a little sad...

2-- Violeta making biscochuelos

3-- Fiorella (Violeta{s daughter) 

1-- Elsa, Juan, Sheylark, Christian, Yosep, and Aldahir. This goodbye was HARD. They were progressing so much and now there{s no established missionary there... it{s okay though. God knows what he{s doing.

2-- Elida and Rosa. They just came back to church :) after 6 months of working with them. 

3-- Lilliana. Sad... 

1-- the kitchen. it{s beautiful.

2-- study room

3-- My new companion and I (Hermana Enriquez from Guayaquil, Ecuador)

I see trees of green. (no red roses too)

I cannot even begin to describe how good this week was. It was HANDS DOWN my favorite week of my mission. So many miracles have happened, and I have had so many eye-opening, humbling experiences.

1// We have christmas eve dinner with a family (their parents couldn´t come) whose mom is a member, and we had a HUGE breakthrough with the dad. I have been teaching them since my second week here, and their progress is slow, but looking back, they have changed so much. Just the fact that the dad isn´t a raging drunk is a miracle in an of itself.

2// I learned so much about myself. So. Much. I learned what I want in life, what is important, what I´ve been taking for granted, and just... so much. I wish I could tell you everything that has happened, but I can´t even think of the words to describe it. I love Peru, and I am grateful for my life in the states. We are so blessed. 

3// Violeta and ribaldo. We found them the first time by a miracle, and we found them a second time by a miracle. God prepared them. And they were baptized 2 weeks later. When she finished changing after, I went to the bathroom to see how she was doing. She just started crying and said "I´m new. It doesn´t matter anymore. I have never been so happy in my entire life." I just cried and said "Yes you are. You´re 100% new. Now listen to me. Never go back." So many sweet moments have been shared with her and her family that I will never forget. I love them. 

4// I got SUPER sick at 2 AM Sunday morning, and threw up until 7AM. Not sure what I ate, but man... it happened. Most miserable 5 hours of my life. 

5// When I finally stopped throwing up, President called us and asked me to be a Sister Training Leader, I was half dead, but I said yes as enthusiastically as I could haha. He didn´t tell me where I was going at that point. I had to wait until transfer calls later that night. 

This means I´ll be traveling all around the mission to visit the other Hermanas and to work with them. Good thing I have lots of motion sickness pills.... cuz if not, I would be dying every time we took a bus. Not sure about what else I have to do, but I´ll find out this week. 

6// Then, there were the transfer calls. HUGE surprise. I was just expecting "hey you´re going to Puno(super super cold), or Cusco" which did happen. I´m going to Cuzco :) Ward Ttio (yes two T´s) BUTTTTTTT then our district leader said "ALSO, Hermana Nelson, You´re going to Inti Raymi (another zone in Cusco) and you´re opening a sector with Hermana Thompson (um. YES that would be MY Hermana Thompson who just broke her leg but now she´s fine. I LOVE HER). My mission daughter will do great things. But that means there´s no one STAYING in Sicuani. As much as that should scare me, because I worry that people we have worked SO hard with to get to progress even a little bit are going to be forgotten, I feel good. I know that God has a plan, and that my mission president works by revelation. He is a good man, and I am so grateful that he is my mission president. 

I love where I am. Like I said to Violeta after her baptism, I am never going back. 

Love, Hermana Allred

Oh yeah. I forgot to share one of my new favorite memories of my mission. 

We were teaching sweet lil ol Alejandro in his store, and we always sing to him and ask what song he wants to hear, but he never wants to sing with us and never names a song at the end of our BEST lesson we´ve ever had with him, Hna. Nelson randomly flipped to Nearer my God to thee, and I was trying to find which number that song was in spanish, and I look over and she already had it ready. So we sang it. And he started singing with us. In his sweet little off key singing voice, he sang the whole song by memory. At the end, I asked "Alejandro, is that your favorite song?" to which he smiled his nearly toothless smile and said in Quechua "yes. yes it is." And I smiled bigger than I ever have before. I will miss that sweet old man. 

1// Feliz Navidad from Peru

2// Spent Christmas Eve eating dinner, panetone, drinking hot chocolate, and making paper snowflakes with these lil nuggets. (they´re the ones I give all the stickers too. MOM AND DAD THEY LOVE YOU FOR THAT haha)

3-- Walking home in the rain on Christmas Eve

1// We went out to a little pueblo a couple hours from Sicuani on Christmas morning to play with the kids and give all the people clothes and hot chocolate. I can honestly say this was my favorite Christmas. every bit of it was focused on other people. and there was a lot of hot chocolate involved, which is always good haha. This is our sweet bishop teaching a kid how to play a game in Quechua. It was his idea to spend Christmas there. He is just the best. I love him and his family.

2// All the people were scared of us cuz they´ve NEVER seen white people. A lot of them cried when we tried to talk to them. How many panais can you see? haha. 

3// I. want. to. ADOPT HER. not joking. 

4// Dad and fam, this is the little girl I was talking about. She doesn´t have shoes (it´s super cold there) and she ONLY has that rag skirt and sweater on. Nothing else. It´s tied on with a string. I love her and want to snatch her up and take her home. I´m pretty sure she´s one of the orphans there. 

1// A less active (juan) teaching us how to sew peruvian style. 

2// Brittany, thought you might want to see what I got to use for an hour. SO COOL!

3// the top one, Juan´s. The bottom one... well, I think you can guess whose it is. MINE. hahaha. What a joke. one day I´ll be awesome at sewing. 

4// Violeta (Giovanna) and Ribaldo at their baptism. Such a special day. 

1// Hermana Anita made all the hot chocolate with some of the other Hermanas in the ward. 3 GIANT pots of chocolate. 

2// All the little kiddies waiting for clothes and hot chocolate. Half of them are orphans. That broke my heart. 

3// The whole family. kind of. Her dad was in Cusco working. (her mom is a member) 

Everybody it´s Christmas

Well I once again used too much time sending pictures. Sorry. But MERRY CHRISTMAS! Next week I´ll tell you about our miracle baptisms that are this saturday.

Love you all

Love, Hermana Allred

p.s. SO EXCITED to see you on wednesday. I have skype all ready to go. WHOOT! 

1-- Once again, went to Raqchi. Much better this time

2-- BOM in Peru

3-- again

4-- Yoga in Peru

1-- The sheep was kicking me. This is more difficult than it looks haha.

2-- door to the cemetary in some random pueblo

3-- Mi hija y yo en el cemeterio. sorry we´re smiling. we didn´t know what else to do.

1-- hike and hike and hike all the way to raqchi. way more fun than a bus. 

2-- we talked through the window like this for a good 20 minutes.

3-- good morning baltimore

There´s no place like CUZCO for the holidays

I only have time for random happenings of the week because I still don´t know how to manage my time on pday haha. sometimes time limits are the WORST.

1-- hna flor called me tweety bird´s grandma because of my glasses and bun. Yeah whatever. My hair is ridiculously long and it drives me crazy, so BUN IT IS. erry day. I refuse to let anyone here touch my hair with scissors. I´ll just wait another 10 months and let the split ends run wild. 

oh yeah. by the way. I will hit my 8 month mark this week. STOP IT. ugh. too fast. 

2-- Sometimes it just amazes me that i speak spanish. I speak a language that no one in my family understands. WHAT IS THAT! I remember working in Chef´s table when I couldn´t understand the dishboy and just wanting to be able to communicate so badly. I could say "La basura, amigo." "mas platos por favor" "que quiere comer?" "no mas cerveza amigo" "donde esta el pollo?" and... that´s about it. Now if I ever want to work in a kitchen again, I´m SET. 

3-- Hermana Flor just got internet in the house so we can skype you guys. She loves us too much. 

4-- We´re going to Cuzco this friday to have a christmas dinner with the president and the 2 other zones in Cuzco, and I GET TO SEE HERMANA THOMPSON AGAIN! 

5-- Ribaldo (son of a less active who forgot she was a member) Has a baptismal date for the 28th. The weekend before transfers. HE is so excited and just soaks up everything we tell him. This family is incredible and their trials have made them so much stronger in their faith. I love them. 

I just wanna let you all know once again how grateful I am for this gospel. For teh opportunity to be a missionary. IN PERU! For the chance God gave me to change and try to pay him back by coming here. My life is worlds different than what it was even just 18 months ago. I am so grateful to be here. I know exactly where I would have been if I didn´t serve a mission, and I thank God every day for letting me be here. I love my mission president, my companion, ward, family, and most of all, I LOVE this gospel, God, and Jesus Christ. 

That´s all.

Love, Hermana Allred

1-- Pday as a Zone playing soccer in the Rosaspata Sports complex. Luckily it was sunny and there was a playground or I would have been bored to tears. 

2-- Hermano Alex and his english students. We went to help them with their Finals. They had to talk to a gringo for 5 minutes. They had no idea what I was saying.... I didn´t know what they were trying to say either. But they tried haha. 

3-- We helped this family set up their nativity (with a million random animals) and also do some farm work in their "yard". The mom´s name is Yolanda, and he has had cancer for 2 years. They told her she had 6 months to live when she got it, but she said God told her she would be okay. She is almost 100% recovered. But this christmas, she is going to be in Arequipa ALONE going through Chemotherapy. She is the most positive happy person I´ve ever met. She said "the first thing I´m going to do when I´m better is go with the missionaries to visit people who need help".... wow. Even when she is the one who needs help more than anyone, she is still thinking about others. I love her. SO MUCH. 

1-- Dancing in the ampitheater while the elders play soccer... again. 

2-- The nativity

3-- switching out my 100 soles with hna. Flor cuz NO ONE has change here. but Hna. Flor is like the richest person in Sicuani, so she´s got my back. Also, look at her face hahahahhaha. I don´t know why she looked so upset. She is happy I promise. 

4-- The cute lil tree in the pharmacy

1-- Vanessa Clavijo McCann. ARE YOU DEAD YET!??? hahahahha. When I saw this sign, I just thought of you. 

2-- Seesaw while the elders... again... play soccer. 

3-- random parade for no reason.