Hello family and friends,

This week was a slow one, there was literally nobody in our area this week, who knows where everyone can go but we literally passed by house after house, Active members, less-actives, investigators, ancient investigators etc and nobody was there it almost appeared a conspiracy! oh and if people would like souvenirs from Mexico please tell me asap, cause it live on the outskirts of Monterrey, the edge of my area is the desert.... so i will have to look long and hard on p-days to find foreign objects. Mom, still working on the dress sorry its taking so long but Mormon standard time in Mexico is ALWAYS off schedule.

Cool experience: this week we participated in a confernce with brother Robert Swanson from the mission board. he taught us in porta-spanglish..... he speaks fluent english and portegess but cant tell you what time it is in spanish. interestly enough portegese is very similar to spanish and with a bit of help from the gift of tongues we could understand the guy, it was like listening to spanish with a french-italian accent... very interesting. As we all know i am not a man of many words when it comes to emailing so i will leave it at that. Love you all!!!

Hello everyone,

This week was a great one. we had LOTS of work, lots of lessons, and lots of cutting across rivers to get to meetings on time. we figured out the bridge is a really big time drain so we go straight to the mountainside take off our shoes and forge the river, which is about ankle deep. when we got to the meeting the ward mission leader wasnt even there and showed up an hour later! dumb. but it was a good expirience.

Recently one of the young men from the Elder´s quarom who is waiting to go out on the mission is going with us almost everywhere with us. he is a month younger than me and is leaving to chiapas the 19th of december. we are working hard with the members of the ward so that we have a constant influx of refferrals, and its working!! we are also working alot with the less actives. this sunday 2 less actives  that we have been visiting showed up and they brought friends. :) well one is the old ward mission leader and actually brought one of our investigatores who lives close to his house. that was awesome, it was a good week in the chapel, loving life and working hard here in mexico.

Love you all!!
Elder Paden W Allen

Hello all,

This week was an alright time, we were kicking around preaching the gospel here and there and managed to double all of our weekly results. thats beside the fact that last week we were not in our area for 3 days, so it got to be a bit difficult, but we have 7 people with baptismal dates, not one of these 7 came to church so that is going to be our focus this week, GET TO CHURCH PEOPLE hopefully they understand so that we dont have to start dropping people. I am pretty sure that at lest 1 we are going to have to drop this week cause we can never find him and when he says he is going to be there he´s not and his wife doesnt help, she is less active and they live in 2 places, which means they could be baptised here or there... wierd... we found a guy named david this week he is 67 and only has one leg and refers to everthing as male or female, but as if they were animals. macho y embra. hes quite hilarious and seems to understand the lessons just fine. his problem will be church attendance cause he works sundays in the catholic church taking pictures of ''baptisms'' hes not catholic but as he is one legged and there are a bajillion catholics here thats what he does cause there is always work and he only has to do it once a week and he can eat off of what he makes. it rains on sundays now, and when we are out working all week its about 85 degrees still. looking forward to snow. it´ll be great. :)

livin good in the neighborhood, love you all, peace out untill next week!

Querido familia y amigos si es que hay amigos que leen esto.. JAJA

Well everything is just peachy here in Mexico. We watched General Conference in Spanish which wasn't that bad. Elder Johnson Gonzaléz, Scott and one other that i cant remember right now translated their own messages. That was cool. especially to be able to hear Elder Scott. he has a bit of an accent but what gringo doesn't?

I Felt very impressed and Exhorted to pay more attention to the spirit in all situations. I also began thinking about everything i am going to have to do after the mission..... best say we wont go there right now.  Our mission president invited us to look for references to the doctrine of Christ as it is mention indirectly by every apostle. there were 447 references as i could count to the doctrine of Christ as it is portrayed in 2nephi 31, 3 Nephi 11 and 27.

I am excited to be where i am and to be doing as i am doing because the end is coming closer and closer and "it gives me fear" anyway love you all and take care.

Family and Friends,

To answer the question you all have, Frambutàn is the stange pinically fruit that i took a picture with i believe it belongs in fantasy books.

This week was great. very exciting and something new! i have never opened area before... well i have now. we kicked trash busting in and giving it where nobody was looking. the members dont know what to do we pass by at almost all their homes at least 2 times a week to ask for refferals. its working as the elders that were here before werent working hardly at all, they are very good elders, just that one had been here for 9 months or somehting like that and needed change. the other one is now home. I included a picture of myself with president walker, with my new companion Elder Cordoba,  and me with the giant moth i cought while i was writing this. i think it thought i was hungry as it tried flying into my mouth.

Anywyay back to this week. We tore it up here in TAMAULIPAS 1 my entire district is opening area, and 2 of 3 of the areas are training as well. the other area is a sister area. I have never learned an area so quickly. i no longer need the map while we are in 5 of 9 colonies. cause i already know the ``rumbo`` hehe. We are super excited, although there isnt alot to write about yet other than being content. Thanks for everything to all of you!!