Elder Braden Allred : Week 39 Sumoto: Transfer Alert

my family, my friends,

this last week me and Elder anderson got our transfer calls and we were both transferring out of marugame. it was way sad and we had a way hard time saying goodbye to our investigators and members who we had gotten so close to and had so many spirituaL experiences with. and the hardest lesson of all was fujiwara shimai's lesson. when we told her she was so sad and surprised. she starteD telling us how grateful she was for us and started to cry which made us all cry and then she told us that she would never forget us because we had changEd her life and she begged us to never forget her and to come back and see her again. we told her that we would come back for her baptism and she

said that she would work harder than ever to make it to baptism foR us. it was one of the saddest things i have ever dOne in my life. we then gave her our little information cards which we wrote notes on and she took them and read them and started crying Again. it was way sad but i am so grateful for the blessing and privilege that it was to be able to be apart of her progression and change to realizing that she is a child of god. she is so amazing i am going to miss her.

well my new area is sumoto it is way awesome but completely different from marugame. it is on the island of awaji which is basically an island off the shore of shiKoku which is an iSland of the shore of the main land japan which IS an island in and of itself. so i just keep getting sent to smaller and smaller islands. our area covers the whole island and doesn't really have a whole lot of people. our branCh has about 8 active members and they are way awesOme! i feel like i am back in the early days of the church when they would gather their sMall band of followers of christ in the livIng room of someone's home. it is so awesome. my companioN's name is osaka chōrō, he is a japanese missionary so i have really been thrown into the fire of the language because we basically have to do everything in japanese unless we are doing english class, or english study for him. i am Getting way better at conversational japanese with him too, i'm so excited too see what we are able to accomplish together this transfer. the only problem is that my english is getting worse, writing emails is getting a lot harder, because i don't remember how to be funny or say things in an interesting way anymore (but then again i may have never been able to do that) another awesome thing about this neW area is that our apartment is at the top of this huge hill and we are On the fifth floor, so at the end of the day when we gO home we have to get a head start to build up speed and then power our way up this giant hill to get back to our apartment, it is a way intense Way to end the day when you are already exhausted from a hardworking day of dendou, but when we finally get to Our apartment the view is amazing! i am going to love this area so much! well like always thank you so much for all of your love emails and support to me as i dO my best to serve our heavenly father and bring souls unto christ. i love you all and hope you week is superb!

elder allred