7/26/21: Wildfire Season

 Hello everybody, this week has been very interesting to say the least. The fires have gotten a lot worse, so bad in fact that on Thursday we got evacuated out of Quincy. It was really too bad because we were making amazing progress in this area but it's all really come to a hault because of the fire.

 
It all went down on Thursday when the wind change direction. That morning was clear and sunny and we were actually having a very successful day. After lunch we were doing weekly planning and we heard a knock at the door. It was out neighbor and she told us to come outside, we look us and there was a wall of smoke growing on the hill and decending in on us. Everyone had already left town, except a few, and me and my companion had to decide if we would too. We prayed about it and called our president who told us to leave. He called the bishop in the next town over (Portola) to see if we could stay with anyone there and he offered to let us sleep in his barn. (which has a very nice mother in law suite attached to it). So we packed up and went there that night. We were so grateful to have such a loving ward who is so open to helping us. 

The saddest part is we will probably have to delay David's baptism and nowall our lessons in Quincy are falling through, for obvious reasons. So most of our work this week has been contacting ward memebers and others we are teaching in Quincy to make sure they are safe or in need of help. The smoke make it hard to be outside for longer than two hours but we do what we can there too. 

This week I have really been working on listening to the guidence of the Spirit. I've come to realize, the Spirits influence is truly  real, all you have to do is listen. I saw it in my zone leader on exchanges as we would walk a street and he would quietly be thinking and then stop, saying 
"we need to stop at this house". On that exchange I saw so much success just in one day because of how well we listened to the Spirit, nearly every door we kncok someone answered and was interested a least a bit. I've been trying to incorporate that into my own finding and I've seen much better results when I ask not "how and I going to do this today?" but instead " how does the spirit want me to do tuis today". The Holy Ghost is real and he will guide you if you listen. I can testify of that.

That's all for this week hopefully things improve in Quincy. Please pray for those affected by the fires!

-Elder Allen



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