Week 58

Woot Woot! Gen-con in a week!  It's gonna be Great!  Big announcements are coming i bet... 

Anyways,  Clarksville is pretty Great!  the ward i'm in is Awesome especially the Bishop.  

Elder Ellerbeck is pretty good so far, we have a lot in common which is good but also bad i guess, we don't have as much variety for our investigators if you know what i mean.

We had a baptism on Saturday here, the guy who got Baptized is Awesome, he's 19.  He only met the missionaries like 3 weeks ago.  He bore his testimony on Sunday and makes good comments in Gospel Principles...  Its pretty sweet.

There are alot of people in the military in Clarksville as we have Fort Campbell...  So that's pretty neat i guess.

But uhh, not much else to talk about, that i can remember anyways...  So sorry for the puny Cameron sized letter.

Love Ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 57

Well Hello there!

So this week was pretty good, we had a lot of good lesson's which doesn't happen a lot... well lesson's in general don't happen a lot that is.  

We found a less active who actually lived pretty close to the church the other day and we read from the book of mormon with him.  I don't know how he's less active.  He has a better testimony then some active members.  His scriptures were all marked up, he's read the whole Jesus the Christ book, and just is really pretty smart in the gospel.  And then he came to church on sunday!! So that was pretty sweet.  All he needed was 1 person to come visit him.

But now to the subject of the email.  Transfers.

There's been a pattern throughout my mission so far, a couple of patterns actually.

1st pattern:  I stayed in my first area for 4 transfers, I stayed in my second area for 3 transfers, i stayed in my third area for 2 transfers...  So i told Elder Lofthouse that i was going to stay for only one transfer because that's what my pattern dictated.  So true to my pattern i am leaving tomorrow!  To Clarksville TN.  which is a pretty big city, there are at least 5 wards there because i'm going to Clarksville 5th ward, with Elder Ellerbeck.

So i totally called that one

2nd pattern:  When i left the Shelbyville ward, Sister's took over one of our appartments.  so we had to clean up really well...  When i left Foxcroft they replaced us with sisters...  When i left Springfield they replaced us with sisters...  So i told elder Lofthouse that when i left sister's were going to replace us, i told him this like week 1...  Well, True to this pattern, SISTER'S ARE REPLACING US!!!

Called that one too...

it's starting to get annoying.  Especially since i was really starting to know the area so i started liking it more, and things were picking up...

I don't know what'll happen after this though, i can't stay less then 1 transfer, well unless i get ET'd.  Maybe i'll just stay the rest of my mission there.

Welp!!  That's the news this week.

Love Ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 56

Hello hello!

This week has been pretty good..  We had a Zone Conference on tuesday, we got lost on our way there...  luckily we left like an extra hour early so we barely made it on time..

the weather has been Amazing for most of the week, we even had a low of 49 one day!  that was crazy...

We had a couple of pretty good lessons with some people at a halfway house here in town!  so thats good.

I'm kinda rushing the letter because the computer is going to restart in a few minutes and it wont give me any say in the matter...

But uhh, oh yeah! we helped a family pack up and move for quite a while on saturday, so that was fun.

only 3 weeks till Gen-Con!!! WOOO HOOO!!

That is all.   Sorry

Love Ya'll

#ElderMartin

Week 55

So this week we did Alot of tracting... well at least alot compared to what i have done on my mission thus far.  So we obviously didn't have a very successful week.

We did talk to Danny Gale again, the guy whose wife commit suicide the other week.  Taught him the plan of Salvation.  He was really quiet the whole time and then we asked if he has felt the power of the atonement since the incident, to which he shook his head no.  So we asked him something else and then he finally started talking...  He just had a bunch of "Why" Questions, like why does God allow babies to come into the world and then die at birth or shortly after, or why did He allow his children to lose their mother.  Just stuff like that.  We had to leave soon after he started to talk though so we'll be going back sometime this week probably.

Then we also saw a lady named Michelle who i think has some good potential to get baptized sometime soon... So, more to come on that in a few weeks.

But uhhh yeah, i guess i'm kinda in the same stage as Cameron...  So sorry for the lameish letters...  But at least they're better than Cameron's!

Love Ya'll!
-Elder Martin

Week 54

So, this week we did a lot of Less Active work, which is great because we have a ton of them in this ward.

We have had 2 inactive's coming to church the past couple weeks, well we actually found out that they are both excommunicated and are looking to rejoin!  So BOOM, 2 progressing right der.

The other day we were at wallyworld picking up something for Elder Lofthouse since it was his birthday, and we find a member who recentlyish moved into the ward but doesn't want to come because she thinks she'll be judged by the people.  (She has tons of tattoos and piercings) Well her name is Nancy.

We have another person in the ward named Wade who has aspergers disease. Well his conversion story involves an investigator from 5 years ago. Which goes as follows. 

The missionaries left a sticky note for an investigator named nancy on her door which was supposed to be a couple houses down from this guys house, but somehow it stuck to a missionary and fell off on his porch, well long story short that led to his baptism...

So we are on exchanges with him and we tell him about how we find a lady at walmart who's a less active named Nancy, and he freaks out and says that "ITS THE SAME NANCY AS THE ONE FROM THE STICKY NOTE!!!!" 

now because we know she just moved to cumberland furnace 1 year ago and she was from hopkinsville about an hour and a half away where she was Active, we know for a fact its not the same nancy...

but he wont be dissuaded!  So he changes his story to say that she didn't live a few houses down but that she lived in cumberland furnace (after we tell him that's where she lives) so then we tell him that she's been a member her whole life.  So He changes his story to say that the missionaries 5 years ago told him that she was a less active.  

But he is So happy that this person is the same person whose sticky note he got, ( which it most definitely is not) and he wont accept the truth and he even went up in testimony meeting yesterday and talked about it...  We don't know what we should do, like we don't want to crush his dreams of meeting this girl but at the same time we know that he wont.  Haha... just something funny that's been going down on the side here.

WELP 

Love Ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 53

Well hey howdy hey ya'll!

This week has been pretty interesting,  The early part of the week was really slow and kinda lame but it did get better...

We had dinner with our next door neighbors who aren't member's so that was pretty sweet...  Which by the way, she looks alot like Christine.  Random fact.

We had our first district meeting since i've been here, and man...  hate to say it but we have a pretty lame district.

On Thursday we got a referral from a guys aunt in Washington for this guy whose wife just committed suicide last week, so we had been kinda wondering how we should approach him and stuff because he didn't know we were coming.  he wasn't there the first time we tried but he was the second time and he told us that it was still a really rough time for us to see him so he told us to leave (but in a nice way) and then he said come back in a week or two.  Apparently a lot of the churches around here have been trying to *convert* him i guess, so if he does talk to us, we have the truth and especially the fact that families are forever so of course he'll choose our church if he chooses any, so that's good i guess.

On Saturday there was a baptism for an 8 year old, so after that we tracted the neighborhood right across the street from the church before dinner, and Man oh man.... that neighborhood had the rudest people in it...  The first guy at least talked to us for a second, he was like "i know all about your church and i appreciate what you guys do, but i'm not interested" so we're like 'Oh, well what have you heard about us?"

"Enough..."

then as we are leaving we turn around and ask him if there is anyone around the area that he knows that might want to learn about the church, to which he says

"I would Never refer mormons to ANYONE!!!" 

So then i say to Lofthouse,  "Well... he obviously doesn't know much about the church at all then."
and i said it loud enough that i hope he heard it.

Then we see the Only somewhat nice person on that street and he turns out to be a ghost hunter, so that was a pretty neat conversation.

Then we get to the next house that answers and he immediately says

"I'm a deacon in my church, so you are welcome to go to the next house" and starts closing the door so we say 

"Oh yeah? what church do you go to?"

"I Said you are welcome to go to the Next House!!!!"  *SLAM*

Sheesh man!  i'm glad i'm not with his church...

Then at the next house a lady answers and says that she's fixin to cook supper, so we say the usual 'Okay, well when would be a better time where we could talk to you?"

"NEVER!!!!" *SLAM*

man...  if ever there needed to be a place that should've been dusted, that street was it.

Welp Thats all folks!

Love Ya'll

-Elder Martin