Week 43

Howdy!  So it turns out that i'm actually in a town called Springfield in Tennessee, not whitehouse... We are in the whitehouse ward, but we are working right now to get a branch in springfield!  we could maybe get a branch started in as little as a month.

The Ward Mission Leader here is Awesome, so i'm excited to work with him.

There is 7 missionaries in the whitehouse ward right now, which is pretty crazy because like 6 months ago they didn't have any in this ward..  They had what we called Traveling missionaries who would cover like 4 wards and they would just drive through and visit them all and stuff, but now this ward has 2 sets of Elder's and a tri-panionship of Hermana's... pretty crazy stuff!

 

Elder Tomlinson is a cool dude, he reminds me A lot of Elder Bethers, so it should be a good transfer and maybe more.  He's a hard worker from Idaho, from a town called "Mud lake", he and his family own a trucking company, Oh and he was also a professional wake boarder...  He's pretty intense, he's broken like 20 bones doing stuff.

 

Anyways... i have some really stupid news.   President and Sister McKee got called home and will be leaving on July 1st...  They were supposed to stay another year but i guess with all of Sister McKee's health issues the Brothren decided to send them home, Even though she's almost back to full health.  They had the whole mission have a meeting yesterday that they told everyone about only 2 days before, where they pretty much tried to let us down easy.  It was a rough meeting with a lot of emotions... There isn't many people i respect more than President McKee ...  So it's really sad to see him go. 

 Our new mission president will be President Andersen, who's from Ogden Utah.

 

Well...  I don't have much to say this week, so i guess i'll end there. 

 

Love Ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 42

Hello!

This past week has been pretty good.  I pretty much knew it was going to be my last week with Elder Dudley (which is sad...  He's great) so we made it a good one.  Had a good district meeting, had some good lesson's with Justin, the guy who's getting baptized this Saturday! (He is Super Prepared and very ready)  Well... maybe, the ward always tries to fight us on when we baptize people... They want to just baptize him after church on Sunday, which we know as missionaries isn't as good because he will then have to wait a lot longer to get the Holy Ghost.  Especially since he won't be able to make it to church the next week.  In my mission we are told to baptize people on Saturday and confirm them the next day.  Cause for some reason they don't let us baptize someone and confirm them right after...  Don't know why,  But that's what President wants so i'm not going to question it.

So besides that we got Transfer calls...  And here's the crazy part, They are whitewashing us!?!  Right before our baptism.  So i guess the ward will do whatever they want to.  Anyways the even crazier part is that they are putting Sister's here instead of elders!  Which is i guess why they whitewashed us.  

So yeah, i'm going to a place (well at least the ward is called) Whitehouse in Tennessee.  Its just above Nashville.  And Elder Dudley is going to Lebenon Tennessee, which is going to be in my new zone!  So at least we'll still see each other at meetings and such.

Oh and my new companion... Elder Tomlinson.  He uhh...  Got sent home a few months ago.  But he's back!  So that's good that he had enough of a desire to come back right?  His companion at the time who also got sent home didn't come back though...

So, we'll see how this goes.

Welp, i guess that's all for now.  Gotta go back and clean the apartment super well for the Sisters....

Love ya'll

-Elder Martin

Week 41

Hello there!  It was Great to talk to all ya'll again last night!  But at the same time now i feel like i don't have much to talk about...

Lets see,  We met a guy named Justin Stevens the other day (he referred himself on Mormon.org, Which is AWESOME) So he's gonna get baptized...  We've seen him twice and have set appointments every Tuesday and Thursday morning with him.  He's almost as prepared as Ryan was.

Speaking of Ryan, when i was on exchanges with the other Elders, they went over to Ryan's and were finally able to teach his wife!  she sat down with them and watched the restoration video with them, and then later that night Ryan texted them and said that his wife is actually considering joining our church now!!! What a Miracle!!  she was So anti before! 

On a different note, remember those slugs i was talking about that are infesting our house?  Well we usually catch them cause they're quite easy to catch.  Well, we have this one slug, who leaves his nasty slug trails All over this one room,  Almost every morning we find more trails...  but then he's always gone!!!  This slug is So sneaky its beyond logical...  we can't find where he hides or anything cause of his sneakiness.  So now we have just put a lot of salt down on the ground...  made salt circles and such.

Well, i guess that's all i have for today...

Love Ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 40

Hello hello hello family!

So, i don't have a lot of time again... sorry 'bout that.

Anyhow, this past week we had Zone Conference and Stake Conference!  For stake conference we also had a broadcast like ya'll, we had President Uchtdorf and Elder Hales speak to us! it was pretty great.

Ryan's wife Finally came to church and this was a really good one for her to come to.  They all talked about Family and the importance of family and how to prepare your family spiritually.  She's pretty big on family herself i guess so she really enjoyed it! 

So for Zone Conference, we had to drive Past Hopkinsville KY this time...  Another 20 miles to Clarksville TN.  and we had to bring our cars for inspections...  So they made us use almost a 3rd of our miles for the month on the first day of the month...  No bueno.

Zone-con was good though and we learned a lot of stuff, but still, i wish they didn't make us drive that far for it...

We were able to reactivate a guy this past week though!  Brother Shelton.  We saw him last Sunday and had a really good lesson with him, (not sure if i talked about it last week or not) and he really felt like he needed to make some changes and come back to church, So he did yesterday!  So that was really cool to see him there.  

The weird thing is he and his wife were sealed in the temple!?!  I can't even imagine going inactive for something stupid like being offended After being to the temple... It just baffles me.

But hey, That's all i got time for, so

Until next time dear family!!!!

Love ya

-Elder Martin, The better

Week 39

Well hello there!

 

Don't have too much time today so it might be a bit shorter...  We'll see how fast i can type.

 

So i'll start with the end of the week.   Ryan was baptized and confirmed on Saturday and Sunday!!!  Everything went Great!  His wife came to the baptism and seemed to like it and it was just great!  Elder Dudley baptized him which was cool for him to do because it was his first baptism of his mission.  So i'm proud of the little guy. :)

 

In other news, we may have reactivated 2 families this week, so we'll see if they continue to come regularly.

 

Oh and remember Kevin?  Well we saw him walking with what looked to be some of his family (they don't live with him though) the other day as we were walking and waved to him and stuff and he was kinda weird about it and just didn't really acknowledge us...  So then later the next day i think it was we get a text from him where he pretty much drops us.  Now, we get dropped every so often,  Not everyone is ready to accept to gospel quite yet.  But the reason i mention this one is because the way he did it was really stupid and funny.. 

Kevin is this big, kind of slowish, old, quiet guy... And here's what he said in a text, Almost verbatim.

 

"Hey guys, i'm selling all of my possessions and taking the $5000 my grandma left me and i'm going to travel town to town talking to people about JESUS, so i don't need you to stop by anymore." 

 

So we know that's not true, cause this guy wouldn't talk to anyone about anything if he didn't have to...   Anyways we try to get to what the real problem is (Which we figure his family must've given him a hard time when we waved at him that one day...) But he keeps saying lame excuses.  

We will go back soon to see him at home, not traveling town to town, and try to help him understand opposition and stuff like that..

 

Phew...  Sorry about my rambling there.

 

Anyways Me and Elder Dudley are still doing great, He is still awesome.

 

Also, with mother's day approaching what's the deal with that? like what time do ya'll want to do it?

 

Welp, i guess that's all for today.

 

Love Ya'll

-Elder Martin