Elder Casey Martin

Elder Casey Martin
Missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Monday, March 25, 2013

Week 34


Well howdy Ya'll! 
 
Last week was good, it went by really fast and it was all kind of a blur, so i cant remember much of it... 
 
We saw Julie a few more times and she's still doing great and on track, except she didn't make it to church cause she slept in.... pssh.. 
 
Ryan Horn's wife is still a dork and wont let us see them but he's still doing good as well.
(i think I've talked about him before, if I haven't i will next week.)
 
Oh! and guess what?!  Jan And Kerri from Lewisburg are getting baptized this weekend! I guess once they finally just decided to come to church they loved it so much and have been going since and now they're getting baptized! 
 
 
Anyhow, if you want to send stuff to me my address is still the same... No changes to it.
 
105 Westpark Dr. Suite 190
Brentwood, TN 37027
United States
 
And that will always be the address you can send stuff to.
 
So you guys remember how its supposed to be spring and all that jazz?  Well, it took a step backwards over here...  its been a high of 36 or so the past several days and today we even woke up to 3 or so inches of snow! LAME...  I'm ready for warm days.  But i bet there wont be any, it'll just jump from 30 to 85 in a day.
 
well like i said, the week has been kind of a blur so i can't remember what's all happened.
 
So this is all you get this week
 
Love ya, bye!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Week 33


Okay, so this week we did TONS of service!  It was GREAT!  Being a missionary is awesome and great and all, but i still like to get out of church clothes when i can.
 
We mostly helped this one family like 3 days last week tear up the carpet in their basement and then we had to scrape off the bottom layer which got stuck to the ground, and then we got thrown around by a buffer machine to get rid of the rest of it (and man, those buffer machines are Crazy!) and then painted the cement floor and put wall-paper up and painted the walls and everything fun like that.  With a lot of moving around all the stuff they had in the basement.  Oh and i Hate wall papering....  why would anyone do it? i don't know, it's stupid.  stupid wallpaper.
 
Then we also helped our first counselor move into his new house he just built, and Holy cow.... Its Mega nice...  the nicest house i've been in by Far on my mission.
 
So that took up a lot of our week, but in between all of that we saw Juile a few more times and then on Saturday we set a date with her!  she's super excited and she totally wants to be baptized and she's doing great!  She came to church yesterday and loved that... So she'll be baptized here in a few weeks.
 
Oh man, i cant believe that Gen-Con is already so close!  crazy stuff!
 
That's all for now folks!!
 
Love ya'll
 
-Elder Martin 

Monday, March 4, 2013

Week 32


Well Howdy ya'll!
 
This past week has been wierd, i can't seem to remember much of it... Lets see,

Monday was p-day. so we did p-dayish stuff and had a couple of lesson's
 
tuesday was pretty good, we went on splits with a couple people from the ward, and i went with Brother Nelson, He's way cool!  He's like in his 30's or something and we talked about some pretty fun stuff, deepish doctrine and whatnot. Saw a bunch of people that night.
 
We had our first D-mtg with Elder Dudley as the DL on wednesday, so that was pretty good.
 
Then later on thursday i think we had dinner with the Nelson's and he printed off a pretty cool talk from Dallin H Oaks about The Ministering of Angels and the Aaronic Priesthood having that ability.  It's pretty neat, ya'll should read it.
 
Oh, we reactivated a family this week! so that was great!  They're really cool too. They even bore their testimonies yesterday at church and they both were really good!
 
Let's see...  Oh yeah, This wednesday we are going to the temple which is awesome!  But it makes me think about how fast my mission is going...  it seem's like I just barely went there yet we only go twice a year...  Crazy.
 
Welp, i guess that'll be all for now... 
 
Love ya'll
-Elder Martin

Monday, February 25, 2013

Week 31


Hey Howdy Hey Family!!
 
last week has been a pretty good one! 
 
We have big plans for the inactives in the ward and are working close with our bishopric on it.  Which is great, we have way too many inactives.
 
Anyhow, We saw Chrissy, (or Krissy, or whatever, i dont know how she spells it) the lady we helped move the other week and she is on board to have us keep coming over to teach them!  So we set up something for this weekend. 
 
Oh! and Winter is finally over here!   We had the last winter storm  on thursday or friday... cant remember...  but it was a pretty bad storm.  they have Ice Storms over here where it's below freezing but it's raining so once the rain hits it freezes and it's no bueno.  And we walked for like 3 hours in it...  there was ice on our jackets... it was pretty crazy.
 
And then the next day it was bright and sunny and a little bit warmer and we walked All day...  so that day was pretty boring.
 
And then we had the Elder Oaks visit!!!  we woke up at 4 so we could get to Nashville by 8:30 and it was great though!  It was the first meeting Sister McKee was able to go to since thanksgiving so that was really cool to see her back in action.
Then we got transfer calls later that night, and Me and Dudley are staying the same, except now he's the DL! So thats pretty cool i guess :)
 
Hmmm, welp... running out of time so i guess thats it
 
Love Ya'll!
-Elder Martin

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Week 30


Holy Cow! it's been 7 months already.... In the words of Brigham Young from the movie Mountain of the Lord
"How did this happen"?!
 
Anyways,  I'll start off with a story of a witch we met last week.
 
So we were looking for formers in the city of Herrin, (which is also in our area, we have about 10 city's in our area... well, like 5 citys and like 5 or more villages...) and we find a former named Lisa and in the notes about her it mentions that she was a Wiccan... so we were like "Oh great..." Well we go there and find out the reason they stopped teaching her was cause she claims the Book of Mormon gave her nightmares, so we're thinking 'that's weird...'
well we get to talking a bit more and she tells us a story of when she casted her first spell........ What?!? and i guess it worked and she found a boyfriend from her spell. Anyhow a bit later out of the blue a Rabbit hops by my foot, now mind you that we are inside at this point... she has rabbits inside.  And i notice that the rabbit is black on the rear side of it and white on the opposite side with a black little rectangle where the chest would be... SHE TRANSFORMED A MISSIONARY INTO A RABBIT!
so we leave. 
 
Well then last p-day we are back in that city and our GPS is taking us to walmart, so we finally get to where it told us to go on the GPS, And it took us to this Lisa lady's house!!!!!!
AHHH!! She cast a summoning spell on us and tried to morph us too! but at the last minute we broke free of her spell and drove off.
It was pretty creepy though.
 
Anyway's we also went church hopping again this week but this time we went to a Apostolic church, the kind where they yell and stuff.  Well it started off great and the people were nice and Everyone there came up and welcomed us which i thought was pretty cool.  However all their people were still only like 20... so.
But then they start off with their prayer thing which is everyone talking loudly at once with their hands in the air, then we sing with really loud speakers blaring at us, then they did a testimony thing and there was this one girl who Literally every 3 or 4 seconds said Amen, it was really annoying. 
Then after a long while they actually did their preaching and the preacher was crazy, he yelled a lot but he said like the same thing over and over and over he was on like a 5 minute loop! and he would throw in a completely random Amen every now and then... like this
 
"And then Isaiah was preaching to amen the people and he preached the amen things that the Lord told him to amen preach!"  but he was yelling all of that.
 
So guess what?!  Pretty much everyone i taught in Lewisburg and Shelbyville are getting baptized now! Earl and Barbara are getting married the 16th and she and her granddaughter are getting baptized the week later, Keith Whitmore and his son are getting baptized sometime next month, Fannie is getting baptized sometime next month.
Thus putting me ahead of cameron...
 
Welp, i guess that's all for now folks!
 
Love all a ya'll!
-Elder Martin

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Week 29


Hey ya'll!  Things are going good! 
 
There are a few things that could've been better, for example, Juile was i guess really sick this week so we couldn't go over and she also couldn't make it to church. 
We tried to see a TON of In-actives because that's 70% of this ward, and a lot a formers as well, but NO ONE was ever  home it seemed like...  no matter what time of the day we tried everyone was always gone!  Sheesh...
 
But all in all it was a good week.
 
We went on exchanges and i stayed here with that Lofthouse guy that came a couple of weeks ago.  We found a couple new investigators and went to a baptist bible study on Wednesday night which was pretty cool.   They were really nice and i did actually learn a bit.  But at the same time they were pretty far off on some things too.
 
So while me and Lofthouse were tracting we get to this one house and a lady come's out and she almost sounds as if she knew us or at least old missionaries, (which maybe she did) but she comes outside and... well here, i'll just write our conversation
 
"Lady: Oh hey guys whats up?
 Us: Well were missionaries for our church and so on and so forth
 Lady: Ah ha ha, oh guys... Alright well you guys have a good day.
 (By the way at this point, were thinking maybe she's like a less active or something and were both new to the area so wouldn't know)
 Us: Uhh are you a member?
 Lady: Ha, no..  Take it easy guys.
and then she just goes back inside...   So that was kinda weird.
 
Anyhow, i gave a talk on Sunday which went well.  i was even the concluding speaker which i thought was pretty neat.
 
Oh yeah, we have to drive our car all the way to Hopkinsville Kentucky this Thursday for Zone Conference...  that's a lot of miles on our car that we have to take because they are inspecting them...  250 or so miles...
 
But Dallin H Oaks is coming Next week too! on the 23rd!  Yay!!!  my third Apostle in like 4 months!
 
i had something i really wanted to say but i cant for the life of me remember it.....  that's going to bother me alot in a day when i do remember.   Curses..  Oh well.
 
That's all for now i guess. 
 
Love ya'll
-Elder Martin

Monday, February 4, 2013

Week 28


Hey Howdy Hey!!!  So, lets talk about my week shall we? First, We went to franky's house with bishop and he apparently was having a Terrible day, and was yelling and all that good stuff, so we just rescheduled ..  Oh and on monday tuesday and Wednesday morning, we were in a Tri-panionship with Elder Lofthouse, he's pretty new. Been out 3 months,  And holy cow... This guys sounds JUST LIKE Seth Rogen, it was pretty funny.

On Tuesday it was 70 degree's... You know what that means in January right?  TORNADO WEATHER!!!!  Yup, we had a pretty big tornado warning!  with Siren's and everything!  we couldn't see anything though as it was night when it happened... so that was lame...  If i have to be in a tornado, i at least want to see it!

Hmmmm, lets see... Ahh yes.  There's this other lady we are teaching named Julie something-or-other and we taught her the plan of Salvation which she absolutely Loved...  she'll probably get baptized once we can find her a ride to church...

Oh yeah, like the topic says, This is going to be a 5 week transfer rather then 6.  I think it's cause of all the missionaries coming in at this rate... or something, i'm not sure...  But their shortening everyone in the mission's (at least everyone who's here already) mission by a week!  So! i will be coming home the week BEFORE my birthday!  No longer do i have to spend stinking 3 birthdays away!  Also, that means i might get home a week before Cameron unless his mission does the same thing.  That'd be pretty funny i think.

Welp, Thats all folks!

Love ya'll
-Elder Martin