Week 14

So lets see,  We went out Thomasing again and found a couple of new investigators who seem really promising,  mostly a girl name Lucia and her family. They are hispanic, which I have a real quick funny story about that! 

We were introducing the BoM to her and mentioned how it was her ancestors and stuff, and Thomas catches on to what we do and uses it himself alot so later that day we went to a black ladies house and after talking for a bit he randomly asks "Do you have any indian blood in you?"... HAHA WHAT?!  oh thomas... he's a goober and a half but it's all good.

 

I Don't know if i ever mentioned him before but we have a guy we talk to who likes to be called "Lightning!" he's this old black guy with a Huge underbite and is super funny.  Anyhow, he ran away....  he lived with his son who we are teaching, and he ran away!!! NOOO!  I loved lightning! he was always a highlight to our day!

 

Oh hey! Cameron, i was just now informed that someone in my trainer's MTC district is in your district right now!  Elder sooter or something around that?

 

Also in other news,  Taylor swift's Bodyguard is getting baptized!  Someone in this mission is going to baptize him!  so that was kinda cool i thought. 

 

Now for the reason of the subject of this letter... 

 On Friday we were riding our bikes down this big ol' hill, Not like steep or anything just really long.  So we get some serious speed going down this thing and people here are dopes and put their garbage cans in the middle of the sidewalks that are already barely there, so Elder Freeze zooms by it Barely missing it.  Here I come with a bigger bike thinking i can shoot the gap too, (which i didn't go into the road because i would've crashed for sure if i had tried cause of how the sidewalk is situated) but alas my handlebar catches the garbage can and shoots me flying off the side of my bike.  I land in the middle of the road and luckily theres no cars in my lane of the 4 lane road, otherwise i probably would've died.  Somehow i landed on the inside of my right knee as well as my lower back and hip...   Anyways, so i crawl patheticly back to the sidewalk after a few seconds of not being able to breath in the middle of the road, and i hurt all over my right side.  its about this time that Elder Freeze shows back up... sheesh, it took him forever.  So he goes and retrieves my bike which was still in the middle of the road.  So i ride back the half mile to our appartment with a dead knee and busted hip, not a fun ride as part of it was uphill.

 

So after we rest for a while i get up to see if I can go back out, but my knee hurt like crap and i felt it and it felt like it was split, which worried me.  So I call the mission Dr. and he tells me it could be a chip fracture and that i should stay off my legs for a few days and if i have to get up to use crutches and such...  He told me not to stay at church for the whole 3 hours....  The heck?!  i stayed anyway though.   I'm pretty much healed now though so it's all good

 

But my shirt got all ripped up and my belt got scratched real good as well as my backpack.

 

Ohp, Out of time! 

Love yall

-Elder martin

Week 13

Okay so this has been an interesting week,  i accidently bought $10 of
pumpkin fudge (Which was actually Really good), seen some crazy people
and saw some more crazy people!

on tuesday we got a call from someone who moved down to Lewisburg from
Murfreesboro who had talked with the elders there, they gave him our
number when they knew he was moving.  So he calls us up and tells us
to go down to where he works so he can get to know us a bit better,
and all is well and dandy until the prayer.
First we hold hands, (he's one of Those people) and Elder Freeze says
the prayer, during which he starts mumbling things like "Yes Lord"
"Ummm hmmm!" 'Oh yeah, thats right Lord" and stuff like that.  But
once Elder freeze is done he Immediatly starts his own prayer, which
caught me off guard and I almost couldn't keep myself from laughing
from the whole thing!  his prayer consisted of "Yes Father God, We
thank thee Father God, For this day Father God"  He said "Father God"
at least 50 times....

So when we finally get away, we go what we call "Thomas'ing"  We go
around talking to people Thomas feels like we should see.  It actually
works really well.  Thomas is the guy who is on Fire with the gospel
who we baptized my second week here.  And we run into this guy (Randy)
who is pretty dumb and hard hearted, won't listen to anything anyone
else has to say, and he's a trinity guy, so we tell him what we
believe about it and he freaks out and starts running around in
circles with his hands in the shape of an egg over his head yelling
"They're one!!! They're one!!!  It's like and Egg!!! It's Like an
Egg!!!"  Oh the south... how you slay me.

So there's a new stake being formed over here, which we'll be in it,
and Elder D. Todd Christofferson is coming for it, and there's also
rumors that someone else is also coming! Someone from the 1st
Presidency!!! Hoo hoo!   that'd be Sweet!
There's also someone coming to our mission next transfer, Craig C.
Christensen i think his name is.  He gave a talk in Gen Con!  So it'll
be a good couple of weeks here shortly!

Thats all for now though folks, Sorry!

Love ya all

-Elder Martin

Week 12

So okay, Holy cow.... Conference.... New aged missionaries...  Talks of amazing Splendor....  Jeffery R Holland.... Again...  
All in all it was an incredible weekend.

We actually heard Elder Hollands talk earlier this week at a meeting, he gave it at the MTC a few months ago so we saw the recording of it,  Still great though. Got me alot of good notes...

First a little bit about last week, i forgot this last time...  But we went to a Mennonite church last sunday evening,  a member used to study with them so he brought us down there for a dinner and an ordaining of a bishop.  It was really interesting and good food too.
They used the laying on of hands to ordain the bishop.  And they are bishops for life, so that was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us. 

Meetings all this week... Wednesday we went to the Temple, which was awesome! but it is a really small temple here in Nashville...  Then we had Zone Meeting on thursday from 9-12, then Interviews from 1-5  those were 2 and a half hours away from us too... so we got home pretty late.  And then gen-con on Sat. and Sun.  Suffice it to say we didn't get a whole lot of lessons in this week, but thats okay cause we got a ton the week before.

Remember, If we Love Christ, we must Feed His Sheep and His Lambs!!!  it is the duty of everyone to warn their neighbors and preach the Gospel!  The Church is true, i know it, and I know that those men who spoke the past couple days are men called of God to lead His church on the earth in this day, and if we follow their example and do as they have said we Will go to the "Pleasing Bar" of God to be judged.

Love you all
-Elder Martin

Week 11

Okay... so first i'll tell you of the time our appartment (the dungeon) got attacked by carbon monoxide!

It happened on tuesday, we are inside just studying and someone comes to fix the AC unit for the hair salon upstairs, which he has to do from our place cause thats just where it is.  So after a few minutes of him working on it I hear an explosion, see bright sparks and a smoke looking air coming out...  i only see a bit of it cause of where i was seated by the way.  And then some more sparks.  The guy does really well on not swearing though.   I guess he cut into a wire that still had electricity going through it and he thought he turned it off.  So he doesn't have the parts he needs to fix That so he leaves and comes back a few days later.  But after we left for a bit and stopped back at the appartment a few hours later, we hear a beeping, so we investigate and find it was the Carbon Monoxide detector, so we leave.   Long story short though, it turned out to just be all the hair spray coming through the now gone AC unit thing which set it off. 

The rest of the week wasn't Too eventful, we had exchanges and the new ZL came with me in our area which i still don't know super well... and he was kind of a doofus so he didn't help me at all, like even in teaching... 
Oh and i also went on a couple hour exchange with Elder Law,  He's still a goober by the way.

This p-day we went to an old indian fort thing here in TN, it was Awesome, there wasn't really any sign of the indian fort, but the land around it was Gorgous... i'll send some pics of it.  These are like desktop worthy pictures by the way.

It rained later in the day Super hard and long and there was even more flooding then last time, as well as another tornado watch.  Good times.

Cant remember anything else though... shoot.. Oh well.

Later

-Elder Martin

 

*edit* apparently i cant send pictures so nevermind about those.... stupid computer

Week 10

So...  Lets see, to start off the week (I mentioned to some of you
that it was raining really hard all day last monday) we had some
pretty good flooding, in fact later that day we were going with the
spanish elders to an appointment and we drove through a big ol' puddle
that was Alot deeper then it led on... We pretty much floated through
it.  It got like halfway up the car, so i'm thinking of suggesting to
the vehicle coordinator to get snorkle kits for all the cars... :)
 Oh and also that day we were in a tornado watch, and neighboring
city's were in tornado warnings... Crazy stuff.  Three funnel clouds
formed over one city.   but it was hardley windy where we were.

We had a zone meeting on wednesday and one of the senior couple elder
gave a training which was AWESOME! mind blowing really...   He has
like a masters degree in archeology,  and has studied alot about the
book of mormon and its more physical proofs.   I won't go into detail
on most of it, but he started off the training by saying that he found
some mistakes in the book of mormon... So we were all like "ummm... is
this guy really supposed to be out on a mission?"  But he was
referring to mistakes that Moroni made, not Joseph Smith... and that
it actually proves that Joseph Translated it, not made it up...  He
showed us 2 places, one in Alma 50: 32 ( i think thats where it was)
and Alma 53: 3.  Lets see if any of you can find what it is... :)

We've been teaching alot of crazy southerners this week.  The things
they say.... oh ho ho, it can get pretty funny.  this one lady once
said, and i quote,  " But what if you no can!? What if you no can?!?"
(i may have mentioned this last week, cant remember.)
But we had another run in with Roy, that crazy guy who worships the
clam shell with Jesus in it.  We were walking Thomas (who lives across
the street) home one night, and roy yells from across the street,
"Is that your car?! Is that your car right there?!'  cause there was a
car that i guess wasn't normally there at Thomas' other neighbors
house.
And we're like "Nah, were on foot today"
"Cause iv'e seen that car the past couple days and I think they're
trying to break in to that house!"
us "Oh really?"  Not really believing him at all... he is Roy afterall.
so Roy walks over with his crazy man walk and looks at the car in closer detail
" I think they are in there right now!"
were walking towards home now cause it's almost 9, so we don't really
hear what happens next.  But as we get about a quarter mile away up
the hill, We see a cop zooming by, and i'm like  '.... i bet it was
roy....." and it totally was, he called the cops on them...  It turned
out to just be the guys girlfriend...

Oops out of time

Week 9

First transfer Completed... Crazy...

This week started real slow but picked up at the end.

First for P-Day we went to the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg TN. Which was actually pretty interesting how they make it and all the processes they take to make it and stuff.   In fact its the only Jack Daniels distillery in the world, so all the Jack Daniels you see is made in that town.   And here's an interesting fact about lynchburg,  It was dusted by a 70 or an Apostle or a mission president or someone, can't remember who...  So that town was pretty much condemned because of their wickedness... But it was a sanctioned activity, So don't worry.

Tuesday Elder Freeze was Really sick and we didn't get out till like 5 that night so we didn't do a whole lot.

Then we had Dist. Mtg. on Wednesday and I got my Bike!!! YAY!  Now i can finally get some bike stories!  We had appointments with 2 people with baptismal dates, both of which canceled....... so we had to postpone it a day, but again they both canceled, and that happened everyday the rest of the week... Bah!   

Oh and we go out with Thomas a lot now, the guy who we baptized like my second week here.   And he is such a goober, he Loves to do missionary work though, cause he doesn't have a job so he just walks around town all day and talks to everyone he see's and gives them contact cards with our number and stuff on it.   He's just a goober though.  Oh yeah... one time when we were with him we were talking to a lady, and Thomas was saying how he wanted to get a job and the lady in a total southern stereotypical way says  "But what if you no can?!?! What if you no can get a job?"  Oh man... silly southerners. 

I don't want this letter to get super long so I'll end it here, but next week I'll tell you of another crazy guy who has brain damage.

Love

Elder Martin

Week 8

Holy Cow! I'm already pretty much done with the first transfer!! CRAZY! Lets see what happened this week... Ahh yes, we had exchanges again, i went to a city called Winchester. About the same size as lewisburg, but alto less ghetto. The apartment there was Quite nice too! But i think they're going to close that area, things are just too slow over there... So it was a slow couple days as you might imagine. But back in Lewisburg we had on a couple occasions, people talked to us about wanting to find a new church to go to. But alas they cant come to ours cuase we don't have a building in town and no one on that side of town has cars to go anywhere... What Lewisburg really needs is a church building, they have enough people to make a branch and there would be Tons of investigators we could get to go if we had one. Oh and we had Zone Conference this week too. Learned a lot! In fact You guys should invite anyone and everyone you know who isn't a member to do the 21 day Book of Mormon Challenge! It's where they read pray about the BofM everyday and go to church for 3 weeks, and if they do, they Will get a testimony of it and of the church. And that's a promise from our mission president... So it works. I mentioned to a couple of you that i found out when the second coming is... It's 2033. In the scriptures it talks about Jesus coming back in the beginning of the 7th seal, does it not? Well that's what i believe 2012 will be the start of the 7th seal, where God instead of trying to convince men through the spirit will convince them through natural disasters. It also says in the scriptures that the heavens will be closed for half an hour (Convincing men through the elements not the Spirit), Well half an hour in Gods time is equal to about 21 years and it says that Christ will show his face to the people once that half hour is up.... so if it starts in 2012, then it ends in 2033! And it never says that man won't ever know the Year of his coming... Only the Day and the Hour. In fact it says in D&C that it will happen in the "Year of His Redeemed"(Christ) So 2000 years after his death... being again, 2033! And that is my reasonings... But i am out of time, so goodbye Love Elder Martin