Week 49

Hey howdy hey familio!

 

So this week has been pretty good, we spent A lot of time with Cyrell this week, mostly cause kaylee was in Idaho for the week.  But it was good, we were able to talk to him more seriously without her there.  Like we were there and at the time were just kinda shooting the breeze when He brings up how he see's all the brother's in the ward and how they are different from what he is used to and how he wants to be more happy like them, then he says he thinks it was the priesthood!  So that was pretty sweet.  He's usually like really hard to teach cause he is so sarcastic and just kinda immature.  But we also spent p-day with him, spent most of Friday with him and like all of Saturday with him..  So he's coming along really well and i expect him to be baptized soon... at least as soon as we can get those two married...

 

We have interviews tomorrow with the new president, so that should be good... First one with him.

 

Oh and there's been a virus going around and 3/4 of us in the apartment have it to varying degrees.  so sleep has been rough.  But it's been like the first time I've been kinda sick.  at least that's lasted longer then 1 day.

 

On a random note,  Here is a sentence that i can't seem to find out how to write.

"There are three 2's in the English language"  

Which 2 do you spell? Two? Too? To?

 

Love ya'll!
#Mission #library #email

-Elder Martin

Week 48

Hello family!

 

This week was pretty darn good!  the guy we are teaching here, Cyrel, is making alot of progress! he finally read from the BoM and prayed about it and had a really good experience with it, i went to the baptism of Ryan's wife which i will go into more detail about in a bit, had my birthday, and stuff like 'aat

 

So the baptism.  The day was kinda crazy for me.  First i got a ride to the mission office from a member in my ward who works like next door to it, where some other elders were supposed to pick me up and i'd spend the morning and afternoon with them until the ride from Lebanon came to take me and Elder Dudley to Illinois.  Well, the elder's didn't come get me till like 1 o'clock...  So i was at the mission office for like 5 hours...  So the office staff people had me doing odd job's filing whatever they needed filing.  So i filed all the emails to president...  so that was kinda weird.  Then they had me file their bills and stuff.  Also kinda weird.  Anyways so the Greenhills elders finally come to pick me up and i spend the next 2 1/2 hours with them.  The greenhills elders are the ones who cover downtown Nashville...  So we had a referral who said he lived at an address on 2nd ave in Nashville, which is like the crazy street in Nashville!  anyways it turned out that the address he gave us was to Coyote Ugly...  ha.

Then my ride to Illinois shows up and we drive for 4 hours down to the baptism, but we hit this nasty traffic for like 3 miles and so we wont get to the baptism till 30 or so minutes after its supposed to start, but we called them and they were nice enough to wait for us to start it.  So finally we have the miracle baptism of Ryan's wife who wouldn't even let us see him for a long time cause she was too die hard catholic!  And the coolest part was that it was on my mission birthday! 

Well ALL the speakers talked forever and the service didn't get over till like 8:45 and we had to stay and talk for a few minutes of course, and we didn't leave till 9:05 or so...  So i had to get permission to stay the night at Lebanon's place cause we had a zone meeting the next day anyways.  We didn't get back until like 1 o'clock...  I was tired the next day.

 

And that is the end of my story!  And my email!

 

Love ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 47

Howdy ya'll!

 

So lets start off with the good!  For p-day last week we played Golf, which was the first time for me...  We played 18 holes and i totally sucked for the first 15, but by the 16th i finally got it under a bit of control.   It was fun though.

 

Also there was 2 baptism's in our ward this week!  The Sister's baptized a guy named Donald, and the other elder's baptized a kid named Eric, But his (Eric's) mom is crazy and she only let him get baptized if he came to idaho to do it...  So they went to idaho to do it. 

 

And Elder Dudley and I have a baptism to go to in our last area on Thursday!!!  Which is also my mission birthday! the 18th! So hopefully i can find a ride up there... which might be hard saying how its 3+ hours away. 

 

But other then that not a lot happened here this week.  As the subject implies, this was kind of a slow week here, we've been trying to visit all our referral's from the festivals but no one seems to be home.   It is ridiculous. 

 

We did get to meet the new Mission President on Friday!  That was good, he seems pretty sweet, he was involved a lot with the youth for like his whole married life so he's super fun.  And he play's volleyball so maybe i'll be able to play with him sometime.

 

Welp, not much else to talk about...  Sorry for the puny letter!

 

Love Ya'll!

-Elder Martin

Week 46

That's right peep's, Springfield branch could be started as soon as two weeks.  probably more like 4 weeks but it depends on the next week or two.

 

Anyways, there are a couple of amusing stories that i have for you this week. 

First, there was this inactive guy who passed away last week, and he asked to have a memorial service at the Mormon church, which was pretty neat, and also a good missionary opportunity.  So about 2 days before they decide it might be good to notify us that we (the missionaries in the ward, which is 4 elder's and 3 sister) are going to be singing At the funeral...  So they pick this lame song that no one has ever heard of called the old rugged cross, and the day before were practicing it and it was just Awful...  So after the sisters pleaded with someone to change the song we just sang "I know that my Redeemer Lives" and it was still pretty bad, but A LOT better then the other song would've been.   Oh and also one of the sister's was asked to talk at the funeral... Oh man, that would be weird, talking at someone's funeral who you've Never met... 

 

Next story, we were helping someone move the other day and they gave us an ottoman (i have no idea how to spell that) thing to take home, well it didn't fit in the trunk so we figured "When in Tennessee, do as the Tennesseans do" so we put it on the top of the car and had our arms sticking out the windows to hold it down.  Now, this would've been fine to take it home, which was like 30 minutes away, cause we'd be going 40 mph or so the whole way,  But the lady we helped move needed us to help her unpack a few things at her new house, Which she said was only a few minutes away.  So we follow her with this thing on our car and then she does it..... She turned onto the freeway!!  This is when things got crazy.  At first only the two elder's in back had to hold it down, but on the freeway all of us had to.  And the lady was Hauling in her moving van and we had to keep up cause we didn't know where her new house was.  Needless to say we almost lost it a few times and our arms and wrists were way tired after it all...

 

Anyways...  We had the baptism for the lady on Saturday,and the font had drained like halfway when i actually did it.  The stopper didn't work or something.  So it was pretty sketchy.

 

i guess that's all for now...

 

Love Ya'll!!!

-Elder Martin

Week 45

So! we had this big ol' festival on saturday!  It was Great!  We had a booth like right in the middle of everything, and we got 105 referrals from it!  several of which were people from other places, so we gave alot of referral's to other missionaries as well...

But we've already got 2 families that were teaching now from the festival!  so the work here is definately progressing!

 

Oh, and as we were just talking to the people walking by and stuff at the festival, there was this guy that set up catty corner to us and started yelling that everyone is a sinner and going to hell and stuff like that.  When he set up and started saying all that crap you could totally tell that the spirit wasn't there anymore.  Everyone at the festival hated this guy, we had a bunch of people thank us for the way we went about sharing our belief's and not by telling everyone that they won't ever make it to heaven.   Anyways, after a while, this guy started bashing on us and saying all kinds of crap.  It's funny how you can tell when satan tries to put up obstacles to try to stop the work from progressing.    So after an hour or 2 of this guy being a total dork, the lady who kinda ran the whole thing drove right in front of him with a golf cart and unloaded to big speakers and started blaring music to drown him out.  It was pretty sweet.

The funny thing is, some of the missionaries went up and talked to one of the dude's henchmen and found out that they believed that everyone in the world EXCEPT THEM were sinners.  They thought they were perfect, that the put aside their sins years ago. Hahaha... silly.

 

 

 

We had another one of our FHE group things at our WML's house sunday night, and we had over 60 people there this time, so we are totally gonna have a branch up here probably within a month or 2.

 

Anyways... I'm like out of time, so sorry for the short email again...

 

Love Ya'll

-Elder Martin

Week 44

That's right!  There's totally gonna be a branch here in the near future.  We just had our first FHE group thing last night to see what kind of numbers we'd get to attend a branch if there was one.  And we had 52 people come to it!  With many more who couldn't come this week but will be there next week!  Right now the people here have to drive 30 minutes or more to church depending on where they live, which really puts off a lot of people.  So if we had a meeting place here in town i think it would be really good for the people here. 

 

Also this Saturday there's this huge town festival thing and we're going to have a booth right in the middle of the town square where we'll have presentations about the apostasy and restoration, and about the Book of Mormon.  Another part of the mission did the same thing a few months ago and had a Ton of success and got over 250 referrals!  This was in a town that was in the same boat we are in now, and now they have a branch and will soon have a ward and that unit has 5 or 6 sets of missionaries just to keep up with the referrals! 

So that's what's happening over here right now.

 

Other then those, there hasn't been much that's been too exciting or crazy...  we had to go get our wheel changed at a ford dealership (cause were driving a ford fusion) and they took forever to do it... 

 

I played volleyball for what seems to be the first time in a forever long time last P-day!  but it was sand volleyball.....  so it wasn't nearly as good as it could've been.

 

But yeah....  We also have a baptism on the 15th,  she's been coming to church for like a year and is now finnaly getting baptized! So that's pretty cool!

 

Well!  That's all i got for now folks!

 

Love ya'll

-Elder Martin

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