Week 9: Merry Christmas!

Christmas Morning... Finding legos in my stocking! 

 Elder Rivera opening his own stocking in a package from my family

Elder Martin and Elder Cox

Hello Everyone, Happy New Year!

Because all the international college students we normally teach all went home for the holidays, this week was likely the lowest numbers in proselyting for a long while! But this is the last week of the break, and it will certainly begin to string up from here. The BYU English Learning Center, where we've met the vast majority of our investigators, opens back up soon along with BYU's regular winter semester this week.  That should bring a whole new wave of people to contact, as well as our recent converts and investigators coming back into town.  It means we are hoping that this week is the calm before the storm!  Regardless though, this week was still filled with some good teaching and great fun. 

I guess we'll go in order of the week then:

So, on p-day we played some sports and I had my first legit Snowball fight, full fledged, and fun. That night we had a lesson with Toree about the temple, learning in the process that she has a calling now and is preparing to get her patriarchal blessing! Things are moving along so wonderfully with her, just better and better all the time.  Elder Rivera and I come out of her lessons just so stoked that she is continually and proactively improving and learning. She's set an example for me at the very least.  

On Christmas Eve we mostly ran errands, grabbing some last minute Christmas presents, dropping off Christmas cards and having Pho soup for lunch. We then had dinner with a Hispanic family, which was fun and filled with delicious tamales and pasole. Afterwards, we hung with the other Elders in our District.  We also spent Christmas Morning with them, so they served as our family away from home. It was good fun, and both the starry eve night and sunny Christmas morning set a nice backdrop for a wonderful day.

I got some Legos for Christmas, and I was glad to see that tradition was not impeded by the mission! But the best gift was certainly getting to Skype with my family, and seeing them all. It's only been three months, but Sophie sure has grown a lot, and the rest of the family is moving along as they will. It was wonderful to say the least. The rest of Christmas day was relatively chill: we visited people, hung with district bursts, had dinner with the Baird family, and said goodbye to Elder Kim, who was to leave (two years done) the next day.  It seems weird that missionaries I know are already finishing up. In any case, that night back at the apartment as I was finally finding some quiet time to reflect, I read the book of John (finished the next morning) and listening to the Lower Light carols, I ended Christmas Day on a note of the love of Christ and feeling so glad to be a missionary.

The rest of the week we had Elder Cox with us since his Mongolian companion is not out of the MTC yet and Elder Kim had already left. We contacted bishops in our new wards, did some work on Facebook, and had dinners at a nice variety of restaurants.

Our scattered lessons also went well.  We are gaining ground with Diana Fernandez. She was at church again on Sunday and that was good to see. We had our final lesson with Diana Gabriela, as she is leaving Utah for good now, having finished her time here.  She seemed touched by our friendship and concern for her, hopefully it will lay seeds for something more, and we'll keep in touch on Facebook. We also had to help Angel Corrona late one night, as his car got impounded. He was just on his way back from vacation and this will put a major dent in his normal life for now.  Please keep him in your prayers.  He is an honest soul and one of the best people I've met.  It was a nice way for me to spend the night before my birthday, helping out someone I'd grown to love over the mission.

My birthday itself was rather chill, I got birthday wishes from Sister McCune (the mission president's wife) and some investigators too.  We went to the Japanese ward with Elder Cox since our schedules are kind of combined right now.  This actually gives us more to do and works very well.  We were able to have dinner with a Japanese family that night, which was fun and delicious, it's cool to jump into other cultures every now and then as a Spanish Elder.

But yes, now I'm 19, and both this year in my life and this calendar year of 2014 will be entirely dedicated to The Lord, start to finish.   I'm grateful for this opportunity to serve, and as I set goals for this new year to forge me into the best missionary I can be (three month interviews with President McCune on Jan.1st as a matter of fact!), I pray that the Spirit will abide with me as I press forward.

Beyond that, all is well here in Provo! May the new 2014 year be the best, 14 is my lucky number after all!

Best Regards,

Elder Martin