Week 59: Christmas Caroling and New Companion News

Howdy y'all! And a Merry Christmas too!

It was a rather good week, we were pretty busy. My companion, Elder Harris had his final interview with President McCune, and today I received a call that my new companion will be Elder Sanchez. He will be the new zone leader with me, so that will make me senior companion and the senior zone leader. Thus begins my reign of terror over the Provo Peak Zone haha.

We finally caught up with Alex to teach him this week. We also had a great lesson with Leandro and Sarah (where my Portuguese was not too bad at all...I'll have to take the lead in Portuguese now!).

We also did some really fun caroling to different contacts, including one to the Fernandez family where we sang along with to other Christmas songs, then shared the movie "He Is the Gift" which was wonderful. In general it's been a great week.

Elder Harris has been a wonderful companion. We talk about all sorts of things and laugh about a bunch of different stuff too. I'm really excited to use more Christmas based stuff in our teaching for the next coming week before Christmas! We have the ward Christmas parties for both the Spanish and Portuguese wards at the end of this week, I will likely gain weight.

Merry Christmas to all!


-Elder Martin

Week 58: Gaudete!

Christmas music, Charlie Brown Christmas trees, Christmas lessons...
This is such a great time to be a missionary!

This week went rather well despite many canceled lessons. Diego, a recent convert from Argentina, who we love so much, finally went home (after 14 years in the US) to his family Sunday night. He bore a wonderful testimony in Fast and Testimony meeting on Sunday.

This week Elder Harris and I caught a mouse in our apartment. We went to Station 22 Cafe. We also had two MLC councils with all the zone leaders and sister's training in the mission. Elder Clark of the 70 was with us.....Super cool and we learned a lot!

We also had our zone training meeting last Friday where we talked a lot about Christmas and some different policies on music in the mission, it was interesting being in the leadership position when I'm so used to being on the other end, but we've got a really cool zone and I don't think we'll have many problems. I look forward to becoming friends with all of them.

There were no new investigators this week, but we've taught a lot of cool lessons, including a Portuguese speaking lesson to an investigator who will be going back to Brazil for the holidays, but who we committed to go to church and read and pray during that month. In fact he has an LDS church five minutes behind his house, so it should be pretty easy for him ha ha.

Peace!

Week 57: Thanksgiving--The More You Eat, The More Thankful You Are

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was a fantastic week. Thanksgiving was great, the turkey bowl was super fun and the dinners were quite filling and fun-filled. We picked up a new investigator, and the ones we already have are doing super well. Elder Harris is speedily becoming one of my favorite companions, from hilarious happenings (including a very opinionated lady from Spain) to deep talks on everything from philosophy to people problems, and notably a talk on the history of Languages. I will be with Elder Harris until the December 18th when he finishes his mission, so I will not be with him on Christmas.

I saw my old companion, Elder Contreras again, he came down to visit for Thanksgiving!

He was one of my first companions in Goshen with Elder Rios, and he's doing well at BYU Idaho.

Guess what my ward mission leader's son's name is?

Leandro and Sara, two of our new Brazilian investigators, are progressing amazingly, and are super fun to be around. We had dinner with them after our last lesson, and I taught them to say "y'all" and "howdy", as the denounced tootsie rolls were tasting terrible.

We had a really spiritual lesson with an investigator named Alex that should be baptized this month. He has been facing some real trials, and we gave him a blessing that was quite powerful. I also got to trek down to Goshen for the Baptism of Milena where I was asked to be a witness. It was quite fun to see everyone again.

This coming week is gonna be super busy, we're going hammer the area with the new Christmas video/cards the Church has come out with, and we're gonna carol too. Super exciting!

-Elder Martin