Week 13: A New Companion!

Well, change is always for the best in the end, right? It's been a busy week so we'll start from the beginning:

Diana Gabriela, who left Utah in December, has met up with the missionaries at home and is getting baptized now, and even her family is showing interest! Glad to see that turned out well, even though we don't get to be there!

On Tuesday, Elder Rivera and I went to the temple, and that a was wonderful way to kick off our last day together. The day was filled with lessons setup for Elder Rivera to say goodbye to our investigators.  It was very powerful to each of them and had set us on a good footings to transition. 

 

We had a district breakfast at the new Chic-fil-a the next day before transfers, where half our district was changed!  So, my companion, Elder Rivera is off to Orem to cover just a single Spanish ward there. He is so happy about it and I'm glad.

My new companion is literally the best, I will be so sad if we get only one transfer together!  He is such a hard worker, its astounding.  His name is Elder Palomares.  He was actually the trainer for Elder Meyers, the only guy who came with me from the CCM.  Elder Palomares is from Dallas, Texas (but was born in Mexico City and lived there until he was 9, so his Spanish is perfect).  He has been on his mission for six months. He loves a lot of the same music I do.  We both love tons of the same bands and he even plays guitar.  We've played together where a family had two guitars. But like for real, we sometimes sing songs and discuss lyrics as we walk down the street.  At first few days it felt almost too good to be true, but now I'm diving in and hope we become great friends for life.

He is a really hard worker, which is perfect since we have less stakes to cover now and we can really hammer down on getting to know them. In fact, after two meetings with the APs in the mission office and talking to many different missionary companionships, we've discovered a whole heap of overcoverage and crossing boundaries in terms of stake assignments. As such, our new area, at least for this transfer until the APs sit down with President McCune and hash it all out, is just 7 YSA stakes, nothing more. That means that we will lose the north family stakes and a couple of our investigators, but otherwise we keep a good portion of our teaching pool.  That is nice, because for all intents and purposes, we're opening a brand new area.  Our last assignment was so large that we suffered from a sort of "area paralysis".  For now though, Elder Palomares and I are determined to suck out all the work we can out of our assignment, which means a lot of this week was contacting YSA leadership and sitting down with ward mission leaders.

We're working our tails off together in our smaller area now and having a great time doing it, I am so behind on my journal and stuff like that because we come home so tired every night. This is going to be an amazing transfer. We don't have our Spanish ward anymore sadly, nor a car, but I love walking and Elder Palomares is a former Cross Country runner like me, so we're gonna run in the mornings to work out!

We have continued meeting with most of our old recent converts, and focusing more on Felipe and Alejandro, our two current investigators. Neither has a baptismal date, but we'll solve that soon enough! We went to church with Felipe and his RM roommate also from Chile named Tomas, and that went well enough. We're going to the temple with Ximena this week to do some baptisms, and are following some leads on some potential investigators we have. Things may be slowed up again, but we're laying good foundations, and I expect our area to be flourishing by the end of the transfer.

Thanks for all your prayers, and for the thought and support you all give. I will do my best to make the most of it!

-Elder Martin

Week 12: Four Months, No Longer a Greenie!

It is the end of an era here,

Hello everyone, and how are ya? As of a few hours ago, transfer calls came in, and here's the news: Elder Rivera is leaving, and I will be staying in this area and getting a new companion. The area is changing too, and we will no longer have all the YSA's in Spanish, only the northern Provo family stakes and possibly some left over YSA's that get tossed over our way as they divvy it out. As such though, we at the very least have a particular Spanish ward we should be covering as their sole elders, and maybe another. The specifics are a bit vague right now. Suffice it to say, we will no longer cover 27 stakes! 

Exciting times are ahead for these next few days! But yes, I will have to say goodbye to Elder Rivera soon enough and that is a stilling fact.  He has been in this area for a long time, and is so excited to go to a new area, and so I'm glad for him. We'll go to the temple tomorrow together for the last time as a companionship.  He'll leave Wednesday morning and I'll get my new companion. Elder Rivera has been a wonderful trainer, companion, and friend, and now that it comes to it I'm really at a loss of how to explain it. We've had a lot of good times and seen a lot of things, good and bad, but hopefully both come out better from it, as I know I have. The very least, he will be missed.

As for the week though, many of our old investigators (who may now get reassigned to other sets of Spanish missionaries in the coming week) were able to meet with us finally. We had dinner with Toree and her parents, and that was great to meet her mom a bit more officially. We had a lesson after a while with Sergio, and a great spiritual one with Felipe. We had a good catch up with Alejandro, but work schedules kept us from Diana Fernandez and Daniela Moncada this week. That and we haven't seen hide nor hair of Angel since last year, althought we're trying to re-establish contact.  We hope everything is ok with him. If I may enlist some help, keep him in your prayers. 

We had a good lesson with Christian too, we'll see him tomorrow and teach the Plan of Salvation if he did read in the Book of Mormon. Its strange to think that I'm probably not going to teach more than half of these people anymore. We ended up doing a lot of work in our new family stakes this week, meeting an inactive family and going to their ward, The North Park Spanish Ward, which should be my official one now.  So lots of changes and good times this week.

Well, the mission rolls on, new experiences never at a lack. Hope all is well at home! Keep up your New Years Resolutions! (Already forgotten about them?)

-Elder Martin

Week 11: Time Doesn't Wait for Me, It Keeps On Rollin'

Well howdy y'all!

This week was an exciting time for the entire district as the semester has finally started! I think this week was best summed up by Elder Rivera and I running to a lesson to get there on time, and then realizing just how long it had been.... Yes, the holidays are over and its great to be busy again!  Of course, it will get much busier this week, as the ELC (the BYU English Learning Center) finally opens up and all the new international students arrive. That's where our real work begins.

So, here's what happened this week:

Diana Fernandez is doing well, we were able to stop by and talk to her a few times.  Her roommate Daniela Moncada is doing well too and we had a great lesson on Prayer with her. She got sick later during the week, so we'll go over the lessons again with both of them again per request. Diana ended up coming to Church again, but unfortunately since Daniela was sick she missed a really great meeting.

Ximmena continues to do well.  Sergio (another recent convert who just returned to Provo) is also doing well. We haven't been able to link up with Angel yet since he returned back to the US, but I imagine his life's been turned around a bit and we're trying to get back in contact as soon as we can.

Toree's niece turned 8 and was baptized this week, so we showed up to support their family. Afterwards we were able to have a short lesson with Toree, which went very well, and we saw how another baptism in her family brought up good memories for her about her own choice to be baptized.  She expressed how grateful she is for the gospel and how much happier and positive she is now with the gift of the Holy Ghost.

We finally got to meet with Rosa and Ismael again, after at least a month, and we are not sure how interested they are right now.  They are both very busy with their multiple jobs, but hopefully they can be touched by the Spirit and find a desire for faith in their lives.  

Sunday night we met up with Christan for the first time.  He had previously taken the missionary lessons before with other elders.  He couldn't meet for a while, but is now back and ready.  Because we are the YSA missionaries and he is now considered a Young Single Adult age, we will have the opportunity to teach him.  I'll share more about him as we get to know him better.  But man, the ELC hasn't even started yet and we're already getting new people!

Beyond that, all is good fun and well in the mission. I'm happy and warm and we are continuing to meet with interesting people and fun families!  Transfers come up next week, and the district will likely change quite a bit.  In fact, Elder Rivera or I will likely head out and get a new companion. It's a rather stilling thought, to be honest, that Elder Rivera wouldn't be my companion.  We've gotten a lot closer with all the walk-and-talk time we've had, but that's the way the cookie crumbles I guess, and either way the mission will still be great.

Everything is freaking amazing, straight up.  Hope y'all are doing well too, and that I can make you, and more importantly the Lord, proud by becoming even better in His service. God Bless!

-Elder Martin

Week 10: Happy New Year!

So this is the New Year!

Hey everyone, and happy 2014! 14 has always been my lucky number, and being a missionary through the entirety of it is probably the luckiest part about it!

But first, here's the news:

On p-day we found out our cars were being reassigned elsewhere so we are walking now!  It's quite fun, and it hasn't been too cold at all, and we get to talk to more people anyways!  For p-day, we went to the flag shop on University Ave to get some new decorations for the apartment, as we were taking the Christmas stuff down in a few days and didn't want the apartment to feel bare. This would explain the pictures of the huge flags in our front room now. I love them! The district then gave me a late birthday present of a Lego set, which was very kind of them and was soon put to use. We accordingly ate my birthday cake (Thanks so much for that Grandma Wadley!)

On New Year's Day we had a mission district activity before the mission president's interviews with each of the missionaries.  The activity was fun and we got to play Uno.  New Year's Eve we really didn't do much, most of the people we went to visit weren't home and we ended up just walking a lot. That night Elder Rivera taught me the Mexican tradition of sticking 12 grapes in your mouth in 12 seconds, each one representing a desire or goal for the new year. We had no grapes, so I used cheese puffs and he used marshmallows, but it was still lots of fun, and I got some good resolutions written up. I actually ran a few of them by President McCune in our brief interview, and he gave me some wise pointers and advice. He is such a great man, it'll be hard to see him go right before I finish my mission.

As for the rest of the week, the days were filled with walking and talking, which has been a good chance for me to practice my Spanish with Elder Rivera.  We've been getting our number and card out to as many bishops and students as we can in the different apartment complexes in preparation for the new semester, which starts today (yes!). We also did a fair amount of Facebook work.

In terms of actual lessons, we were able to see Toree again.  She is doing great and getting her patriarchal blessing soon.  We shared a spiritual thought to her and her dad about praying with New Years resolutions.

We tried to set a baptismal date with Diana Fernandez, but she still feels like she isn't ready, and that her family won't support her.  Luckily, we found out just recently that the missionaries in Colombia have recently visited her family there, so we will soon see what reaction they had to that. As soon as she gets her answer, I can tell that she's gonna be a rock solid member, no doubt about it.

On Sunday, we visited all the bishops in the 9th YSA Stake and attended four sacrament meetings.  This included the one that I went to this summer at BYU.  It was rather fun reintroducing myself to my Wyview summer bishopric, and getting to bare my testimony for them in fast and testimony meeting.  And I think I will close here with the same note that I shared in my testimony: There is mountains of work to be done here in Provo, no doubt about it!

We've been laying the seeds all this week, and now it's time to start sowing. Here's to a new year and a grand new wave of missionary opportunities!

-Elder Martin

My birthday cake

 Celebrating my 19th birthday with my district 

The flags we bought for our apartment

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

Missionaries for Christmas Dinner

We received an email with pictures from the Baird family, 

who had Elder Martin and Elder Rivera over for Christmas dinner:

Kristine wrote: "We love having your missionaries.  They are AWESOME!"

Week 8: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

 Our Missionary Apartment Christmas Tree

(With gifts from 12 Days of Christmas from my family & packages from friends) 

Angel's Baptism Picture

Hello Everyone and Merry Christmas!

All is Merry and bright here in the Utah Provo mission! And Christmas will be no exception, I am finding more and more that being a missionary allows you to say Merry Christmas (or Feliz Navidad) to anyone without any trace of being weirded out.  But yes, the snow is falling again, lots of fun Christmas activities happened this week, and we are filling up the days as best we can in this calm before the storm, because come January not only will everyone be back, but the new semester will bring in a whole wave of new people to teach.  Exciting!  This week also held my three month mark, which is scary because it's going by way too fast.

As for this week though, p-day we played laser tag and that was way fun. We had two zone conferences, one where we had Elder Arnold of the 70 come and teach us, and the other was a Christmas Party, where we walked up and had a talent show,  I played piano while the other elders dressed up and reenacted the Nativity.  Suffice it to say Elder Kim was our zebra-blanket wearing donkey and Elder Rivera was Mary (or María), and you get a good idea of how that went.  We also watched the movie "Up" during the zone conference, and with all the elders pointing out the funny things it made an already good movie great.  Indeed, I got to see a lot of my district this week, not only from the joint meetings or talent show practices, but also from baptismal interviews and helping fill fonts and set up for many baptisms: the UVU Asian missionaries had four baptisms this Saturday alone. This is a busy and exciting mission district to be in for sure!

And my companion and I are not too behind the mark either! Diana Fernandez from Colombia is the only one in her apartment during the holidays, while the others are in Florida (for Oscar Corredor's wedding!)  He plans to be sealed in the temple in 10 months, a year after his baptism), so besides for her hectic work schedule we will be able to meet with her one on one (or two I guess) much more this next week or so.  We committed her to baptism if she receives an answer since her last lesson, and hope to set a concrete date next time.  Toree Coleman is still doing well and we are teaching her the new member discussions (one of which is tonight and about the temple, which is way exciting!)  In fact, her father is also participating in them, which means things are getting better and better.

In other news, we have been combing through our three North Provo family stakes and finding the Spanish speakers.  Most of the Spanish speakers there are already members, which is good as we are building relationships with them through service and visits.  As of yesterday, we have also received two more family stakes, bringing our grand total up to 27 stakes covered!  This includes President McCune's stake, which is fun.  This also means we'll have more families and bishops and leadership to meet, which will be much easier when tithing settlement is complete.

But beyond that, this week was rather chill, but it has given me some good time for reflection and solid blocks of study time, in which I have been continuing to read the gospels and become more acquainted with Christ's life and words.  Throughout the whole thing I am continually struck with really how perfect and farsighted he was and how he truly was the Son of God.  This time of Christmas takes the life of Christ and looks at it at the very kick off, the day of his birth, and with it comes a sort of irresistible hopefulness, like the star that shone above the manger, pushing the night out and making day night and day that seem as one day. I think that's not only miraculous, but symbolical and foretelling of Christ in many different ways. As was so well said in the Carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem, "so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven".  Every string of garland, every ornament, every twinkling light reminds us that it's Christmas time, and that reminds us of Christ.  And as I have said before and will say again, I love being a Missionary.  It's especially great during Christmas, as I get to fill the shoes of the valiant missionaries who years before visited my home on Christmas. It's great to see it from the other end, and I sure love it!

Well, Merry Christmas to all!

As only perfect music is allowed in heaven, let us take the Angel's Chorus as perfect too:
Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth Peace, Good Will to Men!

-Elder Martin