Blessings, Books, and Broadcast

Hello Family,

Mission Tour

This week we had our general authority visit, Elder Audukitus. It was so good. He basically called us to repentance for not talking to as many people as we could everyday. Then he gave us awesome training on helping a family pray for the first time and also helping investigators invite their friends to their baptism, resulting in many referrals. He said if we talked to more people, we will see baptisms. He helped us see that if we really wanted and relied on the Lord, we could baptize every week of our mission! He picked on my companion out of all the missionaries there to present her talk. We were all told to come prepared with a 3 minute talk on diligence, and were told he would pick randomly 3 people. Turns out he only picked one and he started walking towards us and pointed at Sister Evans. I was soooo grateful it wasn't me! But she had to talk about what our companionship has done to improve our diligence in front of everyone, so basically it was both of us. She did great. He also asked a question about recognizing the Spirit, and no one said anything so I raised my hand and quoted Moroni 7, and he told me "thankyou for that inspired answer" and then we all turned and read from there. This may have been the equivalent of a (spiritual) rockstar concert for missionaries haha. It was such a blessing to have him come visit us and feel his spirit of enthusiasm. Helps he and his wife have a super cool accent too! :)

Book Cleaning Service

Some of our service lately for some reason has been cleaning and organizing libraries/ books. A recent one was with our ward at a community clean up day. We were a bunch of mid singles and missionaries and then the people from the community were mostly 70+ years old that were there :) everyone else our ages had signed up to do outside stuff. So with a bunch of baby wipes and grody childrens books, we wiped them down for 4 hours. So I took advantage of the situation, and talked to a lovely elderly couple. Bob and Jackie have been married for about 60 years. They were saying how God put them together in college, it was so cute. We talked about families, family history, being parents, etc. Basically long story short, they were very impressed with everything I had to say. They said the time flew by. I asked them if they would like missionaries to come....and they said no :(. BUT I know that they will someday, things I said "made sense" to them and they felt something for sure. We had a few other members talking to nonmembers there too, so it just showed how this is what we are all about. Serving, making friends. Then questions come up and you can talk about the gospel. It was a great experience.

Broadcast

I got to see Priyali at the Women's Broadcast! It made me so happy to see the fruits of her living the gospel and being in the room with her fellow sisters. I can't imagine her not being baptized and getting to hear the prophet speak. The conference was so great! I loved the first counselor, Sister Stephens. And how about that sister missionary choir?! If you didn't get to see it, here is the link- http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/watch/general-relief-society-meeting/2013/09?lang=eng&vid=2703212494001

You are all amazing. I LOVE YOU!

Love,

Sister Martin