High(er) Expectations

Hello Family!

Here is Annette's Baptism in Walnut Creek! She has been learning from missionaries forever! I taught her almost the whole time I was there! AND GUESS WHO BAPTIZED HER? NORMAN!!

Here is Alvaro's Baptism. He is really shy, so just ignore that is may or may not look like a mug shot...haha. We promise he was really happy. His mom was happy too, we even had her say the opening prayer...IN SPANISH!

Well, I am sure the apartment maintenance loves having two sister missionaries with thick hair live there...we had to call them to pull this out of the shower drain! Sick.

Well I like this new thing I discovered on email about inserting the pictures instead of just attaching them. Hopefully it works. 

Well at Mission Leadership Council, President Meredith just got back from a 3 day long training from Elder Ballard! We discussed a lot of ways to improve and teaching shortly and powerfully. We talked about high expectations. How much of the scriptures have absolutely MIRACULOUS things happen, parting the Red Sea, surviving a den of lions, not to mention all the Savior's miracles and miracles in the Book of Mormon. What did it take to have these? FAITH and KNOWING WHO YOU REALLY ARE. Not just a prophet or a missionary, but a child of God, which means you have divine in you. But how do we build that faith in ourselves and others? The emphasis in this training was on having spiritual experiences and then also sharing and hearing testimonies. We discussed bearing testimony frequently, and promising specific blessings, especially as we have seen them in our life. As we share this with others, it helps them build the cinderblock foundation of their testimonies'.

We have also been talking about becoming more consecrated missionaries. The law of consecration is a celestial law. It not about just changing behavior, but changing your whole nature. 

We had a miracle of one of our less actives coming to church this week. We needed a female for our investigator. Noone in our ward seemed to be able to come when it got down to 2 hours before the lesson. We finally resorted to calling a less active we hadn't seen. She agreed! Despite our investigator falling through at the last minute possible, we taught her instead (it was on the Plan of Salvation) and she cried and said how much she needed the lesson and needed to come to church. It was amazing, and we KNEW that was what the Lord needed to happen that night. 

LOVE YOU ALL!!! Hug a cat and invite someone to church.

Love,
Sister Martin

******Her pics didn't come through for this portion of the email...sorry everyone. Hopefully she'll resend them next week ********

Guess who I got to hang out with for Mission Leadership Council? SISTER OLSEN! And SISTER COOPER! They just got called as new Sister Training Leaders.Love them. It was a blast. 

This is what we really feel like after Mission Leadership Council. It is looong. And stressful. 

Happy Haunted House Cleaning time! As missionaries, we were locked in from 6-9 pm on Halloween, not allowed to proselyte, so instead we are supposed to deep clean. Here we are with the caramel apples we made with the caramel Mom sent. We also have a coloring sheet and a cleaning checklist ready for the night. Forget trick or treating, purging out old mission stuff is very rewarding!

For example, I finally let go of my old running shoes. We run a lot on the mission, and you can tell where I hit my stride haha, they are diagonal. I have new beautiful ones from Target I am loving.