Dear Family,
First, I thought it
was hilarious that during the 1st presidency Christmas devotional, in the
corner was a little twitter sign, "#ChristmasDevo" --so hip church!
Hashtag the gospel!!!!
#Alamoisamazing. #Ilovemycompanion
This week has been THE
craziest!! Every day is an adventure with Sister Olsen. We are constantly
laughing and having a blast, but yet we are stoked to be together and work hard
and turn around Alamo! Our first day, we had to take care of one of our sisters
we are over in my new zone. She was training, and had to wait to pick up her
new companion, so it felt like a giant trio slumber party! And we saw miracles
on the first day! The first man we walked up to at his garbage can let us in
his house with his wife. She said they have never let in missionaries all these
years until now. Then we visited some members, and I don't know what people are
talking about, but this ward is doing amazing with missionary work! One of the
couples in our ward told us about how they just got a mission call to Hong
Kong, only to be personally called from Elder Oak's office a few weeks later!!
Then they had a video conference with President Uchtdorf!! They are now being
called to serve as a mission president and wife!! They will be so amazing! So
President Uchtdorf told them"You only need to know 3 things. Preach My
Gospel. Preach My Gospel. and Preach My Gospel." when she shared that with
us, it just reminded us how amazing that book is. So anyways, they are having us
teach them the lessons to help them prepare! They are so cute, they have all
the PMG videos, pamphlets, etc sitting around in their house. AND this means
they are praying VERY diligently to have missionary experiences. The sister
said she had to go to the bank for the first time in 10 years (I will discuss
the richness of this place later), where she ran into an old neighbor from
like 22 years ago!! After saying her name, which she completely
remembered, they caught up on each others lives. Turns out the neighbor had
JUST lost her husband, and was now mad at God. Our member testified about
the Plan of Salvation, and when the neighbor didn't want to believe her, up
comes ANOTHER MEMBER in the parking lot. She came over, and our
member told her what was happening, and the other member just looked
at the nonmember and said "It is absolutely true." BY THE MOUTH
OF 2 WITNESSES! How cool is that?! Reminded me why we go in companionships.
Anyways, so now our futuremissionpresidentwife went over to her house later
with chocolate offering chocolates and a hug. They talked some more and then our
member invited her to our fancy relief society dinner. She accepted the
invite and totally came. We were there, and just got to know her a little.
Eventually, she is going to invite her to meet with us!
#ourwardisold.
Sooo speaking of
rich, this place is loaded! We are the richest part of the mission. The member
I was talking about earlier who said she hadn't been to the bank in 10 years,
is so funny and just says"my husband is my ATM. Whenever I want money I
just take it from him." I think I have been in like 20 mansions since I
got here. One time was for our relief society dinner. It was the men serving us
in matching cumberbuns (sp?) and bow ties, with a full blown meal on porcelain plates
with wine glasses. We even had the men chauffeuring and parking everyone's cars. However rich though, they did good in
bringing nonmembers, which was the idea. In our last ward, a sister commented
how she went out with a rich guy once, partially to use as an opportunity
to share the gospel, because quote "missionaries can't get to
that door". So profound! We are going to be working really
closely with the members here. We will work as hard as we can to find as well,
but we know the miracles will come through the members. Even if on Sunday,
literally 95%of relief society has gray or white hair. They can share the
gospel too! :) Also, I love older people, they are hilarious, which made Sunday so
funny. You know our ward is old, when they have an electrical wheelchair lift
on the stand in sacrament. And I had to use a microphone to even make a comment
in Relief Society. I love it here :) Also, please pray for our investigator,
even though there are old people here, we are teaching my first teenager on my
mission. She is 14, and the only nonmember in her family. But her family is
less active.
#istruggleridingbikes
Also, Sister Olsen and
I had to be on bikes for a day! The elders had to borrow our car to go to
Oakland, and so we said "ok we need your bikes then, we have
appointments." So we took them. So. Painful. Here is Sister Olsen's
version/account of that day for you:
"It's been SO
cold here!!!! I'm freezing my buns off!!! Last thursday was the coldest day of
the year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And
guess what we got to do all day..............................WE WERE ON
BIKE!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I hated every second of it! haha just kidding!
It actually was REALLY fun and it was REALLY FUNNY to watch sister martin struggle
on the bike because she's so short!! hahaha we were in our fancy fur coats with
tights on and our nice shoes...riding elders bikes. I kept looking back at her
and each time I did I almost crashed because I was laughing so hard. I bet we
looked RIDICULOUS!! hahaha it was the funniest day of my mission! The elders
had to borrow our car to go to Oakland and so we were like okay sure! Give us
your bikes and they couldn't believe we wanted to ride bikes! We were like
"Well, we have places to go, people to visit! We have appointments all
day! We aren't walking!" haha half way through the day I repented and said
a prayer for all the missionaries on bike. I take being in car for granted. I
now have a new respect for elders and sisters on bike. "
I think that is enough
said. Except she was kind enough to not mention when I fell off trying to
contact a sweet Asian couple on the street. Haha. Thank goodness our members
gave us rides in the evening. Alamo is also super hilly. And riding a bike is
so dangerous!We of course had Mission Leadership Council the next day, which
was a bunch of sitting for hours!!
#tightlikeuntoadish
We call our car the
Jaredite boat. It is a Chevy Malibu, therefore, tight like unto a dish.
Horrible turning radius. We miss our Corolla. But we are grateful to not be on
bikes!
Sister Olsen and I are
also giving a training! AT ZONE CONFERENCE! This is one of the biggest training
opportunities, and one of the assistants specifically told me they counseled
with President who needed to give the training, and they picked us for our
conference! Thankfully we don't have to do it al 3 days, just our own zone
conference. We were given the topic of "asking inspired questions". We
are so excited, and already have an object lesson planned.This is also the
funnest zone conference of the year! We get to do missionary Christmas things,
like a white elephant exchange, and our mission president's wife is reading us
a Christmas story, and we have a bunch of Chirstmas special musical numbers. We
have been soooo busy with meetings and trainings, we are excited to get into
more proselyting time together and exchanges this week. I have been feeling so
much anxiety about how fast this part of my mission will go. I am so happy, and
I don't want to stop being a missionary!
I LOVE CHRISTMAS!
and
I LOVE YOU ALL!,
Sister Martin
PICS:
We are so excited and happy to be together again!! Especially for the holidays :)
1. We were in a trio for a day...funnest night ever!
2. we love bikes:)..hahaha
3. Santa already loves us!!!! :)
More pictures for
those of you who can appreciate more pictures of me...:
1)This first pic is at
our first district meeting together. We ate these things called
"Dropeys" ? Our district leader brought them to us. They are
basically licorice with salt. Suuuuper nasty.
2)We have too much
fun. This was our first official companion picture.
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