Week 8

General Epistle from Elder Martin to the Gentiles... he he, nah could you imagine, but yeah here's my message to the non-family... but hey family can read it as well....

Greetings friends, family, loved ones, those who accidentally came here, and those who love me but I'm not so sure about... nah, I do love you all though.

So have I made it clear how much I love being a missionary? Well I do. I love every minute of every day. Except the minute of 6:30-6:31 But once I get up, I'm okay. I am so amazed at how much the spirit is involved in this work. Let me explain through story.

Yesterday, we are at church, we had no investigators, or so we thought. Apparently this guy came to listen to his friend give a talk in church, he sat in the 3rd row, when he left, his phone fell out of his pocket into the pew. A member of the bishopric who normally leaves the Chapel immediately, for some reason decided to check the pews and clean them up a bit, as he got to the third row, he saw a phone, when he saw the phone, he noticed that it just started to vibrate. He picked it up, found out that a non-member left it in the church and would like to come pick it up. Meanwhile my companion and I were just about to leave church to get some other things done, we were out by the car, and decided to come back in, when we got in we caught up with this member of the bishopric who gave us the phone and said it would be more appropriate for us to give him the phone. We find out he's in the lobby on the other side, so we walk over there, and give him his phone, he almost leaves, but then we introduce ourselves and talk to him for a second, and he says "Well I'm incredibly interested in learning more about your church, I really feel like this is what I need" We picked up our jaws from the ground and explained that we were the missionaries! he was excited. We will teach him soon.

We have a guy we are teaching who was less active for a while and desired to have the discussions from us so he could learn more about the church and serve a mission, so we started teaching him and he told us about this friend of his who might be interested, so we had him invite him to the next appt. He didn't come, he flaked out on us, so we just taught him anyway... well the next time we came over, we asked about his friend and he said "oh he's actually here right now" so we were excited about that and we taught him the Restoration, after I bore my testimony of Joseph Smith, and explained what I felt and the conviction I had that Joseph Smith was a prophet, he said "Yeah I think I know exactly how you felt, that's how I felt when I was reading the Book of Mormon". He explained perfectly the feeling of the Holy Ghost, he said he'd never really felt that way before, but he felt like a warm blanket was wrapped around his heart, he asked his friend about it, and they had a good conversation that day, and then he met with us. I am so grateful for how the spirit works and how we are blessed. I'm so grateful that this man will now be blessed to receive the gospel, he didn't come to church, but he plans on it. We're meeting with him again next week, he has a lot of questions about the Plan of Salvation and we are more than happy to answer all of his questions.

I know that the Spirit uses me to do the work of the Lord, it has very little to do with me, in fact its a further testimony of the truth that He uses someone like myself to do His work, the weakest of His servants. I am so glad to be in a place where He CAN use me. I love the gospel, I love the Savior and am so blessed to be called as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm blessed to have the opportunity to invite others to come unto Him. This gospel is true, I know it is.

Elder Martin