Week 59

Let me tell you of my wonderful week.

Monday we met with a family in our ward who has a child who will be baptized soon, we just felt like we should share a message with them before her baptism. So we went and we watched the John Tanner story, it is such a great video! even the 8 year old girl was in tears, the Spirit was strong and we had a great discussion afterwards. After all that, and the strong presence of the spirit, the mom told us that someone asked her a few weeks ago if, since she had a lot of nonmembers coming to the baptism, she would like the full time missionaries (me and Elder Hall) to speak at the baptism while the kids were changing... she said no, that she didn't want to push it with her friends too much, but that now she wants us to come and teach. This could be a great opportunity hopefully.

Tuesday we had an appointment with an anti-mormon... it was fun. All of his arguments were ridiculous! He first harped on how mormon researchers don't do their job right, and how they don't really go into it very well... and THEN he brings up 1st Nephi 19:1 which talks about plates... it says he was commanded to make plates, and then in verse two it indicates he wasn't commanded to make plates... he said that Joseph Smith was stupid to miss such an obvious mistake... Well this shows his lack of research, the verse clearly speaks of two sets of plates, and how he was commanded to make one of them, but he didn't know that he would be commanded to make the second one... or something like that... look into it, its pretty obvious! He had an old copy of the Book of Mormon which has pictures all throughout... he said that some of the pictures weren't historically accurate, or fitting to what was in the Book of Mormon. We said they were simply pictures, artist renderings. He whined about how we always just gloss things over, "You can't have the story say one thing, and have pictures say another thing!" "Mark, those pictures were not included with the gold plates!" anti's are funny.

Friday we had a Zone Conference, that was fun. We had some changes in the mission... a little more laxed on music rules... but at the same time not really. We don't have real limitations, other than it has to keep the spirit... I worry about some missionaries... but I love the hymns, so that's what I'll continue to listen to! It was a great conference, we have an incredibly obedient mission! President Beck took this mission from like 5% obedience, to 93% obedience! it is one of the most obedient missions probably in the world! President Taylor is taking us even farther, he puts it as, going from love to trust, which is higher than love.

Saturday was the baptism of the Caldwell family, not in my ward, but in Elder Kavatoe's ward... 6 people! it was so awesome, there were about 100 people in attendance. The caldwell family showed up 30 minutes late to their own baptism! crazy... President Taylor attended it with his wife and his 16 year old son Braden. After the Baptism, we asked President Taylor if we could take Braden out with us for an hour, which he said yes to, it was a lot of fun to get to know him a bit, he's a really good kid! Reminds me of myself at that age... HA! j/k.

Sunday we had a great lesson with Ryan and Curtis who finally both came to church! it was a really powerful lesson on the Plan of Salvation, it was done in the chapel.

Well that's all for today, love you all,

Elder Martin