Miracles and Beaches

Hola familia y amigos!

 Wow the work is really picking up out here in Las Cruces, it's been an incredible week! I'll just mention a few of the many miracles we experienced this past week. 

So as missionaries we try to have members come out with us to teach investigators and help them feel comfortable and start having friends in the church but the members here are so busy that it's really hard to get those member present lessons so Hermana Holding and I have been praying a lot for help with that and doing all we can, working diligently and such and this week during planning we managed to get 6 member present lessons scheduled when last week we barely got two and one of those was a surprise (I'll talk about that lesson in a little bit). We are so excited and hope that this momentum keeps up! 

Ok so that surprise lesson. So we've been working a lot with the less active members of the ward one of those is a nurse. She has a hard time coming to church herself because she's a nurse and has had to work on Sundays but she loves to share the gospel and the things that make her happy so one day, out of the blue, she called us with a referral to teach her friend. We scheduled an appointment to talk to her more and that was a whole thing (long story short we had the wrong trailer number and thought she bailed on us and we were really discouraged) but she came and brought her friend! So right then we were able to have one of our long hoped for member present lessons with an incredible investigator. 

Seriously her friend has gone through so much in her life and she is such an amazing and strong woman, it has truly been a blessing to get to know her. And then both of them came to church on Sunday so the blessings and miracles just keep coming! Also on Sunday, there's a lot of just clerical tasks that the ward has been needing to take care of and hasn't been able to for enough weeks that the members were getting a little frustrated, but this past Sunday the Bishop was amazing and got so much done and taken care of and we're really seeing a lot of progress and a renewed excitement in the ward.

And we have two investigators that are an amazing couple and really just soak up the gospel, they are so fun to teach!, but their marriage has been struggling a little and so they decided to wait to get baptized until their marriage was stronger. We've been talking to them a lot about temples and the fact that families can be together forever and the Spirit is always really strong as we testify of that and on Sunday 3 members had just gone to the temple for the first time and so they bore their testimonies of their experiences and the blessings of the temple and the wife felt the Spirit so strongly she started crying and said something to us in Spanish about baptism so we don't exactly know what she said but we're so excited to teach them tonight and talk about it! So many blessings man.

On an unrelated topic, we've had an exciting new development with our apartment! The water has sand in it! Not every day but it's been pretty often recently (but we have plenty of water bottles so we have clean water to drink so it's not a big deal). The best part is though that our shower curtain is a beach scene and so it's really funny to see the sand at the bottom of the tub and then the curtain. It's definitely the closest I'm going to get to an actual beach for the next 16 or so months so I guess I'll just enjoy it while it lasts!

I'm loving the work out here and even though it's really hard at times, there's no place in the world I would rather be and nothing else I would rather be doing. Seeing the joy in peoples faces as they feel the truth of God's love for them and how their family can be together for eternity, there's really nothing like it. I love this gospel and I love my Savior and every minute of every day out here I am so grateful that I have this opportunity to serve.I love you all and I hope that you have an amazing week!

Alma 29:9 "I know that which the Lord hath commanded, me and I glory in it. I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea, and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance, and this is my joy."

Love always,

Hermana Martin