Week of Blessings

Wow this was a crazy week. Which is awesome because last week was really hard (thus why greek food was the most notable thing for me) but this week made up for all of that and a whole lot more!

I seriously don't even know where to start, plus we had zone conference which was way cool last Wednesday. President and Sister Miller came down and our zone here in Las Cruces combined with the Mount Franklin West zone in El Paso which is where Hermana Holding is now so I got to see her again! 

Las Cruces Zone

Zone conference is so awesome and pretty much we spent a whole lot of hours in trainings and activities which pumped us up to get back to work and give it 112% out here. We are so blessed to have the Millers watching over us here, they are just the sweetest and such amazing, strong people, I always feel so inspired whenever I get an opportunity to talk with either of them! 

This week we were FINALLY able to teach one of our investigators again (it's been about 4 weeks which is an awfully long time). With every appointment we've had recently something has gone wrong and we haven't been able to teach him. 

Pero this last Saturday was a day of miracles and we were able to go with one of the members of our ward here and we talked about the Plan of Salvation (where did we come from, why are we here, what happens when we die) and the Spirit was so strong the whole time, it was like a sucker punch to the gut and it was the best thing ever. At the end of the lesson he actually asked us when he can get baptized! BLESSINGS MAN. He just loves this gospel with his whole heart and teaching him makes me so happy! 

We have him on date for the 14th of November (and I really hope he is ready by that date because that's my parent's anniversary and how sweet would that be to have my first baptism on such an important day!) We are so excited for him and I can't wait to see him continue to progress and learn! 

This week was just filled with blessings and miracles so I couldn't even begin to cover a small part of them so I'll just suffice it to say that God really is at the head of this work and He unquestionably looks out for His servants. 

After my hard week last week I've really been focusing on patience and faith, which are a lot more related than I realized before this week. In my personal study time one morning I was drawn to one of my favorite books in the Book of Mormon, Mosiah, and started reading in Chapter 23 and it was a story that I had never paid much attention to before but it is hands down one of my favorites now. It's about a prophet named Alma and his people who where trying to be righteous and follow the commandments of God. Their enemies marched in and in order to avoid war and death the people surrendered. During this whole difficult time they prayed continually to the Lord and they exercised their patience in this time of affliction because they had so much faith in God and that He listens and was aware of them. 

The story continues how the Lord was always with them and after this trial of their patience and faith they were delivered out of bondage and returned to a city where many of their brethren lived where they were able to tell of their miracle story and strengthen the faith of the people there. 

I am so far beyond grateful for this opportunity I have to serve. For people like our investigator who have come to love this gospel with all of their souls and for this opportunity I have to have a front row seat on their journey back to their Heavenly Father and embracing the light of Christ in their lives. I am so grateful that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me enough to give me hard weeks so that I, too, can exercise my patience and faith and so that I can learn and grow along the way, and that He knows me well enough to give me such an amazing, miracle week following it so that I can have the strength to continue on and love this work. 

I can testify, without a single hint of a doubt in my heart that God knows and loves each and every one of us more than we could ever begin to comprehend. He is always there. No matter what. No questions. And what beautiful knowledge that is.

Hermana Martin

Week 15 I think

Hola! 

The days here are such a blur, it's so hard to remember everything we did by the time emailing comes but I'll give it my best shot! Plus I swear every time we have an appointment here the investigator or member decides to go and visit Juarez so a lot of stuff got cancelled this week and we don't really have any exciting progress to report but the work here is still doing great and slowly but surely we're seeing progress in our investigators and in our little Spanish ward here. We have some new investigators that we're working with and have a lot of hope for!

It's just been a pretty slow week so honestly the most exciting part ​was probably Friday night. We didn't have a dinner appointment or much food left in our apartment so Hermana Espinoza and I decided to eat out. Fun fact: greek food is my absolute favorite and I just figured I was going to have to wait 18 months to eat it again because where in the world in New Mexico are you going to find greek food? Yeah well I saw a restaurant across from NMSU and we figured "porque no?" so we ate there. Wow. Blessings man. That was seriously the best greek food I have ever had in my life! Friday was a really hard day but that dinner made everything so much better. So that was my little miracle this week. 

Really I can't remember anything other than that though. Tomorrow will be zone conference and I'll get to see Hermana Holding again and President Miller is going to come down so I should have more exciting news in the next email, lo siento! I hope everyone has lovely weeks!

Hermana Martin

New Companion, and General Conference

Wow ok so I think I left off at transfers. This whole week has been a blur. So my new companion is Hermana Espinoza and she's awesome! She's been out here for like 15 months already and it's nice having a companion who has a ton of experience and is good with the language. 

I miss Hermana Holding SO MUCH. We had gotten so close and had all of these amazing plans for this upcoming transfer and it's been hard transitioning to a different Hermana but she's doing awesome in her new area and we've been able to make a lot of progress here in Cruces. Besides that I don't think anything too eventful happened. 

Our investigators have been doing well, steady progress which is all we can really ask for. It finally has been getting under 100 degrees here and we've had a lot of cool lightning storms recently which is one of my favorite things so that's been a really nice little tender mercy. 

We've found a lot of new investigators and are finally busy again which is a missionary's favorite thing. The more appointments we have to figure out how to juggle, the more people that want to hear about God and that's pretty cool. 

We just got back from visiting Hatch, New Mexico, green chili capital of the world! Some Hermanas that cover that area live in this cool remodeled Catholic church with a bell tower and everything that a member up there owns so we got a tour of the church and played sand volleyball in the courtyard which was so nice since I haven't been able to play volleyball since I left the CCM. We didn't do much in town but hopefully I'll be able to visit there again soon! They seriously just have chilies drying out on the roofs and hanging from beams and all sorts of crazy stuff.

But of course the best part of this week was being able to listen to General Conference. We got to watch all of the sessions in a local church building here (I ended up becoming the "tech guy" somehow and help set up the broadcast and the translators for my ward members who came). The whole time I couldn't help but think about what a privilege and a blessing it is that twice a year we get to listen to inspired leaders of the church, working under God's direction and authority, give us advice and council on how to live better, and happier lives and how to be more centered on Christ. 

 All of the talks given where AMAZING and it's so hard to pick just one thing to focus on this week because I learned so much. This was one of my favorite quotes though: