Monday, March 20, 2017

Scenic Ocean Destination...failure




Hello everyone!  It's been a slower week, but it was good!  I hope you all had an awesome week!

On Monday when it was time for our zone activity, we drove to the "scenic ocean destination", to the top of the hill in our area, to see the ocean...and it failed.  We could only see clouds...bummer.














We had dinner with our stake president and his family.  It sure was good.  They took us out to eat at Stonefire...if you haven't heard of it, look it up.  It's delicious.  We came back to have a lesson with Pandian.  So the thing is, he's going back to India on Saturday the 18th, but there is a visa waiting missionary in our mission, going to his area in India.  So we brought him down to help teach and become friends so there is a familiar face in India.  It went well.  Eventually we had to leave to make it to our meeting on time, but Elder Horito (brought the visa waiter down) and this missionary finished what they were doing with Pandian.

Tuesday we had some weed'n'teach with Mary Anne again and she's doing well.  Everytime we go, she basically teaches us.  It's amazing!  We had weekly planning.  We treated ourselves with some fruit from the little fruit stands on some corner.  Sure is good.  We had knockout and dinner with the Rivas couple...he's 87 and still going strong.  Took us to Habit Burger and then Yogurt Land.  We're so spoiled.  We had another really good lesson with Tabitha, and she too, is really ready!  We finished the night with some referrals and potential investigators.

Wednesday was the day.  The day some people weren't looking forward to.  We did a zone all day knockout.  We met in the morning and started off the all day knockout with a zone prayer, and a scripture before hitting the doors for the day.  We felt this was right to do, considering a lot of us are in finding mode.  We finished at 6 pm, but we found no new investigators.  You'd think it'd be tough, right?  We got a text at 6:12 from a referral, that a member has a friend and her whole family to teach, but need a Portuguese translator for her family.  Coincidentally enough, like 15 people in our ward went to Brazil on their mission, and speak Portuguese.  It's just cool to see that when we put our time in, with good intentions, we're going to be blessed regardless.  Whether it came from knocking for hours on end, or just a referral.  It works with anything in life as well.

Thursday we left bright and early at 7:15 to be in North Hollywood by 8:30 for zone conference.  It doesn't normally take that long, but in the morning rush hour, it did.  We had a good zone conference that lasted some time.  We got to knockout for just the last half hour or so.  We had a great dinner too.






Friday we met with Mary Anne again.  She is so prepared for baptism.  I say this every week, but she continues to amaze me with how much she knows.  Plus, I found out this week, she's 80!  Doesn't even look 65 though!  We had lunch with some members of our zone at In 'n' Out and then had knockout.  Didn't have too much success, but it's always good.  We had dinner at some deli that a member took us to, but since I hadn't eaten much yesterday, or this morning, I had 3 burgers at In 'n' Out, so I just got a little meal at this deli, and it wasn't deli food.  Sorry to disappoint.  Pandian also came to us tonight, and told us he is not "reaching India tomorrow, extended to August 26", which is crazy.  I've still got my Indian friend here!






Saturday there was a baptism that was in our ward for a recently turned 8 year old.  We had two investigators there, so that was cool.  Afterwards, with permission of our mission president, we went to this families home with all their friends and talked with all of their non-member friends.  No one that we found to work with in our area, but there was in the Studio City area, so that was cool.  At the baptism we handed out copies of the Book of Mormon and pamphlets to people and they gladly accepted them.  It was cool.  There was a magician there too, he was pretty sick.  He performs at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, and did some tricks to me and Elder Clark, blew my mind.

Sunday we had church.  It was really cool.  5 girls from  Notre Dame High School were doing a project for their world religion class, and chose "Mormonism".  They came to church to find out more, and at the end of it, two of them were actually interested in having the missionaries come teach them.  (Not in our area.)  So it was neat that that happened.  The rest of the day was good as well. Talked with some cool people and had a good dinner.

Today, nothing notable yet, but we're going to WingStop in a little bit, cause cheaper wings on Monday's.  It'll be a good day.  Too sad to see FGCU  got eliminated from the tourney. ; )

I would invite you all to read and learn from two talks:
The first one is "Remeber Lot's wife"  by Elder Holland, at a BYU devotional.
The other is "Come Follow Me, by practicing Christian Love and Service" by Elder Hales.  One excerpt I want to share from the latter of the two:  "If you are suffering deeply, with others or alone, I urge you to let the Savior be your caregiver.  Lean on His ample arm.  Accept His assurance."  "I will not leave you comfortless:  I will come to you," He promises.

I love you and miss you all!

Elder Martin





"And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced , 
then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future."  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

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