Elder Martin @ Temple Square

Dearest Family,

I loved Conference weekend! It was the greatest!  We had a lot of people who we are teaching watch from home, though none ended up coming to the meetinghouse to watch.  I am so grateful for a living prophet.  He is truly the Lord's servant!

On Monday we started exchanges with the Secretaries.  I was with Elder Burnett and we focused on using the Book of Mormon during finding and teaching.  We were able to teach four lessons and do some solid streeting during the exchange.  Elder Burnett really helped me in learning how to be open with people and be Christlike.  We brought two members to a lesson with one of our "eternals", an older woman who almost always comes to Church, reads from the Book of Mormon but always asks for patience when we try to give her a baptismal date.  The two members bore powerful testimony and we gave her November 10th as a baptismal date if she gets an answer during Conference that this decision is the right one.  We'll be following up this week.  We also taught a 17 year old about the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation.  He is looking for God in his life and unfortunately sometimes turns to marijuana to cope with his problems.  We turned down his invitation to join :).  We also taught our miracle family.  They got word from the Romanian government that they will be able to get married officially in the beginning of November.  Hopefully this still works out with their baptismal date of November 10th.

On Wednesday Elder Spencer and I found two new people through various streeting methods.  One is 21, Leo, and he is half Japanese and half Hungarian.  We taught him the Restoration at our second appointment and he was really interested to learn more.  Hopefully we can get places with him; he seems really promising.  Later that night we met with Zsolt, a 45 year old man that we teach.  We started the no-smoking program with him and our MCM leader was there.  He accepted a baptismal date on Saturday of December 1st if he gets the answer before then that Jesus is the Christ (his main problem currently).

On Thursday we met with another one of our young people, Fanni, with whom we read the Book of Mormon.  She's starting the 21 day challenge and we are excited for her to get an answer to her prayers.

Conference weekend was amazing.  On Sunday morning we were encouraged to proselyte from 9 to 11 before the first session of conference we found another young person to teach.  He's 17 years old and had a beanie that said Pikes Peak on it (that's how we struck up the conversation).

I love being a missionary.  Sometimes at the end of the day I just look up at the dark ceiling while trying to fall asleep and I just can't help but smiling.  I'm so happy to have this opportunity for the Lord to mould me into the person He wants me to be.  A lots of times it's somebody I did not have in mind!

love,

Elder Martin