Hi everyone!! Holy wow it’s been an awesome and crazy week. So many miracles, tender mercies, etc. I have so much to talk about so I’ll just get right to it.
I would call Tuesday, “Tender Mercy Tuesday.” There were multiple experiences we had that were a result of following the Spirit. For months we’ve been trying to find one of our recent converts, Ludwig. He was baptized about two weeks before I came out and he was doing well for awhile but he’s been going through a hard time and hasn’t been to church at all. We also haven’t been able to set up
appointments with him, and when we do they are always cancelled. So we were going to try just knocking on his door, but right before we were about to get out of the car to walk to his apartment, Sister Moore didn’t feel super well. We stayed in the car and rested for a few minutes. After sitting for a little while, she started to feel better and we were about to get out of the car…we look over and see Ludwig walking through his apartment complex towards us! What the heck!! We quickly got out of the car and quickly walked up to him. He told us it was the perfect time to meet. I literally hadn’t seen him in over two months. Gosh. If we hadn’t decided to sit in the car for a few minutes, we might not have been able to meet with him. And the cherry on top was that he came to church today after months of not coming. It was so cool.
A little bit later on Tuesday we were trying to find some people we had met tracting a couple months ago. We ended up not being able to find them, but as we were about to leave that neighborhood I remembered that there was a less active who lived in that same neighborhood who we had tried to find awhile back. So we decided to go knock on her door. The last time we tried to find her, we knocked and her front door was open but the screen door was closed. So you couldn’t see in but you could hear inside…and there were definitely people in the house walking around but nobody answered the door. We assumed she was ignoring us but figured it was worth another shot. We went this time and she immediately answered the door and let us in. We had such a great conversation with her and there seems to be a lot of hope for her coming back to church sometime in the future. That was a really awesome experience. Never ignore promptings!!
Wednesday we were able to have another lesson with Evan. This was a pretty big one…we decided that we were basically going to tell him that we can’t meet with him anymore unless he puts himself on date for baptism. Previously his dad always told us that they had decided Evan needed to wait a year to be baptized. But that’s coming pretty close and we just wanted to have something set. When we talked with them about it, they said all Evan needs to do is talk to his mom about it, and pray about a date to be baptized on. His dad even said it could be before the year mark! Yay!! So hopefully we will know soon about when Evan will be baptized. Not only that, but Evan also finally admitted that day that he has received an answer and he knows the church is true. It was such an amazing feeling! We’ve been working towards that for so long!
Thursday night we had a kind of scary experience. It was around 10pm and we were getting ready for bed, when we started hearing lots of yelling and screaming. Our apartment complex is set up into different two story buildings, so we are on the first floor of building three which faces building four. So through our window we can hear things from the building across from ours. I guess this couple in building four was fighting and things were getting pretty intense. We could literally hear every word. Basically some domestic violence starting happening so we decided to call 911. But we were pretty sure that someone who was standing on the balcony of the apartment where the yelling was coming from had seen us looking through our windows. So we got pretty nervous that they were going to know it was us who called 911…it was really scary. We ended up spending the night at another sister’s apartment and when we got back on Friday all was well…there hasn’t been a problem since then. Thank goodness!
Saturday we went on exchanges. I went to Orange with Sister Hathcock and Sister Moore stayed in our area with Sister Jacobs. Nothing too eventful happened on my exchange, but wow did cool things happen in our area! They went to the park in the center of our area to find people, and I guess there wasn’t really anyone there that day. But as they walked through the park they saw a woman named Alisha sitting down on a blanket reading the bible. They went up to her and asked, “if you knew that God had called a prophet today, would you listen?” She told them, “yes, please come sit.” They taught her the whole restoration and it went really well. At the end they invited her to be baptized and she accepted 🙂 yay!! She’s super hopeful so we’re excited.
Later on Saturday the Samoan ward in our stake put on a luau. There were lots of performances and dancing and so much food. And so many missionaries in our zone had investigators come which was awesome!! But wow the whole night just made me miss Hawaii so much…it reminded me so much of the night show at the PCC. I miss da aina.
That’s about all I have..it was a super awesome week. This week something I kind of had an epiphany about was that I’m just so grateful that Christ’s gospel requires a church where we can all learn and grow together as His disciples. Reminds me of the talk from General conference in October 2015 called “Why The Church”
(https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/why-the-church?lang=eng). I know this is Christ’s true church on the earth today. I’m so grateful for it, and for Him.
I hope you all have an amazing week!
All my love,
Sister Martinez 💕
alex in anaheim 