Adjusting to Missionary Life

Hello everyone! Well, this week was really good, but also a little challenging. It was a little bit of a challenge to stay focused at some points this week, but it was also a good opportunity to draw closer to my Heavenly Father. 

This week was really good in the sense that I have really adjusted more to missionary life and my area. I am no longer in a constant state of shock because of the ghetto-ness of it all. Me and Elder Bangerter have also made some goals and criteria for focusing on more promising investigators, so we are not wasting our time trying to teach people we contacted when they were drunk. We have also set a goal to focus more of our finding in the nicer areas, where we are more likely to find father-led families of stable economic conditions who would be more able to help build the church. We have had some really cool experiences this week.

We have two investigators with baptism dates, Xabisa, an Xhosa girl going to school at the local college (she had a date for baptism when I got here) and Treshwine, the boyfriend of a member girl here who is just this really gentle, quiet kid who I can tell is really beginning to become converted. We also have some promising other investigators. One is a young man named Jason, who is very christian and was so excited to have us at his house. Really religious people here ,and there are many, generally like to kind of preach at us for a while when we visit, which is nice but also a little bit time consuming.  Jason read us some verses in Ezekial 37, the same chapter that prophesies of the Book of Mormon (you know, the stick of Judah and Ephraim). After he shared with us, we shared with him those verses in the same chapter and introduced the Book of Mormon. When we read Moroni 10 with him he was so excited and kept saying "Wow!" I have high hopes for him. We have also had some other really good lessons, one with the Tyler family, a nice family that has been taught be the missionaries extensively, that Elder Bangerter just kind of found in the area book. At the end of one of our lessons with him, he told us he knew the BOM was true. We don't quite understand why they haven't been baptized yet, but we hope that they will.

Some funny experiences we have had this week was this run in with this crazy guy, who Elder Bangerter had had a run in with before and saw us on the street. He came to us and started hugging and kissing us, and quoting scriptures at us, even sometimes from the Book of Mormon. When he asked us where we were from, and we told him we where from Idaho, he l knelt down in the street and started kissing our feet yelling "Idaho! Idaho!" It was kind of uncomfortable. Elder Bangerter was so mortified, but I was kinda laughing. We also where accosted by some drunks the other day, and one of them asked me "Son, of Joseph, what word do you have for me!?" I think I told him I hoped God blessed him, and that he would make good choices, but later when we were walking down the street I though that I should have just said to stop drinking.

As for clues about the areas: Don't research it too hard, cause you might find some frightening things. But, things you should be able to find are names like Cleary Park, the big mall in our area, Salt Lake, one of the more ghetto areas we cover, and Gelvandale, where most of our good investigators are. And yes, we attend the Cleary Estate Branch. [This is in response to Ricki asking about where Kaleb is serving so we can use Google maps and street view to see the neighborhoods. Click the links to see for yourself]

Well, those are the things that I can think of right now. Oh, and I would love to get some emails from Granddad, as I am serving in a place that he served before, and Grandpa.

Anyway, know that you are all in my prayers and I love you all!

Elder Martin

The safe door is the door of the library in the chapel here in Cleary.
Gotta keep those gospel doctorine books safe!