Jan 9, 2012

 YEP thats a QT donut :)

 we hiked the san tans this morning as a zone! I LOVE Queen Creek :)
 adams, me, doll, and kerr

OF COURSE WE BROUGHT OUR BOOK OF MORMONS

HELLO HELLO

ohh man... another great week :)

Well as a mission we are completely changing the way that we "find'. Dad used to knock doors, we used to OYM or street contact, but now we're mostly just working with members. We have had 2 trainings this week about it and I'm not FULLY understanding everything that we need to do but i do know that in order to meet our huge goal, we have to do things different then we did last year! We are meeting with ward members to train and role play with them on how they can do their own missionary work! WEIRD but i understand the need. this next 9 months of my mission is going to be completely different then the first part and that is for the better. We seriously have the BEST wards ever and they are all committed to help us in our missionary work by starting the Ward Council Process, which we have known about for over a year, but has not been been implemented in the wards.  BUT yesterday we set it up with two of our wards with ALL of our auxiliary leaders with us and next Sunday we will train the other two wards! ohh man i am so excited for this next year and we started off on the right foot!

MIRACLE!!  So Donny... well he had been really struggling with quiting smoking since he had been doing it for 17 years and so you can see the kind of addiction he was struggling with. Well we have been meeting with him daily to try and help him out the best that we could and Doll and I even made these "Temptation Killers" for him which is really just a bag full of awesome scriptures and good motivational quotes for him to pull out and read to try and get his mind distracted when he is tempted to smoke. He was getting frustrated with himself because he just wanted to quit so bad and so before he went to work (which is the main source of temptation for him) he knelt down and prayed that he could quit. well he went to work and the guy that he smokes with came up to him and told him that he woke up that morning and felt like he needed to quit!!! so he told Donny that and Donny almost had a heart attack I think! ha ha well long story short, today is his 7th day without smoking :) WOW what a miracle. we have still been seeing or calling him everyday but he says that he doesn't even feel the need to smoke anymore! Heavenly Father answers our prayers!!!!

Also... everyone knows that I LOVE Quick Trip maple long johns and so we were talking to josh (Recent Convert) about donuts and i told him that they were my favorite and so that night he called us and told us to come out.... oh ya he bought 9 MAPLE LONG JOHNS!!!! thank goodness there are 4 of us, but they still aren't gone! ha ha he was so nice to do that and he had to drive a bit to be able to find the closest QT!
haha those donuts are def NOT in my diet but how can I resist! this is why i can't lose weight!

So this week sister Doll and I set up an "MTC night" with the youth in one of our wards. pretty much all the youth come for their combined actvity and we set up a mock MTC! they all entered and we split them up into companionships and then districts and rotated them in several rooms! one was a p-day room where there was TONS of cold cereal to eat and they wrote letters (we had them write to the missionaries serving from their own ward), then there was a Language room where they were taught Cantanese, a First Discussion room where we taught them the first discrussion and then there were Tracting rooms where the companionships knocked on a whole bunch of doors and each door was a differnt senario! it was WAY FUN and the youth brought friends and it was just great and very successful!

- i found a quote in the the new Relief Society manuel from President George Albert Smith that says " The best evidence of gratitude at this time is to do all we can to bring happiness to this sad world, for we are all our Father's children, and we are all under the obligation of making this world a happier place for our having lived in it." EVERY MEMBER A MISSIONARY!

I love you all very much!
Love, love,
Sister Martin

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