Week 89 - The Week of Changes! I know who I will finish with!!!!

So we got changes this week! Elder Cox is going to be leaving Rivera and going to a town on the border of Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina called Bella Unión! He is super excited! I am going to be receiving Elder Quintanilla who happens to be the trainee of my past companion, Elder Rojas, right after we were together. I'm really excited to finally get to know him. I've only seen him twice in mission conferences but now I'll finally get to spend ALL KINDS of time with him. Haha! 

 

On Tuesday and Wednesday we were in Montevideo for the Leaders Conference and we talked about a lot of really interesting things, most of all what our Mission President shared with us which I will throw in as my spiritual thought at the end of the email. 

 

Thursday was pretty normal. We had our Weekly Planning Session that morning and after we got that done we were out. All of our charlas fell through that day and we ended up contacting the entire day without a whole lot to show for it. Haha! That´s what happens sometimes I guess. :)

 

On Friday we were on divisions with the Elders in Lagunon! It was a really interesting day honestly! They needed help preparing for a ward activity that night anyway so we just did divisions only in their area. We helped them out with a service project that morning of shoveling and moving dirt and I got a really nasty sunburn on my neck that my shirt collars punished me for. Later in the afternoon we went out and visited some people for a while and then we showed up to a member's house, all 4 of us, to start cooking hamburgers for this activity. We cooked Uruguayan style. They have a really interesting method in cooking meat. They make a massive fire and burn a ton of wood and let the ashes drop through this metal grate, then they move all the ashes under the place where they cook the meat. It got SUPER hot. It was actually kind of hard to be anywhere near that thing. Haha! Afterwards we went with them to the activity and got to meet all of their investigators. All of them seem to be super excited to continue learning the gospel and have had some really cool experiences to tell us.

 

On Saturday we did divisions again, this time with the Elders in La Pedrera. We found a lot of really good people in the morning while contacting and then we had an AMAZING lunch. Sorry Elder Cox. After that we did our studies and went back out, but shortly after going back out I got a call from the Assistants with all the changes in the zone and I spent a decent amount of time letting everyone know about that. 

 

On Sunday something really amazing happened! We had 60 people in church! The church attendance in the ward has been about mid-40's since I showed up, but we finally got a lot of members that come MOST weeks but not all, altogether in one week! It was great to see the church that full. Hopefully we can get a few more people there before I have to leave.

 

I also got news today from my last companion that C. and M., that he and I were teaching in Colonia, got baptized last Saturday! I am so happy right now, I can't even begin to say!

 

Finally, so what it was that President Dunford talked about in the Leadership Conference that I liked so much was his focus on Agency. He taught a lot about the importance of setting goals based on the key indicators of the mission which are how many people we found, how many people came to church, how many people have baptismal date, and how many people were baptized. He said they are important, but we can't judge our success based on numbers, but only on the things that are within the power of our own Agency. Soon he's going to come out with a list of things called the "Standards of Discipleship" which have to do with our own effort as missionaries to bring people to Christ. That's really all that God is really going to care about in all things, not necessarily what we may have achieved in life numerically, but if we truly gave it our all to living the Gospel.

 

I love you all! Nos vemos!

-Elder Martin

Baptism picture for C. and M.  Bryant taught them both

in his last area Colonia.

His companion felt bad Bryant wasn't there for the baptisms

so he "photo-shopped" Bryant into one of the pictures! 😂😂😂

Elders Cox (front), Sandholtz, Martin, Moser

Grilling burgers Uruguayan style!