Because we didn't have a full week between P-days, I don't have too, too much to write today! But I will muster up all my creative writing abilities and try and write something that is somewhat interesting.

We have 1 new investigator this week!!! Her name is Justina. She is actually the daughter of one of our members in the ward! Her mother and sister (who is less active) joined the church together, but Justina (who was an adult and involved in another church already) never did. We taught her the restoration. Surprisingly enough, she believes in the restoration, BOM and Jesus Christ....she actually struggles with believing in God. I have to admit, I've never heard that one before....usually it's the opposite problem (not believing in the BOM, restoration etc.). She loves having us over for tea and has always joined us for spiritual thoughts at her mother's home, which makes our job a bit easier. We will be seeing her Thursday and will start to study the BOM together! Fingers crossed all will go well!

Sister Shchur's b-day is coming up on Friday (Aug 2nd) and I have discovered just how hard it is to plan a birthday for a companion, who you have to be with 24/7 (literally!). Any chance I get (when she's in the shower, bathroom, etc.) I've been planning! Yesterday I was able to get away from her at church long enough to recruit the help of some of the ward missionaries.....I'm having them go to the store for me and put together a package of her favourite things! Another ward missionary is going to have us for tea that night, and we'll have a big cake for her! I've been sneaking out of bed after she falls asleep to make hearts that I'll be heart-attacking our flat with! I plan to write all the things I love about her on the hearts! I hope her b-day will be special! Though we are very different, she is the nicest person on planet earth, and deserves to have an incredible b-day!!!

We had a good old American-style BBQ at our ward mission leader's home on Saturday! Since 3/4 of the missionaries here are from N.America, he knew we probably were craving good old fashioned burgers. He bought jalapeno burgers, wings, salsa and chips, cream soda, and New York Cheesecake! Can I just say: BEST WARD MISSION LEADER EVER!! Brother Davey is wonderful, hilarious (very sarcastic) and is very enthusiastic! We all love working with him!

We had 4 hour finding on Saturday! On the 1st Saturday of each new transfer, all missionaries in the mission participate in 4 hours of finding (i.e. 4 hours of tracting, street contacting, bus contacting etc.) It was so much fun compared to the last time! Last time I was only 3 days in the mission field and had no clue what I was doing. Now that I am 100% confident in talking with people, it was an absolute blast! No major miracles came from it (yet)....just gave away a couple BOM's and had some nice conversations....but it was a confidence boost to see how I've grown in just 6 weeks. Example: We got on a bus and there was only 1 lady on it. I talked to her right away, and then my companion took over for awhile, and I decided why not just talk to the bus driver. So I yelled down the bus to him, and we were shouting back and forth down the bus (my companion thought I was crazy). I ended up standing beside him and we had a great conversation (he ran away to Indiana for 6 months once to get away from an ex-wife..so we talked all about N. America vs. England and then the discussion led to how rubbish the world is becoming......Bam! Gospel discussion!). I am official friends with a bus driver now haha! If I had been on a bus 6 weeks ago, I wouldn't have even said hello to someone! So great to see how fast you can grow in such a short time-frame!

We still are unfortunately teaching the creepy man who's home smells like dead bodies and looks like an evil villains lair from a Bond movie or something! I'm hoping Sis S will come to her senses soon and listen to me, the elders, and our distric leader, and stop booking follow-up appointments with him. She's agreed that after Wed we can stop seeing him in his home and only meet him in public buildings. Thank goodness!!!!!

Besides this, really no major exciting things to share.

Random things:

Since Sis. Shchur is getting supported by the church on this mission, everything she buys comes out of her church bank card. The catch is though that she doesn't receive any more money than the rest of us, so this means that she has less grocery money to spend than I do. This means that at the end of the month, we have almost no money for groceries! I was sitting down, and planning out our meals for the week (so we knew EXACTLY what to buy so we could spend as little as possible) and told Sis S. that for Fri and Sat we were going to have air for lunch (we pretended to eat the air and season it with salt and pepper) and oatmeal+ cornflakes for dinner (our new FAV!.....not! hahaha). She just loved it (she somehow at least pretends to laugh at my never-ending stream of dumb jokes). Then she shouted out: "WAIT.....THIS WEEK IS FAST SUNDAY!!!!! WOOHOO WE DON'T HAVE TO BUY FOOD FOR THAT DAY" and gave me a big huge high-five! Oh the life of a missionary!!!!! I love these small, silly moments! Sometimes you just have to laugh at the sad situations we find ourselves in at times! :)

Anyways, that's all I really have for this week!!!

From the rainy again land of Telford!

Sister Martin