Miracles and madness!

My catch phrase to describe this week: Miracles and madness! But lets be honest! This catch phrase could apply to my whole mission!! :)

Vicky:

So we met with Vicky the day after the baptism! We had FHE with her two little girls (cute as buttons), plus the Perkins family (the family who invited her to the baptism) and their 3 little girls (cute as buttons times infinity!!). It was incredible!!! We ended up teaching for probably 3 hours after FHE! We taught Vicky the word of wisdom, watched a conference talk, shared testimonies, talked a lot about the BOM etc. She was so accepting of everything we taught! She is so prepared! We are so excited to teach her again!!!!!!! They live really far away from us (30 min car ride) so unfortunately progressing is much slower, simply because we can't see her very often!!! But I pray I can see her progress before I leave Telford (whenever that happens!).

Exchanges in China (a.k.a) Wrexham!

So I was in Wales and England on exchange this week!!! And had the most relaxing exchange of my life! Our current sister training leaders are both Chinese speaking, therefore most of their investigators are Chinese and speak little to no English! So all the appointments except one were in Chinese! So my whole exchange was spent playing with the Chinese children of these investigators, so they would not distract their moms during the lesson! Basically I was a glorified Chinese baby-sitter! But it was loads of fun! Fun fact: it's so much harder to work with kids when you don't speak their language! Mute babysitting is a very unique experience!! Cutest thing was a lesson where there was a little boy named Ian. Ian is very autistic and was causing havoc during the lesson (throwing chairs, screaming etc.). This was a very important and serious lesson and my companion was already extremely nervous about teaching it on her own. I suddenly remembered that I had a Canadian loonie in my wallet and pulled it out and gave it to him. He was quiet for the rest of the lesson. He loved it! He kept staring at it and just feeling the different texture of the coin! It ended up being a little miracle for the lesson, because it allowed my companion to be able to teach and be understood with no distracting! The small blessings are sometimes the most precious.

Whipped Cream Party Trick:

So anyone who knows my family well knows that we do the dumbest trick with spray whipped cream! We stick a giant dollop on our wrist, and then swing our arm in the air, and smack the arm with our other hand-- thus launching the whipped cream high in the sky catapult style-- and then catch it in our mouth!! It's stupidly simple, and simply stupid ;) Well I saw a can of whipped cream on the table at tea, with one of the funnest/silliest families in our ward (home with 4 very energetic boys and parents with a great sense of humour). I instantly became the most popular person of the night, and certainly started a fun trend in their home! They loved it and it made for good laughs and people tried it, and failed-- leaving their faces and shirts covered in whipped cream failures!

Another highlight of the tea appointment was our string of offensive/silly Irish and Welsh jokes!! Pretty much the whole tea appointment was a long string of the family members insulting each other and telling terrible jokes! One of my favourites of the night: 3 boys from another family in the ward were over for tea as well; their parents are both from Wales, but the kids grew up here. The 12 yr old boy threw a pretty clever/offensive Irishman quip to Bro Pointer (who was driving the car). Bro. Pointer (an Irishman) replied: sorry Joe, I can't understand a word you are saying, I don't speak sheep. All I hear is Baaaaaaa Baaaaa Baaaaaaaa when you talk. And when your cousins from New Zealand talk all I hear is Baaaaaa Baaaaa Baaaaaa (said in a hilarious accent). You probably have to live here to get this humour!! There is nothing in Wales but sheep (so the joke goes) so there are lots of offensive jokes that insult the Welsh accent using sheep impressions/references. Another favourite joke of the night was their woman in the kitchen jokes (they told about 50 during tea): What do you do if a woman is running at you with a knive? Get a loaf of bread and peanut butter. She'll start making you a sandwich! Funniest appointment ever!

Random Sister Riley Quote:

As we were walking one day, she was thoughtfully analyzing her mittens. She suddenly goes: "Maybe the reason they invented mittens was so people can't tell if your flipping them the middle finger, because otherwise they really aren't a very functional design at all". I love random moments on the mission.

Accent wars:

Sister Riley was animatedly telling me how I pronounce words wrong. Specifically: tomato and aluminum. I won the war. It's simple. To win an accent war with an English or Australian person, just have them say tomato, and then ask them how they say potato. Bazinga. Then ask them to spell aluminum and pronounce it exactly how it is spelled. Bazinga. Then take any word that ends with "er" and ask them to pronounce the letters properly (like they would when they are doing basic grade 1 phonics). Bazinga. I love accent wars, especially when I win!

Sweet, sweet revenge:

Last week Sister Riley made my life miserable after finding out (because of Guy Fawkes night) that I'm scared of fireworks! Well life handed me a beautiful opportunity for revenge. Sister Riley's fear? Chalk. She cannot touch chalk. It makes her gag. So we were at the Perkin's home (friends with investigator Vicky) and were playing charades with their little girls. Sister Riley had one of the girls be a firework--- so cheeky. Well later in the night as we were sitting at the table, the mom suddenly pulled the tablecloth off of the table and handed the girls a jar of chalk. Turns out the girls regularly draw with chalk on the kitchen table. So I told the girls that Sister Riley loves drawing pictures and that they should get her to draw a picture of pretty fireworks. Hilarious! The girls were begging her to draw for them. Revenge is sweet!

Can I get an amen?

Random silly moment in Sunday school yesterday. Our investigator class was cancelled so we were in regular Sunday school. The lesson topic was on missionary work (YAY!). Near the end of the lesson the teacher made a comment about how it is pointless to do missionary work if we aren't helping fellowship and strengthen those who do join the church. Because we have struggled to get any help from the ward in supporting our recent converts and investigators, I sarcastically muttered to Sister Riley "Amen Brotha!" then she quipped back "can I get an aaaamen?!". Just as she said that, the whole Sunday school class echos Amen. The lesson had ended right as she said that. We were in hysterical laughing fits from that!

Goodbye Remek:

Sad week. we officially passed Remek over to the elders this week. We will still go by to see him occasionally, but will not be his regular teachers anymore. He stopped progressing back in September (he still comes to church every week, but just won't take that step to baptism. He is becoming an eternal investigator) and we have absolutely nothing left to teach him. He has been getting way too comfortable with us, and views us as friends to socialize with, more than missionaries who teach the gospel. So we prayed and decided to pass him to the elders. Elders are often more bold than sisters, so maybe they can be more firm with him and give him the push he would need. The elders will have different stories and experiences to share as well, so we hope maybe they can give him something he needs. It was a little emotional for me, since Remek was the first person I ever found and taught on my mission. It felt like sending my baby out into the world for the first time. So strange! Changes are officially beginning for me!

Random Fact:

So I just noticed that the logo above the myldsmail.net website has a missionary badge that says: Elder Martin. This badge is also in preach my gospel. My last name is officially better than everybody else's!! :)

That is the extent of my week! We are still struggling, but trying to have faith that in the midst of the madness that has been going on that we can find people to teach! And through everything we always manage to laugh at EVERYTHING, and I am certainly so grateful for this!!! What a blessing it is to be involved in the Lord's work! What a beautiful work this is! I love being a missionary!!! There truly is nothing better!!!!

Hope the time goes quickly for you and slowly for me :)

<3 Sister Martin