Sister Kelly Martin: Transfer 6

I got an early birthday present Saturday night!!!

Sister Spencer and I found out that we are both leaving Redmond! Her with her 6 months and me with my 6 weeks! And this area is getting Elders! And the Elders will be on bikes because I am taking the car with me to my new area: Sisters, Oregon! And the Elders will be training! I will be re-opening the Sisters branch, there hasn't been any missionaries there for the last 3 months.

I found out that the ward mission leader is related to a young couple in Newberg. So that is super exciting! I get to live in a country mansion with President Liddell and his wife. He is in the stake presidency. I will still be in the Redmond stake. I meet my new companion tomorrow afternoon. My district leader will now be one of my zone leaders and I will still be in the same district!

The beginning of this week was a little rough. We were chastened, some people pointed out lots of areas of improvement. Tuesday night was intense, Wednesday morning was really challenging as well. We haven't had a new investigator in months and several of our investigators said they wanted a break from meeting with us. We kind of went through the motions of studies. We recognized that something needed to change. We needed to see God's hand helping us. We felt like we were working on our own and we needed to turn to him.

Miracle number one happened! We were at a recent convert's house and their cousin asked, "How does one join your church? Do you show up or is there a process?" So we told him that we could answer that question and gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and told him about it. He asked us for our favorite scripture in it and asked us if we could share one scripture with him to give him hope, what would it be? We are meeting with him tonight!

Miracle number 2: While doing SERVICE on Friday at the house of a neighbor of another recent convert, as we were leaving, this neighbor whom we SERVED asked what my (scripture) bag was. Well I opened it up and said it contained my scriptures. I showed her the bible and the Book of Mormon and I asked if she has heard of the Book of Mormon and she said no. So we explained it and shared our favorite scripture (we learned that from the last miracle) and then we gave her a copy and invited her to read. The recent convert asked is she would like to come over and join us on Tuesday for the next lesson that we teach her and the neighbor agreed!

Miracle number 3: We had an appointment with some investigators and we went there with our ward missionary and they cancelled. So we decided to visit one of our other investigators and we had a wonderful lesson with her and when we left, the investigator's son was outside with two of his friends, one of them we had been trying to meet with for weeks, and we stopped and talked to them. We told them about the Book of Mormon and our ward missionary shared how the gospel had changed her life when she heard about it. We gave them copies of the scriptures and scheduled a time to teach them more about it!

Within a few days we had many new investigators!!! We had been trying to build up the courage for weeks to open our mouths to people on the street and go tracting, but we learned an important lesson. Heavenly Father did not expect us to go out there and do that, He expected us to open our mouths to those around us, those that we serve with.

The scripture that we shared with all of these people is found at the end of the first chapter of the Book of Mormon. "...I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance." (1Nephi 1:20)

Our District and Zone: