Goodbye Tooele ⛰ Hello West Valley

Hey everyone!! How ya'll doin? Things over here in West Valley are awesome!! It's been a good p-day so far. There is a poly elder in my district and one of my zone leaders is from Hawaii so you know what that means.... I CAN PLAY VOLLEYBALL!!!

This week was crazy awesome. I love my new area and my new companion.

Hermana Neal is amazing. She is one of the sweetest most genuine people I've met in my mission, AND she's from Portland Oregon! So she's close to home :) This is her last transfer so I get to kill her.

The area we are in, the Hunter West stake is AMAZING. The members, ward missionaries, and stake leaders are all on FIRE 🔥 🔥 🔥 about doing missionary work! THEY go out and take the initiative to befriend their neighbors and make them feel loved and included, invite them to activities and church and to their houses and prepare them to be taught by the missionaries, just like Preach My Gospel says it should be! Yesterday we were walking to an appointment and the bishop of one of our wards pulled up next to us and said that he had just talked to the less active mom of a 9 year old boy that him and his family have been taking to church for a while and she had said that we could start teaching him and he can be baptized if he wants! And the little boy had said that Sunday in the car that he wanted to be baptized and that's why the bishop went to talk to the mom. He's her home teacher.

So, it's amazing how great this stake it!!! And one of the sacrament meetings we went to all 4 of the ward missionaries got up and spoke about member missionary work! So it's been a good first week. This place feels like Zion haha. I know there will be challenges eventually but, right now it's good. Feels like the Lord is giving me a little bit of a break from last transfer. HaHa

So miracle of this week! On our way to an appointment we walked by a woman out weeding her front yard and she had a long ways to go so we stopped to help her. She is from Afghanistan and she is so nice and sweet. So we helped her weed for a while and eventually her husband came out and started to help as well and they started asking questions about our church and we asked them questions about Islam. We ended up teaching the entire plan of salvation and almost all of the restoration and about prophets! We talked about all the similarities and differences of our religions for 2 hours and it was really cool because it never got contentious and the Spirit was definitely there.

They asked if they could give us an English Quran and we gave them a Book of Mormon. They also want us to come back so we can teach them more and they can teach us more about Islam. I don't know if we will because they aren't interested in being converted, but maybe something we say will stick with them!

How is every doing back home? I miss all you guys. As of today I've been out for 5 months 😁 😁 😁

that's scary and I don't like to think about it because it means I'm 1/3 of the way done. But it's been a good 5 months. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Hope everyone is doing well! Love you all!!

Love,

Sister Abby Martinez

 

Hermana Neal & Sister Martinez