Hey everyone!!! 😊

Sooo this week was interesting! On Monday while coming home from an activity it's started snowing like crazy and we got in a car accident.

Thankfully no one was hurt. We were stopped at an intersection waiting to turn left and the driver turning right slide on the ice and side swiped our driver side passenger door. Thankfully there is a packet in our glove box called "What to do if you have an accident", cause this was my first one. So we spent the week getting everything taken care of. We had to take our car in to get a new door, so in the meantime we are driving one of the elder's cars that just got fixed. But after that President gave one of the elder's permission to teach me how to drive in the snow. So taking care of that was a big chunk of our week.

But other than that this week was amazing!!!

We had a meeting with one of our stake presidencies and they remembered that I sang in the fireside so they asked me if they could send an email to all the bishops to have me sing in their sacrament meetings! Sister Harvey sings too so I volunteered her and we are both going to do it. Yay!

Last Monday we had one of the best lessons I'ever ever been in!! We are teaching a man named Chad who is in his 40s and in the reserves for the Air Force. His wife Jennifer is a member, and before Chad was deployed for a tour in Iraq she gave him a quad (Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, & Doctrine & Covenants). He read it while he was over there and came back with lots of questions. Which is so awesome cause that's what the Gospel of Jesus Christ does! It answers questions! So Chad started meeting with the missionaries and has decided he wants to be baptized. It's wonderful! He has been an active member in other Christian churches his whole life, but he said he decided to start investigating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because there are a lot of things he sees now a days that the world says it's okay to do, but as a father, a husband, and supervisor at work he feels the weight of those responsibilities and feels like he should be more than what everyone else says is acceptable. He knows the Bible very well and always cross references the materials we give him and prays about it before our lessons. When we met on Monday we talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and asked if he had any questions and he said "it all made sense and gelled together very nicely".

We are going over to have dinner with Chad and Jennifer tonight and talk about the Word of Wisdom afterwards and we are so excited!!! This week we had a lot of door closed in our face, but we didn't care. When one door closes, another opens. The more people we can find who will say no, the closer we are to finding the ones who will say yes! All we want to do is love people. So this week I invite you all to do something for one of your neighbors to show them you love them! Whether that is baking cookies, shoveling snow, going over to visit, giving a compliment, sharing your testimony, helping with a project, it can be anything, but make sure it's for your neighbor. Someone who lives close to you. There is a man in one of our wards who told us about his neighbors, and when we went to talk to them they all spoke so highly of him and using his name got us in a lot of doors. So that is my invitation to you this week. Follow the second greatest commandment and show your neighbors some love!

I love you all so much!! I know that there is nothing that love cannot conquer or overcome, and that Jesus Christ knows that better than any of us. "We love him, because he first loved us." I hope you all have an amazing week!!

Love,

Sister Abby Martinez

P.s. Here's a picture of our car door after the accident.