Testifying in Tucson: June 28th

HOLA! Things are just peachy here :) and....1 MONTH MARK!!!!! Haha, I still can't believe it has already been a month. At the same time....I want to freaking get out of here ;) I got my flight plans yesterday though!!! I need to be at the office here at 4:35 in the morning. I didn't know that time of the day even existed, I thought it was imaginary haha. My flight leaves a little after 9:30, so somewhere in between there is when I will be sending you a call! :) So get excited! And in case you just didn't figure it out....the day is July 7th ;) so yep!!!!

My week....haha so much has been going on and it has just been such a mess!! On Saturday, one of our elders was not feeling well. I put his name in the temple and was feeling worried. We came home from the temple and found that he was at the hospital getting his appendix removed. After 3 days in the MTC. How horrible is that?!? Pretty much I felt horrible for him. We did a zone fast for him on Sunday and he is actually right next to me doing emails so he is doing much better!

Sunday Devotional was with Janice Kapp Perry. How did I not know that she was the one who wrote 'A Child's Prayer'? That is my go-to song at any given moment. Needless to say, that was easily in the top 3 of devotionals here. Amazing details are here in a letter that I will send on Monday probably!

Tuesday Devotional- As I mentioned before in that cute note I sent to ya, it was Elder Christofferson and I actually made a mistake, 5 other apostles were there! Nelson, Oaks, Ballard, Bednar, and Anderson. Can't even tell you how this place felt!

Hope Hayley told you, but she sent us J Dawgs this past week!!!!! Needless to say, we were pretty darn excited here. Both of my companions went to BYU for a year so they were very familiar with them and were very excited to get them!

We hosted new missionaries this past week. They were all dropped off here at once. All 150+ of them! The ones we took care of were all elders. One of them asked me, "Are you related to Laurel Martin?" I said, "Uh yea just a little, she is my sister!' So this kid is from Canada which got me confused. Laurel went to EFY with him ;) haha small world! So Laurel, I hosted your friend and he said to email him!

I got your amazing sunshine package yesterday as well and a package from Mimi!!!!!!! Pictures to come :)

Meeting my mission president was great!!!!!!!!! I was the only one there so I got an hour with them. Details in my letter :P I am better at hand written letters. They had me bear my testimony at the end in Spanish. It went really well :) El don de lenguas es verdadero. (The gift of tongues is true). Seriously. I speak Spanish pretty well. It has to be the power of God because there is no other way that this would be possible.

I'm doing so well here. We teach at the TRC (Teaching Resource Center) 5 days a week and our last day with our investigator, Ivette, was this past week. That is when we found out that she really actually isn't a member or isn't active. We aren't sure which one. She told me how she is ready to give up and that she doesn't feel the love of God and feels worthless. It was really hard, but I shared my sincere, and honest feelings about being in that same place last year. For the first time, in that moment, I felt like a missionary. I was able to tell her about how I understand that it is hard and that some days you just feel like giving up. I explained to her how you can't give up though. You can't give in no matter how hard it gets. I will share more about it later, but one can't even describe the feeling in that room. That was our last time, and I truly do hope the best for her.

Well...that's all I got I think! Last temple trip today because the temple is closed on the 1st. Hopefully I still get opportunities on the mission.

Love you all :) keep sending dear elders!! Love your guts!

Hermana Martin

Sierra got to meet her Mission President and his wife when they came to the MTC for their training as a new President. They will start their service about a week before Sierra arrives in Tucson.