Elder Anthony Martinez: Conference, Conference, Conference...makes us stronger, stronger, stronger!

Hello mom, you are so right that I do owe you another, or maybe a longer, email for last week. You have no idea how bad I felt that I left you that little email and all that other junk. I really felt bad that I did not tell you more of what happened that week and what I was going to do the upcoming week. I vow to always inform you more and give as much information to you that let you know what I am up to and doing.

Right now I am sitting down and writing emails with elder Evans and both of the sisters, as I read your email and read the part of you going to lunch with all Alpine-German speaking moms and I started laughing out loud. Sister Hammock asked me what was so funny and I told her about the lunch. As she continued to read her email, her mom said the same thing. That she is looking forward to the lunch and meeting all the different moms. So, say hi to sister Hammocks mom for me, and tell her that we are both doing good out here in Augsburg. Have fun at the lunch and make some good new friends. Maybe you can see what I do everyday, meet brand new people and get to hear great stories from all different walks of life. Just remember that everybody is different and you just have to find what makes them special.

This week, Elder Evans and I spent alot of time in München. Stake Conference was in our zone. Transfers began, and I found myself doing the same thing that I did when I first arrived six weeks and two days ago. The only difference is that I was speaking German to most people. We arrived in München on Friday night and had our first session. We had 46 missionaries from all over the zone coming to München for this conference. It was so cool see old friends and make new ones. President and Sister Miles were there as well and met and talked with all of us. I spent the night in the same room and in the same bed I had one transfer before. Talk about dejavu. The only difference was that I was not scared about going to the new area and about speaking German. This time I was having fun with all the missionaries from all over the zone. We had the second session on Sunday and we actually had a good amount of members at this conference. There were so many, that we could not hold it in a church building. We had to do it in a conference hall. We had some really good talks from the stake patriarch and from several other speakers. It was really cool to be part of the rows of missionaries that sat at the front. Now the next part I don’t want you to cry over. During the conference, they wanted all the missionaries to do a musical number so we did two songs one in the beginning and another during the middle. We sang, "I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go" and "Called to Serve". After we sang our last song the next speaker came and gave a great talk on missionary work. He asked all the missionaries to stand. He told the congregation that these are the Lords angels on this earth, and they are the ones that help build the kingdom of God. Let us work with these angels to help build that kingdom. Talk about deep. I was excited to see many of our members at the conference. I hope that this will get them excited for missionary work. After the conference we had a long train ride back and more appointments at the end of the day. It was a very long day, but a good one at that.

We had several new changes to our district like I said last week. Tomorrow we will be going to München again for district meetings. We will be sitting down with our new districts. I met all of them at conference, but we will actually be talking and discussing missionary stuff tomorrow. It will be good day, it’s just we have to go to München all over again. Oh well.

Christmas is already beginning to pop up everywhere and its not even the end of October. I think Germans love their Christmas more than American’s do. I am looking for things for all of my family and a few other people like Mikey and Gma and Gpa. If you have anything particular you want let me know and I will try to find it. The leaves are changing here as well, and I think it is even better here than in Utah. The forests and fields of trees are all changing colors. I will try to get more pictures of all the scenery.

We got some appointment that we need to get to and I have ten minutes to write to everybody else. I hope that this made up for last week and was a little bit more informative then last week. You all walk with me everyday and there is not a day that goes by that I do not think of all my family. I wish you could see and experience all that I do everyday as a missionary. Sometimes we amaze ourselves all that we can accomplish in a day.

Love and miss you all, till next week

Elder Martinez

P.S I will have pictures of me in my lederhosen for you all next week. haha!