Week 11, 11 July 2016

DISTRICT MEETING

This is what our District Meeting looked like this week. We travel about 20 minutes, if there is not a lot of traffic, to Wilmington to the Stake Center each week on a Wednesday. We share talks, progress, experiences and have some training from the District Leader. Elder Martin and I take a treat to start the meeting, usually cookies or fruit and dip etc.

FIREWORKS ON CAROLINA BEACH

A member of our ward, Fred Carroll, invited us to go to Carolina Beach on Thursday evening to watch the firework display. This is a weekly affair every Thursday throughout the summer. He picked us up at 7:00 pm so that we could sit on the beach and enjoy the sea and watch the holiday folk until 9:00 pm when we watched the display of exploding rockets. It was a lovely evening and we enjoyed it very much. Fred's wife was in Connecticut visiting family. Thanks Fred!

MY FAVORITE PLACE TO BE

On the beach watching the waves.

SEAGULLS

The seagulls were scrounging for food as usual.

You can see the people sitting on the sand in front of us.

FROG PRINCE

This little frog has been outside our front door twice now. He is so cute so I took a photo of him/her.

MISSIONARY WORK

Monday, our "Pday"we went to Applebees for lunch with Elder and Sister Hyde. Tuesday we visited with a new investigator that the missionaries found. She has recently moved to Leland from Jacksonville. She was in the Marines for 26 years and is a widow. She was very sweet and the the missionaries gave her the Plan of Salvation lesson. We will go back and see her again next Tuesday. Later we visited with two older ladies who live together, Shirley and Connie. While we were there Elder and Sister Nelson arrived and we all had a good time with much chatting and laughter! Wednesday we had our District Meeting in the morning, spent much of the afternoon calling people for appointments and then visited a couple and their two children. The wife is not a member. We showed them a video of Christ healing the blind man. At 7:00 we went to join the Elders at their Book of Mormon lesson with Kayla Line. This week we also spent another 2 hours with Bishop Hollis getting information about all the families on the ward list. We were happy to finally get to visit with Martha Anderson who is always on the go and has been very difficult to pin down. We had a wonderful meeting with her and her sister. We showed them a video and I think they thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with us. We contacted another couple who married in the Mormon Church but then left to join the Baptist Church. They were very sweet to us and we promised to visit again. Saturday we drove around Leland trying to find members no-one even remembers. Some houses don't even exist any more! We only managed to see one family who are active. 

Week 10  4 July 2016

WISHING ALL OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS A HAPPY DAY!!

We love this country and pray for a blessing on her and her people each day. The Lord has promised this land protection from all those who would do her harm. The only reason this blessing will be denied is if this nation turns away from God and becomes a nation of wickedness and abominations.

DINNER INVITATION

David and Audrey Hollis kindly invited the Elders and Elder Martin and me to dinner and fed us a delicious meal. Left to right: David Hollis, Elders, Lane, 3 younger children, Kayla (friend), Audrey Hollis and Aaron (son). The Hollis family are expecting their eldest son, Elder Bodee Hancock, to return from his mission in three weeks. They will all be going out west to meet him. There is a great deal of excitement as they prepare for his homecoming. Kayla, his "special" friend is investigating the church and reading the Book of Mormon. She is a fantastic lady.

SAXAPHONE PLAYER

To our surprise our Elder Rawlins plays the saxophone. Aaron, who also plays the sax, brought his instrument out for Elder Rawlins to play a few notes!! Who knew?

PRIDE OF INDIA

This gorgeous "Pride of India" tree stands at the entrance to our chapel. They grow all over North Carolina. Here, they are known as the "Crepe Myrtle". The blossoms are white, pink or purple as in this photo.

MISSIONARY WORK

It has been a very busy week. The 4th July was so hot that Lane and I spent the day inside. We only ventured out to have lunch! Later in the evening we went with Brother Dyion and Deborah Skipper to administer a blessing to Charles Pritchard who was in the Hannover Regional Medical Center. Tuesday we had a wonderful 2 hour visit with Sister Betty Rose who lives in our complex and works at Walmart in Wilmington. She helped us go through the ward list and learn a little more about some members we don't know. Wednesday we had our Missionary Zone Meeting in Wilmington. We enjoy these meetings because we get to associate with all the missionaries and seniors in 4 different districts. In the afternoon we had a good visit with Janet and David Baldree, the mother and father of Eric Shipman. Later in the week we visited a daughter of one of our older members, Sister Roseman. Rebecca Roseman received us graciously and we learned about her life. She is a single mom of two daughters and has her own business cleaning homes on Baldhead Island. These are holiday homes which rent out, during the summer, for up to $8000 a week! She and her team go in on Saturdays and Sundays to clean and get the condos ready for the next set of holiday makers. We will visit her again. We had many calls or visits (probably 12) to people on our list, but either got no answer, a disconnected number or no-one was home when we arrived. Friday we returned to the hospital to vist Charles. We found him ready to go home with his wife Denise. We visited with them for about an hour and then headed home. Saturday we had a wonderful lunch with Dora and Itch Hoshiyama who we have been visiting on and off. We also found the Randall Child family home and were able to get to know them. Brother Randall had very bad burns on his hand and it looked extremely painful. He had burnt it on a grill. Daughter Kallie was also there and Brother Paul Allen, a neighbor and member also dropped by so we had a lovely visit with everyone. We had visited them before but only found their daughter Paige home. At that time we had a heart to heart with her. She is at college but has not been to church because of work obligations. She was at work that day but her mom told us she loved our visit and felt that the Lord had sent us to her!! We felt so good to hear that. We hope we can make a difference in the lives of all our Leland ward members. There are so many good folk here and we feel as though they are all our family and we want to help them in any way we can. 

Today our hearts are in Utah where our grandson Austin, gave his farewell talk in church. He is entering the MTC on Wednesday and going to serve a mission in Russia. Go with courage, serve with distinction and return with honor, Elder Thornton! We will be praying for your success! We miss all our family and friends and hope you are all well.

Love from Elder and Sister Martin.