Holy cow what a week! Sorry I would have got this off earlier but I
figured I had more time which turns out today was way crazier than it
was supposed to be. Anyway I have a new companion; Elder Sutton, he's
got six weeks left and even though he can't wait to get home he is
such a hard worker!! We have two people on date! One is Cassie, she's
a foster child fro, the ward and we invited her to be baptized on the
21 of November so that's exciting!!! Also Maxine Is one that has been
out of town for a while so I never had a lesson with her until this
week and we were able to get her on date for the 28th of November and
I got to extend both of those invitations to be baptized! I'm so
excited because now things are picking up. We just picked up a new
investigator from Bandon named Duane so hopefully we can have a lesson
with him this week. Besides all that we have been really pushing to
get referrals so we have a new thing we have the members do which is
when they go home teaching and things to see if they can get referrals
from families. It was been working so good. We've been going out with
members now in order to get more referrals from people so now we have
a bunch of referrals to look into. Anyway so things are going well.
Man I'm so excited to get to serve with Elder Sutton for his last
little while and get the work out here going better. Love you all!!!

Elder S. Jackson Martin
Oregon Eugene Mission
South Umpqua Ward

Shaun Jackson Martin	Oct 19 (6 days ago)

Transfers!! If I've learned anything it's to expect anything. Elder
Zilles will be opening a new area over in reedsport and I will get a
follow up trainer- elder sutton. It's his last six weeks and he'll be
a district leader. So this is crazy. We got a new investigator she's a
girl named Cassie whose like 9 but she's a foster kid. The bike is
great I love it. Anyway I don't know what else to say rn. I'll email
everyone after I get my new companion.

Elder S. Jackson Martin
Oregon Eugene Mission
South Umpqua Ward

Shaun Jackson Martin To Dad	Oct 19 (6 days ago)

Hope all is well back home. I'm short on time with transfers and all
so I won't be able to get an email out with a big summary of the week.
I have my new companion he's pretty cool. His name is elder Sutton
from Gransville Utah. We had an open house at the ward this past week
and one person showed up so that was a bummer. But she seems like a
really nice lady and we have arranged to hopefully teach her, her name
is Donna. Last Friday is when we got transfer calls so elder Zilles
and I weren't expecting anything so when we saw that an AP was calling
us we knew we were in for it. So I'm hoping that since Elder Sutton is
experienced he'll work hard and we'll get a lot done, he just got
released as a zone leader some place. If he starts getting trunks I'll
have to step up I suppose.

Glad you guys had fun in st. George!! I'll talk to you next week!
Happy hunting. Love you

Elder S. Jackson Martin
Oregon Eugene Mission
South Umpqua Ward

**This is a letter from a great coupe who even though are not members of our church, take care of our missionaries. They feed them regularly and Marilyn keeps us posted on any news. They are great.

Good morning,
    Bill and I had the young Elders here for breakfast.  I caught them deep in thought on the first picture.
It's really nice to have them back so early in the morning.
I took several pictures so you could meet the other Elder:
Elder Jackson and Eldon Sutton.
    They will return tomorrow... ONLY if they don't have to head for Eugene.
    By the way, Elder Sutton's birthday...will will have them for breakfast and also dinner that night for hid 22nd birthday.  WOW!!!    Elder Sutton (Drew), will only be here for 6 weeks, then he'll be returning home.
Sent with Love
Marilyn

Hey there everyone! Hope things are going well. It's been a better
week than weeks past. We now do areabook cleanup every day for 2 hours
so we can shrink down potentials which is going well. We have 2 new
referrals who we have been having a hard time catching at home but
soon we hope to catch them because they sound pretty good. This week
we went to a food bank to do service which usually we do every week
but haven't had miles to do it lately. It was cool to help out the
people that volunteer there. They are having a parade at the high
school soon and they want us on their float which we hope we get
permission for. We taught some good lessons this week. I think Fred
and Shelly Sorensen might finally get married which would be so great!
We went and saw Peggy and her son Ron and taught them a lesson. Since
she finally got confirmed Peggy is way excited to come to church more.

President Obama came to town this week and since here in Douglas
County everyone is republican  he was not well received. Now all the
members want to talk politics so we always have to steer them back on
track. In our weekly Book of Mormon class we finished the whole book
so now we are inviting more people to it because nobody comes. I don't
get why people don't want to come read and have a spiritual discussion
with their ward members but whatever.

I was way embarrassed yesterday when the bishopbric second counselor
pointed out to me yesterday that I was wearing non matching shoes.
Besides that it was a good Sunday. This weekend is an open house to
let the community come see the church and learn what we are about so
we've been passing out fliers like candy. Today has been a good p day
too. Today I got some more Magic cards so now I have all 5 dragonlords
from the dragons of tarkir … but what's important is that the card
store owner was way nice and asked some questions to all us
missionaries so that was the really good part. We played some
basketball and things which is always fun to play with all the elders.

I don't know what else to say… I'm starting to like cats. We Have a
bunch that roam around the backyard. We sometimes give them treats and
water because they're hobo cats. Well hope things are good back home!
Love you all!

Elder S. Jackson Martin
Oregon Eugene Mission
South Umpqua Ward

Oh boy what a week! We had splits with the zone leaders this week
which originally were supposed to be Friday to Saturday but it got
switched to Thursday to Friday. When we were waiting for the zone
leaders the UCC shooting happened and they were able to get the word
out quick because they were at the house of somebody when their son
who goes to UCC called and told him there was a shooting. The zone
leaders texted everyone and told them to stay off campus until the
situation was normalized. Some of our elders were within a 2 minute
walking distance of the school when it happened. Anywho then I went
with Elder Myers who was already super frazzled from everything so his
first item of business was to get caffeine so we had a tiny bit late
lunch. We then drove by the scene just to see what was going on and
there were news trucks everywhere with tons of students being
interviewed and stuff. During the whole exchange we mostly checked on
everyone and made sure they were okay. For dinner we went out and the
lady at the register was hysterical. I felt so bad for her. Then we
went to a candle light vigil and there were some good speeches, even
the governor was there.

After the exchange I learned that Elder Earl had shown Elder Zilles
how to break glass bottles full of water, which was funny because now
elder Zilles is obsessed with doing it but basically only succeeds in
hurting his hand. I tried it and broke it my second try, no big deal,
but now he's angry with me. Unfortunately we weren't recording it but
he sent me a video of Elder Earl doing it so I'll send that. Also they
got two referrals which is awesome but when we go neither one is
there.

General Conference was incredible! I loved Elder Holland's talk and
Elder Bednar's. I just loved hearing from them all so much. They were
all such great talks and I enjoyed general conference more than
before.

This week there will be a lot more lessons I hope. I'm kind of getting
discouraged with all this unsuccessful finding but it's not about me
so I'll get over that. Love you all



Elder S. Jackson Martin
Oregon Eugene Mission
South Umpqua Ward

I loved the new apostles and can't wait for their added witness. I have noticed that if we talk about the UCC shooting with people we tract into they really open up, hopefully it will make it so we can open new doors. The coolest tracting story though was when I was on splits with Elder Crowell 2 weeks ago we prayed to know where to go and he had me pick the spot and we both felt prompted to go to this one street. When we got there we started tracting and a lot of potentials were on that street but also a lot of haters. We knocked on one door and the lady was super rude so we were a bit bugged. At first we were just going to go back to the apartment but then we saw this lady out in her yard who was cleaning her motorcycle and drinking a beer. By her tattooed appearance you wouldn't think she'd want to hear it. But we both said almost at the same time as prompted by the spirit that we should go talk to her. We went over and told her about the plan of salvation as we got to know her and it was a cool conversation. Today Crowell said that she's had two lessons and is scheduled for a third! This was way awesome to hear! 

President gave me awesome advice when we met last week. He had me read John 14:21which talks about if we show we love Christ then he will manifest himself to us. The message was Christ wants us to see him and we all will, so we need to keep his commandments so that meeting can be an incredible experience. I liked that scripture a lot.