Elder Murray New York New York
6/22/2016-07/11/2018
We found d a family who came to church this past week! They are the Maravilla family. The dad has a Catholic background but none of the kids have a background at all. They all have random beliefs. They loved church though! There are 6 of them and 3 came to church. Thomas is doing amazing. It's crazy how converted he is. Ahh he just needs to get baptized! He loves the atonement. He's been studying that a lot lately. Thomas' mom is still pretty set in her ways. Reynaldo got evicted again and I haven't been able to get in touch with him in a while. Elder Lusk and i sent him a voice recording not too long ago when we were on a split. We are working on transfers this week. It's pretty cool stuff!
This is from my letter to President: This split was probably one of the best I've been on. Elder McNairy had a rough week and we were tracting up in the middle of nowhere. Not fun at at all, nobody was answering their doors and we were in the wilderness. So we decided there had to be something better to be doing with our time! We checked on Google maps to see if there were any universities with campuses we could contact on. Pace University popped up and we headed over! When we got there it looked like an old rundown place that was shut down. So we were bummed and put in the next look up's address. Well, on the way to that we found the actual pace university which has a super big and nice campus to contact on! So we park the car, say a prayer and get to work! We walk around for a bit and nobody seems to be out but then we get to the campus map. There were numbers labeling where everything was at on campus. We said a quick prayer and told each other what number came to mind. 1, 2, 3... He said 11 and I said 13. There was big walkway in between those two numbers and we headed over! A few steps later we met a kid from queens named Kobe. He told us a missionary a while ago just gave him a Book of Mormon! We invited him to read it and pray to know if it was true and grabbed his number so we could meet up again. Then we met Kevin. Kevin is prepared! We talked about what the purpose of life was and shared a scripture from the Book of Mormon. We set a solid return appointment with him and man it was just so cool to see how the Lord directed us right there. Another really cool miracle was we finished with doing a look up which lead us to a train station no houses or anything around it. We were sad because there was nobody on the platforms to talk to or anything! We figured there had to be a reason we went here and then went forth with faith. As we drove around to get out of the parkinglot we saw this guy chillin in his car. I turned to Elder McNairy and asked him if he felt to go talk to him. Elder McNairy said yes and I was like same! So we pulled around and pulled up right next to him and rolled our window down. As soon as he rolled down his window Elder McNairy asked "what do you think the purpose of life is?" And got a conversation started. Apparently he just had a kid and he has recognized so many signs that he needs to go back to church. He told us that it blew his mind and we set up a time to meet again. He was excited and pretty shocked! He thanked us and said he would see us on Monday. I love being a missionary! Sometimes it's super hard but always worth it! I love you all! Elder Murray
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This week was a good week! We got to go on some more splits up in Connecticut and even one in Yonkers! A LOT of the Elders we have been going with have been in the Spanish program so I'm slowly learning Spanish! It's pretty cool! Other than that we had a really cool dinner appointment with the Sena family the other night. We helped Brother Sena be ordained to the office of priest and that happened on Sunday! It's so cool! He's changed so much. Also one of our investigators is so integrated with the ward it's awesome. He gave a talk on Sunday and it was legit! I love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Murray So, life has changed since moving to new Rochelle. How? We get to take care of a lot of office stuff such as putting everything into the mission calendar like interviews, meetings, baptisms, and so forth, we don’t get as much time to proselyte in our area due to the amount of splits we go on, it’s just us living in the apartment, we have not been up on the grassy roof yet. Idk if that even exists (it is winter) in the photo of the exhausting day we did zone conference and went on a split after and it was a party. Fav part of mission life right now is adjusting to the new assignment. It’s an amazing learning and growing experience. People rarely feed us but it’s because we haven’t been too good at asking, it is a ward. New Rochelle 2nd ward, it’s a possibility that I will get transferred again. President said I would be serving in the Morristown new jersey mission the last 2 weeks of my mission. The New York New York north mission is combining with the nyny south mission and all of the Newburgh stake (the zone I was in when I served in New Paltz and West Point) will be merged into the Morristown new jersey mission. And president said I would be going back to that stake for my last 2 weeks. Yes mom I will be saying that at my homecoming talk you know it. It will be hilarious because I know you love me and care about me. I just think it would be awesome for all my sisters to go on a trek! It will be awesome! 2 weeks is nothing! Well it seems to go by really fast out here! It’ll be fun. Being an assistant is awesome. And this question answers thing doesn’t have to be in the weekly report. It was kind of hard to teach with him at first, but we’ve been doing role plays every day to be better at that. It’s been sweet. Also I like being an assistant because we get to go on so many splits with elders all around the mission. My companion is a stud. He even helps me pick all the raisins out of my granola.
So just to expound on the miracles this week! I have a little bit more time this week to write! Miracle #1 So actually, last Wednesday it snowed like crazy yo. So much so that the whole mission was not to drive their cars. So we got dressed nice and warm grabbed a couple shovels and went out and went and helped people shovel their walks talked to some people about the book of Mormon and then we walked over to the church and started shoveling the walks there while we were waiting for the member who was going to come to our appt with us. Well we saw this guy walking in the cold and we stopped him and asked him “what are you doing out here in the cold?” in a nice way that made him laugh and he then told us that he was going to grab some food. He was a super nice guy and said hey if you had an extra shovel I’d help you brothers out! So we said we did and went and grabbed one from the church. 10 minutes go by and we are just shoveling with this guy and talking to him about baptism and he ends up wanting to be baptized again, our member shows up and we talked him inside the church and give him a chapel tour and everything. He said he’d be at church this Sunday, but it was just awesome how everything just lined right up! Miracle #2 Today we had a mini miracle. We went shopping at Costco after playing some basketball and it cost like 10 dollars for 2 gallons of bleach, so we felt to just grab a gallon of bleach at the nearby CVS. After getting our smoothie stuff and granola with raisins (ew) we headed over to CVS and our cashier was a super humble guy, we started to ask him some inspired questions and we asked him what he thought the purpose of life was and then this was the money question we asked him what he though was missing in his life. He then just opened right up and said, “you know, I really think gods priestly hood is missing.” Elder Aurich and I just look at each other and are like WHAT? Legit. So we asked him when we could meet up and we have an appt with him today at the chapel! He just barely moved here from Connecticut. Splits (aka companion exchanges) So, we went on splits all over the state this week. First one was in Connecticut with Elder Kirkham. Its been a blast getting to go on so many splits with him. We had a few solid contacts and then went and looked up this potential investigator and he let us right in and we got to teach the whole restoration invited him to be baptized and he said yes. Next split was down south in Harlem, the next one was in Connecticut again with a brand-new missionary. It was a blast. Nobody was answering their doors, so we did a role play right there on someone’s doorstep and it was sweet! We opened up to preach my gospel and started reading from chapter 9 in preach my gospel where it says teach when you find, find when you teach. Such a solid section. It explains how to most effectively get someone to listen to your message you just have to jump right in to teaching! So, we tried it out. It was pretty awesome. Nobody wanted to get baptized but we did get a referral for the Spanish elders so that’s always good. Then I got to go on a split with my old trainee elder Lusk! We actually serve in the same ward now and everything. He is a zone leader now and man he’s such a stud. We got to experience the power of the book of Mormon together. We went to check on a member who hasn’t been to church in a couple years and as soon as we walk down her street she just so happened to be getting out of her cab. She called out to us and said hey I’m LDS too! We got to talking and it was kind of going nowhere until we pulled out the Book of Mormon. We felt to share Helaman 5:12 with her and as soon as we handed her the Book of Mormon for her to read it she got super emotional and started to remember a lot of things from when she was working towards being baptized. She’d read a few words and then would say “oh my goodness I need to tell you all something after this” and then she’d read a few more words and say the same thing. After she read it and cried some more she told us she knew it was all true. She then gave us a referral and invited us to a get together with her family. We went by the persons house she referred and got to talking with him. He was cool, and we set a return appt but he didn’t seem super interested. We will see what happens! in my studies this morning I came across 1 Nephi 11:1 and it is a three-step formula for receiving revelation. Thus, the subject line. it is an awesome scripture!!! I love you all! For it came to pass after I had 1 desired to know the things that my father had seen, and 2 believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat 3 pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot. The New York Minute This week Elder Murray sent us a voice recording and not much of a letter. His new assignment has taken up most of his writing time. Here is a little piece that we got form him, Hey Matt when is your release date? It is the June 27th but if yall wanna go on trek then you can pick me up on July 11th. To explain... Elder Murrays original return date was on June 27. That is also the same date of our stake pioneer trek. He wanted his sisters to be able to go to trek so he arranged with his mission president to transfer to a nearby mission in New Jersey for an additional 2 weeks so they could go on trek. What a nice brother (:
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MissionariesElder Murray called to serve in the New York New York North Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 6/22/2016 through 6/22/2018 Write to Matt
Elder Matthew Murray New York New York North Mission 700 White Plains Rd Ste 315 Scarsdale, NY 10583 Archives
July 2018
Current and Last Area Monticello
6th Area New Rochelle
5th Area
The Bronx 4th Area
West point 3rd Area
New Paltz 2nd Area
Yonkers 1st Area
Manhattan 100 Day Book of Mormon challange
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