Elder Murray New York New York
6/22/2016-07/11/2018
We saved a turtle that was crossing the road. Super cool! Also sad because there are a ton of smashed ones too 😭 Caught a toad outside a look ups house Member had a toilet outside their house Temple trip Hey ya'll! I just wanted to start with a short quote from the best movie ever. I asked one of the young men to send it to me because I didn't remember what it was word for word.
"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That's why it's called the present." -Master Oogway I've learned a lot about living in the moment this week! Sometimes we get so stressed about what's going to happen we don't even bother doing our best during what's happening now! We need to take advantage of the present! If we are doing our best in the present the future will all fall into place for our good. If we are doing our best in the present we will learn from our past and change! A fantastic scripture to go with that would be D&C 90:24 Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another. I LOVE IT! I learned that Reynaldo got ordained an elder on Sunday which was awesome to hear! Then bishop took him to a members house who was sick and Rey did the anointing and Bishop gave the blessing! Bishop said he did awesome and Rey told me he felt awesome doing it! So yeah that's the update with Rey. So today we went hiking with the zone! It was sooooo cool! It's up in Woodstock (yes the land of the hippies) and it's called overlook mountain! Man it was beautiful! At the very top there is a fire lookout tower and you can climb to the top and see LITrally everything around you. OH and I caught a snake and a newt at least I think it was a newt. It was so dang cool! The greenery though! So refreshing. Right before the hike we got to go to a Buddhist temple. I feel so cultured now haha. We had to take our shoes off and sit in the back but it was called a shrine or something. It was a pretty cool experience! The coolest miracle happened this week! We have a prospective elder that isn't on Facebook and doesn't have a number. So we stopped by his mom's house to ask her if she knew where he lived and she told us that he lives in the colonial apartments which is our apartment complex and she described where he lived to be our side of the gate. Nobody has been able to contact him or find him! So we decided to map out our side of the gates apartments there were 15 different apartment buildings with 90 apartments all together. We we prayed and prayed specifically to lead us to this prospective elder. Elder Newbold received his answer which was apartment building 35 and I received a prompting to knock apartment C. We went straight there and nobody answered... well we knocked apartment building 35 and asked around if anyone knew him. The last man we talked to knew him and said they went to high school together! He said he lived on the 3rd floor. There were 2 apartments on the 3rd floor one we knew wasn't him and the other one was apartment C! Which is where he lived! Wow. The spirit is so real. Out of 90 apartments the spirit directed us to the very one we needed to go to. What's even cooler is Elder Newbold has a goal to recognize the spirit and he definitely did! SO AWESOME WEEK! #I❤NYNYN Elder Murray
0 Comments
SEMINARY 5:45AM AWWW YEAHHHHH WALKING TO GET TO THE TEMPLE TEMPLE REYNALDO AND I AFTER BAPTISMS JUILLIARD TEMPLE FROM JUILLIARD So I'm going going to write this and then send it but I don't have wifi so whenever I get wifi next it will come. We are on our way back to New Paltz right now. So we had an endowment session at 12:30 and when we got to the temple Reynaldo was already there working on getting some family names so he could get baptized for them! Apparently he got there at like 8 or 9am to work on his family history! Man he's awesome! He found seven of his ancestors. His great grandpa, his great great grandpa, his great uncle, his sister, and 3 other girls in his family. Seriously so cool. I was able to baptize him for his great grandpa, his great great grandpa, his great uncle. We were both shaking in the font it was so powerful. He is the first in his family to join the church so the names he just found are the keys to opening the pay to WAY more names of his family members! He said it was awesome and I've never seen him so happy!!! Ahhhh! It was wonderful! Then when we were waiting for our ride back we went to magnolia bakery and caught up! He's getting the Melchezidek Priesthood either this Sunday or next Sunday which is awesome! His calling is the gospel principles president. So he takes charge of that class and then the elders teach it. He is doing great!
We had interviews with President and man I love President. He is such an amazing leader and example. He truly lifts inspires and blesses us as missionaries of the NYNYN mission. It's been a great week and it's beautiful a day green up here in New Paltz! When we got down to Manhattan we got to walk through Juliard and take some awesome pics! I'll send them next week because they still need to get sent to me. I love the city! I love the gospel! I love my savior, and I love you all! Elder Murray Sister Menzers Bullfrog
Mother's day was the best! Thank you for being such an awesome family! I definitely can say that phone call motivated me to work even harder that day ☺ I am so grateful for this gospel and how INCREDIBLE it is that we can be with our families for all eternity!
This week has been pretty awesome! With the weather warming up everyone has been asking us for help in their yards moving stuff and everything! Seriously like everyone... everyone in the branch is pretty old so it's an awesome opportunity for us to serve and build member trust! We teach seminary at 6am every Thursday which I love. We had zone conference last Thursday which was awesome. We learned a lot and our companionship volunteered to do a role play in front the of everyone. It was super nerve racking but it was good! We got a lot of feedback on how we could improve and what we did good. So we have been working and improving on the things we got out of zone conference which always feels great! We helped Sister Menzer clean up her yard and prepare to spread mulch. She is super old and can't do it herself so we did it and she has bullfrog in her pond so of course I had to catch it! Bullfrogs are awesome! We finally came up with a mission plan for our branch! Thanks to Laura! She sent me some ideas! So sweet. I'll send it to ya'll! Here it is: New Paltz Branch Mission Plan #love2serve New calling: service coordinator 2 times per month we find/put together a service project 2 invitations extended to a less active or non-member Small and simple, easy to remember, easy to invite 2, and opportunities to do good. Mosiah 2:17 Oh yeah and we did a district fast and it was miraculous! The Sisters had a baptism on Saturday and it was so cool! Part member families for days! Pretty much everyone bailed that was on the program so Elder Newbold baptized her and I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. It was awesome! The Sisters taught the restoration and during the first vision the 2nd counselor totally interrupted by stepping in front of them to talk to someone on the front row! My goodness. Then the sisters sat down and he got up to finish Conducting and re-taught the entire restoration! It was pretty funny but nobody interrupted him so it all ended up ok. Then the next day at church Amani got confirmed which is the girl the sisters baptized and a single mom and her 2 kids showed up and we caught up with them after sacrament meeting and she hadn't been to church in 20 years! And she just woke up and said I want to go to church today and I want to get my daughters baptized! Wow what a miracle. President wants sisters to teach girls and Elders to teach guys so we gave them to the sisters and they have an app that set up for this week! So cool! Love you all! Elder Murray The olsen family (Elder Tatafu got transferred but he is still in our stake) we had a regional conference and they went hard on member missionary work! Elder Newbold drew this it's pretty sweet! The Menzer American bull dog. It's so fat but cute too I suppose The APF COMPANIONSHIP INVENTORY IS THE BEST! DO IT!
So it's been about a week with my new companion. He is awesome. But man I don't know where we would be right now without nightly companionship inventory! I've been able to learn how to improve more quickly and understand him and his points of view and then we meet somewhere in the middle and get work done. Elder Tatafu and I got along pretty well but we didn't do it as much as we should have and it just makes everything better. Miracles of the week: So many more service opportunities. I love it. We got to go to a community food pantry and help sort things for them, we got to help someone clean up their yard. And when I say clean up I mean clean up... like whoa. After looking up former investigator who is now atheist and just likes arguing about our beliefs we decided maybe if we could serve him it will soften his heart so we asked if we could do anything to serve him and he told us to come early the next day with the most grubby clothes we had so we showed up the next day and wow! Weird. He is this old Italian guy who does sculptures. The background music was this weird Indian music. He took us down to his shop which is basically just the unfinished basement of his apartment building and he mixed bronze powder and rubber together and told us to paint this silicone molding with it and we did and it took us about an hour. It was probably one of the most random service projects I have ever done Had a straight fire lesson with Teddy. We read Alma 34 with him and man it was like a kind but chastising spiritual slap in the face for him. We had to move his date back. This will be his second date so if he can't quit this time he is going to have to take a break. It's sad but we can only do so much 😔 Street contacting is my favorite! It gets me so excited! So ready to work it's so thrilling haha walking up to random people and talking to them about the purpose of life and what brings them hope. Man I love it. I love that we can work in the college it's my favorite thing! Obviously we are on the lookout for families but president also told us to work on campus! Love it. For all you missionaries out there use those inspired questions for street contacting. It makes for some great conversations! So yeah! This week's studies have been awesome! Revelation through the Book of Mormon is so real! Preach My Gospel is one of the most useful tools ever for everyone and everything! I was able to apply my studies as well on a split this week! Elder Viera and I went on a split in my area and it was good! Always room for improvement on my part but it was good. Learn from my mistakes. I can tell Elder Viera beats himself up a little too much sometimes so during our companionship inventory I explained to him that Christ didn't die for you so you could beat yourself up over your mistakes and get discouraged. He died for you so you can beat yourself up and LEARN from your mistakes, set goals and make plans to be better, and then be HAPPY! Man the atonement is awesome. It's helped me through so much and if we use the Atonement with just the small and simple things we will make so much progress. I've learned a lot about personal integrity this week. I've learned to never lie to yourself. If you can trust yourself and trust in Christ you can do anything that is God's will. I love you all! Thank you so much for your prayers and support. I❤NYNY Elder Murray Mural, New Comp Elder Newbold, Bridge, a cool Peacock, Dirty work, Balling out (i probably got stuffed but ya'll don't know that 😉 I actually turned that into a front flip dunk) we time lapsed our game Twas good! Murals 😮 More later... So! Elder Tatafu got transferred down to Monticello and I got a new companion! It was actually really cool because earlier in the transfer I recognized that Elder Tatafu was a bit of a follower even though I could see all these awesome leadership qualities in the way he taught. He told me he had never been in a leadership position and he goes home in November. Which honestly it doesn't matter if you served in a leadership position or not to be a leader but he was a little discouraged about it. He thought he wasn't fit for the job or something I guess. But he totally is and I could see it! The spirit prompted me to tell him he was a great leader. So every night or every other night in companionship inventory we discussed and told one another their strengths I would tell him what he did that day to be a great leader. There was not one day that I couldn't tell him what he did to be about great leader. There was ALWAYS something! So when he got transferred he became the district leader which was a cool experience and he is so excited! He will be great!
My new companions name is Elder Newbold and he is pretty cool. He is from Sacramento California and has served for a little over a year. We were talking last night and I asked him if he had any friends out in the mission field and he said Philly and I was like what? Elder Petersen is there! So I asked him what his friends name was and lough and behold it's Elder Commins! Elder Petersen's companion! What are the odds. So that was a cool connection! Elder Newbold is a cheerleader and stuff so yeah! Last night we met a bunch of members to get Elder Newbold acquainted with them we've been trying and trying to get referrals. It's a process lemme tell you. We've been inviting everyone to pray for the desire to share the gospel and find missionary opportunities! Teddy has his baptismal date for the 20th of May (Annas b-day) and we are trying and trying to help him quit. Coffee is not too much of a problem anymore but cigarettes are. Uhg. Miracle of the week! This whole week I have been praying for solid teaching opportunities and to find an investigator that we could work with to help come unto Christ. Well last night we had planned to make a few calls to some potential investigators and some former investigators and we called this man named Chris Bruno. Chris proceeded to tell us his story. He is diabetic and apparently he passed out behind the wheel and his foot happened to step on the gas he was with his dog and they drove off the road and caught three feet air off of a snow bank and bent his truck in haft across a telephone pole. He made out alive and his dog... God has something in store for him wow. So yeah anyway we call and he says I miss you all! And we set up an appointment for tonight! We have planned to do some how to begin teaching and invite him to baptism as well as teach him the restoration tonight! I'm so stoked! Awesome studies this week strong hints that have been sticking out to me most recently is to have more meaningful prayer and to diligently study my Patriarchal blessing. I've found so many scriptures that are neither quoted word for word or directly apply to my blessing. It's been so cool especially with the gospel library app to link all these scriptures and notes to my Patriarchal blessing notebook. Hymns, scriptures, articles of faith, and all! The scripture of the week though has to be D&C 10:5 which reads 5 Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work. Which may be a typical scripture but when I read it in was like "man the scriptures are just spittin out formulas to be happy and resist temptation and be a powerful servant of God!" So I have been searching for more formulas in the scriptures and there are actually quite a lot! But yeah that's my week! I love you all and thank you for being awesome! Elder Murray |
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
|