Elder Murray New York New York
6/22/2016-07/11/2018
My week has been pretty slow. Our investigator John basically dropped off the planet and nobody hears from him anymore. Our other investigator Ashley and her family did the same thing and it's a bit discouraging. Being a missionary is hard. I've said the most sincere prayers I have ever said in my entire life this week. It's been crazy.One of the recent converts in our ward is helping us teach one of her friends and it's gonna be awesome. We had our first lesson with him yesterday. He gets extremely serious when he talks and he is actually kind of dark. It's a little scary but it'll all turn out great! He's going to come to church with us and hopefully he'll feel the spirit and lighten up! I love this gospel because it makes it so I can be happy. If I didn't have a knowledge of the Gospel I'd probably be more like him and it wouldn't be good.
We visited a bunch of cool families in our wards and got to know them a little better. The people in these wards are absolutely awesome. They are so willing to learn how to do missionary work and be member missionaries! We had a YSA devotional with Bishop Waddell. He is the 2nd counselor in the presiding bishopric in the church. It was awesome. He talked about getting answers to our prayers and the process of getting answers to our prayers. I learned that when we want answers to our prayers we must study plan out and map our answer that we think will work best and then we present it to our heavenly father and he will let us know of it is right or wrong. And it really does work! It's so cool. Oh and we are working with this less active man named Brother Laneaud and he is awesome. He bore his testimony to us about the temple and he seems so solid! He has a busy work schedule so that's why he is less active. We invited him to bear his testimony this fast Sunday and he said he struggled Speaking English in front of the congregation so I told him no matter what language you speak the spirit still will testify truths even when others can't understand what you are saying. It was an awesome lesson! I got to go on splits with elder Kirkham again and Elder Matson. Going on splits is always fun with Elder Kirkham but going on splits with Elder Matson was rough. Not the most obedient missionary but it was a good learning experience! OH I ATE CUTTLEFISH. IT WAS NASTY. Cuttlefish is Weirdest thing ever. Sister Sultana was like, hey I'm taking you guys to dinner you choose where to go! And this was in Grand Central Station and we hadn't been there for food yet... we were like "hmm what's good?" And she's just "ooh let's go to this oyster bar! I love oysters!" And yeah that was just great. Gotta love agency. Central park is cool. I've only been there once and it was as humid as can be. But it was cool. It's just kinda quiet in there and peaceful. All the tourists go there and people go there to exercise. That's about all for this week! Thank you for all the emails and letters you are all so awesome!!! Have a great week! Elder Murray #1 picture of my cuttlefish #2 Elder Tabor shared this with me and it's awesome.
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The weather is finally cooling down and it's actually quite nice now! My new companion is from riverside County in California, his name is Bulgarian though so that's cool. He's a great guy and we work well together. Some sweet things happened this week. One, we walked right into the middle of a drug deal on Tuesday on the street and the people all thought we were the po po so they all got way scared. When we told them to have a nice day they just went right back to what they were doing. It was funny 😅. The work has been pretty sweet lately still working with members to find referrals so that's fun we came up with a ward mission plan for the YSA ward and we are gonna have the ward council try it out first. We are giving everyone in the ward 3 pass along cards to hand out just to get more comfortable doing scary things like that. Sooo then we are going to ask them to follow up with the people they gave it to and then we will follow up with them. We recently came up with a plan to find people through FHE with the YSA ward as well. It's hard to find YSA here! Everyone is so busy. But we went to this way cool spot called the Brooklyn place and it over looks the Hudson and it's amazing. I'll take pics next p-day. Hmm soccer is way fun and my legs are still sore from Saturday. Need my cleats but I got to call dad today because my wallet fell out of my bag on the street today and I had to cancel all my cards and stuff. I lost all my money so that sucks. We did a photo scavenger hunt today and that's why I haven't emailed until now. It was pretty fun. We are meeting with an investigator named Ashley and she and her family came to church. She is 19 with a three year old, and her boyfriend is a less active member. They came to church and they both felt the spirit so strong! She was crying and everything. It was perfect because the speakers were on family and how the gospel blesses them immeasurably. Then the organist played a song and I felt the spirit so strongly. I cry seriously every week at sacrament meeting. I love how music brings the spirit so strongly. I think that's all for this week! Sorry it's short! I love you all! Elder Murray Photo scavenger hunt 😂 This week has gone by so fast! We get fed by members every night and it's killer. On Sunday there is an organist who is incredible and I seriously ball my eyes out every time he plays. It's so cool we always stand for the last hymn of songs and it's awesome. It was transfers on Tuesday and elder Lesperance and I said goodbye yesterday. My new comp was elder Lesperances first person he had ever trained and I was the last. It's pretty funny. He's a great guy and is an excellent example of charity. Last night we had a good lesson with a less active member names Ivan Garcia. He got baptized around 4 years ago and now has a kid and isn't married and lives with his gf. We set up an appointment to visit with his whole family tonight and we are gonna set some Bap dates for sure. We need to get them to church! But yeah last Friday elder Lesperance and elder Wulff went on splits because my comp is the district leader and elder Wulff is the zone leader and apparently they need to go on splits. Well Elder Wulff is training Elder Kirkham and Elder Lesperance is training me so that meant that the two trainees were going to be together for the day. It was actually a way good time! We got to try to contact an old investigator on Roosevelt island and it was sweet! We got to ride the tram over and it's just like the snowbird tram only bigger and nicer and it goes over the Hudson River I think. Got some sweet pics too. Nobody answered but we did get to street contact a bunch of people! It was cool because both elder Kirkham and I got to apply the things that our trainers had taught us without being in their shadow. It was awesome. We had dinner with one of the members in elder Kirkham's YSA ward and had a great lesson about magnifying their callings. It was sweet. Elder Tabor and have a new investigator named hulito and we are meeting with him again on Friday. He seems pretty solid. John is struggling because a member in his family has passed away recently and now he doesn't know what to think. It's rough but we are going to continue to meet with him. I got the worst haircut today but whatever. A cool experience we had was on the street yesterday a member couple said hi to us we started talking and they used to live in Harlem and he was the mission ward leader. It was cool because elder Tabor asked if we could leave them with a word of prayer right there on the street! It was a little weird at first but after I stopped caring about what other people thought it was actually pretty awesome. She was crying by the time we left. We have been working with members alot lately and we have received a really solid referral from one of the recent converts in the ward. His name is Alfie and we are going to hopefully teach him a lesson this week. His was so excited to learn about the premortal life and everything. It's sweet! That's pretty much my week! Love and miss you all! Elder Murray 1) Elder Nelson and I. He is Kaela's second cousin. 2) my new comp Elder Tabor 3) me and elder Lesperances last mirror pic 4) Elder Kirkham got to go on splits! 5-7) Pictures form a tram that goes over the city Hi! I mjss you guys a ton! I also wish i was back packing! I am gaining weight somehow and it stinks. Hopefully it's all muscle from actually working out everyday but I honestly can't tell... (-:
Our week wasn't super exciting. We do get to go play soccer ever Saturday morning now! And it's an awesome tool to talk to less actives and invite our investigators to! We have been doing a lot of work with members because you can't really tract in the city. Doormen would kick us out and have so we can't really knock doors. Member work is slow but it's cool to see how the wards are getting stoked to engage in more missionary work because of what we are doing! We've been getting referrals from members slowly but surely and they are so solid. We are meeting with a referral we got yesterday this upcoming week and I have never seen anyone get so excited about learning about the church! It's awesome. Oh and we are trying to reactivate less active members too and boy did we have an experience. So we schedule an appointment with a less active right, and then we show up and he's gay. He was a way good guy though. Then my companion asked why he left the church 😐 it was so obvious and I didn't know what to do. It ended up being ok and then it was my turn to talk and I just started talking about prayer! Didn't known where that came from but hey! It worked. My companion scheduled another meeting with him and we are all going to lunch on Saturday. Our investigator John didn't get baptized on Saturday and we were supposed to have a lesson with him last night but he didn't show up. We tried calling him a bunch but he didn't answer. Finally we called one of his fellowshippers in the ward and asked her to get a hold of him. She did and we are waiting for him to call us back. We had the elders quorum president with us for the lesson who cancelled so he took us to dinner and it was soooo good. It's this place called sweet greens and it's and it's all just kale salad with different ingredients. It's so good. My trainer leaves in a week so I'm a little scared that my new comp is going to make me lazy but hopefully I can keep up what we've been working on and follow through with this awesome missionary plan we've been coming up with. The members in the YSA ward are really the coolest! Thanks to all for the letters and packages!!! Have a great week! Elder Murray Pictures; Morningside drive view Sunrise from our window My Comp buying new pants Hi! I miss you guys very much. This week has been pretty good! We get fed by members pretty much every day and it's great. There was one lifesaving dinner that we had though. We had been working with members and talking to people on the subway pretty much all day. We didn't ever have time to go home and eat lunch so we didn't... we were both starving and we were going over to this less active guys house named Edward. He's actually a way good guy. We taught him the restoration to remind him of things and we had his old young men's leader come with us. It was a really good lesson and he asked some great questions. Haha we made it very clear that we were going to ask him to come to church with us on Sunday so when we asked him to commit to come he knew what was up. Then he came to church with us the next day to the YSA ward and he loved it. He said he will come the whole time he is visiting his parents. Which is the next three weeks.
As you know I had to give a talk on Sunday. In the YSA ward. I had my talk prepared 2 days before but it somehow got deleted off my tablet... sooo I woke up early Sunday morning and rewrote it again. Luckily it seemed to have went well! It was literally 1000000 degrees in the chapel that day and everyone was dripping sweat. Then I always get nervous and I started sweating even more excessively... it was nasty. Plus we have to wear suits all day. It was just grand. Then for the Morningside heights ward it was also way hot. We cover two wards so we go to the Lincoln square YSA ward at nine and then the family Morningside heights ward at one and boy it's a lot of church. It's not as bad as I thought but still is a long time. In-between the different wards we have meetings with investigators and stuff like John. John Gomes. He is our main focus this week. He is a lawyer and is a way good guy. He hasn't struggled with anything until we taught him about tithing. Everything has made sense to him logically except tithing. We have taught him everything we know and it's tough because you can't have a testimony of something you've never tried. He is choosing not to act in faith and it's a little bit frustrating. I don't know what else I can do to help him. I kinda just wanna baptize him real quick nacho Libre style. He'll never see it coming 😉 I'm kidding but really he is so prepared and ready! His baptism is supposed to be this Saturday! I really hope everything works out and YEAH. we have the whole thing set up and everythinggggg. We had a really cool lesson with a part member family we found. We took a member out with us to visit them and it was an awesome and very energetic lesson. It's so nice having members with us when we teach it helps so much. We were originally going to just teach the mom of that family but we stopped by a little last minute and her daughter was there and her husband! We had a great lesson about the restoration and that family is crazy. They seriously yelled at each other the whole time. It was pretty funny. And it wasn't like rude yelling but yeah it was interesting. They all said they would read the BoM and it was sweet! In lessons you are supposed to ask if they will be baptized when they come to know of the truthfulness of the gospel. Then when they say yes you give them a date. It's cool because they get a little scared but then they say they will and it's sweet. The street food here is pretty amazing. There is this place called halal food and it's sooo good. It's called street meat. Then there is dollar slice pizza which is also way good. So if we don't get fed and don't have enough time to go make dinner we just get that stuff. It's sweet! Have a great week! 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
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