Elder Murray New York New York
6/22/2016-07/11/2018
1)Elder Murray meets many members of the Church form all over the world. Many of them have sent us texts and pictures sharing with us kind words about how awesome he is. The above photo came yesterday. 2)District: left to right- me, Elder Tabor, Elder Geppelt, Elder Schmidt. Sister Russell, Sister Montemayor, Sister Muhlestein, Sister Evans. 3)homeless peeps. 4)Sunsets are actually amazing at battery park 5-6)oh yeah and we helped this mom and her daughter with her car which "broke down" haha the car wouldn't start because she didn't put the car in park but turned the car off. She asked if we could help her push it back into her spot so we did. We said a prayer asking for help with her car and then she went off to take her kid Halley to the bathroom. Well I started messing with the car and realized she hadn't put it in park so I did that and started it up. Haha she thought we were miracle workers so that was cool! And we are going to set up an appointment with her soon. Sorry for the subject title. I'm a consecrated missionary I promise. This week has been awesome! I got an email from Gabe which was dope. Glad I got to hear from him haha quality guy. Hmm where to start.... So I have been focusing on obeying promptings from the spirit and they can be pretty dang hard to recognize and understand sometimes. However, the most important thing I have learned is that you'll never know if it's a prompting for sure unless you act on the promptings you receive. In preach my gospel one of the quotes by President Hinckley says: “If it invites to do good, it is of God. If it inviteth to do evil, it is of the devil. … And if you are doing the right thing and if you are living the right way, you will know in your heart what the Spirit is saying to you. “You recognize the promptings of the Spirit by the fruits of the Spirit—that which enlighteneth, that which buildeth up, that which is positive and affirmative and uplifting and leads us to better thoughts and better words and better deeds is of the Spirit of God” (Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, 260–61). So that really stuck out to me and then we had to act upon our promptings. Well guess what? We got to act and we set up two appointments with totally random people. One guy we met was in the apartment of a member and it was going to be the last stop for the day. Then I was prompted to knock on the last door before we left that apartment. I was super scared because it was 8:30 at night and I thought for sure the guys was gonna cuss us out or something... but the guy was from China, and his name was Shbing and was apparently introduced to Christianity when he first got here to the US. He said he got to watch to testament video and was touched by it. It was so cool! We will be meeting with him next Tuesday! The next prompting elder Tabor acted on was another time we were already in an apartment building and was prompted to knock a door. Again it was super late at night and so we were a little uncomfortable doing it but we did and the guy answered the door and he was like "the Mormons! I know everything about your religion!" And continued to tell us stuff about our religion and asked some questions. He had read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover and had highlighted a bunch of things in it. He is an atheist unfortunately and he doesn't quite understand why "believers" put their trust in God. "An imaginary being in the sky" haha but it's whatever. People change and when he closed the door we knocked on his neighbors door which is seriously 3 feet across the hallway. As we were waiting for his neighbor we overheard him talking to his wife and he was like "I've been waiting for this moment for years! To have Mormons come and knock on my door. You know what..." then he opened the door again and he asked us for material we had and we ended up setting up an appointment with him and we are meeting with him on Thursday. Haha we'll see how it goes. His name is Jon. We also met these really happy homeless people an gave them a bible and apparently she is baptized in our church and everything. Our members are so awesome. We are meeting with a couple less actives. One served his mission in Slovenia and then reevaluated why he went to church and it was for the social aspect and so he stopped. We are going to be teaching him about recognizing the spirit tonight I'm stoked. Also we have an investigator named Natsuki idk if I already told you about her but she is an intern from Japan she has been progressing so much and is so interested in learning more. Karren her roommate too her to general women's conference and she loved it and she said she especially loved the music! I can relate to that for sure. Music is sooo powerful and awesome and yeah. She is going to be coming to conference with us on Saturday! I forgot to tell ya'll about Eva the German we met at soccer. She is awesome and we are gonna give her a German book of Mormon on Saturday. Oh and Jack the Chinese guy that is totally gonna get baptized. We just need to ask him to be baptized. I'll keep you updated. So that's about it for the week! Love you all! -Elder Murray
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We just got out of the temple and it was cool. Still getting used to it though. Yes same p-day as Kaela haha its cool! Yeah sister Folau Made us the good ol peanut butter cookies. She made elder Tabors tacos. She gonna make grandma's burritos next time. We have a new investigator named Natsuki and she's from Japan. She has zero Christian background and it is so cool to teach her so simply. I had a cool experience with the book of Mormon and the spirit this week. So Elder Tabor likes to take the other people's religious books that they are handing out so they don't hand them out to other people haha so I was holding one of those books it was like a new world bible or something and it just didn't feel right. (This is during studies) then I picked up one of the blue copies of the book of Mormon and the spirit just came over me so strongly and I just felt so happy inside. It was so cool! Then last night this guy rode past us on his bike and then stopped and turned around and came to talk to us. It turns out that we had offered this guy a banana like a week ago on the street just because he looked at our name tags and he was like taken back by the offer and thanked us but kindly declined. So he is a professor at Colombia University and he talked to us about how he stayed at a Marriott hotel and got to hold the book of Mormon and it was so intriguing to him. After we offered him that banana he went to the church and asked for a book of Mormon. It was awesome! We are hoping to stay in contact with him and be able to teach him more. It's sweet. Love you all!
Elder Murray Hello all,
I'm learning to notice the mini-miracles and promptings of the Spirit. I have the best ward mission leaders. Christopher Meek and Broc Buttars. They both are such amazing people. Brother Meek is seriously the best guy. He's the ward mission leader in the YSA ward and he'll do anything for us. He's a returned missionary of Indonesia The YSA ward is awesome. It's just like working with a bunch of friends. There is this one guy that it super prideful but so fun to mess with. He's probably a little like me but he kept giving us crap for not picking a restaurant so we asked him what the best restaurant he had been to in NY and he told us we were like ok let's go there. It's called the Spice Market and it was wayyy good. I miss Guitar… the Simbros have a classical guitar but one of the strings is broken! That was the first time in a while that I got to hold and attempt to play a guitar. It was scary because at first it felt SUPPPPERR awkward but then my muscle memory kicked in and it wasn't as scary. I'm like the mom of the apartment because everybody is a slob. I make them do their dishes and clean their rooms and I hate it. They all hate me sometimes (-;. Sorry mom if I was like that. I don't really have a favorite day of the week. P-day is pretty relaxing but my favorite day of the week is when we meet new people who are interested in the gospel and when we have back to back lessons. Haha that is the best thing ever. The national history museum was fun hopefully your getting the pics. Right now we are waiting for laundry in the laundromat and it is dumping rain like crazy... I'm sitting 12 feet inside the laundromat and the door is opened and rain is still getting on me it's hitting the ground so hard. Interviews were good… President Smith is awesome. We got to go do baptism again this week. It was awesome! We did them with William and his friends and I got to confirm and baptize in the temple! It was sweet! I baptized Elder Kirkham and he's pretty tall. I had to push him under the water every time… it was funny. It was and awesome experience! I didn't even have my temple recommend but President told the temple worker that I could go in so it was cool. After that we took William and his friends street contacting. We gave out 3 books of Mormon and it was a cool experience for them. William does it all the time but it was fun. Another awesome family we've had dinner with is the Simbros family. They are just starting to come back to church and they make the best food! The only problem is the food just keeps coming and coming and it never stops, but it's the best traditional Mexican food I've had. We met a few people on the street that want to learn more about the book of Mormon and it's awesome. We have appointments set with Ivan a guy we met on the street and another one with Latasha hopefully soon! Something cool happened yesterday when we were going to dinner. We were just gonna go straight to dinner but I felt like we should go to the Garcia families home and so we did and Ashley was there and we got to set up an appointment with them! Ashley and Ivan Garcia are going through a hard time right now and that's why we haven't got to get in contact with Ivan but Ashley says she misses us so that's good! All in all its been a great week! Thanks again for all your emails and letters! Have a great week! Elder Murray Pictures; THE LEGO STORE (these are all mini figures. So dope) Super funky bug called the Bronx bug One of my teacher from the MTC Pictures form the National History Museum the one in the movie Night at the Museum Good ol Teddy Rexy Lacrosse First off happy birthday to Eva! I'll buy you a NYC wheelchair. (-: Old woman
This week has been pretty good! I've been praying for ways to be able to talk to people and have an actual conversation about the gospel. So last night after a dinner appointment with an awesome member in our ward named Beau Hart, we went to Washington Square park and just started talking to everyone there! And we figured out a way to be able to have a good conversation with people. We started asking people if they had heard of the book of Mormon and stuff and we ended up contacting this salesman guy. We didn't ask for his help or anything but he complimented us in our approach and said we'd make good salesmen. Haha anyway we began to talk about the Book of Mormon and I shard one of my favorite scriptures Ether 12:27. I explained that we all have weaknesses and if we turn to our Heavenly Father he will make those weaknesses strengths. He really liked that verse and we were able to get his phone number and I gave him a Book of Mormon. Then he just randomly decided to give us a bunch of tips on what makes people want to hear more about what you have to say. He told us to tell people how we came to know what we are trying to teach is true. He also told us to ask people about themselves and that totally worked. The cool thing is you can relate the gospel to anything so it just worked out! So our appointment after dinner cancelled so we just went around talking to people at the park all night. We met people from all over. We are going to be setting up appointments with the people we met and are going to make a group chat with all of them and some members so the members can answer their questions. We had a volleyball tournament with all the YSA wards in our zone and we and elder Wulff and Elder Kirkham organized it. It actually turned out way good! We had a ton of members come and it helped build relationships with the members big time. The downside to it was they were supposed to bring nonmember friends because after all it was a missionary activity. Only like 2 members brought friends. We were supposed to have our investigator come but she didn't end up showing up 😒. Our newest investigators name is Andrea. She almost got baptized in California but them moved here. She seems super solid and would fit in with the YSA ward so well! We have been trying to set up an appointment with her but school just started for her and she is super busy but it will happen! We have a dinner scheduled with sister Watanabe and John, our investigator from before. We haven't been able to come in contact with him hardly at all since he decided he wasn't ready for baptism. He hasn't even been coming to church. This dinner is gonna be awesome though! The members in the YSA ward are so great. With the family ward everyone is also way cool. They are so willing to help us out whenever. The Folau family is probably one of my favorite families. Ian Folau knows Ethan Gluea and Ben Westman from when he was up at Westpoint. But anyway that's pretty much my week! Thank you all so much for the letters and packages that you have sent out to me. I love you all! 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
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The Bronx 4th Area
West point 3rd Area
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