Elder Murray New York New York
6/22/2016-07/11/2018
Good bye awesome district I'll miss elder Kirkham, elder Smith, elder Osorio, and elder Mcnairy! West Point Tour with the zone! Hello! Its been a wonderful week! We had transfers this week and I am sitting here in West Point with Elder Norton! This will be my 4th transfer here which means I will be spending 6 months at West Point! I love it here. After transfers pretty much our whole zone has changed. It will be fun to get to to know and learn from each of the new missionaries who have come in to the zone. We have a baptism coming up on December 16th! We are so excited for her. She requested missionary lessons online after seeing the LDS:-)(-: musicians video on YouTube. Her name is Laisha she loves the gospel. She came to church on Sunday and loved it!
We got the new Christmas Initiative video and that's been fun to use for lessons! We are working and setting goals as a zone to best utilize this year's initiative! What is cool is that the day one video in #LIGHTtheWORLD is filmed in New York City and I know all the missionaries in that video! My trainee elder Lusk is in the reflection of one of the vending machines! It's pretty legit! We have been sharing it with the members of our ward and have been inviting them to share it with their friends! We have 2 incoming referrals from members and we are super excited! Both of them are cadets and I am stoked! We've been reading in 3 Nephi this week and I love Jesus Christ and his earthly ministry as he teaches those in the ancient American continent. Reading that along with all the amazing things that have happened this year have truly helped me know the true meaning of Christmas. It's such a joyful time of the year because our savior was born! God loves us so much that he gave us his son. I hope y'all have a wonderful rest of your week and I'd invite you to watch this video! As well as this video 😉 Elder Murray https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-12-1000-why-we-need-a-savior--a-christmas-message-about-our-savior-jesus-christ-asaviorisborn?lang=eng mormon.org #LIGHTtheWORLD
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We set up a tour with the command historian brother fleek in our ward. It was fun! And frigggggiiiidddddd. 😁🌬🌬🌬❄ 1. Choose the right cookies at the baptism 2. The baptism! Krista is so awesome. She even bore her testimony at the primary program! 3. Car selfie 4. The joker has visited highland falls...🤡 It has been another great week here in the NYNYN Mission! We have souls coming unto Christ! We have a mission goal to help 50 souls enter the waters of baptism for the next three consecutive months. As a mission we have 72 souls on baptismal date so its looking good! We've been working in this goal for a while and we think the time is finally coming after and of course during all of our missions hard work and prayers!
Then the Lord has given us smartphones as tools to fulfill our missionary purpose more efficiently! We now have a hot spot so we can Skype members into lessons, street contacts, and everything! It should be awesome! Oh and we can use emojis haha. So the baptism went super well! The Shaha family let us combine Krista's baptism with their 8 year old sons baptism and it was awesome. A ton of members came. Sister Shaha and her non-memeber friend made these awesome and delicious CTR cookies. Krista couldn't wipe the smile off her face, her parents were feeling the spirit and it was awesome! She got confirmed the next day in sacrament meeting and it went very well! Elder Norton got to confirm her a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said she felt a warm feeling inside. As a missionary that's one of the best things you can hear from someone who you have taught 😊 After that there was the primary program and it was the best (as usual)! Krista bore her testimony and everything! So here's a little miracle. We felt prompted to go knock this street over in Fort Montgomery. We were in highland falls and it's was kind of out of our way so we almost didn't go tract this street. Well we decided to go and the third door we knocked this man opened the door and invited us right in to his house and he and his wife were super open to learning more! So this was on Friday and we set a return appointment for Tuesday and invited them to read Moroni chapter 10. Well, they are Roman Catholic and instead of reading just chapter 10 he read 8, 9, and 10. When he said he read chapter 8 I was like eesh... I wonder what he's going to say (chapter 8 talks about how the baptism of infants is an abomination because they are already alive in Christ) so he told us that was like a splash of cold water in the face but he kept reading and he said he totally agrees with what chapter 8 said! Like what?! Awesome! So we will be visiting them after thanksgiving and will invite them to be baptized! So that's exciting! The scripture of the week has to have been in Helaman 9-10. More specifically Helaman 10:1-2. When Nephi is left alone after he's just seen miraculous miracles and he ponders on the things he's just seen. I'd invite you to read Helaman 9-10 in the Book of Mormon and then read this talk. It is Devin G. Durrant's address in the October 2014 General Conference it is called "My Heart Pondereth Them Continually". Remember pondering precedes revelation! I love you all and hope you have an amazing week! Oh yeah! It's thanksgiving tomorrow! We are going to the Allen's house for the feast. It will be awesome! I love the Allen family. I also love you all! I am grateful for each one of you in my life. Seriously. Like I wouldn't be who I am today with y'all! So thank you! Elder Murray So Elder Murray did not send any pictures this week so I thought I would add one in (: It's been a super awesome week. I love my companion and the work is going forth in the West Point area and the NYNYN mission! We are getting excited for the 2017 Christmas initiative! We are gonna have a #whitechristmas (as in white baptismal suits) we have two people we are teaching who have baptismal dates for December and we are so excited for them! We have been watching their lives change for the better as they have been coming unto Christ. This work is truly amazing! Most of the time im just in awe how things work out so well. This work is SOOO much bigger than sometimes we think it is. Thats is why the small things count. No effort is ever wasted. Ever.
This last week we saw one of the coolest miracles. We didn't have a lot going on that afternoon so we were out trying to find some new people to teach. We have been praying fir solid new investigators and had been knocking a lot of doors, and not too much success came from it. We did feel prompted to knock this one street that morning so we did and knocked the whole street and there was this one lady that was gonna let us right in her house but there was not a dude in there so we couldn't. We will be teaching her soon. Her name is Connie. Well the last door was coming up and we went forth with faith. Well we met this family who had just left the Catholic church and she said her and her family were looking for a new church to join. We taught her some of the restoration and it was awesome! We asked her if we could come back another time and she said yes!! Like a serious yes. She has a husband and 2 kids that we know of. It was such a miracle! Highland Falls is on fire! After all these years of sowing it's time to reap! This week we had 7 people committed to coming to church. 3 actually came and had good experiences and we will have more next week! I got to go on a split with one of the missionaries that is having a hard time in the mission. It was a good experience and I tried to help him the best I could. He is from Samoa and is a really great guy. Just needs to have more patience with people. It was a good split! The scripture of the week is Helaman 5:8-9 8 And now my sons, behold I have somewhat more to desire of you, which desire is, that ye may not do these things that ye may boast, but that ye may do these things to lay up for yourselves a treasure in heaven, yea, which is eternal, and which fadeth not away; yea, that ye may have that precious gift of eternal life, which we have reason to suppose hath been given to our fathers. 9 O remember, remember, my sons, the words which king Benjamin spake unto his people; yea, remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved, only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, who shall come; yea, remember that he cometh to redeem the world. As we live the gospel we are laying up ourselves treasures in heaven. Isn't that awesome!? I love the gospel. I love you all! Have a fantastic week! Elder Murray Thank you for all the birthday packages! Y'all are seriously the best. My fav part were the the cards from Eva, Anna, and Chloe. I almost cried. I miss y'all. Chloe, I will be delivering your testimony to Krista this week! Thank you so much! It will help her a lot. But heah I got some new slacks today and a watch because mine vanished. I'm looking fresh with these new XC4s (brown missionary shoes) and yeah!
Brrr its frigid over here in the East! Its all good though! Everything is bumpin over here in West Point! We have a baptism on the 18th. Her name is Krista and she just turned ten! Her parents have a goal of getting sealed as a family soon and we are excited for them. It's been cool to watch the family grow closer together as they've been having nightly family scripture study and prayer. Wow the gospel is so awesome. Laisha is doing very good too! She is the self referral from church headquarters. She just ordered herself a legit book of Mormon with her name embroidered on it and everything. Yeah she's solid. It's like every missionaries dream to have someone that just comes this prepared! We invited her to live the word of wisdom for a week and promised her that she'd like it so much she'd just want to live it for the rest of her life! Well, we got a message from her the next morning and she said (see attached for part of the convo). ISN'T THAT AWESOME!? We had an awesome institute party this week. Taryn was there (recent convert) and bore her testimony. She had everyone laughing and had such a powerful testimony. Talk about a proud missionary moment. We are helping her get to the temple soon! We had a miracle on fast Sunday! It had been a tough week to find new people to teach so elder Norton fasted for a new investigator (I completely forgot it was fast Sunday until testimonies began to be given at church... don't worry I fasted on Monday) and that night at 8:30 we were looking g up someone who had been previously taught and we met Nevaeh. ⬅️⬅️⬅️ Check out what her name is spelled backwards! Straight miracle from heaven. New Investigator! Fasting and prayer is one of the most effective things you can do to call upon the powers of heaven. I have a testimony of that. We had an amazing zone conference this week! Elder Norton and I gave a training and it went well! I invite you all to study chapter 4 in preach my gospel. It is a really really really good chapter. Anywho I love you all! Thanks for all your support and everything! Scripture of the week D&C 58:26-31. We need to be doing things differently. Like Moroni in Alma 49:8. Moroni prepared for war in as way that had never been done before. As we are agents for change we will be blessed! Elder Murray Yup 20 it is. Yuck. That just doesn't sound right... oh well life moves on! Sorry about last week y'all we went hiking and it took much longer than expected. This week was awesome though!
This week a girl in the tiny little town of highland falls requested to be taught by missionaries! So we got a text from an online missionary serving in London England saying that this girl is super prepared and boy was she right! We met with Laisha for the first time and she had done her research! She knew about temples, missions, wards, eternal marriage, and man it was cool. We invited her to be baptized and she gladly accepted. She has so much faith! In between that lesson and the second lesson we prayed about a date that she could be baptized on and as we were deciding both of us said December 16th. I felt the spirit say that was the day! We invited her to be baptized on that day and she said yes! This work is wonderful! She is Catholic and her family is SUPER Catholic and that's why she said it may take a while for her fam to warm up to it but it will be good. She will set the example for her family! Its cool because Elder Lesperance taught her mom when he served at West Point! You never know what could happen with someone your teaching. It may seem like nothing is happening but in the long run you may have been the start to changing their life! This week we set a baptismal date for November 18th with a Krista! She is a non member in a part member family! She is about to turn 10. She is super excited and so are the parents! The bishop visited them a little bit ago and they want to get sealed in the temple too! In their last ward they got offended or something so they weren't very active but now they want to jump back into it! The parents were really excited how on top of the things the ward was. We had the Ward Halloween party this past week and it was SWEET! More people we have been teaching came! Their names are Kayra and Don. Kayra has two little girls and they are the cutest! Don is Kayra's mom and watches her 2 girls while kayra works. They came to the Halloween party and loved it! All of the members were talking to her and just being so welcoming! The members here are such amazing examples. They inspire me. -we just rode through Yonkers!!! I love that place- ok were back. Oh and at the party the Allen brothers became our companions. We were in a quad all night haha it was awesome. We gave them probably about 150 pass along cards because they were missionaries for Halloween night and they wanted to pass them all out so we did and they literally handed out all but 5... like dang! They be doin work on post for us! Such studs! On Halloween day we had leadership meeting, district meeting which were both awesome, and then Elder Norton took me to buffalo wild wings. Super good wings. Super hot too! The Naylors had us over for dinner! We had stuffed green peppers! (Dad it's your favorite! 😉) it was actually pretty good. They had rice and meat inside and weren't greasy. They also had jack-o-lantern faces carved into them too! They made me a cake with 20 candles and everything! They also bought me like 10 bags of cereal too. They are way too nice. These are the members who bought us 250 dollars worth of groceries a while back. They inspire me too. Sheesh! Then The Allen's bought me one of those big bags of protein and yeah, it was a good day! So yeah that's been this week! Oh and the Book of Mormon challenge has been going amazingly! Alma 32 is awesome! But I would invite you all to read Alma chapter 37 verse 37. I love it! I love you and miss you all! Thank you for the birthday wishes and I hope you all have a fantastic week! Elder Matthew 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
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