Elder Murray New York New York
6/22/2016-07/11/2018
Hey family. It was a good week!
So this week was awesome! I got to talk to my family and boy let me tell ya'll, I am so happy that families are forever because I don't know what I would do without them! I love them. So Elder Brown and I worked dang hard for Christmas miracles. And oh how we found 'em! Christmas eve right? Knocking doors because president told us to FIND FIND FIND around Christmas because everyone is home! This Indian family let us right in their house and we taught them all about the book of Mormon and showed them the Christmas initiative! Well at first they opened the door, we introduced ourselves and he invited us right in and Elder Brown was like nervous or something so he didn't go inside for what seemed like forever! I had to nudge him right in the door!! They are an incredible family that are sincerely looking for Christ in their lives! Our district set up a toy drive and we collected toys for the children's village in dobbs ferry and it was super successful! It is so cool to see how nice people really are. Elder Brown and I found this way good deal on slippers so we bought them and I said I would buy them for his Christmas present. Giving and serving just feels good! We ate dinner on Christmas night with the Swenson family and they hooked us up big time with good food and ALL the leftovers haha yum. Oh oh and on Christmas eve some members saw us tracting and asked us if we wanted to get over and have lunch with them! It was so much fun! All their kids love Legos and they gave us awesome tour of their Lego sets and it was fun. Then we had lunch and during lunch I noticed that they had a CLASSICAL GUITAR 😃 we shared a message and we invited them to do the last day of service in the service advent calender! After the message I asked who played guitar and asked if I could play it. Oh my goodness I loved being able to play! It was the first time I had been able to play my whole time out here as a missionary! Such a fantastic Christmas! I now know the true meaning of Christmas! Christ seriously is the most amazing gift we have ever received! I am developing so much more of a personal relationship with him as I study every day! I love my Savior so much and I'm so glad that I get to share him and his gospel with everyone! I love you all so much! Elder Murray
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Hello again! President Smith changed the day for p-day! It is now on Mondays.
We had the Christmas devotional this week and it was so cool! The entire mission was there and the spirit was so strong during the hymns! One of my favorite things this week was studying. We have been focusing on the Christ like attributes alot this week and I have been studying how to obtain more knowledge. Our roommate Elder Wadsworth is a walking computer and has answers to every question. He gave us these lectures by Truman G. Madsen about Joseph Smith and his life and everything. Holy moly those lectures are flippin awesome! Other than that... Mr. Carter got mad at us for "applying pressure to him" to come to church. He is on dialysis so it's hard for him to come but I swear he is the only guy in Yonkers that has a car! But yeah good times! We helped our stake president move a huge tree and Elder Brown and I lifted the massive stump into his car. Our stake president was super worried about our backs because it was so heavy but it was way fun to do service! Oh I gave a blessing to one of our less active members and it was the first blessing I gave that came so clearly, I didn't even have to hardly think about was I was going to say! it was so cool! President Smith is seriously the best. I love that guy.
This week has been full of awesome experiences! So this week I've been able to more fully fulfill my role as a district leader and it is such a blessing. I was able to interview a family for baptism and it was so cool to see people that are so willing and so ready to more fully follow Jesus Christ in their lives! They were baptized on Sunday and looking at him and his family coming into the waters of baptism I just felt the spirit so strong. It was so cool. I love being able to have the Spirit with me at all times... at least I try my hardest to have him with me at all times! the Spirit is such a blessing!
I got to organize a split and I went on one with Elder Norton. he is such a good guy. We came out together and he was in my district in the MTC. His companion is pretty lazy so he is having a tough time trying to get him to work. so we were able to talk and see how I can help them and give him ideas that have worked for me to focus and stuff. It's really cool! We had an awesome correlation with a member of the bishopric and he told us about all these people we need to visit and serve. We have been working our buns off to meet and serve all of the people he gave us a lot we have seen so many miracles! I know that Heavenly father does have our back. Missions are awesome! I love you all! Elder Murray Zone Conference I'm sure nothing compared to Canada or Liverpool but it's pretty cold the humidity makes it seem even more cold. Thank heavens for thermals. They are awesome. And who knew scarfs made you so much warmer? I sure didn't. Anyway, lots of trying to meet with members! They are pretty tough to crack! We have some that are super nice and invite us over but we want to get to know the whole ward and some of the hem are just sooo busy it's crazy! Sooo I got a a thought that we should start to Skype investigators in to member visits! It'll be awesome. Haven't tried it yet but will and will get back to ya'll to let you know how it goes. This week has been a test of our planning skills. We haven't had a ton of appointments this week so we have to fill our entire schedule with finding events and we are going to do an awesome APF with the new Christmas initiative and it should be a great success. We are planning it still but what we've got so far is we are going to make a Facebook page that's all about service and then we'll bring a whiteboard and write acts of service on it, then we will get people to take a picture by the acts of service board and give them hot chocolate and then have them post the picture they just took, use the #LIGHTtheWORLD and tag our Facebook page as well as challenge someone else to do an act of service and tag them in the picture as well! I don't really know if that makes a whole lot of sense to ya'll but it's sounding pretty good in my head. It's kinda like the ice bucket challenge but with service instead of a brain freeze 😊 OK so we are teaching Dante and he is way cool. He has a big boxing match coming up and so we are praying for him cuz boxing is crazy stuff. Elder Buehner knows how good I am at boxing 😂 but this guy is gonna wreck it. He has so much desire to know if the book of Mormon is true and he just hasn't recognized his answer yet! We try our hardest to stay in daily contact with him and we challenged him to the daily act of service with the mormon.org calendar for #LIGHTtheWORLD. It's actually a really good way of staying in daily contact! You can ask them every day what they did for service and it works! Something that happened that was fun this week was we went and did service at this foundation that collects medical supplies from hospitals and then sends them to 3rd world countries. We had planned to go with a less active member but he dipped last second so we went anyway. We had to crush boxes and take them out to the trash and idk why but it was so much fun. Elder Brown and I have a good time together and service is so great! Our zone had interviews with President this week. I love President Smith! He is seriously so flippin in tune with the spirit it is so cool. We had a great interview and learned about being agents of change D&C 58:26-34. Check it out its a cool one! People in the mission say their area is dead but really it's what you make it! We have been working a lot with less active members. On Saturday, we are going to set a date to go to the temple with a couple that hasn't been to the temple ever since they got married in it! They have 4 kids and 2 of them are getting ready to give on missions so we are getting their parents to get to the temple! We also are setting a date with Noel to go do baptisms for the dead it is going to be so cool. I'm stoked! Sketchy things happened this week. We went to knock on this less actives door and we went through the gate and I felt like it wasn't the right address for some reason and so we went outside the gate to check if it was the right one and then the person released their dog on us!! We like quickly walked away from the gate knowing we were very unwanted and apparently we didn't close the gate and the big ol pit bull came out! We were so scared we like ran to the next-door neighbor’s house and knocked on the door instead. It came around the corner as soon as the neighbor opened the door and the neighbor looked at us and then saw the dog and was like "oh no fluffy got out!" And went over to the house with the dog like it was nothing... So, we felt pretty dumb and the guy wasn't interested so that was sad. So yeah! That's my week! 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
5th Area
The Bronx 4th Area
West point 3rd Area
New Paltz 2nd Area
Yonkers 1st Area
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