District Hermanas at the temple

Me and my companion on Pday

August 29, 2013

HOLA everyone!

 

i am so excited its pday! i have so much to tell you about this week.  lots of exciting things happened.  first i finished the book of mormon! i stared the day i got here and it took me 26 days to read the entire thing.  at home i would read a few verses and then get bored but here i could read for an hour and not get tired of it.  its crazy how much easier it is to read here.  i learned so much! and then i went through and found my favorite few scriptures for each gospel topic like faith, prayer, baptism, repentance, titihing, etc and marked it with a sticky tab in my english and spanish scriptures so that if an investigator asks about something i can find it easy.  its pretty great. 

 

another thing that happend this week is that my companion and i got called to be the sister leaders over the entire ccm.  so we are like the zone leaders over the hermanas.  we have to go to meetings with the ccm president and just check up on all the girls to make sure they are doing alright. 

 

there was so much excitement at the ccm this week because elder cook (of the 12) and elder callister, grow, and wadell (of the 70) came here.  we got to shake their hand so it was pretty exciting.  elder cook talked about recieving a mission call and why you are called to a specific place.  he said there are 4 reasons you aer called to where you are and the member of the 12 who assignes you call knows exactly which reason if for you.  1)that specific mission president will be perfect for you. 2) the people of that country will have a big impact on you and you on them. 3) certain experiences you will have in that spicific place will prepare you for a future event in your like after your mission.  4) a specific person in that country needs you.  i wish i knew which reason it was that i was called to peru!!

 

after today i only have one pday left in the ccm.  i cant believe its going so fast! im already sad to leave my district because we have all become so close but they are all going to be such great misisonaries.  im sad to leave but i am so excited to get out into the field!! i leave the ccm on tuesday september 10th for lima norte. 

 

i am so greateful to be on a mission! i love the spirit of missionaries and its great to be surrounded by them everyday.  i love you all so much! keep the emails coming i love getting them!

 

xoxo hermana murdock

 

the opposite of faith is fear and you cant have both

August 22, 2013

hola!! how is america? when does school start? i cant believe that its that time already! these past 3 weeks have been so different than anything i have ever done before.  i have already learned so much about the gospel and about myself in such a short time.  the language is definitely a challenge and its not coming easy to me like a lot of the others here but i know it will come eventually...even if it takes a year.  right now in the ccm my companion hna. nelson and i have 2 "investagaters" john and edwardo (they are really our teachers but they play the role of invest.) we teach them each about 2 times a week.  its hard because there are so many things i want to say to help them understant the gospel but i just cant express myself in spanish. there are words i want to say but dont know those words in spanish so i have to change it to a word i do know and it just never flows very well.  i have been trying to have a positive attitude about it though because one of my teachers hermano porras had us read mormon 9:7-8 and explained that when we doubt the gift of tongues its like we are putting up a wall between us and god.  and the spirit cannot get through that wall.  he said that saying the words "i cant" is like telling god that you dont want his help.  so attitude is everything here!

p days are the best because i get to read all of your emails! thanks for all the encouraging words.  i really love hearing from everyone.  i also love getting outside the walls and interacting with the people of lima.  the other day i was reading in alma 32 and i found a scripture that describes thses people exactly! alma 32:6.  the peopole right outside the ccm are pretty wealthy for peru standards but in lima north i am going to experience serious poverty.  i know the people are going to be so humble and ready to hear the gospel.  its scary/so exciting to think that my time in the ccm is halfway over and soon i will be out teaching these people for real!

this sunday elder cook, elder callister, and elder growberg are coming to speak to us so it should be super cool.  whenever a general authority comes here everyone freaks out because since the ccm is so small we will all probably get to shake his hand and introduce ourself.  its pretty cool!

if anyone is thinking about serving a mission i would definitely recomend it.  it has already changed so many things in my life and is making me the person i want to be.  you will never regret going on a mission but you may regret not going.  things that are hard are the best things to do.  i love you all! see ya in 17 months!

xoxo hermana murdock

A view of Lima

 The Lima temple

 

 My Companion Sister Nelson

My District

August 15, 2013

Hola!!

wow i have so much to tell you guys! i dont even know where to start.  this week was so much better than last week.  i am really learning to love it here.  i have made so many good friends and my district is AMAZING!! i really lucked out.  today we got to go to the temple because it is open again and we had the 7am session so we had to leave super early but it was so much fun.  its crazy how we are so far away but in the temple everything is exactly the same (except its in spanish!!).  they gave us headsets to translate it into english but i liked listening to it in spanish.  i couldnt understand anything they were saying but the spirit is still the same.  it was amazing.  then we went to the market and got some treats and went to the distribution center.  next week i am going to buy a nice set of spanish scriptures and a mini spanish hymn book at the distribution center.  thats what a lot of the missionaries buy here because they are so cheep.  we took some district pictures so i am hoping that they will send!!  

I found out that lima north is the gheto.  everyone says that its a little scary there and super poor.  there are certain areas that missionaries arent allowed to go because its too dangerous. but hopefully that will mean that the people will be more willing to accept the gospel because they will be more humble.  

on saturday we went "prosalitizing".  thats what they call it here.  we took a bus about an hour away and then my companion and i were assigned a teacher to come with us out into the neighborhood.  it was one of the hardest things of my life. we had been here only 10 days and they expected us to teach lessons in spanish to real people.  the teacher we were with was really hard on us and wouldnt help us much and so we just would stand there awkwardly not knowing how to say what we wanted to say in spanish.  it was pretty discouraging but we go again next saturday so hopefully we will know a lot more spanish and it will go better.  it was cool though to explore the city and get to talk to some of the people of peru!!

my district is amazing and the other night we were getting ready to say our district prayer and then head up to bed and we noticed that one of the elders was wearing 2 different shoes.  and so we told him and he was like hmm i thought they felt a little weird.  but they are both black so it doesnt matter. he hadnt noticed all day that he was wering 2 different shoes because they were both black haha.  we were laughing so hard.  its funny to see how different the elders are than the sisters.  my district had a really cool and spiritual experience this week.  one of the elders in my district is really struggling with the language and with confidence and so the teacher asked him if he wanted a blessing.  so his companion gave him a blessing and it was the most amazing blessing i have ever heard.  the elder who gave him the blessing is kinda the class clown of our district and he is never serious and he jokes around all the time and always spills stuff on himself but he gave the most spiritual blessing i have ever heard.  i could tell that the lord was speaking directly through him and he was saying exactly what the elder needed to hear.  we were all balling.  it was so cool.  

the other night we watched a live byu devotional by richard g scott and the missionaries at the provo mtc sang a musical number and they showed will cain 3 times close up.  it was cool to see someone i recognized from home.  oh and i got a letter last thurday from roger bown.  they just sent it to the ccm address with an international stamp (the kind i used to send letters to shae and brooke) and it got here in less than a week. each night they read the names of people who have letters over the intercom and everyone sits in silence hopeing that they have a letter.  did you recieve any of the letters i have sent? i think there was 5. 

i love getting emails from all of you!! sorry i dont have time this week to email everyone back.  but i love hearing what you are all up to!! 

one thing i would challenge you to do if you have time is to get a new book of mormon (just the cheep blue ones) and read it straight through.  get like 5 different color highlighters in the colors of the PMG lessons and everytime you come across a scripture that you think fits that topic (the lessons from chapter 3) highlight it in the color of the lesson.  i wish i had done that before i came.  an elder in my district did it and now when he wants a scriputre about the plan of salvation he just looks through his book of mormon at all the scriptures he has in that certain color! 

i love you all so much! you really are the best family ever! sorry this email was so random and scatterbrained but this hour is the fastest hour of my life when i am emailing! its so crazy!

xoxo hermana murdock

 

ps. what is the first and last name of the peruvian missionary in salt lake? i want to ask my teachers if they know him because there is only one ward in this area and they said they pretty much know all the members.  

 

pps wisteling here is against the rules so i am in heaven

First P-Day! August 8, 2013

hola me familia!!

today is our first p day and i am sooooo excited! we dont have a ton of time to email so i will try to write as much as i can.  i sent 3 letters through the pouch on monday so i have no idea when you will get them.  so... i feel like sooooooo much has happened in this last week.  the feel like i have been here for months.  the journey to the ccm was so much fun.  i was so worried that i wouldnt find anyone or we would get lost or something but it was a blast.  i flew over with 7 other missionaries all from the salt lake area.  we all became instant friends.  i was having so much fun in the airports with them that i was just thinking wow a mission is so great! sorry i didnt call from new york.  new york was kinda crazy and we were having a lot of fun and i was worried that calling would just make me homesick.  i flew over with hermana nelson and hermand day, and elders escobedo, aokie, wilson, and 2 other elders that i cant remember their last names.  then we got to the ccm and i found out that my companion was hermana nelson.  she is from west jordan.  she is really nice and we get along great.  she does a lot of things different from me but i have learned to just compromise because we have to do EVERYTHING together.  its really weird.  we are at sea level here so when we have gym (1 hour a day) i love to go running around the ccm.  but she hates running so we usually just walk and i try to get her to run sometimes.  i hear that we can do splits with another companionship for gym so i think we will probably try that tomorrow so that we can do whatever we want.  so the first day at the ccm was a total shock.  all i was thining was that i wanted to go home and i didnt know what i got myself into and basically i was just thinking get me out of here.  a year and a half sounded like a lifetime and it was scary.  everyone spoke in spanish and i just didnt really know what was going on.  this ccm is really small and they arent very strict so no one really told us what we were supposed to be doing and i was just so confused.  then we went to our room and met our roomates.  honestly they are amazing.  they made everything better just by how friendly they were.  one is named hermana hooper and she is from austrailia!! she has the coolest accent and she is so funny! she is the only one becides the latinos that is not from the usa.  her companion is hermana barker and she is from idaho.  she is the sweetest person i have ever met.  they are honestly amazing. they leave on tuesday and i am sooooo sad.  hopefully our new roomates will be cool too!  so the next day our classes started and that was crazy too.  we basically go to classes, eat, and study all day.  we were broken up into districts of 12 people and my district is amazing!! we have a problem of getting the giggles during class sometimes and its bad.  but i have never laughed harder in my life.  my district is me, hermana nelson, 2 other hermanas, elder matt young (i think thats his name, he says he knows annie) he is hilarous.  and elder wilson that i flew over with and some more people.  they are all so great.  we have 2 teachers and they are both from peru.  they are the coolest guys ever.  it makes me love the peruvians already.  hermano porras is a tiny little guy who has been home from his mission for one year.  hermano huita (pronounced whita) is so cool too.  they speak english kinda but they speak mostly all in spanish during class.  they try to repeat things in english after but sometimes they dont know how to say everything.  i can pray and bear my testimony in spanish.  most people are way more advanced than me but hermano porras said that we just need to focus on the gospel and then the language will come later.  so we will see how that goes.  so the first few days were pretty hard for me.  but each day gets better and i can honesty say that i am loving it now.  there are definitely times that i wonder what i got myself into and a year and a half seems like so long but i know that i can do it.  and i have already grown so much in this week that i have been here.  i am developing habits that i hope to keep for the rest of my life.  we had a devotional last night from one of the members of the 70 and his wife told us dont just go on a mission, become a missionary.  i loved that.  so today on p day we get to go out into the city!!! i am so excited! the temple is closed this week for cleaning but they told us some stores that a good and so we are going to go check those out.  hermano huita has a friend that sells the peru soccor jerseys and he is going to meet us at one of the corners by the temple today.  i heard that they also have really cool scripture cases and peruvian things.  so we will see.  i cant wait to get out of these walls and see peru!! the sun came out for the first time yesterday and i was sooooooo happy!! it is freezing here.  freezing.  it doesnt rain here it mists.  like at the las vegas outlet how when its hot they turn on those mist things.  the air is always wet.  it is the weirdest thing.  but my teachers said they live 10 minutes away and it is sunny and warm all the time there.  so i have not idea what is going on hahaha.  ahh im trying to think of what else i wanted to tell you.  there is so much but its hard to remember everything!! i love being a missionary.  i love the ccm but i cant wait to start my mission out in the field.  i know it is going to be hard but it will be worth it!! i love you all and i pray for you everyday! 

yo se que evangelio de cristo es verdadero. you se que el libro de mormon es palabra de dios y las escrituras son insipiradas.  sabernos que las familias son eternas.  dios es nuestro padre celestial.  exte conocimiento me ayuda a vivir feliz y tener experanza.  en el nombre de jesucristo amen.  

xoxo hermana murdock

ps the food here is alright.  like not great but i can deal with it.  i definitely havent eaten any meat since i have been here.  it always looks weird.  but i usually get full on the other things.