Service in the mountains
Conference with Elder Oaks
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
June 16, 2014
HAPPY FATHERS DAY DAD!! (yesterday) I LOVE YOU!! I'm sad that I wasn't able to skype like on mothers day but I was thinking about you all day yesterday and am so lucky to have such an awesome dad!
We also have another investigator A who has accepted a baptismal date for the end of june! he is 24 years old and really is so open to learning more and to make changes in his life. he has come to church 3 times now and loves it. ill keep you updated on his progress.
hi family!! I'm glad to hear that everyone is doing good. sounds like you guys aren't wasting one minute of your summer. things here are going good! we had some really cool experiences this week that I want to share with you.
first on Wednesday we had the opportunity to go back to the same house that we went to before (when I sent those pictures of me way up high and all you can see is dirt) to do service up in the cerros. it was super fun and it strengthened my testimony even more of the power of service. the family was so grateful for our service. they are super super poor and so humble and you could just see how thankful they were. they have the cutest little boy named S (and i took like a million pictures with him so ill try to send a few to you guys. he wanted to follow me around all day.
On Saturday we had the conference with elder oaks of the 12 apostles! it was such a great conference and I learned so much. he talked a lot about humor. and that when things get hard and we want to cry, its better just to laugh. he was whippin out jokes like no other and was bustin a gut up there at the pulpit. honestly he was laughing so hard and we were all laughing so hard. it was really cool to get to see him in a more laid back manner and not so serious. he also talked about how we are not on OUR mission. we are on the mission of the lord Jesus Christ. we are on HIS mission. we are instruments in his hands and we need to do what he says, not what we feel like doing.
I also loved the talk of the wife of elder clayton of the 70. she talked about making good memories. she talked about how our time is short and the memories we make now will later be our history. the things that we will share with our families and our future families. so we need to forget about the bad memories and make good, fun, sweet memories to remember forever. I'm so glad that I have this opportunity to be here in Peru making these memories that I will remember forever.
overall it was such a great conference and i could feel the spirit so strong!
We also have another investigator A who has accepted a baptismal date for the end of june! he is 24 years old and really is so open to learning more and to make changes in his life. he has come to church 3 times now and loves it. ill keep you updated on his progress.
I love you all so much!! i am so grateful to have such an amazing family! talk to you next week!!
xoxoxo hermana murdock
June 2, 2014
buenos dias!
here in peru we eat lunch with a different member every day and so we never know what we are going to be served. they just walk out of the kitchen with a big plate of food and you have to eat whatever it is. so this week we went to eat and guess what they brought out? ya you guessed it- fried liver. and not just like a little piece but an entire plate of liver. i have learned to be able to eat just about almost anything now (even beans...) but i just couldnt down the liver. so when the member left the room my companion put it onto her plate and ate it all for me. i was so grateful. she said that its not her favorite but she can eat it. she is the sweetest girl. so that was the excitement this week haha.
other than that nothing new has really happened this week. we are still working with T and C helping them prepare for the wedding and baptism. they are awesome. this week they took a bus to la molina to walk around the temple and they told us that they have a goal to be sealed in the temple one year after her baptism! families can be eternal! T had her preinterview for her baptism this week and she was so nervous but everything went great and now she is even more excited. they said that today they were going to go to the government building again to see if the partidas have arrived so that we can plan the exact date of the wedding. honestly i am a pro at planning weddings now haha who knew that this would be part of my responsibility as a missionary but i love it.
we just found out that on the 14 de junio elder oaks of the quorom of the 12 apostles is going to come and have a special conference with the missionaries. so that is definitely something to look forward to. ill give you a run down of what he says after he comes.
well i hit 10 months this week. time is flying by.
i love you all! have a great last week of school and start of summer! im jealous that you guys are starting summer and we are just starting winter. you know how much i dont like the cold... but i feel like this winter i will be more prepared for the cold than last winter. thanks for all the emails i can feel your love!
xoxoxo hermana murdock
ps sorry if sometimes my emails dont make sense. it takes me a long time to write these emails because english does not flow naturally but hopefully you get the point. les quiero mucho y estoy muy agradecida que tengo una familia tan excelente como ustedes. muchas gracias por todo.
May 26, 2014
hey family!!
well... we had cambios and im still in libertadores. by the time we have cambios again i will have been here for 7 months. more than a third of my mission haha. but i love it here because literally everyone knows me and there are some awesome people here. i will miss them so much when i leave. and hermana silva and i are still together which we are so happy about. we work so well together.
I'm going to send a bunch of photos of what we have been doing lately. i hope they all go through because the computer is being really slow today.
this week president erickson showed up to our zone meeting and he gave a training about things we can and cant control. as missionaries there are a lot of things that we cant control because people have their agency. we cant control whether or not people will decide to read, pray, come to church, or be baptized. so we need to focus on the things what we can control. we can control how prepared we are for the lessons, if we teach by the spirit or not, how well we know the doctrine, our love for the people, our attitude, our invitations to read, pray, come to church, and be baptized. we need to do everything we can and then have faith that the people will use their agency to choose whats right.
so last week i talked a little about T and C, our golden investigators. C is a member but hasnt been active in about 4 years and T is an investigator. they want to be married but her partida de nacimiento doesnt exist. so she was going to have to travel to her home town which is far away to have them make a new one. but we saw a miracle this week. not kidding it was a miracle. we have been praying really hard that somehow everything would work out with her partida. and they have been praying too. and we kept teaching them about the blessings we recieve if we are obedient and show the lord that we want to change. so they have been keeping all their commitments and have been coming to church. and told their bosses that they wouldnt work sundays. and then this week T told us that she went to the government buiding this week to see if their was another solution to get the partida and found someone there that told her that if she could talk to someone in the highschool she went to and if she could have them send her transcripts that show where she was born she didnt have to travel, and she could do it all from lima! so she talked with her highschool and after some convincing, they agreed to send the transcripts. which means that we should have the partida this week! and they can be married at the end of june. and she wants to be baptized the day after her wedding. honestly the lord can do amazing things!
i love you all and love reading your emails! sorry i dont have time to write everyone back but just know that i love you and i am thinking about you!
xoxoxo hermana murdock
May 19, 2014
hey family!!
It was sooooo good to talk to you guys on skype!! i felt like i was right there with you and that it was just a normal day at home with you guys. so great! that will probably be my last skype before i see you guys in person!
well cambios are today.... hna silva and i have no idea what is going to happen. she is in the middle of her training so we think that i will probably stay to finish training her. but i have been here for a looooong time so i could also go. we will see. whatever happens i know will be what is best for everyone.
well hermana silva and i had an amazing experience this week. something that we are super excited about! last sunday 2 people showed up to church that we had never seen before. so we started talking to them and we didnt have much time so we just set up an appointment to visit them at their house the next day. so monday we went to visit them and it turnes out that C is a member and returned missionary but hasnt been to church in about 3 years, and T (his girlfriend) isnt a member. but 2 weeks ago they had had a really bad argument and were really mad at each other and so C ended up leaving. T was all alone and didnt know what to do so she decided to say a prayer. she told heavenly father that she needed to know what to do. if she should leave C or if they should try to work it out. she asked that if they were supposed to stay together and work it out, to put him in her path. so the next day she was walking and happened to run into him on the street. she took it as her answer that they needed to work things out and stay together. so that sunday they decided that they needed to find someone that could help them and C said "well i used to go to this church, and they have a bishop that maybe can help." so sunday they decided to come to church and talk to the bishop. and thats where we met them. since they talked to the bishop on sunday they have changed 100%. on monday the had a family home evening together, just the 2 of them. they are saying their personal prayers and family prayers every day. they read the family proclamation to the world together and decided that they needed to get married because they live together. and they told us that we could come over every day to teach them. WOW! this never happens! so anyway we are really excited. but there is one problem. her partida de nacimiento (which is like a birth certificate) doesnt exist. somehow her records were lost. so she has to travel to the jungle where she was born to figure that out so that they can get married and she can be baptized. and she doesnt know when she will be able to talk time of from work to travel. so we are praying super hard that she will be able to get a week off of work so that she can go find her partida.
something that i have learned while being here is that when there is a problem, there are 2 options. you can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution. there is always a solution to every problem. we just have to find it. and i alot of times we are waiting for someone else to solve our problem. we are sitting on the side of the river of our problems waiting for someone to come build a boat for us so that we can cross. but what we need to do is get up, learn how to build the boat, find the materials, and do it ourselves. if we wait for someone else to solve our problems we may be waiting for a very long time. its so frusterating when we have investigators or menos activos that all day long tell us about their problems. but they dont want to act. that want their problem to be fixed in one second without putting in any effort. anyway i decided that i will never be one of those people haha because i have learned that they are no fun to be around. we can choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution.
i love you all! hope you have a great week. i have like 20 pictures to send of the futbol tournament (central america won), skpye, and a talent show we had at the ward on saturday, but the USB thing on this computer isnt working. so i guess i will have to send them next week. LOVE YOU!
xoxo hermana murdock
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