First off I need to mention the most elect man ever that we
taught last week! His name is Manny and he is from Zulu, Africa. He was
reassigned from the Atlantic Beach sisters to our iPad. We met him at his
work office. He had been too busy to meet in December but was able to
adjust his schedule for 2015 to put two hours in each Saturday to meet with
us. He had found the Book of Mormon online, downloaded it, and read the
entire thing in the three weeks before meeting with us! He took notes while
we taught-seriously!!! He had so many great questions and he would restate what
we had said to make sure he understood. All my mission I thought I had
been really bad at teaching the apostasy because no one ever seems to get
it. I finally realized that 99% of the people we teach just have a mental
block that there could really be only one church that is Jesus Christ's because
Manny got it!!! We had a member with us who bore her testimony
beautifully! It was amazing!!! How did I forget to mention him last
week? Well... we found out he lives in the Ft. Caroline ward so we ended
up reassigning him again to those sisters. We are so excited for him and
he is going to be baptized on February 21st!
Wednesday morning we taught Marcus, a man we met last
week. He moved into the apartment where a potential gator used to
live. We finished teaching him the restoration and invited him to be
baptized on February 28th!!! He said yes!!! After Elder Anderson
said we should pray every day to find someone to invite to baptism we decided
we would do our very best to invite someone to baptism every day this transfer
and we've done pretty well so far!! Miracles are going to happen!
We were also able to teach Karen that night with Summer. We talked about
missionary work. She is already telling people about what she's
learning!
Thursday was Dunn Ave's district meeting and after that we
had lunch/meeting with Sister Thomas the RS President. We are working on
setting up a list to have two sisters in the ward come out with us each
week. We handed it out this Sunday so we will see how it goes!
Hardly anyone will sign up to come out with us so we assigned them! That
evening we met with Pete. We decided to start going over all the lessons
again so we began going over the Restoration! We were also able to meet
with Veronica that night. I love seeing the recent converts get stronger
in their testimonies and to see how they learn to fit the gospel into their
every day lives!
Friday we were able to teach Bridget again. We read
the Book of Mormon with her. She is heading out of town to see her family
for her son's first birthday so we won't be seeing her this week. We had
dinner with the Thompson family that evening. They recently moved here
and are from Texas. They are the cutest family! Love them! We
made a stop by Sam and Marina's that night also. Sam told us he enjoys
our visits, but he will never be able to leave his church. It was sad,
but they are going to keep reading the Book of Mormon so we will stop by soon
and see how things are going. Marina is more open than we thought at
first. We realized she gets the story more from the Book of Mormon so we
invited her to read it looking for Jesus Christ. We're praying that they
will accept the gospel even if now is not the time.
Saturday evening we had an appointment fall through so we
decided to try the neighbor who was a potential gator. Her record said
she was a teenager named De'ajua. So we knocked on the door and a
grandmotherly woman answers. We asked for De'ajua and she says, "oh
Deondra?" We figure sure! We'll take Deondra! Deondra
comes out and she is just the cutest thing! She is a Junior in High
School and she was so enthusiastic she was practically bursting! She is going
to read the Book of Mormon and she accepted the invitation to baptism! We
are so excited to work with her! The Bishop's daughter who is a senior,
is coming with us to her next lesson Tuesday!
Sunday was great! Karen came to church as well as two
former investigators: Damean and Jackie! We had a lovely dinner with
Sister Manning and we were able to teach Thelma about the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. Thelma is one of the most solid recent converts I've ever met and
she is just so loveable! She told us yesterday she has adopted us all as
her grandchildren! Haha! LOVE HER!
I was also able to teach an online lesson also to the man in
Togo, Adebardinho! We have just been able to message back and forth
whenever we are on so it's been scattered. We had a set time when we
would both be on on Sunday but he had bad internet connection so it didn't work
out too well. I am excited to keep teaching him though to see if we can
get the missionaries there over to him!
ALSO!!! This week Aileen's father,
Jorge, was baptized!!! I am so grateful for Aileen's great example and
for the choices Jorge is making! The gospel truly does bless families and
it is blessing the Simon's family!
Love ya’ll
شقيقة موراي
شقيقة موراي
(Sister Murray)
PS Guess
what! This past week there was a change in some of the mission leadership
assignments. In the past District leaders called everyone in their
districts Sunday night to get their weekly numbers. Then they called
Monday mornings to talk about goals. NOW... STL's call the sisters for
both of those! It's more responsibility which is good, but it's going to
take a couple shots to get better at it!
