Roller Coaster.

Hi!!!!

Wow this was a roller coaster of a week First of all we started the week with 4 baptismal dates for this week-end. Bryan (13) , Samantha (9) and Belen (12) and Angel (16). I was so excited I wanted topee my pants! These kids are all AMAZING and want to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. But we encountered some problems. No matter how much they want to, their parents need to approve. Bryan is my favorite. Such neat kid! Wow. So intelligent and so enlightened. The questions he comes up with rock my world and strengthen my testimony. His grandparents that live in Mexico are LDS but his family in Iowa is Catholic. He is pretty confused with the differences between the two churches. We are helping him the best way we can but his family has a huge impact on him. He has decided to wait and push back his baptism until he is 18?! What?! Why?!? We love him so much and are going to contineu to teach him. We also told him we would go with him to the Catholic church Sunday after our ward because we support him and want him to be happy. We dont mind learning about other religions...it just reconfirms our testimonies of the LDS church. Samantha is such a sweetie. She plans on getting baptized this Sunday but her mom is unsure about it. Samantha has special health conditions so we feel that baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost will help her so much! We pray that her baptism will follow through. Belin and Angel are syblings. We have been teaching them for a while and asked them to set their baptismal date. They chose this Saturday..but their mom feels Belin is too young to make this big of decision..she needs to study more and go to church more. I want her to feel completely comfortable making this decision but it was Belin telling us she wanted to be baptized ASAP. We know she has the desire but her family is putting doubts and confusion in her head. We feel that they will be baptized if not now in a few weeks. But we are nervous that once they push it back they will keep pushing it back. So we pray that they will follow the promptings and get baptized (with their moms approval ofcourse). We are praying that her mom will approve. We have taught her mom before and she wants to learn too. We had an awesome member present lesson with Hermana Baraza from our ward. Hermana Baraza's parents are converts so she really loves missionary work. Her testimonyy really touched Belin's mom. As for other progressing investigators...an Amazing family of 6 who has been investigating off/on for 6 yrs! is moving to Arizona Friday. We are so sad to see them go but they told us that they cam to Iowa for a reason, to get back into the church and meet us. We are thankful that we were able to motivate them to go to c hurch and continue learning, they will probably be baptized in like 2 or 3 weeks! The mom and 4 daughters are ready but Raoul, the dad isnt yet. So as a family they will hopefully be baptized soon! We are helping them move tomorrow. Some other cool investigators moved unexpectally and others stopped returning our calls because they heard bad things abouut the church. But Heavenly Father has provided us with a few more awesome families...Juan is way cool and totally searching and the LoveJoy girls came to church and love it. I have noticed that the younger generations are more willing to accept the Gospel and I believe it is because they havent been as exposed to the Opposition and recognize the Spirit more strongly.

As for other things of the week. We had a zone conference which was amazing! We got training and got to hear our president speak. He is so great! I love him lots. I was able to bear my testimony in spanish and share parts of my conversion story. That was a blessing! :) I look forward to zone conferences to come. A general authority is coming to our next one. I got to see my friend from Norcal Scott Haycock at the conference and a bunch of missionaries went out to dinner. :) Fun Fun! Missionaries here are way cool. My companion is so nice. Elder Thomas is going home in January (one of the APs) and is going to ASU so I will see him in the future. There is also an Elder who plays college football and is a convert so I talked to him!

I am working hard and enjoying the roller coaster ride. My emotions are flying from the seat of my pants but I know that as I pray and follow the Holy Ghost that God will perform miracles and direct us to who we need to teach.

Love all of you and miss you! :)

-Hermana Murphy