Today's Letter

Hola! Hace muy frio! It is supposed to snow 10.5 inches tomorrow! AHH. Shoot me! Haha. I am glad that I have snow boots thanks to dad and a snow jacket thanks to mom. Under armor is much appreciated as well. Its going to be a long cold winter. But my first Christmas with snow! Thatll be cool. Ha literally. The good side of things is that we have a lot of investigators so we aren’t out tracting a ton (knocking door to door). We go straight from the car into houses…I hope we are lucky enough for that to continue!

This week was very eventful! First of all… The Pachecos are getting baptized!!! We taught them for awhile and were heart broken that they moved to Arizona. Tina called us and told us they are getting baptized January 2. I was so happy! When they left here, Tina and the kids wanted to get baptized but Raul wasn’t ready. I guess he has really clicked with the Elders in Arizona. Heavenly Father really knows what we need to be fully ready to accept the Gospel! He helped them be fully prepared after investigating for 6 years! Tina thanked us for all we did to help, she said she knew they were in Iowa for a reason…we helped them get back on the path to baptism and got her daughters feeling comfortable in the church. Bah! That’s the best feeling, knowing you have helped souls come unto Christ and be baptized. AHH! We had Zone conference in Des Moines, our ward Christmas party, Fast/Testimony meeting and the Christmas Devotional! Zone Conference was very inspirational, we talked a lot about focusing on what really matters at Christmas..not just the gifts and Santa. I am really excited about having the time to do that! It’ll be great. The talent show was absolutely epic. Our mission is so cool! All the missionaries have funny sense of humors. Our mission president does too. I really feel like this is the mission for me. Even though Des Moines Iowa is really random and speaking Spanish as well here is random…I am random. I really appreciate all the experiences I have had and how much of a family feel this mission is-With the missionaries as well as with the members and investigators. LOVE. I was in a Feliz Navidad dance with the other Spanish missionaries…classic and then in a stomp act with my Sioux City Zone. Stomp is when you make noise with a bunch of random things..but its all to a beat. I enjoyed that. Oh man..there were some good acts too. Elder Holman from my district at the MTC sang/played the piano…he is amazing! He is going to be on Broadway someday for sure. We have videos of all the acts and are compiling them on a cd, itll be sent to Jilly eventually. Our ward xmas party was a hoot. Omar, Angel, and Amanda came as far as investigators go. More Spanish members came. We all sat together. I love our little Spanish part of the ward. We are all like a family. Its great. Fast/testimony meeting was a neat experience as well. I bore my testimony all in Spanish (and I cried)! I shared how much I appreciate Heavenly Father’s love for me-I can feel the love of God in my family, especially my parent. Being away from home has really helped me see how much my family means to me. SOOO MUCH. In our families we can feel the closest love to Celestial love. This is why we have families-to be happy! The Christmas Devotional was beautiful! I love the First Presidency of the Church, and I know they are called of God. Christ is our Savior!

Next week…We are going to the Temple in Omaha because our ward mission leader, Ignacio is going for the first time! We are so excited to go! Hermana Madsen, two elders and I are going to support him along with some of the ward members! It’ll be amazing! Also next week on Tuesday Sonya and Bryan are getting married at our church and then are getting baptized along with their two daughters. We are so excited for them! They stopped smoking and are continuing to prepare for the commitments they will be making. They are so excited! Jenny and I are making the wedding invitation today so she can give them to her family. J Jenny is going home next week. She is so sad to be leaving but happy to see her family. She has been such a great trainer and companion. She is a great example of a hard worker and I hope to be like her someday. Hehe We will be staying in touch through letters.

We are continuing to do the Wednesday night class with the Spanish, and we are going to implement more ward activities to get our ward more unified. There is an invisible boundary between the English and Spanish..so as missionaries we are working with the Relief Society president to dissolve this boundary and have everyone love eachother (even though they cant all understand eachother.) Our investigators are still progressing…Angel’s mom is becoming more open to baptism because of his commitment, he has come to every activity! Amanda Gomez is going to get married so she can be baptized. Eddy knows it is true (BOM and Joseph Smith) and came to the Christmas Devotional. He loved it. He just needs to realize that an organized church is necessary and that he needs to be baptized under the priesthood authority. Omar has read over half the BOM-just need to feel more comfortable praying.

I love this work! I look forward to see what adventures are in store this week. Maybe Evelyn, Amanda’s daughter will help me with Spanish (she is 3). Haha Love you all! Talk to you later!

-Hermana Murphy