Three of us!!

Oh Hello,
This has been a crazy last few days… long story short Hermana Reese and McGuire are here with me in Des Moines...I am so happy to be here one more transfer in Des Moines! I love the branch and our investigators. They are my family and friends. It will be an interesting challenge to be in a three some. We will all need to sacrifice and compromise in all aspects of the work. I am super excited for Fridays now because we can all three go out with members and work. Crazy! We have a lot of work to get done here! Updates on investigators…Gladis- she has been doing her reading and praying…including the Liahona. We went through a scripture chase with her to help her get used to using all the scriptures. Tonight we have a FHE planned with the Santana Family because they are friends. We are going to have dinner then talk about families and Jesus Christ. We are praying hard that her husband will be involved in the activity! They have made progress in marriage plans and might get married at the Catholic church and then she can be baptized in our church. We are also planning a soccer game for the branch to get her husband more involved with members of the church. She believes that Thomas S Monson is the Prophet of God..she asked how she would know it was true so we explained the Spirit more. Angel is doing okay, keeping up on his reading and praying…the only thing is he hasn’t figured out his job schedule yet. We will be seeing him this week and are going to be bold and ask him to let the job go on the week-ends and show God his faith. Jenn- She is doing way awesome! We taught her a lot this week and Jordan Fuentes helped us. She has been praying more and is still working on recognizing the feelings of the Spirit. She felt peace at the baptism of the Flores family this week-end so that was progress! Her testimony of God has been strengthened and she is doing her reading in the BOM. Yajaira- no progress with her this week…we will see her soon. We need to get permission from her dad for her baptism. Diana’s baptismal date fell through…she is being persuaded by her family members and it is really sad. Her parents gave their approval, but she moved to her aunts house down the street and her aunt isn’t okay with it…so we will be teaching her aunt this week to try to make an impact. Diana knows its true, just needs to get the guts to be baptized when her family is another religion. We found a new promising investigator named Jenny..she is 14 yrs old and has a grandma in El Salvador that is a member…she has picked up the lessons well and has great desire to learn.
We have one baptismal date with Fransisco for July 10th. We are inviting everyone to be baptized..this missionary thing is hard. We can work so hard and have faith but people still have their agency to not choose it. It gets me down sometimes and makes me question if I am giving my all. I just need to continue in faith and keep inviting…

I was part of exchanges this week..one on transfer day (Thursday)..Esmeralda and Jenni Crespo were my companions all day..then Friday Hermana Jordan and I did them again. I love the members here! They feed us a ton and are so willing to help out. :) By the way..Happy Fathers Day Dad, Jimmy and Bompy! I love and appreciate you all so much. We had a cute fathers day song in Sacrament meeting..the kids are adorable. We also had a good lesson at church about how we need to treat everyone like Children of God..when we serve others, we are serving God. I love that. As missionaries, we are blessed with charity and I have felt intense love for the people we are teaching. I am so thankful for that. It goes the other way too..if we are mean to people, its as if we are being meant to God. So we better work on our Christlike attributes and spread the love! In the other class we talked about how in life we need to work hard and not be slothful..because even in our jobs we are working for our Brothers and Sisters...but we also need to have a balance with family time. I am thankful for the focus we have on families in the church and FHE!

Until next week,
Hermana Murphy