The Blind and the Lame

Dear Familia,

Reading emails this week has been very interesting...at least now I am going to get Grandma Harmer´s emails! I was so sad to read of the passing of Gracie Bird!!! She was a beloved parrot and I used to love to try and make her talk (although she always ignored me until I left, at which point she would say as loud as possible ¨bye bye¨...).

Hermana Coral and I are doing great! So here is all the exciting news about our investigators!!! The way that we teach investigators now has completely changed in our mission. We now focus and teach almost solely from the images found in the pamphlets. We talk about their symbolism and how they make people feel! It really is amazing to see the way that people feel the Spirit, when they examine an image of Christ!

So this week we found a new investigator named Carlos (not a common name...:D) in a Casa de Salud (nursing home...?)! We have just started teaching him, but he is very receptive. But inevitably there have to be a couple of glitches. He happens to be completely blind...and maybe a little deaf. He also speaks perfect English (who knew that that would come to be a problem?). We have to try and teach completely different and we have to try and teach in English. I have learned all of the lessons in Spanish and so now I actually feel all awkward when I try to teach in English! We tried to explain to him that we understand Spanish, but he doesn´t believe us...So now every time a nurse walks by and says something, he says ¨No, no, no they don´t speak Spanish, only English.¨ Oh well...lessons in English it is!

Hermana Coral had a little bit of a rough week...We were running a little late trying to get back to our apartment (our area happens to be huge...). So we started to run...bad decision! Hermana Coral tripped, tried to catch herself, and tripped again. She totally ate it! She slid down the rock sidewalk...on her face...in front of a crowded bus stop...She also happened to have our cell phone in one hand and a huge folder of papers in the other. Both were chucked into the air as she fell! The good news is we found all 8 pieces of our cell phone and were able to catch all of the papers before they blew away! The bad news is that Hermana Coral busted up her foot pretty bad. By the time that we got back to our apartment her foot was red and swollen and she was walking like a cripple! So one of our Zone leaders (who happened to be on divisions with one of the assistants) and one of the Assistants came to our apartment at 11 pm to give a priesthood blessing of health (don´t worry Dad, they had permission from President Smith :D). The next morning Hermana Coral woke up and looked at her foot...nothing! Her foot was completely better! She swears she thought it was broken that night! I know that this was a miracle for her and I. There was no way that we could continue to work with her foot the way it was! I believe that the priesthood is the power of God on the Earth and that my companion was truly healed by the power of God!

That is about all for this week!
Ciao,
Hermana McMurray

Kickeling!!!

Dear Familia,

This week has been great! We taught lots of lessons this week (almost 20)! Last week we contacted in the streets and had a couple people who said that we could come and visit them. So...we contacted them this week and....we have a new investigator!!!!! Her name is Lilian....the experience is located below (in Spanish...sorry for all those unfortunate enough to not understand it)!

Funny Stories:
-We were visiting an old lady and we accidentally interrupted her meal. She decided she wanted to continue eating, so she offered us some of what she was eating....great, right?...nope, wrong! Slimy, squishy, purple prunes were plopped onto both of our plates! I looked
at Hermana Coral...she looked at me... Uh-ohhh! Luckily, she left the room for about 15 seconds. We both grabbed napkins and shoved the prunes into our bags. Fortunately, I remembered the pit...The little old lady still thinks Hermana Coral is wierd because she ¨swallowed¨
the pit!
-One of the most common foods here is lentils! I actually like them okay, but Hermana Coral thinks they are disgusting! So we stopped by a house this week and got big plates of lentils put in front of us. Next thing I know, Hermana Coral is scraping all of hers into my bowl...
-I had another old lady (we seem to visit a lot of old ladies...), who was super concerned about me! She is very sick and cannot leave her house, so every week the members of our barrio bring her the Sacrament. So of course (:D) she has a little sacrament cup that she
keeps inside of another cup. So the lady who stays with her, gave me a cup of Coke. So I am just drinking, when...BAM, she squeals!!! ¨Don´t drink that, it has my sacrament cup in it!¨ The good news is I don´t think I actually drank the cup. The bad news was she just stared at me through the whole lesson, because she thought I swallowed her sacrament cup!

Sorry all of my funny stories involve old ladies and food, but I think that is all that happens in the mission!  I love the mission and I have been learning so much about teaching! We are finding and teaching more than I ever have in the mission! It is still hard, but it feels very rewarding! I love the Lord and I know that this Church is the only true Church of Jesus Christ!

Have a good week all!!!

Love,
Hermana McMurray

p.s. Kickeling is what my companion was doing to me this
week...kicking and tickling...together. Pleasant :/

Porque HOY ES EL DÍA decidimos tratar algo nuevo y ser mejores en ENCUENTRE EN TODO TIEMPO. VIVIENDO NUESTRO PROPÓSITO invitamos a todos (incluyendo jóvenes, viejitos, HOBOS y asians) a venir a Cristo.  Cuando nos ayudamos y animamos la una a la otra (SEA UNO) podríamos contactar muchas personas.  Encontramos a Lilian en las esquina de España y libertad (en nuestra área [OBEDEZCA CON EXACTITUD]). Ella era muy amable y nos dio su dirección. Llegamos a su casa y ella ACCEDO LAS LLAVES para dejarnos entrar.  Ella tenia unas preguntas y realmente solo estaba curiosa para saber cual era la diferencia entre su iglesia y la nuestra.  La aseguramos que ibamos a responder a todos sus preguntas y empezamos con una oración sencilla.  Despues de la oración ella estaba mucho mas receptiva y enseñamos lección 1.1.  Tal vez no podemos hablar español muy bien o no tenemos mucha experiencia pero cuando siguimos el guia del espiritu santo podemos encontrar las personas que el Señor tiene preparadas para nosotros y TESTIFICAR CON PODER.
AMEN. FOREVER AND EVER.

Pics-Oct. 21

Just us typical misioneras...Who said misioneras can´t have fun (I put misioneras because I love that it is feminine)!

Mairi

Dear Familia,

Time for the big reveal...sorry about last week :)! I am still in Flores, but with a new companion (props to Mom and Michelle)!!! My new companion is Hermana Coral! Weirdly enough, she was also my very first companion for three whole hours in the CCM (until they talked to her and realized she was fluent in Spanish)! My companion is from Springville, Utah and has only four months in the mission as well! Due to a fairly helpful background (a father from Mexico) and the fact that Spanish was actually her first language (even though she claims
she forgot it all), she speaks Spanish like a native!

It has been a little crazy with two newbies together in one area, but things are going great! We have decided together that it is time to get rid of all of the old beliefs in this area and to find new ways to teach and testify of Christ! So at the end of last week, we decided to try some new ideas, here are just a couple:
1. We are now going to start to teach English classes every Wednesday!
2. We are going to be giving tours in the chapel every other Saturday!
3. We are going to try and do a lot more street contacts!

All of this is our new and improved game plan! So Saturday, we figured it was time to put our money where our mouths were....street contacts!  The goal: approach people on the streets and try, in less than 30 seconds, to give them a card and testify of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. I am not going to lie to all of you...I was a little afraid, but Hermana Coral and I prayed for strength and with faith we headed out. The results were unexpected, and really quite amazing. In less than an hour, we had talked with fifteen people (including a 10 minute lesson), gotten the addresses of three people (who wanted to know more), and gotten to testify to each and every person! It was amazing, thrilling, and a little bit of a spiritual high! I have a testimony that as we set goals and we try our best to accomplish the Lord´s
will, He will help us!

Fun stories of the week:
-This week was cambios, so we (a group of six different sister missionaries) ended up waiting in a bus terminal until 2 am and returning at 5 am! What happened for the three hours in between you might ask, well, we decided we wanted to sleep, so we went to the apartment of one of the Hermanas close by. That is when the excitement began... I had been running around all day (since Hermana Camacho wanted to visit places and say goodbye to people before she left) and so I was feeling a little bit physically exhausted. So I conk for about an hour, until...BAM! Super intense muscle spasm in my leg, which might have been accompanied by very loud screaming...whoops :)!  I think one of the Hermanas almost had a heart attack! She spent about five minutes straight asking me if I was okay!
-This week Hermana Coral and I got to teach a class in church. Don´t worry we were given lots of notice (maybe a whole five minutes) :)...So I looked at the topic (Charity)...sweet, this going to be easy! It´s all going great (for about five minutes), that is when the floodgates opened! In our class, we had a very sweet little woman, unfortunately she loves to talk! She just started...and didn´t take a single breath! At one point she was tellling a story about falling off a chair (apparently a near death experience)! The whole class almost died with laughter! After about ten minutes we finally managed to regain control of the lesson! It was crazy...

Anyway...that´s all for now!

Love,
Hermana McMurray

p.s. We have a progressing investigator named Mairi and she came to church for the first time this week!!! VAMO ARRIBA!!!!!
p.p.s Congrats Ryan and Regan! You guys had better start working on my cardboard cutout for all of the wedding pictures!

CAMBIOS!

Dear Familia,

I bet you are all excited to hear about my first real cambios....so I will just save that for last, that way you have to actually read all of my email (don´t you dare skip to the end)!

This week really has been the best week of my mission! We didn´t really get the chance to teach a lot, but we did find 2 new investigators! We are continuing to work hard, but we still are waiting for the miracles. I have realized through these last three months, that patience is not really my strength! The good news is the Lord can make our weak characteristics, our strong ones! I definitely have found that my patience has already grown tenfold!

These week was also General Conference!!!!!!!! I have decided that General Conference is better than Christmas! I am not sure why, but it seemed to make a bigger impact on my life this time, than at any other (maybe because the Lord is my sole focus right now...or maybe because I got to watch it in English :)!

My favorite talk was given by Russell M Nelson. In one part he talked about how we were chosen specifically, by God, to come to Earth at this moment. That we had a particular gift that was needed! The gift is not something physical (since we did not have bodies yet), but it is a spiritual gift! Sometimes in the mission, you are so humbled by all that you don´t know, that you wonder, `what do I have to offer?`  You see all the other missionaries who can talk in fluent spanish, can teach with clarity and power, and you begin to wonder... I realized that I regardless of what I do not have, I have a gift that the Lord wants me to use in Uruguay!

Now to the entertaining chronicles of my life:

-We were in our apartment studying, when after about 20 minutes, Hermana Camacho left to go the bathroom. I being my usual, rather observant self, didn´t actually notice this (trying to understand Isaiah can do that to a person)...So she comes back, sniffs, and asks ¨Are you cooking something?¨ I had a small Kronk moment: ¨Oh my spinach puffs!¨ So I popped out of my chair and ran towards the kitchen...when it hit me, I wasn´t actually cooking anything...or so I thought! So I just stopped and looked at her and Hermana Camacho walked to the microwave and pulled out my precious bolso de maíz! I may or may not have completely cooked into smithereens my second bolso de maíz...The good news, is I may or may not have acquired a third bolso de maíz...(yes, the black market exists in all countries :)).

-President Smith called to tell us our cambios. He began by talking to Hermana Camacho, then afterwards asked if I was listening. So, Hermana Camacho changed the cell phone to speaker phone, meanwhile President is still talking and all we hear is: ¨You are leaving to finish the training of Hermana Nielson.¨ Of course, having not heard who it was directed to, we both yell: ¨Who?¨ President Smith said ¨Ohhh....¨ Then the line went dead....

Love,
Hermana McMurray

MY DISTRICT!!! VAMO ARRIBA!

Arepes

She is a professional!

Hermana Camacho forgot to wear her rain boots :)!

Mi madre is from Colombia, so we had Arepes!

Hermana Camacho in the bathroom, with our refrigerator...´nuff said!

There has been so much rain, that the design of my socks has now become part of my foot!

Mmmmmmhhh! DULCE!!!

My pictures!

My burn from my delious Dulce de Leche...complete with burn cream!

The other is my second bolso de maíz. I had to take a picture with it,
since I felt like I was losing a beloved friend!