Us with one of the members called Jorge! He is a recent convert and has gone through a lot in his life! He is capo!!!

This is just too prove how hot it is here! Look at these wicked tan lines!

I have these horrible mosquito bites all over my entire body! Welcome to Rivera!

Dayane and us before her baptism!

 

Uruguayans Say The Darnest Things!

Dear Familia,
How is life? I love hearing from all of you every week! Here is the week in review:
The best and most important part of my week! We had our baptism of Dayane!!!! She was sooo excited! After she was baptized she had the opportunity to bare her testimony! She said that she was so excited and happy for the chance to be baptized! She said that for the first time in her life she feels complete peace, something she has been lacking! On Sunday after her confirmation, I looked at her and she was glowing! I swear her countenance had already changed to reflect the light of Christ that is now in her life!

We also got to teach a bunch of lessons to Family Valentti. Daniel (father), Luciana (mother), Ingrid (daughter), and Gael (son). Daniel, Luciana, and Ingrid have a baptismal date for the 21st of this months!  They are progressing like crazy! Daniel has created a huge mural on one of their walls of pictures of prophets, Jesus Christ, and other images!ç from the church! They are progressing more and more every week! They pray and read the Book of Mormon every day together! We are so excited to teach them, especially because they are always talking about going to the temple to be sealed for eternity!

The highlights of my week include: We tried to self-fumigate our apartment (which resulted in a mass exodus of cockroaches, spiders, and centipedes from every corner)! We crashed two birthday parties, by accident, on the same day! Hermana Mazzini lost her lenses and now is completely blind! Don´t worry I stopped her before she ran into any walls! I watched a 90 year old man (one of our investigators), with severe stomach pains, mount a bicycle and start biking up the side of a huge mountain!

My favorite quotes of the week:

-During Relief Society (a class of all women in our church) the teacher presented the title of the class, which was Joseph Smith. The class began to talk among themselves for about five minutes all about Joseph Smith. The teacher tried several times to reign the class back in, but was completely unsuccessful! Finally she interrupted one sister and said: ¨It is better to read, than it is to invent things!¨  Hermana Mazzini and I almost died in the back! ¡Baja la caña!

-I was explaining the image of Christ with the lamb (I always seem to have problems with this image...) to a family with five young kids.  The youngest asked me: ¨where is the mommy of the lamb?¨ To which I replied without thinking: ¨She is gone.¨ The little boy then said: ¨its mommy died, its mommy died, the little lamb is all alone.¨ At which point he started crying... Don´t worry he stopped eventually (after being bribed with cake)! Unfortunately my explanation did not
quite have the effect I was hoping for!

-We got invited an old less active lady to church. To which she replied: ¨You guys are people that just talk and never actually do anything. I am all about actions! When I need to come back to church, Jesus Christ himself will bring me back!¨ (Did I mention that she lives on the top of a mountain...just to get to her house is an enormous effort...Don´t worry I kept Hermana Mazzini from killing her!)

-I used my one line of portuguese (which happens to be I speak portuguese) on an old man this week. He responded : ¨You speak much better Portuguese than Spanish¨. After my companion tried her Portuguese, to which he responded ¨hers (me) is much better¨. The good news apparently I have an accent that is great in Portuguese. The bad news...I speak Spanish!

That is about it for my week! La Obra Va Bien! I love serving the Lord!
Love,
Hermana McMurray

What I ate for lunch in Brasil! This is one block out of Uruguay, but our waiter only spoke Portuguese...crazy, right?
I love the shirts in English here! They are always grammatically incorrect and have no real meaning...who writes these?
My brasilian treat!

Herbie and I! Did you know that after the movies, they retired him to Uruguay?!

It´s Christmas!!! Us with our Arbol de Navidad! Yes...the snowman present is homemade (tape, napkins, and a marker)! I made it special for Hermana Mazzini!

¡Serpiente en el Baño!

Dear Familia,

Ready for another crazy week....here we go!!!

We are going to have the baptism of Dayane (16 years old) this Saturday)! She is awesome, but it has been a slightly stressful week with her (due to an unexpected new boyfriend)! The good news is she has promised to live the Law of Chastity and she is trying to be careful! Everyday she tells us how much she wants to be baptized! It is truly amazing to see someone who has such strong desires to follow the Lord!  We also have five other people who have baptismal dates for the 21st of this month! One of the investigators is called Nelson! He told us this week that he found work, but that he was going to have to work all of the Sundays for the next while! We were feeling disappointed because it would be very hard for him to progress, without coming to church every week...until BAM our miracle of the week! He told us that he found out he cannot work there because of some rule...Now he can come to church every Sunday!!!! My companion says it is a direct answer to our prayers for him to progress!

So many funny things happened this week, that I will just try to talk about a few of them! My companion says that all of our funny stories come from visiting less active members (which we did a lot of this week)!
-I got told by an old man that I was cold and a spy!  The good news is that it isn´t just me...apparently all North Americans are cold and spies....I am not exactly sure what he meant by the first part, but I am not sure either were compliments ;). Afterwards, he told us he was
a polygamist with 7 wives and 14 children (two with each concubine...duh) and he invited us to come inside his house! My companion and I got out of there sooo fast....
-We had lunch with Elba Cocco! She is an old blind lady who speaks only Portuguese! So we were sitting at the table waiting for lunch (because she didn´t want us in her kitchen), and she comes out! It was probably one of the funny sites I have seen in my entire life! She had
put a electric blue beanie on the very tippy-top of her head, had a huge plate of empanadas in her hand, and an bright floral apron on...The good news is that the food was super good (probably the best empanadas I have ever had). The bad news....I realized we left an old blind lady in the kitchen with a huge pot of hot oil :)!
-We had a lesson with Elba Cocco earlier this week...she is one funny old lady! I was talking about the story of the 99 lambs and the one who was lost. I talked about how Christ always looks for that one! I then proceeded to tell her that she was that one lamb, that the Lord
loved sooo much! Her response: ¨I am a blind lamb without hair¨ I think the symbolism was a little lost on her....
-I was writing in my journal the other night, when I heard high pitched screaming from the bathroom! My companion was having a meltdown...she told me there was a snake in the bathroom! I went to look (obviously armed with the broom) and found...a centipede! It was actually pretty big, but I am pretty sure it isn´t considered a snake in any country! Neither of us wanted to kill it, so we shut the bathroom door and went to sleep! The next morning we couldn´t find it anywhere...I might get a slight kick out of pretending I find it everywhere!

That´s it for the week!

Love,
Hermana McMurray