January 11th - Biking Sucks

 Hello!!

This week has been really crazy and has gone by super duper fast. The first couple days went pretty quick. Tuesday and Wednesday we had full day exchanges and I went to the other missionaries' areas each day. I first went with the Russian speaking Elder Herron and we grinded. We tracted like the entire day, we found some good russian people as well as some english people for our and surrounding areas. The next day I went to my old ward with Elder Kirkham and we tracted for like another 8 hours, and he showed me some tech stuff because he's a mission tech specialist, which is pretty cool. We got to find some nice people out in the country and we met a guy with like 6 dogs. It was nuts cause they were huge dogs too, like easily over 100 lbs. Kinda scary.

The next day was zone conference with President and that was super spiritual as always. I helped give a training to our and one other zone, and in front of President Beardall. So it was pretty spooky but I was able to do a pretty good job, I didn’t stutter at all! Then on Friday we had to start our car fast, which means we used too many miles last month so they revoked our car privilege for 5 days, so we've been on bikes since then. It ends tomorrow so that's nice at least. It's been really hard on the legs cause we've been biking something like 20 miles a day. My legs are getting used to it, which is good at least. I've just been super tired lol.

We're still teaching a lot but productivity has gone down since biking. We talk to less people now. We reactivated a family this week which was super awesome. I'm excited to hear from all of you and i hope you have an amazing week, as it is the last week of my 3rd transfer. Love you all!

Elder Jacob C Murray

January 4th - Challenge

 Everyone!!

This week was a true grind. We knocked so many doors, talked to so many people and taught a whole bunch of lessons. We invited 3 people to be baptized in February and they all said yes!!! That's super exciting I hope it ends up working out. We woke up at 5:15 every day this week to go workout and it feels pretty awesome. Yeah I'd take a nap in the car every once in a while but it was totally worth it. We had a ton of people give us food this week. Three pizzas, chicken and rice, teriyaki beef, some great soup and a bunch of treats (that's my favorite part).

I have started memorizing a scripture every week. I think this is awesome cause it helps me apply it more to my life when I spend the time to find an important one and them to memorize it. So I invite you all to do the same this week, find a scripture and memorize it. I'm expecting to hear them next week!! We met some awesome people this week as we got to help out with the food bank.  They are awesome, we really just helped sort food and move boxes but got to know a lot of the other workers there. What a good opportunity to spread some love. Besides that nothing too crazy happened. We saw some cool fog and it rained a lot lol. We got some Wendy's and we got some McDonalds. We can't do too much with the other elders because of covid rules so it's really just been a lot of work and a lot of effort to bring others to Christ. Which has been working. Our zone has been doing awesome things as well. Hopefully you all had great weeks and I look forward to talking and emailing individually and sorry I didn't have too much exciting stuff this week. I'm praying for you all and I love you and miss you all. Thank you for your support as well. Have a great week!!  Memorize sum stuff.

Elder Murray 

2021

 Happy New Year!! 

This week has been a good one and there's a bunch of reasons why!! Well I guess I should get the bad out of the way. It rained every day this week like the whole day. We saw a car get in a wreck with the siding of a road, we saw some crazy people, and even got yelled at! And that's pretty much it to be honest. But it's all normal stuff.

We had our friend Lisa come to church this week for the second time which is really exciting. We are gonna try and put her on date this week because she is super solid. It makes me really happy because I was actually a part of finding her, since we helped her move in. Also we put another one of our friends, Jason on date too for February. It's been a great experience and we've been focusing a lot on faith since we had MLC this week and talked about how it can improve our work. Now for some fun stuff, I saw a door that had a crappy little branch taped to it and it reminded me of mom's sweet home decor.(Pic will be sent)

Then on Wednesday we helped a member move and they gave us 25 bucks for some food. So naturally we bought 150 nuggets from Burger King and I ate 50 in one sitting. Felt like a champ. On a bad note, I'm now 225 lol. Gotta watch those calories.  On new years eve we had to be in by 7 PM because of safety. We bought some cookie dough and mountain dew and celebrated at about 9 pm lol. We went to bed before 10 and woke up at 4:30am on new year's day to workout before MLC which was at 8:30 an hour away. So a pretty crazy time but sadly no pictures. I will try and get some more because I don't have all that much to send. We went on a all day exchange with the APs and the one I went with is committed to BYU for football so I'll be cheering for him when I get back which is super funny. He's a nice guy. Anyways that was my good week and I'm glad to be able to serve for all of 2021. I'm hoping for some good success this year and have some goals to help make that happen. I love you all and look forward to hearing all about your experiences this year. Thank you for your support and love I can feel it every day.

Love,

Elder Jacob Murray 

Week 14 - The Week Between

 Hey hey hey,

Everyone, I hope you all had an amazing Christmas cause it was a very spiritual one for me. First I'd like to thank everyone for the gifts and cards. I appreciated it a lot. It was nice to open something on Christmas. Anyways being able to focus on Christ this week has been really awesome. I have studied and pondered many Christlike attributes this week and how I can change myself to become more like Christ. We caroled and gave cookies to a lot of people and those who were lonely this Christmas time, which made me feel great. Its gonna be something I'll remember for a long time because it was so different from any other experience I've had on Christmas. We did a devo thing with our and another zone for Christmas on Tuesday. It was a bunch of musical numbers performed by missionaries. I didn't do anything but I really enjoyed listening.

We also had a good church service the week before as well, and we heard some awesome numbers. Yesterday we had a friend come to church and she really enjoyed it and will probably be coming back so that's kinda awesome!! Besides that it was slow for work. A lot of people weren't home or not receptive cause it was so close to Christmas. We have been able to tract again and that has been real awesome I'm getting way better at talking to random people which makes me happy because it means I'm growing in some way at least lol. Anyways I love you all and hope you are having a great holiday season and hope you stay safe this week.

Elder Murray