Californian in Kansas: Service, Families, and a Baptism

Luis got baptized this Saturday!! It was so awesome finally seeing him get baptized and when he came out of the water he said he felt like he was glowing! He told us how he felt famous because all the people that came to his baptism, and how his baptismal program looked. I swear he stared at it for like 30 minutes straight just smiling. It filled my heart with so much joy it was awesome. His whole family came so we were able to give them a super awesome tour of the church and answer al of their questions. It was so cool because other missionaries brought the people they were teaching to the baptism and all of them loved it so much and can't wait to get baptized too!

As a result of his baptism, 4 of Luis'S siblings want to get baptized and so does his dad!! We are still working on his mom but she will come around soon I'm sure of it. On Sunday, his parents came to support him receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and we think that they really liked it, unfortunately their other son had a soccer game and they had to take off after the first hour so we didn't get to talk to them about it. We tried to go find the, at their house after church but they weren't there. We were able to have an awesome lesson about the restoration with Rogelio, Luis's younger brother. We had Adrian one of the young men with us and he was a really big help in helping Rogelio understand why it was important and he even taught him how to pray!!

We had been working really hard with Luis's Grandmother this week, because she has a testimony if the Book of Mormon and knows that the church is true, but she was so attached to her other church that she would never commit to come. We finally sat down with her and asked her inspired questions for 15 minutes to find the root of her concern and we were let by the spiri to a talk that Elder Uchdorf gave in a conference address about Saul on the road to Damascus and how a lot of times we expect to have an experience like him, we expect to see an angel or see Jesus if we are going to change. But the lord doesn't work like that with us. We have to show our faith in him and trust in him to receive and recognize those answers that he is giving us to our prayers. We ended with the questions, "Where are you on your personal Road to Damascus? Are you waiting for a Saul type experience?" And she must have thought about it really hard because she came to church!

As a companionship we really have been trying to find families to teach, so we went to knock a potential investigators door to find one to teach but they weren't there. I had remembered there was another Mexican family down the street so we walked down to their house and tried to meet them. When we knocked we met the dad, Ezekiel and he told us how he had 7 kids and wanted them to grow up with good values. We taught him the Restoration and he loved it and committed to read the Book of a Mormon and pray about a specific baptismal date. We came back another day and met his wife and shared with her that standards of the Church like the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. She lit up and was so happy that we could teach her kids about it and help them grow up to be good people in the world! Super awesome missionary experience!

We also had the awesome opportunity to do service this week! The Relief Society president our branch was moving apartments within he complex and we got to help he move! It was super cool because this Christmas Season he church has. Campaign call #LIGHTtheWORLD where we try to be a light to other people and help other like Christ so perfectly showed us how when he walked the Earth. We were able to be a light to her and help her when she needed it! The super fun part was when the battery on our car died and we were kinda stuck there for a few hours haha. We asked a bunch of people if they had cables but apparently no one has them here in Kansas, Eventually we found someone with some and they were kind enough to let us borrow them. I guess you could say they were a light for us!!

We also had a really cool Zone Training this week. Elder Call one of our Zone Leaders gave a super awesome training on how important our Desire are as missionaries and took it even one step further when he explained the importance of our own personal Dispositions. Disposition is something thats similar to our nature, it our inherent qualities of mind and nature. He ended his lesson with this question for us to think about "What if my dispositional will was to baptize?". Super deep. It got me thinking and what I took away from the meeting is that I need to be constantly changing my desires to be my disposition. I need to make the things that I WANT to do and make them things that I NEED to do. I need to make them my inherit nature to serve Christ at all times.

Over all it was an awesome week and we were able to see tons and tons of miracles. I love being in the lords service and I love being a missionary in the Kansas Wichita Mission. I love you all so much and I can't wait to hear about your weeks!

Elder Murphy