Californian in Kansas: MLC, Miracles, and some other stuff happened too

This week was just jam packed to the brim with things that happened. I can just tell you that missionary work as a Zone Leader is so much different than I thought. We are so much more limited with our time which forces us to be a lot more productive when we do have time to go out and work like normal. I love it. Elder Watts and I are just balling out and striving our best to be examples for the missionaries in the Manhattan Zone. We honestly saw soooo many miracles this week!

Miracle 1) We were trying to find one of our Investigators who lives about 10 minutes out of town, but she wasn't there and her boyfriends dad answered the door in a not very good mood. He quickly told us that she wasn't there and that he didn't know when she would been be home. It was very evident that he wanted us to go away. I felt really strongly that we needed to share a message with him. So I asked him if we could and the spirit completely opened up his heart and he let us right in! We started to shared our message with him and he opened up and told us how he really wanted to start on his path back to God! We have been back every day now and he has been praying and reading everyday and came to church on Sunday and LOVED it!! He cannot wait to be baptized on March 11!!

Miracle 2) As we went though our area book to try to find if there were any former investigators that we should teach and we decided that we needed to see Dave McCallister. He is such a sweet soul who had been to church over 10 times in the past and was going to get baptized, but said that the other Missionaries were really mean to him and that he stopped meeting with them. He really opened up to us and he is now progressing really strongly to be baptized on February 28! He was able to fly through the baptismal interview questions and the daily habit of reading and praying has grown his faith so much!! He even knew more people than we did at the church! Awesome!

Miracle 3) When we got here the other missionaries had been working with a girl named Gabby from Paraguay. She is going to school here at Kansas State and was a Buddhist. It has been so different teaching someone about Christianity! Before in Wichita, we taught pretty much 99% Catholics and Christians who had already had a faith in Christ, and here in my new area we run into people all the time who don't even know who he is! It's a blessing though because she speaks Spanish so we still get to teach and practice our Spanish with her. Anyways, she has been progressing really well and she is looking really solid to get Baptized this weekend!! WAHOO! It was crazy though, the previous missionaries taught her the word of wisdom before we had gotten here and when we went over it with her, it turns out they had taught it to her wrong!! They told her Green tea was ok and so she continued to keep drinking it. When we re taught it to her, she gave it up immediately and we bought her some herbal tea that she could drink instead. She has so much faith! Everyone keep her in your prayers!!

We also had a "MLC", and Missionary Leadership Council meeting this week, so I got to drive beck to Wichita! That was really funny because we dont have a GPS and we got super lost on the way there and on the way back. It was a really good meeting though and we learned a lot about the Direction the mission is going and how we can best help it as leaders. We had lots of amazing trainings, (the meeting was from 9-4:30, so LOTS of trainings) and I feel like we learned a ton about our responsibility as Zone Leaders. Good stuff to know if you ask me.

Unfortunately because we are so jam packed all the time I did an AWFUL job taking pictures to send home this week but if one of y'all will remind me throughout the week to take pictures then I'd probably do a better job.

LOVE YOU ALL!! EMAIL ME :)

Elder Murphy