June 25th - Great trees and New Horizons

Dear Family,

Mother! Thank you so much for sending me glasses! I can finally see now and I don't have to be afraid I will hit a dog or a kid or worse when I drive at night. They got to me that Friday, and Elder James was very good about getting my Zone Leaders to pick them up. I still haven't gotten the other ones but I got a call from Madera the other day that said they were here so I may wear them when I get them just so I don't break the expensive ones. Thank you so very much for sending me money. I love my family.

Alright, as for the week, things start out this Tuesday. We worked in Dinuba that day and it was good. Elder Reza works very hard so there are not a lot of people that get past us without us talking to them.

Wednesday was a good day as well. I went on an exchanges with Elder Cranford and it was actually really great. We had some good talks about the MTC and the time when I freaked out because a bird pooped on me. Apparently there was a class watching me that I didn't know about lol.

Thursday was also a good day. We once again worked in Dinuba and we talked to a lot of people. That night we went to Orange Cove and tried to do some finding. Orange Cove is a very small town a little ways away from Reedley where we live. It is very beautiful and there are a lot of orange farms out there. Hence the name.

Friday we worked again. We had some good lessons and I was pumped to have new glasses and actually be able to see at night. That day it was 102 degrees outside and it was not very fun. The sad thing is that it will get much hotter before summer is done.

Saturday we had to go get an oil change on our car in Fresno. We ended up staying at Carl's Jr. while they were changing our oil and we finished our weekly planning, had a good dinner and then did a little studying before we got our car back.

Sunday was fantastic. I ended up having to give an impromptu testimony during sacrament meeting in Spanish and teach the Priesthood class in Spanish. I did pretty well and didn't have any problems. That night I had my first member dinner in a long time and I was very happy.

Thank you so much for all of your support and love as I serve in the mission field. Keep up the good work back home and always remember the Savior is there for you in your times of need.

Love,

Elder Murray

June 18th - Reedly and Dinuba

Dearest Family,

This week has honestly been pretty rough. I think that I am starting to settle in a little more and things are getting better though. I still have not received pants so I will have to keep waiting for those. As of right now, I still do not have glasses. . . it is getting really old. I finally sent all of you a package today with some dank mission crap. I just hope that you like it. Sadly, I kind of wish that I had not because I feel like I am plowing through my money and no matter how hard I try I cannot seem to stop. I went without a fast food lunch today and ate a bowl of Cereal instead. I have about 25 dollars for the last two weeks and one preparation day so we will see. I bet that I will end up spending more on the personal card :(. Mission life is sometime hard, family. I wish I was in one of those foreign places where you can live really cheap. 

Tuesday was the first day of this new transfer so I left Madera and went to Reedly, which is an interesting place. I miss Madera but I am getting used to it. My new companion is Elder Reza who is a pretty good Elder and works really hard, but he does some things that really get on my nerves. I am not going to have as many dinners here with members, so it looks like I will have to spend more money in order to not starve.

Wednesday was the first regular full day here in Reedly and it was pretty hard. Things are very spread out here. We cover like 4 or 5 cities and we can only use 1,000 miles a month. That means that I will be biking again when I am in Reedly. Wooh. We also don't have a church building that is open here, the one got shut down because there weren't enough people from this town to sustain it.

Thursday I had exchanges which was a well needed relief. I went to Parlier to work with an Elder that is really cool named Elder Christensen. We had a good time teaching some pretty poor people and also some kind of rich people, haha. It was fun, his companion is . . . you will never guess who . . . Elder Cranford! That means I will be reunited with my worst nightmares of the CCM when I have to go on exchanges next. 

Friday, I was back in my area and we had a good day. We got to talk about some things and work some things out so I feel a lot better about my companionship now then I did at first. There are not a whole lot of members here and it is going to be hard to get people to church because they have to drive to a neighboring city called Selma to go to church.

Saturday also wasn't very fun. It was just a really long day, it is getting really hot and it is hard. We also didn't teach a ton of people that day and those we did were outside, so yeah it wasn't good.

Sunday was a really good day. I got to meet the branch and there are a lot of cool people here that I am sure that I will get to know better as I spend more time here. That night we worked in a little town that we cover called Orange Cove and we found some really cool people that we talked to. It was a good day.

Today has been a good day, I was cracking up about how much of a shurd Jacob is and how jacked he looked in Dad's Lumber Jack picture. I bought some stuff and felt bad about it, and now I am writing y'all. Anyways, I love and miss you all and hope you have a good week. I hope my package gets there safe as well.

Love,

Elder Murray

June 11th - Pictures

Hello all! 

David didn't really send a letter this week - just a short, few lines to those of us who wrote to him. He did send a whole load of pictures though, so I will post these.

June 4th - Yosemite

Hello Family!

This week has been a really cool week. As for the business, the pants will be fine as I am getting fat. It is just that those type of pants are stretchy, so the still fit really well. The rest of the pants I have, however, do not fit. Also I am writing this email on the way back from Yosemite on my smart phone at the moment, so I am not sure that it will be very long. 

Tuesday was a really great day. We had the last of the temple days for a little while, because we are going to have to go a lot less due to the Oakland Temple closing down and half of the Modesto mission merging with ours. The Fresno Temple is gonna be packed. We had a really great time though, and then afterward we went to Chick-fil-A which was a nice change since we don't have one of those in Madera. After that Elder Vargas had a doctor's appointment in Clovis, so we had to drive to that and he had to get his hip checked out. They said that everything Is okay with it, he might just have to do physical therapy.

Wednesday was a pretty good day as well. We taught in the morning and then had a missionary coordination meeting at night so it was pretty regular day for us. 

Thursday was very much a day dedicated to service. That morning we went to the Vineyard which was really fun because we ended up taking a bunch of "toxic" wood stakes to the dump to dispose of them. It was extremely stank there. Then after that we ended up going to a member's home to do her yard work, which brought me back in the day to the parks and rec job when I was using the leaf blower pack. That night we worked more. 

Friday was a really good day. I had exchanges with the Zone Leaders so I went with Elder Tapia, the one that you met on Skype and we had a very good time. We set a baptismal date for an investigator and taught a less active.

Saturday was good. My companion had a baptism to go to from his last area so he left around dinner to go up there for that. I ended up going with Elder Wyne and a member and we had a good time teaching together. It was a good night as well. 

Sunday was really crazy. I had a lot of investigators at church. It was really only two families but there was a whole bunch of kids. I felt like I had to be a Dad in church corralling and watching after all these kids and telling them where to go. It was really great to have so many people at church though, I just wish I could have done a little more with the parents who actually care about our message instead of the punk teenagers that are forced to come along, haha.

Today has been so amazing, Lucio took us up to Yosemite National Park because it is in our Zone, so we did a really cool hike pretty much through the spray of the waterfall. I think that biking may have allowed me to keep up my hiking skills so Mom and I will have to go hike when I get home. Hopefully I am not too acquainted to having a car by then. I picked up some souvenirs at the gift shop and I hope to send some things back in a package for Jacob's birthday coming up, plus something I got at a swap meet in Madera for Gabe way back in April. I guess I will see if I can figure out how.

So my week was pretty fantastic, I hope that you all have a fantastic week this week and I apologize in advance if I don't get the chance to send all of you personal emails this week. I love you all and remember that the Gospel is true. I spent a lot of time studying about the tree of life this week in Lehi's dream. The tree represents the love of God and all members of Christ's church have partook of the fruit. Don't forget the last step of the Gospel which is to endure to the end and keep partaking of that fruit. 

I'll send pictures next week since I have no time.

Love, 

Elder Murray