Hermana Murphy: WE ARE SMALL IN NUMBERS BUT HUGE IN SPIRIT AND POTENTIAL: President Smart

hello!!!!!!!!! this week was a GOOD ONE! on tuesday, we went back to my old stomping grounds, SAN GERMAN! i had a plan to contact all of my recent converts and old investigators and NO ONE WAS HOME :-) haha except we saw some members and Johanna (my first baptism) and tania (my old investigator)! they're both doing awesome. we put tania on DATE! we walked in and she was SOOO HAPPY to see me. hehe. and we talked about life after the hurricane and she told hermana peterson "you know, i was supposed to be baptized the saturday after maria" and then we were like "well when is your baptism going to be?'" and then she said "when can it be?" so YEAH. we still have to work on a couple of the commandments but she still has all the desire to be baptized. YAYY!!!!!! we're going back to san german this week to find some more of my PEOPLE.

on wednesday we had zone conference!!!!! slash mission conference. we had to drive to caguas, which was about a 2 hour drive. good thing it was on the 31st because that was a TON of miles. haha. but it was amazing. they talked A LOT about working with members. A LOT. and i realized something. my whole mission to this point, ive been working to try to make it easy on the members and make it so they dont have to do anything, because i dont really like asking people for help or making it an inconvenience for them. but thats not how it should be!! president smart said that we have to work with the members in a way that if we ever had to leave again, they could still function and work without us. we have to train them and help them to be missionaries! and that really helped me realize that i need to be relying more on the members. this is a VERY different mission than it was when we left, and thats good! we are learning more and more to work with the members. before, we just walked around all day from 12-9 but now, we get RIDES from members! and get members in our lessons! so good. haha.

we have had a TON of member support this week. we had an hermana come out with us for FIVE HOURS on saturday. FIVE!!!!! she just kept saying "a donde vamos?" after every appointment. haha. we also went to the mayaguez ward yesterday and its POPPING. the whole relief sociey presidency is under the age of 25 and 2 of them are converts of less than 3 years. there are multiple people that have come to church that havent heard the missionary discussions. after church, we just went out with one of the councillors for a couple hours to visit less actives. it was awesome. we've been getting so much support from the 2 cabo rojo wards and mayaguez. we still gotta work with san german. but weve gotten a good number of references and lots of members helping us.

one of the things we are facing is lots of people that love to go to church that 1) arent married or 2) dont want to commit to baptism. weve contacted some of the missionaries old investigators that have gone to church a TON and love it but arent married. so we have to work on that. looks like we'll have a lot of weddings coming up!! haha.

anyways, hermana peterson and i are still learning on how to work our huge area. its a challenge but its also fun! its like whitewashing, but funner, i imagine... haha.

well i dont know what else to say except that the mission is awesome!

have a good week!!!

love

hermana MURPHY

1. zone conference!

2. zone conference part 2!

3. zone conference part 3! THE MAYAGUEZ ZONE. straight POWER right here.

4. here's a pretty view

5. here's me with a pretty rainbow!!!