Elder Will Murdoch-Ft. Worth Texas Mission

The Best Day Ever: Saturday was the best day ever. Of all the days of my mission and possibly my life that was the one I loved the most. Because of the awkwardness of my hands (Ether 12:24) I'm going to have trouble explaining it, please bear with me. The week had been lame. We were getting at each other's throats and we were low on miles. After resolving our differences Friday night we realized we couldnt be driving all around DFW until Wednesday we had about 33 miles left per day. We had a lesson with Angelique and decided that was the most important thing to do so our plan until dinner was to tract out her entire complex after her lesson. We don't really tract because Africans just kind of mix with every one else and so it's not an effective way of finding them but we didn't have much of a choice. We showed up at Angelique's around 1pm we knocked and when she answered her smile turned into a frown. "Where's your third guy?" She asked, ...

Pick-up sticks: We got a mysterious text from our Zone Leaders Monday night that pretty much demanded we come to service with them for one of their members, after everyone complied they sent out a mysterious follow up text for further guidance: "Spray your jeans with permethrin tonight."  We did so and the next day we showed up the next morning with our district leader and no one else was there. The lady who we were doing the service for was there at first but had to go drop her kids off somewhere.  We had no idea what we were supposed to do so we just sat there. While we waited, we saw that the Mid-Cities Baptist Church had a "prayer garden" next door.  I knew "prayer garden" wasn't a Biblical term so we set out to see what it was. It was actually really lame, there was a gazebo and a few water features with some bored looking cherub statues attached to them. There were some suits of armor that I assume were for really skinny mi...

Joseph Smith look alikes at Zone Conference Kunama: A Miracle in Statistics: On Saturday I was on exchange with Elder Crane in my own area. The day had not gone as planned mostly because we hadn't properly planned it. All of our set lessons had fallen through and I felt like we weren't being effective enough. Our Zone Leaders called us and wanted to do a pass-off lesson with a guy in a nearby complex   in 5 minutes . We showed up and waited in the car for about 5 minutes but it soon became apparent that the Zone Leaders would not be here for a while. Trying to make the most of our waiting time we got out and just started walking along a road in this apartment complex, at first the only person out was an older Hispanic lady who accepted a card, said, "No English" and then hobbled off.  I was getting ready to start knocking every door on one building in particular when someone a few feet in front of us started revving their parked Nissan Altima so we walke...

False Doctrine Pizza Party: We got this referral a few weeks ago from one of our  active  members about 2 potential investigators living with one of our less active members. The first time we went with the former mentioned member, the second time we went alone and set a date with the woman. She had never been baptized before which was great because we got to bypass the 99 lessons that end in "je suis deja baptisé." But it also has it's cons where they don't really care about the church, or doctrine or enduring to the end. All they want is to be baptized, and they aren't really particular about who does it. This woman also has like 3 or 4 kids that she wants to get baptized too.  We showed up on Saturday to teach them the plan of Salvation and it was just the woman (we'll call her Nancy) and the man (we'll call him Roi) we were just about to start with an opening prayer when in walked an army of children with a lone adult carrying some pizza...

The Phone Call: Just a couple of weeks ago we met this awesome new Investigator, they're super nice and really interested in the gospel. We told them that if they ever needed help with anything to call us which has kind of just become a formality instead of an actual promise to help. We always say, "Do you need help with anything?" And the classic responses are usually, "No, no I'm good." Or "Yes, can you pay my rent for the next few months?"  After district meeting on Wednesday though, we saw we had 2 missed calls and 3 texts from our investigator and of course the texts were as vague and formal and concerning as possible thanks to Google Translate: "Hello my beloved Elders. Help." "I need me help" "Help." We called him and he asked that we come to his house immediately without telling us why. Based off of the last few times this kind of thing had happened I was anticipating either helping him read legal doc...