Elder Will Murdoch-Ft. Worth Texas Mission

Fish Heads in the bucket Roly-poly fish-heads: The details of how I got into such a mess are unimportant, needless to say. We ate some intestine destroying tacos for dinner because we thought a certain group of people were not going to uphold their promise to feed us fufu, or to meet with us.  We were dead wrong and the entire family was poised to feed us the moment we walked in the door. We sat down and the husband changed whatever Netflix show he was watching to Kinyarwandan gospel music. The wife and daughters set freshly made fufu down before us with 3 meat options: beef, chicken and fish. Then one of the daughters came over with a large basin, soap, and an empty pitcher of water. Not about to let anyone wash his feet Elder Alleman quickly shot his hands out and the girl washed our hands. Elder Bugingo later informed us that it was a pretty common practice to do that among refugees from Congo  The father said like a 2 second prayer and then I sat ...

Dinner at Penas Level 10 Dark Wizard: On Friday  it was h-o-t hot, about 101 degrees at  noon . We were suffering even in our air conditioned car. There was absolutely no one crazy enough to be outside so we decided to go check up on one of our investigators who has been struggling with a few things lately.  The lesson was nothing noteworthy, it's hard to try and help someone when they don't want to listen to you. So we made little progress. He [our investigator] is really struggling with peer pressure, he ha friends who always ask us for money and booze, and when we say no one of them shrieks in a Kinyarwanda/English Creole about how we are demons or how we use magic. Not the most Spiritually conducive crowd on the block. We finished the lesson and stepped out into the blistering heat, then this ratty suburban drifted around the corner and by drift, I mean took the turn into the parking lot too sharp and ran over the curb and brushed into the fence pushing in t...

Eat mor chikin: I recall a few years back for homecoming seeing half a chicken (Amish raised on the menu and when I ordered it I couldn't finish because Half of a chicken is actually like a lot of food. Ever since then it's been pretty apparent that I have a small stomach.  As "African Elders" we have an in with everyone from the continent even if they are from places like Nigeria, Liberia, or Ghana where they speak English. We have a member on the Stake High-council from Ghana who likes us because we teach Africans so he invited us to his home for dinner.  He and his family were super nice and when we sat down for dinner we were told we were being fed African style chicken and rice. The chicken was in a big pan, sitting in broth, covered with peppers so you couldn't really see it. I saw Elder Alleman pull a single drumstick out of the broth so I was deceived into thinking I coukjd get away with eating small portions. I loaded up my plate with rice and salad...

Nepalese Miracle: "I feel like we're running in place," I said to Elder Alleman on a rainy Friday morning, "we go all over the place and talk to so many people and yet, I feel like we aren't doing anything."  We had spent that morning in a typical Texas torrent walking through apartment complex after apartment complex trying to find people that hadn't been contacted in years. They were few and far between and literally every person we had spoken with that morning spoke Kinyarwanda or Sudanese or they only spoke Swahili (we are not good at Swahili) and so we were incapable of teaching them. The week itself had not been great either. We had planned to set a lot of baptismal dates and every person we had planned for decided to stop progressing all at once. We had expressed several times that we felt like we weren't doing enough. We were a little discouraged.  The rest of the day was looking pretty grim too. We had a lesson with a "professi...

At the bottom of the bottle: Saturday was super busy, we had started our day with 3 back to back lessons with Brenhamists which are always "exciting." Then, we had a lesson where a member  we were with just spoke to the investigator in Lingala the whole time and it was really cool to see the investigators heart softened. We had 2 other "meh" lessons on doorsteps because we were teaching women and we didn't have a 3rd male with us. Finally,  around 8:00pm we were pulling into our last lesson before quittin' time.  We were somewhat nervous because this particular investigator thinks that joy is found at the bottom of the bottle and it wouldn't be the first time we found him wasted in the parking lot. We'll call him A. Since A has a drinking problem he doesn't want to work, mostly he just wants to drink all day because whenever he's sober he's depressed. Since he doesn't work he has no income so he can't rent an apartment. H...

Clement Sorry this is so short this week but everything got deleted and I didn't have time to retype it  Twerking Yesterday, we were walking through a seedyish apartment complex to an investigators. This is a complex where I have:  Gotten a popcorn maker by a middle aged reformed drug addict, and then had a family friendly conversation about church. Then, another time I got yelled at by a black out drunk guy and gave a card to another drunk guy watching him. And of course another time, I got preached to by a Vietnamese guy.   Anyway I was leading us to this apartment when these 2 attractive black girls walked out of an apartment right ahead of us and started walking in the same direction we were walking towards the parking lot.  Since I was leading I initiated the conversation, "Hey, can I give you a card?" The girl right in front of me awkwardly, kindly accepted a card but the girl a few feet in front of her called out, "Is that your number...

African visions: I'll let you in on a little secret: "I had a vision," is something we hear at least once a week. The first time I heard it I was so surprised and excited the entire time it was being explained (even though it was all in French and I needed it to be translated) I sat on the edge of my seat. But then it kept happening and I started losing interest.  Here's an example of a typical "African vision": I was 3 years old in my vision. And then, suddenly, I was an adult  eating a raw pumpkin in a corn field. Then, my pumpkin disappeared and I walked through the cornfield until I found a cake. And I ate the cake and I was really happy because it was vanilla flavored and that's my favorite flavor, like, I really really like vanilla. Especially when there's frosting in the middle. I also like carrot cake. Chocolate cake however, is too sweet for me. Anyway, I was eating this vanilla cake and I was so happy and my hands were covered in ...