Well, the first transfer is done and over. That was quick, but I´ve heard it just gets faster from here. I guess that´s good and bad. Good cause I can´t wait to get home to my family, but bad because I want to work here as long as possible and don´t want it to get over soon. I´m still in Renca 1, the same sector. I was hoping Elder Rigby could stay with me, and he was pretty sure that we both were going to stay. But we got the call last night, and turns out that he left for a totally different zone (although the same one as one of my MTC companions) and I´m staying here with a new Elder. Elder Nicolas is from Texas, and I´m excited to work with him.

This week was mediocre. We dropped some more people, and found some, etc. We only have 2 with a baptismal date now, and one is sure. But I´m learning a lot, and we´ll see how it goes with Elder Nicolas. To be honest, when I first learned that Elder Rigby was leaving and me staying, I thought, "I can´t do this. I´m not ready to be the senior companion, there´s still so many things I need to know." But I know that it is a calling from the Lord, and if he wants me to do it, then he knows I can, and I too know that I can. It will be difficult, but it should help me to learn and grow more.

This week we visited a recent convert/less-active, named Jon Carlos. He is 12 years old and a little shy but very nice. The best thing for me about the visit was when Elder Rigby asked about the missionaries who taught and baptised him. His face lit up like Steven´s at Christmas as he exclaimed "Oh! Elder Moser! And Elder Rich!" He still remembers them. It made me remember something I learned in the MTC: The people I baptized will never forget me. It made me realiz that I´m not just teaching people the gospel; I´m helping them change their lives forever, for the best, and for this they´ll always remember me. It was kind of a stop-and-pause moment for me.

We found Elva and Karla. We had dropped them because they missed a few appointments. But the other day we stopped by because two other plans had failed. And they were there! They said that they had wanted to get ahold of us but didn´t have our phone number and didn´t know how else to contact us. That night we went to the church with them, and Karla, who is 16, participated in Mutual, and we taught Elva about the Book of Mormon, and gave her a copy. And they committed to church Sunday. But they weren´t there. So we stopped by their house last night. Turns out Saturday night Elva had been with her mom and got home late and in the morning had a huge headache and so couldn´t go. Karla had wanted to but not without her mom. We´re going to teach them tomorrow. There´s been a problem with Elva´s husband because he doesn´t want us to teach them. But we have a movie called Together Forever about eternal families. Last night we stopped by to watch it with them all, including the husband. But Elva didn´t think he would let us, so we gave it to her and she promised to watch it with him. Tomorrow we´re going to see how it went. We´re sure that if he watched it, he will have felt the Spirit and hopefully want to learn more. Or at least let Elva and Karla learn more. We´ll see how that goes.

Things are going great. I´m picking up on the language. I can speak really well, (Elder Nicolas was really surprised, he said he couldn´t speak this well for 3 transfers) and the understanding is getting better as well.

Well, I think that´s about it for this week. And I´m about out of time. Time to go shop for the week. Have a great week! Love you all!

Elder Murdoch