Elder Matthew McNamara - Excerpts from Recent Letters
Sept 2nd, 2013
Hello from Converse Texas!!!!!
What a long week it has been.....
The week of transfer calls is always a high strung week!!! On that note I will
break the news!!!! I will be staying with Elder Miller in the Woodlake Ward!!!
No Change!!!! That means that I will (at the end of this next transfer) have
been here in the Woodlake Ward for 5 transfers or 7 1/2 months!!! Such a long
time to be in an area!!!
September 9th, 2013
Hello from San Antonio Texas!!!!!!
the land of swat visiting your complex once a week for drug busts!!!! LOLOLOL
But seriously. We have heard from a
couple of our friends in the complex that the police and swat teams have showed
up a couple of times to our complex during the night because of things that
people are doing. It is quite interesting. We talked with our apartment person Elder
Upham and he is going to look and see if he can get us out of our lease
agreement and move us somewhere else. Don't know when or if that will even be
happening but it is still cool!!
On November 2nd and 3rd Gladys
Knight will be doing a 'Saints Unified Voices' Fireside!! It should be awesome!
She did this in 2011 up in Austin and I missed it, but heard a lot about it. So
hopefully next transfer I stay in San Antonio and somewhere close to where it
will happen so that I can go. She does this Fireside as a way for missionaries and
members to bring non-member friends and family and investigators to where they
can hear the gospel and her testimony. Should be a very inspirational Fireside.
I am looking forward to it!! Also
General Conference is coming up next month. So excited!!!
One of the members that I have been
working really close with in helping her come back to church is a girl named
Rae Anna. Well she told me that she likes to sing and that she has performed
before for a job. So I said hey lets do something in Sacrament Mtg and she was
like okay!! So on the 22nd of September I will be playing the 'Be Strong' song
while she sings. It is going to be awesome. I never thought I would get to
perform so much in Sacrament Meeting while on the mission!
September
16, 2013
Well hello from Converse Texas!!!
Hope ya'll are having an awesome
week!! Things have been going well down here. We are getting stoked for a
couple of things that will be happening this next couple of weeks!! First of
all this coming Sunday I will be performing 'Be Strong' with Rae Anna Smith.
She will be singing and I will be playing!! Feeling a little nervous because
this will be the first time that I have accompanied someone for an actual
performance!! But nevertheless it will be awesome!!!
Then the following week on the 28th
of September we will be having the baptism of James. James is super solid and
super excited. He has been meeting with missionaries since March but because of
getting moved around with the military and visiting his wife in South Carolina
who is pregnant he hasn't been able to get baptized yet. But he is still
pushing forward. His wife is a Less-Active member who has always had the dream
to go to the temple to get sealed but has been through 4 marriages. James is
her 5th marriage. Each one of the former husbands has backed out of getting
sealed with her. But James made the promise to go with her and started taking
the lessons. A couple lessons in we were talking about all of this and he made
the comment that everything the church teaches just makes so much sense,
"I don't see why her previous husbands ever had a problem with it. The
church is true!!" He is doing amazingly well!!! We are also teaching
his roommate Tyler who is an Instructor for the Navy in the Medical field
(James is as well). He at first was a little stand-offish but has become more
interested since our first meeting 4 weeks ago!! They both love church and the
things that are taught.
Then the next day on the 29th of
September is James's Confirmation as well as our Member Missionary Fireside. We
are having an interactive fireside with the members of the ward to try and help
get them pumped to do missionary work. We have spent a lot of time putting the
different training's together and we are still not quite done. There are four
missionaries in the Woodlake Ward now: Elder Me, Elder Miller, Elder Griffen,
and Elder Moss. The fireside is broken into four training's and each of us will
be giving each of them. The ward will be split into four groups and travel from
missionary to missionary getting the different training's. It should be a lot
of fun. Hopefully we get a good turnout.
Then......
The next weekend is General Conference!!!!!!!!!
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am super excited for General
Conference. I think that it is my favorite part of the year. This will be my
last General Conference as a missionary because I will be home for the next
one!! Crazy to think about. I was doing the math and I will be returning home
the week of February 20th. That means that on the 20th of this month (this
Friday) I will hit 19 months and have only 5 left. Also that correlates to 22
weeks left, and only 3 transfers after this one. That feels like no time at
all.
Well I think that is all from this
side of the dead forest (cause there are not a lot of trees here).
September 23, 2013
Hello from the Mighty TSAM!!!!!
What a crazy next couple of weeks it
is going to be. First and Foremost we are having a baptism on this Saturday the
28th of September at 1 pm. I am super excited!!! James asked me to be the one to
baptize him and this will be the first time that I have been in the water with
an investigator! We are getting everything finalized and coordinated, but
it should be awesome!!
Then on Sunday we are presenting our
Member Missionary Fireside. We have everything prepared for that and are
getting excited for the Woodlake Ward and the miracles that are going to happen
as they implement the things that they will learn. I am a little worried cause
they have been announcing it as a fireside that the members can bring their
friends to, but we are going to be talking directly to the members and what
they can do to be missionaries, so it might be a little awkward for them but it
will be awesome nonetheless!!!
Our performance went very well. I
was shaking so hard as I tried to play the piano but I didn't miss a single
note so I thank the Lord for that!
Other than that not much has been happening here in Woodlake. We have had a lot of rain this last week and the temperatures are starting to drop. This was the last summer of my mission and it was not even that bad. Last summer was much worse than this year.
Love,
Elder McNamara
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