Devon and Sierra

Mark and I had such a wonderful time visiting with Devon and Sierra while we were in Utah for Cayson's birth and blessing.

They are so cute.  Devon let me go ring shopping with him.  We picked out a beautiful large round cut stone for her.

Week 8 - ผมตื่นเต้นมากๆไปประเทศไทยอีกไม่นานและรับไช้คนไทย (I'm very excited to go to Thailand soon)

Hello,

I have one more week here at the MTC and then I'll be on my way to the place I've dreamed about going to since I was a kid. Anyways this week was a lot of fun and was filled with so much joy and excitement. First, on Wednesday we got the opportunity to host for the THIRD time which is a lot. It turns out we weren't actually supposed to host but the hosting job was for another district in our zone lol. On Thursday we taught one of our investigators here at the MTC and it was our last time teaching her. It was kinda sad to stop teaching her because she really enjoyed our lessons and she was by far my favorite investigator. We ended up singing let the holy spirit guide, and we bore our testimonies of how if she lets the spirit guide her in her life she has no need to be of anything that may come in the future! 

Well Friday was by far my favorite day here at the MTC for multiple reasons! 

First, during my class we got our new name tags that are in straight thai which is honestly the coolest thing ever. 

Second, I got my travel plans and my entire district freaked out. We will be leaving the MTC at 3:45am on Monday and will be on planes for pretty much the next two days until we land in Bangkok at 11:30 on Tuesday night. Bangkok is like 12 or 13 hours ahead so that's another reason why it'll take like 2 days. I haven't stopped thinking about Thailand this week since then and how sweet of an experience this will be. 

To top it off, we ended Friday with a Skype TRC where we Skype a member in Thailand and just talk with them and give them a short lesson. I'm so ready to go and I know regardless of how good I think I am at Thai, I'm going to get wrecked. 

This week I have made goals to work as hard as I did the first week when I was here. I was able to finish the first book of Nephi in Thai on Saturday which was pretty cool. I love reading the book of Mormon in Thai and I'm getting faster and faster each day at reading. Another goal I had this week was to learn 75 words a day which is a grind but its achievable if I ask for help from God and Jesus Christ. 

This is my last week here before I leave so if anyone has got any advice or words of wisdom before I head out, that would be greatly appreciated. I love you all and your great support for me. 

ผมหวังทุกคนมีอาทิตย์ที่ดี. ผมรู้ว่าพระผู้เป็นเจ้าอยากให้คุณมีความสึกไนชีวิตของคุณ. ผมรักคุณด้วยแต่ว่าผมพร้อมไปที่ประเทศไทยอีกไม่นาน.

(I hope everyone has a good week. I know that God wants you to be happy in your lives. I love you all but I'm ready to go to Thailand soon.)

I'm going to Bangkok, Thailand

Our district

Love 

Elder Lowe 

Week 7 - Only two more weeks until we are in Thailand

Only 2 weeks left till Thailand baby!!

Wow what a week! Definitely a tough week and such a humbling one.  So much happened this week so here we go:

First, on Tuesday night I had the privilege to hear from Elder Ballard here at the mtc. Right before that I had the opportunity to speak to a คนไทย or a Thai person and they were speaking so fast. I was getting so stressed and overwhelmed that I can't do this, but after hearing elder Ballard's message I knew everything was gonna be okay. He spoke about the humility, strength, and integrity of not only Joseph Smith but also his older brother Hyrum. They had so many worse tribulations and afflictions in their lives, so worrying about a language is honestly a little silly when you put it in perspective of what they had to endure in their lives.  

Well the next day we got 39 new missionaries in the zone and our dorm just got a whole lot louder and way more crowded. It was nice to see Elder (Tag) Wilson in my zone now. But, seeing where all the new missionaries are at with the language and how little they know was kind of a confidence booster and showed me how far I have come along. 

But this week in the lessons it became especially obvious that I don't get much of an opportunity to speak. Every time I want to say something my companion says something or he goes on for like 10 sentences and never gives me an opportunity to speak. But after watching the talk by Elder Holland about opening your mouth, I realized that I just need to open my mouth more and not be afraid to speak. I've been trying to open my mouth more this week and realize that I'm going to make mistakes but that's how you learn. Now, the lessons seem way more unified and and we both do a good job of helping each other out. 

Another reason it was a little bit of a longer week this week was because on Friday I got the opportunity to do a Skype TRC where I got to Skype an actual person that is in Thailand right now, and speak Thai with them and give them a lesson. It was so cool and I can already feel the love for these people. I can't believe I'll be in Thailand two weeks from now or at least on a plane going there :)

To try and start making better progress with the language, me and my companion did an English fast on Saturday and Monday this week. Meaning that we spoke only Thai  (no english) for both of those days. I gotta tell you it gets really tiring and my head was killing me by the end of the day, but I know that I improved so much because of it. I would say listening is my biggest weakness, but being forced to speak only Thai and listen to it all day really helped me develop better focus and listening skills. 

It's been a good week though and I feel way more confident now than I did before. We were able to teach an "investigator" over the last couple of weeks and invited her to get baptized recently and she said yes. The spirit was so strong and I realized that I can do this if I rely on the Lord and have faith and trust in him. 

Also it's been pretty cool to help out the new missionaries, and give them some good tips. Oh yeah, we also had a day where we put out this Thai mat in the middle of the classroom. It is very disrespectful to walk on the mat with shoes on so we took them off for that day lol. We were practicing our Thai squat that we will have to do all the time in Thailand according to our teachers.  สนุก. 

I hope that everyone had a great! Love you all!!

มีอาทิตย์ที่ดี

Have a good week

Learning to squat

Cayson's Blessing on Mark's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Mark Lowe:  Today is his birthday, but also and equally worth celebrating is Cayson's Blessing.  Cayson Mark Russell Murphey was blessed on 7/22/19.  His blessing was proclaimed at the home of Spencer and Alecia (Tate's sister and brother-in-law).  They are very close, and Spencer is a Bishop of another ward.  (The bishop in Tate and Jessica's ward refused to let them hold the baby blessing on this date - even though all of Tate's and Jessica's family are in town and only in town for this weekend).  WHAT????  Well, they worked around that and had Cayson blessed "in another ward".  Luckily a blessing does not have to be done in a church, so they chose to have it done at Spencer and Alecia's home.  Tate pronounced a beautiful blessing upon delicate Cayson.  He was only 11 days old when he received his blessing. 

Mark, Betsy, Jessica with Cayson, Tate, Marissa and Devon

It was such a special day for everyone that was there:  our family:  Mark, Betsy, Devon, Sierra, Marissa, Uncle Alan, Kayloni, and Makeyla.  

So happy to have all these people there:  Kayloni, Uncle Alan, Betsy and Mark, Jessica with Cayson, Tate, Marissa, Devon and Sierra, and Makayla.

Adoring baby Cayson while he screamed

Jessica with Cayson, Tate with Uncle Alan, Makayla (left) and Kayloni (right)

   

Grandma Betsy and Grandpa Mark with our adorable new family

With just Mark and I 

The beautiful new Murphey Family

Pure Joy

I feel so blessed to be a grandma to this precious baby boy.  He is more precious than anything I can think of.  He is so tender and dear coming straight from our Heavenly Father's presence.  I wanted to do something very special for him so I designed and sewed together his baby blessing outfit out of white linen.  I designed it especially for him.  I also made the comfortably wrapped baby blanket to wrap him in, and to keep him snuggled and warm.  Theses are talents God gave me that I desire to use as an expression of love - to use my God given talents to bless the life of another. 

          

Mark and Cayson

Mark feels especially humbled to have Cayson named after him and Cayson's other Grandpa, Russell Murphey.  Both are amazing, honorable, great men.  Cayson is so blessed to have such strong committed, good character men that hold and honor the priesthood as a father and grandfathers. 

He is so blessed to have both sets of Grandparents with him
Mark and Betsy Lowe
Russell and Debbie Murphey

Proud Parents of precious baby Cayson

Such a beautiful family

We were so happy that Uncle Alan, Mark's brother and his daughters, Kayloni and Makayla could come for the blessing and festivities.

Betsy was glad to have this time as another opportunity to get to know Sierra better.  Devon is head over heels in love with her and we were so happy she could come with him to this special family event.  It probably wont be long before she is a part of our growing family.

Cutest thing - Cooper and Devon matched.

Everyone adores baby Cayson

I can't get enough of this - What a blessed addition to our family.

All the Men with Tate and Cayson:  Combined Murphey and Lowe sides of the family

It was so nice of Spencer and Alecia to open their home for this special event.

Meeting Cayson Mark Russell Murphey

Mark traveled via car from Kentucky to Utah - stopping in Missouri and Wyoming on the way out.  He arrived in Utah Sunday mid day.

Betsy took a flight from Kentucky to Utah that had her arriving late in the evening.

On Saturday, Jessica and Tate found out that Cayson was jaundice and required UV light therapy.  She was very upset (as you can imagine).

Mark was able to arrive in Utah earlier than expected and went over to see Cayson Sunday afternoon.

Now, Betsy will be the very last one to see Cayson - that is except for Robert since he is on his mission.

Cayson is doing well being on the lamp.  He is such a wonderful baby.

Betsy arrived LATE - after midnight Sunday night, but since everyone was still up, Mark took her to their apartment to meet Cayson.  We stayed for another two hours taking care of him.  Then Betsy went to the hotel to get three hours of sleep while Mark stayed at their apartment to watch Cayson allowing Tate and Jessica to get some sleep.  Someone has to be with Cayson at all times while he is on the UV light bed.
Betsy came back to their apartment at 5:00 to relieve Mark.  Mark went home to sleep for a few hours.

It's amazing - I should have been exhausted but I was just thrilled to watch, hold, burp and cuddle with Cayson as much as I was allowed.

Week 6: Robert becomes an UNCLE

สวัสดีทุกคน (hey everyone), 

It's been another great week here at the missionary training center with a lot of excitement. First things first, my sister finally had her baby and I couldn't be more thrilled. I know she will be an awesome mom and I can't wait to meet my new nephew! The other cool thing on Wednesday was that I got to host this Laotian speaker going to California and he's in my zone. It was really cool cause Laotian and Thai are relatively similar so he was speaking a little to me on his first day. What a beast! 

Our lessons are going super well, but I  think these days are starting to feel kinda similar. It's a lot of work each day and at this point I kinda just wanna go to Thailand. Even though I know I'm inadequate with the language and probably won't understand most of what anyone says, I feel like I'm ready and super excited to head out in about 3 weeks! 

The other weeks I focused a lot on vocab and learning more words, but this week I focused on reading and tones and I'm actually getting pretty fast at reading. Like not super fast but I'm reading faster than anyone in my class with correct tones. This week I've gotten about 3 elders ask me to help them with reading every single day and it's really cool to be of service to them and teach them. And I really enjoy seeing the other elders in my district progress so much. 

This week me and my companion learned another hymn in thai. We learned the hymn "families can be together forever" and used it in our lesson! The spirit was so strong again and I didn't realize the power that hymns can have in bringing the spirit when teaching an investigator! ผมกตัญญูสำหรับครอบครัวของผม. I'm so grateful for my family. They are the biggest blessing to my life. One of the biggest reasons I'm serving a mission is because of this quote that I heard. It states, "a missionary is someone who leaves their family for 2 years so that others may be with their families for eternity." That's the point of what I'm doing: serving others and bringing them joy through this gospel so they can be with their family for all time and eternity!! 

This week was somewhat of a wakeup call. Yesterday at the beginning of the day it hit me on how I will be going to Thailand soon and how much I still don't know. I felt like I had forgotten all my Thai yesterday and just was stressed beyond anything I have felt in a long time. I think it's because I had a lack of faith and belief and didn't trust in God like I should. Another quote that I really enjoyed this week is, "two people can accomplish anything...if one of them is the Savior." With the Lord's help I know I can do all things so I don’t need to stress. If I do my part and work as hard as I physically can Christ will do the rest. 

Tomorrow will be a big changing point in the mission though. We are getting like 37 new missionaries in the zone. I think there are like 18 or 19 Thai missionaries coming in and 18 or 19 Cambodian speakers coming in. I'm so excited for a change here and to get to know some of the people that I might be serving with for the next two years! 

Thank you for all your support and for all those who keep in touch. I'm grateful for all of you. I love you all, I love this language, I love this gospel, and most importantly I love my heavenly father and his son, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! You are all in my prayers! 

ผมคิดถึงรวมทั้งหมด (I miss you all)

1) me staring off to Thailand 

2) sweet quote

3) me and the old zone leaders, elder Barron and Benteti

4) me and my comp

5) me and old zone leaders again

6) me and new Laotian missionary, Elder Williams 

5 Attachments

Week 6: Photos

1) me staring off to Thailand

2) sweet quote

3) me and the old Zone Leaders, elder Barron and Benteti

4) me and my comp

5) me and old Zone Leaders again

6) me and new Laotian missionary, Elder Williams

5 Attachments

Betsy Lowe

12:50 PM (0 minutes ago)

to Robert

Dear Robert,

It's so great to hear from you.  I can't believe I am less than 5 
miles from you but it's as if  you are already in Thailand to me.

It sounds like you had a super week - both spiritually but also 
with friends and with the  language!  That's awesome.  When
this new group of missionaries arrive will they mix up  companions
or do you think you will have the same companion the whole time
you are in the MTC?

When Dad and I were first married we served a mission in the South 
East Asian Branch - dad was a counselor in the presidency and
translated for the branch president; I served with the Young Women.  
We served in the branch for two years. We met and loved so many
Thai, Loa, Moung, Cambodian and Vietnamese people.  They were 
all refugees fleeing their war torn countries from tyrants and corrupt
governments that killed innocent people.  I learned to love so much -
give so much and be completely unselfish while serving in that branch.  
I would have done anything for any of my girls and dad and I loved the
men and women of the branch.   I am still very close to many of the
young women.  It's so wonderful to see them grow up and grow in the
gospel.  When I went back to VA in June I visited with some of them.  
Right now, one of my Beehives (then) is now serving in Young
Womens and told me how grateful she was for our love and support.  
She was the only member in her family.  I picked her up for church
every Sunday even though it was out of the way.  She is now married
in the temple with three beautiful children and pregnant with number 4.  
You now have that same opportunity to show  people in Thailand
Christ unconditional love for them.

Thailand is beautiful - even the areas that don't have much money  
not because of the physical beauty (which is there too) but because
most people have great love in their hearts.  They want to give their
children a good life just like we do, and they work very hard to do all
that they can.  You, too have a very strong work ethic.  You will be 
able to connect with them on so many levels.  :)

Well, the weather in Provo is crazy - last night there was a 
violent thunderstorm but today the weather is beautiful.  

Dad and I take either 3 or 5 hour shifts taking care of Cayson so 
Jessica and Tate can sleep through the night.  Jessica has to get
up to sleep but we at least can burp him and get back to sleep.  
We divide it up so that one of us can get a few hours sleep and then
trade off.  

I hope you are well.  If there is anything you need, please let us 
know so we can have it delivered to you while we are right here!

What is your favorite treat of all - I will have that delivered tomorrow!!!!!  
Please tell me - It will be something I can do to share my love for you.  

Have a wonderful day

Hugs and kisses

Mom

Welcome Baby Cayson

WELCOME BABY CAYSON MARK RUSSELL MURPHEY

Sunday was Jessica's due date, but the sweet baby did not come :(.  We all kinda expected that he would not arrive on his due date.

The doctor said that if the baby did not come by Tuesday she would have Jessica come to the hospital to start a soft induction.  A soft induction is when they give the mother medicine to loosen the uterus walls, but not pitocin to start contractions.  It gives the mother's body an opportunity to go into labor on its own - just with a little nudge.

They gave Jessica the medicine around midnight (not exact); by morning she was in labor.  Tate was with her the whole time. The contractions were getting very strong,  so she had an epidural which made labor much more bearable.  Soon she was completely dilated and ready to push.

At 11:35 AM, Jessica delivered a healthy baby BOY.  He was 9 pounds 7 ounces and 20 and a quarter inches long.  He was a big baby!  Jessica and Tate are parents to this amazing child that just left the pre-existence.



Cayson Mark Russell Murphey was born.  Jessica and Tate were smitten with love immediately.  Tate and Jessica enjoyed some time alone with Cayson before making phone calls to everyone.



Mark and I were still back in Kentucky when Cayson was born.  We were so excited to hear the news.  We were both at our work places (Mark at Flex, Betsy at the Four Points by Sheraton).  What a joyous day!!!!  Thanks to technology we were able to see Jessica, Tate and Cayson via Facetime/Skype.  He is soooo precious.

I am a grandma - Mark is a grandpa!  We are thrilled all the way around!!

We couldn't make travel arrangements until we knew when he would arrive.  Mark left on Friday to drive the red Toyota Corolla out for the kids at BYU.  Betsy flew out on Sunday.  We wanted to give Jessica and Tate their desired "personal" time with Cayson before family came.

Although, Marissa, Devon, and Tate's mom Debbie all got to see Cayson in the hospital while we were not there.  Robert is already in the MTC and thus can not see Cayson either.

Cayson is such a beautiful and precious baby.