love, serve, teach: Letter October 27, 2014

Dear Family,

Thanks so much for the email!! And for the letters!! I loved getting a letter from each of you!!! :) I loved hearing how every person is doing. My favorite things to get in the mail are definitely, hands down individual letters from each of the kids and Mommy and Dad, because I think of each of you individually and miss you so much. The letters make me feel like I am talking directly to each of the kids - to Hannah, Isaac, Jacob, Adam, and Peter. I also loved the drawings, and Jacob's hilarious story he wrote :D Haha, and Isaac, I don't understand what you wrote in French! But did you know in the gospel library app on Mommy's phone you could download the Book of Mormon in French?? I downloaded it after your letter to me, and it was fun to look at it. :) I'm sorry Hannah is still having a rough time with her teachers. That is soooo sad.... ugh! It is the worst when people choose to believe misguided, false, twisted information. We get that all the time as missionaries. It's so frustrating, but really all you can do is share your testimony and not get into an argument about it. I don't know how that relates with falsehoods about the founding fathers, but way to go for defending them!

That's so funny you got another pig!! Wow!! Haha, I love reading about the adventures with animals and everything. That's so cute Adam loves playing and learning about the sheep. And Virginia is soooo beautiful!! I love the leaves, and the bigfoot pictures of course haha :D It sounds like things are going so well! And I LOVE the felt my little pony!! That's the cutest thing I've ever seen!!! Good job teaching class, too. That is always so nerve-wracking... sometimes a video is perfect. :)

As for me, this week has been fantastic! And SO busy again!! I don't know where the time goes. We had alot of really great lessons, great learning experiences... I don't even know where to start.

L is doing awesome! She is now on her 11th day of not smoking. It has been so fun teaching her. She is seriously the sweetest lady I have ever met. We taught her about forgiveness this past week, and had a really powerful lesson. I shared the experience of Corrie ten Boom (if you've never heard it, look it up and read the book. It literally changed my life, during high school). She is doing well and is so excited to be baptized! She told us she wants to come with us to go to the park and talk with everyone about Jesus. She wants to invite and bring everyone to church, and then she told us we can take it from there. :D Haha, I just love her. She is amazing!!

We had zone interviews this past week. Something happened and Pres T had to leave early, so we're having our interviews with him on Friday. But we had to give trainings... it was so scary again haha. I trained on teaching to understanding. How we are sowing seeds of faith every time we teach, but we need to make sure we're sowing that seed in deep soil. Like the parable of the sower teaches us. One of the most important ways we can do that is teaching to their understanding. It was pretty fun! I love our zone. We had a great time learning together. After interviews we just sat and talked with Sister T, our mission president's wife, for about an hour or more. She is soooooo incredible. We just talked with her about life, companionships, the things we're learning and how it's preparing us for our future... I love her. Sitting next to her, she had so much light in her eyes and in her countenance, and she has so much wisdom! I wished I could just absorb it all. I felt like I was sitting next to a general authority or something. I am so, so grateful for President and Sister T. I love them. I needed them to teach me, and I have learned so much from them. That is one of the best parts of being a missionary, is your mission president and his wife. Sister T told us to every time we feel prompted or have a thought that something is preparing us for the future, we need to write it down so we can look back and remember. That's something I have been doing, but I made a greater commitment to do it more, and look for those opportunities. I just love Sister T!!

We learned alot about online work during interviews! Elder B, the one who almost got stabbed in our ward in PHX haha, is now the tech elder, so he gave this awesome training. In it there was such a cool quote from Elder Ezra T. Benson, way back in the 80s or so, telling us in general conference that someday missionaries would have devices they could hold in their hands and in their pockets, to share the gospel with the world, and that's how the work would spread to all nations. It was the most powerful quote!!! It is a direct prophesy that has been fulfilled with us using ipads and facebook!! Isn't that amazing?? Prophets truly do receive revelation from God. They saw our day, they saw us, and they were so excited for this time! It is the best time to be a Latter Day Saint, and to be a missionary!! We are so privileged and blessed! And we need to use these tools the best we can to help fulfill Heavenly Father's purpose.

We went on exchanges this last week, and a new missionary named Hermana M came into our area to be with me for a day. It was so fun!! It was really cool, we pray alot about who we should go with, and I know we were prompted to have her come with me into our area for a reason. We had the most amazing exchange. She is the sweetest sister, and I just loved serving with her. She's the one I posted a video of me singing with on facebook.

We did the service project again, and we saw a field mouse! It was so cute! We also saw a leopard gecko!!! That was super cool!! And I also tried a fresh fig! It was delicious :) Did you know figs are normally pollinated by wasps? So when you buy a fig from the store and eat it, it has thousands of dead baby wasps in it?? Gross huh?? But the one we ate isn't pollinated by wasps, so it was fine. It was actually delicious!! I don't like fig newtons, but I loved fresh figs! :)

Things have been going well with Sister D. I'm learning so much from her, and I just love her. :) Transfers are next week, so next Monday I'll know if I'm being transferred. I have a feeling I'm going to stay, and Sis D will leave... she's been here for 8 months! Crazy huh??

We also had the coolest experience this past week!! So we started teaching a less active girl named G whose going to ASU. She grew up in the church, but went less active, and kind of believes the church is true, but believes it because of the good morals and her parents. She has alot of doubts and questions, and wants to know for herself if it's true. So we taught her this past week on exchanges. We had planned to teach the Restoration, but it ended up being this powerful lesson about prayer and scripture study, and how those build our faith. It was sooo powerful!! The Spirit was so strong, and I know it was guiding the lesson. It strengthened my testimony, and I could tell she was feeling it too. It was so powerful! Well, she came to church Sunday, and it's so funny how everything was perfectly for her! Before church she told me her favorite hymn was I am a child of God. Well, guess what hymn they played in sacrament meeting? And guess which hymn one of the speakers talked about? :) And then we went to Sunday school, and this incredible lady taught. She's a convert from New Jersey, and is INCREDIBLE. Well, the whole lesson was on how studying the scriptures is essential to gaining a personal testimony. It was literally perfect for G! She taught in a fun way, she has the gangsta sass of New Jersey and South Phoenix, but she is also super intelligent and incredible and taught with the Spirit so strongly. It was so cool!! So that was a super cool miracle this week :)

Another miracle is that we are literally sooooo busy.... like, each day is nonstop. Literally. So our WMLs in both wards had asked us to teach gospel principles. So we were supposed to teach both Sunday school lessons in two different wards, on two different chapters in the book. It was insane! We had literally no time to prepare. So at church we were stressing so much about it! Because we were just too busy, with too many other important things for our investigators, interviews, trainings, etc. to prepare. Well, we got to our first ward, and found out the lady was going to teach the class instead! The New Jersey lady! And then the next ward had the primary program, so we only had to teach for about twenty minutes. It was a tender mercy. I am not condoning slacking on preparing for things the Lord asks us to do, not at all! But I know He knows when we are so overloaded, and He mercifully made it so that we didn't have to worry about teaching those days. It was such a tender mercy. :)

We also had two really funny moments...

So first of all! Tuesday night we were driving, and one of the ghetto birds (aka the cop helicopters) was shining a spotlight in our neighborhood looking for someone!! We were driving home, and it was so scary!! The copter was following us, and shining the spotlight everywhere. Well we got home and were so scared! And the copter shined his spotlight in our backyard!! Haha, we were freaking out. It was so scary!!!

The Hawaiian sister in our apt also had a scary experience! So they were walking along, and they saw these kids run out of a store, and had a bunch of beer cans fall out of this bag. They knew they were stealing beer, so they told the store owners, and they said they knew. so for some reason they decided to follow the kids... so they did, and asked why they stole the beer. Well, it was in this trailer park, and a ton of these huge scary men came out of the trailers threateningly. So the sisters both left, and called the police. But now their not allowed to proselyte in that area for a while, because the people will be looking for them, because they'll know they called the cops on them. Crazy huh??? South Phoenix is crazy... I don't know why they followed them, haha. But theyre awesome Hermanas. And it worked out. :)

We also had the funniest experience on Sunday!! Oh man! So we were sitting in the foyer, and there was this really old Hispanic man in great shape. He started talking with us... and we thought he was just really nice. But then he started telling us that my ancestors are British, and Sister D' are Native American. He knew that because he could hear it in our voices, and also because he could hear the voices of our ancestors telling him that we were descended from them. He then told us that the ancestors wanted us to research them, and that Sister D ancestors came from Delaware, and that he saw beams of light. He THEN told us that he was one of the Three Nephites, sent here to talk to us, because we are angels sent from God. He told us he was in a transfigured form, but that one day we would meet him and know who he was, and how privileged we were that we were able to meet him. Hahahaha isn't that crazy??? It started off this super sweet conversation, and then.... well.... yeah hahahaha. It was so funny!! #phoenixiscrazy

Well, I think that's it for this week! It's been awesome. :) I LOVE my mission. I love it so, so much. I can't believe it's November this week! Almost my year mark. It goes too fast!

I love you guys! Hope you have a fantastic week :) Thanks so much for sending stamps too!

I love you all!

con amor,

Sister Whitney Morris

They drink coke floats instead of root beer floats :) It's pretty good!