October 5, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Family,

Thanks so  much for the emails! That was the best General Conference ever!! It was so amazing. :) It sounds so fun having everyone over! I loved the pictures, especially of Charlotte, and the cute wool sheep!!! And the paintings! I actually thought of that while watching, if I was home I would be with Mommy oil painting :) Haha, but don't worry, there is no place I would rather be then right here, right now. :) I'm so glad Ed. is finding support from you and the branch. He is amazing !I'll keep him in my prayers. That sounds so hard with Hannah's history teachers too... ugh! Way to be for standing up for truth. I loved Jacob's quote, truth has been spoken... and the creepy animal farm meme haha... so weird! 

Oh, I'm SO SORRY I didn't send Adam a bday card yet!! I was going to, but I ran out of stamps. Speaking of which, could you please send me some stamps? :) And also, we're not allowed to have burned cds, so in preparation for Cmas I was wondering if you could send me some Christ centered Cmas cds before the season starts? :) Let Adam know I LOVE him, and I'm glad he had a great birthday! And that there will be a letter coming his way! Also, before I forget, for a Cmas present I would love some Native American jewelry :) Like simple torquoies necklace or something... if it's from AZ, all the better :) Haha.

Well, as for me, this week has been the busiest yet of my entire mission!! Oh my goodness! South Phoenix is a great area, and I absolutely love it. Alot of the people live in poverty conditions, especially some of the people we are teaching, which is so humbling. I can't imagine living and having the struggles they struggle with each day. Elder Holland's talk really touched me as I've served here in Phoenix. It's opened my eyes to alot. But the things I LOVE are how amazing the people are!! Oh, I love the people so much! They are so humble, and so kind, and so willing to give anything. It was humbling to have lunch on the reservation. I didn't actually serve there, but our zone leaders did, and they had some crazy stories. It's true, they are under different law enforcement jurisdiction, so sometimes its a bit lawless. But the people we ate with were so, so kind, and their kids had the happiest smiles and just loved talking with us. I just love serving here.  Being a sister training leader is a new experience! We had a huge leadership meeting, which was really humbling this week. Something I'm learning as serving as a sister training leader is that leadership positions really mean nothing. They are simply an opportunity to love, to serve, and to give greater sacrifice to help the Lord. It's also an opportunity to use our unique gifts to help others. But it's really not about us at all. There are millions of sister missionaries who could be in the same spot I am, giving the same service. For some reason the Lord just wants me to serve in that spot in His kingdom right now. It's exciting, because we mainly work with the zone leaders alot. We go on exchanges with the other sisters in the zone, and help build them up. We give trainings... this Tuesday is zone meeting, so Sister D and I have to train for 45 minutes. It's stressful, and has taken alot of preparation, but we're also really excited now! We're going to be talking about teaching in member's homes and the importance of street contacting. It's going to be a really fun training! We have some really fun role plays planned, and it's going to be awesome! I'm super excited! :D For the rest of our district meetings on Tuesdays, we'll just give a brief 10 minute training at the beginning. So it's nothing too scary. Mostly, it's a lot of fun.  We also just help decide and plan the training for our zones, and help with transfer suggestions. It's been great so far!

Sister D is awesome. She's really sassy, and just says things how it is. I'm still learning to not be so sensitive to things, which I think is a good thing. :) Just learning not to take offense easily. But she's so much fun! She's a fantastic teacher, and I'm learning alot from her. One thing I'm struggling with is that one of my strengths I think is being a really efficient, diligent worker. I just want to work hard, all the time, and not waste time. Sometimes she's a bit slower paced, which is teaching me patience, and I help her learn greater diligence. So we're hopefully learning from eachother. :) Haha, but overall our companionship is awesome! I'm really happy and it's going to be a great transfer. 

We've had some great experiences this week! We teach alot of people with handicaps, or who are disabled. One lady we teach is in a mental health hospital. We go and teach her, and it's basically a hospital room - there's another sick lady on the other side of a curtain in her room, and it's really an interesting experience. We'll be teaching C, and her roommate will be rambling or start yelling in Spanish. It's a very different teaching environment. But C is so sweet. She's had so many hard trials, but her greatest desire right now is to quit smoking so she can be baptized again. (she's an excommunicated member.) We also started teaching a really cool lady named B! She is actually a worker in a different mental clinic, so we teach her and there are some interesting people walking around... but she is amazing! She moved here from Africa a few months ago, and she LOVES the Book of Mormon. She read all the way to Alma in 1 week! She told us she wants to be like Nephi, and in her closing prayer she prayed that she could learn to be like him. It was so cool!! So we're excited to be teaching her!! 

It has been nonstop teaching in two wards! With the leadership meetings and stuff, we have barely had time to just meet the main people we're teaching... it has been soooo busy. But I absolutely love it. It's stressful, but it's awesome! MLC - the missionary leadership meeting - was so awesome! We received alot of training. It's so funny though, just the sister training leaders and the zone leaders of each zone attend. So we dressed up all nice, and were just getting ready to leave, when the zone leaders called us... they asked "Hey! What are you sisters wearing?" We told them, and then they told us that we needed to all match to show zone unity...so I had five minutes to change into a totally new outfit haha. It was so crazy! I didn't have anything that matched Sister D, so we frantically went through the other sister's clothes. I ended up borrowing Sister F's skirt - a polynesian sister who I LOVE, but her skirt was like a potato bag on me hahaha. So we safety pinned it, and it all ended up nice.. all within 5 minutes! It was a crazy morning :D Next time the elders promised to give us more notice haha. On top of that, we were in such a rush to get out the door, I accidentally grabbed the other sister's phone instead of ours.... haha woops! So that made for an interesting day! 

We also had the funniest teaching experience! So L is a lady we're teaching who is SO AWESOME! I love her!! She is so, so sweet. She lives in this tiny, tiny house, that is basically outside because the door just has bars. Well, she wants to be baptized but she has to quit smoking. So we made tons of little quotes and signs and pictures of Christ to hang up all around her house. We got there, and started taping them everywhere! But then we noticed there were literally HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of mosquitos!! It was so  sad! Just hordes of them on the walls and on the roof, because they just have the door with bars, so the mosquitos come right in. So Sister D had this brilliant idea. I guess lavendar dryer sheets keep mosquitos away? So we went, got some from our car, rubbed our arms and legs with the dryer sheets, and then took a bunch to rub on Laurie's walls. We ended up taping some to her swiffer mop and using it to kill mosquitos, like a giant fly swatter! Haha it was so crazy! We ended up killing hundreds of them for her. We didn't get all of them. but by the time we left there were lots of mosquitos gone, and it smelled nicely like lavendar :) Haha, it was so funny! We had a blast, just laughing as we were swiping the mosquitos with the mop... oh man, it was crazy! We're so happy we could help her though! Laurie is seriously the best! 

We also had an AMAZING miracle!!! So do you remember A? He's the young man, 17, who wants to be baptized, but his Mom didn't give him permission, she said he had to wait until he's 18. He's the one who baked us a cake :) Well, we prayed, and we decided to talk with him about faith. We talked with him about how we were going to fast and pray that his mom's heart would be softened so he could be baptized. He agreed to fast and pray as well. Then we had coordination, and we agreed with the ward to have a day where we fast and pray for him and his mom as well. So we were doing all we could to exercise faith so he could be baptized. Well, two days later, we showed up to his door.. and he opened with a HUGE grin on his face!!! He asked his Mom, and she said he could be baptized!!! It was such a miracle!!! He is so, so, so happy! It was so funny, we share one of our wards - the South Mtn ward - with our district leader and his companion. So we told our district leader that he needed to give someone a baptismal interview, but we told him he couldn't know who it was because it was going to be a surprise. So we met at the church, and A was there, and our district leader was so surprised! And so happy! Haha, it was so awesome! Those moments are better then surprise birthday parties. :D It was awesome!! So he will be baptized on October 18th!! (Dexter's bday! :D)

Other then that, I didn't cover half the things that happened this week. It is SO CRAZY BUSY, haha, but I love it so much! Missions are the best. Conference was incredible. I made an action list of things I want to do from Conference, like record myself reading Joseph Smith's testimony, and some other different things. I know without a doubt this is the Lord's work, and that this is Jesus Christ's church. I know He is so aware of each of us, and answers our prayers if we simply ask and search for the answers. I'm so grateful I decided to serve a mission! It has changed me, and I hope it continues to change me for the better. This gospel truly is all about change. 

I love you guys :) Thanks so much for the emails and everything. Keep me updated! :) I'm so glad everything is going well, and I loved seeing the pics of home! VA is so beautiful! And I got Dexter and Britts letter. :) Thanks for your prayers and your support. Your the best!!

Love you guys!!

love,

Sister Whitney Morris

Sister D is an STL too!! :) Us at MLC! I LOVE her!

 

 

 

Sis D and I, and the zone leaders - Elders V and G. Their awesome! Notice we're all matching to show zone unity... this is our "mexican faces" haha. (The elder's idea. Their spanish speaking.)

 

 

Sister F's text to us, when they found out we accidentally took their phone... hahaha. I love her. She is so funny!

 

 

 

And, funny texts about training! We're doing this sweet roleplay, where we'll set up the stage - half like an investigator's normal home (tons of toys, tv blaring, loud kids running everywhere) and half of it like a member's home. They did it at MLC, and just talked about the importance of the environment, and controlling distractions... and how a member's home or a church building is the perfect place to teach, because it's much easier to control the distractions. Well, we asked Elder V to be the child in the roleplay, and Elder Gto be the gater (or investigator). Anyways... I'm explaining way too much of this haha. It was just a funny conversation. :)


I'm behind Sister T. All the zone leaders and STLs in the mission.