Dear Family,
I'm so sorry to hear about Grandma Jo :( Mommy, those were incredible experiences... just feeling the Spirit there, and how peaceful it was. I think those (experiences) were definitely meant to happen, in some way. That is amazing. Thanks so much for sharing with me. :) Mommy, I hope you have a safe trip! That's crazy it's the first time being so long! And Dad, hope babysitting went well! Haha, I'm sure you guys had a lot of fun.
Dad, those experiences are incredible!! About the man choosing to be baptized - wow! I think it's amazing how we can't do this work without the Spirit. Everything you and the elders did seemed so inspired, and were just to help that man recognize the truth and be baptized :D That is amazing!! And so cool you get to baptize him in a river!! You'll have to take lots of pictures after! I'm jealous haha, I wish we could have baptisms in rivers! There's not too many of those here in Arizona... Dad, that's so cool you gave a book of mormon to your coworker too!! Great job! :) That takes a lot of courage! Way to be a member missionary!! :)
I'm so sorry I forgot to tell you our P day was moved to Wednesday! Every other transfer we get to go to the Mesa temple, and when we do we have to move our P day to Wednesdays because the temple isn't open on Monday. So sorry about that :) If I ever don't email on Monday, it should happen about once every twelve weeks, that's why.... haha. Sorry about that.
We have had an amazing week and a half! Our area is doing amazing. We have been blessed with sooo many people to teach. L is doing great! She is getting baptized this Saturday, and she is SO excited. She is the sweetest, most humble, kind person I have ever met, and also the hardest worker. She has the most humble home, and to make extra money she has a yard sale every day, and usually only makes 10$ a day. She gets excited if she sells something for fifty cents. It is so humbling and makes me so grateful for what I have. She is one of the happiest people I've ever met too. She loves the gospel, and in one of our lessons this week she was praying in the closing prayer. She was so happy and excited that she prayed that she would be able to bring 300 people to come into the church. That's one of the main reasons she wants to get baptized - because she wants to help people come closer to Christ. She is just the sweetest! So her lifetime goal is to bring 300 people into the church.... So when there is a new ward formed in Phoenix, we'll know why haha. She said the funniest thing the other day. We were going over the baptismal interview, and we were going over the 10 commandments. She was trying to name them all and she said "don't kill, don't steal.... Don't use the spittin' image of God..." Hahaha it was sooo funny! She was thinking of graven images, but she said spittin image hahaha. It was so funny! I love her! She also started laughing when we asked her about he word of wisdom, and said that she had told her friend to listen to her because she is the word of wisdom. She loves to give advice and help people. It was so funny :) She is so prepared though. Over a month without smoking! Now that is an accomplishment! She is amazing.
It's been a really crazy and slightly stressful week too. Last week we had zone conference, so we did a training for the zone. It was a great experience. Sister D and I trained about being consecrated, and focusing on how we want to feel at the end of our missions. It was funny, there is a video that shows Paul (? I think) during the last day of his ministry, when he's in prison and being taken to be executed. It has him reading the scriptures of his last words, "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith." It's so powerful! So we introduced our training as every time we mention death, it symbolizes our mission death. Then we shared that video and some of the last words of the prophets in the Book of Mormon, it was so powerful, to apply their last words to the last words we want to say and feel at the end of our missions. I loved Enos 1:26-27 especially. I love how he talks about how he has preached the gospel with joy all of his days, and have rejoiced in it above the things of the world. We talked about things we can do now to serve with no regrets and feel that way at the end of our missions. So that was really cool.. It really inspired me. Honestly I think I learn more from the trainings then the missionaries do. Hopeful,y they get something out of it :) but it was neat.
Well, then we had MLC later on in the week, and it was AMAZING! The APs always train us in what we need to train on during the transfer. This time it was completely focused on the talk "Man Down!" By Pres Eyring from April 2009 conference. It is an AMAZING talk! And it talks about rescuing the man down, including heroic stories from soldiers in battle. It was sooo powerful! It made me so, so excited to train. Because as STL's and zone leaders, we're supposed to take what we were trained about and train the rest of the zone about it. I was so excited, because I got to search these neat Conference talks about military experiences, and talk about George Washington and Cptn. America (when he jumps on top of the grenade in boot camp) and about heroes, and what makes a true hero, and how it relates to missionary work. It was so amazing. It was a really, really spiritual experience, because we talked about the charity and the selflessness, and then talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and how He is the greatest hero. It was sooo powerful. I absolutely loved giving that training. :)
We have had an amazing week and a half! Our area is doing amazing. We have been blessed with sooo many people to teach. L is doing great! She is getting baptized this Saturday, and she is SO excited. She is the sweetest, most humble, kind person I have ever met, and also the hardest worker. She has the most humble home, and to make extra money she has a yard sale every day, and usually only makes 10$ a day. She gets excited if she sells something for fifty cents. It is so humbling and makes me so grateful for what I have. She is one of the happiest people I've ever met too. She loves the gospel, and in one of our lessons this week she was praying in the closing prayer. She was so happy and excited that she prayed that she would be able to bring 300 people to come into the church. That's one of the main reasons she wants to get baptized - because she wants to help people come closer to Christ. She is just the sweetest! So her lifetime goal is to bring 300 people into the church.... So when there is a new ward formed in Phoenix, we'll know why haha. She said the funniest thing the other day. We were going over the baptismal interview, and we were going over the 10 commandments. She was trying to name them all and she said "don't kill, don't steal.... Don't use the spittin' image of God..." Hahaha it was sooo funny! She was thinking of graven images, but she said spittin image hahaha. It was so funny! I love her! She also started laughing when we asked her about he word of wisdom, and said that she had told her friend to listen to her because she is the word of wisdom. She loves to give advice and help people. It was so funny :) She is so prepared though. Over a month without smoking! Now that is an accomplishment! She is amazing.
It's been a really crazy and slightly stressful week too. Last week we had zone conference, so we did a training for the zone. It was a great experience. Sister D and I trained about being consecrated, and focusing on how we want to feel at the end of our missions. It was funny, there is a video that shows Paul (? I think) during the last day of his ministry, when he's in prison and being taken to be executed. It has him reading the scriptures of his last words, "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith." It's so powerful! So we introduced our training as every time we mention death, it symbolizes our mission death. Then we shared that video and some of the last words of the prophets in the Book of Mormon, it was so powerful, to apply their last words to the last words we want to say and feel at the end of our missions. I loved Enos 1:26-27 especially. I love how he talks about how he has preached the gospel with joy all of his days, and have rejoiced in it above the things of the world. We talked about things we can do now to serve with no regrets and feel that way at the end of our missions. So that was really cool.. It really inspired me. Honestly I think I learn more from the trainings then the missionaries do. Hopeful,y they get something out of it :) but it was neat.
Well, then we had MLC later on in the week, and it was AMAZING! The APs always train us in what we need to train on during the transfer. This time it was completely focused on the talk "Man Down!" By Pres Eyring from April 2009 conference. It is an AMAZING talk! And it talks about rescuing the man down, including heroic stories from soldiers in battle. It was sooo powerful! It made me so, so excited to train. Because as STL's and zone leaders, we're supposed to take what we were trained about and train the rest of the zone about it. I was so excited, because I got to search these neat Conference talks about military experiences, and talk about George Washington and Cptn. America (when he jumps on top of the grenade in boot camp) and about heroes, and what makes a true hero, and how it relates to missionary work. It was so amazing. It was a really, really spiritual experience, because we talked about the charity and the selflessness, and then talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and how He is the greatest hero. It was sooo powerful. I absolutely loved giving that training. :)
We have a super cool investigator named F. He's in his early 20s, in college, and he's in the Knights of Columbus. He went to the open house with his knights of columbus brothers, and referred himself to meet with us. We started teaching him, and he is seriously golden... he is so in tune with the Spirit. He said he felt it soo strongly at the temple, and when we taught him. He came to a baptism we had, and he also felt it again so strongly there. It was so cool! So he's starting to progress really well. We also have another amazing new investigator named L. He just moved here from Mexico, he's a junior in high school, but he's been exposed to so much in his life that he seems older then us. He used to live with his dad in Mexico and he said they did really, really bad things - the violence, illegal stuff, ect, because that was the way to make money. He never felt bad or thought that it was bad, until he came to live here. He came because the violence was getting too scary, so he moved in with his mom here in the states. He said since living here he has started to feel guilty about the things that he's done. He met some missionaries in Maricopa, and thought what they had to say was very interesting. So they referred him to us. We taught him the Restoration, and the Spirit was sooo strong. He was just thirsty to learn, he has basically no religious background. At the end, we taught him how to pray - fold our arms, bow our head, address God, express feelings of your heart, gratitude, questions, ect, and then say in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Well, we taught him, and then we all knelt together and he said his first prayer. The Spirit was soooo powerful, it just filled the room. After the prayer we knelt there for a bit, and we asked him "How do you feel?" He said, "warm.." We asked him, have you ever felt like that before? And he said "no". It was soooo powerful. We are so excited to be teaching him... it is so humbling to think where he is coming from, and the divine potential God has for him, and that we get to help him along in this process. It is incredible! I love being a missionary. I love these people so much!
We also had a really cool spiritual experience with a lady named L. She lives in this poverty trailer park :( It's so sad... 7 kids and her, all in this little home. But we talked with her, she was also a referral. And we talked with her, got to know her a bit, and we found out that her two year old daughter needs a heart transplant, because she has a rare disease. It's soooo sad :( I felt prompted to share a scripture of comfort with her, and the first one I found was D&C 84:88. At first I thought, oh that's a weird one to share, it's like a missionary one. But I felt prompted to share it with her. So I did... it basically says, those who accept you, I will be with them. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and angels round about you to bear you up. We testified of God's love for her, and of His sending angels round about her to help her. And she instantly said that she knows that's true, because in the hospital her little girl raised up her hands like she was touching someone. And later she told her mom she met papa, which is her grandpa who passed away a while ago. It was the neatest experience. I definitely know, without a doubt, that the Spirit guides us in what to say. He knows their hearts and their circumstances, and He sends us as angels to help them. It was so amazing.
It reminds me of a training we had from one of the zone leaders. He talked about how he used to feel frustrated because he wanted to know when the Spirit was guiding him, not just realize it later. Well, he talked about how having faith enough to move a mountain - he said that it's not having a sufficient amount of faith that's important. It's feeling the Spirit, trusting it's God's will, and having the faith - even if it's the tiniest bit, to follow that prompting - then that faith, even though it's so tiny, because it's following the Spirit and the will of God, the miracle happens. That really stuck out to me, in having the faith to follow even the tiniest of promptings. It's something I really want to work on.
We had so many miracles this week! Seriously, there are so many to share. Another night, around 8:30, we felt prompted to try this person we never had before. We did, and she answered the door. She seemed kind of upset, so we started talking with her through the screen door. We asked if she was doing okay, and she opened the screen door and she was crying. She wouldn't tell us what happened, except that one of her best friends just found out she had a brain tumor. So we stopped and prayed with her, and the Spirit was so sweet. The woman was very touched, and said she knew God had sent us there to comfort her, and she told us that we could come back another day to talk more with her. It was another powerful experience of my mission.
We had another amazing experience - gosh, so many! We've been teaching this lady M, and her family. They just moved here from Chicago to get away from the awful gang stuff going on there. So we've started teaching them, and she is so interested in the Book of Mormon and loves learning from us. She's getting surgery soon, so we had some of the priesthood holders in the ward come to give them a blessing. They have concerns about the priesthood ban, so we were trying to think of a good fellowship to do it, but we felt super prompted to ask this recent convert to come and do it. It ended up being such a spiritual experience.I think it really strengthened the recent convert man's faith, as well as M's. She said a few nights before she had a dream that she got the blessing, and she felt the power in the dream, and was so excited to recieve it. Well, when they gave her the blessing, M said all of the fear just left her. It was so powerful! So many miracles! I love the people of Phoenix soooo much!
We also had a really crazy experience... one night we were in this apt complex, trying to find this apt. It took FOREVER. One kid helped us find it, it was at like 8:30 at night again. So we finally found it, and the people had moved and the people living there now were very sketchy haha.... people smoke marijuana everywhere here. :( But we went back to our car, and on the way back we stopped to talk to the kid who helped us out. He was super cool and said we could come back to teach him! So we are excited to meet with him again!
The Phoenix temple dedication this week was soooo amazing too!!! The cultural celebration was AWESOME. It was so cool - a ton of it celebrated the Hispanic culture, which our stake did the dances to, and it was AWESOME! Something I realized was how many Mexican and Spaniard ancestors I have, and I thought about how that culture is part of my family, my past. It made it really powerful, and made me love the people here so much more! But they also did a whole big chunk of it dedicated to honoring the military personnel. They played each of the military branche's theme songs, and during the different theme songs the veterans of that branch got to stand. So when they played Anchors Aweigh, President Monson stood up, and saluted along with the music. It was soooo sweet!!! And then Pres Uchtdorf and one of the general authority's wives stood up in the Air Force one. It was so awesome!!! The youth did such a great job dancing too, the girls had red polka dot dresses and yellow ribbons in their hair :) And the young men dressed in military uniform costumes. It was so cute, their swing dancing!! They did such an awesome job!! I LOVED it! Then of course, the dedication was absolutely wonderful. We got to watch them put in the cornerstone, and they gave beautiful talks that really inspired me. I'm so grateful for temples. :)
There are so many incredible experiences to share, this is hardly even the skimming the top. I love being a missionary. I love my companion! She is incredible. She has health issues, so we can't bike or anything, just drive. Which reminds me, we live with the cutest greenie, and she borrowed my bike because hers had a flat.. and they didn't lock them, they were gone for 7 minutes, and they were stolen :( So I don't have a bike anymore... ha. I'll probably end up just buying a used one, because there's no point in buying a brand new one to leave in 6 months. But we'll work something out. Anyways, so Sister S kneels for every single prayer. She is in alot of pain sometimes, and a long time ago she promised God that if she knelt for every prayer, she asked if He would heal her. She did, and He healed her, and she is in good enough health to come on a mission. It is so humbling, she kneels and prays in every single setting and lesson. I love her! We have a lot of fun.
Well, I had better wrap things up. I love you guys! Hope you had a great week. :) I can't wait to hear from ya next week! Also, Mommy, were you able to sign me up for Adopt A Solder? Just to mail them a letter once a week? I can do that. :) And I really really want to! Especially because it came to mind a few weeks ago, we had the MLC training on military, the PHX temple celebration was military themed, and yesterday one of my recent converts invited me on facebook to do adopt a soldier randomly! I think it's a sign haha, somebody needs a missionary writing them! :)
Well, I love you! Also THANK YOU for the package!!! I LOVED the letters, the candy, the skirt, everything! Thank you soo much :) And for sending the set changes! Haha, I think your right, that should be good :) Love you guys!!!
love,
Sister Whitney Morris <3
We took all these on p day
Sister Whitney Morris <3
We took all these on p day
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Us and a recent convert. She loves the BOM and started painting scenes that inspired her from what she read :) I LOVE her. She has an amazing story! I'll tell it sometime!
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Us at the temple
My package
Funny Sister C haha
And pics from last week that I didn't get to send.. the computer kicked me off so I ran out of time. so I'm sending them today :)
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Sister D and I and this family we love - S and E. The elders in our ward are teaching them, E wants to be baptized but she doesn't want to get married :( I LOVE them and their kids!
And the M's took us to get respados - basically ice cream, with sugared fruit (mangoes, pineapple, strawberries, whatever you want ) and lechera on top, which is basically sweetened condensed milk. IT IS DELICIOUS. I love Mexican food!!!
The graffiti pics
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