Thanks so much for the emails!! It was so fun to hear about the baby lambs being born, and Hannah's birthday, and how things are going at home with Dad's job and the kids and everything. I especially loved hearing about Adam's sweet love for the baby lambs, and how you related that to the Savior. That was just the sweetest story! It is such a powerful thing to work with our Good Shepherd to gather His lambs from every corner of the earth. He's going to be a great missionary someday. :) Dad's new mustang looks sweet! I'm so excited to come home and have mine! Gosh, you guys spoil us. :) I'm glad Brittany could come down and spend the weekend! . We have the best family in the whole world!
That's great about Netanyahu! It was funny, in Sunday school the other day a lady brought him up.. I can't remember why, but she was basically saying "So he won't go to heaven even as awesome as he is?" and our teacher explained that if he repents and follows Christ he will. :) Haha it was just funny, it reminded me of ya'll! He's amazing!! I'm glad to hear he won office again!
That's so cool Dad's renting a bedroom by Mount Vernon! That will be amazing!! We will have to visit for sure!! I'm so glad things are going well at home. :)
Well, It's been an awesome week for us! I love being back in Maryvale. I
feel like Heavenly Father has blessed me so much, allowing me to come
back to this area, and be with the companion I have. I love Sister
W SO much! We get along so well! I feel like I've had so many
companions that have taught me really important lessons, and have
helped me develop charity and patience (hopefully at least a little
bit. I've been working on it.) but I feel like Sister W is
teaching me more about what a good relationship is like - as weird as
that sounds, haha. We work really well together, and she is so
Christlike that when I'm with her I want to be a more Christlike
person. She's been helping me so much! And it's been really fun going
through training together and going back through the basic
fundamentals of missionary work.
The time is going so fast. I can't believe it's Monday again! We had
some really cool and funny experiences this week. L is doing great
:) He's such a funny, sweet old man. We went to his house to teach him
the word of wisdom for the first time. We walked into his house with
our member, and there he was, finishing a bottle of wine! He said,
"hold on sisters! Let me finish this before we start our lesson." And
then he downed the rest of the bottle hahaha. We were just both
thinking oh no.... This is a little awkward! But he actually took the
word of wisdom really well. He committed himself to live it, but we
went back again two days later and he said he doesn't understand why
we need to abstain from coffee. We just pulled it back to it being a
revelation from God through the prophet Joseph smith, and having the
faith to live the commandments, even if we don't always understand
why, or why me - I don't see why I need to. We talked about trusting God and not letting those
things get in the way of our obedience and love to Him. Hopefully it
helped! We have another lesson with him today, and definitely recieved some guidance during studies to help us address his concerns. It was such a powerful comp and personal study - I know Heavenly Father is guiding us to know how to help him. If you guys could pray that he will be able to gain a testimony of the Word of Wisdom, we would appreciate it!
He did come to church Sunday, and he's aiming to be baptized
on April 7th - he's really excited. So we are hoping and praying that
we can help him understand and live the word of wisdom, so he can gain
a testimony of it. He believes Joseph Smith was a prophet, so that
will hopefully play a big factor.
We had another miracle! Did I tell you that L R - our recent
convert in south Phoenix who we helped quit smoking and is the
sweetest lady in the world - she moved to Maryvale like two months
ago! We were all worried about her, a member of the south mountain bishopric even
took her to her new ward the first Sunday she moved (South Mountain ward is SO awesome). Anyhow, we've
been teaching her the new member lessons! She's fallen off from going
to church a little because changing wards has been a hard transition
for her. But she's been strong on the commandments, and she still has
such a strong testimony of the gospel!! Yay!!! She's in alma 40 or so
in the Book of Mormon too! We taught her this week, and she came to
church Sunday!!! Yay!!! We helped her make some friends, and we are
really, really hoping she can find a network of friends and support in
the ward. That was an awesome blessing! I love L so much! She is
the sweetest!
We also did some really fun service at the st. Mary's food bank. Every
month our zone goes and helps them prepare meals, organize stuff, ect.
This week we organized around 15,000 lbs of food, to go to people who
are hungry this coming week. It really feels so good to do so much
service! It's definitely something I want to continue to do for the
rest of my life.
We've been having really, really awesome studies. I've been studying
the Book of Mormon and using a study journal every day, and it has
been such a powerful spiritual experience. I learn so, so much. Sister
W and I also have amazing comp studies too. A few days ago we
read through d&c 89 (the word of wisdom chapter) together, and just
picked it apart, learning the different meanings of words and thinking
and pondering about questions we had. It was soooo powerful! The
Spirit was so strong, and we both ended up actually learning a lot
about the temple and the Creation, which was so interesting and amazing. I have grown
to love the scriptures so much on my mission. It is incredible the
Spirit we feel when we ponder, study, and apply them in our lives.
I've been thinking about how to stay spiritually strong throughout
life, and something that keeps coming up is feasting on the words of
Christ, and keeping close to the word of God. In my scripture study,
in hymns we sing in sacrament meeting, in conversations and lessons,
it keeps coming up that when we study and ponder and keep a strong
testimony of the scriptures and words of living prophets, we won't
fall away or be led astray. That has hit me very powerfully this week.
Sister W and I also have really funny role plays :) She does the
funniest, most perfect impressions of people haha. There is a lady we
are teaching who has no teeth, but she likes to chew gum, so she
chomps very loudly during the lesson. She also has a short attention
span, so if we start rambling a little she just says "I think I'm done
now." We have to work to keep her attention! It's so funny though,
because I had forgotten those little details, until we did a role
play. I started teaching and Sister W just started chomping away,
and then I remembered, and it was just sooo funny haha. Not in a mean
way or anything, it was just so funny how accurate her imitation was
:) but we love J and we really love teaching her! She's a really
sweet lady too.
It's been really cool going by people we taught last year and seeing
them again. It's funny, most of them remember me! We went by a man
whose less active, whose uncle had died and so he had been drunk and
he proposed to us... But when he wasn't drunk, we had some good
lessons with him. He remembered us and he was a lot more positive and
open then he was last year, which was good.
on April 7th - he's really excited. So we are hoping and praying that
we can help him understand and live the word of wisdom, so he can gain
a testimony of it. He believes Joseph Smith was a prophet, so that
will hopefully play a big factor.
We had another miracle! Did I tell you that L R - our recent
convert in south Phoenix who we helped quit smoking and is the
sweetest lady in the world - she moved to Maryvale like two months
ago! We were all worried about her, a member of the south mountain bishopric even
took her to her new ward the first Sunday she moved (South Mountain ward is SO awesome). Anyhow, we've
been teaching her the new member lessons! She's fallen off from going
to church a little because changing wards has been a hard transition
for her. But she's been strong on the commandments, and she still has
such a strong testimony of the gospel!! Yay!!! She's in alma 40 or so
in the Book of Mormon too! We taught her this week, and she came to
church Sunday!!! Yay!!! We helped her make some friends, and we are
really, really hoping she can find a network of friends and support in
the ward. That was an awesome blessing! I love L so much! She is
the sweetest!
We also did some really fun service at the st. Mary's food bank. Every
month our zone goes and helps them prepare meals, organize stuff, ect.
This week we organized around 15,000 lbs of food, to go to people who
are hungry this coming week. It really feels so good to do so much
service! It's definitely something I want to continue to do for the
rest of my life.
We've been having really, really awesome studies. I've been studying
the Book of Mormon and using a study journal every day, and it has
been such a powerful spiritual experience. I learn so, so much. Sister
W and I also have amazing comp studies too. A few days ago we
read through d&c 89 (the word of wisdom chapter) together, and just
picked it apart, learning the different meanings of words and thinking
and pondering about questions we had. It was soooo powerful! The
Spirit was so strong, and we both ended up actually learning a lot
about the temple and the Creation, which was so interesting and amazing. I have grown
to love the scriptures so much on my mission. It is incredible the
Spirit we feel when we ponder, study, and apply them in our lives.
I've been thinking about how to stay spiritually strong throughout
life, and something that keeps coming up is feasting on the words of
Christ, and keeping close to the word of God. In my scripture study,
in hymns we sing in sacrament meeting, in conversations and lessons,
it keeps coming up that when we study and ponder and keep a strong
testimony of the scriptures and words of living prophets, we won't
fall away or be led astray. That has hit me very powerfully this week.
Sister W and I also have really funny role plays :) She does the
funniest, most perfect impressions of people haha. There is a lady we
are teaching who has no teeth, but she likes to chew gum, so she
chomps very loudly during the lesson. She also has a short attention
span, so if we start rambling a little she just says "I think I'm done
now." We have to work to keep her attention! It's so funny though,
because I had forgotten those little details, until we did a role
play. I started teaching and Sister W just started chomping away,
and then I remembered, and it was just sooo funny haha. Not in a mean
way or anything, it was just so funny how accurate her imitation was
:) but we love J and we really love teaching her! She's a really
sweet lady too.
It's been really cool going by people we taught last year and seeing
them again. It's funny, most of them remember me! We went by a man
whose less active, whose uncle had died and so he had been drunk and
he proposed to us... But when he wasn't drunk, we had some good
lessons with him. He remembered us and he was a lot more positive and
open then he was last year, which was good.
It is going to be the best transfer!!! Sister W feels like one of my best friends. I am SO grateful for her. Every night after planning we always talk and laugh about different things that happened during the day... I love her so much! and I'm so grateful for the things that I've learned that have helped me keep our companionship happy, and not let my temper or contention disrupt the Spirit we feel and the happiness we have. We also had one other cool experience - we've been thinking of ways to make our days more spiritual. We decided to begin and end each day with a hymn (we had read the intro to the hymbook during sacrament meeting, and it was sooo powerful!) So last night we ended by singing "Abide with me, tis even' tide". It brought the Spirit so, so powerfully into our little study room. Us two sister missionaries, kneeling on the floor, after having planned our day and what we could do to help our investigators, we sang and pled with our Heavenly Father to continue to be with us. We read the scripture with the hymn as well, and it's about the Savior - how he walked with the apostles all day, and they must have enjoyed their time and conversation with Him so much. He was about to leave, but they pled with Him to stay, to abide with them that evening. And He did, He stayed. I love how the Savior had the love and the patience to serve and love the people. He took the time to truly get to know them and show His love for them. We also read the account where He washes His apostles feet. I love how He showed them to serve and love one another by His example. First He showed them, by serving them and loving them. After He was done, then He taught them the commandment to love one another. I think that shows the power of His leadership and His example. I want to be that kind of leader, that kind of parent one day. It has been so powerful.
I love the Savior, and I love this gospel. I know it's true, with all my heart. I love being a missionary. I love my companion, I love the people, and I am so happy!
I love you guys! Thanks for being such an awesome family. :)
I love you!!
love,
Sister Whitney Morris
This picture of us laughing describes our companionship perfectly :D We are always laughing and happy! I love it!
a cute baby chicken at a member dinner
Soo i'm really sad, because the hilarious Mr. Beanish movie we took on accident is too big of a file to send home.... so, when I get home, be on the lookout for a hilarious, hilarious video we accidentally took of us. Yes, it involves the crocheted chicken pot holders a member gave us... hahahaha it is the funniest thing I've ever seen. I'm so sad it won't send! One day you will see it! In the meantime, here's other pics!
a member made us these hilarious crocheted pot holders. it's funny, she always gives them to new missionaries... last year she made me a green pot holder that I still have, but these are way cooler!
a terrifying cat!!! asleep next to me at Lori's house..... so scary.
Me & Sister W.
self explanatory :)a terrifying cat!!! asleep next to me at Lori's house..... so scary.
Me & Sister W.
a super sketchy ice cream truck
us biking in the morning while on exchanges :)
us eating dinner with sister f :) she's amazing! we ate at a place called garcias - a mom and pop restaurant in phoenix that has DELICIOUS mexican food. We ate fried ice cream and carne asada tacos!!! my favorite!
us eating a little picnic before going to a meeting in tempe :) our old ward mission leader from last year and his wife drove us. They're so cute! They are in their late 60s, they've been touring the state doing tap dancing, and they gave us marriage advice on the way there! They got sealed in the temple last week! They are sooo sweet!
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