Dear Family,
Thanks for the email! I loved hearing about how everyone is doing. Happy birthday this week, Peter!! :) his bday party looked so fun! Haha, I love the plastic noses! Isaacs crutches that are too small are sooo sad!! And hilarious haha, poor Izey wisey... Or should I say, tiny tim... Haha that's so funny :) I do hope his leg is doing better though! I got Brittanys letter this week, which was SO sweet. I know they'll pull through. It will work out somehow. I'm really proud of Dexter and that he is doing so well and trying his best to do what's right! I know Heavenly Father will really bless him for the faith he is showing and with his righteous desires. It will work out. :) I did get the Easter package, thank you so much for sending it! We especially loved the gummy lambs and ducks - they were delicious :) and I LOVED the earrings! Thank you!
As far as logistics when I come home, I think the main things are getting released - hopefully the same day I get home? That is the saddest sentence ever.... Gosh, I donnt want to not be a missionary anymore :( I'm going to miss it sooooo much. I guess please be patient with me and my returned missionary struggle ha. It will be a great blessing. I want to get involved in institute, getting a job, and preparing for school asap - which includes getting a cell phone... I think that might be the main thing at first. That and a job for gas and savings. But we'll work that out when I get home! I also will have almost no clothes haha, but I've saved all my gift cards for post mission shopping, so that will help! Anyways, this is making me really sad, so I'm going to move on to a different topic.
It was so sweet and sad to hear about Adams experience sharing his testimony. Adam, I want to share a story with you. So my companion, sister w, is the most awesome missionary EVER! She's from Arkansas, and is such a powerful teacher, and has such a strong testimony. She is one of the best people I've ever met! She is incredible! With how awesome she is, I think Heavenly Father gave her a weakness for a reason, I don't know why. Maybe to help other people. But she gave me permission to share this :) She has social anxiety, and so if we're in a big group of people she sometimes will start crying. But the most hard thing for her is public speaking. In district mtg, our district leader asked her to share a 5 min thought. She stood up, and she started, and then she started getting soooo nervous. Her eyes kind of rolled back, and she started tipping forward, and I had to catch her! We went to the bathroom, and it was so sad. She was heartbroken and felt like a failure. But the awesome thing is that she didn't give up. She was scared that nobody would ask her to speak again. But after the meeting, our district leader apologized, and said if she ever wanted to share a thought again to let him know and she could do that. That meant the world to her. Well, Saturday night, at the luau we had, we had to give a little lesson about missionary work. In front of like 50 people! And you know what she did?? At the end, she gave a little presentation in front of everyone!! It took so much courage! It's okay to get nervous sometimes, and it's okay if we feel like we messed up. The good thing is that we can always get up and try again. And when we finally succeed, it's all the more valuable because of the struggle we had to overcome to succeed. She is one of my greatest heroes, and you are too Adam. :) I loved your testimony about sheep and the savior! It was so good! I'm excited to hear you share it again someday. :)
I had one other story I wanted to tell you guys. So we have the most amazing young woman in our ward. She is incredible! We went on visits with her, and at the end she asked us for advice. She said some of the yw were mean to her, and gave her unkind stares and remarks during church that made her feel really sad. We comforted her, testified of Gods love for her. And the amazing thing is this young woman tried to smile at them, and be kind in return, but it didn't help anything. She shared this with us, and then I felt prompted to share Hannah's poem with her and tell her a little bit about how Hannah struggled with similar things. But how AMAZING and strong she is, and how the young woman was so strong and incredible too. She started crying, and it helped her soooo much! Hannah, your poem and example made the difference and brought comfort to a young woman many miles away from you. You never know what difference you can make. I just wanted to share that with you :)
As for us, it's been such an amazing week! I love my area, I LOVE my companion, and I love this gospel - especially studying the scriptures. I absolutely love being a missionary. :) we had so many cool experiences!
The first is that we have an AMAZING investigator named R!! He's probably in his early 60s, a navy veteran who is disabled (he's in a wheelchair and has alot of pain :( ) but he is sooo prepared. We taught him the restoration, bom, and plan of salvation, and he is amazing. He studies on his own, reads everything we give him, and he wants to be baptized! May 9th is the day! It's so cool, he has started telling his family, and they all started asking him why, and saying he shouldn't do it, and even got angry, but he told them that he is doing this for himself and God, and he has already started gaining such a strong testimony. On Sunday he came to church and it was so awesome. Afterwards the elders, eq president, and our wml and his dad gave him a blessing of health because of the pain he was in. It was soooo powerful. They taught him a bit about the priesthood and what a blessing is and how it's dependent on his faith beforehand, and he told us that even when we first told him about what a blessing is he believed it would help. Elder C (an elder in our ward - we have 3 sets of missionaries) pronounced the blessing, and instantly the Spirit filled the room. We could feel that R had such strong faith, and so Heavenly Father blessed him sooo much. The Spirit was so, so strong. It was so powerful!! It was one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission. It is truly an absolute honor to be able to serve and teach these people! R is so awesome!! When he's baptized we might have to do it on a stretcher, or have multiple people baptize him because he can't lean backwards, so he'll have to go go straight down laying on his back. But the eq and bishop are going to work something out! He is so excited!
Yesterday was such an amazing day. So many special, incredible things happened. It is the greatest miracle to know that the Lord is working through you, and to see Him answer prayers and bless the lives of His children through you.
We got to go to the temple on Thursday, and that was awesome! We did a session, and it was so beautiful and so spiritual. I love going to the temple. The Spanish missionaries had a big conference this weekend, and they got to go through and do a session in Spanish! That seemed really cool. :)
We've been teaching so many people and have had many incredible experiences - whether it be somebody on the street, or less active families, or with our investigators. On Saturday we had a ward luau to help motivate the ward to share the gospel. It was crazy, but so awesome too!! We have AMAZING Polynesian families in our ward, so they made delicious food - bbq pork, delicious noodles, and pineapple upside down cake. Yum! They also had a dance group come and provide entertainment - hula dancing and some of the brothers did the Hahkka (the dance the rugby team on forever strong does before their games.) it was kind of intimidating haha, but SO awesome!! After the dinner we as missionaries provided different workshops, along with some awesome members in our ward. We based our trainings off of he book "the power of an everyday missionary" which is an AMAZING book! And it's easy and fun to read! Our mission pres approved us to read it because alot of stakes in az use it. It's an awesome, awesome book! So that was great.
We had some funny experiences this week too - one of the less active guys we were teaching had a lesson with us. He was baptized 5+ yrs ago. But hasn't been to church in forever, and just lost his testimony :( he loves Christ but doesn't understand why we need the bom. So that was really sad. He basically dropped us, and we just shared our testimonies and told him if he ever felt he was missing something in his life that he would always be welcome. A few hrs later though he called. We missed it, so we texted back "did you call?" This was his reply... "Yes I want to talk more but maybe I'm wrong but the thing is and don't take this wrong I'm in love with you, everything about you please call me. I ask God to give me a woman who love Him then me please never let me go." Hahaha... Oh man.... It was a little crazy! So we didn't text back or anything, and we made a note in his teaching record to not send sisters. Poor guy! I feel so sad for him.
I think that's about all for this week! Soooo much happens every single day, so many miracles and times I feel the Spirit, and it is incredible. Also some hard and discouraging times, A dropped us. That was really, really sad. We met with her, and her mom has been telling her bad things about the church, and she also looked up anti material. We talked with her in the lesson and just bore our testimonies, expressed our love for her, and hopefully left some seeds planted. She was doing well but just started listening to the wrong voices, and wouldn't give the Book of Mormon a chance. She wouldn't read it because she was scared. It was really, really sad! But the good thing is before we left she had us teach her kids a little bit about the Savior. We taught them using a few videos and pictures, teaching them about Christ and his life and atonement. It was a sweet note to end on, and we just bore our testimonies and invited her to read and pray and left. I feel that someday she'll be ready, right now is just not her time. But I'm really grateful we had the opportunity to teach her, I really love her and her kids.
I love the people so much. My companion is THE BEST. I love her so much! She is hilarious, and also so sweet and kind. I feel myself becoming a better person because I'm around her! I am quite serious when I think Heavenly Father blessed me with a companion near the end to teach me what to look for in a spouse! As funny as that sounds, haha. I love training her, and I feel like I'm learning more then she is! Being a missionary is the best!
Well I think that's all for today! As part of the technology program were only allowed to use iPads for email now, so no pictures today :( and probably for a while. They're going to try and work something out, but that's why my grammar is so bad - silly autocorrect!
I love you guys! Thanks for the awesome emails. :) I love you and have an awesome week!
Love
Sister Whitney Morris
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