Hello family,
First of all, happy early Thanksgiving!! I am so grateful for all of you. I am so grateful to be a missionary right now. Seriously, I am madly in love with this work and this restored gospel. I cannot describe how much this gospel means to me. I am grateful to know that I can return to live with my Heavenly Father some day and be with my family forever. I am grateful for temples and the opportunity that all of us have to be sealed with our families for eternity. I cannot think of any greater blessing and promise our Heavenly Father could give to us. I am so grateful for prayer and the chance that we have to communicate and ask questions to Him and receive real personalized answers through the Holy Spirit. How amazing!! I love it!
This week has been amazing. Full of ups and downs. A few of the highlights include:
- the perfect exchange with Sister Prior on Wednesday and Thursday. I love Sister Prior. She is such a consecrated missionary and she helped me so much in our area for those short 24 hours. We went to go visit a less active whose girlfriend is one of our investigators. I learned so much from Sister Prior about how to really develop a more trusting relationship with less active members and investigators and how powerful that can be. We sat and chatted with them for about 45 minutes and then out of nowhere they both bore their testimonies to us of this church and tell us some plans they have for the future about them coming to church more and taking the lessons more. It was a miracle!! All because they were comfortable around us and the Spirit was there guiding the conversation. She is having her baby in 3 weeks, so after that, we will start having lessons with them more frequently and they will start coming back to church!! It was amazing. Pretty much that exact same thing happened to another less active family who we brought to the VC the other night as well. I love being a part of this work and being able to see the miracles the Lord is letting us be a part of.
- also, Sister Prior cut my hair!!! :)
Oh and we had dinner with the Burroughs. Their daughter is the CUTEST!
- how the Lord answers prayers. I have a very strong testimony of the power of prayer and Thursday evening that was confirmed. Little backstory, as I am approaching 6 months in my mission, I am getting soo nervous about my future about having to come home and keep the habits that I have now and continuing to progress and to strengthen my relationship with my Heavenly Father in His gospel. So, to help myself, I have gone crazy on goal setting. In our companionship, we set personal and comp goals every week and I am setting daily goals to accomplish those goals and then goals for my whole mission and life. Pretty much goals on goals on goals.. aka overwhelming, but also amazing. I love goals. Anyways, throughout the exchange with Sister Prior, I was talking with her about this and about the end of our missions. and THEN, at the end of shift at the VC that night, a girl walks in and I greet her and get to know her a bit. I took her through God's Plan and then just chatted with her. She just got home from her mission in January to Peru and felt prompted to move here to Independence (love these stories, people are so led by the Spirit it is amazing). Anyways, I asked her how it is being home from her mission, if it is weird or sad or..etc. and she responded so joyfully, "It's great! I love it!" It caught me so off guard. Every missionary I know that goes home has such a hard time with going home and is sooo sad for a month or two afterwards or longer, so I had her come sit down with me and explain to me how she got there. The things she told me was exactly what I needed to hear. This whole experience is extremely hard for me to share and try to write because I'm not sure if any of you will understand, but that's the story of a missionary. right? haha. Anyways, she shared with me soo many things that I needed to hear and really changed my whole mission. Two things she shared with me were: 1. Live in the present. always. strive to search for His will every day of your life and you will have fulfilled your purpose in this life if you do that and act on the spiritual promptings you receive. and 2. (after I was thinking to myself.. well great, I've just spent so much time focusing on goals for my future and this is exactly what I am supposed to do... not do that. ha) she said, "goals are great. They are there for direction." I really can't describe much else to you all. This girl is amazing and I feel so privileged to get to meet her and so many others on my mission. but in summary, of that experience.... God is real. He knows you. He loves you and He is so involved in the details of your life that we cannot even comprehend. I have a testimony of that as I have seen glimpses of how He is involved in our lives over and over and over throughout my life.
- getting a cute package from my sweet momma that included Christmas lights that we put up in our room. Tender mercy. Seriously. That is one of my favorite Christmas traditions. Sister Flake and I are seriously in love with them!
- Sundays. The Sabbath is truly a Delight. Our ward had their primary program this Sunday. It was soo good! I LOVE primary songs. The simplicity of them and the spirit that comes along with having little children testify of the plain and precious things of this gospel is so inspiring and such a great reminder to us all about the simplicity of this gospel. I am reminded of Elder Uchtdorf's talk.. Simplify. Sunday evening, we had a lesson with Paulina! She is amazing. She is looking forward to her baptism and it seriously has been such a joy being able to be apart of her conversion. :) (Paulina is in the red jacket :)
I love you all so much! Have a great thanksgiving weekend. Eat some yummy thanksgiving food for me :) Remember to record some things you are most grateful for!
- Sister Morgan
Sister Morgan
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