happy early 4th of july!

Sister Anderson exchange!!

some good ole exchange tracting! lol jk, we just knocked this one. haha

COMPS WITH LIZ

because we never take any pictures during the day. post planning selfie :)

district meeting!

love you all so much!

happily stressed,
sister morganHello Family!

This week has been amazing! And also so unbelievably stressful.

early 4th of july title because Sister Delange told me something so
funny one night while we were laying in bed completely exhausted and
stressed. She said, "you know those fireworks that buzz around on the
ground? yeah.. when I am stressed, I feel like my head is just on one
of those" hahaha, so as you are watching those fun fireworks for us
next week, just know we are there in spirit stressing our heads off
with what is commonly known as .. missionary work.

The Lord truly is in the details of our lives though. I feel so
blessed to serve as a missionary at this time. I love everything about
being a missionary. I have never lived in such a way that the Spirit
was with me as much until now and it is the best feeling in the world.
There is often a misconception that only missionaries have the
heightened Spirit with them because of our calling. That is not the
case though! The reason missionaries have the Spirit with them more is
because the lifestyle we are living. We get added doses of the Spirit
each time we are obedient to God's commandments. Isn't that cool?
Every time we TURN to God more, He blesses us with the influence of
the Holy Ghost! I think that is one of the things that I have
reflected on for a majority of my mission.

Anyways, so on Saturday, Ny'Vea got baptized! You all will seriously
never even understand what a miracles that happened to put this
baptism on.
Here is a sneak peek... (if it lets me send videos at the end of this,
I'll attach them so you can pretend to stress out with us. haha) get
ready for the longest story of your life.
So last Sunday, Ny'Vea and her brother got whisked away to their dad's
house unexpectedly, which prevented her brother, Antonio, from being
baptized. So they missed church and weren't able to see them up until
Friday night... the night before her baptism. Meanwhile, we have been
in contact with her mom trying to set everything up while she is on a
crazy work schedule working from 6pm-6am everyday. We set up a time to
have her baptismal interview Friday afternoon and we confirmed with
her mom 30 minutes before the interview and she is all set for it. We
get to the church building with the elders for her interview.. and...
no Ny'Vea. We wait 45 minutes and contemplate just stopping by her
house to see what is going on. Finally, we all had to leave to our
next appointment. So the night before her baptism, she hasn't even had
her interview and no one is answering their phones and at this point,
we haven't seen Ny'Vea in a week!
Her mom finally gives us a call that night and told us she ended up
falling asleep on accident and so Ny'Vea couldn't make her interview
(thank you crazy work schedule). She says we can go over in the
evening and see Ny'Vea though and teach her her last lesson even
though she will be at work again. So we go over there and no one
answers.. The TV is blasting inside but nothing (HIMYM is playing
inside ps. super distracting) We are like banging on the metal screen
door at this point. We convince one of her 4 year old cousins who was
on the street biking around to go inside and see if she is in there.
He at first tells us she is at the park with her mom, but we found out
from the little boy's mom that he has no clue where she is and is just
messing with us. We decide to drive around to see if we can find her,
but we decided to say a prayer first for guidance. Sister Delange gets
the prompting to go back to the house. soo.. we do that and again, we
convince the little 4 year old to go back in and give us more info. He
is no help haha so we peek our heads in and Ny'Vea and her older
brother are passed out asleep on the couch.. great. ha. We feel
awkward just walking into the house and waking her up.. plus there
isn't an adult woman in there anyways so we aren't even allowed to. We
spend the next 5 minutes bribing this little boy into waking her up.
We tried many tactics. First, tried turning the TV off, hoping the
change in noise would wake her up. We then tried telling him we would
fix his water gun while he went in to wake her up. Meanwhile, we have
no clue what to do. If we couldn't see her that night, there was no
way we could get her last lesson in and set up her interview in the
morning for before her baptism... so pressure. is. on. Nothing was
working for the longest time, but eventually! Ny'Vea was awake! We
taught her and set up a time for her interview in the morning!
We had to schedule to go on splits at with some members during her
interview THE NEXT MORNING because we have no other option. Thank
goodness, we have some amazing members who were so willing to help
out. We'll get to that in a bit though.
The next morning at 6am when we were leaving for our run, we thought
we should probably bring the phone with us because her mom, Latrice,
gets off work at 6am and we need to make sure she is good to bring
Ny'Vea to her interview. We finally get ahold of her at 7am and
confirm her interview. This time, they showed up! The interview went
great! We told her mom and grandma to come back for the baptism at 3pm
(an hour early just to be safe) and at 4:40pm no one from the family
is there.. including Ny'Vea. Members are just sitting there waiting
and we haven't been able to get a hold of them. Again, we were
contemplating going to their house and seeing what is going on. We
finally got a hold of Ny'Vea on her mom's phone and she says that her
mom is still getting ready (mind you.. this is 30 minutes after the
baptism is supposed to start)..
Long long long story short, they all show up to the baptism and it was
such a spiritual service. Her mom and grandma (who has been less
active for 15 years) bore their testimonies and the whole family was
crying. Ny'Vea was so happy. We asked her how it felt when we were
walking back into the primary room and she said, "it just felt like
all of my sins are washed away" so precious. Totally worth every
second of stress.

(Again, wrote most of that because journaling has been a stuggle and a
half this week)

We also went on the best exchange of my life this week with the
Raytown Sisters. I was with Sister Anderson! She is absolutely
incredible. I was able to learn how important it is to be a good
leader. She is training a new missionary and is seriously such an
inspiration. We also got to go to the VC FMTM Friday morning and they
were doing the Mormon Walking Trail! It was also June 24! The day last
year that I came out to Missouri, so it was a perfect way to
celebrate!

Now to the other best part of the week!
I got to be companions with LIZ!!! haha, she is one of the best people
who helped us out for splits Saturday morning! I was with her while
Sister Delange was with another member at one of our lessons. We
stayed with Ny'Vea for her interview and then we talked about the
temple and family history for a bit. She got her recommend to go to
the temple this week and we are going with her to do baptisms this
week!! I cannot wait! It is going to be the best thing ever!
Liz shared her experience of her baptism with Ny'Vea and shared with
her how she feels after having the gift of the Holy Ghost now and it
was so amazing! Liz said she would come with us to help with other
appointments too if we needed it :) Then, Sister Delange and our
member Sister Condie, were going to pick me up at a restaurant that
Liz was meeting her friend at and then, Liz invited us to stay and eat
lunch with her friend at the best Mexican place!
#lizisdoingmissionarywork! It was so awesome. I love Liz.

Last night, we had a cool experience too! A member invited us to
dinner at their non-member friend's hosue who has mini dinner parties
every Sunday and has a few friends over each time. We have been once
before but only have been able to stay for a few minutes. The member
is from Madagascar and her friend is from there as well. It was the
Madagascar Independence Day so they all made the best Malagasi food!
We had a cool experience meeting one her friends, Jamie, too. We were
talking with her for a while during dinner and she has a lot of
tattoos so we were asking what they all mean, and then she showed us a
tattoo on her chest that had the footprints of her son when he was
born and "Family is Forever" ... cue missionary light bulb going off
as we were trying to figure out how we could bring in the gospel this
whole time! We told her about the temple and our beliefs about family
and eternal families and she absolutely loved it and wanted to learn
more! Such a miracle! I love this gospel.

We also had interviews with President and Sister Vest of Saturday! I
absolutely love them! So blessed to be in this mission with them!

and finally, because I know no one read that whole long email, PICTURES!

Our cute friend, Ny'Vea!