After the trial of your faith...

Um I left my planner at home, so basically I have no idea what happened this week or what to do with my life, so sorry if this letter's rough. I don't know how I survived pre-mish without my planner. I'm such a missionary it's disgusting.

WELL. We have seen m i r a c l e s this week. It's transfer week. Normally transfer weeks are awful.... but luckily (or unluckily....trying to be positive here) we basically had our transfer a week early. We got calls last night and found that FOR SURE I will be staying with Sister Johnson for another 6 weeks. It's gonna be good, but a long transfer none the less. I've had an unbroken pattern with my companions since the MTC haha, Trio, best friend companion, rough but hard working comp, trio, best friend comp,......rough....working hard... loving her.. but rough. Sister Johnson just finished her training, she is SUCH a solid missionary. Her and Sister Zenger are the most obedient, letter of the law, to the T missionaries I've ever met. Sometimes it kills me but I'm learning a lot haha :) when I got to the area I had a little bit of a pride problem and thought I was going to help Sister Johnson SO MUCH being her follow up trainer, but instead I got a spiritual punch in the face and remembered that I am an idiot and she is a rock star. If anything, this girl is training me. 

This area is SO different than either of my past areas. There's not many investigators, but there's a lot of potential. Lots of people to talk to. Our area covers a good portion (if not all, i dunno) of Manteca and a bit of the south end of Stockton (YEAH BOY.) and we're full time bike... ha ha. The land is super flat so it's not bad at all, and the weather has been phenomenal.... It's supposed to rain this weekend, which is a bummer for us on bike, but great for California.. the whole drought thing, ya know. Water would be nice i guess. 

We've added 5 investigators since last Monday, had a few MIRACLE days (one of which was yesterday) where we found most of said investigators. It's been a blast... An exhausting, frustrating, rewarding blast. I've never been so tired in my life. It gets worse the longer you're out. Any soon-to-be missionaries, beware. Embrace it. Love it. It's the best time of your life. BACK ON TRACK SORRY. So yesterday. Miracle day. Transfer calls. Sick. Best. Worst. Tired. Excited. Hungry. We got crab for dinner. The area book smells like Elders. 2 new investigators. Yesterday was crazy. I felt like we were getting nothing accompished for the LONGEST time yesterday, but we started talking to people, SPED through all of our plans for the day, and had no idea what to do or where to go. So we found ourselves near the central part of our area... I still have no idea where anything is or who or why or how or ANYTHING. I bike and I testify and I love the people and I depend on God to help me do the rest. So I looked around and asked Sister Johnson if she knew the area pretty well, she said yes. I told her to follow me and we were going to find a miracle.... and a new investigator. I was 99% joking, but we didn't have any other plans, so what else do we do? Just keep swimming, just keep swimming... So I led and we started biking around, stopping and talking to people. After a few failed attempts we met a cute middle aged couple talking to their neighbors who had just had a baby.. thought that was going somewhere and they decided to head out before we could mention the church haha......Typical. It's whatever. I'm just concerned about their salvation and stuff. (Nacho, anybody?) 

So we keep biking, and we wind up in front of this lady's house, Sister Johnson has spent a lot of time with her in the past and wanted a picture for her last comp that I had to replace haha.. So we stop in front of the house, and the neighbor across the street is kinda watching and laughing at us, wondering what is going on. He said he's seen us around a bit in the area, Sister Johnson didn't miss a beat "Oh yeah? Do you ever wonder what we're doing here biking in a skirt, talking to everyone?" The neighbor replies, "uh, -chuckle- well yeah." AAAAANNNDD we're in. Missionary conversation SUCCESS. We told him about our purpose as missionaries, asked about his experiences and thoughts about God... He says he doesn't particularly believe he is or isn't there, he has no idea. He said he prayed about it and searched and studied different books and history and asked and has never received an answer. I shared with him a similar experience that was super personal and important to me, and Sister Johnson PROMISED him that if he read the whole Book of Mormon, cover to cover, that he WOULD receive his answer and that he would feel of God's love and awareness of him. That's a pretty bold thing to do. But it's true. We KNOW it will bless him. We know that it will help him draw closer to God than he's ever been. He's in his 50's now and has kind of given up on a belief, but you could see that he really did want it deep down. He said he would read and pray. We set up an appointment to follow up and talk more about the Book of Mormon and where it came from. He's SO GREAT. 

We've already seen this area pick up so much, there are so many prepared people. It's been SO neat to see them come out of the wood work as we try our best to talk to everyone around is. IT WORKS. 

It's time to gooooo, but keep in touch errbody. Love ya all. Talk to you next Monday :)

Love, Sister Morrill.

PS

HI SORRY. I FORGOT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE BEST PART OF MY WEEK. There's a man in our ward who l o v e s his hunting. He's the best. He's been to Africa 6 times. When he was in Africa he hunted with Barry Bond? Yeah. Killed lions and zebras and wildabeasts.. He's LEGIT. He has them all taxidermied [if that's a word] and hung on his walls, the lion is standing there in the living room.. IT'S A BASK. The whole house is loaded with dead animals. It's beautiful. He let us come by a couple nights before I left, and well, here's a visual..

Bass Lake Blues

Sooooo these days Bass Lake is bumpin' without me :(

 

We got a call Friday night and I got pulled out of the area the next morning for an emergency transfer [ET]! Now I'm in Manteca. I went from the furthest north part of the mission to the most south. WEIRD. I'm back to full time biking!!!! It's tedious to begin with but there are NO hills here and it's suuuch perfect weather to bike in. I'm so excited.. gonna get RIPPED. Other than that, I'm still deciding how I feel about Manteca. I've only been gone for two days but I miss Bass Lake SO MUCH! Transfers are only in a week and a half, so we didn't see that coming at alllllllllll. I'll come back to that though.

 

Before the ET our week was SO GREAT.

 

We had dinner with our investigator and his wife on Tuesday, they have like 4 cats, and they kind of act like cats themselves.. They keep us entertained.

 

On Wednesday we had a lesson with Kevin.. We recently started teaching him with his [now ex]girlfriend (who is a member), he's an AWESOME single dad with 2 teenagers, he used to be an alcoholic, he's been sober for 2 years now and he KNOWS that the strength he's had to change and overcome challenges is completely because of God. We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about baptism, the holy ghost, enduring to the end, etc.. He was so pleased to hear about baptism and how it can cleanse him and give him a fresh start, but he wasn't COMPLETELY sold on the idea yet. We were near the end of the lesson and we were discussing what it means to "endure to the end", and he just pops up suddenly and yells "I got my answer! I believe it! I know it's true! I know I need to be baptized. This is what's missing in my life." We were shocked haha, THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN. EVER. But it did. We got over our initial shock and challenged him to be baptized on February 15th. He accepted :) He wants to be baptized sooner, actually.... He just has to come to church. It was such a miracle!

 

Thennnnn a day or two later his girlfriend called us and said he broke up with her via text... Awk awk awk. Obviously Sister McLelland took that phone call, I don't do the "talk about feelings" thing.. Don't know why all that went down, but we're kind of stuck in the middle of it. Beautiful. The  next day I got ET-ed sooo I haven't heard any more. sad sad sad.

 

We finally met with Kelly! Everyone's prayers are workin haha. He's been super sick, and he's had to work (which is good because he needs the work, but sad because SICK...obvs) We gave him a call and he was super happy to hear from us. We had a lesson with him at the library.... Always a bad idea. He's worse at being serious and quiet than I am. We went into the "quiet room".. turned it into the loud room. The librarians weren't pleased but Kelly is working on salvation, so WHATEVER. I think salvation is more important than a bit of quiet time.

 

Friday. Bah. Weekly planning. Normally I hate weekly planning. We plan for all of our investigators and people we want to focus on, what we want to teach them, how we can help the people in our area, where we need to be, when... everything you could possibly plan for the upcoming week. This weekly planning session was FANTASTIC. Sister McLelland and I actually stayed focused and got stuff D-U-N-N DONE. We were super excited for this week. And then we went to dinner that night. Then we took Jordan with us, she just got her mission call so we're taking her out so she can get a lil experience! ....So she came, we tried to visit a few people, people weren't answering, our new investigator dropped us, stuff just was nottt happening. Then we get a call from the AP's (Assistants to the President). AP calls are never good calls. Especially as a visa waiter, you never know. It probably means someone is leaving. Or in big trouble. Usually it means someone is leaving. They called us LAST transfer and Sister Twitchell was ET'ed.. but this tranfer we weren't in a trio, so we thought they were going to call about my visa or something. No bueno. I picked up the phone and they asked me to take on an assignment in Manteca and that I needed to be there ASAP the next day. Bumbumbumbumbummer. I literally could have stayed in Bass Lake for my whole mission and been completely content. It's fantastic. There's just SO MUCH going in that area. Kelly and the Walsh's and the Duffy's are there. I. Love. Them. And Sister McLelland. I've never been so bummed to leave a companion. She is the BEST. Sister Duffy drove me to Carmichael and we got to say goodbye and get pictures with the Walsh's in the morning before I left, that was nice. I'm coming back after the mish and we're all going to Tahoe so it's all good. Chris is a goof. We're going to float on the lake chuggin' some Kool Aid twisters ;). Anywaaaays, I miss Bass Lake a lot. I've grown so much and I have not been happier on the mission than I was there. But I got comfortable. What happens when you get comfortable? God puts you in a situation where you're UNcomfortable... We've all gotta grow.. I just really really really wanted to keep growing in El Dorado.

 

But that's alright, here I am in Manteca, serving in the Northland ward. I've been on the mission for 8 MONTHS. That's almost half way. People think I know what I'm doing now, but I don't have a clue. I'm "old" now on the mission. NOPE. I don't see it. My companion now is Sister Johnson. She's actually a visa waiter, too! She is waiting to go to the Brazil Goiania mission. She is still pretty new in the field, and I'm finishing her training. YIKES. She's almost done luckily, but unless they move us around on transfers I'm still senior companion and I'm follow-up training. I don't know what I can do really, but she keeps asking me questions like I know and I keep trying to answer, so that's a start. I don't know what I'm doing. I won't tell her that, though. There were 4 companionships that were affected with this ET, so we all met at the mission office [in Carmichael where I was "born on the mish :')] and it was a mini mission reunion. Sister Zenger and her trainee [plus one of the ward members that i LOVE who drove them], Sister Burchett and Sister Ward [Burchy came out with my trainer, Ward served in Northridge before me], My new comp and her trainer Sister Cleverly [didn't know them til now], aaaand me and Sister McLelland. It was nice to see everyone again, but SO SAD. We all kind of got flipped around and we don't know why the ET was needed and it's obnoxious because I still want to be in El Dorado. But it's okay. I'll get over it.

 

SISTER HALE IS IN MANTECA THOUGH. We're in different districts, so I won't see a lot of her, but I'll be reunited with my mission mommaaaaa :) So excited for that. Elder Johnson is here too. We're buds. There are a lot of sisters in this zone and I don't know how I like it. They don't laugh. Thus far I haven't met fun missionaries in Manteca (Sister Hale is....just haven't seen her. She's in Tracy, a little further south). Obviously President needed me here to liven it up a little bit. I CAN DO THAT! We're playing volleyball with some of the Zone today, so mayyybe that will change. I hope so. My companion is wonderful and sweet and obedient. But she doesn't laugh at my jokes. She doesn't realize that I'm HILARIOUS. Send me a letter or an email or something cuz I'm missing everyone hardcore right now, and I need a laugh okay? Honestly this transfer looks a little daunting and it makes it a little easier to hear from yall :)

 

WAIT I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE MEMBER WE'RE LIVING WITH. SHE IS SUCH A BASK.

 

Her name is Sister Pool. She's in her 70's. She acts like she's in her 30's. She is so. much. fun. Her husband and a grandkid passed away last year, and she's recently let the missionaries in her home. She gave us a ride home after church yesterday. Every Sunday she stops at the cemetary, brings flowers or balloons for the grave, cleans it up a bit, and takes a few steps back and plays Be Still My Soul and Amazing Grace on her recorder. It's a legit, indian-looking, wooden recorder. She just stands there and plays a little tribute to her husband. SO CUTE AND SAD AND FUN AT THE SAME TIME. I laugh because emotions aren't an option soooo.. Anyways. After her songs she kneels on hands and knees and kisses the corners of the grave stone, and then shifts to the left on the ground where he's actually buried, and kisses the ground as well. Broke. My. Heart. This woman is dedicated.

 

Okay well this is long, desculpa. It's go time. LOVE YOU ALL. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR LIVES. MAKE ME LAUGH. SEND PICTURES. ANYTHING.

 

Ate logo,

Sister Morrill

HI SORRY. I FORGOT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE BEST PART OF MY WEEK. There's a man in our ward who l o v e s his hunting. He's the best. He's been to Africa 6 times. When he was in Africa he hunted with Barry Bond? Yeah. Killed lions and zebras and wildabeasts.. He's LEGIT. He has them all taxidermied [if that's a word] and hung on his walls, the lion is standing there in the living room.. IT'S A BASK. The whole house is loaded with dead animals. It's beautiful. He let us come by a couple nights before I left, and well, here's a visual..

 

HAY errbody.

Speaking of HAY, we went on two HAY rides this week. And we planted 500 Christmas trees. And we cleaned up a butt load (ha ha) of toilet paper of some poor soul's lawn a few days ago.. Someone in the neighborhood got TP'd and we (by we I mean Sister McLelland.. I mostly just like being the TP-er, not the TP-ed/cleaner... Not on the mish of course. I've repented of my past transgressions, don't worry. It's whatever..ANYWAYS.) We decided to start picking up all this TP, and the neighbors gave us this rake-like thing to help pull it out of the trees, and after they finished their own yard work THEY decided to come over and help us. We started talking about God's hand in our lives and their faith, and got a really great gospel conversation rolling. Then the homeowner's daughter came home and joined in. Then the neighborhood pool guy drove around a few times looking at us, and decided to pull over and yelled "Hey, I've got a little time!", so he joined in as well.. It was SO COOL. The old neighboring couple was so great, they have their own church right now, but they appreciated our help and invited us to stop by and talk to them any time. SCORE. It was wonderful. Sister McLelland teared up a bit.. There are 4 things that really make her cry. 

1-Unity. People join together in one cause and she loses it.

2- The handicapped. 

3- Other people crying. Doesn't matter why. If they cry she'll cry.

4- Old people. She loves em. She can't help herself. 

It's SO fun. She's not a really emotional person but those tear ducts just GO.

We had a lesson with Jack! Always a blast.

Kelly's fallen off the radar this week :/ he needs some prayers! He's gotta remember what he's felt and what he knows to be true, it's been a hard few weeks for him! The adversary's working hard, and Kelly knows that. He's SO prepared for baptism. He just needs to realize that.

We've been able to add some ROCKIN new investigators this week, we're excited! They genuinely want to learn more and they're loving what they've heard. So solid. We got to see Cathlina and Rory yesterday too :') It's been a while haha, it was great!

___________interrupting myself, sorry_________

HEY ABBY. 

I'm sorry Miss Jackson, I am for reallllllll........ popped in my head this week. Thought of you. You're the best. Shoot me an email or letter or something. Miss you boo!

_______________________

 

moving on. Uh, psych. I don't know what else to tell you about this week. It's been great. Things are picking back up after the holidays. We're working our tails off. If anyone knows anyone in the Sacramento area (or anywhere I guess) who needs Jesus just send us a referral on mormon.org okay? That'd be cool. We want to teach people, and referrals are the greatest thing on the planet. 

That's all. I've got nothin.

 

Also some of yall should email me, I've got a whole hour to do it and all I do is write these lame emails! OKAY I'M REALLY DONE NOW. Bah.

See ya lataaaaa.

Love, Sister Morrill

QOTW:

".....What? I had to make sure I got the pea off my pillow."

-S McLelland.  She was legitimately talking about peas, not pee... but still. HA.

"I'VE GOT A SIDE BURN.............Ache. I've got a side ache. Not like Brother Johnson's."

-S McLelland

MONDAY P-DAY

HEY YALL HEYYYY.

Holidays are finally over and we're back to good ole Monday P-days :') It's about dang time. Our zone (about 20 missionaries) got to go on a hay ride this morning, it was a BLAST. They had a border collie and 2 golden retrievers that came along and Sister McLelland and I were dying the whole time. We love dogs a little too much. SPEAKING OF WHICH- we got to visit some members who had 3 GREAT DANES on Saturday. THREE. They were m a s s i v e. and beautiful. and huge. 

Sorry, moving on. 

Uh did I tell you about new year's eve? Wait yes I did because we had P-day on new years day. Wellll. We have this lady who is legitimately a little obsessed with the missionaries, and she's moving out of the ward and she had us visit one more time before she left and she was wearing a Tiger robe and Sister McLelland was basking so hard. She wanted it. We got matching tiger T-shirts last week BTdubbs.. I  know I'll get judged hardcore for this, and I probably deserve it, but the shirts were TOO GOOD TO PASS UP. I don't know why I just told you all of this, but there you go. Now I'll tell you about some of the missionary work I guess, ya know, the entire reason I'm out here. SORRY THIS LETTER IS SO WEIRD IT'S BEEN A WEIRD WEEK OKAY?

We've gotten like 2 new investigators! Suddenly we're getting referrals, and when we contact them they actually want to hear what we have to say. It's a new experience, kinda catches me off guard. "Hi we're the missionaries, can we share a message about Jesus Christ?....Oh, we can? Uh okay. Would you like to learn more about our church? Oh, you would? Uhhh. umm... Okay. Great. Wait, you went to our church last Sunday? What?" That's about how we feel every time that happens. It's fantastic. SO GREAT. There are so many prepared people here, it's been incredible to serve them. Also El Dorado is BEAUTIFUL. Our area is the perfect normal (mostly) people suburb-ish place, then in the area surrounding us there's rich people to the left and lots of land and farms and hicks to the right. It's the best.

We had interviews with President on Friday.. He's quiet and dignified and I'm loud and I try to be dignified but I'm loud so it kinda doesn't work like it should, but it's okay because I GOT PRESIDENT TO LAUGH. TWICE. SCORE. It was cool though, he had us read a scripture in the Book of Mormon about "laying down your weapons of rebellion", and it was an AWESOME way too go about our new year and recognize what could be holding us back from being the best missionaries we can be, and letting it go so we can grow and better help those around us.

PS we got to go on a temple tour of the Sacramento temple with Jack's family! We haven't seen them for like two weeks, major withdrawals. WE LOVE THEM. We texted them about going that morning, and we didn't hear from them all day, then suddenly as we were going to dinner we get a text saying they were on their way... so we dropped the food and headed off to the temple, so funny. Kelle is a champ at doing things last minute haha, LOVE HER. 

Okay I'm running out of things to say but I hope yall have a b-e-a-uuutiful week.

Tchau tchau- 

Sister Morrill

Oh PS

Just fyi I got an abundance of letters over Christmas week so I PROMISE I'm writing yall back, it's just going to be a looong task so sorry if it takes a while. (However this should not stop you from writing me MORE letters..) Feel free to keep em flowin' people ;)

HAPPY NEW YEAR

So it's 2014 and I got my mission call a year ago and time is suddenly f l y i n  g faster than ever before and I don't know how to slow it down. 

I don't even know what to talk about right now, our P-days have been messed up for weeks now because of the holidays sooo I don't even remember what i wrote about last. We had exchanges last week, it was a BASK. I went to East Sac with Sister Dees.. East Sac is ghetto, I LOVE IT. Oh, we decided to eat at Subway for lunch, and when we walked out someone parked THEIR silver car right next to ours,and we didn't realize it wasn't ours and we threw our stuff in and were suuuuper confused about why all this junk was in our car and why our stuff was gone, so I shut the door... then I look up and see our car right next to us.. Awkward moment when missionaries just break into a car and go through all their stuff. We shuffled on over to our car, and turned around to see this old man laughing at us from across the parking lot. Missionary probz. Over it. 

Last night we had a zone activity for new years eve... til 9 PM. We party hard. We had a campfire going, played soccer, ate lots of food, played some ukulele... It was great. Then we came home and passed outttt.

It's been so hard to see people the past few weeks! EVERYONE is gone for the holidays and we've been struggling haha, but we've got lots of work coming up, we're excited!

I'm just telling you this useless information because I'm running out of things to say. We've had to get creative with things to do because literally no one is home or they have family over and don't want to talk to us while others are there... super lame. OH WELL.

Okay I'm gonna go now, sorry this letter kinda sucks.... er, stinks. Slayin' the slang. Missionary problems... KILLING ME. 

Talk to ya MONDAY, finally.

Um abraco,

Sister Morrill