I can never think of good titles for my email

Óla família!

So ya, life is good.

Honestly, I am SOOOO tired this week. We need to clean our house still today too. We had a great begining to the week. We talked to so many people, we taught a lot and it was just way good. After about Wednesday though, things started falling through and we didn´t have any more lessons. The problem is we are teaching people only on a weekly basis instead of short, but various visits in the week. Luis Fernando went to church yesterday! Woohoo! He seemed to really like it, and there was lots of people at church that day too, the talks and discussions were perfect as well, I was really pleased.

Last night we were going to teach Luis Fernando, but there was some members who were going to teach with us, and he didn´t have much room at his apartment, so we went and had a lesson in the park about The Plan of Salvation. He is really intelligent and understands well all of the concepts that we talk about. Honestly, he is a little weird, does Calculus, just for fun, haha but a great guy. There is another young man, about 14 years old, who has been coming to church too that we started to teach, Iago, who is really great, it is just being difficult to meet with him. He started praying, after having gone to church without anybody having invited him.

We had a ward activity on Saturday, where we got together and went in families to go and distribute friendship cards in the neighborhood around the Chapel. It was fun to see everybody get so excited about missionary work and everyone who participated enjoyed it.

Today I got permission to go and pay a visit in Simões Lopes :) I visted Cátia, ( Igor wasn´t there, and has been having some problems, I don´t remember if I mentioned that they seperated) and it was so great to see how The Lord had blessed her and there family for being faithful and obeying the commandments. She is working, studying, taking care of three children, is very very poor, but still finds time to smile, hold family night, and serve faithfully in the ward. It was so great, you can really just see a light in her eyes as she and her mother, who haha was CRAZY before, as they have been changed by The Atonement of Christ. They used to fight, hardly speak during the day, etc. Now they are the best of friends, hugging and laughing, and living a simple, but happy life. I felt so pleased to see them.

So, I stayed here with Elder de Almeida for one more transfer, it has been good. The transfer was CRAZY, Presidente Castro told us to forget logic, because it doesn´t exist anymore in our mission.

We did a baptismal interview this week too, in Gotuzzo, with two Elders. A young woman ( ha 28 years old) who has been ready for baptism for quite awhile, but was never baptized, because she said she still didn´t have a testemony. One day her friend was saying how she condemed The Book of Mormon, and then Ana Claudia ( the girl who will be baptized this friday) bore her testimony of The Book of Mormon and The Bible together, and then realized she did know The Gospel was true, and decided to take the step to be baptized, her friend wants to watch her baptism.

Well, that is all I have time for. I can´t wait for Krista to have her baby. I can´t believe how many neices and maybe nephew I will have to get to know when I am home. The months are passing very quickly. I thought that I might train a new missionary or have another calling in the mission here soon, but I was told today that it isn´t likely that I will be released as a zone leader any time soon, we´ll see.

That´s all. LOTS and LOTS of love.

Elder David F Morgan

I think I can, I think I can....

Óla!

WOW!

I didn´t see the time flying by and I have almost NO TIME!

Sorry.

We had a good week. Really hard actually, it seemed like nobody was home at all or just gave us excuses to not hear, but we just kept going, knocking on doors, asking for referals, talking to people in the street, smiling. It was a good week. We really worked hard. I just felt good all over. Seriously, I feel sooo happy.

Thursday we had a zone conference w/ the zones on the bottom half of our mission, and it was really uplifting. We talked about sanctifying ourselves to be instruments in The Lord´s hands. Also, Sister Castro talked to us about having good... Animation... cheer, excitement. Whatever the word is in english (by the way, Grant´s English is so wretched! Reading his emails is so fuuny, even I´m not THAT bad, I can usually catch myself, he just lets it all loose hahaha, Love that kid :) ) Anyways, coming back. She read to us O Trenzinho que podia. ´The lil´engine that could´ It was... cute, but also very spiritual as she read to us from her mission journal and talked to us about how to stay positive and happy, and full of faith.

running over time AHH!

Yesterday, after nobody being home all week, we managed to teach a college student here, Luis Fernando, that was really interested and engaged, I love when I don´t feel just like a mouth, but that our lesson is a discussion. He accepted to prepare himself for baptisms, and was really grateful for our visit. I felt so grateful that The Lord had blessed us for not giving up, or getting discouraged during the week.

The month/transfer has flown by. Elder de Almeida is awesome! We haven´t had as much success as we would like right away, but I feel good about or efforts.

Okay, gotta go. Time is up,

Lots of love

Elder David F Morgan

Without A Title...

Óla!

Well, what can I say about this week?

It was actually pretty normal. We gave a training for the zone on Wednesday. We talked to them about the importance of always seeking new people to teach, even when we have a great teaching pool, because you never know when everyone will fall through, and it is important to be finding, while we teach and baptize, all at the same time. We also trained about how to cease teaching investigators who are not progressing ( a challenge we are having in the zone, eternal investigators) Our purpose is to invite people, and in the most loving way possible, show them that repentance and convenents are the only way to follow The Savior, if they don´t want to do so, we need to continue to seek others who are ´kept from the truth because they know not where to find it´ and who will accept those invitations. We also made some fun videos to inspire and excite them. I feel like it went well, in our weekly report yesterday the whole zone had done much better.

I honestly was a little bummed with myself this week, even though our work got better, I feel like I could have done better. We didn´t plan very well, and it seemed like everything fell through this week, so we did a lot of unproductive walking, which is not my favorite activity. I don´t really like going home feeling defeated, but seeing that the whole zone did better this week, picked me up a bit.

On a fun note. We moved our study desks into the "living room" of our apartment and found out that the accustics there are SOOO good. So now we have started to sing hymns before our study, and sometimes at night.

We have zone conference this week and I am hoping to receive some personal revelation to have a little bit of direction in our area. We are working hard, but without many results so we are needing to change our strategy I guess. We started talking to people about geneology, something that I have never tried before, we are going to find out what is the schedule of the family history center and make some flyers we can give to people. It was fun to share with Elder de Almeida some stories that I remembered reading from our family history.

I feel this odd desire to always be smiling lately. I feel like a goof walking down the street trying to wipe the grin off my face. Even when something cruddy happens, I have this perma-grin on, or at lest the desire to.. it is weird.

Anyways. I am trying to think of a spiritual thought, but I feel like I am repeating myself a lot. I was reading in Mosias today, I could see that sometimes The Lord see´s fit to try our faith and patience, as Elder Anderson said, with faith, comes the tests of our faith, which bring more faith. I think the best way to endure it well, is to seek out our blessings, and be drenched in gratitude to The Lord. We are going through a trial of faith in our area right now, but we are trying to endure it well, and we may even try to literally count our many blessings :)

I love you. I try to remember to pray for you, but there is a lot to think about here :p

Elder David F Morgan

My Mind Is Fried

Óla!

I swear, listening to training, and having meetings and conferences is the most tiring thing in the world! On monday we took a bus to Porto Alegre, and got there late. We had zone leaders council at Pres. Castro´s house (sweet right?) that took most the of day, and then we hopped on the bus and went back to Pelotas (three and a half hour bus ride, so not TOO bad). Wednesday afternoon we had specialized training w/ Pres Castro and the assistants and at about 6:30 we went on splits with them and managed to get a little bit of work done, but sadly not much. Thursday we had breakfast as a zone and interviews w/ Pres Castro, but the time went by and so Elder de Almeida and I weren´t interviewed. No probs, because we have zone conference in a few weeks so we will do it then.. I think. O ALSO, ´we´ ( not I) lost our cell phone on the bus coming into Pelotas woohoo! Friday we had a meeting with the Bishopric, and afterwards our ward mission leader, Madger. Then of course summing up in the awesome sessions of General Conference on saturday and sunday. My mind is so fried that I haven´t been making it to 10:30, after planning our day, I get ready for bed, pray , and sleep, the extra half hour is SO precious.

So just because it NEEDS to be said. Let us all agree that President Uchtdorf, is still, The Man. I love that he always seems to talk about, slowing it down, finding joy in the journey, what is really important in life etc. We are going to adapt his talk to the mission in our training on wednesday. Just a quote from what he said I want to share. ( I heard it in portuguese so if it comes out a little different, bare with me.) ´ Many of the regrets of tomorrow, can be avoided, if we choose to follow The Savior Jesus Christ, today.´ We are going to ask the missionaries what kind of regrets are possible to have at the end of a mission looking back and what kind of action we can take today, to avoid those regrets and find joy in the journey of our missions.

Elder Hollands talk was way good, he had given a talk similar in the MTC and it was transmitted to us in SÃO Paulo when I was there.

Ha, funny story. Elder de Almeida and I showed up after the special missionary announcement. So when all of the speakers wer mentioning what a historic moment it was and how grateful they are (yet never mentioning what was actually announced) I was freaking out wanting to know what it was, lessons learned, show up early! It was Elder Nelson that bailed us out and acutally said what changed. So yup, Elder´s can go with 18 years now and the Sisters with 19. That should increase drastically the amount of missionaries in the world (one would hope) and I hope it gets many other yound men preparing sooner. Ha, about the sisters. All the Elder feel shafted, haha all the girls that would be in our in our dating group when we go home ( aka 19-20 year olds) will now be married or on missions, so we got the short end of the stick ha.

President Monson and Pres Eyering both talked about what has really been on my mind lately (suprise) Knowing the will of The Lord, and acting on spiritual promptings to fufill that will and be of service to others. I personally, don´t know how we are going to help our area or our zone to grow and get out of the rut that it is in right now, but The Lords knows, so it is essential that we know His will and do it. It is also an excellent recipe for happiness. :)

Sadly, or teaching this week was a bust. We left in between sessions of conference and tried to get some work done, but nobody wanted to hear us this week it seemed like, and every plan we had fell through. I don´t like getting to that moment where I think ´well, what do we do now?´ Days, like that, you just throw a smile on, give your comp a hug, and buy something you really like to eat at the end of the day. :p

Wow, I´m hungry.

Our training w/ Pres. Castro was also very inspiring, we talked about asking inspired questions to our investigators, and how The Savior also asked questions that really changed people.

Okay, time is coming up.

I love you all very much. I love this work too. Make others feel important and loved this week.

Elder David F Morgan

Mini Miracles Again!

Óla!

So now that our house is clean and neat our work was very good this week :p

Our first task has been to build some sort of a teaching group, nothing happens in missionary work until you find somebody to teach. We started the week in fasting and asked The Lord to send us to people prepared to hear our message and promised that we would do our best to find these people, The Lord is too good to us. We started looking up all the contacts that we have in the area book, and asking all the members for referals, marking appointments with people on the street etc. It is neat how The Lord guides us, almost without us knowing. One night we were just about to leave a certain area, and we just decided to go after a few more adresses right where we had just passed, one of the these was Rudiele. He is 18, and is pro Soccer player here in Pelotas. ( a B team, but hey, it´s my team too.) We felt that we should talk to him about The Plan of Salvation, and he had lots of questions and we talked, and he really paid attention, and The Spirit was really strong. We invited him to pray to confirm in his heart that everything we had taught him was true, which he accepted and we also invited him to be baptized, which he also accepted! It might be a little tricky at first, cause of his game schedule, but there has got to be a way I´m sure. We went home really happy that night.

Also, who would have thought that two missionaries rocking out ´Johnny B Goode´ could be so inspired to help unite a ward? Elder de Almeida had planned a ´time tunnel´ activity ( oldies music, dance etc.) before I got here and we were REALLY praying that is went right, to try to gain some confidence with the members and leadership, and to just unite everyone and have a good time. It was a HIT! We sang, I played Great Balls of Fire of course, and then we both ripped up an awesome Johnny B Goode. Some other members presented dance and songs, and it was just an all around good time. Sunday all the members were still talking about it, and the bishop was very pleased, he had told us that he wanted to get the ward excited, but he is a very calm man and that is not really his strong point, and that the previous Elders had always done lots of ward activites and that seemed to help. So at least the members here really like the missionaries now. :) Like I had said too, Elder de Almeida reminds me A LOT of Shaun, so goofing off and singing with him felt natural and we had a great time too.

Sunday we didn´t have any investigators at church again :( we are hoping/praying that we can bring somebody to General Conference this weekend. I LOVE General Conference!

Well, we are going to travel to Porto Alegre today, zone council tomorrow. This time it will be in the mission home, so after a year and six months almost, I will finally go there. Woohoo! But it means that p day will be spent on a bus ha. Letter time, I am behind. ALSO! reminds me, the mail company is on strike, its been awhile now, and so if you sent a letter, I won´t be getting it for a while. The bank workers are all on strike too.

Okay, gonna run now.

I love ya, please pray for us,pray for the missionaries in our zone, and pray for our investigators please.

Seriously, I love you all.

Elder David F Morgan