Lot's to talk about

Óla! So in preparation for today and reflecting on the past week, I had made a list of things I wanted to talk about. Of course, I left the list at home and now am just going to try and remember everything.
 So time sure does pass really fast. This last Tuesday we went on an exchange with missionaries in our zone, a district leader E. Muniz and his companion that he is traning E. Fagg (yup, it sounds just like it´s spelt.) E. Muniz is my ex- zone leader and one of my best friends here in the mission. I told E. Fagg that he got one of the best missionaries in the whole mission to be his trainer. I stayed in our area with E. Fagg; it was really good and fun too. I really wanted to help him just go out there and talk to people on the street or in front of their houses etc. One thing I really struggled with as a new missionary was just stopping and talking to people, I really wasn´t fufilling my calling as a missionary and I didn´t want him to be making the same mistake. So that´s what we practiced. He did super well. I told him to just go out and do it and I would be right by his side to help like his companion will be. It took me back to my first divisions with E. Rogers and how great that was for me. I can´t believe that now he is at home, I am in his place and am taking new guys on exchanges too. I enjoyed it and tried to give him lots of good advice and just encourage him because the language WILL COME and some day he won´t even remember what it was like not to understand. Unfortunately we didn´t get to teach too much that day, and the teaching we did wasn´t just standard lessons, it required talking with people and seeing their needs so he didn´t get to be too involved, but we did´teach a good lesson about The Restoration of The Gospel that night, he did great again.
  Oh, funny story, Monday night I was giving myself a hair cut for our leadership meeting the next day when the clippers stopped working when I was about at the halfway point. That left me in a pickle. I told E. Cardoso that if I didn´t get it working he would have to learn to cut hair with sissors pretty fast. Luckily we got it up and running again, but I was worried for a moment.
  OH! I saw monkeys! Our area is pretty... the word in Portuguese is mato, i guess in English it would be like the woods, or foresty. We went to visit a less active family and in the trees by there house there was a bunch of monkeys! I was pretty excited, and bummed that I didn´t have my camera with me. I just didn´t think I would ever see any this far down south but I guess I was wrong.
  We struggled a little bit this week teaching. It seems like everybody packed up and took a week long vacation, plus we still just don´t have too many investigators yet. I know they are out there, but it has been a struggle. But we have also found many other less-active members of the church to be working with.
  There is a family of young men that are less active that we have been working with. Gregory, Gabriel, and João Vitor. They are all really awesome. They were taught as a family but the parents never got around to being baptized because they didn´t quit smoking so just the boys were baptized. We are really wanting to help the parents rekindle that desire to follow Christ and help them to partake of baptism so the whole family can go together and they can work towards being an eternal family.
  We found another less active family two nights ago and the father came with us to stake conference yesterday. It was SUPER good. Elder Carlos Godoy was there, and President and Sister Swenson too. I felt very uplifted. There were so many members coming in that we kept giving up our seats and setting up more chars. Finally I asked all the missionaries in our zone to just stand so that all the member could have a place, especially young mothers and Elderly couples. We did manage to set up some chairs for us later on, but it was tight. It was so good to see the church so strong in this area.
    Man, I had that list for a reason, I don´t remember everything I wanted to say.
We did another exchange with another companionship this week as well. E. David and E. Annunçiação. They have been struggling a bit and we wanted to help them out and see what was going on. I ended up having a really good conversation with E. David and we talked about our motives for having served a mission, why we do what we do, and the attributes we develop etc. This email is turning out to be super long so I won´t go into the details. It just seems to me like some people think you will go on a mission and magically aquire better attributes. But we need to do the things that will help us be better. We may sometimes pray for patience, but we want that patience RIGHT NOW! We will gain patience by BEING patient, we will learn love, by helping and serving others. Being on a mission isn´t enough, you need to BE a missionary.
  Well, I will wrap up this email. I hope everyone is well. It sounds like it. Special congradulations to Uncle Sam, and also to Jennifer as of Wednesday :) I expect details this coming week.
Come Grande Amor
Seu Filho, Irmão, e Amigo
Élder David F. Morgan

Too much craziness to give the email a title

Oi!
So, I just looked through those little face icons on the computer to see if there is one that looks absolutely overwhelmed, doomed, and very humbled.. or screaming in terror... doesn´t exist.  this is as close as I could get.
  So! I feel like so much has happened I don´t know where to start and I feel like it´s been so long that you should all already know about it... but it´s only been a week. So to sum it all up. I got transferred, I am in Porto Alegre opening an area.... oh ya, and I got called as a Zone Leader. (WHAT?!)
  I will just start with the story. So transfers. We went up to Porto Alegre to the Mission Office where Elder Almeida was going to be meeting his companion that he will be training. When we showed up there I saw my companion from the CTM Elder Jensen who is the Financial Secretary. Happy to see him I gave him a hug and he told me, ´Hey Congratulations!´ I asked him ´for what?` he was kind of running out the door and so he just gave me a weird look, muttered something and left. I thought it was kind of weird. But when I actually walked into the office I was greeted by more ´Congratulation!´ once again, I asked ´for what?´ (p.s. usually President will call you and let you know if you have been called as a Zone Leader) everybody thought I was just faking not knowing, so they wouldn´t tell me. Finally I figured out that I had been called as a Zone Leader. Surprise! I felt a little light headed.
  I am in a new area called Agronomia Mapa, opening a part of the area. A new stake was just made in Porto Alegre, and therefore the mission created a new zone. Partenon Viamão. My companion is Elder Cardoso from São Paulo. I have known him since I was a greenie in the mission, we were in the same zone in Pelotas. He is a really good guy, a little crazy, but in a really good, making jokes, hardworking way, so it´s good. He has about five months left on his mission and has a sweet accent that I am trying to mimic because so far I like it the best. But in spite of feeling overwhelmed I am comforted because he is a good missionary and will and already is helping me out a lot.
  When I talked about The Lord stretching us and putting us in situations to help us grow, I didn´t really have this in mind, I feel like a got put on the rack a little bit. I haven´t even been a senior companion yet. Luckily I have always been put with District Leaders so I have a little bit of experience there; and I am really just trying to trust The Lord and realize He is in control. I think I just feel really inexperienced.
  I really do like our area. It is out and away from everything which is really nice. We are in downtown Porto Alegre, and it is really busy. I prefer to be up and away from all the hustle and bustle.  Simões Lopes and Camaquã were two really quiet and calm places generally speaking and when I got of the Bus in Porto Alegre I felt a little shell shocked. Buses, highways, people shouting and selling things on the street, I had a bit of a ´deer in the headlights´feeling.
 We are working really hard and talking to a lot of people because we are opening the area we are at a total of about 6-8 investigators right now. We are teaching an older lady named Yara who came to church on Sunday and felt The Spirit really strong and felt very peaceful and renewed, I hope and pray we will see some progress there. We are also teaching some families too, they were progressing but then turns out they started having relationship problems, I hope they will put there faith in Christ and realized that He can help them work through it. It would be real tragedy to see any family broken up, I really want to help them out.
  We had a Zone Leaders Council on Wednesday. It was really kind of neat to be in such a close setting with President Swenson. ALSO E. Palandi, E. Hansen, E. Falcão, and I are all ZL´s together, so our district from Simões Lopes is all back together, it was really fun to see them and we all got to catch up a little bit.
  To sum it up, I am spending a lot of time on my knees and have lot´s to think about unlike when I showed up in Camaquã. The ward is nice, it was a little weird to be in a large group of people again at Sunday, but nice..ish haha. I played the piano. The Bishop's son here will be leaving to Belo Horizante this Thursday and it was interesting to see them saying goodbye and it brought back some memories. Especially of those SUPER good burritos that Jenn made, that I was way too nervous/ busy to eat haha.
  I am going to wrap this up. So basically Jenn´s baby could be coming any day now. So Congrats if he/she happens to be born before my next email home. :)
Lot´s of love to all. Please pray for miracles to happen here.
Com Grande Amor
Seu Filho, Irmão, e Amigão
Élder David F. Morgan