Mission Pics, 30 November 2015

1 - Thanksgiving plate (1st round)

2 - Selfie with part of my district.

3 - Cookie with frosting dessert!

4 - An investigator gave us a giant tortilla! (Ruler for size reference)

Futbolito, Ping Pong, and Mexican Thandsgiving

Hey everybody! So here's another week down, even though I wrote to you guys last Wednesday :) Some more interesting things are going on in our lives here in Mexico, so we're not bored just yet :)

As many of you know, last Thursday was Thanksgiving. The answer is no, Mexicans don't normally celebrate Thanksgiving here....HOWEVER! We had the opportunity to have Thanksgiving dinner in the mission home, with the mission president and his family, our district, the president's assistants, and one of the missionary couples! So yeah, I celebrated Thanksgiving too! I really am grateful for that experience, the food was perfect and oh man, I was so full!

Friday, we after lunch we went to work in one of the sister companionship's areas to help them find more people to teach. Their area is very.........interesting, in the aspect of that there's not a lot of people in the street, and those who we do find normally have no interest in the gospel. We were able to contact a handful of people, most of them said no, but we managed to pull out a referral for the sister missionaries. Do Work!

Saturday, my companion and I helped out the other sister missionaries in our district with a special request from one of their investigators. This investigator, Ruben, has been seeing spirits and has had these weird supernatural feelings in his restaurant. He asked the sister missionaries if my companion and I could come to his restaurant and 'give it a blessing', thinking of when we came to his house and gave him a priesthood blessing. Well, we went and helped him out with his situation. We went to his restaurant with the sister missionaries and Ruben, and we gathered in a circle and we offered a prayer, seemed like a good idea. He said that it helped a lot and thanked us, and then he gave us some sort of salad that he made, (Ruben's a chef).

The rest of the week, we've been working, finding people to teach, and trying to get our investigators to church. It's something that we have to put a little more effort into, church attendance. We know we can get our investigators to church, we have the means, and we're willing to do what we need to!

So, yeah! Here's to another week! November's already over, now into December! Counting down to christmas!

With love,

Elder Morrison

Mission pics - 25 November 2015

1 - Guaymas, outside of the consolate building

2 - Some missionary buddies and I, sitting in the bus station

3 - When it rains, water would come out of this mouth 

4 - My Denver Broncos tie (or Tony the Tiger tie)

Surprise trips to Guaymas (Part 2)

Hey everybody! I luckily found time to write an actual email about this past week, unfortunately I didn't have time yesterday....This normally doesn't happen so no worries :)

This week had a couple of interesting things for my companion and I, the thing most interesting was the fact that I spent my entire P-Day in another part of Mexico, not even in my mission area. So, what happens is that when we are in the mission for about a year, our visas are almost expired. So naturally we have to go renew them, and we do that in a consolate building in a place called Guaymas. It's in the state of Sonora, but north of my mission, it's part of the Mexico Hermosillo mission, I think. It's far away. We took a bus, around 24 or so missionaries, and we headed up north. It takes about 2 or 3 hours to arrive in Guaymas, and we left at around 7:30. We get there at 10:30ish, and we walk to the consolate building. This building is super small and one by one we started signing papers and giving finger prints. A few other missionaries and I didn't have visa pictures, which were required, so we had to go to a local photo place and take some pictures really fast. Everything worked out in the end, and when we were done, we went and ate lunch. There was McDonalds, Little Cesar's, Burger King, and Subway to choose from. I ate subway :) After lunch we went back to the bus station and we started our bus ride back to the mission. We got back at around 5. Then, my companion and I took a bus back to our area, and we got home at like 6:15. Normally, P-day ends at 6:00 at we work for the rest of the day. So, you could say we lost our P-day. Good stuff.

We also had a meeting last Thursday, focused on a new christmas initiative from the Church. It's called A Savior has born, or in Spanish "Ha nacido un Salvador", it's really cool, and we're handing out special cards, and we're inviting people to watch a special christmas video. The video I think is already out in English, but the spanish version comes out the 29th of November. There's a special page that the Church is going to put out, and it's all just going to be awesome. You all should take a look :)

This saturday, we went to a baptism! It wasn't any of our investigators that got baptized, it was of a sister companionship in my district. The new convert's named Chalo, he's a really cool guy actually, he's really nice and it's always nice to have a new member in the Church :) 

The rest of the week, we've been working, finding people to teach, doing the same old missionary routine. I would say that we're doing pretty well, we have a good amount of lessons, and we have some baptisms planned for december. We're going to keep working hard, praying, and we'll see if we can get a few baptisms in before this year is over :)

Road to Guaymas (To be continued)

Hey everybody, today I was really busy doing stuff for my visa, so I don't have much time to write, so I'm going to write my letter tomorrow or sometime soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Love,

Elder Morrison

Used Clothes, Surprise Invitations, etc.

Hey everybody! Another week down in November, it's actually starting to cool down now. It's actually a little bit cold in the mornings and at night. I love it! It's amazing, the heat is officially gone and 'winter' is now starting.

This week was pretty good for us, a few good things, a few not as good things. However, we're still pushing through, we're happy with the progress that we've seen with our investigators and we've been finding new investigators every now and again :)

Monday and Tuesday were normal days, P-Day and District meetings, and yeah. Epic story actually, on Tuesday. So, we had appointments planned in the evening, but we were supposed to go to a meeting with the ward missionary leader in the evening as well. We thought, "What are we going to do????", We rushed to all the appointments that we could (only like 3, but still!), we were able to teach 2 of those 3 (which is amazing) and we managed to get a ride from the bishop to the chapel, and we made it in time for the meeting with the ward missionary leader. We were so happy because we thought we were going to either have to drop an appointment or skip the meeting, but we were able to do all that we needed to do. DO WORK!

Wednesday, after eating lunch (and brownies), we took a few hours and we worked in the sister missionaries's area in order to help them out contacting referrals and finding more people for them to teach. They specifically asked my companion and I to accompany them in an appointment with one of their investigators. This investigator is very VERY interesting, she claims to see spirits around her that talk to her and ask her for help and other crazy things. She was feeling sick, so the sister missionaries explained that as elders we were able to give special priesthood blessings. We gave her, and her son who was also feeling sick, blessings and they said that they felt something so special throughout their entire body. I'm just going to say that this was a very interesting experience for all 4 of us missionaries

Thursday, we played foosball (futbolito), it was awesome.

Friday, in the morning as I was cooking breakfast and as my companion was in the shower, we received a call from one of the AP's and he told us that there's a meeting in the chapel in about an hour and we have to go. It was like 7:25 and it started at 8:30. Snap. We rushed to get ready and we hurried to the church as fast as we could. We made it to the chapel, and the meeting hadn't started yet. I think they were waiting for us to arrive so that they could begin. Well.....a little heads up would have been nice! Also, we lost the chance to have 4 lessons, 3 of which could have been really important for us. Oh well, Mission President's orders. The meeting was about how we can improve in our district meetings, other things, and a christmas message that we're going to be sharing with everybody next month. I really am excited for this iniciative, it's going to be great!

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to go to a retirement home and sing hymns for a handful of elderly folk. 3 of the 4 companionships in our district went, it was really fun to go and meet the elderly and sing for them. They loved it and they told us that they want us to come back and sing for them again and again. It was so heartwarming, the Spirit was there, and yeah. Old people are awesome.

On Sunday, in church there was a primary program which was really nice to see. Some primary kids shared little messages and they all sang primary hymns. It reminded me of when I was in primary and when I was part of those programs during sacrament meeting. Then, let's fast forward to the night. We were running all over our area to find rides for our investigators so that they can come to church. We stopped by one member's house and the lights were off. They were our last hope of getting our investigators a ride to church. We were in front of their house, thinking of who else could help us. Then, all of a sudden, the porch light turns on. The wife comes out and asks us if we wanted to come in. They were in another room, watching a movie! The husband said that he just randomly had the need to drink some water so he went to the kitchen to get some water and that's when he saw us. He told his wife to come see and then that's when they invited us in for some dinner. We asked them for help with our investigators and they were more than happy to help. Unfortunately, all of our investigators that were going to go to church.....canceled on us. They all told us that they couldn't come to church in that same morning. It was a bummer for us, but it was for special reasons, so I still have hope for next sunday.

So yeah, my week was quite an interesting one. I'm fine with that, it makes the mission fun! Let's see what we can do in this upcoming week, and we'll see what happens.

Love you all!

Elder Morrison

Mission pics - 16 November 2015

1 - We didn't have a curtain to put over a window in our house.......so we improvised!

2 - Working on my mohawk (Not really, I was tired and I decided to comb my hair into a mohawk)

Gears of War, Reincarnation, and John Lennon

Hey everybody! I finished another week here in Villa Bonita, and this week I officially complete 10 months in the mission field! It feels like I'm still a new missionary, but it seems like I'm not a greenie anymore haha.

This week was an interesting one, a lot of stuff happened that usually doesn't I guess you could say. 

The first few days of this week, we didn't have that many lessons. One of the reasons was that we were talking to a less active for about 3 hours! That's terrible! We completely lost track of time, we did share a message with her. Afterwards, we just started talking about random things, and that's what made us stay for so long. It wasn't something that we're proud of, we agreed to never do that again haha.

Last Friday we had a zone conference, the zone leaders asked us if we wanted to have the meeting Thursday or Friday a couple days earlier. Everybody said Thursday would be better, so the zone leaders decided to have the zone conference on Friday. No, it doesn't make sense. The conference was decent, I'm pretty sure I learned a couple things, yeah...  One part I really liked was that we had a little activity where one person would ask a hard question about doctrine and the rest of us would have to answer that question. There was some really interesting questions, but being super amazing missionaries, we had answers to all of them.....more or less :)

This weekend we had stake conference in our.......stake. We went to some saturday sessions, and the sacrament meeting on sunday, that only lasted for 2 hours instead of 3. A general authority from the 70 came and talked about a lot of things, about responsibility, the Atonement, and other things. He bashed a lot on the bishops of the stake, because not a lot of the ward council came to the reunion on saturday. He spoke very....strongly. Honestly, I enjoyed stake conference, it was good to hear the words of really important people in the church. We even saw the temple president of the Hermosillo temple, along with his wife. I shook hands with him before the reunion started, not knowing who he was. Then they announced who he and his wife were, and I was shocked! I thought, "I just shook hands with a temple president....cool!!". It was a good stake conference.

As of last saturday, we are in a new house. I will attach pictures of the house in this email or in another one. It has more space, and hot water! I'm so happy to take hot showers once again. I like it more than our previous house. Just one challenge right now is that there's a lot of mosquitos here. The mosquitos in these parts carry a disease called "Dengue" (Deng-gay) It's a pain to deal with, and if you get sick with Dengue, it's possible that you could have to stay in your house for a couple days.....due to the pain that it gives you. It's not something good to have, no sir.

So those were some of the highlights of my week this week, hope you enjoyed reading it :)

Here's to another week!

Love,

Elder Morrison

This is what my new house looks like, it's about...15 feet from our last house

Fútbol, Halloween, and the Virgin Mary

Hey everybody! October is over, and now moving on to November. It's really weird for me to think that this year is almost over! Also, this week I'm going to complete 10 months in the mission. I can't explain how weird it is to know that I've been in Mexico for 10 months already, it feels like it hasn't been that long!

So, this week was the first week of this transfer, and wow what an interesting week it was! First, an elder in my district WAS going to train a new missionary in this transfer. However, there was a little problem.....this new missionary didn't come to the mission field. My elder friend, Elder Steele, was waiting and waiting in the chapel for his new trainee to arrive, but he never did! So, he stayed with us for about a day. We actually ended up spending the night in his house (we share the same area, so we live in the same area).  The next day, Tuesday, he received a new companion, Elder Rojas, a mexican that has almost a year in the mission. They get along well, and I feel like they're going to be great companions. 

This week went very well for us, Elder Poaletti and I. It's been the best week I've had since I arrived here last transfer. We were able to find a lot of new investigators, that actually are interested in the gospel. With that said, I feel like we're going to do a lot of work, and have a lot of success in the transfer, maybe even a baptism! We're working on it ;) We get along great, he really is such a cool guy, he likes to work and he's just a nice guy to be around.

As many of you know, this last saturday was Halloween. Fun fact, people trick or treat here too in Mexico! I bet you didn't know that! Because I didn't until I saw tons of little kids dragging their parents around and asking for candy from everyone. It was really cool to see all the little kids dressed up in costumes running around for candy, it reminded me of home :)

Yesterday, was the first sacrament meeting with my new companion, and thankfully one of our investigators was able to come to church! His name is Jonathan, and he's 13, and he's a cool kid. He has a good amount of friends that are members, in fact, they attend the ward that we're in, so he can easily fit in. He likes to listen to our message, and we're planning his baptism for November 28. Prayers would be really nice, I would appreciate it :)

That's really it for this week, not too much, but just enough to make it interesting I guess :)

Until next week!

Elder Morrison

Mission pics - Nov 2 2015

1- The time we slept in Elder Steele's house (the elder who had no companion for a day), I slept on a spare mattress, with a blanket of the Virgin Mary. Don't Say Anything

2- Getting into the Halloween spirit!

3- My companion taking a selfie with a member's dog

4- Elder Rojas with his sweet new ride (not really his car)

Mission pics 2! - Nov 2 2015

1 - My companion and I eating dinner in an investigator's house

2 - This is a Virgin Mary sticker on a window above my desk

3 - This is what the sticker says: Little Virgin, Please send me a boyfriend.

4 - "Um....maybe they're not home"