We are here to influence the world rather than have the world influence us!

     So this week, everyone who plays the piano or organ decided to go out of town all at once.  So guess who played the piano In sacrament meeting? Yep.  Me.  And I was up there so worried about playing and looking at what songs we were going to do that I was oblivious to the fact that the stake presidency was sitting on the stand...  I had no idea until they announced the bishop was being released that we were getting a new bishopric. Yep.  Probably i should have gotten the hint when bishop was crying while he was conducting....but he cries every time he conducts!  (Kind of reminds me of someone I know....) So our new bishop is bishop Tanner.

     I also ended up playing in primary as well.  That is always fun! :) those kids say the funniest things! Also, we had zone conference this last week.  So we are all told to prepare talks and then when we get there, it is announced who is speaking.  So elder Witaker got up and announced a bunch of people...and then just before the last one could go, he got up again and I was like, ah man!  He is going to announce my name right now. Yep.  He did.  So I gave my talk about prophets...and I pretty much have no idea what I said because I was so nervous.  But a lot of people said I did a really good job....  sister Perea was laughing at me because my hands were shaking so hard when I sat down. Anyway, I hope everyone is having a fabulous week!

Love, sister morris

Sent from my iPad

The Holy Ghost is always the Teacher anytime, anywhere pure truth is taught. That is His privilege, that is His stewardship.

     So we had a really great time doing service this week for a less-active/part-member family.  They were doing a garage sale and we went over to help clean stuff up and get it ready for the next day.  It turns out that Faith collects pencils and we had to force her to put them out. Seriously, even she was surprised at how many pencils she had collected over the years!  We filled up an entire table with just pencils!  It was crazy!  And she had a ton of beanie animals she had collected, thinking they would be worth something, but turns out they aren't...  And she had a huge collection of purses that she had stored downstairs they had grown mold on them, so we had to clean them off.  Anyway, it worked out really nice because we didn't have any dinner that night and the Kostelniks ended up buying us pizza as a thank you.  (They also tried to pay us and we were like, no!  It was service!).

     Anyway, we got eaten alive this week!!  I have so many bites on my legs!  It is awful!  And itchy!   I guess I need to take bug spray with me everywhere so I can reapply!

     We also had a great dinner with the Lindsay's yesterday!  They are soo funny!  Brother Lindsay does a really good imitation of an older brother in our ward and they were showing how to light matches on your teeth....  Yep.  That is the Lindsay family for you!

Anyway, I hope you all are having a great day!

Sister morris

This is my wall!  I'm thinking i should fill up the whole thing!  That would be fun! 

This is the nasty bug we found on our wall...I stood on the couch and sprayed it with Raid
Sister Perea tried to smack it with a broom when it fell...Yep.
That was an epic fail!  It ran under the couch...We hope it's dead

We love biking!  Not!
 This picture was at like 9am and it was soo hot

This is Shelby Cordell who is heading to the Mexican MTC on Wednesday.
 Spanish-speaking Arizona!  Crazy that she is already leaving!
She was the first member of our ward I ever met (drove us home from Charlotte)

"I must testify of the blessings of daily scripture study and prayer and weekly FHE. These are the very practices that help take away stress, give direction to our lives, and add protection to our homes." Sister Reeves GC

     So this week has been really fun since it was my birthday on Monday and sister Perea's on Saturday!  We got soo much cake!  Too bad neither of us are really big fans of cake...But we had a lot of people that wanted to feed us for our birthdays! Like the Kastenlniks (Faith is a less-active who was baptized at 17 and inactive by 19...She was a do not contact that Sister Perea contacted anyway with one of her former companions but when the missionaries met her son Eddie and started teaching him, she let the missionaries start coming.  She is our favorite less-active to teach!) Anyway, the three of them had us over for dinner and we had some really yummy spaghetti and chocolate cake.  We felt really special because we ate in the formal dinning room which they have not used in 15 plus years!  

     Anyway, we are hoping to help Faith come back to church and tell her she should bring her husband as well (they are catholic). Also, Sister Jessup (less-active) had us over for lunch and she bought us cupcakes as well.  She is really sweet and enjoys our visits. And the Gordon Lindsay family (you have to specify since there are three Lindsay families) had us over for dinner...And that was interesting!  Evaline pulled out her tooth at the dinner table and had to use napkins to get it to stop bleeding.  And Clair said, "Everyone! Listen!  I'm going to tell you a dream.  Except I don't have dreams so I am going to make it up."  And Brother Gordon ended up at the mini table because Clair and Bonnie were fighting...It was just overall a really fun dinner! We also ate with the story family who made a multi-layered cake. They were all really cute, giving us origami and happy birthday signs they had made. Also, It is soo humid today!  We are dying!  Hopefully it will not be that humid tomorrow!

Anyway, hope y'all are having a great day!

Sister Morris                                                      

My companion in the MTC--Sister Grace

Our visit to the Provo Temple

our bedroom

a frog i caught

The Really cute calendar from the Rasmussens!!!  I love it!!

thank you everyone for your birthday wishes!
and i love the scarf....

Cupcakes that Sister Bridges got for me on my birthday!
They were soo good!

This is my cat-friend.  She belongs to Sister Jessup.

This is me and Padrigh Story.  He is my favorite! 

Zoey is the cute (2 yr old) grandchild of one of our less-actives Sister Wagner! 

This is Sister Wagner...Zoey wanted to take a picture of nana!

"I pray because I can't help myself....I pray because the need flows out of me all the time.... It doesn't change God, It changes me." CS Lewis

     So this week, sweet sister Freeman (relief society president and organist\pianist for the ward) asked me if I would play the piano as prelude in sacrament meeting.  She was hoping that people would be more reverent, plus it would give her more time to make it to the old folks home and get her brother and sister-in-law ready for church. (so funny story there...She is the only member of her family and her brother and Sister-in-law used to hand out anti-mormon literature... and now they come to church every week and love it!  If people would just try it out!!  Seriously!)  Anyway, I am up there playing prelude and just started laughing because I can see Sister Perea being accused of scaring me off (her last companion gave up and went home when she got sick).  And then Sister Perea kept energetically pointing at me playing the piano... Hehe.  it was really funny because everyone was giving her a hard time!

     Also on Sunday, Sister Wilcoxen (aka Mrs Wilcoxen who teaches at North Layton Jr High and had Josie and Keaton in her classes) came up and gave me a hug.  She was really sweet! :)  So today, we had Sister Bridges take us shopping (we don't have the car) and we saw Sister Meads and Sister Bywater there.  So they wished me happy birthday and Sister Bridges got all offended that I hadn't told her it was my birthday.  So she took us to a really expensive cupcake shop and got us cupcakes for everyone who was going to be meeting us for lunch.  They were really good!  I got one that had strawberries on top and strawberries inside...  Sister Bridges is our favorite though because she is always willing to take us anywhere! (she has taken us to Charlotte and hung out for our 6 hour meeting and then taken us home again and she takes us shopping a lot).

     Also this week, we had a really great finding experience.  So since Sister Perea has been here for so long, she has pretty much knocked on every door.  So as we were walking along, I was praying and asked God to have whoever we were supposed to talk to be outside and I promised I would talk to whoever it was.  So we are walking along and I see a lady sweeping out her garage and I was like, "we need to go talk to her."  And sister Perea was like, "no.  we already have knocked on her door.  She is baptist and not interested."  But we had stopped walking (we were hidden by a bush).  And she was like, "well, if you want to go back, we can."  So we went back and talked to her about forever families and we have an appointment with them on tuesday!  God listens to prayers!

Anyway, I hope yall are having a great week!

Sister Morris

Us with Sister Lawrence.

She is super amazing and lots of fun!

She feeds us a lot and goes out teaching with us as well....

"We can all be more consistently involved in missionary work by replacing our fear with real faith." Elder Ballard

So I went on my first exchange this week!  I went to Guilford with Sister Kenyon, and Sister Perea and Sister Lewis stayed here in Summerfield.  It was pretty fun.  We went knocking doors and for some reason, the only people that were answering were Jews who were all offended we were going to try and share a message about Jesus Christ with them...It was really weird that there were so many of them there!  

           Anyway, I did not realize that the mosquitos were out for the summer yet, so i got like 15 bug bites that day!  But the good thing is that it is also warm enough for the fireflies to be out!!  :)  They are so pretty!  We want to catch some in a jar at some point!

So yesterday was fast Sunday and Brother Bridges got up and was talking about how he and his wife had been driving along and just feeling depressed over the hard times in their lives when sister Bridges's phone got a notification from Facebook with a scripture,  "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." And he talked about how that scripture had been perfect for them at that moment.  And then he thanked me for listening to the Spirit and posting that just when they needed it!  It was an amazing feeling to know that my face book post had helped them!  The funny thing is, I was actually posting it for our investigator Nicole to see...Because we committed her to be baptized when she finds out the Book of Mormon is true, the next day, her 18 month old baby is in the hospital!  Crazy how Satan works!  But it is also amazing how The Lord has perfect timing!  

Also funny this week...So we were teaching our investigator Zac and we were teaching him outside.  So we started out in the shade, but as time went on, the shade moved and we didn’t...And since we were sitting sideways, only my right arm got sunburned!!  The same thing happened to Sister Perea!  Good thing she was sitting to my right!  Because if I had been in the sun for a longer time, I would have really burnt!  Because she got burned on her right arm and she is way more tan than me!!  

Anyway, i hope all of y'all are having an Amazing week!

Love, Sister A. Morris