P.S. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Trade off with Sister Colson!! We knocked lots of doors and ate lots of chocolate so it was awesome 

Hello everyone!!

The weeks are flying by and somehow it's Monday once again!! This week was so crazy and busy and I'm so excited to tell y'all about it!! 

On Tuesday we had district meeting where missionaries give trainings and we set goals for our work here in St. Augustine! We set a goal as a district to contact 3 former investigators everyday to see if we could start teaching them again! We thought it was an awesome idea so the next day we spent a good chunk of time trying to find some of these old investigators and we had a TOTAL miracle!! We went to see this guy named Robert. He had met with the missionaries a few times before a few years ago but had told them he was too busy to keep meeting with them. We decided to see if he would be interested in meeting with us again. We called him and he seemed nice enough so we headed over! When we knocked on the door he told us he would be out in a minute and that we could sit on the chairs out in the yard to wait. After we sit down he comes outside, props the door open with a pillow, lays a piece of plywood over the stairs to make a ramp, and wheel his mom in her wheelchair out and down to where we were sitting. It was super impressive ha-ha. After that he comes and visits with us and tells us a little about himself. He's the sweetest person ever and told us that he's been taking care of his mom for the last 22 years!! And that later this month she will be 95yrs old!!! Wow! She's the sweetest thing ever and she always kisses our hands when we leave ha-ha. We asked if we could share a message with him and he said yes so we shared the restoration! I was able to share my testimony of the Book of a Mormon with him and how it has blessed my life and he just looked at us and said, "Well that makes sense. Now I get it. I didn't get it when those other elders came but now I get it and I want to read the book." I wanted to jump up and down I was so excited!!! He said we could come see him again so we went over Saturday and he told us he'd read from the Book of Mormon and that he knows it's true!!! AHHH!!! He said he felt the Holy Ghost as he was reading just like he feels when he reads the Bible so he knew it was the word of God and then he asked us how/when he can be baptized...MIRACLE!!!! We are so so so excited! 

This week I got cleared to drive! WAHOO!! We have this thing on our car called a tiwi (weird box on the windshield) that yells at us if we go too fast or turn too sharp etc...I spend most of my time driving yelling at tiwi to be quiet ha-ha

We currently have 6 progressing investigators, which is crazy, but so fun! Trying to find time to teach them regularly while still finding new people and doing service and visiting with members makes our days wild. I feel like a chicken running around with my head cut off most of the time but at the end of the day it's all worth it ha-ha!

Adulting pt. 2! I can drive and I can vote. wowza 

I have one more investigator I have to tell y'all about...James! He's married to a recent convert named Heather (we watched conference with her and she's a superstar if y'all remember) and he's really progressing!! We were able to teach him this week and he told us that the driving force in him trying to come closer to Christ is to strengthen his family! Sister F and I were both able to share with him how much the gospel has blessed our families and he seemed really excited!! I love that I get to talk with people all day about how much I love Jesus Christ!! I love seeing the way it brings families closer together and all the other blessings they receive! We hope to set a date with him for his baptism later this week :) 

My ASL buddy Sister Pennock!! I love her so much (if you look really hard you can see the ocean in the back)

I also had the opportunity to give a talk in church yesterday! I was asked to base my talk on President Uchtdorf’s talk called “First Floor, Last Door.” If y'all haven't read that yet go read it. Seriously it's the best. It talks all about faith and how it should be the anchor in our lives. I just wanted to share one quote from his talk really quickly.  

"Faith means that we trust not only in God’s wisdom but that we trust also in His love. It means trusting that God loves us perfectly, that everything He does--every blessing He gives and every blessing He, for a time, withholds--is for our eternal happiness."

I know that I have a loving Heavenly Father. He knows me he cares about me and he wants to bless me!! I love getting to share this JOYFUL message with people 24/7!! It's the best!! 

Florida is a 10/10

I feel so incredibly blessed. The support and encouragement that I have received since being out on my mission is overwhelming. All the sweet emails and letters mean the world to me and I hope y'all know how much I love you!!! 

I hope y'all have a blessed week! 

xoxo

Sister morrow 

My weekly “moss moment” (the humidity makes moss grow in our brains and makes us missionaries do silly/stupid things and so we call them moss moments) 

-I was on a trade off with a different sister in a town about 30 min away. We went and had dinner at this amazing members house and we ate and gave a spiritual thought and had a great time. Before we left they asked me to say the closing prayer. I had just met these people but I was confident I knew their name so I asked Heavenly Father to bless their family. When we left sister Colson told me I said the wrong name in the prayer. I wasn't even close. I was super embarrassed hahaha classic moss moment. 

Different day.....same yellow shirt

I got two pumpkins hey hey hey hey

Hi y'all!! 

Another amazing week here in St. Augustine! 

We are still dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane, and I feel like I wore my yellow Mormon helping hands shirt more than I did my missionary clothes all week ha-ha. We do about 15hrs of service every week, and this week we were doing house demo basically the whole time. The days are crazy though...we wake up and do our studies, go swing hammers at dry wall for a few hours, then teach in the evenings! It’s been an exhausting week but I've loved every minute! 

Semi professional construction workers 

On Wednesday we were out doing service with our district. It was for a lady named Kathy that just called the crisis cleanup hotline and so we went to help. Her garage had flooded and she needed all of the dry wall torn out. When we knocked on her door she was so surprised at how young we all were and kept saying, “These Mormon babies are ripping out my dry wall!!!!" She kept coming and checking on us and being so cute and at one point she said, "We got Baptists and Mormons out here working togetha.... WAHOO!!!" hahaha It was so funny. While we were working this guy walks up and starts talking to Kathy and she's just ranting and raving about how she thinks it's so awesome to have these missionaries working on her house. The guy asks if he can take some pictures of us and then asks if he can get our full names and where we are from. We were kind of weirded out but then he told us he's the publisher for the St. Augustine Record, which is the main newspaper out here!! They did a live feed of us on their face book page and he said he wanted to include us in an article they're doing on the hurricane cleanup!! It was super cool and we were all so happy to get some good publicity for the church lol 

district pic minus the other elders

Along with doing tons of service we had some AWESOME lessons! Saturday we were planning on teaching one of our investigators named Travis. We were at home getting ready to leave when our phone rings...and it's President Lee (mission president over all the missionaries). We didn't really know why he was calling us so we just answered and he told us that he was going to be in the area with his wife for about an hour and wanted to see if we could meet up with them to visit. We said we would love too but that we had our lesson at the same time and they said...."oh wonderful we'll just come to your lesson then!!" AHHHH I was so terrified hahaha we had about an hour before the lesson so we went to try and visit some people but we were just so nervous the whole time. It ended up being a really amazing lesson though and Travis thought it was so cool he got to meet President Lee! The spirit was so strong during the lesson and Travis is so golden!! His baptism is scheduled for November 5th and we couldn't be more excited :) 

THE SPARROWS!!!! My favorite family ever. The mom is wearing a hat that says, "Jesus saves" they are Baptist but they love us and we go see them every week.

After the lesson on Saturday we had the opportunity to go to a concert by Jenny Oaks Baker!! She’s the daughter of Elder Oaks, and she does a musical show with her 4 children! They range in age from 9-15 and they're all pros. It was crazy ha-ha. In between songs they would share little spiritual thoughts and I loved it because it was all about family and how families are central to Heavenly Father’s plan. It was so sweet and made me miss my awesome family just a little bit ha-ha 

taking a break while tracting to swing ha-ha

This week Sister F and I were working on memorizing the scripture Mosiah 4:9 which says 

"Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend." I just LOVE this scripture!! We don't have to have all the answers in life, we just have to have the faith that God knows better than we do and that it will all work out!! I'm trying really hard to have faith like that ha-ha 

I love y'all so much! Have a blessed week <33

xoxo

Sister Morrow 

Everyone here takes Halloween very seriously and all the yards are super festive. We found this fella hangin in the tree yesterday while we were doing some tracting lol 

We were driving the other day and we noticed this little lizard on our car. He stayed on the car with us for like 10miles until we got to our next appointment and he let us take a picture of him before running away. Florida. 

pumpkin patch    

One with pumpkin 

St. Augustine Part 2

Found this while doing service.... GO GATORS!! lol

Hello hello everyone!!

It's Monday once again and this is an exciting one because I found out I get to stay in St. Augustine with sister Fotheringham for another transfer!!! We have at least 6 more weeks together here which we are very happy about :) we also found out that all the missionaries in our district are staying as well! So it'll be a party. 

 

President Lees favorite district ;)

This was another hectic week! We spent a TON of time doing hurricane clean up. We did service everyday scooping mud out of people's houses and moving big branches and debris out of yards. We did it all day yesterday and I am so exhausted but it's so amazing at the same time. We had thousands of people come from out of state to help with clean up and it just makes my heart so happy to see these amazing people that are willing to sacrifice their time in order to help the people in our community! We are still on kind of a weird schedule with the hurricane though. Yesterday we had a 30min sacrament meeting before they split us up into our teams for service. There was a bus of youth that had just gotten in from Tennessee to help volunteer that came to the meeting. They were of all different faiths but it was so amazing to come together and worship and pray together. I felt the spirit so strong and it's so amazing to see these people of all different backgrounds coming together and showing their love for God through helping those in need. 

There are still HUGE trees down like this all over St. Augustine. It’s crazy 

With all the service we have been super stressed and just tired all week. One night we were driving home after a lesson and we were beat and needed a pick me up. We were listening to some church hymns and I was telling sister f how the song playing was one of my favorites she looked over at me and said "let's jam" and cranked up the volume to a dignified level. We started singing along super loud and being dorks. As soon as the song ended our phone buzzes. Let me just tell y'all about our phone really fast. It’s like an old slider phone from like 2007. It’s super crappy and doesn't work half the time but it's fine. So anyways, the phone was sitting on my lap and I had not touched it for like 10min. it was just sitting there. So after the song ends our phone buzzes and I pick it up and it's a text from our AP (elders that are the assistants to my mission president) and he said "the song sounds soooo good sisters!!! Keep up the good work!" at this point we are like uhhhhh what?? Sister f figures out that our phone ghost called him and at this point we were dying laughing. So then we were like "okay they probably only listened for like 30 seconds and then they hung up." so we checked the call history to confirm and...The call was FOUR MINUTES LONG. Which is the entire length of the song. We texted them back saying how embarrassed we were and that we were glad they liked it so much they listened to the whole song ha-ha they said it made their night and that they are going to put in a good word for us to sing at the next zone conference.... YIKES!! No thanks elders hahahaha we thought it was super funny 

This is Thomasina!! She’s the sweetest lady ever and we go over and visit her every week!! She’s 92 and always tells us the best stories <33

I feel like I have to take the time every week to just say how much I love the south. It’s honestly the best. Everyone here is so nice and I just feel the love 24/7. For example this week we were doing service all morning and then we realized we were running late for our lesson that started at 2. We hurried home so we could change and we didn't have time to eat lunch. After the lesson we were starving so we ran to chick-fil-a to grab some food really quick before our next lesson. We were feeling stressed (per usual for this week I guess ha-ha) and as we were standing in line this lady came up behind us and bought our lunch for us. It was something small but there aren't a lot of members here and that's not a super common thing that happens. We were so excited and we talked to the lady and found out she's a member that lives about an hour away. She was so kind and it really made our day. Heavenly Father really works through others to help lift and strengthen us, even if it's just something small like someone buying your chicken nuggets hahaha 

Door knocking aesthetic 

Being a missionary is hard, stressful, and really discouraging at times...but it's also the best experience I’ve ever had. I love spending everyday trying to be better and to love people the way Jesus Christ does. He lives. He loves us!! I know this is true with my whole heart!

I love y'all so much!!! Have a blessed week 

xoxo

Sister morrow 

No Thank You Matthew

Go gators!!!

Hello everyone, I’m alive, I survived!!

This last week has been so bizarre but it was also a week of miracles and blessings!!! for anyone that didn’t see the news this past week....a category 4 hurricane(hurricane Matthew) hit Florida on Friday. 

As missionaries we don't get to watch the news or listen to the radio or anything, so we really had no idea what was coming. We were doing service for a member on Tuesday and they asked us if we had boards to put on our windows. We were super confused and said no and they were like, "Well what are y'all doing to get ready for the hurricane??" We started freaking out hahaha. We called some other missionaries and finally found out what was happening. We had a mission wide conference call that night and they told us that they would be evacuating all of the costal cities (like St. Augustine) and that we would be sent to a city called Palatka (about 40 miles west). 

 

A tree down in the road in front of one of our investigators house 

Going into this we knew our apartment was not the most weather proof...we've had some flooding with tropical storms and we were positive it was going to flood with a hurricane. We moved all of our stuff up into closets, took our valuables with us, and pushed our mattresses up against the windows. It was hard because we weren't being told a lot about the severity of the hurricane (probably so we wouldn't freak out). So we didn't really know what we were doing or how much to pack so it made everything super stressful. Once we made it to Palatka on Wednesday we were there for about 2hrs when our zone leaders called and said we were being evacuated again. We had the choice of sleeping in a church building for two days with no beds or food or driving all the way to Gainesville. We decided having beds and food was worth the drive hahaha. We were so blessed to have this amazing member in Palatka take all 6 sister missionaries to Gainesville then they drove all the way back to pick us up. The members here rock. Seriously. 

 

Elder McConkie helping on the roof. The tree landed on this ladies trailer and we helped haul it off 

We spent all of Thursday and Friday in Gainesville and we stayed with this amazing senior couple named the Bookers! They are from Utah and are serving here in the U of F institute (religion classes for college students). We got to go hang out with them at the institute on Thursday and it was super fun! We walked all around campus and we saw some of the people Sister Fotheringham taught when she served there!! It was weird to be away from St. Augustine for so long but it was also a nice change of pace. Friday we were on hurricane watch and were told to stay inside all day. It was really weird because it was my first kind of normal day since I’ve been a missionary lol. We did our studies in the morning, planning for the upcoming week, and then we just watched church movies and napped the rest of the day. It was really weird haha but kind of nice!

What used to be a grass field is now a swamp. Flooding in Florida 

Saturday we were able to head back to St. Augustine!! The whole drive back we were terrified that our apartment had blown away. When we got home there was only a tiny bit of flooding and all of our stuff was okay!! Other than the carpet there was no damage. This was a MIRACLE! There was so much flooding in St. Augustine and other apartments in our complex had some serious damage. We were so thankful and knew heavenly father had blessed us. The rest of the day Saturday and all day on Sunday we were out helping members clean up their yards and houses. Some members had up to 3ft of water get into their houses. It was so hard to see some of the awful aftermath of the storm, but it was also amazing to see the strong faith of the people in the south!! Saturday night we were helping a lady who'd had a massive tree fall on her house. We were hauling off branches and cleaning up and she just kept saying "I can still see God in all of this. He's always blessing me." she had lost so much but she knew God hadn't left her alone in this hard time!!! It was so sweet I wanted to cry. 

 

I loved this scripture when I was thinking about this last week. 

Matthew 7:25-“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”

Life is super hard sometimes. We might not lose everything we have in a hurricane, but we will all face those impossible and heart breaking trials. I know that if we have a solid foundation in Jesus Christ we will be able to withstand all the rain, and the floods, and the winds, and the hard and scary things. 

I love y'all so much!! Have a blessed week <33

xoxo 

Sister Morrow 

Cleaning up at a members after the hurricane.

Snug at two bugs at the Booker's