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

Smile It Off

  Swamp life//the outfit that scored me a free dress

Hello everyone!! 

This was a crazy week and it blows my mind that it's Monday already! The time is FLYING by! I've been out almost 2 months and it feels like it's been 2 seconds and 2 years at the same time...missions are weird like that ha-ha

 

This lady in the ward had a friend that died and so she gave us all of their food(?)(haunted?) But it was all really healthy and gluten free and I felt like I was home in my mom’s kitchen lol 

We taught Bongani again this week and he's still doing amazing!! We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he loved everything we were saying. His relationship with Christ has really strengthened since we've started teaching him and it's so amazing!! After the lesson we were asking him about his family back in South Africa, asking how many siblings he has and what their names are that kind of thing, and his siblings all had really cool names! We started asking him what all of them meant and he said "what about you sisters?? You have REALLY weird names!" And we said "well yeah maybe Morrow and Fotheringham are kind of weird last names...but our first names are normal!" He then he said "WAIT THOSE ARENT YOUR FIRST NAMES???" He was so confused and it was so hilarious. I've had a few people think my first name is actually sister...but he's the first that thought my first name was morrow hahaha and poor sister Fotheringham...that would be an awful first name hahaha after we explained it Bongani said, "That makes more sense. I've always wondered why Mormon missionaries had such weird names!!" 

 

Sister f....she always shoots me with nerf guns and plays other pranks on me so I guess it's true love

On Thursday we went to see this sweet little old lady that lives in our apartment complex. We had met her a few days earlier but she was busy so she had told us to come back. We knocked on her door and she said she had forgotten she had a doctor’s appointment and asked if we could come back. We said that wouldn't be a problem and put her down for another time. As we were walking away she called out to me and said " oh sweet baby that's a pretty dress you've got on!!" We stopped and I thanked her and we started to leave again and she calls out "what size are you??" So I told her and she says "oh baby come in the house I have something for you!!" So we go inside and she goes in the back and comes back with this blue dress hahaha she said she bought it a few weeks ago and realized it was too small for her so she made me put it on (on top of my other dress) and it fit so she told me to take it home with me! So we get to teach her about Jesus and I got a free dress. Seems like a good deal haha everyone here is so sweet and southern hospitality is a real thing. I love it so much 

 

I got mail I got mail I got mail :))) I was so happy to get some new cds!! We had started listening to Christmas music since we didn't have anything else lol but now we are SET

Saturday and Sunday we got to watch general conference!!! It was so amazing and I'm really excited to get to go back and read all the talks again! We were able to watch all the sessions with members in our ward and it was really nice to get to know some of the people! We made homemade bread at 3/4 of the houses we went to and it so good. I love bread. We also had the opportunity to watch one session with a recent convert named heather! She was baptized about two months ago so this was her first time watching! She was so excited and kept saying waiting for the prophet to speak was like waiting for Santa to come on Christmas!! She's the best and such an example to me! I should always be that excited to hear the prophet and other leaders speak because it truly is a blessing!! 

 

I would eat only homemade bread for the rest of my life if I could 

We have district meeting every week and it's so great to get to be taught and uplifted by other missionaries out doing the same thing as me. It also provides some comedic relief. One elder in my district is a total goof and we love him and he always has golden one-liners. This is my quote of the week 

"I like to say smile it off instead of walk it off...because sometimes you can't walk"-Elder Hansen lol

 

Not the same as NM sunsets but it'll do

I love y'all! Have a blessed week!!! And remember to smile if off :)) 

xoxo

Sister Morrow 

P.S. One more exciting thing...I found this old keyboard in the back of one of our closets and I pulled it out and it works!!! So now I practice playing hymns at night and any other personal time and I love it!!! My week was made when I found it ha-ha. 

My new headshot. Glamor shots by deb pt.2

Just in case 

Singing in the rain.  As Hurricane Matthew approaches Florida, Sister  Morrow (and all other coastal region missionaries) has been evacuated. She will be having a sleep over in Gainsville for the next couple nights. We have received emails from the Mission President, texts from ward members and a phone call from the Senior couple lucky enough to house our girl and a bunch of other wonderful sister missionaries. All reassurances to let us know they are well prepared and in good hands. They have already had service opportunities and likely will have many more. So grateful for the kind, good people in Jacksonville Florida Mission!