Week 37--My new area is Morristown!

Pueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees I could not be more tired, yet excited and stoked all at the same time! Sooo my companion is Hermana Dubon which is SO FUN because we met a while back and were just instantly friends. Shes from Southern California (like Santa Clarita) and her parents are El Salvadorian but she learned her Spanish in the mission. We are gonna be going home together in November and this was sooo unexpected because first of all, this is both of our first transfer being Sister Training Leaders (nope there is no manual for this calling so how hard can it really be right?...) AND we got doubled in.... which is so classic because this is my third area, and third time being doubled in ha ha ha. I love it, but its a tooooon of work. Andamos perdidas. Which could be really stressful, but we just laugh. super hard. We are in the Morristown area! Its super beautiful here but also super weird because we are in like one of the biggest areas in the mission so its pretty overwhelming (we have like 12 cities in our area) pero the beauty of it all is that we are literally forced to rely wholly on the Lord... and our GPS.

So the first night we got in, we met with the branch mission leader who seems super solid. He told us right off the bat, okay so these members are not going to want to have you over and give you dinners just letting you know that right now... awesome. We could really feel it too, like when we met them there was kinda a stiff feeling so we just decided to love the living daylights outta them. and its working a little! We have to give it more time of course but asi es la vida. The majority of the people here are from Honduras (Ive never worked with people from there before) and from Colombia. 

I'm not gonna lie, I miss my Peruvians and all my people back in Newark, but its good to start anew and meet new people and grow a ton. 

We have seen more than a few miracles this week! One of the biggest blessings this week was that we literally had 2 investigadores walk into the branch this Sunday! We met with one of the recent converts during the week and commited him to invite a friend to church. Anywho, we get to church and he was waiting outside the gospel principles class and he said, "I brought a friend of mine today!! She's inside go sit by her!" That was so awesome! So we were talking with her and she was super interested! and then the same thing happened with another member, but appartantly her friend that she brought has come to church a ton of times and has never had the desire to meet with the missionaries, but we went up to met her and she was like, "hey, heres my number, come by and i'll give you food and we can talk about all this" WHAT? So that was super awesome.

It's crazy how much we have to do. We have quite a few sisters that we are over (or rather, that we have to go on exchanges with, so we basically are going on 2 a week starting this week up until the end of the transfer). and we have a few trainings that we will be giving this month as well. I think more than anything, the most pressure I feel is to make sure that we have an exemplary area. That means that we always have to make sure we are updating the area book, always having a clean apartment, teaching from preach my gospel and the fundamentals, the whole shabang. and just kick it into high gear. So yeah, we are bringing our A-game. 

Love you all! We need the prayers big time.

Love,

Hermana Mortensen

With sister Dubon after transfer conf.

This is an excerpt from Hermana Dubon. She writes more detailed than Mallory and maybe that is a good thing! Haha! 

Another Miracle that I am weary to share is that I didn't die TWICE in one night. We got locked out of our apartment, So we made the best use of time to call potentials while we waited to hear from the sisters what they do when they get locked out. Its happens more often then you think. First person on the list Moises says " I am in Morristown at the train station, waiting for my train" We say " We will be there in 20 minutes". We start to walk there holding a GPS luckily only a mile away in knee deep snow. The GPS takes us on a highway because it probably thinks we are in the car... Ahhh we are practically dodging cars. Soo scary ! We jump into a black mountain of snow holding on to each other so the oncoming traffic doesn't turn us into fresh road kill. Are we absolutely dumb or just from California?! Lets be real. We landed on the snow and we were doing high kneels clinging onto a barbed wire fence to avoid falling into traffic. We took a moment to really think about what we were stupidly doing. So we began to run !!! we called the sisters serving in English to pick us up. At this point I am sweating profusely, dazed and confused. We get to the train station right at the exact same time the train to pick up Moises comes. Literally the train wind almost toppled us over as it came into the station. We missed him by a second !! At this point I was woozy not sure if it was from the pioneer experience or my blood sugars. So i decide to take a moment to check my blood. It was 45 !! way too low to function. We see the sister car and we jump in. My companion is trying to keep me from passing out but her questions were awkward enough to make me want to pass out.  We get into the Sisters apartment, and I pounce on chocolate pudding. My companion told me I was acting like a 5 year old, and I was delusional...she started cry laughing. It was a bonding experience.. haha but we used some skillful tactics with a credit card to get back into our apartment. Yeah we feel safe. Not ! So God saved my life twice in one night. Miracles, blessed, I'm awesome.