Week 39

So we welcomed spring in with a nice snowfall... *eyetwitch* but hey its okay, the snow is almost all melted now. It was just a funny joke probably.

All is well here in Morristown! This week was SUCH a roller coaster. So basically there is a lot of work to be done here in this area. Its been really rough to get the members involved in the obra misional. We call and we call and we call for them to come out with us and they literally just ignore our calls or hang up on us. The only member that went out with us was our ward mission leader and branch president. So we basically threw down in our Branch council meeting and we were just like, “Okay. We have someone being baptized this next week (her name is Paula and she is awesome) and hardly anyone in the branch knows her. We have tried getting people to come out with us but there is only so much we can do. We aren't here to just baptize people who go inactive". (that is a huge trend here) We shared some ideas with the branch council on some ways that we can get members more involved. They were super open to the ideas and we are expecting to see major improvement. But yeah. It was rough. Hopefully the attitude of "this is the missonary's work" will go away and it will all become a team effort. I am so grateful the Lord trusts be enough to send me here and apply everything I learned in the Newark Ward to help strengthen this branch.

So we had ONE OF THE MOST SPIRITUAL LESSONS probably in my whole mission this week. We were teaching this investigador _____. I love her to death. we work out with her every morning and seriously she's so hilarious. She's from Bolivia, her husband as well. he is a doctor and her son is 7 and is obsessed with the church. He already has articles of faith memorized and is counting down the days to his baptism. So we went over to teach her and President Crane (the branch president) was there. We went over to talk about the Plan of Salvation because she was asking a lot of questions about WHY we do all the things we do. She always said that she's just not a church going type of person. Sister Dubon and l laughed saying that if we just went to church because we were born with this desire to go to church, we wouldn't be going either hahah so what better way to explain the why than the plan of salvation?

So we start off by saying, "Okay ______, today we want to explain to you the "why" behind everything we do, why we go to church, and why we invite you and your family to be baptized." she smiled and said, "Justo, today I was thinking about why you girls are doing all of this" she was all ears. The spirit was so strong the whole time. We were teaching the with folleto and she was all ears. we got to the end and talked about eternal life. We explained that eternal life is when we are in the presence of god with our families. I simply looked up at her and said, “_______. This is why!! I go to church and serve a mission and do all this things, because I cannot live without the promise of being with my family forever. I miss them a lot, but I'm not sad, because I have this promise." The spirit was so tangible in there. She started asking questions about temples and how she could get sealed to her family. it was so powerful because sister Dubon had been sealed to her family like one month before she left for her mission so she showed her a picture. Then ______ was saying how when she found out the two new missionaries were coming, she had decided that she was going to tell us that she wasn't interested anymore, and then she said that when she met us, she knew that we were specifically sent for her. She is progressing a ton now and the whole family came to church last Sunday :)

I know I say this every time but I couldn't be happier! Serving a mission is the absolute best. Love you all!

Hermana Mortensen