Faith, Pure and Simple

hello everybody!


this was a great week of learning. we had interviews with president trayner and a zone meeting where we watched another elder holland talk. man he is the bomb. pres. trayner talked with me about being a "finisher." i don't know why though, i still have another year left of my mission...

we found some great people this week and i learned a lot about the power of faith. it's amazing how much our attitudes really shape the things that happen to us. we noticed that after we started losing all of our investigators we went into this crisis mode and all we could focus on were the negative things and how much we needed and were lacking and the things that god was letting us down on. but we came to the realization that the reason it was all happening was because of our attitudes. we were doubting ourselves and our abilities and our investigators and worst of all god. we were forgetting to rely on him 100%. so, we rededicated ourselves to being positive and having faith and sincere prayers and the changes happened immediately. we found 6 new investigators in the last two days alone. faith really is power. and if we want good things to happen in our lives, we just need to think about good things.

so simple.

anyway. i am completely out of time. but i hope that you are all staying happy and positive. happy mother's day!

love,

hermana "morrill of the story"

(people call me that down here.)

Easter

hello!


another week has passed in sunny san benito. all of our investigators for some reason this week decided to not be our investigators anymore so we are going through a cleansing. but it's okay, we are finding some new cool people.

so. this week was easter. down here, people celebrate by getting drunk at barbecues.. so it wasn't the most finding friendly weekend. but. it did make for some good food.

yesterday, sister martinez and i had about an hour to spare before a member fed us an easter dinner, so we decided to go and find some people to teach. we were on a farm road and all the houses were pretty spread apart and we walked kind of far without realizing it. so. after we finish talking to this lady, we realize we are already two minutes late for the appointment, we're far away from our car, and we were super far away in the boonies from where she lived. so naturally, we started sprinting. sprinting past all of the drunk people that we just called to repentance. they were all staring at us. we were just laughing and sprinting and gasping for air because we got really tired. then. my shoe got caught on a rock as we were crossing the road. i think i normally would have been able to just stumble a little and keep running. but i guess my legs were tired from the sprinting and the laughing and i just rolled onto the ground. in the middle of the road. then my companion yells, "cars!" so i just got up and we kept running and laughing. and all of this happened in front of another house that was having a party. it was awesome. i kind of scraped up my knee. but it was worth it for the memory.

well i told my friend victor i would talk about him and his family because he apparently found my blog. victor is cool. he lives with his sister daniela and brother in law senovio and their kids who are also cool. they all just got baptized a couple months ago. victor is probably going on a mission in a year and always gets me and sister martinez candy and bracelets and things. they have a bright yellow and green house.

anyway.. it has been a pretty uneventful week i guess. OH. noel is now being taught by the elders for reasons not to be mentioned in this e-mail. but he's still great and progressing and should be getting baptized soon.

um. that is all i think. i hope that you are all great. i still haven't been taking any pictures. oops. i promise i will take at least one this week.

love,

hermana morrill

Bed bugs and other stuff....

hello everybody!


this will be brief or else i will type at lightning speed because everyone in the zone is waiting on us to go play some kickball. this week was great! we found a lot of new cool investigators who are ready to progress. if all goes well we should be having a baptism in two weeks for a guy named noel. my trainer sister kellett actually used to teach him when she was here in this area. it was her greenie area. so that's pretty neat. anyway, he's a cool guy and he's been coming to church and he likes it and he had been a few times before we got here and yeah. he may or may not have schizophrenia and so it has been kind of a battle for him in the past, but he is really just making leaps and bounds of progress and is super cool. i think he really enjoys being surrounded by good people at the church instead of the family and friend environment he has been exposed to his whole life. he's a sweet guy.

in other news, i think i had a bout with fleas or bed bugs or something because two days ago i woke up with bites all over my body. its extremely itchy and uncomfortable.

what else. last week i tried to go on a carb fast because all i eat is tortillas. i lasted about two and a half days and then a member fed us some tortillas and it was all over. man carbs are so good.

anyway. we have been extremely blessed in finding families lately. and i have just been feeling so grateful to have been raised knowing the gospel and in a family where there was love and we were all trying our best. we've run into some families this week that have abuse problems and anger problems and it makes me more and more grateful to have been raised in the home i was raised in. i wouldn't trade my family's problems for any other in the world. :)

hope you are all doing well.

i regret to inform you that i have hardly been taking any pictures. maybe i will try to improve this week.

love,

brittany

Patience....

muy buenas tardes a todos!


today i broke the vow that i made to myself in 5th grade to never play soccer. and i actually enjoyed it. i guess this is the second time on my mission that i have played. it was fun and i accidentally tackled an elder kind of. i think i have truly become mexican now though. i play soccer and i eat chile. who would have thought this day would come?

well, this week was awesome. it started off horrible. we've been having opposition lately with investigators and helping people progress. jazzmin hasn't talked to us this whole week. her brother jamal got arrested. and anyway, we felt like we were doing everything in our power to find new people to teach and get people to progress but nothing was working. i went into this opposition though determined to handle it better than the last oppositions i've been through. to show that i could be just a little more patient. and a little more optimistic. on tuesday we felt like we were just at rock bottom and so we finally decided to get priesthood blessings from our district leader and his companion. i feel like everything just changed from there. right after that, at almost the end of the night, we were on our way to visit a less active woman and we met this husband and wife and taught them and they accepted a baptismal date. the next day, we had a district meeting and set goals as a district to beat negativity.. to have good attitudes and only say positive things about investigators and situations. our district ended up having one of the best weeks this district has ever had. sister martinez and i were able to find a lot of amazing people and set more baptismal dates. we actually had somebody come to church. and we saw jazzmin's boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) walking down the street in front of our church. a baptism was just about to start so we ran out and invited him to come in. he came and watched and loved it and now we are teaching him. i know that sometimes heavenly father just tries our patience and sees if we will endure humbly. i know that priesthood blessings are really from god. i know that attitudes are what make or break our lives.

i hope that you are all keepin' it real wherever you are.

love,

sister morrill

Conference Weekend

hello everybody!


another week down in san benito. it has been nice and hot. a lot of people here are poor and don't have air conditioners, so we just sweat to death in their homes. it's awesome. general conference was baller. general conference here is like a holiday. you pretty much don't work all day. members invite you out of nowhere to come and eat at their homes. everyone in our zone went to eat at texas roadhouse in between sessions on saturday. all the country music lovers were in heaven and getting super distracted. didn't phase me though. :) i loved elder bednar's talk about light and receiving revelation. i'm so grateful that heavenly father guides us and answers prayers and teaches us things through his spirit.

we visited this sweet woman this week. she got baptized about six years ago.. she has three daughters: 9,7, 18 months. apparently about four years ago, she (Gloria) fell away from the church.. got this boyfriend, started doing things that she knew she shouldn't, got pregnant, etc. etc. and hasn't really been back to church. but. recently she was praying and asked god if she should start coming back to church. that day the missionaries knocked on her door. then later that day she ran into some members she knew from the ward and hadn't seen since she left the church. and a couple days later her new visiting teacher came over to meet her. she said she knew that god was telling her to go back and she is so determined to do it. her boyfriend is aggressive and violent and jealous and doesn't want her coming back to church. so we made plans to meet with him this week and see if we could talk it out. and if not, i think she is planning on leaving him. she is awesome and has so much faith. we love her. so. pray for her! and us. and that the baby daddy's heart can be softened.

anyway. this is short, but i am about out of time. hope you are all swell. until next week!

love,

sister morrill

                                                           The Church in San Benito

What is it with her and animals??

                                     P.S., from Britt's mom:  She will be home June 29th!

Howdy Y'all

howdy people!


i have been trying to incorporate more words like howdy and y'all into my vocabulary. even though i'm serving more in mexico, i want to claim the texas accent. this was a week of some pretty sweet miracles.

we had a zone conference and we studied a talk by elder holland called "the divine companionship." this month as a mission we're focusing on having the spirit more powerfully with us as we teach. sister martinez and i started the 'purification challenge' and we fasted about things that we can give up that are distracting us or poking at our own spirits. one of the things i decided (reluctantly) to give up is naps. not that naps are bad, but it was to the point where i'd be out working and instead of focusing on people i was thinking about when i'd get home to take my nap. so. with the exception of p-day, i am no longer a nap taking person. i don't know how i'm going to do it. but somehow i will survive and become a better and more focused missionary from it. i can survive from my 8 hours of sleep.

this week we started teaching a girl named jazzmin. yes, that is how it's spelled. she's the daughter of a less-active woman that we found on our first day here. we had no idea where to go or what to do or how to start being in a new area, so we just said a prayer that we would be guided to someone who needed us. we found this woman, maria. she had been baptized about 25 years ago but fell away from the church pretty soon after being baptized. she kept dodging our appointments for the first week we were here but then we finally convinced her to make some time for us. she completely opened up and was crying and remembered that when she got baptized, the elders gave her a blessing and promised her that she would be able to have children. she had been married twice before and the doctors told her that she would never be able to have children. so then, a couple years after her baptism, she got pregnant, at the age of 32. then she had another child at the age of 33. she said she had completely forgotten about that until we came. so she committed to start reading the scriptures every night and praying and meeting with us some more. so the next time we came over, her daughter jazzmin was there. she's 19. my companion and i both felt prompted to invite her to come and listen. we asked maria and she told us she didn't think she would want to, but we asked her anyway. she came and sat with us and the spirit was so strong. we taught her about jesus christ and faith and repentance and baptism. the spirit was so strong, i felt like my heart was going to leap out of my chest. i asked them if they felt the peace. they answered without a delay and said they had felt it the whole time we had been there. we testified of the holy ghost. jazzmin cried. she accepted a baptismal date. maria suddenly remembered all of these feelings that she had from when she was baptized and was baring testimony about how she knew this was god's church. it was such an amazing experience.

i'm so grateful to be a missionary and to see heavenly father do his work. i know that he loves each of his children and is constantly preparing them. we can help him in his work if we are just pure and listen for the spirit to guide us.

hope that you all are happy and healthy and well.

love,

hermana morrill

Growing Branches

hello queridos!
this has been a fast week. it seems like it was just monday two days ago.
amber, our sixteen year old we found last week is still doing awesome. she prayed and got an answer that she should get baptized. she's been reading the book of mormon and is just so awesome. we love her. we're hoping to start teaching her whole family this week, since spring break will be over and people will have more regular schedules.
we also found a great lady named beatriz this week. i say lady, but in fact she is only 19. she just seems like a lady to me because she already has three children. it's pretty crazy. she made some very big mistakes in her past but she has completely been changing her life around. she wants so badly to repent and has already come a long way. we taught her about repentance and baptism and she said she wanted to get baptized on the 17th of april. when we saw her again last night she said she had already talked to her husband about it and told him that she is planning on getting baptized and coming to church with us and that she knows its right because we've been able to answer the questions that she's always had and nobody has been able to answer. she's great. we are meeting with "husband" tonight to teach both of them. "husband" is really boyfriend.. so they will have to get married before they can get baptized, but i just know that beatriz has the faith to do pretty much anything that the lord asks her to.
this week was the first week our english branch met. they just split it from the ward last week and so yesterday was all the organization and everything. there were probably about 30-35 people tops. the spirit was so strong there. there was a spirit of humility there as young and/or unexperienced people got called to leadership positions, and of unity as everybody was supporting each other and so willing to help out. i kept imagining what it would be like to be in the very first sacrament meeting of church history when joseph smith and a handful of people organized the church for the first time. i could really feel heavenly father's approval and the spirit was so thick you could swim in it. it was a really neat experience and i am excited to be a part of helping this little branch grow.
well.. i am about out of time. choose the right!
love
brittany