I never thought that it'd be this cool

Another letter from Apple Valley, CA, where it's almost November and still 80 degrees!  It's pretty different from Washington, but it does make proselyting a lot easier.  I feel sorry for the poor missionaries in Vancouver who are on bike during this time.

 

This week was a little overwhelming, but that's good when you're a missionary.  We had so many appointments to teach and things to sort out that we were a little stressed, but I'd rather that than not be working.  We've been blessed with lots of people to teach and to work with.  We're forging great friendships and getting a lot of work accomplished here in the Ranchos ward.

(Carter's apt--apparently they need a maid)

 

First off, one of the families that we've been working with has a young boy named N.  He's an eight year-old boy but his dad wanted him to hear the missionary discussions before he was baptized.  We talked to him about what it means to be baptized and how we make a two-way promise with Heavenly Father when we do that ordinance.  He really understood and has agreed to be baptized!  We're very excited for him to be taking this step in his life.

 

While on exchanges and visiting some of our investigators, we ran into an old man who was putting away his trash.  We got started talking and he had a crazy life.  Apparently he was a Christian missionary for quite a few years and has been all over the world.  We asked him if he wanted to hear our lesson and he said "Why not?"  We taught him twice but we found out that he's kind of too old to really take our message to heart.  We told him how much we liked meeting with him and said we would say hi if we were ever in the neighborhood again.

 

One of the kids that we taught in the Sermon in the Dirt keeps finding us when we're in the neighborhood and keeps BEGGING to hear the missionary lessons.  We keep telling him that we need to actually meet his parents first and he keeps promising us that we will.  Then every time we go over to teach his mom is mysteriously gone.  It's strange how that works, haha.  We keep joking that the church needs to do a campaign called, "Missionaries.  They're normal people."

 

Speaking of people not thinking we're normal people, it's a funny feeling being a missionary.  We went out to lunch last week after P-Day sports and I forgot to clip my nametag on.  It was a REALLY weird feeling to not have everyone stare at me.  And I've only been out in the field for a month!  I'm sure it will be an even weirder feeling when I go home and have to readjust from mission life.

 

Speaking of mission life, it's dang awesome.  I never thought that it'd be this cool.  Is it hard?  Yes.  Is everyday absolutely fun?  No.  Is every single day that we work hard the most rewarding feeling in the world?  Absolutely.  I never feel like our efforts are in vain, even if we don't accomplish things on the surface.  For example, just the other day we ran into a dead end in the work.  We didn't really have any idea what to do.  So we decided that we would just get down right in the middle of the sidewalk and say a kneeling prayer and choose a name from our ward list of someone to visit.  We did and there was a definite name that we felt prompted to visit.  We started to bike and felt like we needed to get there really fast.  While we were biking the name "Cassie" popped into my head and I started to think about it a lot.  When we got to the member's house she started to yell at us about how she never wanted to see the missionaries again and she wanted her name removed from the records.  Needless to say, we felt that was odd considering we were prompted to go there.  But we stopped for a second and knew that there was obviously a reason that the Lord sent us here and we felt like we hadn't accomplished our purpose yet.  We were near another family, the Bs, and I asked Elder E. if Sis. B first name was Cassie.  He didn't know, so we pulled out the ward list and tried to look it up, but we were missing the page.  But, lo and behold, while we were looking it up, guess who drove by?  The Bs!  We stopped them and told them that we felt like we needed to talk to them.  We asked them if they had anyone that they thought we needed to visit.  They pointed to a house and said that a less-active member lived there and was home at the moment.  We thanked them and then went up to the house and knocked a few times.  We could hear a hushed argument between the two of them indoors and knew they were home.  We felt impressed to just talk to them through the door and let them know why we were there and that we were always available to help.  After that we left and felt like even though we didn't understand exactly what just happened or why, that we had accomplished what the Lord sent us there to do.  It was a rewarding feeling.

 

We taught one of our investigators, S again about how the Book of Mormon is structured and who wrote what exactly.  It was a really interesting lesson and my compendium of useless knowledge about the Book of Mormon finally came in handy, haha.  After the lesson we had ice cream and her daughter, E, gave me a toy cell phone to call her on.  She told me that she was an air pilot and that she was going to Treasure Island.  It was an interesting "phone call."

Our ward had their Trunk or Treat party this week.  I'll send pictures soon when I get them of my companion and I's costume.  He went as Clark Kent and wore a Superman shirt under his white shirt and tie and I went as a secret agent.  I got sunglasses, an ear piece, and adjusted my nametag to say "Agent Morgan" and "FBI."  It was pretty sweet.

 

Well, I hope everything is going well back home.  To the youth of the Mountain View Ward: I got the banner.  Thank you very much for it.  I've included some majestic pictures of me with the banner.  It's very windy here in California.  I'll write again next week, but until then keep it cool.

 

Your friend,

Elder Carter Morgan