Tuesday, January 14, 2014

"Who Doesn't Like a Story Where a Missionary Chops a Bunch of Arms Off?"

Greetings once again from Chino, CA!  This is a note to all other missionaries in the world: I'm sorry.  I'm truly sorry for you.  In fact, I feel bad for you.  Why do I feel bad for you?  Because you don't get to serve in Chino.  And moreover, you don't get to serve in the Walnut Park area.  That privilege is reserved to only a special few missionaries and I'm lucky enough to be one of them.  My working theory for why I've been given this privilege is that I'm exceedingly righteous.  And I'm humble too.  I'm the most humble guy I know.  Just ask me about how humble I am.

This week has been great!  Elder Wagstaff and I continue to step up the finding effort and it's been paying off.  We started off this transfer with one investigator and we just found out that now we have more investigators than the rest of the Chino stake COMBINED.  That's crazy!  The Lord has truly been blessing us in our finding efforts.

We've been having a lot of luck with the part-member families in the ward.  A lot of the non-members in the family are interested in learning more about what the Mormon church is all about.  It was funny, this week we had a dinner with a part-member family.  I swear this family came straight from out of a sitcom.  The ten year-old girl talks like she's sixteen, the six year-old girl talks like she's ten.  It's hilarious.  When we went to dinner we wanted to see if they were interested in learning more about the church but right as we sat down to eat the ten year-old, K, looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm interested in being baptized into the Mormon church."  I was a little dumbfounded, haha.  "Um, yeah.  We can help you with that!"

One of the other new investigators we found this week is T.  He was a referral from a member who lives in Irvine.  Tony is a sixty year-old Chinese man from Taiwan who grew up Buddhist his whole life.  He really respects the member friend who referred us and he also really respects the church.  He wants to learn more about it.  The things is, having grown up Buddhist his whole life, he knows next to nothing about Christianity.  In his words, "I don't know who Jesus Christ is.  I don't know what makes him so great.  I don't know why people worship him."  It's crazy meeting and teaching a man who has absolutely no idea who Jesus Christ is.  But T's awesome.  He's super solid and trustworthy and he's a great student.  He said the prayer at the end of our first lesson and it was a fantastic prayer.  There weren't any of the typical LDS cultural formalities that usually sneak into prayers.  When he prayed there was no question that he was talking directly to God.  If I didn't know any better I would've assumed that Heavenly Father was sitting right in front of him, listening to his prayer.  It was amazing.  I hope to one day pray as well as T.  He also came to church this Sunday, which was exciting!  It's always a great feeling when an investigator comes to church.

This week we also taught some middle school kids about the Book of Mormon.  We met them outside a Stater Bros. and asked them if they had ever heard of the Book of Mormon.  When they said they hadn't Elder Wagstaff and I acted like we couldn't believe they had never heard it and offered to sit down with them and read a chapter.  They accepted and we shared the story of Ammon with them, because who doesn't like a story where a missionary chops off a bunch of arms?

The member we live with, B, is serving a mission for the family history department of the church.  He has to use Skype a lot for it.  The problem is that he's so old we're pretty sure that he had his midlife crisis during the Renaissance.  So when he accidentally logged out of Skype and didn't remember his password, email, or username the house kinda went into chaos.  For about a week we were playing constant tech support trying to figure out some way to get him back into Skype.  Well this week, after strenuous study and skillful tactics, I managed to get him back into Skype!  I am the hero of the house!  I then typed up instructions on how to get back into Skype if he ever logs himself out and hung them up on his wall.  I've also been trying to convince him to buy me an iPhone so the final step of the instructions is, "Remember how much you love Elder Morgan and start saving up for his iPhone."  I've finally got him to agree that he'll buy me an iPhone after my mission if I personally come down to Chino to get it.  Uh, Chino's about twenty minutes from Disneyland, B.  I'm sure I'll be down here again soon.

That's about all I can think of at the moment.  The work is true and it's going great.  We continue to press forward and do our best to serve the Lord.  I hope all is going well for you back home, because it's certainly going well for me.

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan

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