Catching UP!

So...I'm a little behind on blog updates so here's a few:

Hi family!

So about stories of the people we're teaching: I would love to send
them, but we currently have no investigators. They all left the state
the transfer i got here. So we pretty much spend our tome contacting
referrals and meeting with members. We did meet an awesome man from
india the other day, named Venka. He's super cool, but doesn't want to
change religions, but also loves the discipline our church has. He's
awesome.

I guess i can talk about the ones from Plainfield. We had Kasie and
Kelsie, two twins who lived together with their kids. They were super
awesome, and are close to coming into e church, but they have a little
bit more to go. They introduced us to their friend Katrina, who wants
to be baptized, but her husband won't let her. She's super awesome
too.

Then we had the Lilly's, who are 80 years old, black, and awesome.
They have a grandson who played for the pacers, but he's since been
traded to the celtics, i think.

Then we had Sam and Sandy, who are 93 and 73, respectively. Sam is one
of the two people who invented the board game Operation. He also
played guitar on the radio back in the 20's, and had a friend who
played the piano in a mob joint.

Then we had Jon, who was baptized. He was the non member husband of
an active member, and claimed to be atheist.

Then we had Kathleen, who was a less active member who has a son on a
mission. She and i got along really well, and her daughter Brianna,
whose thirteen, is awesome and loves doctor who.

There was brother Torres, a less active member who did not feel at
home in our ward, so the bishop of his old ward sent us to reactivate
him. He ended up going to Nauvoo with our ward mission leader, and now
is a ward missionary and is super strong.

There is Subhash, who moved here from india ten years ago, was
homeless, and was living with a friend when the sisters knocked on his
door. He converted, and his family has disowned him, but he now has a
great job snd a nice house, and married an lds woman from Germany that
he met online.

Plainfield was awesome. I really want to visit it after my mission.

My mission is super fun, and everyone should serve one, if they are
able. I hope everything is going well back home!

Also, we went to the temple today, and it was awesome! Everyone should
go there, if they are able.

Love,

Jordan

Hello family!

There is nothing much new to report. There should be some packages
coming to the house soon. One of them, the bigger one, is full of fun
stuffs for the family. The smaller one is my stuff. Please put it
somewhere safe.

There is a member in he ward that is helping me with an awesome
project that I am working on. We're still in the planning and prepping
phases, so I'll let you know how things are going as it develops.

I get to speak in church this Sunday! It's on faith, so I'm kind of
nervous, because that's a big topic. And I'm speaking on high council
Sunday, so that will be interesting.

We still have no new investigators, but we do have lots of awesome
ward members who are trying to help with that. People are going to
show up, I just know it.

We're also planning on talking to our president to see if we can go
downtown for a pday.  He's a pretty reasonable man, so we'll see.

I hope everything is going fine back home. I pick up on things now and
again on Facebook, so that's been cool.

Have a great day!

Elder Jordan Morgan

Do you get the subject line? Tell Parker I want to play that game with
him when it home, because I keep seeing pictures of it when we do
online proselyting, and it looks AWESOME.

Two exciting things happened this week: I got to speak in sacrament
meeting! That wasn't so exciting as it was terrifying. I don't know
why, I'm a missionary, all I do is talk to people. But for some reason
whenever I get up to speak in front of a crowd, I get really nervous.
Maybe it's because they're all facing a different direction than I am.
I feel outnumbered.


I got to speak on faith, which was awesome. I'm only now starting to
get faith, and it's been super awesome. I talked about how it's a
principle of action, because true faith always motivates someone to
some sort of action. It was a lot of fun.

Then we finally got a ward mission leader! We hadn't had one the
entire time, so that was a nice surprise. His name is brother Abromov,
and he's from Soviet Russia. Like, he grew up in the Soviet Union. How
intense is that? He's super cool, and his wife is a recent convert.
Her name is Lybov (Pronounced Luba.) She's super nice, and loves
having us over for dinner.

So we're at the mall right now, and it's been awesome. Have I ever
mentioned that we have, like, the largest mall in the United States in
our area? It's called the Woodfield mall, and it's gigantic. There's
pretty much every store you could ever ask for in here, including an
AWESOME anime store.

So this week has involved lots of experiences with heeding the
direction of the Spirit and finding people to teach. Sometimes
missionaries (and members, frankly) fall into the trap of thinking
that busy=productive. This isn't necessarily true. For instance, I
could decide to walk to our appointment clear out in Barrington. It
would take about six hours, so we would be perfectly busy the whole
time, but would we be productive? Hardly. I had an experience with
this while I was on exchanges with an elder that is very much like,
"gogogoallthetimehurry!" Which I don't really like. Instead, I was
sitting there trying to heed the spirit in which person we should go
visit. He just wanted me to pick someone and get moving because he
thought we were wasting time, and I thought that it was a pretty sad
thing if you call trying to listen to the Spirit "wasting time." But
finally a name felt good to me, and we drove clear out to visit it,
and we found a man that's interested in coming to church! And he's
Russian, and speaks little English, but we just got a new ward mission
leader that speaks fluent Russian! How about that. Things have never
worked out so well as I have seen them work out on my mission. It's
been great.

So keep reading the scriptures and doing good things, and being nice
to people. Especially being nice to people. I've spent a lot of time
wishing I had been nicer to people in high school, so just do it,
alright? It makes everything better.

Jordan

First things first: When on earth did we get a fire pit?  And the deck
expanded? Nobody tells me anything!  I just saw it on the Facebook!

This week has been really, really cold.  It finally started snowing,
which back home is like "Yay!" But here it's like "It begins..."
We're supposed to have a really bad winter this year, but we'll see.
It is so cold.  Like, crazy cold.  It's the humidity.  It gets you
both ways.  You feel like you're melting in the summer, and then in
the winter it manages to permeate every single part of you're
clothing.  It's currently twenty degrees out right now, but with the
wind chill it feels more like -20.  Tis truly the windy city.

So Davis wants a fox that wears a top hat and takes people shoes?
That sounds awesome.  We actually saw a fox running across the street
a couple days ago, and it was awesome.  And it reminded me of my
perfect pet! I want a falcon that is trained both to deliver messages
to my friends and family, and also it stays within hearing range of me
all the time, so at any moment outside I can just whistle, and it
swoops down and perches on my arm.  I'd be like a pokemon master.  It
would be fantastic.

I'm sending a picture of a plate that one of the members in the ward
gave me.  You'll understand when you see it.  It's pretty awesome.

I have no idea what everyone is so busy with in the states.  It's
like, we ask them to read the Book of Mormon, and then a week later
they were like "Oh, I was too busy, and didn't get a chance."  Really?
There are 168 hours in the week, and 10,080 minutes in those hours,
and you were busy during every single one of them?  I would almost
rather people just say that they didn't want to read it, because THEN
we can maybe help with the real problem.

I'm excited for Christmas to.  It's next transfer!  That's pretty
crazy. Time is going by too fast out here.  Like, it's already pday
today.  That's insane.  And transfer calls are this saturday, which is
also insane.  They are going by too fast.  And I hate transfer calls.
The suspense is almost too much.

A mission is awesome, and I wouldn't trade the things that I have
learned out here for anything.  Please keep writing!

Jordan

I'm being transferred!

That went by really fast.  True, I was only in this area for half as
long as I was in my first area, but still!  Three months!  Like
nothing!

It'll be sad saying goodbye to my companion for a spell, but I'll see
him again. Apparenty my next companion is super cool

I'm going to an area called St. Charles.  It's supposed to be pretty
wealthy, so it'll be an adventure.

So this transfer is the Christmas transfer!  It's going to be awesome
to get to talk to everyone!

Is it snowing over there?  Because it was rainging earlier, and it
just turned to snow.  You know how you would watch the sequel to
Frosty the Snowman and all the adults were like "Snow is awful, we
must get rid of it!" And you were like "Those jerks!  They hate fun!"
Well, now I kind of sympathize with them.  The snow wouldn't be too
bad if it wasn't SO DANG COLD!!!  It was ten degrees all last week,
with the wind chill!  It's awful.  But my companion is being
transferred up to Beloit, Wisconsin, so I shouldn't be complaining.
At least I'm heading southwest.

People should email!  I like hearing from people!  And to everyone who
does email, thank you so much!  Have a great day!

Elder Jordan Morgan