Grace and the "Sister Missionary Disease"

Hey Family, 

Where do I even start in describing this week? So much has 

happened and it has all been interesting. Juan is gone. He texted us and told us he'd skipped town but we don't know exactly where he is. :( Jenifer did not get baptized this week. She is in need of a new living situation. She was ticked when we told her she couldn't get baptized, but she meet with the bishop yesterday and is feeling a lot better. She came up to us after church and apologized for being such a 

butt. Our investigator, Natalie, is still rockin awesome. We 

didn't get to meet with her all week because her family was

 in town, but she texted us and said, "are you going to church today?" um...yes. And then she came too! What?! How cool is that?!

Anyway, Sister Sorenson and I both had to speak in church yesterday, and it was kind of nervous making. I don't know if y’all remember my farewell, but it wasn't that long – and that was when I had time to prepare...wow I just looked over and I have like 5 new emails. Just a second... yeah, so anyway we had to talk and it was...pretty good. I talked about the Atonement and grace and Sister Sorenson talked about the preexistence and how God knows us. Then one of our recent converts got up and told her conversion story and challenged everyone in the congregation who wasn't a member to be baptized. It was awesome!

We got to go on exchanges again this week, and I spent the 

day with my sister in the mission. (We had the same trainer.) We had a good long talk about Sis Schwarze and life, and I'm feeling a lot better about my sucky winter in Converse. Her name is Sis Camarella, and she was in the MTC with Daniel Walentine. She is also training this cute little Australian sister named Sister Alfaro. Poor Sister Alfaro was engaged before her mission, and she had a total melt down when she got to the field and he dumped her. We're going to have to talk sometime, but I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. The poor girl has serious guilt issues. I call it the sister missionary disease. All sister missionaries catch it at some point in their mission, but my brilliant mind and I are working on a cure. Basically, when you have this disease you are plagued with overwhelming feelings of guilt and ineptitude, feeling like you're never good enough and never working hard enough even though you know you're working your butt off. (Of course, it doesn't help when poor sisters like Sis Alfaro are chastised by the people back home who they care about and who don't really quite 100% remember what it's like to be a brand new missionary.) Okay, I'll get off my soap box now. But, speaking of boys, Sister Sorenson got this creepy text from one of the Bug Boys telling her that he thinks she's really cute and wants to "hang out" when she gets home. Gross. This kid is an RM {returned missionary}. What the crap is his problem? But anyway, exchanges were amazing. Sis Camarella said that she's been having a hard time in that area, but we saw so many miracles! We taught this African guy who was referred to us by a member, and it was a really good lesson. He kept interrupting us with comments about African courtesy, and he gave us this nasty alcohol-free malt nasty – I don't even know what. It was disgusting. 

I'm wondering how my bank account is looking because last

 Monday I bought cowboy boots. yeah... They're way cute though and I love them. I can't wait for the day I can actually wear them whenever I want.

I'm glad to hear everything is going well at home. I stuck a

 letter in the mail today finally so you should get it this week. Anna, as usual I about wet myself when I read your email. Make sure y’all are being nice to each other. I love you.

Love, 

Morgan

   DFTBMA

Mormon Connections

Hiya Familia,

Another P-day is here. We're going to go buy Sis Sorensen some cowboy boots today, and I'm excited. Does it get any more Texas than buying cowboy boots? I don't think so. Don't mess with Texas. 

So this week has been crazy. (Just like every other week, but that doesn't change the fact that life in general is crazy) 

Jessica, these are for you. We have this super solid investigator named Natalie White, and one of her really good friends served with you. His name is Zach Atherton. When she told him she was meeting with us he said, "Wait, does this Sister Heeder have a bunch of sisters and live in Idaho? I served with her sister. It's a sign!" I also met Elder Rivera. He's in our stake. He said he just got home from Jacksonville a year ago and he knows who you are. 

Quick question. Where is the family bible? 

I hope you like the pictures. My comp says that she promises she doesn’t really have sixty chins. hahaha.

Grandma and Grandpa Heeder, I hope you made it to Idaho safely. 

This week we had Zone Conference and President's interviews, so a lot of our proselyting time got eaten up. But we still got a lot done. Jose is breaking our hearts, and he has not been confirmed yet. Jenifer can no longer be baptized this week because she lied to us about her living situation and has to move before she can get dunked. :( Amber has stopped responding to our calls and texts, but we'll hunt her down eventually. Natalie is amazing. We finally got a chance to teach her the first lesson, and she said she'd be baptized and she knows what we taught her was true. So that's awesome. I love her so much because she's so open and honest with us. At the end of our lesson I asked her if she'd pray and she said, "me?! no. no. too far. too far." hahaha. She’s so funny. She reminds me a lot of my friend Cat (who was my bff in Ecuador, for those of you who don't know.) I think they even kind of look alike.

If anyone wants to buy me a gift, I've been coveting the MoTab “Come Thou Fount” CD. Just so you know. :)

I have so many funny stories from this week, but they’re the "you had to be there" kind of stories that wouldn't really be funny to anyone else so...sorry about that.  \

So a bunch of our members have this friend named Luke who he comes to activities every once and a while and knows us really well, but he's an untouchable. As in, we don't get to teach him until the members give us the go ahead. But he is so funny and he's so nice. The other night he showed up while we were eating dinner with the Relief Society president and her roomies, and he spent a good hour giving us advice about boys. hahaha. Amanda has a new boy from Dallas, so we asked Logan to be her screener when he comes to visit next month. He was so excited.  I love the people here so much. They are all so awesome. It's pretty fun that Ryan is in my ward too. I see him in Sunday School every week, and it's just kind of like this weird, "Hey, we know each other" type situation, and I tell all our investigators our weird Mormon Connections. (Ah, did you see how I did that. I made the title the same as the end of my email. I'm so clever. haha.)

Well, I love you all and I hope I get to keep hearing from you. Have a week like it's December 1999 and have fun. Summer is almost here!

Love you All

Love, 

Morgan

Editor's Note: P.S. If you want to hear Sister Sarah Cate Sorenson's (Morgan's companion) take  on everything, here is a link to her blog.

Watched it Pour as I Touched Your Face

Dear Family,

Where to begin?... Well, first of all, it was really good to talk to y’all yesterday. Sorry I didn't say much, but it's hard to catch up on 5 months in just one hour. I love you all though.

So much has happened this week and I'm not really sure where to start. the week went by really fast, but when I look back and try to remember I can't so... good thing I have my journal with me!!!

Oh I remember:

We went on exchanges this week, so I was in the Wells Branch ward in Pflugerville for three days. That was fun. I got to meet a lot of really cool people, and they all loved me- of course. :)

I got a letter from Sam Nielson with a left-handed unicorn picture on the back and it was fantastic. I put it in my journal and then made my companion draw a left-handed unicorn for me. I think I may make this a thing. Left-handed unicorns are the best! hahaha.

I finally bought some local honey because it's supposed to help with allergies. I don't know if it really does, but it tastes really good.

We finally found Jose this week! He got baptized but never got confirmed and he moved and his phone broke, so we haven’t been able to contact him. But he got a new phone and left us a message saying he was going to be at work. So we got a group of members together and stalked him at work. Just kidding. He works at a restaurant so we got some members to take us out to eat for the sake of missionary work. It was so good. Jose was so excited to see all of us. It was a good thing it wasn’t really busy that night because he just sat and talked to us the whole time we were there. Then a member offered to give him a ride to church the next morning. I love our ward so much!!! So Jose came to church, but the bishop was out of town so he could not get interviewed to be confirmed. (The bishop has to interview anyone who misses their original confirmation date before they can get confirmed.) ahhhhh! The bishop will be there next week though, and so will Jose! But then he's moving to North Carolina the next week. It’s sad, but he doesn't have a super good living situation here and there are Mormons in NC just like there are in Texas. So long as we get him confirmed and in touch with the right people out there he will be just fine. Well, that's the most exciting thing that happened this week. The coming week is going to be fantastic because we are going to teach Natalie again, and she is going to get baptized and go on a mission. Yes! We also get to teach Jenifer again this week, and she is going to get baptized too. yeah!

Oh, so we were tracting one day and I saw some hippies, so I ran over to talk to them so I could tell them how much I loved their dreads. We had the craziest conversation ever and one of them rolled a dubie right in front of us! Then when we asked them about their religion they said they were "more spiritual." That's the stupidest answer I've ever heard. Then one of them went off about skin walkers, and we probably could have talked to them for a really long time. But it started to rain and we had to run back to our car. We got soaked, and my asthma was going crazy. We had to take a break under a tree because our car was forever away and I am so out of shape.

Anna, I about wet myself when I saw that picture. It was so funny. I'm so bummed that by the time I get home Adele won't be big anymore, but that's ok because listening to hymns 24/7 is way better than listening to good music. :) I'm trying ok. Don’t judge me. For those of you who didn't get to see the picture... I just set it as an attachment. :) 

As far as the other pictures go, we had dinner with a Ranger last night so I hope that explains a lot. Not the forest ranger kind of ranger, but the A-Team king of ranger. It was pretty fun and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, as I hope you can tell. What can I say? It was a good photo op.

We also had dinner with a senior missionary couple and the dinner conversation mostly consisted of the origins of various Native American groups. Elder Lombardi wrote a book all about how to stay healthy so you can have "great sex over 80" hahaha and now he's working on a book about Native American genealogy.

Alright, I have to go now but I love you all. Have a good week and send me some letters ;)

Sister Morgan Heeder

2104 E Anderson Ln Apt. # 1032 

Austin, TX 78752

Happy Mother's Day

Love,

Morgan

Singles' Ward (Part 2)

Dear Family,

Ok, so yesterday we went to the Walnut Creek family ward because one of our investigators is supposed to be switching over. Well, she didn't show up, but we stayed for sacrament meeting anyway. 

Every summer in Austin a ton of new people move in to sell pest control;  "bug boys." well, as I was sitting at the back of the chapel I glanced this girl- clearly a Utah girl; big hair and fake bake tan- sitting with whom I supposed to be her boyfriend. Then the boy she was sitting with turned his head to whisper some sweet nothing in her ear and I thought, "Oh my goodness, that looks just like Eric Tatro." As I continued to stare at them from my back row seat as they made eyes at each other and snuck kisses every 10 minutes I realized that it was indeed Eric Tatro and that Ryan Golding was sitting on his other side. 

As soon as Sacrament was over I jumped up and went to where they were sitting to say hi. Also, I, being naive as I am and assuming that all of my peers must still be as single as myself, I had the intention to invite them to the singles' ward and let them know what activities were going on. So I just walked right up and started talking to them. I was greeted with the most Utah "oh my gosh" I've heard in quite a while. Then Eric said, "HI, this is my wife." ugh. I'm sure the surprise on my face was hilarious. First of all, didn't he just get home from his mission? Second of all, who does that? I hope to never be introduced simply as "wife." I'm sure this wife girl has a perfectly normal name that the world would like to know, but those of you who read this email and I will simply know her as wife. 

While all of this was going on, Ryan was just looking at me with a very confused look on his face. I said,

"You know, it's really crazy that I even ran into you all here because this isn't even my ward. I'm in the singles' ward."

Ryan said, "What are you doing here?"

I said, "I'm in the singles' ward here."

Ok, so I was obviously missing something because he asked me the same question again. Then I realized that he meant- what am I doing in Texas. I tapped my badge and he said, "Oh, You're a missionary. ok"

Then the funny part ended so I said goodbye and went to my ward. Leslie showed up. Yay!

After church we had a linger longer. Good thing too because we go to church until 5:45 and I was starving. As I waited in line for food I was talking to one of the bug boys. I don't remember his name but let's see if anyone can figure out who he is. As we were talking it came out that he served his mission in Jacksonville, Florida and got home about two years ago. (yes Jessica, this one is for you) I told him that my sister served in Jacksonville, Florida and has been home for about two years. He said, "What's her name?" I grabbed my name tag and held it out and said, "Sister Heeder." (I'm such a brat) hahaha.

He said, "oh yeah, Sister Heeder. Jessica, Right? I was her zone leader when she served in Orange Park." So, do you know who he is yet? He is from Mesa, Arizona and he's brown (he's Native American). Yeah, that guy. {Eric Trott!} He’s in my ward. He took a picture on us on his phone and I gave him Jessica's phone number and he texted it to her. Then I remembered that night that Jessica probably can't receive picture texts any more, but if you facebook him he said he'd put it on facebook  :) {I got the picture and will put in at the bottom of this post.}

We were able to meet some really cool people this week and we taught a first lesson in Spanish :)

For my spiritual thought/challenge thing this week I want to share with you an epiphany I had this week. go back and review President Eyring's talk from conference about how time seems to slow when we are facing trials. Then read Heleman 15:4,10-11; 2Ne. 2:21; and Mosiah 14:10 and tell me what you think. For me it was like getting hit over the head with a shovel, but I want to know how y’all feel about it.

I'm not going to give you my real address b/c we have all sorts of things going on when mail will be delivered from the office and I hate hoping for mail and not getting it. so, I figured if I just get mail on three set times during the transfer when I'm pretty darn sure I'll be getting mail, it will save me some grief. Nothing against you family, I'm just trying something new out. I'm looking forward to talking to you all in a few days. I'm going to have to start writing things down that I want to say. We'll make it a good 45 minutes. Don’t you even worry about it. Also, being in a singles' ward I get exposed to all sorts of worldly things and my new favorite song is "Fire to the Rain" by Adele so if someone wants to be my little apostate friend and print out the lyrics and send them to me I would greatly appreciate it. One of our members took us out to lunch and pulled out his iPad and started playing all the new songs that are popular that we haven't heard yet and then he begged us to borrow his iPad. Oh my goodness, he is so funny. I love my ward so much. 

ok, bye, I love you

Love,

Hermana Heeder