Monday, March 11, 2013

YAY DANIEL!!

I am so excited for Daniel!* I know he wanted to serve in Europe, and it is great that he will be speaking Spanish. How perfect! I know Europe is tough, especially for baptizing. But I am sure he will work hard and be ready for it. I am serving right next to Grandpa´s mission, and he´s next to where Dad served. I´ve heard great things about the Spain MTC: He will learn a lot there, especially with the opportunity to leave and proselyte.  Really, that is awesome.

Don´t worry, I made sure not to let José tell me until I read the email. He has helped us a lot this week. He drove us around all day Saturday. Unfortunately, we still did not have anyone in church, in spite of our efforts to teach a lot more with the members. We have some people who could come, but have doubts or conflicts that they still can´t overcome. But, we keep trying to improve how we teach. My companion is really great about being patient and willing to work harder. This week I watched the movie "On the Way Home." I really like what that shows. I wish I could have more families like that, and I realized I need to focus more on the conversion process (I also read Alma 17-22 this week). In studying that, I have discovered a lot of things to help me (especially the Book of Mormon and the Spirit), along with realizing that most of the process rests in the agency of those who we teach. They need to decide. I also learned that we were teaching a lot more in the last months because it was summer vacations. So, it looks like things are going to get tougher again. That just means there are a lot of opportunites to learn. I am really trying to focus less on comparing myself to others and expecting results when I want them. Abinadi has always been a great example to me of a missionary who suffered and testified but never saw the amazing impact he had.

We are also seeing a lot miracles, but not always the fruits. We normally invite the people to be baptized the first lesson, and we have had amazing experiences with people who were very willing. But it has been difficult to find most of them, sometimes for family opposition, or other circumstances. Maybe they weren´t sincere and hid from us later? (That happens sometimes). Or maybe I am just planting a lot of seeds for future missionaries. That is why I have been thinking about Abinadi a lot. I always try to just do the Lord´s will, and I hope he is using me to do great things, though I may not be here for the baptisms. For example, we have Juan Ramon, who still needs a lot of help. It will take a while for them to overcome the difficulties with their son, and we are just trying to give them hope, often by singing hymns. Honestly, I wish I could just sing all lesson, every lesson. Haha, but it´s not that easy.

We talked about the impact a missionary can have in our Zone training this week. There´s a church video of President Eyring talking about the waves a little pebble makes in a large pond. We really can do a lot of good (or bad) as missionaries every single day. We taught them how to teach the 1st lesson according to the needs of the investigator, which went very well. A lot of comments showed that they learned a lot. Actually, in trying to plan a simpler training this time, we opened it up for too many comments. That is the problem I had sometimes teaching Elder´s Quorum at BYU, which is better than when I taught Sunday School and there were no comments. It´s a tough balance to help people learn by the Spirit but still give them all the teaching you can. Especially all the motivational scriptures and questions (like "What would you do today if you knew you could not fail?) at the end, I feel like we inspired them and gave them things to apply to the work they do every day.

I was up late last week helping the other missionaries pack, especially in Centro where we had to clean, organize, and prepare the area book for the new missionaries. The bus terminal was an interesting situation because of all the missionaries who I may not see again, like I explained last week. There are three more transfers before the mission split, and I am pretty sure I will be in my next area in July. So on whichever of those three dates I leave this area, I will be pretty sure of which mission I will stay in. I will also try to send more pictures...but as you have seen, that often risks you not getting the email. I appreciate all the news I get from you, and I am thankful for your support. It is going to be exciting to have my brother in the mission field with me. Any questions, or anything else I can do to help with that, let me know. I love and pray for you all! Please pray for me, my companion, the missionaries in the Zone, the members in the ward, investigators, and all of Paraguay. And don´t forget that the Lord is always with you!

-Elder Wesley Morgan

*Elder Morgan's brother Daniel has been called to the Madrid Spain mission.  He leaves for the Madrid MTC on July 24th.  Hooray for missionaries!

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