The Rolling Plaines of Belle

Hey Everyone!!

I had such a great and uplifting week. We have moved into Belle Plaine and have started to get working on the area!!

My new companions name is Elder Harris. He is from Washington, and has been out for 6 months! He is a great missionary with lots of energy!

Elder Harris

We met on Thursday and drove the hour trip to Belle Plaine. It is in a super small town in the middle of nowhere! There is one gas station and one grocery store, other than that you have to go to the next city to find another grocery store and then all the way back to Iowa City to find anything else! It is pretty awesome being out here, it is definitely not the city life that I am used to in California but I could get used to it!

The branch has about 30 active members and about double that inactive members. They are all pretty old and so I am excited to get some youth back into the branch! We have met with all of them over phone call or video chat and have already felt a love for them. It is very special!

We dont have many people to teach, but are facebook finding. That is coming along very well. I hope to see success this next week. Speaking of facebook pages.... last transfer about halfway through we got a call from a man named Pablo! He had been praying for a church to join, right after his prayer he got onto facebook and saw our page! We have taught him for about 4 weeks and he wants to be baptized on July 4th! We told him we would celebrate with some firework after haha. I have really grown close with him and love him very much. He is so humble and just says that the Gospel of Jesus Christ just makes sense. He always takes on bee challenges to become more acquainted with Jesus Christ! Facebook is working!! Miracles are happening over social media!!!!!! 

I love this work and am grateful to be out here serving in Iowa. I have learned new skills here that I will take back home and apply for a lifetime!!

Love, 

Elder Morgan

New Experiences

Hey Everyone!!

We had a quick week. We were able to extend some Baptismal dates, make and edit some videos and also received our transfer news! Doesn't seem like it has already been 6 weeks since coming back out on mission!! It has gone so quick and is very fulfilling!

We have began to teach a man named Pablo Gonzalez. He has had a pretty rough and tough life but found us through our facebook page. We have been teaching him for about 2 weeks and finally extended a baptismal date to him! He accepted and is really excited. 

It is different teaching people here. Baptism seems to be such a foreign thing to people here and so it takes so much more preparation to get them excited about baptism! In some ways it is more fulfilling, speaking in my own language, serving in my own country, and being in a similar culture to what I have back home. It is wonderful! I do miss Sierra Leone, but serving in the states is fun as well! 

We have been working on different videos and editing other ones as well. It keeps us pretty busy, which is very nice!! It is a new look on missionary work, but I am really enjoying it. We have made great progress, and I hope that we can keep it going!

Yesterday night President called us and told me that I was being transferred! I am opening up a new area about an hour away from Iowa City! My new companion is Elder Harris. President Sturm said " Well Elder Morgan, this won't be the jungles of Africa.... but it will be pretty close!" I'm excited to get working and see what the needs are in the new area and what I can learn! I am grateful to have served with Elder Anderson, he really helped me a lot in re adjusting back to missionary life! 

Well, I think that is it for me. I'm excited to get going in this new area, seems like itll be so fun to get it working again!! See ya next week!

Love, 

Elder Morgan

We found a super big wooden hand and now use it as a banana holder!

Facebook Goals

Hey Everyone!!

I had such a good week, it went by quickly but we were able to put a lot of work in!!

This week we were able to work on some videos for our Facebook page, had an exchange with our District Leader.... IN PERSON, and we found two new people to teach!!

We are currently working on a few different videos. We have just finished a video showing that missionaries have struggles and we rely on Jesus Christ to help us out with that. We are trying to make a lot of videos that will be on different topics. It makes the week go by faster and it is also very fun! Editing the video takes the most time, it takes a while to get everything perfect. I am learning to enjoy it!

This week I was on an exchange with Elder Beals. He is awesome! We were able to do some great Facebook finding and had some awesome lessons. I really appreciate him! And what's best of all is that we did it in person! The work is slowly opening up and it is great!!

This week our mission had a goal for every area to find one new person to teach. That means that we had to find a person on Facebook, meet with them and set a return appointment. We found two new people! As a reward our Mission President told us to sleep in until 8 o'clock today. I thought that was a bit weird and still woke up at 6:30 am and just had some extra time to workout today! It is fun to see how different missions and different mission presidents work. I'm grateful for the opportunity.

My studies have been centered on praying with faith. I've been studying up on that and really learning a lot. 

Our downstairs neighbor came up to our apartment and asked us to help her move something's this coming Wednesday. When she knocked I opened up the door and she said " Dont worry I am not making a noise complaint! I just need some help!" That means we are making progress!!!! 

Other than that, nothing too exciting! Just a ton of facebook finding and filming videos. See ya next week!!

-Elder Morgan

Elder Anderson and I

Seeing Some Success

Hey All!

I have had a quick and eventful week! We have been making video content for our mission Facebook page,  we were able to have one of our friends join the fold of God, and have really been blessed with great people to teach!

Like I said above, we have different Facebook pages based on the amount of big cities in our mission. We have quite a few Facebook pages. Our job is to make enjoyable content for the viewers. My companion and I released a cheesy cooking show. We tried to make it not to serious but also to get a good message out. We have some more ideas that we are trying to put into action this week. So hopefully we should get a few more done and ready to go out! It is cool how missionary work has been changing.  It is all from our devices now, it was a bit of a tough transition for me but I am really trying hard to get better at it. We have found some great success as well with finding people to teach!

We actually just had a baptism on Saturday! It was really awesome. We didn't have too many people there, we have a rule of 20 people maximum. We were also able to set up a Zoom call so more people could watch it. I played the piano. Now, I know what you are thinking, " Elder Morgan can play the piano??"  Well sorry, I don't know how. I kinda cheated. 

Hallie's Baptism

We have really been blessed with people to teach! It is a lot smaller than what our teaching pools in Sierra Leone were like but I am really happy with how things are going. When I first got here, they literally were not teaching anyone! After much prayer and some grind on Facebook, we have some solid people. We have extended one baptismal date and hopefully another this week. The Lord is helping us more and more. I am grateful for His hand in my life!!

Fun fact of Iowa-

Well this isn't really a fun fact but there is some trouble brewing in our apartment!! We have this downstairs neighbor that is out to get us! Over the past few months she has been getting on the missionaries ALOT. We are trying to be extra quiet but also follow the rules. We were working out today and she came up and threatened to get her lawyer involved if we don't do anything. The thing is, we have tried to call our landlord and mission housing coordinator for a few weeks but nothing has come of it! So we are just trying to be as quiet as mice, but we will see what happens!!

I am enjoying it out here doing The Lords work. I am grateful for God teaching me patience and how to adjust to this new adventure. I still see my own pride and I mess up alot, but I know that He knows I'm trying. Sometimes that is all He asks for, and I'm really trying my best!! I love Him and this glorious Gospel. I find myself having gratitude even on the hard days and wanting to do better and be better. He is my King!

-Elder Morgan

My companion and I putting in some work on the computer.