Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Ooh, I would have loved to go to Disneyworld. Although I´ve been walking plenty enough so maybe not. Yes, I am bummed that I couldn´t go but I was expecting for you guys to do fun jazz while I´m gone. I can´t expect life to stop for two years. Although that would be convenient. I haven´t reached that level of power in the priesthood yet. 

I heard my favorite reason for why the Catholic church is true and ours isn´t. A man told us last week that the Catholic church was true because there are more people in it and that apparently is solid evidence. He ignored us talking about authority and stuff.

March 11 was the anniversary of some accident. The statue outside the train station was surrounded by candles and bunches of flowers put there by people. No idea what it was, though. 

The members were watching the news and there was some wave of like a thousand Africans hopping a fence to get to Spain. Or I guess the strait of Gibraltar to Spain. It was freaky looking. They went in a giant army and swarmed it like some zombie apocalypse film. 

During a lesson an investigator said she was having a hard time accepting the Book of Mormon as well as the bible. She said all her life she had been taught, "Bible! Bible! Bible!" and right then me and my companion looked at each other and smiled and we flipped to the "A Bible! A Bible! We have a Bible!" scripture. I believe it´s in 2 Nephi 29. It was the perfect situation. 

Last Monday I obviously went to Segovia! It´s such a wonderful city. And it was a much more fun trip this time. We had a car, we had people we wanted to be with, we made sandwiches in front of the castle, we had native Spanish speakers with us, and I actually can speak Spanish now.

On Friday there was a talent show! We, the missionaries, and some ward members did the Cotton-eyed Joe dance.

There were a lot of good talents even though some were purposefully ridiculous. Some of our friends did a really good skit I had seen before on youtube. It has a girl in white dancing with a man representing Jesus. There are 4 other people who represent bad things of the world that get between her and Jesus and won´t let her get back and make her feel terrible but Jesus rushes in an pushes them all away. It´s good.  Mom, I think you can find it on Jhony's FB page.

It´s getting pretty hot here. It reached the equivalent of 88 degrees here. I´m used to that not coming until June and it´s deathly. Hopefully it goes back down. I miss my beloved snow. Maybe the heat´s making me tired. No idea. Either way I´m hopefully going to be able to rest. I miss you all a lot and love you even more! Have a great week!

Os quiero,

-Elder Morgan the Younger

Doctrine and Covenants 116

So, storytime. We went to Segovia today with people from the ward! And this time I had the camera charged! Turns out, we partially lost the car and people who aren´t missionaries walk very slow. I suppose "normal" but it seems so slow to us. After that their GPS was all funky and led us on the weirdest trip through Madrid and we got lost-ish. Eventually we got home, and had a boss lesson. After all that, I´m finally here a bit late. I have to go, but this is just so you know I am alive and so you don´t worry. This will be the D&C 116 of my novel of letters in the mission. At least I think it´s D&C 116 that´s super dang tiny. Now you can actually read the whole email in one go. Umm... I can´t remember anything life changing that happened this week. Some people gaining testimonies! Videos work like a charm sometimes. Thank you whoever made the 3rd disc of the D&C DVD collection.

Here´s a second paragraph so this looks a bit longer and so everyone feels better. Sadly the tab key doesn´t work to add to the nice paragraph effect. I´ll do that in my book! Exciting. Sadly, I must go. I love you all and and miss you loads!

Os quiero,

-Elder Morgan the Younger

Mom speaking:  Since this is such a short email, I'll include some of the photos I've been getting the past few weeks from Facebook and his companion's mother. The outside photos are taken at Parque Europa and include ward members and an investigator.

All the Torrejon missionaries

Fourth Time's the Charm

Brownies in a mug are a hit and they tasted really good. :) Especially since they sell really good cocoa powder here. Thanks for the recipe!

The "Do you want to take me" was supposed to be something along the lines of "Will you talk with us?"-*

Funny story. So, we wake up early to go to a gym nearby for our excercize in the morning every day. Last week we got a call that two girls were calling for us downstairs. Turns out the sister missionaries locked themselves out of their piso without a phone. Thankfully they just had to ask the gym to find the "Two tall americans" and they found us instantly. And on the subject of excercizing, my companion has to look good for home so we do super intense workouts before bed. Hopefully it shows soon. 

There´s a reason we say the field is black and ready to harvest! We just had our third Nigerian baptized! Paul Osaghae! He´s so solid. Thankfully it went much more smoothly and less stressfully than the last time. And even more cool is that he was baptized by the first man we baptized! It took 4 times due to a left hand and a head, but it happened in the end. Paul´s pretty happy and more solid than ever. I love these people!

They´re doing a Mission Tour where a general authority visits around the mission and does many things like giving a talk. We got to hear from Elder Teixera (from Portugal I believe) who is over Europe. And we heard from President and other people like their wives. It was really good and we learned a lot. We need more of those! Sadly they only happen once a year. 

I got the birthday card. That was wonderful. For the world to know, I received my birthday card which was a cow orchestra. It starts with the orchestra warm up and then you can press buttons which are 5 different notes of cows mooing. They also give you music and, to quote the card, plenty of "udder-ly" terrible puns. It made me very happy. Thank you. 

On the food section, I have an assignment and a story. You all (Including my illustrious brother) must find a store that sells Pandebono. It´s delicious columbian cheese bread and I´ve eaten it many times here. It´s really good. I also remember Wesley talking about something called an alfajor (something like that) and we found some here and ate them and enjoyed them. And yesterday we made arepas which are like really thick corn tortillas fried in a mountain of oil. That, combined with the really rich hot chocolate of Spain almost killed me, but I deliciously survived. I think my stomach is still lined with grease and chocolate. I have many things to cook for you guys when I get back! The hard recipes, though, are those which are just "a lot of this" and "add some of this" but I´ll try to get them.

Well I´m off to preach the gospel and go eat! Sorry if I forgot to write something! Tell me if I did! I miss you all loads like always and love you all like always! I hope you´re all doing well!

Os quiero,

Elder Morgan the Younger


Some random photos I got from Elder Fisher's mom:

The Field is Black and Ready to Harvest

Ooh. I do like the word epistles (Mom called my letters that). From henceforth my dang long emails shall be called epistles. Today will be a bit normal sized-ish. 

Yes, I´m happy to stay in my area. I love the ward and the investigators. I have a lot of friends here now that I will have to visit another day and some are actually going to America. 

Well last Monday we went to Parque Europa in Torrejón which is a big park with big replicas of monuments from around Europe. Everyone takes photos at the Eiffel Tower. Sadly it was getting dark when we went so I couldn´t take photos, but we´re for sure going another day and I´ll get photos then. 

The booth finally worked! It´s just a table and posters in front of our chapel and we contact people near it. It was cloudly like every Tuesday (Always Tuesday. Literally) but there was no wind or rain so we got to do it finally. It wasn´t so golden with the weather but we found some people. Mostly we were excited to finally do it.

We went to the temple again! It´s a beautiful building. I wish we could have more time to stay there. I never get tired of the temple. It´s cool to hear everything in Spanish too and now I can understand much better. It´s definitely a place I´m visiting again after the mission.

Our African investigators and recent converts are boss still. We talked to Juliet, the woman we just baptized, about member missionary work and she had already invited a friend to listen. We can definitely feel the shockwave from the explosion of baptism in Africa. Maybe it has some effect here too. We now like to say, "The field is black and ready to harvest." We´re going to start an English branch here or something. They are just such an open people and good at member missionary work.

Our investigators are pretty good. Just lazy sometimes. I feel like a lesson to be learned here is lots of patience. With investigators and my companion and members and overall. I´m coming out of this city very, very, patient. But we´re doing well here. The ward says the haven´t had this much success in a while. Hopefully we´ll continue that success this transfer too. There are certain investigators that we will celebrate very much when they are baptized because we have done so much work for them. I hope everyone gets baptized before I move on.

Here´s the food paragraph! I helped make empanadas and they were delicious and fun. They have perfect little empanada molds. Also I learned how to prepare whole shrimp. I was mostly in charge of ripping heads off and it felt a bit gruesome but it was fun. And shrimps are the perfect way to scare people. They look creepy. A paratrooper in our ward gave us some military rations that expire next November that the army was going to throw out. Each meal comes with a cheap foldable stove, energy tablets, purification tablets, Vitamin C, and basically a small survival kit of a bajillion things. And since we´re in Spain they always have to have bread at meals so the army has bread crackers. We had a nerd moment because they look exactly like the elf bread from LoTR and fill you up and come in green packages.

We had a missonary activity in the ward with the youth! It went really well. They got to practice a lot and get excited about mission work. They even went out into the street and contacted real people. They were so excited when they came back. And they had the option to practice contacting in English and we heard some really funny phrases like "I am The Church of Jesus Christ..." and "You want to take me?" and put them in thick accents. But it came out well and everyone had fun. 

Well I´m in somewhat of a hurry today so I´m going to end. I´ll write everyone I didn´t respond to next week. I love you all and miss you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Morgan the Younger

I'm not Illegal Anymore!

I´m legal! I finally made it through the residency process and now I have a card and everything. I was theoretically illegal for about a month back there too. Although, like I said earlier, the police never check white people. They always check Latinos and Africans. It´s sad. But now they can´t catch me. 

There are no pictures from Toledo. I can´t remember if I mentioned last time that my camera died on the bus going to there. Ya, you could say I´m pretty bummed. I´ll probably go another day because that´s a popular place so I´ll get some then. Toledo was beautiful! Even the library looks like a castle. It´s quite the workout since everything is on a huge hill. We didn´t get to see much because some people just wanted to talk and take the same pictures over and over again, but we got to do quite a bit. We accidentally entered the cathedral on the worship side and it was pretty fancy. Although we were a bit saddened by the prayer candles. They´re not candles anymore. They are a grid of lightbulbs and a 10 cent slot to turn one on. Wow. Apostasy is getting modern and lazy. We didn´t have time to buy anything. Next time, though! 

Tell Kamalei to learn to say "Que lo que." All the Dominicans here say that. They´re interesting people. I love them.  All the black and african culture mixes with latino culture and it makes fun things. And learn about baseball!

Transfers are actually today! We received them on Saturday. This weekend has been quite the drama and fiasco with that. In the end, Hermana King goes to the islands and we just got Hermana Floyd.

Yes, we have real brown sugar here but it´s rare. The sisters found it in a chinese shop a little north of our chapel. Most of the brown sugar here is like side walk salt texture. It´s super rough and doesn´t do what you want it to in recipes. I love collecting recipies! Hopefully when I get back I´ll have a good amount. Food is a great way to connect people. I guess because we all use it and want it.

So, our other Nigerian, Izekiel, didn´t show up a few weeks ago. One of his friends in the church found him and found us and told us what happened. He didn´t come to the baptism on purpose because he didn´t want Henry, my first baptism, to baptize him. Considering that he himself asked me to baptize him, it makes no sense. I was in white in the picture that Mom saw because I was waiting to baptize Izekiel. 

My birthday! Well, nothing feels different. I blend in now with the normal age missionaries. President and Hermana Jackson called and sang their fancy Happy Birthday song they do for everyone. It´s awesome. We ate lunch with some members. In the evening I made a bajillion pancakes and syrup, my companion made cupcakes (without a cupcake pan. It´s what´s on the inside that counts.), and someone brought a cake. We put a 1, an upside-down 6 and a random Real Madrid trophy on it. We never got to the cake because we were so sugared out. Although there is a nice Ecuadorian tradition of the person having to take a bite out of the cake and someone tries to push them in, but I escaped and just had a bit on my nose and chin. The next day the hermanas made lunch to celebrate my birthday also.

We gave a Temple tour! I´ve never done one before, despite being so close in Barrio 8. You walk around the temple explaining stuff and the gospel with symbols and then you get to sit in the waiting room and feel awesome. Our investigator didn´t want to leave. And I found out that the olive tree by the temple is a few thousand years old and from the Garden of Gethsemane. But I wish I could´ve given more of those in the past. They´re boss. 

We found a awesome guy from Mexico! He is from Guadalajara (Which is confusing because that is also a city like 20 minutes from here) and he kind of reminds me of Danny. He helps us teach his Catholic friend in a way too. He also somehow found and brought us maple syrup. Then the even better part was that we found a family of 7 Romanians that want to hear a lot. I´m excited to teach them all! Obviously we have found other people than these, but these were just special. 

A recent convert couple got sealed on Friday! They had essentially a reception and it was nice. There were some beautiful talks on marraige. Later my companion showed us one of the videos that they mentioned about a man who takes care of his paralyzed wife. He combs her hair and makes her food and takes her out dancing even though it´s just to watch. Speaking of dancing, they had a dance and they´re kind of funny here. They´re mostly adults doing basic latino dances and they enjoy it thoroughly. So do we. Especially when they did a flamenco song and it was a bunch of 50 year olds being boss. 

Well another week has come and gone. I miss you guys and love you more! Have a great week! You´re welcome for the eternally long email! I´m not joking about printing a book of all these for my descendants and myself. That bad boy´s going to be long.

Os quiero!

Elder Morgan the Younger

Some Random Photos

Elder Morgan finally sent a bunch of photos. Many of them were from his previous area, but it's good to see them, so here they are:

 

The District in Vallecas (Sept - Nov.).  Elder Morgan and his companion are mostly hidden.

Finally got a picture of his first companion in the field, Elder Shumway from Arizona.

The other Elders in their apartment: Elders Anderson and Miles.

The French Toast breakfast they made for Thanksgiving.

The Street they lived on in Vallecas.

The statue and city center is actually Alcalá where we have district meeting.

The district in Alcala - It was the Sisters' baptism

 

As Elder Morgan's companion said:  "Holey cow!"

King's Day Parade (January 6)

Nativity at the chapel in Alcala

The view right outside of the renfe (train station). We live in the building on the very left of all.

Toledo and a Baptism!

Ooh, I´m not fluent yet. I´m on my way. I feel like I can survive on my own now, though, and get across what I want to say. 

So! This email will be short. We just went to Toledo which means today was nice and that I have no time. It was awesome! There´s a store right off the plaza that has a bajillion swords and everything. We were like children in a candy store. There was too much to see and too many people but I´ll surely be back another day. I want to buy like a dozen swords but obviously I can´t because apparently the swords and knives in Toledo are mixed with gold or something so they cost a lot. More about Toledo later!

We had a baptism! Juliet, a wonderful woman from Nigeria, got baptized on Saturday! She´s boss and so golden. If the whole world were like her we would baptize everyone by the end of the year.

 

Hopefully soon we´ll baptize her husband and kids who we recently met. It was also randomly fun to confirm her because she has an afro and even though it was pulled back it was still poofy. We also had another man who was supposed to come but he has disappeared at this moment and we will search out that little lost lamb after we email. No, the boss lesson with the girl hasn´t resulted in a baptism yet. We even had a boss temple tour with her. She didn´t want to leave the waiting room and my companion served in the temple area so he knew how do give a boss tour. It´s mostly outside but we get to enter the waiting room. She´s still afraid of her parents so all we can do now is fast, pray, and wait.

Sorry this is short! If I had time, I´d write the usual novella. I love you all and will write about everything next week!

Os quiero!

-Elder Morgan the Younger