September 6, 2011

September 6, 2011

Lakeside Ward/Tucson, Arizona

Hello All :)

How is everyone doin today? I hope all of you have chosen today to be the very best day of you life. If not...why not? You should make every day better than the last one. This is something that I have learned today. Today was a day of a lot of reflection, sorrow, pain, yet happiness. A sister missionary named Venessa Bentely was killed on her mission in Uttica, New York. She was from the Tucson area and she actually is from our Stake. Her father is the 2nd Counslor in the Stake Presidency. Our Mission President asked all of the Missionaries in the surrounding area to attend to support her family and the work that she was doing. We had over 90 missionaries in attendance. Hearing her family speak was humbling to say the least. She was 13 months into her mission and she was 5 months from coming home. You can tell that her family loved her so much. After one of her sisters spoke and her mom and dad, the stake president spoke and then an area seventy spoke. But then a member of the first quorum of the seventy spoke. His words were so amazing. You can tell that he really did have a firm knowledge of the plan of salvation and the power of the atonement in someones life. As I was reflecting about you my family, I was brought to tears when I thought about you. I want to say to you all that I love you all so much. I'm sorry if I have ever hurt someone that is reading this, or if I have every offended someone. That was not my intent. I am truly sorry for any hurt that I have caused anyone. I love all of you my friends and family so much. I am so thankful for this wonderful support that I have from every single one of you. I feel your prayers every single day, every single moment in my ministry here. So thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you for everything. I have seen the miracle or missions and what they can do for your life.

On a happier note :) Things here are going really well here. I am in love with my area and I love serving Gods children. A bummer though is we had a really good lesson with Reggie (the black guy) and we had to drop him a few days latter because he wasn't progressing forward. He just would not listen and he was very firm in saying that he had the Holy Ghost in him already. We tried to discuss with him about the proper authority and things of that nature but he just would not listen. So we had to drop him and hopefully later on some missionaries can touch him in a way that I or Elder Robison cannot. This week has also been a lot of decision making for me. I have decided on many things of how I want to be as a missionary. I also received a call from the Mission President and he said I am now the Senior Companion so I make all the decisions in our companionship. This is a very scary thought. I have only been out 3.5 months. I am very scared about this, because every single person in this area is under me. It is a huge responsibility. I am so humbled and ready to get to work. I know t with the Lord by my side all things are possible and I can't wait to get to it. Elder Robison and I have some really good ideas on finding. We decided to have a scripture study class, so hopefully that will work out good.

Have a great week!Pray!Read the scriptures!

Love,
Elder Mortimer