July 28, 2014

Good morning:

I’m happy to hear that Sister Wright has been keeping in contact with you. She has been calling me regularly in order to help me along the way. She has been a very good “mission mom.” I feel the lack of family at my side, but Elder A. has been my brother, and Sister Wright, my mission mother, so I’m doing all right.

Thankfully, the Lord has been blessing us with a lot of work and baptisms, which have been helping me to stay focused. We baptized again on Sunday. I have found that it only hurts when you stop moving; in other words, while I have been busy working and thinking about and focusing on baptisms, I haven’t allowed myself much time to grieve. The antidote that I am trying to utilize is distraction. I’m honestly doing the best that I can to just not think about what has happened, and I’m reserving these thoughts for when I come home and will be close to my family. So far, I have been able to scrape along. Only ten more weeks left.

We baptized B. and J. last week, and we baptized N. this week. B. and N. are family members of a recent convert. We have been working with this family since I have been here, and they have been supplying friends and family members for us to teach (we will baptize a reference of theirs next week). J. is the 11-year-old son of an inactive family that we are reactivating. His baptism has helped with that. I have really been liking this area. It’s calm, the members are great, and it’s close to Porto Alegre, so I won’t have to travel much at the end of my mission.

I’m hoping that Mark can come back for my homecoming, and I would love to hike the hot pots with you guys. I will add that to my list of things to do when I get home.

Elder A. and I are getting along really well. He was trained by Elder S. (a guy from my group, a good friend and one of the best missionaries in the mission), so we are able to work effectively together, which is really nice. He has already been in this area for three months, so I imagine that I have one more companion waiting for me. We will see.

That is about it for now. I’m doing all right, and I hope that everyone at home is too. I love you all and I pray for you. I’m almost home.

Love, Elder Morris