Sister Morrison takes on the Steel City: 11.28.2016

Amish Thanksgiving 🦃

Happy (late) Thanksgiving! This year's festivities were totally different from last year, but it was awesome! Thankfully we were invited to join a member and her family for the feast. Sister T is an awesome, and feisty lady whose the only member in her family, and so we only really knew her going into it, but thankfully her family was ok with us coming over. We got to the house right as we were about it sit down, and about three minutes after we got there an Amish man walked in. Sister Terry and I were low key freaking out because of how cool it was to be eating Thanksgiving with an Amish man! He sat right across from us, and as dinner conversation was made we were starting to pick up on clues that proved that he's not some random friend of the family but Sister T's husband. Plot twist! Although, in a weird way it made sense because Sister T associates with the Amish a lot, and even wears their dresses to church. Can you imagine that combo? A Mormon married to an Amish haha. But, then he told us he is no Amish, but since he works with them he feels less ostracized when he wears their clothes and has a beard like them. So, I guess we didn't eat with a real Amish man, but I'm still claiming that I did!

As we were planning we learned that there was a less active's husband who lives at the nursing home that we volunteer at each week, so we decided to pay him a visit after playing bingo. Oh my gosh, this man is crazy! K welcomed us in so we sat and talked to him. We asked him if he was ever baptized into the church and he began to tell us the craziest story. He said that as a teenager he went to a church camp with over 30,000 people. At that camp he was baptized into a river named Jordan (named after the river Jordan). While there, he decided to try to speak in tongues. He ended up speaking Isaiah for 5 hours in "God's tongue" where he told everyone "I am God, do what I say. I just killed 17,000 people, I'll kill you." There was a cross at the camp that you were supposed to stay 30 ft. away from but while praying his head was two inches away from the cross. When he stopped praying he looked up and the bridge, river, and cabins had all sunk to the core of the earth, and 17,000 had died.

Sister G and her family have really taken a man named A under their wing. A has some mental issues and even though he is 37 years old, his brain capacity is that of a 3-5 year old. He is one of the nicest people ever, and Sister G thought it would be a good idea for us to help A learn more about who Jesus is. This past week we went over and watched the "Lamb of God" movie with them. It's a little hokey, but A really enjoyed it, and asked us to bring another movie for next week! To top it off, we committed them to read a chapter of the Book of Mormon together every day.

About a month ago our Stake President challenged all of us to read the four Gospels, along with 3 Nephi before Christmas. Sister Terry and I have been doing that as part of our studies, and it's been so awesome! We focus so much on the Book of Mormon, that I forget how awesome the Bible is. I'm learning so much, and I really have come to appreciate Jesus even more than I have before. It's also made me really grateful for the good seminary teachers I had growing up. I remember how Brother Rushton did such a great job at making me get excited to study the New Testament every morning.

Sister Morrison