Morgans letter from previous week I forgot to put in!

Zone Photo but the camera focused on the sand!

Kaila Kaahu is baptised

I have to be quick as i a only have like 10 minutes to email today. Today is going to be crazy busy and we are already behind schedule, hopefully next week i will have more time to write.

But i just wanted to tell you all about the baptism we had on Saturday, 2 days ago. Someone was supposed to unlock the doors at 7 am so we  could fill up the font. But no one came until 8 am, luckily someone filled up the font the previous night. The Baptism for Kaila Kaahu started at 8:30 AM. Her mom gave a wonderful talk on Baptism and some members of the ward did the other things. Her uncle baptized her and then the Bishop confirmed her a member of the church. Me and my companion did a missionary moment and shared a part of the restoration. The baptism went great and was a great experience for her i am sure.

We met with Rick Pleasants, our investigator, this week. We taught him the Restoration, and he really enjoyed it. He especially loved the part of Joseph Smith a 14 year old boy seeing God and Jesus Christ. Because he already believes that children are innocent and pure, and clean in the sight of God. The whole lesson just clicked for him, and he had lots of Questions.The spirit was definitely there very stongly helping us to teach, and helping bear testimony the Truth of our Message. He watched a documentary about Religions a while back, and he remember that from the documentary he learned the African Americans could not recieve the priesthood or go to the temple for temple work. and Since he's African American, He had a question about Blacks not recieving the Priesthood until 1970's. And also from the Documentary, it said that Blacks are the Children of Cain, the First Sinner. And he didnt really like that. We answered the best that we could, and told him we would try to learn more about it. I told him i have never heard about the Children of Cain thing, but i would look it up. He was just more curious more that anything, not negative about it. Please keep him in your prayers.

We had an awesome lesson with Our Investigator Ted Kenesi. He has a baptismal date for June 29, please pray for him that he can be baptized on that Date. He is a solid young man. And has lots of good influences in his home. We only had a few minutes so we just shared a short scripture with him. Helaman 5;12.

So theres a person in my ward named Sonny Ah Puck. He served in Taiwan, and got home about a year ago. He was formerly Elder Ah Puck. He said that he knew Elder Bruce White, and served around him a couple times. Most recently in his last area when he was a District Leader, and Bruce was a Zone Leader. He spoke very highly of Bruce, and said he was an awesome missionary, and a great person, and very good at basketball haha. You will have to tell The White's that i ran into him, and see if Bruce remembers him.

Thats all i can think of and im out of time. Wow i cant believe i wrote all of that in less that 10 minutes. Thats amazing! Well i love you all. Have a great week!

Love Elder Durocher

Morgan's 23rd Letter in 2013 - Photo's

Entire Zone of Missionaries

Dear Family,

This has been a great week! On Wednesday my companion Elder Soifua got transferred to another area called Kaneohe. My new companion is Elder Cutler from Brown Mountain, Nevada. Its a little Gold mining city of 800 people, in Central Nevada. He says its like 3 hours to the closest city. He has been our for 7 months, and we have had a lot of fun together. This week has been kind of a slower week of missionary work. But we did visit a lot of less active members. We went and visited a lady named Jasmine, she is a 65 year old Filipino lady who has not come to church for 30+ years. We talked to her for like an hour, and then we shared a message about the importance of church, and why we take the sacrament. The lesson went awesome, and she said she will try to come to church. 

That same day we were walking down the Highway and a random guy riding a bike stopped us on the side of the road. He told us his name was Kip Ortin, and he served a mission in Japan 20 years ago. But now he doesn't believe in the church anymore. He asked us how we gained our testimony? So we bore our Testimony on how we gained a testimony, and also taught about faith. He asked us about some deep doctrine questions that were bugging him and didn't make sense in his head. Like does God have a body like us? or is he a personage of Spirit? We explained that he has a body like ours, but his is perfected, exalted, and pure and stuff. Then he asked if God can eat food does that mean he has to go poop still? My companion explained that what he thinks is that after we receive a perfected body, there wont be any waste or by-product from eating food, because our bodies will be perfect and can break down all the nutrients and vitamins and stuff in the food we eat. Then he asked where God lived before he lived where he does now? So he had just some random funny questions he had. He wasnt trying to Bible Bash us, or fight doctrine with us, he just wanted to know. He seemed a little bit loopy, like maybe he was high or slightly drunk. But we just bore testimony, and invited him to start praying and reading the Book of Mormon again.

Last week on our last P-Day, our zone had a Big Barbeque with all the missionaries. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and stuff, and had Otai ( a Tongan drink) and we just talked to each other and played soccer and other games, it was really fun. I found a Caunch Shell at a little store on the side of the road and i bought it. Its one of those Shells that Gail Cancilla had, the one where you blow into a hole in the shell, and it makes a trumpet horn war call sound. Its really fun to play, it took me lots of practice to be able to play. Then later that evening, we went to the Samoan Ward Camp with the missionaries who are in that ward, and we had dinner at a Luau there. Then i got to play volleyball with a bunch of the Samoan youth, it was super fun, and I haven't played that intense of Volleyball for a really long time. 

Well i love you all thanks for reading! Have an awesome week everyone!! :) Aloha Nui Loa  (which means Much love, or love you a lot)

Elder Durocher

Elder Soifua and Morgan

Ladies in the Zone!   Go Elder!

Morgans's 22nd letter in 2013 - Photos

Aloha Durocher Ohana,

So first of all, I'm sending my email out a little bit late, and here's why. We had temple trip today again, so our P-Day became Tuesday since the Temple is not open on Monday. So Yesterday Monday was a normal Proselyting Day, and Today (Tuesday) is our P-Day this week. So our session started at 8 Am, and we left around 11. Laie, and Kaneohe both had their temple trips today at the same time. So that was fun, and i was able to see a lot of Elders i knew who are currently serving in Kaneohe. So it was fun to catch up, than we took some pictures at the temple, and talked. Then we went home and changed for the hike we were going to go on.

The Hike we went on is called Laie Falls, we met at the temple, and started walking from there. There were 4 Elders and 8 Sisters that came hiking. We followed a main trail, and then took a side trail that veered off of that. I think we took the wrong trail because we hiked for like 2 1/2 hours and never came to a waterfall. In the meantime, the sky's turned against us, and mother nature let loose all of her fury on us. A huge rainstorm hit us super hard, as we were on the top of the mountain. In a few minutes we were soaked to the bone. Some of the people wanted to turn around. 3 Elders and 2 Sisters wanted to keep going and the rest wanted to turn back. Since i couldn't leave the other Elder by him self, I volunteered to turn around with all that wanted to. The whole hike ended up being 4 hours long, half of it in the heavy rain. The way back down the mountain ended up being way fun. On the way up we crossed over a small stream of water, on the way down it turned into a small river. We had to walk through the 1 foot deep water, cuz there was no way around it. It was slippery and slimy every step you took, with huge massive puddles everywhere. A small stream of water started running down our hiking trail. I gave up trying to keep my feet dry and was soon walking through the small stream and trying to splash people. In the end I think the heavy rain made our hike a lot funner! At least for me I guess.

Last Tuesday we went tracting, knocking door to door. And we ran into a man named Rick, he's an African American from Alabama. We Introduced ourselves, Shared a prayer with him, blessing him with everything he needed, then taught that the good feelings he had during the prayer was the Holy Ghost and he could have that with him all the time through Baptism. Then committed him to be Baptized on June 22, and He said YES!! Then we promised blessings, and bore our Testimonies. It was an amazing miracle that we were able to find. To meet a Random person, and after 5-10 minutes commit them to be Baptized into your church. Its a real Testimony builder to know that its not my work, that its God's work, and that he has been preparing people to be Baptized, and how important the Holy Ghost is, we are nothing without the Spirit. The Holy Ghost is so important and essential to missionaries, and we can do nothing with out it. We have continued to teach him this week. He was really sick and couldn't make it to church on Sunday, so we might have to push the Baptism back a week or 2. One of our Members who lives nearby, said he's not married to the person he is living with, so we have to work on that too. But he's an amazing guy, and its awesome to see how open his heart is, and how open he was to let us talk to him and share a message with him. Please keep him in your prayers, his name is Rick Pleasants.

Friday we contacted a referral that the Ward gave us, it was for a person named Ted Kenesi, who is a 15 year old Non-Member. He was living with his cousins, the Williams, who are a Less-Active family in the Ward. We shared a short message about Baptism, and what its for and why we do it. The Spirit was there, and was strong. At the End of the lesson, Ted said that he wanted to be Baptized into the Mormon Church. His Baptismal date is for June 29. We have another lesson with him later tonight. It was super awesome to find this guy, and have to ward involved and helping us find people to teach. Here's a cool Statistic. On average,  60% people who are referrals from Members are Baptized, while only 2% of people who missionaries find through Tracting, and knocking on doors are Baptized. So member involvement and help is so essential. Plus then the referral will have a fellowshipper in the Ward, or a friend in the ward after the missionaries leave.

This coming Saturday Elder Soifua and I have a Baptism at 8:30 AM, for Kaila Kaaahu. She's a 9 year old Girl, her family used to be less active, but now they come to church pretty consistently. I'm super excited for this Baptism to happen, it has been fun teaching Kaila, she is so so smart, and really excited to be Baptized. Please pray for all of these people i mentioned. The work is picking so much in the 2 Wards that i cover, its so awesome to see. I love serving in this area, and i know I'm supposed to be here. I'm so grateful for the chance i have to serve my mission, I'm loving it so much, there's no where else I'd rather be right now. I love you all, thanks for reading!

Love Elder Morgan James Durocher

This is a picture from our Hike up  to Laie Falls, looking down at the city of Laie, and the Giant Rainstorm that hit us super hard

Laie Falls hike

From left to right: Sister Kunishi, and Takatsu. Me. Gamba, Elder Morris, Chen, Kuok, and Henderson