The best week in a long time

Dear Family and Friends,

well we had a very eventful week. it was probably the best week i have had as far as missionary work in a long long time. we taught a lot of lessons and did a lot of work. Since we conver 12 wards there is soo much work to be done and i feel bad because we can';t give adequate time to each of the wards. they really need to split this stake as far as missionaries go. we need another set here. WE are teaching 7 people right now. Jugling all the things we need to do for these investigators takes up most of our time. but somehow we are still picking up new investigators. this is the 10 week where we have found at least 1 new investigator. 

So this week we went on 2 exchanges. 1 with the assistant and 1 with a district leader. and we have another exchange this week with our other district leader. They were both very good exchanges, and it was nice to learn and then also to teach missionary work. Although i dont really like to exchange because i hate packing up. sooo thats while i stayed both times. elder northrop has been getting to know other areas haha. 

It was a good weekend though. I was thinking of hannah and kevin all weekend and i even got my tie last monday so that i could wear it last friday. i hope you enjoyed the picture of me in my tie. i had my landlady send that for me so that you could enjoy it. There was also a parade/ fair friday night and saturday morning. and it was right across the street from where we live. it was not good. i wanted to go soo bad, haha but obviously i wouldnt. the music was super loud and it kept us up at night. but i did enjoy the fireworks saturday night. they even started and ended before we had to go to bed so it was all good fun. we watched it from the porch of our house. so that was nice.

Sunday was good as well. we were expecting 5 investigators at church but only 3 went.:( thats not bad but also not that good either. but funny story at church. Sitting next to our investigators there was this awesome family in front of us. they were so nice, and they have young kids that were fun. towards the end of the meeting i was listen looking down at the ground and i see this liquid pour down from the seat in front of us. it came between the crack in the cushioned bench seat. i was going to tell them that they had juice spilling when i saw the mom just grab her forehead in frustration and probably embarrassment. i saw the exchange of whispers and lip reading as i saw the mom tell her husband that there child just peed there pants and also the bench and the ground beneath it! hahaha. felt soo bad for them but it also was pretty nasty and it smelled the rest of the mtg.  

Spiritual story of the week- We picked up a new investigator sunday night. Conner Green is an adopted son from china. almost the exact same situation as scott walker. except he is blind. so same situation we don't speak mandrin.  we took hijm to temple square to have the sister talk to him. the sister that translated for us was from the same city as connor and even spoke the same dialect. The Lord is mindful of all his children. Connor is so much like chirst already. so loving and kind. he loves everyone and does not have the bias of looking at them. he does not judge. The lord knew he needed this sister to help him. so of course i called president chambers and got the okay for her to continue to help us teach him in the home. President and i are close like that. haha. 

Today is Pday because we are going to the temple. i will enjoy that. i love the temple. i cant wait until i can attend more often when i am home. 

Well gotta go. 

LOve Elder Salmon

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Dear Family and Friends,

HAPPY FATHERS DAY DAD! i have the best dad. and i didn't get to call him yesterday soo everyone gets to here about it. D&C 29:47-48. i am grateful for the lessons that i learn. and that i i am accountable and i was taught by m y father to make good decisions.

So we had a really good week. i at least really enjoyed it. We taught more lessons then we normally do and just made some good contact and received some great referrals the work here is very much alive. i wish the members of this stake knew that. i wish they could see all the people around them perishing in unbelief. it is a real problem and we need to be more charitable as a church.

So i am going to update on the people i have met that know people back at home. Mom and dad i dont know if you know the babcocks? they know you. they lived near president chambers. anyways they live in this stake. Also when i was at temple square i met a sister briggs... yeah so i dont remember her at all but she knows me and claire. apparently she lived in hampton woods or herritage hills and was in the other ward i think. soo some clearity on her would be nice, i just really dont remember her. which doesnt mean much because heck i dont remember much from that long ago. Oh and i much the angus family. she is a sister to brother olson! she is in my stake as well! haha so that was cool. Soo yeah these are the people i have met here. 

Soo teaching Sara! oh my goodness! she basically accepted a date! we have been working soo hard teaching her and trying to gether to pray and read and come to church and now she is telling us she is inviting people to her baptism... just dont know what day yet. she hates dates but she is soo awesome. Umm we picked up a new inv this week and we taught 2 lessons and he is on date. yes the lord blesses us. i am grateful for that. Our polygamist inv. (guy) is also doing great. we gave him a paper he needxs to fill out to be baptized and i think he really wants to do it. we had a great lesson with him and a high priest we took. guy was super old but added a lot of power to the testimony. Things are going well here. i am super busy and i love it. The Church is true. 

Its been actually rather cold lately and i dont mind it at all. i could use some rain though... we never get a good rain storm here... not ubntil late august then it will thunder which are really amazing storms. well i got to get going. got to pick up the mial and i have to drive 30 mins to the mission office. that part i dont like about being a ZL. Love you all.

Love elder salmon

I love it

Dear Family and Friends,

Well we had transfers and i get to stay in my area!!!! finally i am soo happy to stay in this area. Elder foster got transferred to riverton as a zone leader in the YSA stake and i get to take over this area as ZL 1 in the Herriman zone. So i am actually really excited because now i get to do things how i would like to. of course i always take into consideration my companions opinions. I love it. we have such greats elders and sisters that came in. they are all pretty cool and seem like great missionaries. Our zone is doing pretty good and could always get better though. So elder Northrop is a lot more excited about working out in the morning than elder foster was so we have started doing a variety of things in the morning. one oif them is hiking. we have trails and mountains in our area and hiking always ets my heart rate going. we also jog and do a jump training exercise. and its super hard.

So i have been mildly freaking out with the more responsibilities that i get now but it is a lot of fun. i realize i just dont have time to waste time. if i want to have a successful area i need to do the most effective things while i have time to proselyte. so its really helping me to focus on the most important things to do. We picked up a new investigator and he is a polygamist and he accepted a baptismal date! haha soo we have to go throught the first presidency if he wants to be baptised. its pretty cool. i dont know how solid he is but he does want to change his life so we will see how this goes. Last monday we went hikinh it was soo much fun. dont know what we are going to do today for pday but im sure we will come up with something. 

Well gotta go. 

Love Elder Salmon

Pretty good week

Dear Family and Friends,

Hmm so we had a pretty good week this week. We are always experiencing miracles and meeting lots of really faithful people. So we went on an exchange with one of our district leaders and i stayed in our area again. and we had some great miracles. We decided to talk to this guy who was out smoking and found out he had taken the lessons wasnt baptized and was interested in meeting with us again. He is a son of a well know polygamist soo we will have to get the first presidency approval if he wants to be baptized. But that was really cool. he was so nice we will see if her has real intent. Then ater that day we had dinner with this family and the dad really wanted to go visit some of the people in the ward. Because of where we went and the people that he instigated talking to we set up two lesson with 2 new investigators. It was amazing. i have a testimony that the members are the real missionaries. he showed genuine love and concern to the people where we could not. he had the relationship that we did not. it was soo good. 

So as far as our investigators are going, they are progressing but they are not accepting baptismal dates. so we are fasting and praying for each of them. we have really cycled through people. we have picked up a lot and dropped a lot. there are plenty of people are will listen but they wont act. we are having problems getting them to act. we also need the involvement of the wards more. they are too involved. I mean they come to lessons but they wont do anything more. Fear is very prevalent. We are always inviting member to invite there friends to do things. then we follow up later in the week. of all the members we have talked to non have fulfilled what they said they would do. if members cant keep there word i dont know how we can expect others to keep them. 

We have transfers this week so i will have to get back to all of you what happens. i hope i dont leave. i just want to stay where i am for the rest of my mission. 

Elder Salmon

We received miracles

Dear Family and Friends,

sorry for the short letter last week. i felt bad for not writing something longer. but sometimes when the monday comes i just dont have a whole lot to say because nothing has changed. i am still doing missionary work. i still testify to people and still invite them to change and most everyone still says no. But that really bugs me. i dont know why it is soo hard for people to just let us teach them. or just try to live the gospel just once so that you can see the blessings that come from it. this really got me thinking about this subject when earlier this week we stopped by a part member family and we talk and testified just perfectly the spirit was there and the husband just said the same lame excuse that he had been saying the whole time. "no we are good. i can get closer to god my own way." i told him that he may be right and he would lose nothing if he allowed us to sit down and have him try praying reading the scriptures and coming to church. we told him he would feel closer to god and he still refused. saying he didnt need a brick building to get closer to god or to show others that he has faith by going to church. Well thats basically how the conversation went. we have tons of logic and the spirit to back it up and they are just stubborn. i just dont get it. 

So we went on an exchange with the Ap's last friday. it was really good. i got to say in the area with elder bramwell (use to be my zone leader in south jordan) and elder foster got to go with elder bennett (i trained him) in west jordan. it was a good exchange. we talked about doctrine and about mission policies. we decided our mission is too relaxed on music. so elder foster and i changed our music and we received some miracles from it. We are just listening to motab and talks now. when earlier we listened to disney and other efy and stuff. on sunday we had a man come up to us and tell us that his neighbors are non members and want to learn more about the gospel and we got  a text late sunday night from a a girl who said her friend wants to take the lesson and possibly get baptized before she goes back to the netherlands! the lord blesses us when our hearts are in the right place. we should be really busy this wek teaching lots of people. 

So i dont know where the time has gone because this transfer ends in a week... and this next one is elder fosters last and my second to last... its getting really scary and surreal. these last two transfers here are looking to be very busy. which is exactly what i want but will also cause the weeks to go by fast. i have loved my time here in utah. it wasnt the most glamorous mission, which is a horrible reason to go on a mission, but it was the perfect one for me to learn and progress. 

We didnt catch any fish last week... maybe today we will. anyways i know jeremiah calls us fisherman but we really are fishers of men not of fish. because we are horrible at catching fish.  

So sarah decided to go see her husband this last weekend. first time in 2 months she has seen him. she went to church with him and everything. hopefully she is not getting divorced and will make this marriage a happy one for eternity. inour last lesson we asked her probably 4 times to be baptized and she said no to all 4. not sure what is holding her back. but we will get her. we have good contact with her almost every week. our other inv. which are actually a lot are not progressing and they will all probably be dropped as we pick up these other people this week who are willing to be baptized. 

Love Elder Salmon

Herriman

Dear family and Friends,

SOo we had another good week here in the Herriman fire bones zone. The mission training plan that elder foster and i came up with is working we are starting to see some improvement. It was really exciting to see the numbers improve where we actually wanted them too. I just hope they continue to do the things that we have trained them to do. I feel like there are always people to contact here in herriman we have lots of things to do and we are seeing some good fruit. But sooo many people cancel on us. its really frustrating. And we didnt have any of our investigators come to church... it was sad. they all siad they would come and none of them did. Really though our problem is we are not meeting with them enough. we need to have more frequent lessons so we can help them progress. 

So today for PDay we are fishing. Hopefully we catch something because last monday we didnt. We are going to use worms thins time. 

Got my hair cut today at sports clip and it was the most amazing thing ever! they had massage chairs, and warm clothes and i just love it. 

Love you lots

Elder Salmon