Recap

Dear family and friends,

So since ive com here to south jordan i seen even another side of missionary work that i didnt know. The stake of which i am laboring in is the country park stake. It is a lot of fun and i really like it. im getting to know a lot of really cool people. however the teaching pool isnt as full as i would have liked it to be. we work really hard all day and hope for referrals from the members. the sad part is we still have to go to them to get the referrals. i have not had a member call me and give me a referral. i feel like a facilitator. i find the names, i find the fellowshippers and i commit them to do what i want them to do, like invite your friend to church! whent hey fail then i contact them and it never is as good as if a friend does it.

ive had two companions here in south Jordan, eler lila who is from Albania he was a lot older than me but he was still a handful. they left us together for one transfer then i took over and trained elder heath here. All this time they also wanted me to train the other elders around me. I was freaked out at first. i didnt know what to do. i feel way more comfortable with it now and i actually kinda enjoy it but i'm more tired than i use to be. here in south jordan i had the great opportunity of teaching and baptizing Robin Wimmer and reactivating her husband Richard. they are a cool pair and like to go camping and hunting. he had the longest beard the whole time while i was teaching them. He had to shave it the other day and i saw them at a store and i didnt recognize him and almost thought she was cheating. it was that bad. Also i had a great opportunity of teaching Scott walker. he is from mainland china and didnt speak any English and still really doesnt. we used a translator from temple square sister chen and her comp sister roffler then after transfers sister snow. It was slow teaching through the translator and helping him understand because all the other missionaries were out less than 3 months. so i was easily the most experienced of us all. He really understand more than i thought he would. He is a very loving kid and he will play hand games with you all the time. Tennis, and mercy and other such games. he really loves the interaction. he owns me at rock paper scissors. After those two we had to drop most of our other investigators because they weren't really progressing. And right now we are relying on the lord to help us find more.

The other day, we had 4 suits be given to elder heath and i! and these are designer suits! man they look good and luckily they are the perfect size. im not going to worry about buying any more. I cant believe how nice some of these members are. he probably gave us about 3000 dollars worth in suits or more. They all came from Nordstrom. This general conference is going to be good i can tell. i didnt get any tickets to go. i think we got less tickets than we normally get because i thought for sure i would go this time. Oh well. we will watch the conference with members and our investigators when we find some this week.

I love being a leader and having to learn to receive revelation. It does get easier and easier. Priesthood blessings are easier and training and teaching is so much easier. missions are truely inspired. i feel like i had learned so much yet i see so many flaws in myself as well. The scriptures are so valuable. i cant believe how much more i can receive from reading them. they are a gold mine for information and especially when you have the spirit with you. and i can see why studying them with a question is helpful. i have come to love serving. i can genuinely ask to serve people and mean it when i saw i want to. Charity is probably the hardest attribute to gain and i have really learned to love people. i love those i serve. I am still prideful but i think im less prideful. Missions are hard and they are to humble us and im grateful for all these experiences. I have come to know for myself that joseph smith is a true prophet and either the book of mormon was written by god or the devil because of what is claims. and i know it is of god because of all the good it has done for me. i love my mission and i love the gospel.

Elder Salmon

South Jordan has been pretty good to me

Dear family and friends
Hello everyone! Well this transfer has come to a close and we are getting transfer calls tonight. sorry i dont know where i am going. So far south jordan has been pretty good to me. Although we get way too much food and not enough exercise. We just had a baptism this last weekend. Scott walker got baptized! yeah! although he is the first one to come up crying... he was scared when he got into the water and he calmed down enough to let the father do the prayer and just as he was going down he freaked out and the father just put huim under. haha and he swallowed water and im sure he was a little angry. But after he changed he was all smiles. and the confirmation we did after the sacrament meeting at church because we didnt want him to freak out. All in all it wasa  good day. But the few hours before the baptism we were frantically getting the clothes, filling the font and getting the program to print. man and everything went wrong. which i really wasnt that surprised about because Satan does this with every baptism. nothing goes smoothly for a baptism.

Georgette one of our better investigators wasnt able to come to church this last week. Because she was sick her boss made her work on sunday. its soo frustrating because her boss is mormon and he is making it harder for us to help her. The last lesson we had with her was amazing! we taught the plan of salvation and it was great. She was understanding so much and scriptures to help explain were just coming to me and made the lesson really powerful. At one point she said "i need to bring my husband to this!" so i feel really good about her but the things of the world could delay it.

So that lady that i OYM'ed and i was really excited about turned out to be really disappointing. all they wanted us to do was bible bash with them. but as they were preparing i was praying so that the lord would help me to exlpain things so that i would not have to bash. i was getting into too many here and it kills the spirit. every question they asked i was able to answer it while teaching principles from the lessons taht are in preach my gospel. The best part was they could have no objections to what i taught because it was truth. Every time he tried tog et me worked up it didnt work and we left on "good." he invited us back but i doubt we ill go back until they humble themselves.

So Mom you will e happy about this ive decided that i need a good snack and now i eat celery and peanut butter every night for my snack and i actually really really like it. so thats going to be my snacks from now on.

Well lifes good.

Love Elder Salmon

september 16

Dear family and friends,

Hello everyone! im here in south jordan and this is the last week of the transfer. This week we have a lesson with a family and i am stoked! We might pick up a whole family of 5! which would be legit because ive never taught a whole family before. That lesson is on saturday so pray that they will be there. We had some sad but also some happy news this week. We had to drop an investigator because he was not willing to continue to keep his commitments. He had a confirmation from the spirit but he didn't want to admit it and follow the promptings that he received. It was very sad. But i think he will be baptized on his own terms. He just felt a lot of pressure when there really wasn't any at all. The good news is that we picked up a new investigator. her name is Georgette and shes Hispanic but very smart. she had a couple of degrees and she told us she was fed up with the catholic church. She definitely felt the spirit and accepted the date of baptism on the 5 of oct. i forgot it was conference but hey waht better time than then. hers husband is going to be a problem. he says he supports her but he might make it hard to have lessons with her.

Scott is also getting prepared to be baptized this saturday! im really stoked. He just needs to pass the interview which im a little nervous for because getting his comprehension is difficult. he has some mental problems but not much but some days he will talk a lot and some days he likes to joke around a lot. We will be teaching him for a long time because we will have to prepare him for the temple and for the priesthood. It was very touching because scott had to write the chinese government and tell them how hes doing and he wrote that he had a great family who loves him and he has friends. and he wrote elder heaths and my names for his friends. it was very touching but it also means we need to find him friends so he doesn't feel bad when we leave.

Other than that not much happened. we had stake conference and elder russel m nelson spoke and so did Elder packer. His talk was very interesting because he showed a talk that he gave a while ago. it was a video and it was very erratic. i could tell what he really wanted us to learn. i felt like he just threw out nuggets of information.

We had a good week. All is well. not like the scripture though.

Love Elder Salmon