"The Future Only Looks Bright"

Dear Family and Friends,

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SOOOOO!!! We got the Interesting news of the mission changing and yes we are probably losing the whole east side of our mission. But we won’t know for sure until later. Elder Clayton of the presidency of the seventy came and told us the news. And gave us some awesome information! i learn so much whenever we get a general authority. WE will also get a new mission president. President Robert E. Chambers; A religious teacher at BYUI. i don’t know him though. But this just means with all the new missionaries and them splitting up the missions everyone will be training a lot! And we will all be getting leadership positions probably! I’m the 3rd oldest in our district aside from the district leader and his companion, so I’m a little worried about getting more leadership positions. I could also go to the east mission. The president there will be president Eberheart i think. He’s from a sandy stake. He was the president there.  Very exciting times! I’m excited for Washington! i honestly didn’t know there was that much success there. But that really cool! i am excited to see the changes.

This last week was okay. No baptisms but we worked hard and found a new investigator.  We tried to teach a lot. In March it looks pretty good, 4 people who i would say look pretty good have dates. But that also means we are going to lose 4 investigators! haha so we have to do a lot of finding next month. We are riding our bikes more because it is warmer and on those days we have way more success. We move a lot faster and everything is just dandy.

So we had an awesome Blizzard for like 2 hours! i was having so much fun! i made elder bennett walk in it with me to our lesson. i wanted to walk but we had two rides there an i turned them down! haha i was enjoying it. I basically skipped and sang the whole way there! I’ll send an awesome picture of me in the snow.

I am very surprised to hear about Grandma! i didn’t know about the fast however i did fast last Saturday and hopefully the Lord knows where i would like those blessings to go. Grandma will stay in my prayers. Keep her healthy until i get home. I will need her to tell me more about family history because i am kind of just getting interested and probably will be interested by the time i get home.

This is truly an amazing age to live in! The signs of the times are here! i know it is. Things are happening way too fast. All the missionaries are kind of pumped! These next 5 years will be great. The future only looks bright and many hearts will be softened by the Lord. He is preparing the people for us to find. i can see that in the people that we do teach. They are ready and we are looking to make real growth and we will be working hard to bring others back into the fold. I gave a talk on becoming a true disciple of Christ. i thought it was one of my best talks ever. I could tell people were captivated. People need to and see that they can’t stand idle especially here in Zion where it needs to be so much stronger than what it is.

Anyways Love you all take care.

Love Elder Salmon

"I am sooo done with snow"

The wrinkliest Dog ever! He can't see out of his eyes unless he flexes his muscles and moves the skin

molcajete best lunch ever!

Awesome igloo

Found this it looks just like me! but its not me!

 Dear family,

It’s great to be here in email form in front of all of you haha! Well Hannah your time is running out... I bet you never thought this would happen. As I don’t think it will ever happen for me. I am enjoying every moment and it is a little scary that each Monday comes way too fast.

Yes father I do remember that 50 mile bike ride very vividly actually in fact it turned into 66 miles if I remember correctly. I remember almost hating it all the way there and all the way back. However I don’t think I complained while doing it. But it was fun despite not being able to feel your butt the next day. I had never been on most of those roads and I had never been to Gasworks Park before that either. And mother I do know what movie that is from it’s from Saturdays warriors. Please I know all the quotes. I often think of a random one and blurt it out and my companion has no idea what I am talking about. It is very funny for me because he is very confused and I just calmly move on.

We had many miracles this last week. Looking back we had a very productive week. Every lesson we had we were able to get someone from the ward to come with us. I know that is the best way because then when they came to church we didn’t have to do anything but remind people they were there and we let our investigators enjoy the church services. In particular we have two very strong investigators and they are in the same ward and about the same age. RaeAn butler is 17 and a senior in high school and Reuben Martinez is 18 and is working full time. Both really loved it at church and each are very special.

Reuben has expressed some very deep ideas and has trusted me with some of his feelings regarding his conversion. I don’t ever want to limit the spirit and I’m still learning how it works but he tells me that sometimes he sees a thin outline of something around people when they are speaking in church or when we are teaching to him. God works in mysterious ways. Reuben must have some important work to do.

Also RaeAn is also very sensitive to the spirit. The lessons with her are some of the most powerful lesson I’ve ever been in. She is very receptive and is very willing to accept what we teach. Not because of what we teach but because she knows what the spirit feels like and she recognizes that this is the truth. A few time I was prompted to share some deeper understand than what I would normally teach.

We are still doing our best to work hard. The baptisms this month have kind of fallen through. It was a little discouraging but they will be baptized just not as soon as I would like. Next month looks like 4 baptism for March right now. We are really blessed. I am stressing about doing the right thing but I can’t stress about to much that not in my power.

Mom I don’t think I’m that great of a trainer... Elder Bennet and I do well together but I haven't found a way to correct him without him getting offended. He was a zone leader in the MTC and I think he has a lot more pride than most greenies because he feels like he is a really great teacher. Compared to me he is alright. But I’m still a novice I feel like when it comes to our zone leaders and some other older missionaries. But it’s a great opportunity for me to practice being humble.

The temperature has been better lately. I didn’t wear a coat for the last few days because the sun was out and it felt soo good. We still have like a foot of snow in some places around here. I am sooo done with the snow. It definitely needs to snow though.

I cut my own hair today by myself, the whole thing. I think it actually looks pretty good. I didn’t use a mirror for the back but my district says it looks fine. So whatever.

Hope everyone is doing fine.

Love Elder Salmon

"Talking with them is like talking to a brick wall"

Dear Family and friends,

Well its another week! and it has been a pretty good week. The weather hasn't been too cold and we have been able to get around easily. I look back on the week and I don't remember a whole lot. I am starting to get selective memory. But this time mom I only remember the good stuff. Which is probably why I am drawing a blank as to what we did because it was a trying week. Probably more trying for my companion because i think im use to it. most days i understand there will be trials and usually i am pretty happy during the day regardless of what happens. But still it would be nice if people were home and we could teach them. but we actually have some really good potentials that i know we will pick up and 3 people who will be baptized just a matter of when. So we have success but it just doesn't look like it.

 

I am getting alot of good advice from my president. In my letters to him i often tell him my struggles and he gives me great advice for how i should fix them. All take a lot of work on my part but hey if i want to fix them i guess thats how. I am really starting to see parts of my patriarchal blessing getting confirmed on my mission.

 

i gave a talk yesterday on charity. I basically falsed myself because i am not showing enough charity. But it was a fun talk because i decided to just study the topic and just speak and see how i do. i thought i did pretty good, people came up and said they liked my talk. i spoke for about 20 minutes on how i have learned charity on my mission. i gave many examples and really tried to speak from the heart. it was good. In the wards here they always have an intermediate hymn and only 2 speakers so i had to speak for a long time. i left my comp about 10 minutes. haha but getting there was interesting. We had a confirmation in the other building at the same time so after the confirmation we ran to the other building and they only had one person bear there testimony as they stalled for us. i forgot to tell the bishop we would be late so he was sweating hahaha. my bad. he forgave me.

 

But elder Bennett and i work hard to do our best. we try to follow preach my gospel as best we can and listen to the counsel of our leaders to help people make covenants and keep them. I think that is the key. even though we are not the best teachers and we definitely don't know everything we find success when we work hard. the Lord has really blessed us and i have felt his love for me.

 

A couple days ago a guy tried to bash with me. my companion didn't know the scriptures well enough to bash so it was just up to me. I held my own but i mostly bore testimony. I didn't want to argue but anytime he came up with something false i showed him in the bible where he was wrong. Then he just started yelling at us because he could destroy our faith. He was trying to prove that our prophet was false. After that i stood up and in a calm voice bore testimony of Jesus Christ and how he set up his church and how our church is founded on apostles and prophets and we have the priesthood and i grabbed my comp and just walked out. It was going no where. But the spirit was really weird after i did that. i felt it but i could also feel some contention. Anyways we also ran into a satanist and a few 7th day Adventist. None really want to hear what we say. There are  lot of catholics here but they don't even know what they believe so talking with them is like talking to a brick wall. But i have  met a lot of prepared people and a lot of people that will be baptized when the right elder or sister comes along. Kearns is where its at. We baptize here and i am glad to serve here.

 

Love you all and i hope your all safe and sound.

Love Elder Salmon