December 6, 2011

Hey mom

I haven't heard much from Claire since before Thanksgiving so I don't really know what's going on. I'm excited for her. That's so great that she has found someone who will love and appreciate her. I only wish I could be there for everything. :( Kjarsta's really the only other one who keeps me informed on what's going on. I heard about Kristian, that really sucks that his face is all swollen. Other than that it’s always good to hear about the family.

As far as Christmas goes, you can tell family that money is always greatly appreciated. :) Or some long stretchy running pants that I can wear under my sweats. I can't think of anything until I go out shopping.

This weekend was probably the craziest weekend I've ever experienced. Friday morning was a really hard morning. Sister Shutt and I knocked on a lot of doors with no leads. We finally tried contacting people via phone, but after calling everyone we possibly knew with no results we were kind of getting a little discouraged. After double checking that we had tried contacting everyone we knew we found a few names of people that we didn't have phone numbers for. The first house we knocked at was Miss Saddie Reed. She was a potential that we hadn't been able to contact, but this time she was home. She was super nice and after a few minutes of talking to her on her porch she invited us in. We had a good discussion about Christ. She's really funny, and invited us back again. She said as long as we're talking about the same God then we're welcome to come back any time. Miracle! It just comes to show that after you think you've given your all, sometimes you need to push a little bit more.

So that was Friday, Saturday we woke up to a little surprise. We had just come outside to go for our morning run when we noticed that someone had spray painted our drivers side passenger door. Ya not the greatest way to start the morning. But what can you do, I just laughed it off and tried not to let it bother me. I went for my run and while running saw that other cars had been targeted. That was a bit of a relief to know that someone wasn't targeting missionaries. And compared to their car, we lucked out. The police were really punctual and arrived not shortly after our phone call. They wrote up they're report and moved on to the next homes. So that was in the morning, that afternoon we received a phone call from one of our less actives asking if we wanted to go on a walk with her. We had a great walk, discussing Christ love and the atonement. I think things are starting to piece together in her brain. On our way back from our walk we saw this lady walking out to her car and under closer examination we noticed that she was crying. And I'm talking shaking from head to foot gushing tears crying. We walked up to her to see if she was all right and found out that her daughter in law had committed suicide the previous night. Both my comp and I looked at each other, a little flustered at first and not knowing what to say. We tried to console her, gave her a plan of salvation pamphlet and briefly explained it to her. We would have taken more time but she was on her way out to Texas to console her son. I offered the prayer, not knowing at what to say. Good thing God knows each of us and what we need. We exchanged numbers and hope that when she returns we can start teaching her.

Okay you're probably wondering why I'm writing today instead of yesterday? Yesterday we had a Mission conference over in Springfield Illinois. Half of the mission got together for training with Elder Malm and his wife. Before the conference we were told to prepare a five minute talk on becoming a disciple of Christ and a four minute success story. They would then choose people to speak from the congregation to speak. My comp was called, thank goodness it wasn't me. But one of the cool things was prior to the start of the conference president clark asked three missionaries if they'd like to be interviewed by Elder Malm and I WAS ONE OF THEM! I was interviewed by a general authority. CRAZY! It was so cool. Elder Malm is so funny. When I introduced myself I said sister salmon like the fish. He chuckled that and said that his first name is spelled P-E-R. And when you pronounce it to think of the fruit. So said he, when you think of your name you think if the fish, and when you think of my name you think of the fruit. Training went really well. I think because I had the one on one time he remembered my name and had no problem calling on me during the discussion. I could have stayed in that chapel forever. It is so great to be taught by a servant of the Lord. It reaffirmed that God does call worthy priesthood holders to lead and guide his church today.

Sister Salmon