March 12th, 2012

Hey momma dear!
What an amazingly productive week! So it's finally true, you're empty nesters. How does it feel to not have any family in the home? I'm super excited for Kjartsa and Kristian, they have so many exciting adventures ahead of them.
You'll have to let me know as soon as possible when James receives his call. I think he'll go to Australia and will be leaving August 5th! How awesome, he's going to hopefully be able to do the same thing I did for Spencer's wedding. He'll be there for Claire. When does Claire go through the temple? Is she going through the Seattle Temple?
The weather here is so lovely. The daffodils have come up and little specks of color are starting to appear. Today it’s supposed to get up into the 80's, we'll see if it actually does. We are having P-day today. We're going to be playing games and having a fiesta at a nearby park. Really excited about this, I love being outdoors!
This week we met with Kristina started over teaching the lessons. Sister Northcutt and I didn't feel that she had a strong understanding of the foundational principals of the church. We met with her twice in members’ homes and then again on Saturday. I want to try and make daily contact of some kind; we're only with her for short periods of time during the week and all the other times I know that Satan is breathing down her back trying to deter her from doing what she knows is right. We also were able to make contact with Melanie. She's another Investigator whom we've been having a hard time getting in contact with.
We've been doing a lot of PM/LA list contacting as and tracting. I think the Lord's trying to tell me that tracting is effective because we've been doing that a lot this last week. I read this amazing talk by Elder Bednar back when he was President of Ricks College. I can't remember what it’s called but it talked about understanding the redeeming and enabling power of the atonement. And he gave some really amazing examples of how we need to instead of ask for the Lord to take away those things that are difficult, ask for strength to overcome them. He gave the example of Nephi when he broke the bands, and how Nephi asked for strength according to his faith to break the bands. That taught me that as a missionary (and as a daughter of God) I need to be better at asking for the strength and the faith to find people. It gets a little disheartening when we have no one to teach, and that's all I want to do. But the Lord in his wisdom knows what we need, and I have learned many times its through our trials that we receive our answers. God has a purpose in everything he asks of us.
love sister salmon