Hello everyone.

its great to be back here in the florida tampa mission. i am in dade city but am serving in the zephyr hills area and i am with elder cheever (who i came out with the first time) and elder stanford (who was a greeny when i left.) its definately a hick town down here! haha i am loving it the people we tract into are crazy but thats what makes it fun! the first night i was here i got here in time for bible study with the ward and was exhausted from the flight. the next day i had my first lesson with a woman named shauna. the elders tracted into them the week before and were coming back for a lesson. shauna's sister erica wanted to join because she knew a lot of the bible and was active in her church. so we gave her the benefit of the doubt and didn't think she just wanted to bible bash. man were we wrong ha. the lesson started off great and they both were really receptive. then we saw erica pull out some papers that had been printed off the internet and we all looked at each other and knew this wasn't going to be good cuz we had a feeling it was some anti she had found. so the bashing began and man did it get intense. elder cheever then took charge told her that we were leaving because she had come here with a hardened heart and a closed mind. her reply was she just wanted answers so we had said "that if she wanted to know about the catholic church to ask the catholics, if you want to learn about the baptists you go to talk a baptist and if you wanted to know about the mormons you ask a mormon you don't look and print up that crap off the internet" she then went quiet and said ok and we left. what a first lesson!! haha. something that is different about tracting now compared to before is that before we were trying to get people on church tours for the first lesson and now we are trying to just teach at the door and get a return appointment and it has made a world of difference for this mission!! its an adjustment for me but i'm loving the results. before we went out tracting one day what elder cheever and stanford like to do is one elder takes a map of the area and goes in the bedroom and prays for revelation about where to tract while the other missionaries are in the front room praying for the missionary in the bedroom. elder cheever asked if i had ever done this before and i said no so he said try it out then. so i went in the back room with the map and said a prayer looked at the map and found 4 streets that i felt good about so i prayed again for help to cut down the list then looked at the 4 streets and cut it down to 2. i did the same again and felt great about this one street. said another prayer to ask for confirmation that this is the right one and it was confirmed. so we went out and tracted that street. on that street was a hispanic family that had just moved here from conneticut and were recently baptized so we are going to get them to church this next sunday. we got 4 new investigators from that one street!! it was such a great feeling and when we got home i got on my knees and thanked the lord for all the help he had given us. we are teaching 2 part member families that each have a child that is just above the age of 8 and we are looking to baptize them before the end of the month. once i meet them for the first time i will let you know more about them. i love you all and appreciate all the prayers and support!!

love

elder salmon