September 7th Email

hey everyone

this past week has been a blast! i love this area! i feel like i'm at home ha. what we do for finding out here is walk around campus and talk to people and in the evening we go and knock on apartment complexes. it has definately been an adjustment period for me and i feel like i will grow a lot in this new atmosphere. before i felt content and felt that i was doing really good as a missionary knocking on doors and talking with people about the gospel. then the Lord put me in an area were i need to walk up to people as they are walking to class and while they are chilling on campus and studying and teach them about the gospel. man was that so awkward haha. but elder alber, rhodes and i are tearing it up. oh before i go into more i need to introduce my greenie. his name is elder rhodes from lehi utah and he is picking things up quickly. elder alber and i are holding nothing back. we are just treating him like he has been out here for a few months and letting him just figure his ways and teaching styles out and it is working great with him. but back to the area. in our potentials sheet in the back of our planner in the first week we have more than missionaries get in a whole transfer! this past sunday we had 10 investigators to church! and one of the assistants elder shannon served here and called me and told me that when he was here in one transfer he gave 28 church tours so he challenged me to beat that. last week we gave 7 church tours and yesterday gave 2 more. its amazing how many young men and women my age are looking for a church. they really are concerned for themselves as to what kind of direction they want to go as well as for their future families. what also helps here in this ward is that there are so many activities we have been to family home evenings on sunday and monday nights also on mondays is basketball. tuesday nights is institute and dinner after and wednesday night is bible study with game night after. its a party missionary style baby! this ward hasn't been huge on giving referals but the leaders want to start getting some so at family home evening we committed a bunch of them to bring people to family home evening next week and they were all happy and willing and most already were working on friends so its going to be great! we have a baptism this sunday, this guy is michael and is golden and loves the church. he works on campus over the meals so we get hooked up from time to time. also the following sunday we have another scheduled baptism for a guy named pierre. he is from haiti and loves the gospel. his father is an inactive member. our zone is like the smallest in the mission but this past week we have been number one and two in all catagories! great missionaries in the zone and some not so much but we're working with them and it'll all be good in the end. the church is so true!

i love you all

elder salmon