Summer is OVER!

The summer is coming to an end, and you couldn't find a happier person than me about that! My forehead and the top of my head have been red for the past month! Come on hair, I NEED you back! This past weekend we had another baptism, Shelly. It went well, I performed her baptism and confirmation the next day at church. Sorry I have no picture of it, I forgot my camera! BUT we have a baptism Friday evening for Daisy, and she's part of a big Samoan family, so you know I'll take plenty of pictures. We had interviews with President Winn this week. A new thing he's doing is interviews and zone conferences every quarter, rather than every transfer, so getting to sit with him one on one is definitely a rarity. He's such a great man, we talked about my performance and what I want to work on to continue to improve. He told me to read "The Infinite Atonement" by Brother Callister, so I just picked that up yesterday and am excited to read it. Elder Burkard and I are still getting along great, he's a lot of fun. Our biggest thing right now is quoting funny movies, but our zone leaders asked us to pick something "worldly" that we are to give up. Elder Burkard and I both picked movies, so we've been trying to get better at that. We still do it all the time, we can't help it, but we're getting better at it. All of our new investigators are all kind of shaky, no one is really solid. After this weekend it will probably be a couple of weeks before we baptize again. It's tough in West Valley, especially the Granger Stake. The stake is either apartments, where people come in and out all the time (Many who come to the church for financial help, and so aren't very interested in religion) or it's all older homes, with retired people and very few people to teach. It's tough right now finding. Especially in Utah! Knocking on doors and talking to people on the street is ineffective everywhere else, but here in Utah, NOTHING comes from it. Every one is either already and active member, an in-active member who has hundreds of excuses not to come back, or they are not a member and have absolutely no desire to meet with us, and if they were interested the church building is right across the street from them or they see us walking every day and so they would come find us if they really wanted to. Needless to say, finding activities are tough to plan. We depend heavily on the members for referrals. Utah is still the greatest place to be, wait, Utah, SALT LAKE CITY is still the best place to be! Where else do the missionaries get to go to the temple once a week? Where else do missionaries have access to a place like temple square to take their investigators and see films about the gospel? Where else do you have the church leaders all around you 24/7? Yeah, I have no problem saying it, this mission is simply the best. All the anti-mormons we run into everyday don't have any affect on all the wonderful things we have here as missionaries. I'm even turning into a Ute. YES, I said it! For every BYU fan here there are at least five Ute fans. Red flags fly everywhere here, stickers on every bumper, and red shirts on every person in the street we talk to. And with that said, I'm totally cheering for UW this week against BYU (GO JAKE LOCKER!), I'll be sporting off my purple tie! With what BYU athletics is doing right now, I am somewhat upset with my cougars, I feel so bad for the rest of the athletic programs who have to, in my opinion, downgrade, because the football program wants to try and keep up with Utah and the rest of the country.

Next week I promise pictures and more spiritual things to write on, this week has just been tough with trying to find new people to teach and with other things going on. I received more mail from family friends this week. It is honestly such a burden lifter every time I get mail from a friend. After a long week, when I get a letter of encouragement, telling me to keep up the good work and that prayers are coming my way, it instantly takes away any bad feelings I'm having, and anything that's bothering me doesn't bug me so much afterward. Thank you to everyone for helping me become the person I am, I won't let any of you down and I promise to continue to be the best missionary I can be.

Elder Scotty