email of May 24 2010

Hello Hello my wonderful family!!!!!

SO good to hear from you all this week! Looks like you're really having a great trip (even with all the driving and yucky weather :) -- Make sure you drive safe the rest of the way and just love every minute of it all! David, I'm super excited for you too! I can't believe you're all graduated and going to college and stuff -- it's nuts! But so exciting! You're going to LOVE living in your own apartment in SLC and going to school and everything. Do you know who your roommates are yet (I guess by the time you respond to this you will, of course!)? Dah, college is so fun, and that'll be a great place to go, especially for pre-mission. Sis Tittle keeps saying, "Oh, he's going to LOVE the business college!" She's really excited for you!

Here's something really fun that happened this last week: Our awesome investigator, Mohammed (Muslim from Iran) went on a trip to Utah (he works with NuSkin), so Sis Tittle gave him her parents info and he went to see them!!!!! It was so crazy to see the picture her parents sent today of their family with our investigator; also really funny to hear Mohammed talk about meeting her family :) Mohamed, by the way, is doing GREAT! He's set for baptism on June 6th, so pray that everything will keep going well!!! He's really incredible -- absolutely brilliant, and has an awesome testimony of the gospel, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, all of it! He was originally introduced to the gospel when he worked for a different church. He did their sound engineering kinda stuff, and one day some visiting pastor or special speaker or someone came, and preached a sermon that was something along the lines of how evil other religions (including ours) are. He had a BofM and threw it on the ground, saying that noone should ever read it because it was bad and evil and all kinds of balony like that. Well afterwards, Mohammed went up to the front and picked up the BofM, wondering how on earth it could be that this would be such a terrible thing. Anyways, after reading the first 50 pages, he knew it was true. When he heard about Joseph Smith and how we have a prophet on the earth today, he knew it was true! A while back, he met a lady at the grocery store (a cashier) who is a member of the Samoan ward here (which holds all meetings in Samoan), and she invited him to church with her. So he went. For 2 or 3 months.

MOHAMMED DOESN'T SPEAK SAMOAN!!!!!!!!!

His English isn't even all that great, but he felt the Spirit at that Samoan ward, so that's where he'd go. So then, a few months ago, he was flying to Utah for a business trip, and who happened to be sitting next to him on the plane but Sister Blackburn, our mission president's wife! She was realy excited to share the gospel with him, but (how funny is this?!) didn't even have a pass-along card with her! So she told him to go to temple square as soon as he could, and refer himself so that missionaries could come and teach him when he got home! So he did. And now he'd going to get baptized! Sis. Blackburn came with us a few weeks ago to teach him, and she was just so happy and excited! This is the only person in her entire time here on her mission that she found and has been able to see progress to baptism, so it's really special for her too; kind of a special little gift to her from Heavenly Father right before she goes home from her mission. He's had some really amazing spiritual experiences in his life that have led him to this point, and now he's getting baptized!!! Love it. I love it!

So anyways, I was just thinking -- since you'll be in Utah this weekend, you should go see the Tittle's too! That would be so fun, since your daughters are currently mission companions!!! Sis. Tittle is giving her parents your phone numbers, and I'll give you their info, so hopefully you can hook up. :)

(Note: Sis Tittle is Sallie's companion.)

Tonight we're going to do an FHE with a family from our ward, and I'm really excited because we came up with a really fun lesson/activity to do with them! When we stopped by to set up the appointment, we said we'd bring brownies or something; Sis K. mentioned that her youngest, who's 4 loves making brownies. He likes to do the stirring. So we decided to incorporate that into things. So we're re-labeling the brownie mix as "Happy Family Mix," and each component (mix, eggs, oil, water, bowl, spoon, etc) is going to be labeled as something that helps us to have a strong, happy family, as well as have a scripture ref/GA quote/Family Proclamation paragraph with it! I'm really really excited! Don't worry, I'm writing it all down for future reference...you'd better believe I'll be doing this again, on my mission and with my own family someday!

Life is good! I'm so glad that you got to go (and will go again) see the Joseph Smith movie at the visitor's center! It's amazing, huh? I feel so blessed that we have that available here in our mission! It's an amazing tool in the teaching/conversion process!

Have a great rest of your trip, and know that your missionary in LA loves you and misses you!!!

Thanks again for the pictures -- you'd better believe that I show those off to everyone I can!!!


I Love you all SO MUCH!!!!!!!!
The Church is TRUE!!!!!

I LOVE being a missionary!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Hermana Sallie

(aka: Aunt Sallieonamission)

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!!