Be a Good Neighbor and Don't Judge

Sometimes I forget how close that I really am to home. In fact, as we speak, I am literally five steps away from Temple Square. Which means that within a half hour, I could see half of my best friends. We still have no word on the visas so it's going to be interesting to see how my mission goes. It's definitely different than I expected it to be if you were to ask me a year ago. I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve in Utah, though.

I am surprised how many people that have lived in Utah for their entire lives know hardly anything about our actual beliefs. We have been teaching a few people who thought they knew everything about our church, who in fact, had distorted perceptions about what we do. If you want to know what Mormons believe, go to church, read the Book of Mormon, and pray. It really is that easy! I think my favorite was a lady that told us that she didn't like how after Mormons allowed Non-Mormons to enter the temple, and then closed the temple for a few days to "rip all of the furniture out because of all the 'dirty' people that entered the temple." We kind of started laughing.. and just said, "well, I think they might vacuum." Or that Mormon is Joseph Smith's father. Yeah, these are people from Utah.

Also, there is so much work to be done in Utah! But it's easy.. just be a good neighbor and don't judge anyone for any reason. There are some wards where I am literally scared to bring investigators to because they are not welcoming. It doesn't matter if people smell like smoke, alcohol, or are dressed in whatever because EVERYONE should feel welcome at church.

ARRGGGHHH.. if you can't tell, we dealt with a lot of that this week.

But there are a lot of good people out here, too so don't think that I am angry with everyone right now.

On the good side, we have been looking for people to teach because.. well, we need people to teach. We both decided that we were going to exercise our faith. We ended up getting a new investigator every day, and it was awesome. Now, he have some steady people to teach. We tripled the number of people we are teaching within like a week, and it was awesome! So there, there was some good news.

Well, I feel like this letter home was really jumbled and out of order. So, yeah. Sorry about that. I promise the next one will be better.