Email: February 11, 2013

Dear Family,

It has been a really good week here in good ol Dallas Oregon.  It has been sunny and warm and we have been soaking it up, it is awesome.  Its weird how good the weather has been here.  We drive over to Salem or Monmouth and they are getting really bad weather and then we get back to Dallas and it is sunny and warm its awesome. 

We have a Baptism tonight!  I am pretty stoked about that, we announced it for two weeks now at church and in all of the quorums and auxiliaries so hopefully most of the ward will be there to support them!  They definitely need it.  We met with this mother and daughter for the first time this week as well who seem like they are really solid.  Angel and Anna Hammond.  We found them when we were going through the area book like I talked about last time and we met with them at the church on Thursday.  They had met with missionaries lots over the course of a year or so, about 2 years ago and then the missionaries just stopped coming by is what they said.  They asked us what we wanted them to read and so we are reading 3 Nephi 11 and they are going to pray their hearts out this week and get an answer.  Its funny because she works for the city and her new boss is Bro Foggin and she said she didn't want to be going to the same ward as him because it might be weird, so its a good thing he isn't in our ward ha ha. 

Other than that, we found some new potentials that we are going to work with this week and we are excited about it.  Also the Johnsons, (the family that we were working with) will be back this week and we will be able to meet with them again.  They have been up in Portland this week and last because the youngest son, who is 4, has Sistic Fibrosis, don't know if I spelled that right, and he has to go up to Dornbeckers up there once ever 3 months or so to do a routine check up and what not.  They have to be up there for 2 weeks and they get back on Friday this week so hopefully we can get them to church this next week!  We had a change in the ward here yesterday.  The Bishop was released and we have a new bishopric.  It is going to be interesting but he seems like a good guy and we have talked a lot about missionary work with him in the past so we are hoping that he is missionary minded.   It has been a struggle to get this ward going and really wanting to do missionary work.  We finally were allowed to come into ward council just a few weeks ago and the members are really starting to trust us which is nice, they had a bad run of missionaries in the past. 

I have realized that I say So a lot before I say sentences when I talk and when I write, and I am really trying to not let it take over ha ha.  I now have to consciously think about what I am going to say and make sure I don't always start off with So.  I noticed it a few weeks ago when I was talking with someone on the street and I think I counted 25 times in just a a few minutes that we were talking.  Anyway that was random but I thought I'd share!  I love you all and hope that you all have a great second, minute, day, and week. 

Love,

Elder Erickson