Hello from Russelville!

Good morning from sweet little Russelville area. I love this place already. It's actually several small towns close together that we get to work in. We were driving around yesterday and I totally had some flash back moments to Queen Creek. It's perfect out here!

What a crazy week we've had! Wednesday was spent at transfer meeting then driving two hours to get to my new home and unpacking. Thursday is always Weekly Planning and Sister Salmond was so sweet in explaining things in detail to me. I think I will do alright in this area with Sister Salmond helping me out. After weekly planning, one of the ward members named Becky picked us up and we helped her do her visiting teaching since she didn't have a companion. We got to visit a less active sister and meet some members. Becky is so sweet and so dedicated to her calling as a ward missionary. With her help I was able to meet several members of the ward before Sunday even rolled around. And this ward is so awesome. We have team-ups with the Relief Society sisters lined up for almost everyday of the week. We went out with Sister Perkins on Friday to visit investigators and less active members. Sister Perkins is so awesome. Her little family lives right around the corner from us and they are so cute. Already her and her husband have done so much to help us out, with the team up and being willing to pick up investigators and recent converts. This family is awesome. Saturday we went to the State Fair and just contacted like crazy so we could reach our goal of 70 unplanned contacts. We didn't go on any of the rides, but I still had so much fun. Sister Salmond is a rock star and so dedicated to this work. I can already tell I'm going to learn a lot from her example. 

I just jumped into the ward head first because they asked me to say the opening prayer in sacrament meeting and I agreed. It's crazy the courage a mission gives ya. We were going to meet with a referral that has a connection to an investigator we are teaching. The referral is the aunt that is keeping her niece from getting baptized even though she is a grown woman and she has that desire. One of our ward members had told us we should go visit this lady and yesterday during lunch Sister Salmond made the connection that our investigator is related to this lady. She wanted to go see her and see if we could fix the problem and she told me she wasn't sure what was going to happen but I really didn't worry about what this lady might do {yell at us, slam the door in our face, call us mean things, etc.} and I was game to meeting with her. But, she wasn't home for her to do any of those things to us. We're still going to try to get in contact with her and see if we can answer some of her questions and straighten out some misconceptions. 

One of my friends from college is in the next town over, right outside of my area. She found out that I was in Russellville and came up to visit our ward. It was so fun to see a familiar face. Speaking of familiar faces, I am serving with two elders that were in the MTC with me. We had several of our MTC group at the transfer meeting and it was so fun to see these missionaries again. 

I love you all and hope this week is amazing for ya!!