Mission Life

Dear Family,

I want to thank you for sending me good emails each week. It's nice to know what's going on back home and helps me feel loved.

I'm so excited for all the sister missionaries in our ward. Leslie is home! That is very exciting! I can't believe she is already done. And when I read that Haley Hatch and Brianna Northrup were preparing for missions, I cheered ... out loud. It came out something like this, "Yeah! They are going to be missionaries!" Needless to say, I am very happy for them.

Mission life is amazing, as usual. I still love serving in the Trail Center because I get to bear my testimony constantly. We have tons of families doing church history vacations so I like telling them about ours. Often, they have an oldest son or daughter preparing for a mission. It reminds me a lot of our family. I love encouraging them to strengthen their testimonies and be missionaries now. Recently, I've found myself asking them, somewhere towards the end of the tour, how they will be better because they came to the Trail Center. I love the different answers: I'll bear my testimony to my kids more often, I'll study my scriptures every day, I'll serve my siblings, I'll attend the temple more frequently, I'll think about Christ when I take the sacrament. They are all such wonderful answers. I also love how everyone gets something different out of it. The spirit is able to invite each of them to do something that they need to do. I also love hearing their testimonies. You can see how much parents love their kids when they share their testimonies with them. I'd like to thank you, mom and dad, for always being so good at sharing your testimonies.

I think the most exciting thing that happened this week was helping a semi-active mom in the ward quit smoking. Her daughter Ally just got baptized and has been a really good example to her. Her other daughter, Annette, is 16 and deaf. We are trying to teach her by having her mom or siblings sign as we teach. I'm also learning some sign language from Sister Gingrich and it is a lot of fun to talk with my hands. I'd like to really learn sign language some day.

Dawn and her daughter Meredith are also doing very well. They love coming to church. Meredith actually reminds me of you, Sophie. She is a good kid, maybe 11 years old. She loves cooking in the kitchen and even made us dinner and lemon bars that were very delicious. She reminds her mom to bring her scriptures to church and is basically a lot of fun to be around. Something I really appreciate about both of them is that they realize what a blessing it was to have their friends introduce them to the gospel. They are both excited for their baptisms on July 10th.

Sorry I don't have time to write more. I love you all very much.
Love,
Sister Bailey Mortensen