We are just getting our blog up and running, so be patient with us as we are just learning how to do all of this.  Darci and Brandon are here visiting us for the weekend, and she is helping us figure it all out!
Missions are great!  We are learning so much.  We love all of the families we are teaching, and are so appreciative of this opportunity to teach and testify.  We are working with many inactive families who have lost their way, and they have all kinds of excuses for not being active.  Most of them have been offended by someone, which is very sad, as it is they who are missing out on the blessings that they could have enjoyed.  We struggled in the beginning of our mission, wondering what to teach these people and how to help them.  One day in district meeting I asked the young missionaries how or what we should teach the in-actives.  They told us to teach them just like we do investigators, because it is the doctrine that they don't have a complete understanding of.  As we have taught these families and asked them questions about the principles we are teaching, we are finding out that many of them are very limited in their understanding.  We have both remembered the quote that says "True doctrine understood, changes attitudes and behaviors." We are finding that to be true.  As these wonderful people learn about the Plan of Salvation, who we are, where we came from, why we are here, and where we can go after this life because of the atonement and resurrection of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they have greater desires to be obedient.  We have been working with one couple who have been inactive for 15 years.  They have become our dear friends whom we love so much.  They are now coming to church again, which makes us more happy than we could ever express in words.  They came the first time when Elder Simkins and I were talking in sacrament meeting.  When we looked down in the audience and saw them sitting there, we both started to cry.  It was hard to speak after that!  We are now encouraging them to go back to the temple, and receive all the blessings that will bring them eternal happiness and joy.
We have learned so much about the importance of loving and fellowshipping those in our midst.  That is what they need, so VERY much.  We must all live the first and greatest commandment, which is to love the Lord the God with all of thy heart.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt 22: 37-39)  We have witnessed first hand how extremely important it is to live those commandments.  As we do so, things fall into proper order in our lives.
We are also teaching a woman we met at a restaurant here one day.  Elder Simkins and I took the missionaries out to eat after a district meeting.  As we were walking by her table, she noticed that we were all wearing tags.  She asked me who we were, and so I stopped to chat with her for a minute.  She asked me if we were selling Mary Kaye.  I got a chuckle out of that!  I said "No, we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." I asked her if she had heard of us before, and then asked if she would like to learn more.  She said YES!  We have been teaching her for a couple of months now.  She accepts things little by little, and has A LOT of questions along the way.   Elder Simkins is such a great missionary, and I have learned so much from him.  He has taught me the importance of asking questions, and involving people much more in the discussions, instead of me just rambling on when it is my turn to teach.  I think she will be baptized as she continues to read and pray about the truthfulness of Book of Mormon, and about the prophet Joseph Smith.                                                                     We hope that you will keep all of the missionaries in your prayers, as well as the people that we are teaching.  We also hope that any of you that are capable will also have the desire to be missionaries.  So many people are searching for the truth, but don't know where to find it.