P-A-R-T-Y!!!

So, our family is full strength again! Brit looks great and appears very happy. We can't get enough of her!

To her friends and our family that wanted to attend the airport reception we apologize. I truly wish I would have know and could have contacted you! However, we hope you will come see Brit at the BBQ we are holding for her.

Andrea, Amanda & Carin - please try to come. If there are other friends of Brit's that I didn't realize are following this please comment if you are interested in attending.

6:30 pm Saturday in Farr West. Take the Farr West exit and then go to the West side to the stop light. Then go North toward Smith and Edwards. But, watch close for the next left to go West on Higley road. Then go 1/4 mile to the next left. The party is down that lane 2/3 of the way on the left. We will have an obvious sign in the front yard!

See you there!

Come what may and love it...

Well, throughout the day I have had an uncomfortable feeling. I had all kinds of thoughts and concerns enter my mind. I dismissed them. Then, with 2.5 hours to go I became troubled enough that I began trying to track Brit's flight. The mission home sent us a simple itinerary which told us her flight number from LAX to SLC and time of arrival. But, we didn't even have a confirmation number (which it seems you must have or the Delta gastopo will take you out) and knew nothing about her international flight.

So, after 4 different phone calls and 4 different foreign employees (heavy accents) I finally got enough pieces of the puzzle from each that I was able to call the last lady (good english) and get somewhere. She was wonderful! The first lady "broke the rules" and let me know as a favor that Brit's international flight was with EVA Airlines. With that information I was able to get the next lady to give me a little more - that she wasn't flying into LAX but into SF instead. And finally, by the last lady I was able to spell things out well enough for her that she believed my story and provided me the details I needed.

So, Britney's international flight landed and she is safely on the ground in San Fransicso (changed from LAX to SF which was just one piece of the puzzle). But, there were problems with one of the missionary's luggage making it through customs so the group of missionaries missed their flight. I found out that she would be staying the night in SF and flying in Thursday morning at 9:00 am instead. We were 30 minutes from the airport when we discovered this news. So, we started urgently calling family. Then, Brit called and was quite suprised that I already knew her news. Don't mess with a concered Dad!!!

So, my promptings proved to be for good reason. I am so glad she is safe in SF and we will endure the disappointment until morning. We went to Marie Calendars to have pie to soften the blow. The benefit for Brit is that she gets to have a good nights sleep and take a good shower prior to seeing everyone.

I feel horrible because we weren't able to contact her dear friends to let them know the news. I received a phone call from Carin. It seems Amanda, Andrea and Carin (Brit's dearest friends) came to welcome her.

So, I thought I better post this tonight just in case anyone else needed to know what the latest moment in our missionaries life was.

We can't wait to see you sister Landrum at 9:00 am tomorrow morning!!!

Well done thy good and faithful servant

Britney arrives in Salt Lake City this coming Wednesday evening. We invite any of her friends and any of our family that would like to attend. Be to the airport by 9:15 pm at the bottom of the escalators.

We are pleased with Brit's testimony and dedication as a missionary. Her letters and emails are evidence of how serious she took her mission. He personal growth will provide her an advantage in pursuing the balance of her life. We cannot wait to embrace her and see her smiling face. She is worried that she will be tired and beat down looking due to a 20 hour travel. I assured her she could smell and have tattered clothing and matted hair and it wouldn't make one bit of difference! She will be hugged regardless. That emotional and tearful pretty lady next to me will be her mother. She has earned every tear. Fly safe sis, we are counting the seconds.

3 weeks from tonight...

Britney will arrive in the Salt Lake International airport 3 weeks from tonight. August 12th, Wednesday, at 9:30 pm.

We welcome family and Brit's good friends to be there. We will be there by 9:00 p.m. securing our place at the bottom of the escalator. We will forewarn airport security about the potentially crazy group of loved ones and likelihood of animated powerful noises authored by a proud and supportive grandmother.

We have decided to stay in Utah after picking Brit up. She will be released on Thursday morning which will surely be a difficult moment for her. She has loved and embraced everything it means to be a missionary. We will be remaining in Utah until Saturday when we will host a family/friend gathering to honor Brit and hear her report her mission.

There are many reasons prompting the change to Utah from Idaho for this gathering and none of them include purposefully creating difficulty for loved ones. It simply had to be. Fortunately, we have loving and understanding family.

I will post further details in short order.

Arriving August 12th...

She just loves sister Garcia!

Brit is arriving home August 12th. It has gone by so fast. She was sweet enough to send us some photos yesterday and we wanted to share.

We will be having a homecoming party Saturday night at 152 West 400 South Burley. It will begin at 6:30 pm. We will have a barbecue and fireside visit with Brit! Close friends and family are invited. Reply if you have questions.

Boy, are we excited to hug her and hug her and hug her! Sure hope those Filipinos have prepared her for it.

Email May 24, 2009

Today as I welcomed Sister Garcia to our companion study and announced that it was the first day of transfer, Monday the 25th of May I thought..."...that sounds like a holiday."

We had an enjoyable week as a three-some and enjoyed attending transfer meeting without the pressure of being transferred, getting to see our other friends and hear president's talk...then within the last two days three of our current investigators agreed to baptismal dates, we discussed how blessed we have been and we know it has to do with us trying to do our best and to be obedient.

We are also very excited and know the service of another missionary is helping with one. He is on a mission here in another mission in the Philippines and his mother has been being taught for years. We taught her the plan of salvation and I talked about that day that we will stand beside our Heavenly Father and about the time we will enter his Kingdom with our friends and family, and talked about her son on his mission and how that is exactly what he wants and he also imagines her there. She told us she would decide after she finishes reading the entire Book of Mormon. Then we finished teaching her and I asked her how she felt about our lesson and all she said was "Sister Landrum, I will get baptized before you go home, let's set a date and you can write to my son and tell him." We are very excited to write to her son and tell him. We can sense a missionaries just how much that will mean to him.

I met a very interesting family one of the days I worked with a member and Sister Garcia and Pairat worked together. We didn't have anymore scheduled appointments and it wasn't time to meet up with them yet so I started talking to people outside and met this woman with four little boys standing with her. As I talked to her, her husband came outside and from their door motioned toward the pamphlet I had, he wanted one. I re-focused my attention to him and asked if we could share a message. They invited us up to their porch and we discovered their neighbor is an old man and woman. The man baptized a couple years ago but since we've been here he has been ill and has not come to church. His wife agreed to listen to us also and we continued in teaching their neighbor. I started by teaching about the Godhead and knew from the start that he is a bible scholar because he had many questions and personal ideas. He is not however affiliated with any religion. His questions lead us into parts of lesson two and I was not sure where it was all going to go because I was having a hard time directing it towards one topic for our first lesson but felt like just continuing on how we were until he got to his big thing. He believes that any religion that is the true church of Christ should be actively concerned for the temporal welfare... and he brought up Malachi and Tithing so I opened immediately to third Nephi 24 and started testifying about tithes and offerings while his old man neighbor started telling them "they have a supply!" It was kind of funny... he listened now without question unlike before and I taught him about the church welfare program, tithing and offerings and then testified that we have living prophets who direct this work and closed by giving him all three of our pamphlets to read. He read them all before the next day and we taught all of lesson one and gave him a Book of Mormon. The interesting part is what he said to this neighbor of his, not directly to us... on the first visit he said "all they have taught me is almost exactly like "The continuation church of Christ" and I got from that a part of an idea about what he is up to which was confirmed at our second visit when a paper with a drawing of a church logo fell out of his bible and so he showed us. He has been creating his own Church because he doesn't find any others to have all the truths he believes in from his research.

So, they weren't there the next time we returned and I don't know where it will go but it was quite the experience and I felt so strongly the truthfulness and fullness of our Church, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ here and of what I teach. All that anyone is searching for is here and all the answers if you will only search them out. I don't know all the answers myself, I still have questions, but I have a firm testimony of the most important things and I know that as each of us continues to seek learning "even by study and also by faith" we will come to know all the mysteries of God and be prepared to receive his fullness.

Well, I hope Savanna made it to Utah alive and that Mom's leg is healing. Olivia and I will have to race when I get home... I bet I'm SUPER slow now :) we'll see. Give me a couple weeks I'll get into my real exercise program again -- all of my arm muscle is gone I think, haha.

Congrats on the graduations, birthdays coming up and SUMMER BREAK. They are about to start school again so it's funny that you're just ending. I'm sure the next few months will go very fast for you since it's break -- have fun.

LOVE,

Sister Landrum

Email May 18th, 2009

Hello - We had our first Darasa baptism on Saturday. I realized that it could, possibly, be the last baptism that I witness on my mission due to the fact that they need to attend church at least four times before baptized and overcome all addictions for longer. We have a couple of investigators right now that I am hoping to have baptized before I get home, or right after I leave, but I guess we'll see what happens; whatever the best timing for them is.

My companion was especially excited because it was the first baptism of her mission, I'm glad we've had such quick success in this ward -- they all are so helpful. We have them working with us and yesterday we went on splits for the first time, my companion felt comfortable with having me leave her now and being in charge and we had a lot of appointments, and I worked with one of the RM sisters - it's always nice to hear others teaching styles and learn from them.

This week Sister Pairat is working with us until Friday when she will get her new companion at transfer day. We will probably go on splits almost every day. I will work with a member and they will work together. I'm excited to find a lot of new investigators this week.

We have our mission tour in two weeks with Elder Edwards and I need to read about five chapters a day to finish the Book of Mormon on the scheduled date, I find every spare minute to read and it's really great. It will be my third time through in English while here on the mission and I think I'll focus on Tagalog a little more my last two months, it's slower-going and longer in general in Tagalog so we'll see where I get, I plan to finish it once I get home though.

Did I tell you the other great thing about our baptism on Saturday. Two of the baptisms, one was a child of record, were the nephews of a member we met our first week here. He hadn't been to church of years and we taught him a lesson about the importance of the Sacrament, and about how that is the main purpose of why we should be at church every single week, because we need the sacrament every single week. He started coming to church that very week and was ordained a priest soon after and then able to baptize his two nephews. Him and his sister worked with us this last week and I noticed in his testimony that he always talks specifically about the importance of the sacrament, the very thing we taught him about and he put into action and thus gained a testimony over which he now is sharing with others -- how wonderful.

Well, I'm out of thoughts for the moment so thanks for the email and for Maddie's joke Love,

Britney