Dear Missionary Friends:

Well, this mission is a huge blessing as well as challenging. We have done some teaching but the big focus for us is to help our Elder's stay busy. In our stake we are reminding the members that they live in the mission field. We are all used to being comfortable with our LDS neighbors and in many cases family that live close by. But, many are surprised to know that 66% along the Wasatch Front are either less active or nonmembers. I would say that those stats. fairly represent our stake as well. There is for sure work to be done but we battle preconceived notions of what it means to belong to the LDS faith.

Our weeks are filled with meetings. We have seven wards in our stake. We attend ward council and there receive assignments of who we could visit from each ward. Sometimes we work from a prospective Elder list and other times we just get assigned to call on their less active members. We have had good responses from this door step---unannounced approach. People are nice; just not interested. We remind ourselves that success is in the invitation.

Last Friday the full-time missionaries had the chance to go to a training session with brother Christensen; author of the EVERYDAY MISSIONARY. Wow! What an amazing session that was for us and our missionaries. We all came away with some new ideas to assist us in our efforts.

We love to hear from you! Your joy in this marvelous work is evident. We feel very blessed to have this opportunity at this time in our lives. Just plain lucky. We are healthy, and happy for longer days with light so that our evening calls are no longer cold and dark on the porch. Our testimonies continue to be strengthened as we proclaim, serve and love.

Happy mission!

Elder and Sister Carter

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