Hello my loved ones!

How has every body's week been? I hope it was wonderful! We had a pretty good week here in Blanding. It seems like they could always be better, but when we step back and look at it it could always be worse. So I like to look at the bright side and count our blessings and just think how wonderful it has been. We had a very good zone training meeting on Thursday. It was is Durango which is about 2 and a half hours away from here. So we drove to the zone leaders in Cortez on Wednesday night so we didn't have so much driving Thursday morning. It was a very good meeting. President Jones primarily talked on the Ward Mission Process. It was really good to have him present it to us; especially since he has worked with the quorum of the twelve and had a little more in depth understanding about it. It is amazing and I love having a mission President that has been a general authority before. He shares some amazing stories and experiences from meeting's that he has had with the First Presidency and with the apostles. It is amazing. But, back to the ward mission process. It is something that is so effective if understood and used properly. From what I learned I don't think everybody has the complete understanding of it. I haven't been able to really use it in the other area's on my mission because we didn't even have a ward mission leader. But, in this area it could be used so effectively. Everybody thinks that everybody is members but there are a lot that are not but we rely on the members to find them because it is hard to do by knocking doors. Just like Elder Holland has said the most effective way of finding is through referrals and not knocking doors. So it is something that we as missionaries have discussed and next week in our stake correlation meeting we want to talk about it. But it was a very nice meeting. I had never been to Durango, but to put it in your words dad "it was beautiful!" At this time of the year with all the trees changing colors and being up in the mountain's it was beautiful. I'm glad I wasn't the one driving.

Well tomorrow we are moving out of where we are living. We are moving into a three bedroom three bathroom house by ourselves. It is a pretty unique situation. It is a less active lady that is letting us stay in the house that she has, and all we have to pay is utilities. We meet with her on Saturday and she was going to get keys made and then she was going to drop them off to the lady that we are currently living with. We weren't there but Sister Langston, the lady we live with right now, told us about the visit that they had with each other. Sister Langston told her about how she came to have the elders stay with her and how it was at a very hard time in life when she really needed something and the Lord sent the elders to live with her and now it has been going on for almost five years. It is similar with sister Bayless the lady who is letting us have the house. She hasn't been to church in years and is having a lot of trials right now. So the deal with letting us have the house is that we work with her and her son and get them re-activated. So we are so grateful for them and excited to get the back into church.

I am so glad to hear that you had the missionaries over to teach a lesson mom and dad. Their is no greater joy to a missionary then when members open up their doors and let people be taught in their home. It helps so much and it makes it easier for those people to come to church when they know somebody. They feel more comfortable and have someone to fellowship them. President Hinkley said one of the three most important things that every recent convert needs is a friend. Missionaries come and go but the members need to be there to support and befriend those that the missionaries are teaching. So keep it up!!! I challenge you all to invite somebody into your home this week and have the missionaries teach them! We all need to better fulfill our calling as member missionaries!

Well I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you all! Be safe and be smart!

Love,

Elder Trevor Schmidt