I know it is a little late, but here are a couple of pictures from the MTC:

I hope to see many miracles in Many today!

"We have a baptism this Saturday! My first one! To see a person accept the gospel and come closer to our Savior is what missionary work is all about. I'll be sure to take a picture with him and Elder Davidson and send it home so you can put it on Bishop's wall! I can't believe we have 11 missionaries out from our ward! The Bishop's wall won't have enough space soon!

I heard this fact in the MTC, but I'm not sure if I share it with y'all. But, as of December 2011 there are around 56,000 full time missionaries serving and in December 2010 there were 52,000. I think we have the most missionaries in the field now than ever before! It's great time to be serving the Lord!

Today we are going on exchanges with the Zone Leaders and double working our area. That means Elder Davidson and I are splitting up for the day and teaching with on of the Zone Leaders, and then we are both working in our area. So, we will have four missionaries working Many for today! Which will be awesome because we have tons of people to see, so we will be able to teach a lot! I hope to see many miracles in Many today! ;) "

Miracles

"This week was good, crazy, but good. We had our Zone Christmas party. It was combined with the Lafayette Zone. It was really fun! We ate and then had a Christmas play, which was really good. Then after that we had a testimony meeting about all the miracles that have happened recently. It was a really neat and spiritually powerful meeting.

The teaching is going great. I'm teaching half of the lesson almost every time! It is really cool to teach through the Spirit cause I've said some things that I've never said before and it seemed to work! But, we didn't have investigators come to sacrament meeting. Elder Davidson was supposed to speak in church, but when we got there both his name and mine were on the program to talk! I had no idea I was speaking, so I had to throw together a quick talk. I guess I did okay because we got a lot of compliments--either that or they were just being nice.

I'll leave you with a miracle that happened last night...So, we went to see this husband and wife that we saw had been taught a long time ago. And when we got there, a 20-year-old kid answered the door and said that the couple had moved. But, he invited us in to hear our message. We were able to teach him and his mom and they both understood everything really well. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and the restoration and they both committed to read, pray and then be baptized! It was incredible! We didn't set up a date, but we are going back this Thursday to teach! It was truly a miracle. I feel like the Lord sent us there for a reason. He knows who is ready and guides us to them. I am so thankful to be serving him at this time and know that y'all are getting tons of blessings because of it. I love and miss all of you so much! Stay safe, enjoy life and have a very Merry Christmas!"

It's so cool to use my priesthood!

This week was good! Not as perfect as last week, but good. We are still teaching all of our investigators and might have a few more, we are going back to a few people this week that we contacted from a referral. Only two of our investigators came to church! But, we are working hard to get them to prepare for their baptismal date. If everything goes right we should have 3 people for Dec 31. 1 for Jan 7. and 2 for Jan. 14. So we have 6 commits and 5 of them we both feel are solid. Our most solid one is Larry Austin, he is in his late 60's! His wife has been a member her whole life and he has been an eternigator his whole life,which is when they go through tons of missionaries and investigate the church for ever! And in our first lesson with him we commited him to the 31st! We gave him and his wife a blessing this past week! It's so cool to use my priesthood! And to see the miracles it performs!

We are trying to visit every single less active family in the ward, there are a ton! On the ward roster there are about 300 members but only 70-90 show up a week. So, we have really been focusing on that. I have a cool story about a less active family that we visited. Their last name is French and they have been less active for some time. We went there with Bro. Newman (a young guy in our ward who has been home from his mission for about 5 years and is really cool) The husband wasn't home, but since we had Bro. Newman we could go inside and talk to them. It was the Mom and her 3 daughters that were home. We started teaching them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Mom started crying! I think the spirit was touching her heart and telling her that she needs to go back to church. She knew it and God knew it, so he sent us that day to teach them.

I Get to Bear my Testimony Several Times a Day!

This past week has been awesome! We currently have 8 investigators! And 5 of them have baptismal dates! Elder Davidson is an awesome teacher. The coolest part about teaching is that I get to bear my testimony several times a day. I've noticed that it grows and grows everytime i bear it!

We are really focusing in less active members and part member families. So far we have only tracted for like 30 min. haha the rest of the time we have teaching appointments and are trying to meet a lot of the less active families.

The member support is amazing up here, everynight a member drives us and comes to our teaching appointments! And our area is pretty big!

Some cool lessons we had this week were with a few recent converts that were struggling and with a lot of investigators. One recent convert guy got baptized in august and has had heart problems, deaths and just a lot of trial in his life. He actaully lost his son in a motorcycle accident a few months before he got baptized, but then a member came over and gave him the Book of Mormon and said that it would give him comfort. He loved it and read it in 5 days! But he has been struggling lately and turned back to drinking and chewing, so we stopped by and taught an awesome lesson on faith in Ether 12. Another covert hasn't been to church in forever because she worked on Sundays. Then, the other day she got fired, but she knows that the Lord has a plan for her and that she can find a new job that will allow her to go to church! I thought her testimony was so strong! We taught her about how we can turn to Heavenly Father and ask him for those things, I actually used that thing you said about prayer mom! It helped her a lot.

We actually witnessed a small miracle. On Friday we went to this ghetto apartment complex that had some recent converts and less actives in it. We happened to see a lady and gave her a pass along card and asked if we could come back and teach her. She was very shy, but said we could come back on Saturday. We went back to that complex on Saturday to see her, but decided to stop by a recent convert's house first. She wasn't home and her daughter, who is an investigator, said she didn't know where she was or when she would come back. So, we went on to the other lady's house that we had met the day before, her name is Beverly. When she opened the door, our recent convert we had been looking for was sitting right there in her Beverly's living room! We were like "Hey, Sister Carter! What are you doing here?" It turns out the lady we just met yesterday was her sister! So, we taught Beverly and Sister Carter helped a little bit, and she agreed to come to Church, read the Book of Mormon, and to be baptized on Jan 14!! I couldn't believe it! Then Sunday comes around. Beverly is there with her two sons! She loved church and felt awesome while she was there. Then she came to the Social and Christmas devotional that night and she said she loived that too! This lady is loving The Church and its all because we just gave her a pass a long card and asked to come back. The Lord really does prepare these people and it is so awesome to see that!

Carter's MTC district