Mission Calls, Ward Support, and More!

Both Michael Watson and Matt Wood got their mission calls this last Friday, and we got to be a part of all the excitement.  Michael Watson has been called to the Nevada, Las Vegas Mission; and Matt Wood has been called to the Argentina, Buenos Aires Mission.  It's awesome because their calls just fit their characters and personalities so perfect;  the Lord sure does know what He's doing.  I reflected back on the video of when I got my call and recalled the feelings I had at that time and the support of all my friends and family there.  It sure is neat to see that even though I didn't go to Mexico, the Lord had a plan for me, and He has placed me in the New Hampshire Manchester Mission so he can carry out that plan.

Lately we have been doing TONS of "less-active hunting" work.  It basically starts with plugging in every name on the ward roster into my Garmin, assigning each address a color icon according to their status (referral, less-active member, investigator, member, etc.), and then when we are in an area, we can just look at the map on my Garmin and got to every Less-active member and try to contact them.  Often times we find that the people have moved (sometimes up to 20 years ago)  and so we do our best to figure out where they moved to.  We take that information, along with any other updates to any on the ward list data and work with the Ward Clerk to clean up to ward roster, send records to correct areas, and eventually help be more organized and have better ward statistics : )  So anyways, this last couple of weeks we've been doing a lot of that, and last Thursday we some great success.  We actually got to meet with 2 different people who were so sweet to us and really wanted to come back to church; plus we've gotten tons of updates and such for the ward list.  One of the greatest parts about this was yesterday when we got to work for a few hours with the 2nd counselor and the ward clerk on updating MANY things on the ward roster, as well as discuss in depth the needs of our investigators and more; we gained so much respect, support, and trust from the ward for being able to show them all of the work that we have been doing in this area and for helping them so much.

Well I gotta get running, but things have been so great here lately.  It's sad with Elder Ahumada's time coming to an end in 2 more weeks, but we just keep working hard and make the most of every day.

From New England with Love,

Elder Dustin Carr