Dear Family,

Happy P-day! It's been a good week. My fingers are all covered in paint, we had fun painting in our NEW BRANCH MISSION LEADER's mom's house yesterday. We haven't had an active branch mission leader for about 5 months, so that was really really exciting. Plus, painting is fun. I'm going to spend a week cleaning out my fingernails. I really enjoy doing service, but we haven't been able to use our lawn mower yet. It's been really busy. The bishops of other wards have been giving us names of young single adults to go visit and most of them live pretty far away or don't have lawns. Sad day. But we'll keep on rolling on. It sounds like Mom is out doing more missionary work than I'm doing. That's really great. Colorado Springs 2nd needs some good missionaries like you guys. Keep it up. That's really exciting. I've been showing off your letters in the guides room at the visitor center.

The Visitor Center has been super busy as well. It's neat how there's always a connection between myself and the tours that come in. They're usually from a mountainous area or they know someone I do or study the same thing I study. It's neat, how it all works out. I really liked some of the people I got to take on tour this week. I took a man from England on a short tour at the Visitor Center. I asked him if he knew anyone from Leeds. I guess he used to live there and he served as a high councilor with Al and Val Mitchell -- the only people I know in England. That was cool. There one this one little couple from Podunk, Alberta, Canada. And the husband was a convert. His wife looked young, but apparently she'd already been a primary president and was a Relief Society counselor in their little family ward out there. And in this city of 8,000 they were from, due to missionary efforts there were already 3 wards. I was really impressed with how positive they were, despite being in the middle of a move and how much love they expressed for the Gospel. If they testify that much to everyone they meet. I'm not surprised they're so many who want to join the church in that area. It's great. There's a lot of power in testimony.

Something like 25% of the wards in the US didn't have a single convert baptism last year. I've heard of more of my friends being sent stateside on missions, because we're not as up to par and excited about sharing the gospel as we could be. I think on average here in Missouri there's about 10 baptisms in a ward per year, some a little more, some a little less. In Kansas it was a little lower, less members. I want to know what the retention is over a 30 yr period. I've discovered that most really active member have all gone less active at some point in their life, but still had a testimony and felt a connection, if not a commitment to the Church. So I wonder in a 30 yr period who stays or becomes really active.

We've got a lesson with Josh tomorrow and he's still active and doing great and I hope he'll be able to go to the Nauvoo temple trip to do baptisms next month. I'm really excited for him.

Thanks for your service and all that you do. Thanks for the letters and the support and the prayers. I love my family.

Hermana Deb