This week was incredibly busy and extremely exciting! We started it off with Mission Leadership Council on Tuesday. 6 hours of training fro President and Sister Taggart and the AP's! The main focus of it was having desire. Desire to do our personal and companionship studies in order to better learn and treasure in our hearts the principles and doctrines of the gospel we teach! It wasn't as boring as it sounds.

But it gets better. As zone leaders, we are responsible for carrying the training we receive in MLC to the rest of our zone. So we have to put together a two and a half hour training out of the notes we take.

That takes place on Thursday and is called Zone training. Almost all the missionaries in our zone hate meetings, so the real challenge is making it interesting. We were driving in the car on Sunday (the 25th) talking about what we would do to make it interesting. Seeing as it was the week of Halloween, I declared that we would carve pumpkins as a zone for part of zone training! So that night, still unaware of what we would be teaching, we called up our Relief Society President and told her we needed 11 pumpkins. We figured out what we were teaching Tuesday, planned Zone training on Wednesday, got the last few pumpkins Wednesday night, then carved pumpkins for 30 minutes of the training on Thursday! It was a lot of fun, but here's how it tied in. When we teach people, we teach the same principles, but we tailor the way we teach to the individual. When everyone had finished carving their pumpkins, we pointed out that they had all carved different Jack-o-lanterns. Just like people don't all make the same exact Jack-o-lanterns, we shouldn't give scripted lessons to everyone! If people are more important then pumpkins, then how much more important is it to study and prepare a lesson for a person than carving a jack-o-lantern? It was a pretty bomb object lesson and one of the most enjoyable zone trainings ever! The rest of the week was pretty hum drum, but we were able to go to a couple "Halloween parties" for a short time on Friday! (We had to turn in early on Halloween) Everyone thought I looked like Ron Weasley. It was a fun end to the week and the month of October. Here's a short thought to start off he new one!

"Character cannot be summoned at the moment in crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision that can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self-defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Habit is the daily battleground of character."

- Daniel R. Coats

To kind of go along with our zone training this week, character is determined by desire and action. In our fast and testimony meeting, a lady in our Ward shared a story of how her son had lost a tiny Lego from his Lego titanic ship. They looked for it forever, and even after praying for help to find it, I hey couldn't. She sent her son back to the house to grab a piece similar to it to put it in the grass to see what it looked like, and while he was gone and she was sitting down, she suddenly saw the piece in front of her, right where she had already combed over multiple times. This is a tiny thing. Probably not even something most would count as a miracle. I think this speaks volumes about the character of God as our loving Heavenly Father. He cares enough about a little boy enough to take time out of his probably busy God schedule to help him find it. It's the little things that count. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. I love all of you so much! I say it every time because I mean it!

 Hunter

The pictures:

Carving Pumpkins for Zone Training!

My Halloween costume. I was trying to be an evil Brother Thommason (a guy in our Ward with longish black hair. Also the most intelligent person I've ever met. So all of you don't get it. But it was really funny. Everyone else thought I was Ron.