December 2nd, 2012 To Daniel:

Elder Carter!!!! Hey! How are you? How's your mission going? My week was mighty fun. I think? Here's how it went. Monday- Family Night. Mom and dad helped me with History Faire. Tuesday- I practiced my guitar. Wednesday- I went to mutual. I mostly just talked to Olivia the entire time. Thursday- Play my guitar. Friday- I did home work! Mom and I also listened to Christmas music! Saturday- Yesterday I had a basketball game... WE WON!!! Score was 14-20. Our first time that we have won a game. :) After the game momma took me to Center Street Grill. I saw Jordan. She asked how you were. She says to tell you hi. Later that day we decorated for Christmas. I played my guitar more and wrote a chorus to a song. ( with dad's wonderful advice in each song lyric) later, later that night we watched While You were Sleeping. Such a cute movie! Sunday- Today we had a lesson in Sunday School on how our siblings can be our best friends. Many of the teens were saying how they can not STAND their siblings. I'm so fortunate enough to have amazing siblings. I was also wearing one of the dresses you got me, and a coat from Toph. I told them how you and I would fight all the time! I then proceeded to tell them how you are now one of my bestest friends! I love you so much! This upcoming Friday is the 8th Grade Christmas dance! I'm so excited! I will probably wear one of the dresses you got me! The day after (saturday) I am going to have an Elf party! None of my friends have seen Elf! I find this sad and unfortunate. My spiritual thought for Today. Enjoy life right now. Don't live in the past but don't get caught up in the future! I love you so much! 

Love, 

Nina

Hola Daniel!  It's been a great week here in Logan.  Every week is great.  The last two days have been darkly overcast and tonight it is raining hard.  Raining, not snowing, much too warm.  We have the lights up on the trees.  I thought of you with every branch that I broke.  I remembered how I told you to be careful and not break any of the fledgling branches.  I should be as hard on myself as i was on you!  I appreciated your finese  of putting up the lights.  You were a master!  I bought out the scaffolding and put it up against the tree, that way I had 6 foot platform to walk on.  So... according to my calculations, the lights on occasion reach 14 feet.  Let's see, if you were here, it would be 14 feet, one inch!  I tried to stay single colors, but ran out of matching lights before I ran out of desire to light the tree, so the red tree is all red (Burr Oak), the Debra Oak is green on the bottom, lavender on top with a splash of white.  Christopher says it looks like a rose.  I told him I did that on purpose!  (Actually, just strong the light together, wrapped the tree, then plugged them in to see what I got!).  The original maple (the one stripped of it's branches in its infancy, but held on to be a mighty tree) is blue with a splash of white.  Reminds me of how we frost cookies....  And the Culimnar outside my studio window is green. It's the hardest to light because it is so broad.  Instead of wrapping lights around it like in years past, I crawled inside it and worked the lights up that way.  It is green.   

I wrapped the railing with whatever you call that stuff, some had lights, some didn't so I had to add lights.  Karen don't read this...(one side is doubled, the other single.).  It looks pretty good.  You always made it look fantastic.  

The tripled double batch (yes, x6) was gone the next day.... Let's see, that's 12 trays of cookies... I wonder who ate them all?)  I made another triple double yesterday and today and right now Christopher and his friends are eating,... I mean frosting them as I write.  It's never a good thing when the home/guest frosters ask for glasses of milk while they work... Can only mean one thing.... fewer cookies for the tree.  

Mama did a great job sprucing up the blue spruce.  (Actually a grand fir).  she wrapped ribbon and added some shiny glass bulbs ornaments.  I'll snap a picture and send it so you can apprieciate the work. 

I'm still working with the missionaries in our stake.  Bad bad news, they decided to move the weekly 5pm correlation meeting to 6am every week.  What are they thinking.  I was more vocal than I have ever been in a meeting protesting the time change.  I countered every argument they raised to support it.  But, I was out numbered.  Remember, they are sisters.....so, this morning, after waking up, getting ready and attending a 6:00am meeting that will last the rest of my life, I smiled as we met.  Funny, sister missionaries look a bit different without their makeup!  By the time I saw them 3 hours later at our 9 am meetings, they had spiffied themselves up a bit.  oh blessed sisters....

I think I would have won the battle if the ward missionary who opened last weeks meeting with prayer hadn't said, "Bless us to be supportive ot the sister missionaries in our stake ....) I knew it was over....

Well, after a good nap from 9-10:10, I did what I could to help in various ways.  I found out that I was volunteered by the High Priest group to do a special number at the ward christmas party this friday.  Too bad, i told them, I'm not going!  (As case would have it, I'm working... institute concert weekend.  Both Logan and Ogden...Whoopeeee!)

I recorded a cool concert at the St. Aquinas Catholic Church.  I love the way that building sounds.  I'll have to send it to you.  I know we haven't sent you any music, but this would be acceptable.  Christ centered, classical choir.  Bridgette is in one of the choirs.  It was packed.

Let's see, this week had other events...Jonathon Rose, the phantom of the tabernacle, Recorded on location this week, also.  He is a great guy, auditioning for three big organ programs back east.  I hope he is successful.  He plays beautifully.  

But, I try not to give you a day by day, just a feeling by feeling sense of what is going on.  And, the feeling you should experience is that you are loved, admired, and looked up to. (Yes, we look up to you, not only because of your amazing inherited altitude, but your amazing eternal good natured, good willed being).  We love you.  We pray for you and your experiences every day.  Mostly, I don't want you collecting experiences to be able to count off what you have done, but I want you to be shaped for life by your passion and desire to be the Hands of our Father in Heaven as He reaches out through you to all those who's path you happen to cross.  You can see it in peoples eyes.  As a past temple president once said, 

Eyes

Mind

Heart

Soul

What is in your mind enters through your eyes, then becomes a part of your heart.  Then, once in your heart it becomes part of your soul.  This works for both good and evil.  You control the shutter.  

I always liked adding physical actions to my mantra:  I would touch my eyes with two fingers on my hand.  Say eyes.  I would touch the temples of my head with my fore fingers and say Mind.  I touch my closed fist to my heart and say Heart and I use the sign language gesture for person, two open hands going from up to down for shoul. 

Eyes, mind heart soul.  It works for everything, scritputer study, good works, promptings.  And it works for bad also.  It is who you are.  

 "Your eyes are the window to your soul" had the starting and stopping points right!

I just looked it up and it comes from the bible...

Matthew 6:22-23 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

And another source, though I like the above better.

EYES ARE THE MIRROR (MIRRORS) OF THE SOUL -- "A person's thoughts can be ascertained by looking in his or her eyes. The proverb has been traced back in English to 'Regiment of Life' . But the proverb was known much earlier. Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is quoted as saying, 'Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi' (The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter). The L*tin proverbs, 'Vultus est index animi' or 'Oculus animi index,' are usually translated as 'The face is the index of the mind.' The French say, 'Les yeux sont le miroir de l'dme (The eyes are the mirror of the soul). 'The eyes are the window of the soul' is a variant form of the proverb..." From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

We love you.  We are excited to share this holdiay season through you.  Know that we would have it no other way.  

Have a great week.

pa

John Carter

Thirteen/Eight Productions