Elder Starr - welcoming the Trek Leaders for training.  He looks like a missionary and a Wyoming Cowboy all rolled into one.  Love the Stetson.

Our friend - a mother antelope welcoming us back right in our back yard.  They seem so gentle and tame and just know that we are here and that we are good neighbors.

Of course you know we must have our first snow storm after getting settled in our spot at Missionary Village.  The bird feeder - a gift from Brent's family - got a good dusting and the birds had to stay away for a few days.  It is a beautiful sight to see the snow blanketing all the prairie and having the antelope grazing through the snow.

Upon our arrival at Missionary Village we found a welcome sign made by the "Polar Bear" missionaries to welcome us back "HOME".  It was a great sight with flags waving and lots of love to go around.  We miss our home in Mesa and our family but love being here with all the other missionaries on our assignments.

I brought a bunch of cut squares from the Martin's Cove Humanitarian Center so we could sew them together for quilts.  Erin took some and made them into the right size for "Wounded Warrior" projects and sewed them together for her mutual project.  When we arrived back in Wyoming they were thrilled with her design and the good work she put into her project to make our project a success.  Thank you so much

This is how we looked last year and this year.  Not much has changed except we know more about what we are doing this year and feel a little more confident and yet so humbled by the new missionaries and their eagerness to learn and serve.

Just want to post that we are here in Wyoming again - beginning the 2012 summer season for another six months.  So far it has been a little different than in 2011.  We haven't had time to take nearly as many pictures so I will post those later.  Second the weather has been really, really different.  We are actually experiencing spring weather and not so much rain and snow.  This can be a good a bad thing - the area is so terribly dry that we are all drying out and have to have the vaporizer running at night.  We had so much rain last year we didn't need to water our little lawn until June - however now it looks really dead so we have started to water our little patch. 
We have a fantastic set of new missionaries who are so eager and talented.  Our little Branch Choir has 61 people in it.  Doubt that any ward can match that. 
Sister Starr is busy working on scheduling the weekly assignments for missionaries and soon we will train new missionaries at the Base Post and then the Trekkers will begin coming.  The time flies by so quickly here that we hardly get time to turn around each day.
Love serving - and we continue to learn new things each day.
Today Sister Starr took a young man and his mother from Brazil through the Visitor's center and out on the trail.  It was a really wonderful experience.
Elder Starr has been working on work crew a lot and getting the winter out of everywhere so the summer schedule can arrive.  He will train two couples assigned to us for Base Post and then help others learn their protocol on the rovers.
Thanks so much to everyone for your love and support.  I will include photos next time.  The animals are out - the cows are calving and soon the antelope will have their babies.  It has  been so warm that the snakes have come out already.
We think of everyone so often and send our love.