Kristal and Adam to Wed

     Another mission story.  Kristal Smout and Christina Johnson (now Forster) were FTM companions.  Christina recently introduced Kristal to Christina's husband's good friend, Adam.  The rest is history.

Kristal and Adam are getting married on May 10th in the Oqurrih Mountain Temple.  Kristal is pursuing a second BA degree in Social Studies/Secondary Education.  Her husband is working towards certification to become a combat choreographer and instructor.

The Pecks Complete Another Mission

Thanks and we wish you a Happy Easter. We are busy here with the Easter Pageant 2 weeks before Easter. There were over 10,000 people here last night and many of them come into the Visitor Center. We have 20 young sister missionaries greeting the people when they come into the center and they do a terrific job.

We get a lot of referrals etc. It is so much fun visiting with the people who come into the Center and this time of the year we have a lot of winter visitors who are not members and feel the spirit and come back and send their friends to come to the center. They love to see the Christus and want to know more about the church. We loved General Conference and all the talks were just what we needed. The Gospel is true and so grateful for the Savior and all that He did for us.

Well our mission end tomorrow night after the pageant and it is so scary and sad. We will go on vacation then maybe go on another mission.

Leslie & Martina Peck

A House for the Forsters

Christina Johnson Forster finally has some news worth sharing! Josh and I are in the middle of buying a house! We are so excited about this because we have yet to reach two years of marriage and are already getting a house! We are in the underwriting stage and should know sometime this week when we can actually close. It's a one floor, three bedroom house. Small, but a great starter home!

Ricardo (Ed) Herrera to Marry Audelia (Auds) Arroyo

Boy has life been fun these past 2+ years. Well for starters I returned home and my Bishop called me to be the Ward Mission Leader which has been the calling I have served in for over 2 years now. No breaks from Missionary work, and it's been great working with these young men, mostly because most of my friends are not members of the church, so they have been able to keep me from regressing from all that I learnereceived my Associates in Liberal Arts with an emphasis on Behavioral Science. Now I've decided to take a small break from school and after a year off, I don't want to go back. But I must. I've spent the past 2 years working a Chase bank and have made a small success in the banker role. A major reason for my break from school was to focus on music again. I was unable to get most of my former bandmates back together due to the fact that most of them had moved out of the state, so I decided to really master the art of recording and music production instead. I am currently producing for 2 local bands as well as working my own recordings and music. In fact, a friend and I have an up and coming album release on iTunes later this summer, which we are both very excited about. I guess the biggest blessing that the mission brought me was the friendship of missionaries I served around. Thanks to knowing Sister Para (Now married to the keyboardists for whom I produce for his band) I was able to meet a beautiful girl(who is shorter than me, which is always a tricky thing to find) whom I was able to take to the temple a few weeks ago to receive her endowments and will be taking to the Newport Beach Temple in August to be married for time and for all eternity! She really is a sweet woman and I'm extremely blessed to have her keep me on a high spiritual plane. Well that's really about all that I have to report on as far as right now goes.

KristiLyn Jensen and Clarke Wilkinson to Wed in June

KristiLyn Jensen and Clarke Wilkinson are planning their marriage date for June in the Salt Lake Temple. A special note of explanation is due here. While serving in the mission field, KristiLyn (Sister Jensen) was a companion to Aubrey (Sister Wilkinson). After attending our mission reunion last October, Aubrey convinced KristiLyn that she and her brother, Clarke, should meet. The rest is history.

President and Sister Colton Letter to FTM Missionaries

1 April 2012

Dear Returned Missionaries of the FTM,

Happy Easter to each of you. We hope that spring finds you well and happy and progressing in your lives. We miss you!

April Conference is just over and we are replenished once again with the love of the Savior. We are grateful for His guidance to us through the prophet and apostles and other church leaders. Amazing as it is, the spirit found us even as we sat in our own home and viewed the proceeding of conference. We fill buoyed up and reinvigorated to stand as a witness for Jesus Christ in these latter days.

We want you to know that during the conference, we thought of you. In the Saturday afternoon session, the music was provided by the choir of missionaries from the MTC. As they sang “Call to Serve”, we couldn’t help but think how kind you were to indulge President Colton in his desire to see you march out of the building from zone conference singing that song on the way “to find”. The song that really touched our hearts was “Praise to the Man”. Literally, we sat with tears in our eyes as we remembered singing that glorious hymn to the restoration with you. It will forever remind us of you.

It is a transcendent joy to reflect back to the days when every six weeks a new group of faithful missionaries arrived in the field not really knowing what to expect other than you were willing to serve. It was amazing to witness up close the first night in the mission home and then the last night in the mission home. With faithful service came the blessing of testimony and an expanded capacity to love. We saw the change in you.

Please fill free to send any information about your lives for me to post on the blog. We know good things are happening for you and we would like to share it. Remember, for a variety of reasons we are among the few who do not use Facebook. We would like to use the blog for an additional exchange of information. Let us hear from you.

Mark your calendar now: FTM Mission Reunion, Friday, October 5^th, 2012

More information to follow.

We continue to find joy and happiness in life and are grateful for the gospel in helping us find meaning in the ups and downs and the joys and the challenges of life. We are richly blessed.

With our love we remain,

President and Sister Colton

Colton Life

This is what we mainly do these days. Our grandchildren are growing up!

Shauna Stewart and Ryan Nokes to Marry

Shauna Stewart and Ryan Nokes have set the date of April 28, 2012 to marry in the Washington DC Temple. They will make their home in the Washington, DC area. This is our good fortune (that is the Coltons) in that we will, relatively speaking, be their neighbors.