In the Grovetown ward we have two sisters who are opening a bakery business together. One asked if we could help her move a large piece of furniture from her home to the business site. Elder Gowans called the young Elders to see if they could assist. We decided to go up just before our Fireside this evening. We got up to the home and found a real nice cabinet that she had painted to look antique. So we put it into the back of a truck that we borrowed and hauled it up to the store. The grand opening of the business is soon and we look forward to going to it.

Then this evening we attended a "No More Strangers" Fireside. This comes around about every 3 or 4 months. The mission president and Stake President come and speak to investigators, new converts, or those who are returning to activity. It is a real nice hour that provides an opportunity for these people to gain a testimony and to have questions answered.

This morning and after noon, we assisted President and Sister Estep and Sister Arnett in laying the new flooring in Sister Arnett's home. We spent nearly 9 hours. Elder Gowans worked on the bedroom floor while  Sister Gowans worked with the ladies in putting in a new back splash. It all looks real nice.

Then later in the evening, we drove into Grovetown and visited the Woodbury family, who just recently moved in. We had a nice visit with them; they have 4 children, the oldest is at BYU-I, then they have a 16, 14, and a 10 year old. Most of all the families we meet are very young families, so it is nice to meet with an older family.

This evening we assisted Sister Arnett in laying new flooring. We finished off a bedroom and will start on the next bedroom tomorrow morning. Good thing we learned how to do such things a year or so ago.

This morning we renewed our service with the Red Cross. It seems we have not been there much lately with all the holidays. Christmas, New Years, Martin Luther King Jr.! We have only been there about every other week for a month. This morning Elder Gowans wheeled out a gentleman who had his fingers operated on, and said that he had just had the fingers on the other hand done a month ago, then he said and I think that it was you that wheeled me out before. Then Elder Gowans remembered, sure enough he had. So we had a good visit while we waited for his wife to come around with the car; Elder Gowans then said to him, "I guess I won't be seeing you here again since you only have two arms!" We had a good laugh over that.

Sister Gowans had the final crown completed on her teeth today. Hopefully there won't be any more needs to have those again.

We have had a nice day. It has been busy like most Sundays are. After the Branch meetings ended and after our linger-longer was over and everyone had left, we headed out to Evans to visit a family we had only met for a short time at Christmas. They had invited us over for dinner; he cooked up his favorite camping dinner of potatoes, ham, onion and so forth and then we ate it with rice. The reason for the rices is that his wife is Japanese. He served a mission in Japan, she served in NYC and they met at BYU in the Book of Mormon class for returned missionaries. They have 4 cute children.

Then we went to visit the James family. He is a Radiologist and recently received deployment orders to Afghanistan. We had visited them twice in the past, but this time we went to give him a predeployment briefing. It helps families prepare more spiritually than other briefings. It focuses on family communication, avoiding temptation, and other spiritual aspects of the separation.

We hope that these briefings are helpful to our troops and their families.

This morning we had another little miracle occur, similar to last week. We received notice of a new soldier coming our way who had just graduated from Basic Training by the name of MacInnes. Again, we had no idea where to find him, so we tried our best educated guess. They said he wasn't there, but we should try the next company over. We went there too, and they said try the one we had just come from. Well, we could see where that was going, but we did go back over that way and low and behold we see the soldier sitting on a bench with a battle buddy. We introduce ourselves and he introduces himself. He seemed happy to meet us. We told him of our services, when and where they are; hopefully he will come out. We sought out another fellow and as we were talking with him we felt the urge to ask him why he had never come out, he said he never had the urge. Well, we invited him again and told him we hoped that he would come out. We were able to meet up with 5 of our soldiers; we didn't seek out too many today, we wanted to find those who we hadn't seen in a while.

This afternoon we took the younger missionaries and went out and met up with George, our great friend who has found great satisfaction in all that we have taught him. We hope he will tell us soon when he would like to be baptized; he stated that he does have a testimony, he just wants to learn a little more.

This evening we met the Kilcullen family. We had a nice visit with them. He is not a member, she is. Both were very nice. He supports her church attendance and will go with her most every week. The attend the Harlem ward. Then we drove to the Post and met the Campbell family. The younger missionaries helped us move them in about 2 weeks ago. We had a very enjoyable visit with them, in fact, we learned that back in the early 2000s they lived just to the east of us in the Chelsie Park area.

We had a real fine Institute class this evening. Brother Deroung came and joined us. We hope that he had a good spiritual experience. We will find out tomorrow when we see him again. Our class covered the Law of Witnesses and so we built it around the 3 and 8 witnesses to the Book of Mormon and discussed along with it some of the history involved in the call of the witnesses by our Father in Heaven.

This afternoon we took the young missionaries out to visit a lady named Catherine. She has been living with her daughter and 4 children for the past 10 months or so while her husband is deployed. Also, living there is her aged mother who is on her last weeks of life. She has been the primary care giver of her mother, her grandmother and father over the past 20 years; now only her mother remains alive. At the same time, she  has been caring for her grandchildren so mom can work, she is army, too. While we visited, she expressed to us that just that day she knew she had had enough. She no longer as the strength and stamina to care for her mother so she called her case worker and they will arrange to place her in a nursing home. She receives no support from her siblings. We were there, we learned, to give her comfort and solace about her decision. She was able to talk for nearly an hour and off load all her feelings. Sometimes it is just good to sit and be a good listener.

This evening we visited the Patchett family; a new family who has recently moved into the ward. He was one of our AIT students and was assigned here at Fort Gordon. After visiting with them we dropped in on the Ledbetter family, he is in the Navy and we learned that he will deploy again in July. Also while there, we learned that a family who we had been looking for lives right next door. We walked over and knocked on the door, but unfortunately no one was home. At least we know where they are. After our attempt there, we went to visit Brother DeLong. He is a convert to the church a few years back, but had become less active in his attendance. He is a wonderful, loving fellow. We had the opportunity to present our Rock lesson to him. Someday wewill show it to all our faithful readers. We had a nice visit and was able to help him with some questions about the Priesthood and help him get on line to buy some new scriptures and just have a good visit.

This evening we had wonderful visits with Sean Sullivan, the young man who called and asked for a visit because he wants to get back active in the church. We left him with a message to dive back into the scriptures and to be prayerful everyday; we also told him that we looked forward to seeing him at church and he said, "Sure thing, 9 am". 

The we went and had a real nice visit with George. He is a real fine fellow, we love visiting him; he is one who has truly been prepared to hear the message of the gospel. We left him the challenge to read Enos after we discussed with him a couple of verses out of the 12th chapter of Ether. 

Then we went on to see the Slack family. Another great family whom we love. Sister Slack is a beautiful Polynesian lady and Brother Slack, as far as we know is  not a member, but a wonderful fellow who is a great husband to Marie. We made this a home teaching visit until we can find out who their home teachers really are. 

Afterwards, we stopped off at the Post Hospital to give a fellow a blessing who is in the ICU. President Estep and I had given him a blessing about a month ago, but his condition has worsened. He looked very bad. Elder Dixon and I administered to him and then left; we will have to keep an eye on him. 

This morning we took a little road trip out to Edgefield, SC. It is also called the Town of 10 Governors. We walked up and down several roads looking at the old southern mansions and drove by others. We visited some shops and had lunch at a cute little place called, "Chief Bob's Cafe". It was very tasty, very well done.

We also visited the National Wild Turkey Federation. 

 The Discovery Center

 Some great old homes, several were for sale.

 Chief Bob's Cafe

 The Magnolia Dale

 A couple of photos from the National Wild Turkey Federation

Today has been a lighter day than normal. We attended our DDM this morning and then came home to work on Institute class, which by the way, will be built around the Law of Witnesses and the witnesses to the Book of Mormon.

This evening Elder Gowans attended his Branch Presidency meeting and then went in to the Augusta building to help map the homes of the members of the Church in the Grovetown ward. We have become very familiar with where all our military members live and was able to point out where on the map they reside.

 We took a nice little hike today with Brother Lord who is here TDY. He has a dog and is taking care of a friend's dog; his friend's dog always has to have this funny orange ball with him; just like a child who always has to have his favorite toy with him.

 Our friend's dog's name is Cody. He is just a pup, a 9 month old pup.

This morning we inspected the missionary apartments. We traveled to Grovetown, Waynesboro and Harlem. We found them all to be in pretty good shape.

We had several new students show up at church today. We were so pleased to see these new soldiers who made the effort to come out; one even enlisted a nonmember battle buddy to come out with him, who also willingly sat down with the missionaries to learn a little more about the church. We love these young men and are grateful for their faithfulness.

We love Saturdays! They are so full of wonderful achievements! They are always testimony building days; by the end of the day we know Heavenly Father has been with us, blessed us and inspired us in all our activities.

This morning we began our normal visit of our AIT students. The first couple of barracks we visited we didn't have any success in finding who we were looking for. We looked for Sister Lane, she was not in her room, we looked for Brother Jessop, but he was gone also. The thought came to us, "We are not going to have a successful day". Then the thought came saying, "Keep going, you are out and about, good things always happen when you are out!" So on we went. Immediately we began to have success in finding the students we went to see. On Friday night we received an email stating that we had two new students who would be arriving today, but there was not any information on where to contact them. So we decided that we would try the 551st BTL. We walked over to B Company, walked in the door and there was a new group of new students standing at the CQ's desk.We looked at one name tag and read, "Bailey", that was one of the new soldiers we were looking for. Then we looked again and read, "Edwards", that was the other new soldier we were looking for. We said, Hey Private Bailey, hey Private Edwards, we came looking for you two", so they walked over and we introduced ourselves and gave them our short explanation of who we are, where and what time church is, invited them to come and welcomed them to Fort Gordon. Quite often, we have such experiences where you know that Heavenly Father has led us to find those who need to be found. In one company, we found all 4 of our LDS soldiers who are billeted there. By the end of the morning, we spoke and visited with 13 of our soldiers. We even found Sister Lane on her way back from chow and Brother Jessop after his morning formation.

At that point we left the Post and headed down to pick up our younger missionaries. We took them to visit two investigators who are on date to be baptized. We found them at home, gave them encouragement, left them with a thought and a prayer and went on to find some other folks. At that point, one of the Elders, received a text message from a less active member that none of us had ever heard of. His name is Sean Sullivan. He asked us to come visit him, left his address and so after lunch, we went and looked him up. We found him at home and had a nice visit with him. Invited him out to church and then said our goodbyes. It was his birthday that day and he had plans to go out. We then left to go visit another lady who had been studying the gospel at one time, but had been dropped. We found her home, she invited us in and we had a nice visit with her; she even scheduled a return appointment with the young missionaries.

We had a real nice dinner appointment with the Norris family and from there we went to the church for our FRG. Twelve of our sisters came from throughout the stake. Not a great turn out, but an enthusiastic one. They all agreed to bring another friend out with them next month. This was a real good meeting from which a good nucleus will form that will grow and envelop many more sisters.

It has been a wonderful day!

We had a wonderful Institute class this evening; the Spirit was very strong and taught us much as we all had the opportunity to share our testimonies of the gospel with each other. We studied D&C 3 and 10 this evening and was able to use these sections to learn how the adversary tempts, cheats and deceives us in order to destroy our lives. Everyone seemed to be well edified.

We received our apartment inspection assignments and found out we will need to drive all the way over to Barnwell, SC to inspect one apartment. It is over an hour drive. Oh well, all for the good.

Early this afternoon, we received a phone call from Sister Holm asking if we could go up to Aiken and visit an Elder who was sick with food poisoning. The call came just at the right time because we had just finished up the laundry. So we got dressed and out the door we went. We found the two missionaries at home, one well and one not so well. He was in bed; he talked to us a little and we asked him a few questions about what was going on and what he was feeling. We then told him we would go buy some things to help; Gatorade, Sprite, broth, and soup. We returned it to the missionaries and when we got back the ill Elder was not responding to us at all. Elder Gowans felt that there was more wrong with this young man than just food poisoning. So later when we were able to get back in contact with Sister Holm she informed us that they had heard from another missionary in the area that he had not been doing the things he should. So we are sure that is true after what Elder Gowans had felt while there.

After our visit with the two missionaries we dropped in on Sister Ahlers; her husband is away for training before his deployment. We had a chance to visit with her for a while, then gave her a blessing, (she is 6 months pregnant) and then left. We were glad that we were able to see her for a few minutes.

This evening Sister Gowans attended Relief Society and Elder Gowans took our young missionaries out to visit and find several people. We had just about struck out when finally we began to have success in finding people at home.

Currently the Post Library is undergoing some major renovations, so our service time there is kind of limited. We were able to go in and serve today amidst the noise and hustle and bustle of many workers doing many things. For now we will be on phone standby, if they think we will be able to get some things done, then they will call us in.

This evening we continued our Home Teaching of Branch members. We visited Brother and Sister Halford who serves as the 2nd councilor if I am not mistaken. We visited for about 50 minutes and then went up and visited a fairly new family in the Grovetown Ward, the Andrew Johnson family. He is a linguist like so many other of our members here in the area. At Fort Gordon there is an NSA group, which employs thousands of linguists, analysts and so forth. They have a lovely family, 2 children and have lived in the area since September. They hope to return to Arizona in about 2 years where they plan on retiring.

Afterward we dropped in on the Stock family to make sure they were doing all right. They are the ones who just moved into a new home and so we have helped them in the moving process with packing, moving, cleaning and so forth. We are so happy to be able to serve them.

This morning we made another visit to the dentist's office to have a second crown started on Sister Gowans. We were there about 2 1/2 hours. Elder Gowans got a lot of reading done in the new Lorenzo Snow book.

Afterwards we headed right into Harlem to attend our weekly DDM. We had a nice short meeting, it only went for an hour.

From there we went home and got a bite of lunch and then over to Sister Stock's house to help her clean after the move. We didn't find her at the old home, but the door was open so we helped ourselves. Elder Gowans went out and did the desired yard work that she wanted done and Sister Gowans started cleaning the kitchen. After Elder Gowans finished he went to work in the kitchen with Sister Gowans and they got in nearly all ready for inspection. From their we washed windows, cleaned bathrooms and so forth. We spent about 3 hours helping her out. Hopefully she will appreciate all that we did for her today. Of course, she doesn't know it was us, which is the best thing. So she will just have to be curious.

Elder Gowans attended branch presidency meeting this evening, he is getting better at running the agenda. The meeting went just 65 minutes.

We are excited to hear that Eric will be going to Africa with his work to help solve some issues there. What a great opportunity for him to go there and put his great problem solving skills to work.

A rather quiet day today. We did our Red Cross service this morning and then came home and worked on our Institute lesson most of the afternoon. We have nearly all planned out. It will cover D & C 3 and 10, plus a few verses out of other books of scripture.

We had two new troops come out to church before, who had not as yet come out. We visited both of them last night. It often takes some coordination to get everyone there, but it is certainly worth the time and effort to see these young men come to church.

Later in the day, Sister Murray, whose garbage disposer we removed and replaced brought us dinner of chicken pot pie, and banana bread, it was most delicious. Thank you Sister Murray!

Afterward, Elder Gowans attended the last Saints at War meeting. With very little participation, we decided that we need to rename it and give this meeting a new purpose and a new focus. So Brother Foster, Brother Creswell and Elder Gowans discussed the issue for about an hour and a half to work out some possible solutions. One thing that we all felt needed to be done was to ensure that the Stake organized a military relations committee to meet the particular needs of the military families in the stake. We felt it was a very successful discussion.

We have had a warm, muggy day; the temperature was probably in the 80s. Can you believe it, an 80 degree day on January 12. This morning Elder Gowans spent 3 hours at Sister Sock's home helping, with others, load up the moving van and taking their household goods to their new home. When he left at noon, they were working on the second load. He hated to have to leave them at that time, but we had appointments all afternoon long.

At 2 pm we visited the Escobido family. They were all baptized a while back, but then after they moved out here from Arizona they didn't put attending church on their list of priorities and so we have been visiting  them with the young Elders and bringing them back into activity. We have enjoyed our visits with them immensely. We have been discussing with them the Book of Mormon and how it is a record of their ancestry. We also left them with a copy of Elder Gowans' book to help them realize the great promises the Lord has given us.

Afterward we attended our weekly mission correlation meeting and from their we went to visit the Norris family. From their we went to visit George a great investigator who has been prepared by our Father in Heaven through the ministry of the Holy Ghost to hear and accept the gospel. The church teaches everything he has been looking for, all the truths that he has wondered about he has found answers to here. Where we came from, why we are here, where we are going after life, he has found fascinating and has answered so many questions.

After our visit with George, we went up to post to find and visit our troops since we were not able to do it this morning. We found all who we were looking for! They have all committed to coming to church and one was even engaged while home during Christmas. Elder Gowans, in order to persuade them to come out set up interviews for them with President Estep. It has been another wonderful day!

This morning we went over to Sister Stock's home and helped her pack up her kitchen to get ready to  move to another home within our ward boundaries. She had her children are without their dad/husband who is deployed with his unit to far away places. We assisted her for about 3 1/2 hours; we also helped her in the bedroom closet pack a few things up and in the garage. She is a sweet lady who deserves the best. We will help her load up the truck tomorrow.

This evening we held our weekly institute class teaching from D&C 1 with a theme of listening to the warnings of the Lord and preparing ourselves for the second coming of Christ.

Today we went up to the Murray's residence and removed and replaced the Garbage Disposer. It took just an hour. At first we thought it was going to be a terrible process as the rings which attach the disposer unit to the sink were completely rusted. However, with a little encouragement from a good, solid hammer we soon got them moving and down came the disposer. The next task was to remove the attachment ring from the sink fitting. We soon got that off too. The new unit went right in its place without much of a problem. I felt that Heavenly Father guided our actions and helped us move right along so we could get in and out without disrupting things to bad.

Sister Gowans is in the sleep clinic this evening. Hopefully she will sleep well and all the tests will come back negative.

This has been an excellently busy day! We had our first trip back to the Post Library today since the 12th of December. We resumed what has become our normal duties of inventory and putting back in order the children's reading room. Those books get so out of order! It is incredible. We don't know if it is the children or the parents, but if you don't keep at it every week, it gets to be quite a mess.

After our duties at the library we went to Home Teach Kayla Westbrook, a wonderful young lady who has such enthusiasm and love for the gospel. She attends everything she can. She is scheduled to receive her Patriarchal Blessing in to about 10 days. She is very excited. As we visited with her, we explained the Home Teaching program to her, and talked of the importance of having Home Teachers.

This evening, we went and picked up the Elders and took them to an appointment, but they had bugged out on us. So we drove up to the error where our 6:30 appointment was to be and felt impressed to go look up a less active member of the church. We found him home! We had a great discussion with him and he was so happy that we came out to pay him a visit. He committed to coming to church on Sunday and to begin reading and studying the Book of Mormon and to pray often.

We left there to go to our 6:30 appointment, George! What a great fellow. When we went in we talked about his experience at church last Sunday. We rehearsed with him what he learned in the Gospel Principles class and then the missionaries began to teach him about the commandments of God. When we began teaching him about the Word of Wisdom, he said that he had read about it and that he had started living it already. He felt that was a powerful witness that he would read about it, commit himself to living it and then see that we came with that message in mind. He stated that he had felt the peaceful feelings of the Spirit when  he read and prayed about the Book of Mormon. So as the last commandment we taught him of was the commandment to be baptized. He accepted the challenge to work toward that and had no objections to being baptized. It was an incredibly power meeting with him. He has truly been prepared to receive the gospel.

The final family we went to see was the Garcia family. The children have all been baptized, but he dad and step mom have not. They are not married, but are waiting on the time when they can be so they, too, can be baptized. We left them with a little thought of the importance of following the Word of God and challenged them to read from the Book of Mormon every day. The accepted that challenge. It has really been a wonderful day!

Today has been a very long day. It began this morning at 0500! We arose, showered, ate breakfast and then drove up to North Augusta to the Mitton home where we had the opportunity to teach two young ladies their seminary lesson. It covered Acts 3-5. We covered the principle of healing and how it is accomplished through faith and priesthood power. We also discussed how this tremendous miracle helped spread the gospel and make an opportunity for the leaders of the Jews to hear the word and the testimony of Peter and John.

After the lesson, Elder Gowans gave Sister Mitton a blessing to assist her in her continuing battles of life.

From there we picked up Elder and Sister Berry and together we drove up to Columbia to attend our quarterly couples conference. As always we had an enjoyable experience. We discussed many of the problems and concerns couples encounter while serving their missions and some of the solutions that others have used to over come them.

We are thankful to hear that our sister-in-law, Sharon Gowans, is doing well after the discovery of a brain tumor. She will always be in our prayers.

 After the conference ended, we headed over to the mission home for a great dinner.

 A table for six, please!

 The hot chocolate bar.

 Our MTC friends, Elder and Sister Wakefield, they are at Shaw AFB

 Elder and Sister Berry

 Hmmm, who could this be?

 President and Sister Holm

Just a quick note for tonight, as it is getting late and we had a late night last night and we will be getting up very early tomorrow to go teach a seminary class. We returned to our duties with the Red Cross today. For the last two Mondays being Family Days we the hospital was not open for normal business. This evening we home taught 3 of our soldiers who are either here permanent party or here TDY. Since we are a Branch our members need to be Home Taught, so we have taken that duty upon ourselves to Home Teach the entire Branch until otherwise assigned. They are all military members, so it is in the line of duty any way.

Back in the saddle again! We had a good group of soldiers at Church. Although we did have one sad experience. One of our soldiers was not allowed to come with us; the Platoon Sargent would not allow him to come because he did not have one of their own as a battle buddy. He was in tears, he wanted to go to church so badly. We told him we would work out a solution. We have elevated it up to the Chaplains.

We met a sweet sister and her family this evening. She has 3 little girls, dad is deployed and will be gone a year. We certainly hope she will take us up on our offers to be of assistance in any way we can. These dear sweet sisters, they are so strong, brave, and true!

We have had a real fine day today. As stated earlier, our soldiers are all back in town. We heard one Platoon Sargent say, "Thank goodness they are all back safe". We suppose from that remark, that in the past they have had some accidents and deaths over the holidays; so we suppose that nothing like that happened this year. We got out to post a little after 0800 this morning and started off on the eastern most end of the long row of barracks and worked our way west. We met 3 of 4 of our newly arrived soldiers, the fourth one we found out where he resides, but he had checked out. We were able to find most of our soldiers and visit with them for a few minutes, see how there Christmas went and welcome them back. Then we went over to the 73rd ORD BTL and met up with 3 of the 5 of our soldiers there. So it was a very successful morning.

We then dashed home, ate lunch and left to go pick up the Elders for our afternoon appointments with them. We started off visiting the Escobido family. We had a real nice visit with them and had the opportunity to talk about the Book of Mormon, its purpose, its testimony of the Savior and so forth. We had a good Spirit there; we believe they came to a real fine understanding of the little lesson we gave them.

From there we went to visit a very old fella (64), 64 may not be too old, but his body looked as if it had seen 84 years. He told us some real interesting stories; one was about a son he never knew he had. The two of them just happened to meet by chance at an H&R Block office. Anyway, we talked for about an hour and then moved on to the next appointment. The man, Johnie, was not there, but another fellow was. We told him we were missionaries and asked him if he had a copy of the Book of Mormon, he said no, so we gave him a copy. He began to read it as we were leaving.

Our last appointment of the day was with George. The young missionaries had met with him once when they told us about him. We asked if we could come with them to teach him the next time. Well, the next time just about fell through, but miraculously, it pulled through. So we met with him and thereafter the missionaries, both, were transferred; that left us to bridge the gap. Our new Elders did a great job teaching him tonight and he committed to reading the Book Of Mormon, praying about it and coming to church tomorrow. It was an incredibly good meeting.

The last thing we did was take fliers of our next FRG around to all the missionary apartments to give to the military families in their wards. It has been a great and productive day! We love days like this!

This evening we began our study of the Doctrine and Covenants in Institute. Brothers Child and Miller were our soldiers who came out. Hopefully, in the future, we will have more attend. We left each attendee with a challenge to read and study each week so they could come prepared to do as the commandment teaches in 88:118, to teach one another the doctrine. Institute is very enjoyable and if more soldiers would come out they would see, as well, how enjoyable it would be for them.

In preparation for our next Family Resource Group meeting, we made up some fliers and then took them to Sister Fordham to approve, unfortunately she was not at home, but we left a copy of them on her door step. She volunteered to be president of the FRG. Next we went to see the Stocks, but she wasn't home either. After that we went to see Sister Scroggins, we found her home and had a nice visit with her. Her youngest son had had a very bad rash so she and sister Gowans had fun talking all sorts of medical stuff together. From there we went to our Missionary Correlation meeting. That is about it for the day!

This morning we drove two of our young missionaries up to Irmo, SC for transfers. We had an enjoyable drive with them. We were sorry to see them go, they have only been here a short time, but the Lord has other things in mind for them. After we returned we went to meet our new missionary who was transferred in. He is a nice young man, Elder Dixon. They will be without a car to cover their very large area, so we told them we would help and support them in any way we can. So we drove them to our apartment, feed them dinner and then went out to an appointment, unfortunately the appointment was not at home. So we dropped the Elders off at their apartment and we drove home. Elder Gowans felt impressed to call the Murray family, he is deploying very soon. They wanted us to come and assist in giving him a blessing before his departure. It was nice to be with the family on this special evening. We were able to talk and to visit for a while. We know  Heavenly Father will be with them.

This has been a reinvigorating day! This afternoon we had the opportunity to Skype with many family members while they attended the Gowans Family Christmas party. Most everyone was there. The only family not there was Jacob and family and Becky and family, but we were able to Skype with Becky and family earlier today. It was nice to talk and see them at the same time; of course mom and dad, being the oldest are always the most amazed. We were surprised, however to learn that many of the younger ones had never Skyped before.

After our Skype session was complete, we readied ourselves to go pick up the Elders and take them to appointments that had been arranged for tonight. While we were together we obtained all their information on all their current investigators. We will help bridge the gap from the time our Elders are transferred to the time we get new missionaries in town. We will be doing much of teaching over the next month or so depending on what happens in the next few days.

We had a real nice visit with a less active family, the Escobidos and then one with George who had his second lesson today. He seems to be very excited about what he is learning, and so we should all be excited about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation.