This has been a wonderful Easter Sunday. This morning we started out with our weekly missionary correlation meeting with the Augusta ward. Even though it started a half an hour late it was a good and informative meeting. From there we went home until it was time to go to the Post for our Branch services. Over the past couple of weeks, we have received several new soldiers, most of them are returned missionaries, so we hope that they will be a blessing to our Branch by way of their support of our functions. We have been able to meet most of them, we are still missing a couple. Elder Gowans went and picked up one of the soldiers today who was without a Battle Buddy, his name is Brother Buck, a very nice fellow.

Elder Gowans spoke in sacrament meeting, of course, on the topic of the Resurrection and the atonement. It went very well. At the beginning of the meeting, we only had about 6 people in the congregation, but over the next 5 minutes or so we had nearly 15 people come in. So we ended up with a good group.

This evening we went out and met a new soldier who had just come in, Brother Smith; then we went and met  with the Wooley family, Brother Woodley, Sister Stock and her family and then we ended up with the Rockhill family who we have been working with, helping them come back into activity. This evening we discussed with them the commandments. One of the important things that we wanted to emphasize is found in D&C 20:7. Since they are already members and are already very aware of many of the commandments, we wanted to make sure they understood the purpose of commandments. The scripture reference helps us understand that commandments are given to inspire us; as we all know, commandments will usually come with a promise or a promised blessing. The promises and the blessings are given to inspire. For example, the sacrament prayers, the promises in the Word of Wisdom and so forth. Many people view commandments as restrictive, or binding, but we know they are also given to protect us as well as inspire us.

Here are some more photos of our little trip:

 The Aiken-Rhett House: In some of the homes it was forbidden to take photos, this was one of them. So all the photos are of the exterior.

 This is the kitchen building; the upper floor was the slave quarters. In most of these homes, the kitchen was always detached so as to prevent burning the house down if ever there was a fire in the kitchen.

 The back of the home.

 The stables.

 The backyard, back beyond the kitchen, slave quarters and the stables.

The back of the home from the back yard.