What an interesting day this has been. It began at the Library at 0800. We were able to complete the book inventory in the young adult and children's section today. We were zipping right along. After the library we had our monthly meeting with all the chaplains and "faith groups" who work out here on the Post. It is always interesting to see what everyone is doing. After our meeting ended, we headed home for supper and then right back out on the road again to see a Sister whose husband just left for Kuwait. A very short notice deployment. He did not have time to fix their lawn mower, so she asked if we could come up and take a look. We noticed that the circular undercarriage was bent so we asked her if she had a hammer. She did not. So we looked around the yard for a good rock, found one, and with the rock we reset it and found that the blade would move fine after that. We started the mower and it worked just fine. Tomorrow Elder Gowans will go back up and mow her lawn for her; we also learned that she is expecting their first baby, in about 8 months. After we visited with her we went to visit a fellow who has been out here to school for 7 months! So he is ready to go home, he has 3 weeks left. His family lives in Arizona where his follow on assignment will be. A very nice fellow! He has a great testimony and by the sound of it a great wife and lovely children. Just after we got home Elder Berry and Elder Gowans drove back up to the base to give our still sick soldier another blessing. He was promised that things would be resolved in a matter of days.

It is Monday, the beginning of a brand new week! As always, you can find us at the Post Hospital taking care of our Red Cross service. Elder Gowans' job, as you may recall, is to transport patients throughout the hospital; today however he didn't have any calls. When he has nothing to do and while he is waiting, he has been reading Jesus The Christ, by Talmage. He has read close to 300 pages of the over 700 pages in the book. This is probably the second time he has read it. Sister Gowans finished early inputting patient comments into the computer, so we both left a little early today.

We worked on Friday's Institute class, then we drove over to Grovetown to visit a lady whose husband just deployed, but unfortunately she was not at home. We will try again tomorrow when we are out that way. We  wish we had her phone number. We have her husband's, but that won't do us any good any more.

One of our greatest challenges is getting our young troops to church. So many of them are out on their own for the first time so they have to try their new freedoms; one of the first things that some do is decide that church attendance just isn't that important, or it becomes of secondary importance, or they use army excuses not to go. There is so much temptation and pressure from their buddies that many decide to leave church behind. Some will not even answer or return calls. It is very difficult. This is our task, this is our challenge and hopefully over the next 20 months we will be able to make a difference in a few lives. We love them and hopefully they will be able to sense that love and respond positively.

This has been a fine Sabbath Day. We attended our normal meetings and while at the Grovetown ward, the Spirit spoke several times prompting us to go meet some folks that we had not seen before. The first one was a young lady who we had been trying to find. Up to this point we had never seen her at Sacrament meeting; that does not mean she was not there, but rather we simply had not seen her before. Then later we introduced ourselves to another family and come to find out he is military and a brother to another young man we had been trying to find. They told us we could come by in the week and they would make sure that little brother would be there. The Spirit has helped us, over and over again, find the people we are looking for. We see this on our Saturday morning visits too. The Lord's hand is definitely in the work, we feel His presence, His strength and guidance all the time. Elder Gowans was called upon to give two blessings today while at the serviceman's group. There are a lot of people with deep personal struggles, yet they stay true to their covenants.

We visited our new friend up at Doctor's Hospital again today and then we went from there to an appointment to meet a new family in the ward. We had a great visit with them. Come to find out they are both converts and are trying real hard to stay true.

This has been another great Saturday. As our habit has been for the past month, we head up to the barracks to visit our AIT student soldiers. Hopefully you all know what AIT stands for by by now. (Advanced Individual Training) We were able to find two of our new students and visit with them. We also were able to locate another student, but were unable to meet him as he had signed out. We also met one of our student's wife. She move out from Bountiful, UT to join her husband; as soon as he get permission to move off Post he will do so, in the meantime she has to live alone in their new apartment. We met several of our current students and had an opportunity to visit with them for a few minutes.

This evening we met two families, one of which attends a ward that we will soon be working in so we can meet and befriend the military families who live within its boundaries. We have nearly completed meeting all the military families who live in the Grovetown ward. We are now beginning to branch out and meet the families who live in the other wards of the stake. We have met around 50 families in the Grovetown ward alone. The remaining wards in the stake will have only a handful of military families who live within their boundaries.

This morning we got a call from our troop who was in the ER, again. We dashed out to the hospital and found him being treated by the doctor. More chest pains. They have finally determined that it is not his heart, but rather it is something with the muscle and skeletal system in the chest. He will need to go visit another doctor in the near future to make a final determination of what it could be.

We also visited our new friend up at Doctor's hospital. He underwent skin graft surgery yesterday; they took skin of his upper right leg to graft onto his right arm. His leg was uncovered so you could see the entire area where they took the graft; it looked terribly sore. He was in pain both in the arm and the leg. I cannot imagine the pain he must be experiencing. We did not stay long as he was also very tired. We left from there to go pick up two of our missionaries and take them to our correlation meeting with our new ward mission leader. After that we left for Institute.

Elder Gowans had arranged to mow a sister's lawn today, her husband is away for 6 months of training. Unfortunately it was over 100 degrees. He drank over 7 pints of water in the two hours he worked on the yard and was soaked from head to toe. Fortunately in this heat the lawn won't grow to rapidly so it may be two weeks before he will need to mow again. 

We learned today that one of our army families, the husband, will be deployed this week; it came up very short notice. They have only been married 1 month. We will be checking in on her frequently to ensure she is doing well. 

One of our AIT troops went to the ER today with chest pains and shortness of breath. He is only 18 years old. We went up and gave him a blessing; he is home now confined to quarters for 24 hours. 

We visited two wonderful families this evening. It is great to see the gospel in action in families who try their best to live the gospel. One fellow had served his mission in the Mississippi Jackson Mission; he new many of the same people we knew. It is a small world. 

Today has been a interesting day, one where a single incident changes the entire day. We had on our scheduled this morning our District Development Meeting (DDM). We arrived at the church early so Sister Gowans could practice the piano for a while. While she did so Elder Gowans received a phone call from the mission office asking him to call a concerned mother out in Idaho. He did so and found her to be the mother of one of the soldiers who he had been trying to find. Apparently, this soldier had hurt his knee and while mending he came down with pneumonia. He had been admitted to the hospital on Sunday and was doing better and was due to be released that day. After our DDM, we drove up to the hospital, taking two other missionaries with us. We found our troop still in his room and immediately struck up a conversation with him to help us all get to know each other a little bit. After a few minutes of conversation we administered to him and then left him. We told him we would hope to see him on Saturday when we came up to the barracks for our weekly visit time.

After our visit with him we dashed up to the Doctor's Hospital to visit our new friend who had the flesh eating virus in his arm. We found him to be in great spirits; his operation to place the cadaver skin on his arm had been successful; now he was waiting for the operation to actually graft his own skin in place of the cadaver skin.

Next we took our two Elders to the Waffle House for some lunch after which we went back to our apartment to continue our preparations for Institute. We left the apartment for our first appointment, but found no one at home! Our second missed appointment in the week. We decided to go by the home who had forgotten us on Sunday, but once again, no one was home; only the dog. We decided to go by another home where the dad had recently had a back and neck operation and whose family we had helped while he was TDY. We found him in good spirits and had a nice visit with them. We next drove up to Martinez and visited our new Ward Mission Leader and his wife. We had a real nice visit with them and talked about his calling and gave him some thoughts, ideas and scriptures that would be of help to him. We will probably be going up to his home every Friday for a correlation meeting.  It has been a very nice day. We finally got the Institute lesson all planned out.