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.

This morning was our time to help out at the Post Library. We inventoried books for the first two hours then we helped with the duck tape activity. The kids had several patterns for things they could make out of duck tape such as wallets, purses, bows, arm bands, hats and so forth. They all had a lot of fun.

 Helping a young man make a duck tape wallet

 Hard at work

 Look what I made!

 The Mission Home

 Ready to eat!

 More hungry souls

 Sister Bowman, a delightful lady.

The entire group of Senior Couples; 11 couples plus the mission president and his wife. Two more couples are due in soon bringing the total to 13 couples. 

This afternoon we traveled up to Irmo, SC, near Columbia, for a special Senior Couples Conference. We had a very nice time together. We had some training from our mission president and his wife and also from the president's assistants. Afterwards, we went to the mission home for a great supper of chicken pot pie, salad and a fruit pie and ice cream. It was very delicious.

This has been an interesting day. As you may recall, this is our Red Cross volunteer day at the Post Hospital. Elder Gowans was called upon to transport several patients today around the hospital. One was a young lady who needed to be taken down to get an MRI; apparently she had a head injury, or spinal injury, she did not look well, nor could she speak clearly and she seemed to have some palsy. We hope she will be okay.

This afternoon we worked on our Friday's Institute class. This week's lesson will cover 3 Nephi 1-7; we will be discussing Discipleship.

We had an enjoyable FHE with our little group this evening. While there, we had to run a Temple Trip announcement over to one of our troops this evening, while there we ran into another one of our troops who we have been looking for; thank goodness for name tags. So we stopped him, told him who we were and told him further that we would like to get together with him and get to know him. We explained briefly about our purpose as military relations missionaries and then shook hands and departed. I believe Heavenly Father brought us together at that moment. Hopefully he will make himself available for us to visit with him on Saturday.

This morning just after we arrived at church, we were informed of a man up at Doctor's Hospital who needed a visit and desired some reading material to include a copy of the Book of Mormon. We gathered up some issues of the Ensign magazine and took two of our missionaries and went up to the hospital after the servicemen's group concluded. This poor fellow had poked himself in the arm with something on an old hot water heater, which caused him to contract a flesh eating virus; so bad that it ate his skin and part of his muscle away. He said that he was a member of the church, but had not been active in years and wanted to start making things right. The woman that he currently lives with is not his wife, but is the mother of his children. So he has a lot of things to correct in his life. We visited with him for a while and then told him we would be back in a couple of days after his next surgery. They are going to try to graft cadaver skin onto his arm.

We had an appointment this evening, but when we got out to the house no one was home. We were hoping that we were at the correct house. We called, but received no answer, then left a message, hopefully they will call back.

We were also happy to hear that Adam made it home safe and sound yesterday and that Matt and Becky also made it home today from their cruise. We love our family.

Saturdays are becoming one of our most fruitful days. This morning we went out to the student barracks and visited with 8 of our AIT soldiers. Among them, we were able to visit 2 nonmembers who have attended our meetings recently. We also found and visited one fellow who we had never seen out to church. Unfortunately, he will be leaving soon for South Korea, so we will not have a chance to work much with him.  We invited him to come out and join with us. When we first arrived, we parked the car in front of one of the barracks and we wondered around a little waiting for formations to end. As we did so a young lady came up to us and introduced herself; she was one of the ladies we were looking for. She had just arrived on Friday and wanted to attend church, so we pointed out the church house to her and had a real nice visit. We met with another young man who has only been here one week. We had been in contact with him during the week via telephone, and told him we would come and find him on Saturday morning. I feel that by our visits we reignite in the hearts of most of these young men and women a desire to attend their church meetings. So they recommit to coming out. It would be so easy for them to simply hide away for a period of time, but with a friendly visit they feel the gentle urging of the Spirit to join us.

This afternoon we, with another member family, went out and picked up a nonmember lady, her son and her nephew and took them to the church house to show them around and help them feel at home before the first time they come out. So we showed them the children's primary room, the chapel and the Relief Society room. The Elders then showed them the Joseph Smith movie. 


This evening we visited two more of our member families. We had a real nice visit with the first whose husband is in Texas for training for 6 months. We told her we would come by and mow the lawn and take care of the yard. She seemed happy that we would do that for her. The second family was a lot of fun too. We have some great families who diligently serve in many various capacities. This second family, the husband voluntarily had his name removed from the church records. We had debated what kind of a thought to leave with them. The Spirit prompted us to leave him with a thought on prayer. We believe it was very effective as everyone, even him, had input on the subject. Then we left with a prayer; hopefully it will give him something to think about and ponder on. 

We made another trip to the doctor with our dear young sister who suffers from so many different ailments. Her appointment was at 10:00am this morning. We didn't have to wait too long for her, she was in and out pretty quick. The doctors don't really know what to do to treat her, the poor soul needs to find someone who will put a team together and see what they can do for her. She is only about 25 years old, and we can't imagine what her quality of life will be like too many years into the future.

This afternoon we made our final preparations for Institute and organized our visits for tomorrow morning out at the post with all our AIT (Advanced Individual Training) students. Upon our arrival at the Friendship chapel we had our dinner and then we had our lesson. It all revolved around the visit of Samuel, the Lamanite, to the Nephites.We discussed the importance of repentance, not rationalizing our sins, not procrastinating our repentance and so forth. As part of the discussion we talked about listening and giving heed to our modern prophets today. We discussed President Monson's talks from last April and then we brought up a talk by President Hinckley way back in 1998. He spoke to the brethren in Priesthood meeting and warned us of  the upcoming financial stormy weather. This was 14 years ago and look at where we are  now! We often wonder how many people paid attention and did all they could to get their houses in order. We had a fine evening, we believe everyone went away feeling edified.

Today we had our first appointment at 1130. We met with a family whose schedule is such that it is better for them to have guests over at lunch time rather than dinner. She fixed a delicious pan of enchiladas. Then for desert she had fixed a pan of brownies. Everything was delicious. We  had a real nice time visiting with them and getting to know them.

Our second visit was with a family way out on the end of a long and lonely street. It certainly was a quiet place. Their oldest daughter was about 3 years old and had the darkest, curliest hair you'd ever seen. We had a nice visit with them as well.

Afterwards we went out to celebrate Sister Gowans' 57th birthday. Happy Birthday to you!!!

This morning and afternoon, we attended student graduations. This morning graduation was for a Basic Officer Course attended by 2Lts. A member of the Church had been in the class for four months. She was so excited to be going home. She lives and works in Washington State, her husband is not a citizen of the U.S. so is not able to obtain sufficient work, so she decided to join the army to supplement their income. Then this afternoon two of our LDS students graduated from Advanced Individual Training. One student is married, no one from his family was able to come out, so our being there was nice for him. The other's parents came out, which we were happy for.

 Brother Whiting, the bald one in the middle and below

 Brother Lee, married, a son was born to him about 3 weeks ago.

This evening we visited only one family, one had to postpone their appointment due to illness in the family. The family we visited was older than most of the families we visit. They already have adult children and their youngest children are 11, twin girls. We had a nice visit with them and learned that the girls are very talented, each in a different things. One girl writes poetry and the other girl likes to be involved in good causes. In fact she raised $1000.00 for cancer patients; she raised it by donating all of her hair and then having people pledge any amount of money when she did it. Her hair now is about 1/4 of an inch long. Since one of our appointments was postponed for the evening, we drove around trying to find people we had on our roster; we had four people to find, when we did find their homes, not one of them was home. Four strikes, but one home run.

This morning we helped out at the Post Library Carnival. We arrived at the library around 750am and helped all the library staff carry the games outside. They had a volleyball/badminton net that we set up; they had a mini trampoline, which we had to doctor up somewhat to make it usable;  they had several outside sport toys, a sack race and then they had a bowling game. They had a long carpet that was the bowling lane, a bowling ball and ten pins. Elder Gowans was the pin boy during the hour and half that the carnival went on for. He was very busy setting pins up, helping the kids with the ball and so forth. He was so beat when he got back home that he took a nap. Sister Gowans was the photographer; she had a good time taking pictures of all the kids having a good time.

 Some hula-hoop action

 A little trampoline

 Body Bopper

 Fun at the beach...ops, where is the water?

 Bowling

After his nap, Elder Gowans finished putting together the Institute lesson for Friday. This evening we visited to more families. The first family we visited, the husband attended the same college that Sister Gowans graduated from, Westminster. Interestingly enough, they also had the exact same dining room set that we do in our Layton home. The second family we visited were celebrating their 4 month wedding anniversary. They are a fun young couple, just starting out in life together. They said that they had met on line; they are probably the 10th couple that we have met who have met on line, incredible!

Today was our Red Cross service day. Sister Gowans did her usual data entry. Elder Gowans had an interesting experience. While sitting in the office a phone call came saying that there was a lady down in the loading area who needed to be brought in. So he went down to the area to find her. He found one lady, but she was getting into a van to go home. Upon looking around, he found a lady who was sitting in an old truck in the passenger side. He asked her if she needed to go inside, when she spoke back to him she spoke in a garbled tone. After talking to her he came to understand that her husband had gone into the pharmacy for some medication, but had not come out. Apparently she had sat there for sometime. Using the wheel chair that the previous lady had left behind he helped her into the chair and wheeled her inside where it was much cooler. He had her look for her husband, but she did not see him.So he told her that he would leave her by the doors so that when her husband did  leave he would see her and be able to wheel her out. When he and sister Gowans left the hospital they saw her and her husband just getting back into the truck.

 A few of our Elders and Sisters at the Transfer Dinner. For Craig Gowans, Sister Johnson, the one of the left is on her way home to Greenriver, Wyo. She is a very sweet young lady, hint hint!

We had an enjoyable transfer dinner with several of the Elders and Sisters in the zone. We ate hot dogs and tossed salad, with some yummy deserts. Afterward, we went up to the Friendship Chapel for FHE. For part of the activity we introduced and played Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; we are sure that our children will remember that game. We had a lot of fun, there was a lot of laughter; we had a great time.

Last week we were asked to speak in church today. After a week of preparation the day finally came. Sister Gowans gave a very nice talk giving the congregation our background and speaking about the roll or mission of the Military Relations Missionary. After she completed her talk, Elder Gowans spoke from Alma 26:22 D&C 100:5-8 and D&C 4:2. We had many complimentary comments during the rest of our meetings. The Spirit of the Lord was very strong and powerful in our meetings. Wonderful promises were made to the Saints as they work to share the gospel.

In our servicemen's group, we had one investigator there who simply came on his own. He had to leave early to make a mandatory formation, so we didn't have time to talk to him after the services. I will give him a call later to see how he enjoyed our meetings. Also, one of our servicemen's family made it out here from Montana; they were all together in the congregation too. It was wonderful to see them all together, he was very happy to have them.We missed some of our regulars today, hopefully they are all well.

This evening we paid a visit to a fellow who is single and has made the army a second career. He had taught school for about 10 years and then decided to join the army. He was making sweet rolls when we arrived; he bakes for himself every Sunday afternoon. After our visit with him we went over to another couples house who live close by; they really struggle, so hopefully our visit cheered them up.

This morning we drove out to Fort Gordon and picked up 3 servicemen and took them to the Columbia South Carolina Temple. Two of the men were AIT students, one of which was baptized last month. The other fellow was here TDY for some extended training, he is out of Provo, UT. It is about 90 minutes to the temple from here. We arrived just before 10:00am and was in the temple until about noon. We had a very special time. It is a great experience for these folks to be able to go and get away from the Post environment for a few hours and go somewhere where they can feel the Spirit of God. After leaving the temple we ate lunch at Bojangles, similar to KFC. We made it home about 3pm and then headed over to visit one of our other troops who was denied permission to go with us. He took it all well and had a nice visit with him.

As with most Saturday evenings we spent an hour or so making appointments for next week. We were also able to get a hold of a brand new troop who just arrived in town this week. He was very happy to hear from us. People are always so happy to know that someone cares for them.

Today was laundry and house cleaning day. Then this afternoon we worked on our talks for Sunday and Elder Gowans also worked on his priesthood lesson. While all this was happening we received a message saying our new phone was in. Elder Gowans drove up to the Sprint store and after waiting for over 30 minutes he was told that the phone was not registered properly and couldn't be activated. So they ordered another one, oh my!

Just as we were getting ready to go to Institute, we received a call from a lady in the ward who suffers much from all sorts of ailments, asking if we could come up and have Elder Gowans give her a blessing. We ended up meeting her at the hospital, where Elder Gowans and Brother Estep administered to her. As we were driving up to the Post we also received another request for a blessing by one of our troops. So we ended up meeting him at Institute and administered to him there. Our class didn't get started until nearly an hour late. We finished close to 9pm and then everyone visited for a few more minutes and we all went home.

This morning we dedicated our time to preparing our talks for Sunday. We will both be speaking in sacrament meeting in the Grovetown Ward. Of course being missionaries, we will be speaking on the topic of missionary work.

This evening we met with a family out in Grovetown and as we got to know each other we learned that she has a brother who does the same kind of work that our son-in-law David is educated to do. So I got his name and number and gave them to David so he could call him and see if he can't get a foot in the door there. It would be wonderful if it should work out that it would lead to work for him.

This morning we finished initial prep for Institute on Friday. We will be studying Helaman 10-12 with a concentration on receiving personal revelation through pondering scripture and the words of our living prophets.

We then attended our weekly District Development Meeting, which was held at our apartment. Our district consists of us and four Elders. We met in our apartment because one of the missionaries forgot the keys to the church house. After meetings we drove two of the missionaries back to their apartment and on the way we stopped off at Checkers, a drive through hamburger joint, very popular here.

This afternoon we met with on family and this evening we met with two families. As we meet with them we get to know each other and we also find out if there are any deployments in their future. We will have many families with husbands and father who are deploying in the next six months. We are considering starting a support group for the ladies and their children. Also, as we get to know them we try to leave them with a scriptural thought that would be appropriate for them and their current circumstances. It has been a very enjoyable day.

P.S. We took our new phone back to Sprint today and found out that the new one we picked up yesterday has the same problems that the old new one had that we just got rid of. They both have had serious difficulty in connecting when we try to call out or text. We are going to get another new one, but this time a different model.

This morning we had our weekly service with the Red Cross. This was Sister Gowans' first time serving since her back ground check was just completed. Additionally we spent 3 hours in a commander's briefing this afternoon conducted for new comers to the hospital. Most was not even applicable to us, but for some reason the hospital requires volunteers to complete the portion of the briefing that we needed to attend. Upon completion of the briefing we came home for about an hour and a half and then went back to the Post for our Family Home Evening. We had a good lesson and a chicken dinner. After the lesson we played a game and of course did a lot of socializing.

This has been an incredible day! Our day began with a trip out to pick up a lady for church, we were within a couple of miles of being there when we got a call saying she was not going. We made a quick left turn and dashed down a highway, caught the belt route, 520, back into town and then up to the church. We were able to make several appointments for the coming week with more of our military families. We were able to make one for this afternoon after our Servicemen's group and before another meeting with a family who has two special needs children and whose husband/father with be deploying in January, but who will be gone a lot between now and then for deployment training.

At our Servicemen's group meeting we had most of our troops there who we know of. It certainly pays to go out and visit them and encourage them to come out. They always have a real good time when they do come out. Elder Gowans taught a new Temple Prep class to 3 of our soldiers who are preparing for the temple. One still has a while to weight, but we are counting them as new member lessons too.

Later in the evening, after we visited the family mentioned above, we dashed up to the stake center to attend our first "Saints-At-War" meeting. Here military personnel have the opportunity to share experiences from their deployments that will hopefully be of help to others who are scheduled to deploy. With these meetings it is hoped that the trauma brought on families due to long time separations will be mitigated. Also, it is hoped that the soldier will be able to better cope with the trauma that comes from being at war. Both of us was able to talk a little bit about our experiences from both the male and female point of view.

While at the meeting we received an emergency text from one of our soldiers asking for a blessing; so after the meeting concluded we drove back to the Post and up to the barracks and gave our friend a priesthood blessing to help him overcome some adversity that has been troubling him. We arrived home a little after 2100 and look forward to a good night's rest.

This has been a tremendously successful day. We recently came to learn that we can go into the student's barracks and ask the CQ to have a student come down to meet with us. They will send a runner to the student's room to let them know they have a visitor. When the student comes down to the CQ's office we can go outside and find a shady place to sit and visit. This morning we were able to reach 10 of the students who are members of the church. Most come out to church as often as possible, some have difficulties. During our visit we try to get to know them and help them get to know us. We encourage them to be prayerful and study their scriptures everyday. We were visiting students from about 0930 to nearly 1330. We were also able to meet and talk with a couple of students who have come out to church activities who are not members of the church. We hope that we are able to establish a bond of trust with all our students so that they will feel comfortable calling on us if they should every need anything. We feel this has been a break through day.

This evening we were able to meet and visit with a family in the ward. He serves in the Air Force as a linguist. They have a cute family of three little girls from 8 to 4. We had a nice time visiting with them. We are so appreciative to our Heavenly Father for blessing us with such a great opportunity to bless the lives of these military men and women.

We finally received a photo of the young man who was baptized about 3 weeks ago. He is the one on the left. What a great experience.

This evening we had a real nice Institute class discussing Helaman chapters 5-9. We learned from the discussions that ensued that many people, although they feel they have been forgiven of their sins in the past still feel that they cannot forgive themselves. They still harbor much regret and find it difficult to get over the past. So much of the discussion revolved about this issue. We tried to help them understand that if God has forgiven them, then they should be able to forgive themselves. Also, as they exercise faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ and pray for help and assistance in this difficult matter they will be blessed with relief from their regrets and sorrows.

On our way to our first appointment this evening, the phone rang and it was our appointment calling asking us to postpone the appointment to another day. We were just turning into the housing area when they called. Hopefully everything is okay there, maybe it was just one of those days. So we got on the phone to call the next appointment to ask if it would be okay to come early; that was just what they needed. They had the younger Elders coming over for dinner with an investigator, so it worked out just right. We got in visited for 25 minutes, left them with a thought and a prayer and off we went just as the Elders were ready to come in.

 An old clock

 A cotton basket, musket, trunk, spinning wheel

 Old golf clubs and a basket of cotton

 Mammoth jaw and tooth

 Arrowheads

 Mixing bowl

 ax heads

 more arrowheads

 Bail of cotton

 Cotton Gin

 Elder and Sister Berry and an old fire engine

 Us

 Ty Cobb's old baseball mitt

 More old golf club's belonging to Lord Byron

 A Georgia locomotive

 An old Texaco filling station

 An old fire truck

 The fire chief's loud speaker

 A sheriff's motorcycle.

The old service station

 Fireman's coat

 Cotton wagon

 A confederate Uniform

 The Yankee and the Rebel

 A bugal

 A drum set

 Cannon Shot

 A wedding gown

Happy Independence Day to everyone! This morning we picked up 3 of our troops and took them to the church house for a pancake breakfast. We all had a very nice time visiting with each other. After that we attended our very first District Development Meeting. We asked the Elders to temporarily move it to Wednesday due to our Tuesday service at the Post Library. It was a good experience. Afterward, we drove went with Elder and Sister Berry to the August Museum and then went up to the River Walk along the Savannah River. We had a nice afternoon. We didn't schedule any appointments due to the holiday. I will post some photos from the Museum.