This morning, as is our weekly tradition, we went out to visit our soldiers out on Post. We began our visit hoping to find a certain young man, but instead found another, Brother McKinney. He is a fine young man, his problem is that he does not have a consistent battle buddy that will come to church with him. The company NCOs will not allow us to drive him over to church, we acting as his battle buddy. This is one of the big problems we have encountered, many of the companies apply the rules so differently that it gives us problems. Sometimes different NCOs within each company apply the rules differently, too. We had a nice visit with Brother McKinney; he went down to the other fellow's room who we came to see, but he was asleep in bed. We were able to get around and find a few others who we hoped to find and encourage them to come out to church, and to give them a hand of fellowship and love.

We then drove up to the church to witness a baptism of a young 9 year old boy whose parents have recently come back into activity. We had a nice service for him and he seemed to be really happy. The parents, too, were elated to see this significant event take place.

This afternoon, Elder Gowans attended his first Branch Presidency meeting as the Branch Executive Secretary. We will meet regularly on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 pm. Now that we have met most of the military families in the stake, we can begin to use our evenings for other purposes. Interesting how this call came just as we had visited nearly every military home in the stake.

This evening we attended the Nutcracker Ballet. The Mitton family, with home we have been working, have two children who are a part of the cast. We went to show them our love and support and also to enjoy a nice evening out. It was very well done and we enjoyed watching these two young people perform. They were very happy to see us after the show and know that we had come out to support them.