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.