This morning we attended a graduation for one of our officers, John Lord, who was here attending Army Command and Staff. It is a 4 month long course, so he has been here since November. He was very active in attending church services as well as our Family Home Evenings. As always, we will miss him, but are happy that he will be back home with his family by tomorrow evening.

This evening we visited the Spencer family. He had been told that he would be deploying in the coming months, so we went to give him and his wife our predeployment briefing. We learned that he had also been selected to attend the Captain's Career Course up at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. He was just promoted to Captain this past December, so now they don't know for sure what is going to happen. We went ahead and gave them the briefing just in case he does end up deploying.

Also, this evening, we dropped in on a new family that has just moved on post. We arrived just after the husband of the family was taken out of the house by force and put up in one of the barracks. Apparently he is suffering from the disorders that come from being deployed in a war environment. His wife was besides herself; so we were able to talk to her and give her a blessing that helped in calming her down. We also briefly spoke to the children to remind them how much their mother loves them. We asked her to please call us if we can be of assistance in any way. Afterwards, we went over to visit one of her neighbors who is LDS to let them know she is in the neighborhood and to ask them to befriend her. Hopefully they will do that.

This afternoon we attended the graduation of one of our soldiers who we have really grown to love, Brother Downs. He will leave tomorrow for Airborne school at Fort Benning, GA. He will be there for 3 weeks and then home and from there he hopes to get right in to college at BYU-I. As with all our troops, we will miss him, but are happy that they have completed their training and will be able to get on with their lives.

This evening we had a nice visit with Brother Baum; he has changed a lot over the past couple of months. He seems to be more excited about having the gospel back as apart of his life. He prayed at the conclusion of our visit. He will be separating from the Army around Halloween time, so until them we will have the opportunity to enjoy him. We also was able to meet another young man that we just learned was living on Post. His name is Seth Kunz and comes here from Idaho. We called the number we had for him, but instead of getting him we got his dad. His dad gave us his number, we called, but received no answer, so we simply found his room, knocked and found him at home. We had a short, but nice visit with him and seemed really pleased that we had stopped by to see him. After we visited with him we went to find a new family in the area, but found the home, but no one was home. We then stopped by to say hi to one of our lonely sisters, Sister Scroggins, she is always busy when we stop by to see her, so we had a quick chat on the step and then left.

This evening we (the young missionaries and ourselves) had a real nice visit with George Dureoun our baptismal candidate for Saturday. We went over with him the baptismal service and all that he can expect to happen. He asked that Elder Gowans perform the baptism and that Brother Erwin, a fine brother in the ward, confirm him on Sunday. We love this good man very much. It has been exciting to see him grow in testimony; he has had so many assurances throughout the past two months or so that he has been studying with us. The Spirit has been with him and guided him through this entire process.

Afterward, we went to visit the Escobido family. Just as we arrived the rain began to pour down; we were really drenched as we got up to the front door. Our visit with them was wonderful. As we talked we spoke of their eventual preparation to attend the temple and receive those blessings; they were very excited about it. We hope that we can help them get on the road to getting that accomplished. At the conclusion we gave both Brother and Sister Escobido blessings along with their son, who had come home at the end of the visit.

This morning, real early, Elder Gowans drove up to Post to drop off Temple Excursion Letters to several of our soldiers who are hoping to go to the temple on Saturday. We have probably got the best group of soldiers here on post that we have ever had. Nine soldiers signed up to go to the temple Saturday; hopefully they will all be able to go.

This evening we met with the Rockhill family for dinner and then for a Family Home Evening. We had a nice evening with them. The children are wonderful, very active, but sweet and good kids; we hope that we can help them make the right choices in life, right now we need to get them to pray, study the scriptures and then hopefully start coming to church.

After the Rockhill family, we dashed up to Post to join our FHE already in session. It was a real good turn out. We all said our goodbyes to Brother John Lord, we hope to see him at graduation on Thursday. We also said hello to a Brother Stewart, just in to begin a class as an X-Ray Tech. He will be here until August.

This has been a tremendous day! This morning, Elder Gowans instructed the Gospel Principles class on the topic of Prophets, we believe it was really well received. The Escobidos came out as well as Larry and Kara. Brother Derouen was there too! It was a great class. Then at our Branch Fast and Testimony meeting we had such a tremendous Spirit there. Elder Lavulo started off the testimonies, which really set a great tone for the remainder of the meeting. Several soldiers got up thereafter and bore their testimonies, three who really needed to get up and feel the Spirit, Brothers Palmer, Brown, and Ward. We had such a tremendous meeting, it touched all who were there.

This evening Elder Gowans took the two missionaries out and visited Brother Delong, Brother Sullivan and Brother Weston. We learned that Brother Sullivan will be medically retired from the service on Sunday; Brother Delong still has desires to be active in the church and Brother Weston has been out of town each weekend for the past month.  It has been a great day!

It has been a very nice Saturday; as we have posted in the past, Saturdays always are wonderful. This morning we met and visited with 8 of our AIT students. We were able to say hi to two who are very new and then confirm graduation dates on a couple of our seasoned student/soldiers. It was very cold this morning; we were only on post for an hour, by the time we were done visiting who we wanted to see, we were very cold. We compare this with the summer time; during the summer it is so hot that we very worn out by the end of two or 3 hours of visiting.

This evening, Brother Derouen, our baptismal candidate had his interview with the District Leader for his upcoming baptism. He was smiling from ear to ear. I've seldom seen such a huge smile. While he was interviewed, we attended our Missionary Correlation Meeting.

Afterwards we came home ate dinner and then headed out to visit two of our lonely sisters, Sister Fordham and Sister Murray. We found them both well and happy, which is a wonderful blessing.

This morning we left the apartment around 0830 and drove out to Harlem to assist Elder and Sister France in moving our two sister missionaries out to Thompson, which is about 12 more miles west than Harlem. We packed them all into the trailer that the Frances brought down with them from the mission office then followed the sisters out to their new home. Sister Cottam and Sister Gardner are two incredible young ladies, it has been a blessing to know them. We moved all their furniture and other household goods in and then help them get everything all set up. Afterwards we took them to lunch at a Mexican Restaurant.

This afternoon we finished our preparations for Institute class, it went really well. Brother Derouen came out and really enjoyed it; he said he always learns a lot.