This afternoon, we received a call from the Cheney family, ah oh, we thought they should have left for home by now. Anyway, they had decided to take things easy yesterday, and now it is Friday afternoon. So Elder Gowans went over to their apartment and helped Steve load up a bed on the top of the U-Haul. It was too heavy for Sister Cheney, especially after just having a baby. We are glad they called us for some help. They also gave us their left over food, which we shared among the other missionaries around the neighborhood. We pray that they will make it home safely, that no harm will come to them and that Heavenly Father will watch over them while driving through the long night ahead.

We learned today that Elder and Sister Meacham will return home to have the prostate cancer removed surgically removed. After recovery and when all is determined to be well, they will return back to Augusta to complete their mission. They have been truly blessed to have everything work out so well for them. We will take them to the Airport on the 28th and then pick them back up when they return. If they return after we leave, for Joe's wedding, then we will have to work something different out.

This evening our Institute lesson went real well. We studied section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants; along with it we read Isaiah 53 and a few verses from 3 Ne 11. It was a very spiritually rewarding lesson for all who was in attendance. The lesson centered around our Savior Jesus Christ, how we come to know Him and not just know about him; and how we can come to know Him personally while still in mortality.

While the Sister Gowans was doing the laundry, Elder Gowans sat down to go over the Institute lesson for Friday. He hadn't felt quite right about it. Going back over it, he felt inspired to make some changes in the outline; as he did so the inspiration continued to come and the final product turned out wonderful. We will have a great lesson on Friday; we will be covering the 93rd section of the Doctrine and Covenants. Heavenly Father certainly has inspired us as we create these lesson and get them ready for the class; we are blessed every week with wonderful lessons, they are not our lessons, they are the lessons Heavenly Father would have us give.

This evening, we met and visited with a new family to the area, Brother and Sister Call. When we arrived they had another military couple with them. Not members of the church, but another couple with whom we were also able to get acquainted. We had a nice visit. Both of these brothers are in the army band located here at Fort Gordon and both play the trombone.

From there we drove out to meet with the Elders who serve in the Harlem Ward; they were meeting and teaching a family where the wife is a member and the husband is not. The husband has been receiving the missionaries and being taught. He is in the Army, this being one of the reasons why we wanted to stop by and visit and get acquainted. He has set a baptism date for the 28th, hopefully that will work out for him; hopefully we will be able to attend.

After our service at the Post Library this morning, we went and picked up Elder Gowans' dry cleaning and then we went out to the housing area to drop in on a sister who just arrived from Utah to be with her husband while he is here in AIT. She seemed very kind; we invited her to the church social on Saturday night and to church with us in the Augusta ward on Sunday; hopefully she will come out. We will make a list up for her of the other LDS families in the area for her to meet.

This afternoon, we attended the graduation of four of our AIT students; however, we were only able to get photos of 3 of them. Saturday morning we should be able to get a photo of the fourth.

This evening we went out to meet a new military family in the Harlem ward and after getting there we found out they weren't military. Our Harlem POC thought they were because Brother Walter's hair is cut military style. Oh well, we still had a nice visit with them. From there we went to visit the Halford's to pay our  monthly visit with them. We had a nice visit; we discussed the topic of adversity and opposition in our lives.

 Brother Padron

 Sister Cheney and the kids

 Brother Power

 The entire Cheney family

Brother Cheney

With this video, We should now have posted, all the songs the graduates sing at the conclusion of the ceremony. 

We need to thank Becky again for reminding us that a blog for Tuesday had not been posted. Sorry about that to all of you who read our daily posts.

So, Tuesday morning we attended our weekly DDM and immediately following we dashed up to Evans to meet with Brother Criswell and his wife to update our list of Military families in their ward. We learned that there had been some who moved out and a few who had moved in. We have now met with Grovetown ward, Harlem Ward, Stevens Creek Ward and the Martinez Ward POCs and have a new and updated list of all the families who are new who we need to get out and meet. We have started making phone calls to get together with them.

This evening we had an appointment on post with a lady and her son who was just baptized a month ago. It is time for them to receive the new member lessons. We picked up sister Sanders and took her with us so that Sister Dixon could meet and get better acquainted with some of the other women in the ward. We reviewed with her the Apostasy, the First Vision, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and then we did something a little different that we had not done before and that is we taught her some church history, besides what we just mentioned. We all had an enjoyable time together.
Here are some photos from our DDM; of course there are always the comedians in the group, Elder Hatch.

 Elders Hatch and Phillips

 Three Elders who are assigned to the Spanish population: Elders Webb, Bennett and Brimacomb

Sisters Tevi and Grimm; Sister Tevi is sitting on Sister Grimm's lap 

Elder and Sister Meacham

We are happy to hear that Anthony's surgery this morning was successful and that he is home and recovering well. We are grateful to our Heavenly Father how He watches over our family and how He has blessed each family with wonderful and rich blessings.

This evening we enjoyed our last FHE with the Cheney family; they will be departing Thursday to for home as Steve has completed his AIT courses and graduates on Wednesday. We have welcomed Paul Miller back with us. He attended our services for 5 months back during the fall, winter and spring months. We are grateful for the Esteps and all they do to support us in our missionary efforts.

This morning we all met at the Friendship Chapel at 0900, loaded up our AIT students, and off we went to the Stake Center. After arriving at the Stake Center, we had the opportunity to introduce our students to President Squires, our Stake President, Elder Bruth, our Area Authority Seventy, President and Sister Cottle, our mission president and a few others. We had wonderful speakers, we hope that our students left the meeting inspired and spiritually rejuvenated.

After conference, we came home, ate lunch and Elder Gowans began making phone calls to arrange appointments with new military members in the area. He couldn't get anyone to answer their phone.

We decided to go back up to post and find and meet 3 new soldiers who had just arrived at Fort Gordon. We went to find the first fellow, but he was not in his room. We started back to the car when we saw a young man carrying his gear towards the building we just left. Elder Gowans began walking towards him to see his name tag to see if he was the fellow we were looking for; sure enough it was. He was a rather short, small fellow, but we talked as we walked back towards his building. We left him with all the information we could and told him we looked forward to seeing him in the future. From there, we went over to the 73rd. We have two more fellows over there in what we now term, "The Black Hole". It seems our LDS soldiers get assigned there and never get out until it is time to graduate. We met one fellow, but not the first that we hoped to find. We will have to look for him another day.

From there we went to visit a few more families. We were able to visit with Sister Janssen for a few minutes; from there we went to see the Johnsons. She had just returned from the ER; she had a kidney infection. We administered to her and then left. We also went up to visit the Cheneys and see the new baby. They will be leaving this week; we will miss them.

It has been another wonderful day; by the way after returning for the evening, we were able to find some of the families at home whom we had called earlier and was able to fill our week with appointments.

We were up early this morning and off to pick up our AIT students who were going with us to the temple. We picked up 3 at one company and then took them to pick up two other fellows. The letter of the law states that if they are going off post and older than 21, they need two battle buddies. So we took the two and didn't have any problem getting them checked out. We had a total of 14 attend today, with one of our young soldiers, Brother Mardanlou, going for the first time.

 Sister Flygare, Brothers LaRose, Kemner, Mardanlou

 Elder Gowans and Brother Mardanlou

 Brothers Kemner and LaRose

 The Angel Moroni, of course

Brother and Sister Manwaring; she came out to be with her husband for two weeks while he is in training. He finishes in October, the same day we fly out for Joe's wedding.

This afternoon, after returning home, President Estep and Elder Gowans dashed up to the Stake Center to attend the 4 pm Priesthood Leadership meeting; that ended at 6, we then met the girls (our wives), at Zaxby's and had a snack before the 7 pm Adult Session of Conference. They were wonderful events, we were well instructed, the Spirit was powerful and we were all uplifted and edified. 

While at the temple we saw some friends: 

 Sister Mack, her husband just deployed 2 weeks ago.

Robert Bradley and two of his girls