Today is Monday, it is difficult sometime remembering what day it is; time is running by so fast that they all become a blur. This morning we took care of our usual Red Cross Service. They haven't been too busy lately; we don't know if it is the partial shutdown or what, but it wasn't very busy.

This afternoon, we were able to work on getting most of Friday's institute class outline completed, it will take additional work yet, but that should get taken care of in the morning. In the morning, Sister Gowans will travel down to Macon with other of our Sister Missionaries for a Sister's conference. Elder Gowans has arranged to work with the Spanish Elders most of the day. It will be an interesting day!

This evening, we picked up two of our soldiers for FHE. One of them, Brother Kemner, had an interview with President Estep for his Patriarchal blessing. He was very excited.

We have been busy trying to coordinate our temple trip for this week end. We sent out a text message to all of our AIT students and permanent party to find out who all is going. Hopefully we will get some response back soon on who is going and who is not.

This has been a wonderful conference weekend. This morning, we received a phone call around 0915 from our young Elders asking if we were going to the baptism this morning; what baptism? Oops, they never told us; anyway, Elder Gowans assumed that they were calling for a ride, so he asked what he could do for them. Yes, they asked for a ride. I asked what time it was to start, Elder Phillips, our Australian Elder, said 1000. I asked what time they wanted to go, he said anytime, then he said 1000. You have to know Elder Phillips! Then Elder Gowans replied, but Elder Phillips you said it started at 1000, so don't you think we should leave before 1000? Anyway, we arranged to pick them up at 0945. It was a very nice baptism, a mother and her daughter. They had been loved and fellowshipped by a family in the North Augusta ward.

After the baptism, we returned home, gathered up some food for lunch between conference sessions and then headed out. Elder Gowans, after dropping off Sister Gowans, drove over to pick up some soldiers. Upon arrival, he noticed they had a new fellow with them. Brother Carapezza, had just arrived from California, he had dropped out of the Language Institute where he had been studying Mandran Chinese. He didn't make the cut, so he decided to come here and become a Signal Soldier. He seems to be a very nice fellow. So we got them all in the car and off to church we went. Another Soldier, Brother Oyston, his wife has come out to be with him for a couple of weeks and then we had a few other soldiers come out for the first time too. We hope they will continue to come out. We all enjoyed conference, it was truly a spiritual feast. We love our Prophets and Apostles.

This evening, after conference, we received notice that Brother Johnson, our Sunday evening visit, may have broken his hand. We drove to the hospital and found him; he was doing fine, he just had a very sore left hand. We visited with him for a few minutes and then left and dropped in on his wife and kids to say hi and make sure they were all well. From there we went to our appointment with Sister Dixon and her son Jack. We gave them a new member lesson and then introduced them to the Doctrine and Covenants. We took sister Powers along with us so she could get to know more the ladies in the Ward. It has been a very nice day and wonderful weekend.

October 5th: Early this morning, we headed out of the apartment and up to Post to visit our student/soldiers. We have a list of those among all our soldier who we need to see that morning. Usually it is those who we have not seen for a while. So this morning we started out with the hope to see several soldiers and since it is General Conference Sunday we were not going to go back home, so we had all the time we needed. We were able to visit with most of everyone we wanted to see. We found one young man who had broken his shoulder playing some volley ball, his story sounded really bad. After working through nearly the entire Brigade, we stopped off at the Friendship Chapel to see how things were progressing for the Spiritual Fitness BBQ that the protestant chapel puts on every 6 months. Sister Gowans went in to help with the set up and Elder Gowans felt impressed to go across the street to the last company we hadn't visited to look for one more young man. As he was walking through the area, a young soldier calls out to him, "Hello Elder". Usually when that happens he knows it is a member or else someone very familiar with the church. So he walked over to meet the young man and seeing his name tag asks, "Are you Brother King?" he said he was, but that he was not active in the church. They had a nice visit together, Elder Gowans encouraged the young man to read his scriptures and to pray daily. If he hadn't of gone over at that time, who knows if or when we would have ever met this nice young man. After the first session of conference ended, he felt prompted to return to the same unit to look for one other young man. He walked over and found him out in front of the barracks; he learned that his unit of assignment had been changed; he was now going to be in a support role for the special forces and so he was working on getting ready to pass their rigorous physical fitness test; we had a nice visit, Elder Gowans invited him to conference and then said our goodbyes.

We enjoyed the day of conference; we had several soldiers come out off and on during the day as they could and enjoy the sessions. The Spiritual Fitness BBQ was enjoyable, we had a good turnout of LDS soldiers who came out to support the function.

This afternoon we made our second visit with Kyle Janssen. This time we took the young Elders with us and we team taught him about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. We also touched upon the restoration of the priesthood. We agreed to work towards a baptismal date of 19 October. We will teach him twice a week up to that time and hope that by then he will have gained a strong testimony of the our Savior and of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

After our visit with the Janssens, we drove up into Grovetown to meet up with Sister Stott and her two children so they could follow us on Post and attend October Fest. Her husband just deployed recently, she is rather timid, so we are trying to get her out of the house a little more and enjoy some fun activities. The two girls loved the carnival atmosphere and really enjoyed riding the rides. While there we ran into the Allen family. We hadn't seen them for quite sometime, but had a nice little visit with them. They are much more active now and attending church much more regularly. They looked great and seemed very happy.

This evening in our institute class we discussed acts of persecution, violence and so forth committed against ourselves, our families, our nation and so forth. We discussed what Heavenly Father expects of us in regards to persecution, war, and other acts of violence committed against us. We tied it in with our duties to also share the gospel as well.

Let's see, today is Thursday, that means morning laundry, mid morning shopping and early afternoon Institute lesson review and then visiting. So today we visited Sister Mack. Her husband has now been gone about 2 months. She has adjusted and seems to be getting along fine. When we arrived, Sister Stock was mowing her lawn. Elder Gowans mowed Sister Stocks lawn a few times. So Sister Stock was paying it forward. She just needs to be careful, she gets over heated and sick. That is what happened to her last year and it put her in the hospital; that is when Elder Gowans did the yard work for her. Not that he hadn't offered, but some people simply don't like to ask for help.

This evening we, met for the first time, the Wells family. Another delightful family! They both hail from Utah; he decided to join the Air Force and became a linguist. His expertise is in Arabic. They have two delightful children, Isaac and AJ, a little girl. Isaac is quite a smart little 5 year old boy and his little Sister seems to be following right in his footsteps. We have met so many wonderful families; we wish we had more time to get to know them all better and to be more neighborly. It would be enjoyable, but we have a different labor to perform. Maybe in the future we will have an opportunity to get to know some of our families better, after our mission.

This afternoon, we had the opportunity to attend the graduation of Brother Rapp and Brother Turnbough. As always, it is difficult to believe that their time here has come and gone already. We miss them as they become our good friends.

 Brother Rapp is very athletic and won a very prestigious badge from his German counterparts; you can see it over his name tag. 

We wish Brother Turnbaugh the best also. 

This evening we visited Brother Kiriyama who is here to attend Basic Officer Leadership Course (BLOC). He will be here until January. We invited him to attend the Branch activities; for the past two weeks he has been faithful attending the Augusta Ward, don't know if we will see him at our activities or  not. As always, it is up to him. After visiting him, we went out to see the Hansen family. Unfortunately, Brother Hansen forgot to tell Sister Hansen we were coming and as we arrived she was just leaving to get a cell phone fixed. Although we saw her for a moment, we did not get to visit with her, but we had a nice visit with Brother Hansen. 

This morning we attended the graduation of Sister Lacey Wessels. She arrived about 2 months ago. Elder Gowans saw her sitting by herself in the Augusta ward one morning waiting for Sacrament meeting to begin. Went over and introduced himself to her and learned that she was here for Advanced Leadership School. He informed her of the meetings on post along with FHE and Institute. She has been very faithful in attending and participating in all of our activities. We will miss her.

 Sister Wessels and her sister. She came in from Charleston to be with her for her graduation. 

After the graduation, we returned to our apartment and then dashed up to a job fair to see if we could help our son-in-law David get any leads on jobs as a computer animator. We did find some possibilities; so we passed them on to him. Afterward, we headed out for the afternoon to visit a couple of our lonely Sisters. We visited Sister Swartz and Sister Stott and had a nice visit with both ladies. We invited sister Stott up to the post on Friday to attend October Fest with us. We will only be able to be with her an hour before we will need to go to Institute, but she should be able to have a good time with her two little girls.

This evening we visited the Janssen family. He just returned from deployment. She was baptized about 4 months ago and has encouraged him to listen to the missionaries. So we made an appointment with them to begin the ball rolling on his learning and gaining a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We had an excellent, spiritual discussion with them. We know he felt the Spirit there tonight. We challenged him to be baptized as he comes to learn and know the truth of what we will teach him. He accepted the challenge, stating that he would be baptized when he comes to know the truth. From there we hopped over to visit the Holloway family. Their oldest son, Josh, had brain surgery last week to see if they could stop seizers from occurring. So far it appears that it is working. He seemed to be in very good spirits. We had a great evening  and a great day!