This morning, Elder Gowans had his yearly physical. When he arrived, he learned that whoever ordered the blood work put in an order for a female rather than a male; as a result he has learned that he is not pregnant and has no prostate worries. What can he say? Anyway, he immediately went down to have the proper blood work done; we will know the results in a few days. He did test a little high in the cholesterol, so we will work on getting that down to normal.

This afternoon, we visited with Sister Swartz, one of our lonely Sisters. Her mother in law has been with her for a while; they also spent Christmas with them. She seemed more happy and upbeat than ever before. We are happy she is doing so well. We also dropped in on the Maple family who we have been trying to reach for some time. They never return our phone messages and whenever we have dropped by in the past they have never been home, but tonight we caught them and they agreed to have us come by for an appointment on Thursday at 5 pm. We look forward to getting acquainted with them.

Today was transfer day for one of our Sisters and one of our Elders. Sister Meacham took the Elders down while her husband was going through his chemo treatments, which ended up not happening because no meds came in from Atlanta. We all got back to our apartments about the same time, so we invited them over for dinner. We had a nice visit and conversation with them.

Of course, it is Monday! Red Cross service in the morning. Last week on Friday, we received a notice that a new fellow was coming in to Fort Gordon. I gave him a call to see if he had arrived and found out he was delayed getting into Augusta. Apparently, the airline booked him into Augusta, Maine! Did you know there was an Augusta, Maine? I didn't. He texted us and asked if we could pick him up at the airport today; so we did. His name is Jacob Richards, married, not children. He and his wife want to be sealed in the temple later this year. He wants to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood while here and be Endowed in the temple. He has wonderful goals and we look forward to helping him achieve his desires.

We resumed our FHE without the Esteps this evening as they are both down with the Flu. We wish them a speedy recovery. We had a nice time with all who came out. We ate hot dogs, had a lesson, and played Mad Gab. We all had a fun time together.

This has been a wonderful Sabbath! During our Branch meetings today, we had a young man, Brother Navarette, come out for the first time who had not been out since his arrival; he is a new convert, he was baptized while in Basic Training. We were concerned about him and new we had to visit with him after the Christmas Leave. He is one of the young men we visited yesterday afternoon; when we visited him he said he was reading and praying everyday, but said he hadn't been out to church (which we already knew); we invited him to come out to services today and he did! We were so happy to see him. We asked him if he enjoyed his day and he replyed that he did. We also had another young woman (Sister Flygare) come out who hadn't been out since September. She was so active, then all of a sudden we never saw her for 3 solid months; we did see her when we would visit her, but she didn't come out to any activity. She must have made a resolution to come out and be active again; we hope she will as she leaves to return home in just 3 weeks. We are so happy that all of our soldiers have returned back to Fort Gordon safely; they all seem to be very refreshed and happy after having a wonderful Christmas holiday!

After our services, we visited the Johnson family; they have now been to church two straight weeks! We are very happy about that and they seem to be pleased that their efforts have paid off. Brother Johnson seems to be exercising his responsibilites a little better in ensuring the family is ready to come out; hopefully they will keep it up! Afterward, we dropped in on the Janssen and Sanders families to see if they had made it home; they had, we wished them all a happy New Year and were on our way.

This blog post is for 4 January 2014: This afternoon we went out to visit our AIT students who should have all returned to Post. We decided to wait until the afternoon to make sure we didn't interfere with soldiers who got in late who were asleep or formations, which would probably be long. As it turned out, we did wake up a couple who were sleeping and we did run into one formation, but for the most part we had great success in welcoming back 17 of our student soldiers. A couple of them were out, one at the theater, one at the PX and so forth. We found a couple just out and about. It is wonderful to have them back, it has been rather lonesome without them. Today we resume our normal meeting and activity schedule; church services Sunday at1330, FHE Monday at 1900 and Institute of Religion Friday at 1900.

This evening, Elder Gowans was called upon to go with Elder and Sister Meacham to give a blessing to Shae; the doctors found that she has a mass growing in her abdominal cavity, so obviously she is very concerned about that; we are sure she will be fine. Tis been a wonderful day.

This morning, Elder Gowans left the apartment at 0640 to be at the Jones' house by 0700 to catch a ride to the South Carolina Columbia Temple. The Grovetown ward and the Fort Gordon Military Branch had the assignment to clean the temple today. We all gathered at the appointed time and off we went shortly after 0700. In the car was the Jones family, Sister Bowman and Elder Gowans. Sister Bowman is the Bishop's wife of the Grovetown ward. After arriving at the temple we all changed into white cleaning clothes, watched a short instruction video and then we were given our assignments. Elder Gowans' assignment was to vacuum. He vacuumed for 2 1/2 hours, which equaled nearly half of the temple floors. It is an honor and a privilege to serve in the House of the Lord!

After returning home, we had just enough time to dash up to our 3 pm appointment to meet with Brother Scott Horr. He is stationed at Fort Meed up in Maryland, but he is here for a 6 month deployment, yes, I said deployment. So he missed being home for all the holidays over the last two months and will be here until April or May. We will visit him monthly to see how he is doing. He will not be able to attend church all this month due to the rotation of his schedule.

This evening we visited a gentlemen named Darrel with our Zone Leaders and taught him about the Book of Mormon. Teaching about this wonderful book is always a joyous experience. We love the Book of Mormon, it is truly a gift from God. Darrel, works as a diesel mechanic for the Army Reserve; he has been at it for 23 years. He is very gentlemanly and a very gracious host. We hope he will keep his commitment to read and pray about this beautiful book of scripture.

This morning, we both had a dentist appointment with Dr. Davis. Originally, Elder Gowans' was at 1 pm, but when they saw that Sister Gowans was at 8 am, they moved them both to 8 so we wouldn't have to make two trips.

This afternoon, Elder Gowans took the young missionaries out to visit a few folks; we knocked on the door of Emillio, but he was not home, but his wife was. We had not met her before, so we asked if she would be interested in learning what her husband had been learning from the missionaries, she said she would be. Yeah! We then went to visit a lady who is probably in her 70s, named Lily. She must be a heavy smoker; we taught her how to give up her cigarettes, gave her a blessing to help her and then departed. Elder Gowans had to air out his suit coat and sweater for an hour or two.

This evening, we met with Brother and Sister Bruderer. He has been her at Fort Gordon for several months, probably since July. He suffered a broken collar bone a couple of months ago and when he was finally healed they started him in a class that was 6 weeks behind where he had been. So he will graduate in February. His wife and daughter just joined him about 3 weeks ago. We had a nice visit and encouraged them with some thoughts and ideas that would help strengthen their marriage and each other.

This evening, we had a wonderful visit with a new family, the Elms, who began attending our Branch about 4 weeks ago. He is in the process of being med boarded out of the Army; he hopes he will be out by March. He has a class all lined up down in Florida to become a Motorcycle Mechanic. We wish him the very best and hope that everything works out for him.

So we have some interesting stats to put up for you: In the year 2013, we drove approximately 23,172 miles; we spent $2,995 in gas, which is one month of my retirement pay; we filled up 83 times with an average cost of $36.00. An average day of driving is 64 miles, filling up every 4 or 5 days. The most expensive fillup was $51.00 and that happened 3 or 4 times when gas was upward to 3.60/gal.