This morning we attended our monthly Zone Training Meeting. Our Zone Leaders really try hard to make them a learning experience for everyone there. They have several of the Elders and Sisters always take part in the training, which gives many an opportunity to learn and grow through their preparation.

Afterwards, we met the Sisters at the home of a single fellow and helped review via a DVD the restoration of the gospel. Immediately after that, we went home and made our final preparations for institute; this evening we discussed the 89th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, or the Word of Wisdom. We had a lot of good input from all who were there. One soldier shared with us a story about his mother, who, prior to her receiving the gospel smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day. She could never quit, even though she tried many times. Once she began studying with the missionaries and began to have the Spirit in her life, she was able to quit very easily.

Tomorrow is our monthly trip to the temple, plus it is stake conference weekend. We will have a great weekend ahead of us.

This morning Elder Gowans went up to visit with Brother Peterson the Elders' Quorum President of the Harlem ward. We wanted to sit down together to swap notes on our military families and make sure we know who they all are. Of course there is always the possibility that there are some who are unknown to both of us. Anyway, we received a list of nine people that we need to call and set up appointments with so we can get to know them and find out if there are needs that we might be able to help with. After his visit with him, Elder Gowans then went over to drop in on the Walter family, to see if they needed anything, having just moved in. From there he went to the Stott family; Brother Stott will deploy in nine days. He also needed to get Sister Stott's phone number to be able to keep in contact with her. While there, he met Brother Stott's little brother who serves in the Marine Corp.

This evening, we visited with Sister Arnett. It is usually about a 2 hour visit and it was tonight. She is getting ready to go on a 12 day cruise around about Italy, Spain and other European countries. She is very excited about this adventurous trip that lies ahead.

Elder Meacham, who we had mentioned in an earlier post, learned today that his prostate cancer has not spread anywhere else in the body. They are very happy about these results, as you may imagine. We also learned that our Son-in-Law, David, was hired by Church Distribution on a part-time basis, this will be a great blessing for him and his family. We are very grateful how Heavenly Father has blessed each of our children and their families.

This morning at the Post Library, upon arrival, we asked, as we always do, what they might have for us to do. The lady who is charge of us as volunteers said she needed our help in cleaning up the conference room. What? What conference room, we thought to ourselves. We walked over to a door that we'd never been in and she opened it up and immediately we could see why we had never knew it was there. It certainly could never be used as a conference room. It had become a storage room. She explained to us what she needed to have done. Now you will never guess where she wanted us to put a lot of the "stuff"; we had to walk it across the Library and stash it all in one of their small Word Processing rooms. So basically, we emptied out one room and trashed another. By the time we were through, the conference room was still not usable as a conference room and now the Word Processing room was not able to be used as a Word Processing room either. Oh well, we are not there to ask questions, but to do as we are asked.

This evening we had a nice visit with Brother Baum. He will be separating from the Army in 2 months and then will begin school at Idaho St. where he wants to study robotics. Sounds like he will have a great adventure ahead of him. We hope it will all work out for him.

Thank you Becky, for reminding us that we had not posted anything since Monday! However, we do have a good excuse. :) So this is Tuesday's Blog entry.

Last evening we, the Branch Presidency, held our first Disciplinary Council for one of our AIT students. Four and one half years ago, this young man had been disfellowshipped from the church and now he was seeking to be reinstated to full fellowship. He has been here at Fort Gordon for nearly 5 months and has been working with President Estep while here to have his blessings of church membership restored to him. We met with him for nearly an hour and at the conclusion of the Council it was determined that he would have this blessing restored to him. He had done everything he could to repent and show by his works and deeds that he had truly had a change of heart.

After the Council ended, we dashed away to visit a fellow who is here TDY, brother Freeman. We had an enjoyable visit with him. We learned that he was from Cheyenne, WY and that same day David and Rosalee and family had driven through there on their way to Matt and Becky's. We all thought that was a good coincidence. After our visit with Brother Freeman, we drove over to the Barrett's home to review with him and his wife who the military families are in their ward, to make sure we had an accurate list. We learned that a new family had just recently moved in and that a couple had moved out.

Upon returning home, Elder Gowans, who had acted as the recorded in the Disciplinary Council, went right to work on typing up the notes he had taken and then emailing them to the rest of the Branch Presidency. Afterwards he still had to do his scripture study. By then it was nearly 2330 and he completely forgot to record in the Blog that night. Our apologies to everyone who has been following us regularly.

Our old friend, Paul Miller, is back to finish up his Warrant Officer school.He was here for nearly 5 months back last fall and all the way through spring. He will be here until December. It is fun having him back with us. This afternoon we took our Elders bowling and had a lot of fun. It has been interesting to watch all these Elders and Sister bowl, so many different styles and so many levels of proficiency.

This evening, after church, we had the opportunity to visit with Sister Janssen; she was the young wife and mother who was baptized about four months ago. She has been under terrible stress and anxiety over issues that she has recently learned about her husband, who is due home from deployment next week. It wouldn't be proper to go into all the details here, but she has learned many things about him, none of which is good. Elder Gowans gave her a blessing of peace and instruction to help guide her through this difficult time. Next week will be an interesting week for all of us as we will be there to help her through the home coming of her husband.

Next we went to visit the Hand family. We had just recently learned of them being here on Fort Gordon. We had a real nice visit with them. He is a member, she is not. We learned that at one point she was about to be baptized, but something happened where it all fell through. Her husband was recently on deployment, in fact he was deployed the entire first year of their marriage. He is now being reclassified, or in our terms, learning a new job. We asked them if they would be interested in having the missionaries come by, they will, but first they will get back to going to church. They asked if they could both attend the Branch on Post. They said they would see us on Sunday!

Elders Phillips and Hatch, our District Leaders, came by this evening after we returned home for the evening and after visiting for a while asked us to share a miracle that has occurred in our ministry this week with the rest of the District on Tuesday in our District Development Meeting. So, we may share with them what happened to us this morning as we were meeting and visiting our AIT students.

We were finally able to find Brother Mortimer this morning. We had received his name, but we had no other information about him that would identify where he was located, even his phone number didn't work. We finally narrowed it down to the 447th BTN. So we thought we'd start with C company. One of the Platoon Sargents said he was in his company, but he couldn't tell us for sure which building he was in. So after walking back and forth between buildings, we finally located him, but he was at breakfast. We also learned that he would be returning soon only to go to a financial briefing. So we waited for him and finally he came. We had about 1 minute with him, before he left. From there we went to locate one more new fellow. We found him in the same company as Brother Mardanlou; Brother Mardanlou just so happened to be at the company door sweeping out the entry way. We spoke with him and told him we were looking for a new fellow, Brother Amidan, he had just arrived. As we were talking he shows up there at the door and says I hear you are looking for me. At the same time another fellow who is at the door just starts hanging there and listening.We start talking with him and then we ask him if he is a member of the church too. He says he is not, but that he wants to learn more and then we find out that there had been members of the church in his family, back in his grandfather's generation. We invite the three of them to come together, Brothers Mardanlou, Amidan and Beach. We hope the three of them will come out together and that we will be able to start teaching Brother Beach tomorrow.

This afternoon, we visited the Anderson family. They are an older family with a 14 year old daughter, their youngest is 1 year old. Most of the families we visit are very young families, it is nice to run into some who are older. After our visit with them, we drove around to look for other families who we have no telephone number for, but an address. We had one successful visit among that group.

We invited David and Joann White to dinner with us at Cheddars. We met a 6 pm and had a delightful visit and dinner with them. We served with him in the Library prior to his retirement. We have tried to maintain a friendship since then. We gave them a copy of the Book of Mormon a while back and hope that at some point in time we will be able to teach them about it.