This has been a different but busy week. Monday our dinner was with a family that spends time each year in Alaska. She had cooked fresh salmon for dinner, and it was very good. After dinner we went to visit a family in the 14th ward. The ward mission leaders wife has been very helpful in setting up appointments for us to teach family history. We have really enjoyed these experiences. We also had a meeting in the same ward just before dinner as well.
  We had a nice rain storm for our prep day so I ran to the store and bought some fertilizer and spread it on the lawn during the rain. It is already showing nice and green.
  Wednesday after district meeting we went to the temple with a sister that we met through the sister missionaries. We had met with her and she didn't have enough information to get her own names so Ruth looked through her chart with decadency view and found four names. I followed the same guidelines on my line and found two female names as well. It was a wonderful experience. The sister missionaries went along as well. It was a great day. Some of our friends that we worked with at the temple were supervisors in the baptistery and they really made it a special day for all of us.
   We also visited with a couple that have become good friends and helped us quite a bit with a less-active fellow in their ward. She recently had rotator cuff surgery so we wanted to visit them. She recently purchased an i pad so we showed her a recent app that is available for family history. We had a request from a young men's leader to visit a guy he had been concerned about. We stopped in and made the invite to an activity. Later we received a message from the leader saying that the young man had attended the activity and had a blast.
 We had a good evening. We stopped to see a new family in our ward, they were having dinner so they asked us to come back a little later. We went next door to visit a sister that has had some real challenges recently, as we knocked the door opened and our Relief Society Pres. was just leaving following a visit. We had a great visit and showed a video on the Savior and then went next door again. The family has a new baby but were very welcoming to us.
  Thurs night we had a great dinner with a couple and two grandchildren that used to be our neighbors. The weather was so nice that we had dinner and a video presentation outside.
  We have spent a large amount of time working on a presentation for our ward for the fifth Sunday lesson on Charity. It is hard to pull things from several different sources and put the ideas and thoughts into an organized presentation. I told Ruth that I have a new appreciation for those who are on committees that write lessons for our study manuals.
  One day at the mail box I spoke to one of our neighbors and he expressed an interest in learning the new family history programs. We met at the stake center on Friday morning and got the couple signed into Family Search and showed them the i phone app for family history as well. It was a good experience.
  After putting the final touches on our Sunday presentation, Kaylene came out and went with Ruth and a friend to the General Women's meeting on Saturday evening. Sunday we went to a sacrament meeting and then went to our ward for the full block of meetings. It was good to be there and we had a good attendance and the combined meeting for our presentation. Based on the comments, we feel like we did fine.
One of our young men in our ward received his call to New Mexico, Farmington Mission and leaves in July. That is really exciting for us! He's a very good young man, we feel he will be a valiant missionary.
  We have taken time during the week to visit our home teaching families. Our last visit was with a single sister who has an adopted daughter from Haiti. We usually just visit but this time we asked her if we could share the new Easter video, Because of Him. She accepted and we were pleased.
 This past week marks eleven months that we have been serving. It seems to have gone quickly, especially recently since we have had a pretty full calendar.

  We have completed our first set of member missionary classes. I just realized I didn't write about the class in last weeks blog. We had a family of four and one other gentleman there to start with. Before the class was over we had two more people join us. We had a good discussion about being member missionaries and how the invitation was the most important thing we could do. We talked a lot about Preach My Gospel and the book by Bro. Christensen,"The Power of Everyday Missionaries." The assignment for the week was to take Elder Ballard's challenge and set a date by which time you would have a person or family to invite the missionaries to teach.
We felt like with the discussions we had and the material we presented, it was accepted and will help the work go forward.
During the week we studied and prayed and also extended an invitation through the three bishops to invite those who have responsibility for home teaching and visiting teaching to join us even if they hadn't attended the first class. We ended up with an increase in attendance including one of our bishops with his wife. We focused on how we needed to help investigators and new members feel welcome and learn about their new environment. We had good discussions and helpful comments and felt like we really did what we set out to do, to have members see how they make a difference in the growth of the Church and especially in the growth of less-active and new members.
 Tuesday we drove to Salt Lake for my seventh appointment with the Huntsman Cancer Clinic. The same fellow,Tom, has been my contact each time I have made my visits. He is a nice guy and so I determined as I prepared to go to the appointment that I would leave some kind of a Gospel message with him. Earlier in the week we obtained some pass along cards about Family Search. As we arrived I made a point to engage him in conversation, probing to find how to leave the message. We talked about his family and that he is youngest of three children. His father has passed and his mother is living out of the area. He and his wife adopted two children from India. As we were leaving, I asked him if he had ever looked at his family tree on Family Search.He said he had not and because his children could never find their family, he felt like this may not be a good idea. I presented him with the pass along card and encouraged him to look at his tree with the idea of learning more about his ancestors. He said one of his sisters had done some research so he may find some good family information if he looks.
Anticipating the appointment, I had e mailed my siblings and asked them to meet us for lunch. Lavon, Nick and Jules, and Chuck were able to join us at Chuck A Rama for lunch and we had a good visit about what had happened in our families since we had last been together as well as some of the current things that were going on.
  Each day is a new adventure. We have wonderful members who invite us into their homes and we enjoy the meals and the opportunity to share our Gospel message with each of them. We feel like we are being guided as to the things we present to the families and have felt their appreciation for our work. Wednesdays are District Meetings. This past Wednesday we talked about improving lesson presentations and at the end of the meeting our District Leader asked one of our elders to bear his testimony. The missionary is from Samoa and joined the Church a few years ago over the objection of his Baptist minister father. The result of his baptism was that he has been disowned and shunned by his family. He told about struggling with his decision. He was homeless for a period of time  and then finally decided that  he was going to stay true to his commitment and work himself into a position to go on a mission. It was obviously a struggle for him but he is a fine elder. At the conclusion of the meeting one of our senior elders told the elder that he should write home every week and his family would soften their hearts toward him.

  We have had some great dinners and wonderful discussions with families. One of the most bizarre things that happened was on Friday night. In the economy of the Lord, things don't just happen. We had an appointment and arrived at the address Ruth had written down. The lady answered the door and invited us right in. We asked if she were the person we were looking for and she said no and gave us her name. She said she didn't know very many people because she doesn't go to church. She was very friendly and we apologized, and after leaving our calling card with her, we left and found the right address down the street. Last night at our dinner appointment the brother talked about visiting a couple and taking cookies to them and hoping they could invite the missionaries to visit with this family. A pair of ward missionaries also live across the street from this family and were anxious to talk to us yesterday about our visit to the wrong house which is across the street. The ward missionaries had also recently made a visit with cookies and so it is apparent that the Lord is very aware of this family. It will be interesting to see what develops following all these visits.
 Saturday was a special day. The sisters have been teaching a family that have three boys who are baptized members. Recently their step father's ex wife passed away and left three children behind.
The father reclaimed his three and brought them into the new home. The blended family of six have been meeting with the sisters and the three new family members have been studying and all accepted the opportunity to be baptized. One daughter and one son are over eight and so are counted as converts, They youngest girl is just eight so she was baptized with her brother and sister as well. It was a wonderful and spiritual baptism. There was so much support from the ward that the baptismal service had to be moved to the chapel. It is wonderful for these new converts and blended family to feel that kind of support from their ward family.
   This is a wonderful work. The work rolls on and, as the Prophet Joseph testified, no unhallowed hand will stop this work until the Lord declares, that the work is done! We appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this movement.

 The week started by taking our sisters to a doctor's appointment in Pleasant View. Sis Geetz is having treatments for allergy problems. We came home and worked on putting things together for our first missionary class on Sunday evening. We are a little nervous but are preparing to have a good experience for all who attend. Just before dinner time we got a text from the former mission leader from the third ward asking us if we were planning to come to dinner. We had no notification of that but responded that we will, they said they were expecting us so we obliged. We had a wonderful meal. He cooked chicken with crab meat and cheese. The Bluebird Cafe cooks the same dish and call it Chicken Louie, it is one of Ruth's favorite dishes there. We had two more appointments one was a former bishop's family in the 5th ward. We were able to help them fill in a few gaps and find a family where there may be some additional work available. Then we went to the 14th ward area and met with a family that are fairly new in the area. She was born in Peru and their family moved to Italy. They were interested in pursuing some additional information. Ruth is going back tomorrow to see if she can help. We stopped to see another sister who is recently reactivated. She told us earlier that she wanted to go to the temple. She told us that she has set a date and she plans to go in July. That is exciting!
  Tuesday we had dinner with a couple that we have established a nice relationship with. We have helped them with indexing problems and also Ruth has helped her with some Family History challenges. We have tried to help there since he was recently sustained as the new Stake Indexing director. They wanted to have us for dinner to say thanks for all our help. They are a neat couple and we enjoyed being in their home for a delicious pork chop dinner.
Following dinner we went to the home of a Relief Society Pres. in another ward. She really wanted to find a name of an ancestor to take to the temple. They worked hard, and after one family they found needed more work, low and behold another ancestor was found and she was so excited. Her daughter will do the baptism and the mother will do the rest of the work. It was an exciting evening for her.
  After spending most of the day fine tuning our missionary class for Sunday we went to visit a father and son who had invited us for dinner. The family lost a son just over a year ago to a suicide. The younger son found his brother which obviously would be a shock for anyone to deal with. In addition to the death there was a separation of the father and mother which complicates the matter even more. However, the father had recently been able to go to the temple and do the work for his deceased son. It was an incredible experience for him and those family members who attended.  The younger brother is still struggling some with the memories and the shock but seems to be doing better. We had a couple more good visits. One is a sister that is just returning to activity and wants to go to the temple to do baptisms. Ruth has found a few names for her so we will continue to help her schedule that temple visit. We were impressed to stop to see a couple that have recently moved into our stake. They are members but have not been active for a long time. We had a great Gospel discussion and they were happy we stopped to see them.
  The following day was one of the busiest and most productive days we have had while we have been serving. We ended up with five appointments We had dinner with a neat family that loves Montana. He is a builder and an artist. He spends a goodly amount of time in Montana. He would probably move there but his family has been in the valley since its beginning and so that would be tough to leave. We talked a lot about Montana, they are going next weekend to Great Falls for the annual Charles Russell art show and sale. Their little family of five including a set of twin boys enjoyed our "What is Genealogy" video and "My Family" books, and the coloring pages.  Some of the children were working on the information before we left the home. We stopped for a short visit with another family and found they have a daughter with some medical problems. She only goes to school part time and the parents thought some form of family history research or indexing would be a great thing for her. We set up an appointment to return and talk with the young lady. As we were going to our next appointment one of our ward members flagged us down and told us her young daughter was missing for the last four hours. She had taken her bike and gone with a friend and no one had been able to find where they were. Fortunately when we checked back after our scheduled appointment, the young lady had returned home and was fine. They had found a place to have fun and just seemed to have lost track of time.
Our appointment in the 14th ward was great. They are an active family with two boys and a college age daughter who was sleeping at the time we were there. The parents and the boys were very excited to accept the challenge of Find, Take, and Teach. What a great visit!
 We had a late visit with a young family that had a disconnect on one of their lines. It didn't take Ruth long to figure out how to solve the problem and connect the family properly.
  My brother Nick told me about a book recently told me about a book called "In the Shadow of Eureka Peak," by Rodger Carlson. He was a few years older than me but I ordered the book and it came in the mail. It is an interesting read as he recounts some of his experiences as a young man in Eureka that reminds me of many people and experiences I had a young man there. He remembered the epic snowstorm of 1949 that buried Eureka and left snow banks nearly ten feet high along the plowed streets. Some of the streets were not plowed for a long time after that storm.
   Saturday we put in a lot of time finalizing our missionary class. We were happy to be able to attend the First Ward Conference then go to our own ward to hear the returning missionary talk from a young man, Elder Pututau who just returned from Chile. He gave a wonderful talk about how the atonement of Jesus Christ and faith in that atonement made a difference in his life as well as some of the people he met and baptized. This is a Polynesian family that celebrates everything with a big meal. We went to the Canyon school following sacrament meeting and enjoyed the meal with many friends who filled the church more than any meeting I ever remember. Even the dedication service was not as heavily attended.
  We are so thrilled to be involved in this missionary service. We pray that we are doing all the Lord expects of us. The people of the stake have been so kind to us, we are getting acquainted with so many, what a privilege.

 This has been a good week for us. We are doing a lot of family history lessons and people are getting more interested in finding ancestors to take to the temple. Our Stake President recently explained that the Work of Salvation is going on on both sides of the veil. We need to provide the opportunity for those on the other side to realize the blessings promised by the atonement.
 On Wednesday we had training in Farr West because there are changes coming with I pads. New I pads will be issued and some new restrictions will be in place. Elder Clark and Bro.Donaldson were the trainers. When I pads were first issued to our missionaries there were no General Authorities present. Now Elder Clark explained where these meetings are held, there will be a General Authority in charge of every session. This was wonderful training, they explained that this training is not just for now but for the rest of your life. We need to be obedient, active missionaries forever. Elder Clark said that there is no more room for less-active returned missionaries in the Church. Elder Donaldson said if you don't like missionary work, you won't like after-life, and you'll just hate the millennium. So learn how to do it right and keep doing it the rest of your life. There was so much in this training, it was wonderful.
 We had another great District Meeting. Our D L is really trying hard to include Senior Couples and address how they can be more effective in their work. We had a wonderful initiatory session at the Temple following our meeting. Followed that with two more family history meetings.
 Friday was a wonderful temple day. Our home teacher for many years had a son who decided to be married in the temple. The son was his father's home teaching companion for many years and came with him last Sunday to make a verbal invitation to us to come to the wedding and dinner following.
Trevor decided not to serve a mission but felt like he wanted to be married instead. They are a cute couple and seem to be determined to make things work. They surely chose the right way to begin their journey.
 Saturday was another spiritual high. We traveled to Eagle Mountain for our granddaughter Kiersti's  baptism. She had two friends baptized at the same time. It was a wonderful baptism.  Jessie was asked to talk about the Holy Ghost and did a great job. Keith and Catherine do a great job preparing their children to understand the covenant of baptism.
Following a waffle bar at their home, we traveled to Tooele where Naomi and Caroline competed in the Winter Guard competition. Both teams did very well and both teams placed first in their divisions.We saw our former neighbors the Bartschi's who came to watch their daughter Megan compete. Our nephew Dwight Solomon Jr. and his sister Karma was there to see Karma's daughter on the Riverton team.
  Sunday was another wonderful day. We first went to church with Hallie and TeTe. Following sacrament meeting I was asked to ordain TeTe to the Aaronic Priesthood and the office of Priest.
We then attended all the meetings of the 13th Ward Conference. It was a great conference and well attended. Our ward mission leaders are still doing a great job getting appointments for our sisters. The sisters taught 30 lessons again during this week. Our evening was spent at a Youth Fireside at the Stake Center. The youth were challenged to write names of non-member and less active friends that came to their minds as two youth speakers and our sisters talked about the opportunity to share the Gospel. The ward mission leaders collected the names which should create a large number of opportunities for the missionaries.
 What a great work to be involved with!

  This week started our like weeks often do. We had our correlation meeting with our sisters then we took three sisters from our area to Ogden for a leadership meeting. While we are waiting for the sisters, we have study time. We did some preparation for our evening meeting which was a family home evening presentation on family history to a neat family in our neighboring ward, 14th ward.
The family had already obtained My Family booklets for their children and knew most of the information we usually ask the children about their families. We left some coloring pages that we have copied from a book we picked up at the Roots Tech Conference.
  Even though Tuesday is our prep day, we had an appointment with a neat family in the 13th ward. They didn't have a lot of experience with Family Search so we were able to get them into the program and then fill in some people on their trees so they could go from there. Later in the week we saw the family at a baptism and they had made contact with family members and obtained some needed information and asked us to come back this week and help them more.
  We have one new Zone leader and a new District leader. District meeting this week was getting acquainted with several new elders and sisters. They do a good job leading discussions on what is needed to help the missionaries be successful. Following our District meeting we had three other appointments. We had dinner with a young family where the father is less active but the mother and the children attend meetings quite regularly. Since we had recently had dinner with the parents of the father of the family, he was willing to set up an appointment for our sisters to come this week and meet them. We had a good visit and introduced the children to My Family booklets and left coloring pages for them as well. We then wen to visit a family in our ward. Two sisters live together, one is unmarried, the other divorced with two children. Only one child was there because the other had gone with his grandfather to a Jazz game. We had a good discussion on family history, the sisters know a lot of their family history but we left some suggestions on some tools available to help them answer some questions they need to answer in order to move forward.
Our final visit was to a family in the 14th Ward. They are an active family but they had some questions that we were able to answer. The children didn't have My Family books so we left some with them and some coloring pages as well.
   Thursday, we had set up an appointment with the bishop's family in the 13th ward who we had dinner with last week. The wife had some questions that with some research help and suggestions she was able to fill in some family lines. Later in the week she told us she had continued the search and found about 80 names that needed temple work. What a joy! Hastening the work is happening on both sides of the veil, those who have not had their work done are being prepared so they can understand and accept the work when it is done in the temple on earth.
  We had dinner with a family in the 14th ward that we had visited before. They had invited a less-active family to have dinner with us but they were not available. We discussed family history and suggested some programs they could use to find family members on lines they had not fully explored.
  Friday we had invited our sisters to lunch at Texas Roadhouse to celebrate Sis. Geitz's birthday. We had a great meal, the restaurant wished her happy birthday and gave her a free dessert to celebrate the day. After the meal the waiter came by and said, you are all set to go, an anonymous person had paid for your meal. Wow, what a neat surprise! The sisters says it happens often to them when they eat out. What a kind gesture, how we appreciated that kindness.
In the afternoon we had another family history appointment with one of our ward mission leaders families that turned out very well. They want us to come back and help them learn about indexing which will be fun.
   Saturday we attended a baptism of a child in our own ward, Korbin Smith. It was a great baptismal service and the family was grateful we would attend. Ruth then stayed for our Stake Relief Society Conference. The guest speaker was Ardeth Kapp, and it was a wonderful meeting.  Sister Kapp talked about the power of love.  She gave  three steps to love:  1. Love of our Savior, 2. Love for  ourselves, and 3.  Love for others.  All did an exercise where each sister turned to a person next to her and with instructions about what they could say did the following:  1.  Small talk, (Get acquainted)  2.  Building your relationship of trust, (Find out about each other) 3.  What can we work on together? and 4.  What would you you say if you won't see that person again?  It was a powerful exercise.  Ruth said she felt such love for the person she worked with and helped her see her with different eyes. We then went to another child baptism following the conference.
   Sunday was a full day, we attended our Stake Presidency meeting with our sisters. The presidency are pleased with the work that the sisters are doing and are excited how well people are accepting the lessons we are giving in Family History. They cleared some dates for us to hold classes on "Every Member a Missionary". We are going to hold two classes in each of three of the buildings. We have lesson outlines and are now preparing to make the presentations. The first group of people will include families who currently have missionaries in the field and others who they feel inspired to call. We hope this will enhance our work in the Stake and help move our work forward and an accelerated pace.
 

Well, we made up a little for eating at Wendy's for Valentine's Day. On Monday night we went to the Ellen Eccles Theater and saw Jay Richards production of "Little Women." It is a great story and a great production.
We are in the midst of ward conferences and the Stake President wants us to be there. It is great to be able to be in these wards and to know many of the members because we have been in their homes. Sunday was the Fifth Ward Conference. The sacrament meeting format is that the bishop talks, a member of the ward council is asked to bear their testimony, and then Pres. Davis speaks. They are good meetings and enjoyable to be there. We usually attend one or two other sacrament meetings and this Sunday we also had a meeting with some of the bishopric of the Third ward concerning a member of their ward who needs their attention. We also attended the Spanish missionary correlation meeting. Since our Spanish missionaries cover three stakes in our area, it is good to know what they are doing and try to help them with their work.
Monday mornings we hold our correlation meeting with our sisters. Following that meeting we took two of our sister leaders to Ogden for meetings. When we returned we had dinner with Bishop Berry's family in the Thirteenth Ward. What a great family! Nearly a year ago they lost a daughter to cancer. Fortunately she was able to go to the temple for her endowments. They are a faithful family, and they shared some sacred experiences with us about her and some things that have happened since her death.
We talked about family history and it was well accepted. We have a return appointment this week to see if we can help them find some family names to take to the temple. One daughter is sixteen and she thought it would be fun for her to organize a date night for several couples to go together to a family history center and do indexing, then go have more fun together. We appreciate our youth!
   Our Prep days are usually busy but in the afternoon we made a visit on the way to our dinner appointment. We have a cute video we are using called "Woven Generations" that we show then discuss how that is done through research and temple work. After dinner we visited a couple, the husband has just been called as the Stake Indexing Director. That was a great visit, then we attended the Fourth Ward family history fair where they had good attendance. It was well organized and we were impressed that they had youth teaching in some of the classes. We followed with a meeting with our Stake President who was gracious with his compliments and we discussed some things we want to do going forward.
  Wednesday would normally have  been transfer day but because of conflicts it was put off for a day. We had a fun meal with the Thirteenth ward mission leader and his family. The children were so excited with the "My Family" booklets and the coloring pages we copied from a book we picked up at the Roots Tech Conference. The sisters asked us to visit a less active family that are returning to activity and have a boy turning eight soon. The father is preparing to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood so he can baptize and confirm his son. We gave the family a short Gospel lesson and presented the boy with a child's Book of Mormon. It was a good visit.
  On Thurs.one of our sisters, Sis. Mathison was transferred to Benson but she was replaced by Sis. Geetz who was involved with TeTe getting baptized, so we are happy that she will be in our stake for the last transfer before she completes her mission.
  We had some great visits and then visited a member of our ward to see if we could arrange a visit with a non-member neighbor. We also presented their children with the short video and coloring pages. Our area Seventy Elder Laing presented some training to the Stake Presidents, High Council members over missionary work and most of the senior couples. He talked about the workings of the ward councils in Hastening the Work of Salvation. It was a very good meeting.
  On Friday we had an interesting day of service. We went with Hallie and a bus load of students from her school to Salt Lake to visit the Clark Planetarium. We were the chaperons along with two people from the school. It was a good day except coming home some of the kids got a little rowdy and caused some problems on the bus. The Planetarium is very interesting,  The I Max presentations make things so real. The content of the presentations show a wonderful display of the universe and shows how well things are organized. One interesting thing was how stars have a life span and then they explode. Those explosions return matter to the universe and in time more stars and bodies are made from the material created by those novas or explosions.
After we returned home we had a neat visit with a young family with four children. The children were very excited to learn about family history and the parents were excited and curious enough that they asked us to come back next week for another session. The father in the family is the only member of the Church so he has a lot of people he is curious about. It will be fun to see what we can find for them.
 Saturday we went to the Mount Logan Stake for a Family History Discovery Day. We didn't know the schedule so when we arrived there were some classes in progress but we were able to get an outline of their day and we will probably use some of their ideas as we are looking at hosting a similar event in our stake in the near future. We were invited to dinner at the Ringer home and they also had four children that were interested in our presentation and the booklets and coloring pages we left for them.
  Yesterday was a great Sunday. We attended the ward council in the 10th ward where the stake presidency gave the training. It was a great meeting and even though it was mostly training there was some good discussion on different families in the ward that need some attention. Pres. Netzley lives in that ward and said that wherever he went on visits, the Castleton's had already been there. Their bishop gave a wonderful, heart warming talk in Sacrament meeting and the Stake President is always right on with his comments.
  We then went to Richmond to hear Jonathan Dayton give his returning missionary address and then enjoyed time with the family with a meal at the Civic Center in Richmond. We came home and visited a family for home teaching, attended our missionary correlation meeting then our home teacher came and visited. It was a great Sunday!


 
 

 These weeks just go by so rapidly. We had some referrals given to us by ward mission leaders, but there were some challenges finding the addresses. So we now have more information and as a result, more people to contact this week.
We have a correlation meeting with our sisters on Monday mornings. On Monday afternoon Sis. Castleton had a sister come to the house to do some additional family history research. Then we had dinner with our new ward mission leaders family from our own ward. Their children are growing up and the family is expecting a new addition any day. After our meal and our presentation to the family the oldest daughter in the family gave Sister Castleton a rose. She just turned twelve and the Young Women gave her a rose to celebrate. What a sweet thought, such a sweet girl.
  Tuesday was a little more restful prep day. We really need some time to really relax so we have the stamina to get through each week. We had a nice visit with a Primary Pres.and her family in the evening and talked about being good missionaries.
  Wednesday was our last district meeting for this transfer, for some reason, transfer day is next Thursday. We know now that we are losing one Zone leader and it looks to us like we will lose our District leader as well. It feels like one of our sisters is vulnerable for transfer. Every transfer brings changes, but we just accept them and move ahead.
  Ruth had a couple more family history sessions with members coming to our home to research and scan some documents. We then had a nice meal Thursday night with a family in our own ward. Their oldest son went on a mission but returned early. This happens from time to time because these younger missionaries just do not adjust automatically to the rigors of missionary life. It must be a problem because I have seen some articles that talk about how to be accepting and understanding of those who return early. We have a young man who came home from his mission because of a health problem. It was exciting yesterday to visit with him and find out he has clearance to return to his mission today. Hopefully he will be able to serve without more health issues
We had previously visited a member in the nursing home. We stopped at their home and the brother was home but doesn't seem to be doing really well. He has some heart problems and breathing problems. He knew my uncle Wayne and aunt Jo in Modesto, California. On our way home we stopped to see another sister who is fairly new to the area and had a great visit.
  Friday was kind of a service day. Ruth took Kaylene to the Logan Family Search library and got her started on some projects for our families. George took a fellow we still have contact with that moved to Logan and needed some help during the same time. Realizing the end of the month is close, we made an appointment with one of our families and went home teaching in the afternoon. We had a wonderful discussion about faith and conversion.
The Fourth Ward has a tradition of having an adult retreat with a meal then the couples go to the temple the next morning. They invited us to the dinner and asked us to talk about marriage and love. I talked about some of the principles while Ruth talked about some of the experiences we have had as a couple raising our family. It was a very nice evening.
  We arose early Saturday morning and went to Salt Lake for the Roots Tech Conference. In our last senior couples meeting they talked about family history as an activation tool and told us our area Seventy will be presenting information to the stake presidents about family history. Our stake president has already indicated an interest in doing more so we wanted to be more prepared. Our area Seventy training meeting is Thursday night this coming week. We arrived early and heard Donny Osmond talk about his family and some of the interesting traits he inherited from his family members.. He has been in show business for 51 yeas. Pretty amazing for our time, Al Fox Carraway is a blogger whose presentation was very eye-opening as to how people need to feel accepted as they come into the Gospel. Noel Picus Pace was a delightful presenter as she talked about dedication to the goal of winning a medal at the Olympics and how important her family was in that process.
Elder Neil L Andersen then closed that session with a talk about the Temple Challenge and the blessings available to those who work on that challenge.

The leadership training was by Elder Allan Packer, Elder Whitney Clayton, and Elder Kent Richards. The focus was on the Family History Spiritual Passport. The focus is find a name, take the name to the temple, go as a family when possible; then teach someone else about how to find family names so they can enjoy the blessings available. This is in addition to Elder Anderson's youth challenge last year to find as many names as you do baptisms for in the temple.
Elder Quintin L Cook was the closing speaker and talked about the Father's Plan is about Families. He had his children and grandchildren help him with the presentation. It was very good.
The treat at the end of the conference as the cast of Studio C performed for a while and talked about the show and answered some tweeted questions about the cast and the show. The closing presentation was David Archuleta who sang a few numbers. What a wonderful example and a great voice for a young man.It was a long day but a good day. We celebrated Valentine's Day with a meal at Wendy's on the way home. Not the most romantic but a great day.