Things get a little crazy and I just blew past last Monday without writing about our week so I will cover two weeks in this entry. With our full time sisters working at the Ogden Temple Open House, we have been having dinner with members a little more often because the sisters shifts have them working at the temple during evening meal times. We have a couple of people that we meet with most every week. It is an uphill battle with both of them but we are persisting and trying to encourage them to study the gospel and attend their Sunday meetings. It is difficult to measure progress sometimes and we just have to invite and encourage but ultimately the decision is theirs.
We found time to make a home teaching visit to one of our families. We feel that is an important part of our missionary work. We had a delightful dinner visit with a family that used to live in our ward. The weather was really nice and we ate outside. What a joy for us to have a chance to visit and leave a message with the family.
We have many meetings. One of the neat meetings is our Senior Couple correlation meeting. We held such a meeting on August 21 and our Area Authority Seventy, Elder Laing and Pres. Gordon from the mission presidency and his wife also attended. We had a good meeting, sharing thoughts and experiences. In a couple of weeks we have our first mission conference which is always an exciting experience. On Friday the 25th the 5th Ward High Priests put on a Hasten the Work dinner, they invited all the high priests and their wives, us and the full time sisters to attend. There was a wonderful meal, then High Priest leadership spoke of how everyone can help in the work and then our Stake President Davis spoke. Everything was well prepared and hopefully will bring about some positive results.
Keith and his family came to celebrate my birthday and at the entrance Sardine Canyon there was a rock slide and they had to turn around and go through Tremonton to get here. On Saturday morning Kaylene, Ron, Collette, Hallie, and her husband TeeTee came for a meal. Keith's family gave me a painting of the Martin Handcart Company which now hangs near our front door. What a treasure!
In the afternoon we went with Keith and his family to the Ogden Temple open house which was so fun to be with them as they saw the beauty of the temple.
Sundays are always busy. We have a missionary correlation meeting at 6:30 a.m. and then usually attend one or two ward council meetings. Then we attend normally attend a sacrament meeting and Sunday school class where one or more of our people we are working with are attending. By the end of the day we are usually exhausted but happy for the experience. This past Sunday, in addition to our normal meeting schedule we attended a planning meeting in the 14th ward where they are planning a youth missionary experience and we are going to help the youth training to prepare for the experience. We love the Gospel and we love sharing our time and testimony with others.
One other exciting thing was the 4th Ward had a ward activity and went to the Ogden Temple Open House on the 28th. There was good participation, about 75 ward members. We were asked to attend the activity so we decided since some less active and non members had been invited, we should go. Our Stake President asked us to ride with his family. Their son had just returned from his mission the night before, what a wonderful experience that was. There was one sister especially and her less active daughter that attended. The mother was especially impressed with the beauty of the temple and the daughter seemed happy to be there as well. On the drive home, the president shared some of his concerns about the status of our stake. He is concerned that only 50% of our members are attending Sacrament Meeting. We have a lot of work to do to get the other 50% on board but we now have that goal before us, so we will keep that as a main focus of our work. Our mission is to bring people closer to Christ, we will make invitations and hope people will respond positively to those invitations.

Ogden Temple Open House - Hyrum 4th Ward