Sorry about the last week. One thing after another came up and we just didn't get back to updating the blog. It is amazing how when we need to find opportunities to meet people that the Lord puts them in our pathway. This happens in the neighborhood or in a store where we have gone to shop for something we need.
  We had some great visits during the week. We had been asked to see a sister who has been diagnosed with tongue cancer. Being a nurse she was aware of the treatment regimen but she opted for the operation. The tongue is a different situation than most so following the operation, instead of stitching the doctors put leaches on her tongue to hold it together while healing. It sounds rather gross but it worked and she is healing quite well. Her ward family is really taking good care of her and she is so grateful.
  That week was transfers so we were asked to attend the transfer breakfast for our zone because the father in the home that had scheduled the breakfast was out of town. It was fun to see the excitement of the young elders and sisters as the transfers were announced. This first transfer was a nine week transfer to match our transfers with the assigned dates of new missionaries coming in and going home. This next week we are losing one sister and nine elders including an assistant to the president. As a result there has been several threesomes in our zone. It will be interesting on the next transfer because we understand there will be twenty-five new missionaries coming in, and only a handful going home. It is always exciting to meet the new missionaries that are transferred into our zone. We always enjoy the Zone study and training because the zone leaders discuss the expectations for the six weeks ahead and plan training to meet those expectations.
  We have been working with one young man in particular that we are so hopeful that will return to activity. He welcomes our visits and during that week we really challenged him to attend church meetings and to reestablish a practice of reading the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon.
   We are excited for our Family Discovery Day coming on Sept. 12. We hope to be well prepared and that we will have a good attendance from the area. There is so much new information and so many changes in Family Search that we hope people will be interested in learning about how to more effectively do the research of their ancestors.
  This past week was all a jumble because we had to change meeting plans because a mission conference has been announced for Sept 19th and Elder Ballard will be our visitor and speaker. As a result we had preparation day on Monday and a Zone conference on Tuesday. The Zone meeting training was great because it looks like the leadership has decided to get to the basics and so we talked a lot about basic principles of teaching and understanding that should help every missionary. We had several new couples in attendance and the schedule included time for the senior couples to have their own session. One of the big challenges is for each pair of missionaries to teach the Restoration lesson in five minutes or less, then challenge the people taught to pray for a missionary opportunity and the missionaries are to return for a report from the family in five days. The mission is going to record these experiences and give them to Elder Ballard as he comes for the mission conference.
  We had a wonderful opportunity given to us by one of our ward mission leaders. There is a young couple who wants to reestablish their church activity. We made an appointment and went in and taught them the lesson of Restoration. It was a special time for us and challenging because we are not well practiced in giving these lessons.
 We have had some wonderful member visits and meals where we have shared messages. We also had a couple of family history lessons with families who are wanting to do more family research.
  There are just over six months left in our calling. We we will hopefully be able to continue meeting with the good people of our stake and helping them to make progress in living the Gospel and learning about their ancestors.