Logging Miles in Florida

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We have had another busy week with meetings with the missionaries in the Hialeah Zone (west of Miami) and also traveled to every chapel in the mission (about 20) to take pictures for our Chapel Pass-Along Card project. On the front of a 3" x 5" index card is a picture of the chapel and on the back the name of the ward or branch, the address, a map and a Sunday meeting schedule. The missionaries will use these to invite their investigators to attend church. With the help of some missionaries, some of the cards will be in Spanish and we will eventually have some in Creole. Elder Black spent so many hours doing the maps, etc. he developed a lot of pain in his wrist. We hope to get some proof copies to the missionaries in Zone Conferences tomorrow and Wednesday. Elder Black called Roger on his birthday and Roger has also been helping out trying to get the church logo superimposed onto the chapel photos.

In our Zone Conference, Elder Zwick (one of the Seventy) and his wife will be meeting with the missionaries and will be touring the mission including visiting missionary apartments, etc. The couple missionaries will have a lunch with them on Thursday. These should be great Zone Conferences (one in the north and one in the south part of the mission). Next week, we have been asked by the Mission President to be hosts at a special Art Display portraying Christ at the Fountainebleau chapel in Hialeah and will be greeting people who come to see it and answering their questions. We will be involved every day from Saturday to Saturday (except on Sunday) from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. We will be holding companion studies in Biscami (north of Miami) each morning and then travel to the Art Display in Hialeah.

We also had a meeting with our Stake President and a Brother Nelson who he and his wife will be helping out in the Daily Dose English effort. We have a meeting with the Lauderhill Spanish ward council next Sunday to introduce Daily Dose to them. We are excited to finally start making some progress towards starting up the Daily Dose English effort. Our work in the Coral Springs ward has taken a back seat the past two weeks, but on Sunday in High Priest Group meeting their leader mentioned that based on the work Elder Black had done on the ward list and identifying where people live using Google Earth, that they were able to revamp all of the Home Teaching assignments so the priesthood can visit people who live close by them and cut down a extensive travel times. You never know when your efforts help the work go forward. We also got help this week from Traci who researched a question an investigator asked one of our missionaries. We appreciate all of your notes of encouragement and love.

PS. We might mention that in one of the attached photos, the tall Elder is not standing on something. Elder Bachynski is 7' 2" tall. His companion standing just in front of him, Elder Pinard, is the shortest Elder in the mission.

Alligator Adventures

We have had a good week visiting missionaries, feeding the missionaries, making a few member visits and today we went on an air boat ride out into the Everglades and our unfortunately our camera battery was dead so we didn't take any pictures of the alligators (one big and two smaller) we saw out in the wild. We will try to get some on the other missionaries pictures. The attached are two pictures that were taken by Elder and Sister Holdstock of Sister Black on the air boat and Elder and Sister Black at the alligator show afterwards. Brother Torsok from the Hollywood ward is a convert to the church and for the past three years he have been paying 1/2 the cost for the missionaries to take an hour air boat ride and to see the alligator show. He was the person who arranged for us to speak at the Hollywood Ward the week after Christmas. There were 3 couple missionaries and about 24 Elders and Sisters who participated. It was a lot of fun. We saw a 12 to 15 foot alligator cruising around in some water lily type plants. It was very fat in the middle and they think it had just eaten something big. We also saw a large iguana sunning itself in a tree. At the alligator show the alligator wrestler put his head inside of the jaws of a medium size alligator. Because the missionaries are regular visitors, they let everyone hold the small alligator for free as pictures were taken.

We will be starting up the Daily Dose English soon. We will also be doing a project of preparing chapel pass along cards for investigators. It will have a picture of the chapel on the front and on the back the name and address of the Ward or Branch, a map and a meeting schedule. As we are traveling around the mission, we will take pictures of all the chapels and Elder Black will do the back of the card using AutoCad.

Mixed up week

This has been a rather mixed up week. For most of the days activities we had planned out, we ended up doing something else. We attended the Transfer meeting on Wednesday and it was very exciting to see a good part of the mission receive there new assignments. There were 9 new missionaries (6 Spanish and 3 English). One Elder is from Riverton, Utah and another from Rigby, Idaho. One of the new Elders is from Kenyan. He is 26 years old and will be a powerful missionary. His village pooled their money and bought him a suit before he left. His Bishop had told him he could not serve a mission because of his age, but someone else heard about his desire to serve and got things straightened out. One of our couple missionaries sat in on a lesson he helped give just two days after his arrival and they said he is an amazingly powerful teacher. Afterwards, we were able to help out by taking a group of missionaries and their luggage to the Mission Office and then drove to the Biscami area (north of Miami) to deliver luggage to some other missionaries. We also delivered some bicycle helmets to some other missionaries up in our area and later in the week we delivered a bike and later that evening a bike rake to still some more missionaries. The afternoon of the Transfer day, we picked up some dessert we had ordered and helped Sister Hale prepare for the Finishers Dinner. The dessert has a history. We ordered it from an Italian bakery on the Saturday before. A couple of days later, Elder Black was prompted to call the bakery and make sure there was no alcohol in it (it had a cherry on top) and sure enough it would have had rum in it, if the prompting had not been followed. We also enjoyed going to the Finishers fireside to listen to the 8 departing missionaries testimonies.

Another contributor to the mixed up week was the fact that several weeks ago I was asked to give a deposition for a law firm representing an insurance company in a law suit brought by TerraTek's former landlord (who also has a law suit against TerraTek). I will be giving the deposition this afternoon at 3:30 pm in Ft. Lauderdale. The landlord is claiming that TerraTek removed his fixtures (our equipment) from the building, the building was left in bad shape and he was unable to rent it. I had taken the landlord and some contractors on a tour through the building and then wrote up some notes on what was discussed on the tour and gave them to Sid. I was told that the deposition would be about one hour which sounded okay, but then last week I spent about 5-6 hours talking to and being questioned by various lawyers from both sides and TerraTek's lawyer offered to represent me at the deposition which I gladly accepted. Today, I am expecting at least two more calls. I will let you know how it goes. We used to watch a lot of Perry Mason episodes, but I'm not sure how much that will help out.