Rainy month

September has been a very rainy month so far. Every day we have had a few hours of heavy rain. It actually has cooled things off a bit and we have enjoyed that. While we were at dinner Friday evening with the Senior Couples is rained extremely hard and there was some minor flooding in that area. We are keeping our fingers crossed concerning the hurricane season and have about 1 1/2 months left in the season.

We have gotten a couple of assignments from the Coconut Creek ward to teach new member lessons to a couple of the recent converts. We went to the home of Dalton Rhoden and visited with him and arranged to teach him each Thursday. We also learned that his mother needed a large print Bible and we were able to get her one through the Mission Office. She was very appreciative. On Sunday, Elder Black was able to help Dalton get an interview with the Bishop to receive the priesthood. He is quite excited and should be ordained next week. The sister we have been helping and fellowshipping got a job interview in the field she is trained in and we are praying that she will get the job. We had a number of good visits with the missionaries this week and were able to take five sisters out to lunch on Thursday.

We heard a neat story that happened last Wednesday evening. In the Hollywood area, the Sisters had a family of four committed to baptism, but the mother had a few concerns and so the family decided not to be baptized on Wednesday, but they attended the baptism to see what it was like. Just before the service started, a 10 year old boy from the family came up to the Sisters and told them that he could be baptized and that he wanted to be a missionary just like them. They got the Elders to come interview him and then the Bishop mentioned that when the father of the family saw how much his son wanted to be baptized, the father started to cry and said he wanted to be baptized also. So the Elders interviewed him and the father and son were baptized on Wednesday evening. I also attended the baptism of a 12 year old girl on Sunday who had been introduced to the church by her friend. Her friend gave the talk on baptism and afterward it was very sweet when they hugged each other. There have been three young women join the church in the past 3 or 4 months.

A change in assignment

We have received an assignment change. Starting in October, we will be assisting a new Senior Couple, Elder and Sister Welch from Springville, Utah with Monthly Apartment Inspections. Each month we will visit one half of the Mission Apartments and they will visit the other half. This will include a trip to Key West every other month. They will be in charge of the apartments and medical. It was a real blessing that they have been assigned to our mission, otherwise, we may have been assigned both the apartments and the medical. We had a wonderful Zone Conference on Tuesday and attended a baptism of a 42 year old man on "Sunday who has read the Book of Mormon three times. He said the first time he read it, he knew it was true. The second time he knew he needed to contact the missionaries and while they were teaching him he read it again. His parents and a sister attended his baptism. We taught Daily Dose English at the church twice this week and last week while the Nelson's were on vacation. We are teaching English to an elderly women and her daughter. They had not missed until Friday and the daughter brought her mother to the lesson while she waited in the car because she was sick. Also, on Tuesday, a women walked for an hour (in the heat) to get to the class and we drove her home. This Friday and Saturday, the missionaries, working with the local members, found 400 new investigators to teach. Investigators attending Sacrament meeting has gone from 400 to 600 a month in the past 4 months. Starting next month, the Mission Office will be printing the Chapel Pass-Along Cards which Elder Black has been doing. The missionaries really have loved them and it looks like they will become a permanent part of our mission. We are keeping a close eye on the hurricane reports and still have two months left in the hurricane season.

Party in Florida

One of our Senior Couples, the Kynaston's, will be going home later in the month so we took them to dinner on Friday night. We drove across town in a driving rain storm to a fish place they recommended only to find that their power was out from the storm, so we drove back and ate close to where we live. On Labor Day, we had a Thanksgiving Dinner in honor of the Kynaston's at the Elder and Sister Dalling's place and spent about 5 hours together. It was great food and a lot of fun. Then on the 19th of September we will be having one more party for the Kynaston's at Elder and Sister Hogge's place. I told Sister Black that when we are ready to leave that they will give us a "don't let the door hit you in the back side" party to celebrate our departure.

We have had an interesting week and was able to cheer up one of our English students and fix several problems with her computer. We also had some wonderful visits with the missionaries in the Hialeah Zone. We will be teaching the New Member Lessons to a recent convert and will be teaching a Temple Preparation class. We are enjoying our mission and the wonderful people we are working with.