A Temple in South Florida

We are thrilled and humbled beyond measure at Saturdays announcement by President Monson that a temple will be built in South Florida (Ft. Lauderdale). A lot of prayers of thanksgiving and tears have been shed by us and many of the Latter-day Saints in this area. As we had mentioned earlier, the members and leaders have been very faithful in attending the Orlando temple, fasting and praying for a temple and doing Family History work to do the temple work for their ancestors, but I think the announcement took almost everyone by surprise. The prayer offered by one of our humble and spiritually in tune missionaries who prayed not only for a temple but that it would be announced in this General Conference gave a spark of faith and hope to everyone in the mission. In a meeting with our Mission President two days before the announcement was made, he said that he fasted for a temple last Sunday and that a momentary doubt came to him but left quickly and that he was confident that the Lord would answer the prayers of the members, leaders and missionaries. This will be an amazing blessing to this area and we believe it will hasten the work of bringing souls to a knowledge of the truthfulness of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the opening of the doors of nations in this area to the preaching of the gospel. It is not hard to tell that we are excited.

Sister Black turned over the medical to Sister Welch and Elder Black turned over the housing to Elder Welch this past week. That was a big relief. We will continue to help Elder and Sister Welch with the apartment inspections and other things they ask us to do. We also taught Daily Dose several times this week and taught two new member lessons. We enjoyed General Conference and on Saturday and Sunday shuttled several recent converts and an investigated back and forth to the conference sessions. We have our Zone Conference tomorrow and are looking forward to that in light of the temple announcement.