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.

The Lord's Hand in Our Work

This has been a difficult, but rewarding week. Attached are a picture in the evening from our apartment, of the missionaries in the Miami Zone and of our chapel. They all contributed to our week. On Monday, we attended a District Meeting in the Miami Zone and came away concerned in two areas. So later in the week during Companion Study with six of these missionaries, we dished out some loving counsel (after getting the Mission President's okay) and we felt it was received well. It was hard on us because we have such love for each and every one of them and they are working so hard, but we all need some correction from time to time. We also had our first visit in this area to a man (and his 5 year old daughter). As it turned out, he had served a mission in Utah and worked in the Murray South Stake, new President Burton and many others. He married a lady from Bolivia who is not a member and he has fallen into inactivity. When he talked about his mission, he really came alive. He would make a great Ward Missionary. His daughter loves coming to Primary. We tried to arrange to meet his wife, but he is quite protective of her. We sensed a sadness in the man and he admitted that her lack of progress towards joining the church could be from his lack of involvement. We have been praying for him and his family.

On Sunday, Sister Black had a very spiritual experience and could see the hand of the Lord assisting her. At the beginning of Relief Society, the Relief Society President found out their instructor had not shown up so she asked Sister Black to give the lesson. Just a week or so earlier, our home Relief Society President, Sister Jodi Hermansen, had mailed Sister Black a lesson outline she had used to give the same lesson in our home ward. So Sister Black had already read the lesson outline and had placed it in her scripture case, was able to pull it out and give a good lesson to the RS sisters. It was a little miracle. Also, for the second week in a row, someone walked in off the street inquiring about the church. The Elders invited her to our Gospel Principles class. She was only able to stay for a few minutes, but during that time one of the Elders recent converts came up to her and told her how much his conversion and involvement in the church meant to him and bore his testimony to her. Also, the Ward Mission Leader who is a convert from the same church she belongs to was able to talk to her about his conversion. She said she would come back next week.

One Monday, President Hale asked Elder Black to put together some graphics (plots) on baptisms, church attendance by investigators and lessons taught for the past 8 months while he has been the Mission President. It involved creating a table of numbers and some Excel plots. President Hale was surprised how quickly I was able to get him the information. What he didn't know is that it was like being at TerraTek and generating hundreds of such plots over the years. You never know how your lives experiences can contribute to the work of the Lord. The picture of the sun set reminds us of the beauties of God's creations and the He has provided this beautiful earth for us to learn and grow and gain experience. We love being on our mission, the experiences we are having and love you all very much.

Miami or Bust

During this past week, we continued to make trips (4) to the Miami area for training and companion study. Our last visit was to the Atrium in the heart of downtown Miami. The Elders came down on the street to save a parking spot for us and by the time we pulled in to it, I was a nervous wreck. We found out that in downtown Miami a red light doesn't mean stop, but stop and then go if the coast is clear. It took us a while to catch onto this and we were honked at a lot. We have two more trips this week and then will start visiting the Hialeah area which has a reputation as a rough part of the mission. Following that, we will be back up to our Coral Springs area (paradise). Sister Black taught the Gospel Principles class this week. After Sacrament meeting, we were out in the foyer and an older lady who described herself as a Jewish-Christian asked Elder Black for a program and he invited her to attend Gospel Principles class. She accepted and was the only investigator in the class. She spend about 10 minutes introducing herself and telling about her life. We had six missionaries, another ward couple and her. The Elders will be making a follow-up appointment with her and will have us go along. We also have our first appointment this week with a part member family in the Coral Springs ward.

Saturday evening (Valentines day), we had a very fun Senior Couples party at our apartment. We visited and told about how we met our spouses and really enjoyed the company. Yesterday, we were asked to deliver some flowers to one of the Sister Missionaries in the Boca Raton area (east of us) and we took the opportunity to take them to lunch. They are very sweet and dedicated to the work. They have two baptisms next week. One of them was told they couldn't be baptized if they continued to drink coffee, so she said she would switch to de-caff., but when they shook their heads no, she said I'll go out tonight and buy me some hot chocolate mix. What faith! Our mission was blessed with a record 17 baptisms last week. In the Hialeah area, a family of seven joined the church. This coming week looks like a big week also. Our Mighty Prayer and the dedication of the missionaries is really making a difference in the lives of many people.

From Chilly Florida

We have had a cold snap this past week in Florida where it got down to near freezing. It only lasted a few days and we are now back up into the high 70's. It has been an interesting week, as we made three trips to the heart of Miami for a District Development Meeting (DDM) and two companion studies. The missionaries live in high rises and the areas that rough (lots of bars on the windows). Two of the missionaries got their bikes stripped recently and another missionary told how someone had removed his wheels and then for some reason leaned them up against the bike and only took a water bottle. He said that he prays for his bike a lot and really wants to take it home with him in a year. The traffic in Miami is something else and we have had to give ourselves about 1 1/2 hours to be there on time. Much of that time is sitting nearly still in traffic. The next two weeks, we will also be making three more trips to Miami each week.

We got our new Daily Dose supplies last week and spent time making up folders and other things for Daily Dose. We had the Spanish missionaries over for lunch and gave them some preliminary training in Daily Dose. The Data Base reporting program is working well and the Mission President is pleased. Today was our Mission Presidency meeting and I had a number of things on the agenda. It was great to get some issues resolved with the Mission Presidency so we can move forward with Daily Dose and other things we have been bogged down on. We had two people confirmed on Sunday which was special. We will be hosting a Valentine's Party for all of the Senior Missionaries (12 or 13 will be there) in our tiny apartment. It should prove interesting.

Some exciting things that happened this week included receiving and watching Kevin and Heather's babies ultra-sound video. He is so cute and active. We love him already. We also got news from Steven and Traci that they and their family will be coming to visit us in late March-early April. We will get to see them two weekends in a row and the week in between they will spend at Disney World in Orlando. We are so excited to see them. We also heard from Ryan that his contract has only two more signatures for his new job in Yakima, Washington. We also got to see pictures of Ammon's school play where he had the lead role as Horton the Elephant and also Emma and Caleb in the Missoula Little Mermaid play.

A baby boy!

We were very excited to hear from Kevin and Heather that their baby is a boy that will be born around June 26th. Ethan will make a great big brother. Congratulations.
This has been a relatively slow week. We are not sure the new ward we are in knows what to do with us. We did get two names from the Elder's Quorum President on Friday and the full-time missionaries gave us 7 names they have been working with. We attended another baptism after church on Sunday. Sister Wislande Jean Baptiste (a Haitian Sister) was baptized. After the baptism, two Elders from the Coconut Creek area came and gave her a talk on the Restoration in Creole. She has two cute children. The little boy was dressed in a suit and the little girl had about 5 or 6 pig-tails. It was a very spiritual event. We had a wonderful Zone Conference on Tuesday (our first). The theme was on Finding Investigators. We learned a great deal that will help us with the Daily Dose effort. For example, teaching Daily Dose to the neighbors of active members and including the active members in the lessons will establish a good base for fellowshipping those who become interested in the gospel through Daily Dose English lessons. The Daily Dose material is still missing and the Mission President offered a $50 reward for the missionaries who find the two missing boxes. We did order a limited amount of new Daily Dose supplies so we can get started soon. We will be heading to Miami tomorrow to a District Development Meeting and Sister Hale will be going with us.