Prayers are answered

We are doing well and feel so blessed to be in the service of the Lord. He has been so kind to us and this week we have felt His love and tender mercies in answering our sincere prayers. Elder Black has been struggling with a problem related to the printing of the Chapel Pass Along Cards. The new laser jet printer used toner at an amazingly fast rate making it uneconomic to use. A firmware update and cutting way back on the color quality was done to help, but about $300 worth of toner had been used up. After several weeks of trying to find a solution and many dead ends, Elder Black sought the Lord's help and earnestly prayed for an answer. On Friday, he called the printer manufacture again and the second person he talked to seemed to understand the difficult situation and offered to replace all four toner cartridges for free and also gave other tips to conserve on toner. It was an answer to prayer and a great weight was lifted. We are so grateful. In our Presidency Meeting this morning, Elder Black was able to inform the Mission President of the problem for the first time and the solution.

We traveled to West Palm Beach early on Sunday morning to present the Daily Dose English program to the ward leadership. The meeting went very well and they were enthusiastic to get it started in their area. The missionaries have already taught some lessons and are excited about it also. On the way up there, there were some large towering pillars of clouds out in the Atlantic Ocean and for a few minutes the sky was yellow, with a robin egg blue streak jutting up from the ocean and high into the sky. This blue streak had straight, parallel sides and looked surreal with all of the surrounding yellow and the beautiful clouds. Unfortunately, we did not have a camera. Sister Black did a good job teaching the Gospel Principles lesson on Sacrifice on Sunday.

Beautiful Clouds in Florida

One of the impressive things about Florida are the beautiful clouds and sky. In the afternoon, huge thunderheads form and billow up high in the sky. Attached are two photos. We need to take more pictures of the clouds. We also went to an area today on our P-day where the cruise ships sail out of Ft. Lauderdale harbour and took a few pictures. The cruise ships are escorted out of the harbour by the Coast Guard in two rubber boats equipped with machine guns on the front. They sounded their sirens and the cruise ships sounded their horn and the people on the ship started to cheer. Also, a Coast Guard helicopter came and circled the cruise ship at one point. We believe it was heading for the Bahamas. It was quite impressive. Down by the water, we also saw a big bright green Iguana sunning himself.

We had a wonderful Zone Conference on Tuesday. As we mentioned, the mission is doing so well and the missionaries were treated to a steak fry after the Zone Conference meetings and then played volleyball afterward. We sat at a table with several Sister Missionaries. One of the Sisters said she wished she had her camera so she could photograph her steak to help her remember it. We baked the potatoes which were huge Idaho potatoes. We cooked two batches early that morning (starting at 4 am) and our oven heats up much more than it is set at. When we opened the oven door, all the smoke alarms in the apartment went off. I'm sure our neighbors got woken up. Surprising enough, the potatoes were excellent. We helped with the dinner and clean up and then Elder Black played a little volleyball. The rest of the week we were involved with Daily Dose and other projects and helped clean the church on Saturday. We will make two more visits to West Palm Beach this week and then will head for Miami the next three weeks. We had a good laugh this week. The Sister we have been helping out had worked one day for a man and when she asked for her pay, he refused to pay her. Her son heard about it through his wife and went down to visit the man. Her son is big, has a shaven head and is covered in tattoos. The next morning the man called her and said her check was ready and that her son was not welcome in their premises any more. We all laughed so hard.

What a week!

We have had some good visits with the missionaries this week. One group of missionaries missed our first companion study and begged us to have another companion study and talk about patriarchal blessings. There were 6 Elders who participated since they were on exchanges. Steve helped Elder Black figure out how to analyze a very large set of data (65,000 entries) for a report Elder Black was asked to do for the Mission President. We also helped a Sister in our ward who is out of work and her car is broken. We took her to the church's employment center in Boynton Beach and took her out to dinner the next night. We also prepared talks for Sacrament meeting. Sister Black got mixed up and thought we had more time and did a great job of stretching out her talk and left 5 minutes for Elder Black to talk. She gave a wonderful talk on family unity and I talked (briefly) on strengthening others families through home teaching and visiting teaching. Our Daily Dose effort has slowed down a lot the past few weeks. This is transfer week and 8 wonderful missionaries will be going to the Orlando temple tomorrow prior to their departure and eleven new missionaries will be here tonight. It is always exciting on transfer week (every 6 weeks).

Welcome to Andrew Dean Black

We were so pleased to hear from Kevin this morning about the birth of Andrew Dean Black. Ethan's "New Baby Our House" has arrived and we congratulate Heather and Kevin and welcome him into our family. What a wonderful blessing. We look forward to seeing his pictures and getting to know him the best we can. We have been in the clouds all day.

We attended a Zone meeting and three companion studies this week, but had a relatively slow week with Daily Dose English. We traveled to Miami for one of the companion studies and the Elders took a picture of us with the Miami skyline in the background. On Friday night, we had a fun get together with the other 4 Senior Couples to celebrate Father's Day. Sister Black taught the Gospel Principles class on Sunday about the Gift of the Holy Ghost and did a good job. We have been invited to a 4th of July barbeque at the Mission Home with the Hale family and all the Senior Couples. This week has been quite hot, with occasional thunderstorms and intense rain. We cannot believe how wet things have been at home.

Things Are Heating Up in Florida

We decided not to complain anymore about the rain, because it stopped raining for a few days and got very hot (mid-90's) with high humidity. The cooling rain storms started up again the past few days. This has been a busy week visiting and studying with the missionaries, teaching Daily Dose English and purchasing a new printer which will be dedicated to printing the Chapel Pass-Along Cards. Even figuring the cost of a new color laser jet printer, we will be able to cut the cost per card in half versus using our inkjet printer. It has meant modifying all the existing files to maintain front and back alignment. Elder Black also attended a Hurricane Expo sponsored by the City of Coral Springs and the Pompano Beach Stake. It was very informative. The peak season for hurricanes is usually between mid-August and mid-October. A man named Max Mayfield was the Keynote Speaker. He was the former head of the Hurricane Center and is now the hurricane specialist for a local TV station. He showed 4 slides that a friend had sent him. Slide 1 showed a satellite picture of a large hurricane directly over Florida and there were scattered locations marked for his home, garage, car and dog. Slide 2 showed the whole state covered in plywood and a sign reading "Welcome to the Sunshine State (crossed out) Plywood State (inserted)". Slide 3 showed Florida bend up toward the Carolina's with arms reaching out to hold onto those states to keep Florida from blowing away. Slide 4 showed a map of the United Stakes with the outline of Florida in between Montana and North and South Dakota with the caption "Enough is Enough". He said that Coral Springs was far enough in-land to avoid any storm surge and so we would likely not be asked to evacuate.

The Florida Ft. Lauderdale Mission is really starting to have much success due to the dedication of the wonderful Elder and Sister missionaries and blessings from the Lord. We are so blessed to be a part of the Lord's work here and hopefully are contribute in some ways.

Send Plans for An Ark

We are doing well and are getting use to the continual rain and thunderstorms. If you would get on the internet and see if there are any good plans available for an ark, we could use them. On Saturday night, there was a huge thunderstorm come through while Elder Black was at the Saturday sessions of Stake Conference. On Sunday morning, the sound system in the Stake Center was not working and the organ stopped working before the closing hymn. They tried to use a wireless system, but the sound would not reach the back of the cultural hall, so they brought people up closer, in the choir seats, etc. The theme of the conference was "A Temple in South Florida". On Friday, about 325 people from the Stake spent the day at the Orlando Temple. On Saturday, evening several people bore their testimonies about their experience going through the temple for the first time and being married and sealed to their families. It was very inspiring and a spiritual meeting.

We had the Spanish missionaries over for lunch and training in Daily Dose this week. They ate so much that one of the Elders had to lay down on the couch for a few minutes before he could move. We really enjoy them and appreciate all they are doing. In our Presidency Meeting today, President Hale said that he can see the positive results from the missionaries using the Chapel Pass-Along Cards and wants to continue there use. We will be looking at ways to lower the cost, including possibly purchasing a color, laser printer. The Stake President of the Pompano Beach Stake also has asked President Hale to expand the Daily Dose English effort to another area of his Stake, West Palm. We will be meeting with the missionaries from the Ft. Lauderdale Zone this next few weeks.

Exhausting Week

This past week has been exhausting as we have traveled to the Homestead Zone numerous times including Key West and Key Marathon on Saturday. Elder and Sister Hogge came with us and we really enjoyed their company and contributions to our meetings. We have had some great meetings with the missionaries, trainings, companion studies and also trained two sets of Elders on the Daily Dose effort. We also taught four Daily Dose lessons and printed and delivered a bunch of Chapel cards as we returned from our trips to Homestead. We had a good visit with a less-active sister who is now coming to church. Elder Black taught the Gospel Principles class on Repentance and then after church, we both had long naps and are starting to feel better.

The work here in South Florida continues to move forward with much success during the past few weeks. The number of convert baptism in May almost doubled any previous month. We can really see the Lord's hand in the work. The mission has been praying for a temple in South Florida and the opening of the nations to the preaching of the gospel. Next week, we are looking forward to attending the Zone Conference in our area. The weather continues to be very rainy. The locals say that the rainy season started about 2 weeks early and has been much heavier than what is usual for this time of year. In Key West, it was sunny and hot and then it rained most of the way home.

These are photos of some of the notable places we went on our journeys.