As I checked the mail this evening, in came pictures from the last two Zone Conferences. So I decided to do one more post with them and a picture of the new couple that arrived here on Friday!

    

In May we went to the Miami Shores chapel to be part of the Miami Beach/Hialeah Zones conference. These are elders and sisters that we do not get to see very often except at conferences and transfer meetings unless they have served in the Fort Lauderdale zone. Hopefully many of them will serve here in the Fort Lauderdale zone so we will get to know them better.

On Friday afternoon the Bares finished their long drive from Provo and we got a chance to meet them, give them a phone and help them move into their apartment here at the Waves. They are not stranger to Fort Lauderdale as they have spent many months here enjoying the warm all year around weather.

As noted below on Thursday we had a chance to go to the Fort Lauderdale Zone conference. We know most of the missionaries very well as we have been to their district meetings or they have been over to our apartment for a last lunch or two.

It has been a great Sabbath day. Lots of powerful talks, an excellent Sunday School lesson, and to top it all off a baptismal service for a strong father and his son.

    

I already have mentioned some of the articles and talks I read this morning. As I was getting dressed I noticed the items that I put in my pocket including passalong cards – Faith in Christ being the most popular, glasses, and a yellow liner pen, all sitting on a picture of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It just looked right for a picture. After a great block of meetings, Mary was asked to play for the baptism of Victor Texador and his 8 year old son Danel. It was Elder Harral’s first baptisms – he baptized Danel who gave a nice shout as he came out of the water. Elder Shaffer has been successful in all of his areas and is a fine trainer for Elder Harral.

I will mention an opportunity I had to follow the spirit. Just as the Sacrament service was finished, two women stuck their heads into the chapel, looked around and then went back out. It was obvious at least one of them was not a member so as the Deacons were walking back up to the front I felt that I should go out and see it they needed help. It turned out one was a member but the other sister was an investigator that the Elders are teaching. I told them that the sacrament was over and showed them where the elders were sitting with the Texadors. They stayed for Sunday School but not for the baptism service.

With our meeting not starting until 1:00 I must confess that at times it is easy for me to just find a book – not the scriptures – and curl up and read for a couple of hours. A few weeks ago I read a talk about the Sabbath Day that changed my attitude about the way I spend the morning or at least how I am trying to spend the Sunday mornings.

I have found it a good time to read the Ensign and listen again to conference talks, and ponder what I read. This morning besides reading and listening to a couple of talks by Elder Neal Maxwell – there are 53 of his conference talks available at LDS.org – I read an article about President George Albert Smith in the January 2012 Ensign (http://preview.tinyurl.com/8hn722e). The article ended with this comment about President Smith:

“As one observer said of President Smith: “His religion is not doctrine in cold storage. It is not theory. It means more to him than a beautiful plan to be admired. It is more than a philosophy of life. To one of his practical turn of mind, religion is the spirit in which a man lives, in which he does things, if it be only to say a kind word or give a cup of cold water. His religion must find expression in deeds. It must carry over into the details of daily life.”

It really got me thinking if the same or at least most of it could be said about me and the way I live what I know is true. As I once read somewhere “If you were accused of being a Latter-day Saint, could they find enough evidence to convict you?”

So as not to create a false impression that I spent the whole morning at LDS.org reading uplifting articles, here are some pictures that I accumulated from visiting other blogs and taking screen shots.

   

I guess we have never really left Africa because one of our favorite websites is the Tembe Elephant Park webcam. Almost every morning – it is afternoon in South Africa – we check in to see what is going on there. Elephants actually standing in the water is unusual but this big old bull was having a great time. He probably left the water hole and threw dirt all over him – it is an elephant thing. The middle picture caught impalas in the front, an elephant and way in the back some waterbucks. I am pretty sure we never saw this combination live while we served there. I can remember the first time we saw an impala and how excited we were. After three months we had seen so many we didn’t even say anything when we saw a herd.

  

Our dear friends Elder and Sister Bell who are serving as PEF missionaries, sent this picture of them being Helping Hands in the Philippines which has been hit by one terrible flood after another. Another blog I visit shows scenes from the DRC. I thought we had seen some very interesting loads on motorcycles, bikes and carts but I think this one of a van being transported on a cart beats them all. The writer mentioned that the men, cart and van actually passed them while they were sitting in traffic. We had that happen in Jakarta when a man pulling a huge cart full of grasses kept passing us as we tried to get through a stuffed traffic area.