Well I finally got around to writing some text to go with these pictures. On the first Friday of each month there is a Zone Leaders’ conference at the mission home and after it is over many of the companionships come in to pick up supplies for their zone. I try to take a couple of pictures of those I do not have captured before

    

Elders Olson & Hatch  serve in the Stewart Zone and drive more miles than any other pair of elders except perhaps the Assistants. Elder Gust and Badillo are ZLs in the Miami Zone. The last picture is a clear sky morning from our patio.

   

The ducklings continue to grow in size and decrease in number. I took these pictures to show some of the different markings that show up in this one flock. The mother duck is almost pure black but as you can see her offspring come in a variety of colors. There is also an almost pure white one that was not around when I took these pictures.

    

On Saturday we went down to try what we were told was one of the best seafood restaurants in the area. The food was excellent as advertised, but it was made even better by the beautiful weather and view.

    

On Sunday Elders Thorne and Larsen had a baptism. I happened to be walking through the building just as they were passing by so I stopped them for a quick picture. Today – Wednesday – many of the new missionaries and their trainers dropped in after they had been to a training meeting that is held about a month after they come into the mission. In the middle Elder Fisher is being trained by Elder Rockwood. On the right Elder Harris is being trained by Elder Dowdle.

   

Elder Kata is training ElderBay. Elder Samuelian who is quite tall himself, is training even bigger Elder Fanaika. Seven sisters happen to come in close together so I got them to gather for a picture. Starting from the right in the picture is Sisters Syme, Lira. Sister Beck who is training Sister Bagley who has the big purse. Sister Aloi is being trained by Sister Holder. On the far left of the picture is sister Hancock who is training Sister Syme. I hope I got those right…if not I apologize.

   

Sister Chavous is being trained by Sister Sheffield. Their serious picture did not come out all that well so I included one showing off their new DVD player which I think shows their smiles much better.

It is a great joy to have all these great missionaries come in to the office and feel of their spirit. They are truly above average missionaries. We are blessed to serve here at a time when the work is exploding.

President Anderson’s letter to the missionaries this week was full of inspired teaching about obedience and also shared just a few missionary experiences that are sent to him each week – 140 letters are sent to him each week. As I read this story about a less active family that the missionaries visited I was impressed by the way the ward reacted but wondered about the home teacher who lived next door and did not know there was a problem…

““We decided to see if there were any less actives that lived nearby. We got the map out and found the one. Didn’t know anything about them and with less actives you never know if they are going to be mean or nice. So we knocked on the door and the 14 year old daughter let us right in. Come to find out they got baptized about 3 years ago. But the mom is deathly sick. On bed rest with an auto-immune disease and has 6 months to live kind of thing; so heartbreaking. So we visited them for a while and when we left we called their neighbor (who we had just eaten with) and turns out he’s their home teacher and had NO idea she was sick. He said he’d get someone and they’d go give her a blessing. Then a few days later we called him again to see how the family is and he told us that he called Bishop and RS pres to let them know about the family’s situation and that meals are now being brought to the family and people are doing what they can to visit her or to take the kids out for the day or whatever. It was a very tender experience for me because if we hadn’t gone to visit them, no one in the ward would know they were in need… It was a testimony to me that the Lord uses us even when we don’t know he is. And the dad and son even came to church on Sunday. It was a powerful experience for me!”

The power of ‘opening your mouth’ continue to bring people into the gospel light as this missionary found out.

“We decided to see if there were any less actives that lived nearby. We got the map out and found the one. Didn’t know anything about them and with less actives you never know if they are going to be mean or nice. So we knocked on the door and the 14 year old daughter let us right in. Come to find out they got baptized about 3 years ago. But the mom is deathly sick. On bed rest with an auto-immune disease and has 6 months to live kind of thing; so heartbreaking. So we visited them for a while and when we left we called their neighbor (who we had just eaten with) and turns out he’s their home teacher and had NO idea she was sick. He said he’d get someone and they’d go give her a blessing. Then a few days later we called him again to see how the family is and he told us that he called Bishop and RS pres to let them know about the family’s situation and that meals are now being brought to the family and people are doing what they can to visit her or to take the kids out for the day or whatever. It was a very tender experience for me because if we hadn’t gone to visit them, no one in the ward would know they were in need… It was a testimony to me that the Lord uses us even when we don’t know he is. And the dad and son even came to church on Sunday. It was a powerful experience for me.”

It is a wonderful experience to serve in a mission with such obedient and hard working missionaries.

    

A couple of days after Isaac passed way to the West – sorry about that Louisiana and others – this was the scene outside our apartment in the morning. I don’t think I will ever get tired of looking out over the lake in the morning. Each day is a new and interesting experience. However I must admit that rainy mornings are not all that interesting.

  

Mary went on Google and found where we lived in Inglewood and Redondo Beach. We laughed at how large those little trees we planted out in front of our new home in Inglewood have grown. A new garage door, a different colored paint job and a new fence were noticed at the Redondo location. The big white bird was just dropped in because there was room…we did had big birds outside our home in South Africa from time to time.

  

Some pictures from the office this week. Mary was making up a couple of dozen binders that are given to new missionaries when the arrive. We already have the names of some of the missionaries who will come in February 2013. The Beagleys are busy with vehicles and baptisms…it is important that sister Beagley is kept busy because that means there were lots of baptisms the week before. Elder Avila was on a split with Elder Beer who is one of the Zone Leaders for the Fort Lauderdale Zone.

    

Sister Dye with Elders Harral and Shaffer at this week’s District Meeting. She promised me that she would have a two mite day! Today – Saturday – Elder and Sister Bare are moving out of their stinky apartment and into sanitized one close by. Elders Rellaford, Conger, Doman, Marsh, Rippstein and Avila volunteered to come and move them. Besides being blessed for their efforts of service, they will get to have all the Papa John’s pizza they can eat.

As we sat at home on Monday we watched the rain bands from Isaac come and go. We noticed that the edge of the pond/lake that we look over started to move over it’s banks, over the grass and towards our apartment. One of the maintenance men went by and Mary asked him about the height of the water and he said that the county said that no more water could be released into the canals because they were all filled to their peak. Luckily the rain stopped before the water got really menacing and it was fun to see the fish and turtles come up on the grass.

    

Turtles came up on the lawn to get some bread…the water over lapped the lower pool deck…the high water mark shows how the water came before it stopped raining.

    

Tuesday morning provided a beautiful sky as the sun returned to Fort Lauderdale.

The Florida Fort Lauderdale mission was poised to have it’s second month of 100 plus baptisms when Isaac came roaring up from the South. Due to the possibility that it would have great impact on the area, two stakes cancelled all of their Sunday meetings and the others all had only one sacrament meeting in the morning. Therefore a large number baptisms had to be shifted to next week.

But even with all of this 27 great people entered into the waters of baptism during the week and brought the total for the mission for the month to 94! This shows that while Issac kept these above average missionaries from reaching the mission goal, they still had a great month!

We were at the office this morning when we got a call from Sister Anderson. She said that she hoped we were at home and not at the office. Because of the forecast of high winds and lots of rain, President Anderson wanted all missionaries – including the couples – to stay at home all day. So we did a few things – including calling other couples – and came home.

Thankfully – at least for Florida – Isaac has moved to the West and the eye will probably miss all of Florida except the Keys. However this is not of course good for wherever it ends up coming ashore. I have found it somewhat hard to pray that our mission might be spared when this means some other mission will be affected.

Last night we heard that there would be no 1 PM meetings and we should go to the 9 or 11 am meetings. Actually the only meetings that were held in our area were at 9 and that was only sacrament. It ended up that as soon as the sacrament had been passed it was announced that due to a major band of high winds and rain that the bishop decided to end the meeting and send everyone home. Mary and I can not remember us ever being in a meeting where there was just the sacrament and no speakers. But then we have never been in Florida when a hurricane was off shore.

But we did not go home! Elders Shaffer and Harral had a baptism for a woman planned and they were determined to hold it. So Mary played the piano, we sang one verse of a hymn, prayer bishop Pickard gave a short talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost, Jackie was baptized, one verse of a hymn, closing prayer and everyone headed home.

I have commented before on how most of the saving ordinances are simple and short. Once again as I was watching this amazing ordinance of baptism I was touched by the spirit as the power of the Priesthood, a simple declaration of purpose, and then immersion in water, changed the life of this woman for all eternity! The only robes were simple white garments, there was no elaborate ceremony,  and the whole ordinance took less than 2 minutes – but all the power and blessings of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were invoked.

We are winning!

    

We tried to get some pictures of the progress of the temple but since we must take them while traveling on the freeway we can not slow down much so this week we got a couple of good shots of the South side and a great – if not planned – one of some of the equipment that is being used. Hopefully we will get better shots in the weeks ahead as we travel home from the Pine’s chapel that is supposedly going to be open for September’s testimony meeting!

    

It was Mary’s turn to feed the ducklings – they are getting quite big and they can put away an amazing amount of bread. They are also not very polite about sharing – it is every duckling for itself! The smart ones catch the bread on the fly but there is plenty of scrambling. Mary is really enjoying helping Sister Rampton with improving her piano playing. I get to spend the time either reading something from their excellent library or talking to one of the daughters – usually Chloe. I have a great picture of her studying but I promised I would not put it up for public display.

    

Needless to say one of the things that we regularly check is the forecast of where now tropical storm Isaac may be going. It is rather like the old saying – “Pray for the best and prepare for the worst.” I went to the gas station this morning to make sure our gas tank was full, we have water, lots of high calorie food bars, our cell phones and iPads are fully charged, but we do not enough batteries. The mission has a program in place as to where each missionary companionship and the couples will go if it looks like Issac decides to take a bigger turn to the East.

While we were preparing for the possibilities of a hurricane here in Florida, we found out that a couple of teenagers playing with fireworks started a fire on the North side of Rock Canyon which is way too close to our neighborhood. Thankfully there was little wind and the great firemen and women were able to get it under control before it did any real damage. However the two culprits were caught and their families are facing a bill of around $100,000 to cover the cost of fighting the fire.

 From this week’s letter from President Anderson…

“On Saturday… one of the last doors we harvested, after a not so successful street, was David’s door. We blessed him and he was very touched. We testified, invited and he rejected. He said… I am not looking to become a Mormon. We invited him to Church and he said no, and so we left him our number and a chapel card. The next door was a family of 3 that accepted and committed to come to church… then as we were walking to our car we got a call from an unknown phone number… we answered and someone said  ‘Hi is this the sister Missionary? This is David…you guys just said a prayer with me. Sooo you turn left on Hiatus road to get to the chapel??’  I smiled and said ‘yes’… and he said… ‘and is ok if I don’t wear a suit?’ And I said ‘yes!’ He said ‘ok …I was inspired and I will see you there tomorrow’… and he came..! Miracle .. THE HARVEST IS INSPIRING!”