Tuesday, July 1

Today was such a wonderful day!!! We went to our zone meeting and met our new mission president and just enjoyed the spirit of the whole zone. The spirit is so strong here in the mission. Our new President, President Smith, is from Arizona, a very nice, mature, loving, and capable fellow. They brought their cute daughter, 16 yrs. old, with them. Their plane landed at 5 p.m. last night and they got to bed by 1 a.m. and here to zone meeting by 9 a.m. They were on time too. (we were 10 minutes late.)

We have about 20-30 people who are going home next week. Our mission is losing a lot of people over the next month. So there will be a lot of changes. They are also losing 2 of the 6 couples. It could mean a change for us. We hope not cause we would like to get our baptisms here taken care of before we leave.

After we get through with lunc, at our Zone meetings, we always stand and sing, "Called To Serve," as a missionzone, as a "thank you" for all of the work they go to in preparing and serving a meal. It is the greatest feeling when we stand up and sing that song. It feels like we are truly a part of God's Army here on earth. It is an amazing feeling; all the missionaries sing it with such pride and gusto. They serve us a very good meal of Mexican food. Dad could not eat all of it, but I think it was pretty careful about what he ate.

We got to hear the tremendous testimonies of the Mission President's Family and also the zone leaders. The Elders got a lecture from Elder Wooley about taking care of their cars and apartments. He also handed out candy for those who had done everything they should. The couples just laugh about it, we all know how Elders are. I have to say that we have some very outstanding Elders and Sisters here in Texas. Many of them are from very strong families in the Utah area and it shows. We are learning to treat them like our kids and just love them.

We ended with testimony meeting today. The spirit was so very strong. They first let the Elders give their testimonies, that are leaving before the next zone meeting. The spirit was so strong, the missionaries are so in tune and they work very hard. It is amazing what the Lord can do with these kids in teaching them to work with the spirit. One Elder said, "I was pretty much miserable before my mission, I can't believe how much my life has changed." Almost everyone of them said, "My life will never be the same." Several said they would now take different directions with their lives. It made me so thankful for our children that have served missions. I will always and forever understand what they mean,

We drove home, dropped off the Elders who live in Waxahachie and hurried. We had an appointment at 6 p.m. out in Purdon. We called them and told them we were running late, stopped and got some Ice Cream and Cookies and went out and visited with the Jonte Family. They are a combination of a Spanish Lady and a Caucasian convert who have been married two years and have one teen age daughter who is living at home. They have not been coming to church and we decided we needed to visit them. We had such a nice evening with them, we were glad we went. We shared a thought about the Donut and the plan of Salvation that Jen posted on the web site. They were very touched by that.