Happy 12th birthday to our granddaughter Claire! How great that you will be participating in the Young Women's program. You can now get a temple recommend to go to the temple to participate in doing  baptisms for the dead! We wish that we were there to go with you- but we will do that when we return from this mission. Love you Claire and we pray that God will bless you always and that your testimony of  Jesus Christ will grow and strengthen you always,



Today was a very interesting day here on our 9th day at the MTC. Evidently an incoming storm affected my hips and I was in pain for most of the day. It required a wheelchair to get me across the MTC campus and back to my room. Some rest and prayers and tonight has gone much better. Tonight was also Devotional Night! Elder W. Craig Zwick of the Quorum of the Seventy and his wonderful wife were our speakers tonight. Elder Zwick talked about the "work of hastening" that is bigger than the First Presidency, the Quorum of Twelve etc.  Ilt requires the effort and testimony of  all of God's church- members and missionaries. Although it is also a person task in that we must "hasten" our own spiritual development and salvation. He talked about how missionaries will now be attending the Saturday night evening session of stake conferences around the world-that the example of the missionaries would be a strength to and help increase the missionary work that  would need to be done by members and missionaries together serving. It was so very wonderful and we are grateful to have been there.