Time is not flying for us, it is jetting away faster than we can keep up!

I couldn't believe how long it had been since I had posted, until I looked at a friend's blog and saw the link to us with a notation that it had been 1 month (+) since we had last added anything. And we really don't have that much of an excuse. We are busy with our mission, but not overwhelmed, at least not yet.

Our knee friend saw the orthopod and got 3 injections in his knee. He is loving life now with no pain.

We are currently working with a family that lives in a mobile home in Grantsville. They bought it "as is" and the "as is" is a collapsing roof. A contractor friend from our home ward looked at the roof and estimated it would cost about $2500 to repair the "dip" and resuface the roof. Max is going with a group of High Priests from the Branch on Thurs. to look at it again. One of the HP is also a contractor, so maybe we'll get a different approach to fixing the roof. We would really like to help this family. They have 7 children, 5 from her previous marriage, and 2 from this marriage. Shortly after we met them and started working with them, he got laid off. He can't apply for unemployment as he is undocumented. Also can't apply for job assistance at the State of Church employment offices. He has experience in landscaping and so is talking about trying to set up a business of his own doing that. They get no financial assistance from the prev. spouse.

We have a group of Branch members who are working on education issues, some doing ESL and some working on technical training or college. There are special programs and funds for Hispanic members and we are helping them access these funds.

We arranged dental care for 2 uninsured young men who want to serve missions. They are undocumented also, but the Mission Dept. tells us that they can still serve, they will just be sent to areas close by and will be sent out by bus.

We are getting ready to begin piano lessons in the Branch for members who are willing to learn so that they can play in church. We have a simplied Spanish hymn book as well as a lesson guide book. We were able to pick up 2 keyboards Sunday night when we were in SLC for a mission meeting. The keyboards are loaned to the students while they are taking the classes and then returned to us for the next group. I hope this is successful as I am kind of becoming the default RS pianist--mostly using 1 finger. I'm going to try to learn the songs from our simplified hymn book. I'm just waiting to get the songs for May so I can see what i can do.

We are gradually getting to know more members in the Branch and are feeling their friendship and caring for us. Our Branch President is excellent and we enjoy our association with him. We are grateful that we are able to serve this mission and pray every night that our health will hold up so that we can continue.

We have just realized that we can count on both hands the number of times that Logan (Melanie's youngest) will come to us on Wednesday and Friday mornings. During the summer she will stay home with her sisters, and in August she will go to Kindergarten. We will miss her. It has been so much fun watching her mature and grow up over the past few years.

When we look at our grandkids, we really realize how much older we are getting--they are all growing up so much. Pretty soon we won't have any little kids in the family. This Christmas I will make the last Raggedy Ann/Andy dolls for the grandkids we have now. WOW! Hope I can continue with that tradition for the gt grandkids.