Time to show you a little about the office folks. This is Elder Williams. He is the office manager and in charge of housing. Finds apartments for missionaries and helps them move and delivers goods to them. He is fun but off in an office away from us. He reads and studies a lot. Knows the scriptures very well. He has taught snowboarding at Brundage by McCall.

This is Sister Williams, his wife. They are from Logan. They will be done in July. She is the secretary to the President and keeps his schedules and updates everything and keeps us up on what is going on. She is very concerned about the missionaries and we tease her a lot because she asks everyone where they are going and can they take supplies and mail to missionaries who are way out. She also takes all the phone calls from crying moms and other interesting people

This is Sister Miller. She is in charge of finances and has also been the mail lady, she also lives across the hall from us. When we were forwarding mail, she had quite a job every day. Now that we cannot forward, it is not such a big job. I am now going to do the mail. It will be fun. Today is basically Sister Miller's last day. She has been training a new man in our ward who is going to come in and do finances. Her daughter and son-in-law arrive tomorrow afternoon and then they will leave on Sunday. She lives in Turlock, California and they are driving it in two days. Sister Miller is so fun. She is a convert and her second husband was about 27 years older than she and he passed away in 2005 and she was doing this mission for both of them. We laugh a lot with her. She has traveled all over the world and someplace will be mentioned and she has been there! It is fun. We are going to miss her.

This is the mail man coming and dropping the mail at her desk.

This is Elder Bouy. He has come in and taken over the phones. No one was minding the cell phones and they were very out of control. Very, very out of control. We had Elders spending hours at night on their phones. It was sad to see what some had done. Elder Bouy is able to print out every cells history, every call they make and where to and for how long. WOW! Talk about being blindsided. Some of our missionaries were in shock. He is also going out and checking apartments. Not a real fun job. But some missionaries need to clean up a lot.

This is Sister Bouy and she is the mission nurse and what a job she has. The Bouys are from Syracuse. She worked at Primary Children's and knew Adrian a little. And their son is a PT and landed a job at Primary when Adrian left. He is now in Washington however. Sister Bouy is inundated with phone calls. All sorts of problems for these young missionaries. Some are pretty serious and some are kind of like they need their mom to wipe their noses and bring them orange juice. It is crazy what they call her about. And I don't know much about her calls. Have to tell you about one call though. The Elders had gone to dinner at someone's house and they served menudo. I believe it is a Mexican dish made out of awful things like tripe (cow's stomach) and pig's feet! Yes. The missionaries described it as ball of fat in a broth. They choked it down and one Elder got violently sick. He called Sister Bouy and threw up twice while he was on the phone with her. She nearly got sick! The Elder also said that the house was very dirty and there were cockroaches crawling around on the counter and on the bread. I could not believe it. I would have died. I don't know what the answer is, but you won't catch me eating anything like that. I would have to dump it in my purse or down the front of my shirt before I could put it in my mouth. Good news is he felt better in a couple of days! Sister Bouy spends lots of time on the phone all hours of the day and night with the missionaries who are far away and then has to decide what kind of care they need. She has to find doctors and other help for them. I would not touch her job with a ten foot pole. She gets pretty wiped out.

Ah, SPRING is finally showing its face. All over are these beautiful trees covered with white blossoms. It is very pretty and so good to see. We still have signs of winter however. Right now we have our heat on in the apartment. Go figure. And a couple of nights ago we had a rain storm that was quite amazing. We had put ourselves into the car to go to the office to see if the last two cars had been removed. Oh yea, six of Dad's cars were picked up on Tuesday and hauled to Mississippi. Sold to a broker who sells them to car dealers. We are hoping he wants seven more! OK, on the way to the office it was raining so hard and made so much noise hitting the car. The raindrops were about the size of a 50 cent piece. At one point Dad said, can you see the road? I quickly said NO. The streets were like little rivers that were full of water. Then it stopped in about 15 minutes and sprinkled for awhile. This is a place for changes in weather that go from one extreme to the other. And yes, on Wednesday we hear the practice tornado sirens go off. Every week. Everyone in our building says that they will come to our apartment in case of a tornado! I hope it does not happen. The tornado, I mean.

Another look at beautiful white trees.

And these trees are unbelievable! Pink magnolia. There are a lot of them. And they are beautiful. I had Dad grab me a blossom off a tree and we brought it home and in water it opened up and was probably six to eight inches across.

A closer look at magnolia tree.

Even closer...........

Quite amazing wouldn't you say.

These little signs of spring have perked up our spirits. We have had a tough week in the mission. Cried tears and been disappointed and heart broken about the actions of missionaries. One Elder was sent home and four days later another went home. We really don't know much about it all, but it does make your heart ache.

We are well and happy. Dad went and hit some golf balls last night and is golfing on Saturday. He also plays racketball three times a week. I am still walking and trying to lose some weight. Ya, since we left at the end of September, I have gained 10 big lbs. (lbs. is a more descriptive word than pounds, don't you think. it actually creates a picture for me. Yuck!) Quite discouraging. They have got to go. (Dad is trying to lose some too and never find them again.)

Loves and hugs to all.