I am so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We just finished another great conference.  We were taught well.  There is so much to digest.  I'm grateful that we can re-listen to the talks, read them in the Ensign or watch them on the internet.  We are so blessed to be able to continue to learn as we study these talks during the next 6 months.  I was excited to hear that our young men and women can now leave on their missions at an earlier age. Elder Nelson and Elder Holland said, “We need to be hastening the work.”  This should help with the hastening.  We sisters were also blessed with the Women's Conference last weekend.   The spirit was so strong as I listened to our leaders.  I had more than once a witness that what I was hearing was true.  One theme that I feel I heard throughout both conferences is that our Savior, Jesus Christ, knows us, he understands us and he will support us as we live the principles of the gospel and serve others.  Service is a very essential key in the gospel.  As Elder Eyring told us in Women's Conference, our service may not always be convenient but if we include the Savior he will be there to help us.  I loved Sister Dibb's talk on having a conviction and confidence in being a Mormon.  She told us to know it, live it and love it.  We all need to stand up and be bold and not afraid to say, "Yes, I am a Mormon."  We were taught to: immerse ourselves in the scriptures; to become the person God expects us to be; our testimony is a precious gift; submit fully to God's will; we all need the Atonement of Jesus Christ; Love one another; Come unto Christ; conversion is a lifelong quest; and asked if we Love Him?  These are just a few of the highlights in my notes that I took.  But I think one of my favorites was "Ask the Missionaries.  They can help you."   To me it was a powerful conference, a spiritual feast.  I always feel sad when it is over but know I can continue to fill my lamp with continued study.

After conference on Saturday, we had the Elders over for pizza before the Priesthood session.  We already love our new Elder McKenna.  He will be a very good asset to our area.   And we can already tell that he is focused and ready to work.  He shared his precious delicious cookies with us that his mother sent him for conference.  Thanks Wendy, they are yummy!

 
We were thrilled that our investigator, Don, came to two sessions.  He had a hard time sitting that long because of his knees but I know that he felt the spirit as he heard our apostles speak.  He asked if he could sustain the leaders as we raised our hands to the square in their support.  I hope that what he heard touched his heart and that when we meet with him next Wednesday, we can commit him to baptism.  He is trying really hard to quit his smoking and his coffee.  I think he is making progress.  I challenged him to give up his TV Evangelical ministers and stop reading all the magazines from other churches and try to concentrate on the Book of Mormon this week.  He told me that he only watched one show.  That is progress. 

 On Saturday, the 22nd, we drove to the beach to witness a baptism of a young sister.  She requested to be baptized in the ocean.  It was a beautiful clear day.  The skies and the ocean were so blue.  The water was calm until after the baptism then it got a bit choppy.  There were about 30 people who came which included about 15 missionaries.  As she and the Elders entered the water I thought of our Savior and his baptism in the waters of Jordan; how he set the example for us and fulfilled all righteousness.  It was a beautiful baptism.  There were a few curious people on the beach but they were not distractions for us.

 Elder Benson giving the talk on Baptism

                                                                      A beautiful scene

Sister Molina

Elders from our District and beyond.  I didn't know some of these Elders but most are from here.

Some Senior Couple?

 We also had a baptism in our ward of Theo Swapp, one of my cute piano students.  I was asked to play the music for it.  I wrote in my journal that he has curly blond hair, a stocky little body with a forever smile.  He is really doing well on the piano too.

Theo, Ben (his brother) and Sister Hesse

Theo

Theo and Ben (his older brother)

 We had dinner at the Bishop's for FHE and a goodbye to Elder Hargan.  Elder Hargan was transferred to the Lake Hamilton area.  They really treat us well here.  We had steak and all the fixin's.  Afterwards we played "Hold to the Rod" game which was a lot of fun.  We could have played it all night but I had to break the party up because we were to teach Seminary the next morning.  I knew if I didn't get to bed before 9, I'd be toast in the morning. Four thirty a.m. is really, really early!

Julie Bangerter, Paul, Bishop Bangerter, Elder Hargan

Elders Hargan, Hendley                 Sister Hunt (R.S. President)                       Paul

We've been busy the past couple of weeks.  We helped Sister Hunt prepare her house to sell (she is moving to Texas), helped the Bishop move (thankfully only a few miles up the road, closer to us), helped a sister organize her tiny room in a care center which she shares with another lady, taught several lessons, met with less active families encouraging them to return to the fold, baked lots of bread and banana bread, made lots of salsa and guacamole for appointments at our home with new members, cooked meals for the Elders, gone to dinne with new converts and attended to lots of meetings.  And we love it all.  Being a missionary is a busy time but with lots of rewards.

I finally finished my second drawing of our darling little granddaughter, Brooklyn.  She is the three year old daughter of Brian and Kellie.  We have a wall of pictures of grandchildren and it is hard to know who to draw next.  So I decided to do a still life.  This time and am using colored pencils.

Brooklyn

The best news that we have is that Kimber had her 2nd little boy, grandchild #28.  He was born on Tuesday, October 2.  He is the cutest little thing.  He weighed in at 5 lbs.15 oz.  Mom and baby are doing just fine.  We are always thrilled to have a new addition to our family.  Just a little sad we can't be there to celebrate with them and to hold our little angel. I am grateful for Skype.

Just before the baby was born

 The Happy Family - Logan Matthew Haidenthaller

 Logan

Logan        Weston (his big brother)

 

 Our son, Bret, spent Friday night and Saturday morning with us.  I decided to make a roast with a recipe from the internet.  I had it baking most of the afternoon.  After Bret arrived, we took a drive to Tampa.  I turned the oven down thinking that all would be well.  The meat still needed to get a little more tender.  We returned an hour later.  On the way in the house, Paul stopped to invite our neighbor to dinner.  Unknown to him that the roast was pretty done!  The veggies were black in the pan.  This was not one of my best meals.   So instead of a variety of veggies we had canned green beans, with mashed potatoes, gravy, and a salad.  The meat was still good.  I guess you might say we had burnt offerings that night.  Next morning we left early to have breakfast on the beach.  We took Bret to Caddy's on the Beach.  It is our friend, Tony's, restaurant.  He was there and visited with us a while.  It was a nice visit with Bret but way too short.

We have been teaching seminary again this week.  The teacher had a family emergency and had to leave town.  It is so enjoyable working with the young people.   We get in some extra study as well.  The District Leaders challenged us to read the first four gospels in the New Testament in a month.  We are reading together which is very enjoyable.  It gives us an opportunity to discuss what we are reading.  We also decided to read the Book of Mormon together also.  I love the opportunity to feast upon His word.  This is a royal daily feast.  We have been truly blessed to be here to serve our Heavenly Father.  It is an experience I would recommend to every senior couple and our youth. 

We send our love and prayers to the Urie family.  We hope that little Jonathan is doing well.

We love you all and hope all is well with everyone.  Have a wonderful day.

Smile

September 9th marked our 8th month in the mission field.  We can smile because we have been having a wonderful experience here on our mission.  September 13th was our 45th wedding anniversary.  My how times flies.  We can smile because we have had a wonderful life together, 7 beautiful children and their wonderful spouses, 27 and counting beautiful grandchildren, wonderful parents and siblings, and the list could go on and on.  Oh how blessed we have been.   We celebrated at, where else, Busch Gardens.  We even discovered an area we hadn't seen before.  This time Paul rode about 4 of the roller coasters; two of which got him soaking wet.  It was a nice relaxing day.  Then we went home, changed and visited some members in the ward that we had appointments with.

Busch Gardens was getting ready for Halloween.  One of the hats they are going to try to sell.  Not his style.

Beautiful Bird.  He could talk too.

Coming off one of the rides.  He's just a little wet!

Anniversary lunch at a cafe in the Gardens

Summer is over, but it is still hot and humid.  We are back in school.  This year Paul got held back in Kindergarten and I have been promoted to the Library.  I return books to their shelves and any other jobs that the librarian has for me.  After my first day on the job I was so sore.  The bookshelves are from just below eye level to the floor.  So there is a lot of ups and downs.  The next day or two were painful on the back of my legs.  We were also able to volunteer for picture day at the school.  That was really fun.  We saw some of the kids we had last year.  There were lots of kids in the library for hours.  They just kept coming and coming.  Kids were sitting everywhere waiting their turn for their picture.  This week I helped a new teacher set up her room for her class.  She will have 12 (can you believe that, just 12) students in her class.  We had such a great time getting to know each other and she said that she wanted me to be in her class to help with the kids.  These are kids that are behind and need a lot of tender loving care.  I am going to try to get moved to her class, it would be easier on my back and legs.

 This is Ray.  He is a mentor at the school.  The kids all love him.  He also works with the kids at the YMCA in a really rough part of town. 

We spent two weeks teaching Seminary which was a great experience.  We have 10 young men and women who are a delight.  We never hear a negative word about getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning to come to seminary.  Some come in a little slowly but as class began they were all ready to learn.  It is a very diverse class.  Kids from very active, to less active, to non active families.  They're smart kids and all participate with us.  Paul and I have had some fun activities to get them all involved.  Both weeks I did the Friday scripture review with cross word puzzles, word games, memory games, etc.  It was so much fun with them.  I love the teaching but those early mornings are a killer (now I'm complaining).   But...we do get to see a lot of beautiful sunrises.

Blindfolded-through direction he was to find a picture of Christ.  It was demonstration to help the kids learn that they need the Holy Ghost to help them. 

This past month we have met several new people.  Don is one of our investigators who is trying to gain a testimony of the gospel.  He has apparently investigated several different churches over the years and kind of has a philosophy of a combination of them all.  He believes in Jesus and has been praying to him instead of the Father in Jesus' name.  He has made a change in the past couple of weeks for the good in that area.  He still receives material and watches a lot of christian people on TV which I feel is a stumbling block for him.  He calls them cookies.  We are going to direct him to lds.org and Mormon messages.  We want him to watch conference and some of the "cookies" that we have.  The problem is that he is not reading the Book of Mormon enough.  We have been encouraging him to read certain parts and assign him reading each week.  It's a slow go.  But he is improving each week.  The best part was that he came to church this week and enjoyed it.  Prayer, reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church are so important.  Those three things we emphasize every time we meet with him. Every couple of days I send him a text with a scripture from the Book of Mormon.
We've had a little more success getting into homes this past couple of weeks.  There are so many members that we want to get to know.  So many stories of lives that are happy and some sad.   We finally met with a couple that we have tried to visit for months.  Come to find out the address we were going to was wrong.  We had a very good visit with an invitation over for a chicken dinner in the near future.  He is a very rotund man and said as he patted his bellie that there is no food that he doesn't like.  We've visited with members that have strayed away and want to get back into good fellowship, members who think it is too late for them to repent, it's not.  The bishop has asked us to teach several people that are on the road back.  He wants them to have a refresher course.  It is so good to see them remember what they had and the light coming back into their eyes.  One less active brother that we met several months ago called the Bishop and told him that I had called him when he was at a point of total desperation and I gave him the Bishop's phone number.  He is now on the road back.  I didn't realize I had called at such a point in his life.  What a blessing the Holy Ghost is.  He helps us continually.   My problem is that I get too emotionally involved with people.  It's so hard to see them give up what they once knew was true and right.  One man, (78 years old)  we just met broke my heart.  He knows the church is true.  When Paul bore his testimony, this man had tears in his eyes.  But his chosen lifestyle keeps him from the blessings of the gospel.  I came home and cried.  I wrote him a letter (with the Bishop's blessing) and hope that he will take it in the spirit that it was written.  There is hope.  It is not too late for him.  He has a loving Heavenly Father with "outstretched arms" waiting for him to return.

We had a Zone Conference and Elder Cardon of the Seventies visited us.  It was a wonderful day.  He, his wife and President and Sister Summerhays taught us.  One theme was sacrifice and the wise use of our time.  We were told that we could sacrifice through the effective use of our time.  Elder Cardon taught us how to hear the Lord's voice and how we can "feel" the influence of the Holy Ghost and how it can influence us.  Sister Cardon told us to "treasure up" in order to feel the spirit by study, prayer, taking notes and learning.

When we arrived at the conference these Elders were on the wall reading their scriptures.  Wise use of time.

A group picture.  While everyone was getting in place for the big picture I set my camera up and took a few.

Preparing to sing "I am a Child of God" to the sisters who served us lunch.  President Summerhays lead us.

After the meeting with some of the Elders and Sisters in our District

A group of the sisters from the meeting

On Labor Day we went to a Stake Breakfast.  It was very good.  Many of the stake members came with their swimming suit to cool off in the water.  They had a pool at the park and also a fun water area for the kids.  After our breakfast I took Paul to the Golf Course (it was P-day) and I drove to my art lesson.  I have finally finished my picture of cute little Sebastian.  Last week I started to draw a picture of Brooklyn, Brian and Kellie's oldest daughter.  I have so many things I want to learn from Sister Gorman and only one day a week to learn them.  She is a very good teacher though.  She is so sweet.  I am her only student in the morning.  I usually stay between 3 and 4 hours.  So by noontime we are both hungry and she fixes us lunch. Her afternoon students start arriving about 1 pm.  They are home schooled kids.  She has a name for herself in our community.  She teaches at home in a studio and also goes to a church once a week to a co-op group that she teaches.  She also cares for her husband who suffers from Vietnam war trauma and anyone else who is in need.  I have grown to love her very much.

This young woman has autism.  She is a sweetheart.  Her mom is so good with her.

                                                  Sister Guerra             Sister Franc                     Sister Rood

One young sister, her last name is Young, needed help with her sewing machine a couple of weeks ago because she couldn't get it to work and so we went over one evening to help her.  After some reading on the internet about her machine I finally got it working.  She was so excited because she has a cute little baby girl that she wants to sew for.  After we were done they invited us over for FHE the next week.  We had a great time.  Her husband talked about gratitude for the lesson and then we played a sort of Jeopardy game with gospel questions.  It was a lot of fun.  The Elders were there also. 

We had a great Zone Meeting with our district this week.  Our Zone leaders keep our Elders and Sisters challenged and encourage them as they strive to meet their goals.  We will see several of our Elders and Sisters leave us at the next transfer next week.  It is always sad to see them leave.  We get pretty attached to them.  But we always get wonderful new missionaries ready to take over and work hard.  This last transfer we had 6 baptisms, three of which were in our ward.  It is so wonderful to see new people accept the gospel and  have that burning desire to get baptized.  They are willing to give up those things that would hold them back such as their smoking, coffee, tea, etc.  It is a real challenge for many of them.  But they work hard to  succeed.  We cheer them on on a regular basis and when they quit we stay close to them to help them be strong.
Because of the transfer that is coming this next week we did inspections this week.  These pictures are actually from last transfer.  But most of the Elders are still here.  We are going to loose some of them this time.

Elder Rowan and Elder Kenyon- very hard working Elders

Sister Guerra (going home this transfer), Sister Rood (new this past transfer), Sister Franc

Elder Durrant            Elder Tevares   Our district leader

When we do our inspections the Zone Leaders challenge Elder Nelson to do pull-ups on their equipment.  This time he got to 7 pull-ups.  But not without a very red face and some sweat.

Zone Leaders                     Elder Boehme                          Elder Perry 

                   Elder Anderson                  Elder Hansen  They are having a baptism this Saturday in the ocean

Elder Heining                      Elder Spendlove - Great missionaries

 After Zone Meeting we went to Olive Garden.  You should have seen the food that these Elders put away.  It was the never ending pasta deal.  I thought it would never end!

Cute Elder Boehme has been here for a while.  He is such a good missionary.

I finally finished my grandson, Sebastian.  Isn't he a cute little guy?

We continue to enjoy our mission everyday.  There are so many blessings.  Each day brings new experiences.  We are so grateful to be able to be here and work with the people of St. Pete.

Smile! 
It's a wonderful day because you're in it!

Love you all

The Nelson's