Dear Grant,

    We just made it threw our first week of school. Whew, the first week is the hardest week of the year, I feel, so everything else is downhill:). I am trying to do improve my teaching this year by conferencing every day with my students, that is one of my main goals: to conference with one student every period-spend 10 min one on one, going over their goals, classes, any issues. I am so excited to start. This week I am implementing this plan, I will report next Sunday on how it went.

Saturday one of my students called me to ask for help on a paper that is due Monday. I had asked his mom earlier in the week if he could come in early on Friday and stay after in order for him to have some one-on-one help. I after our phone call Saturday I realized he was the first student in all of my teaching who has called me for help in all of my 20 years teaching.

This Tuesday is back to school night. I hope parents come and we can have a face to face contact. I went to Erin's last Wednesday and there was a poor showing. 

Anita and Micha came Thursday and stayed until Saturday. We went hiking Saturday morning as you can see from the pictures. It was so good to see them. They went to "Peter Pan" Friday night at Tuachan. Unfortunately they did not like the play! They wasted 120.00. I liked it when Erin and I saw it, I thought they would. They should have seen "hunch Back" ins hind sight. oh well, at least it didn't rain on them.

I went to "Into the Woods" last night with Judy Phelps. One of the teachers at my school was in the play, Katherine Woods, she is the Theater teacher at SCMS. She is a great actress. She had had the bad stomach flu on Friday and was still sick on Saturday. At the end of the play, she was standing below me and I gave her a thumbs up and mouthed, "are you OK?" and she rubbed her stomach and shook her head "no" and smiled. I couldn't even tell she was sick, she did a great job of hiding it. It just goes to show you the power of the mind and a person's will.

Today in gospel principles the lesson was on charity, I handed out the purifying email Jody R sent me, the one you mentioned you had had and were following. I am still my 40 day fast. Trying to act on the thoughts that come to me. I did follow through on a prompting about Sister Briggs. She fell and had to have back surgery awhile ago. So I was praying on who to visit and I thought of Sister Briggs in the morning. On my way home from school I remembered I wanted to go and visit her and I thought, "no I am too tired", I have too much to do tonight. But I went anyway and had a good visit with her and felt the spirit in her home and radiate through her; so glad I went. I saw her and church today and there was an extra connection when I said 'hi" passing her in the halls.

We loved the pictures you send :)) Thank you!!!!!!

We listened to your voice message: So exciting about Kevin on Sept. 17th.  Also about the lesson last week about gratitude, it is so humbling to hear of the mom who gave thanks for finding sticks for her fire. We are so blessed and need to realize and give thanks for all of the many blessings !!!!

Kevin

Hey Family! this week has been awesome! We have seen miracles. This week we ended this transfer cycle and we decided to end it with a mad dash! We worked hard and were able to baptize 6 souls this weekend. It was crazy! we were running all over to different interviews and striving to be able to get everything done. All in all we were very blessed and we have seen the hand of the lord in our life. This is truly the lords work. We have been visiting Kevin this week and he is progressing very well. Yesterday we went to his house in the evening and found him very discouraged. We had passed by in the morning to invite him to church and he said "yeah ill see you there when it starts". We waited at church with him anxiously for a long time but he never came. In our visit he explained that his Sister had passed by with news that she has breast cancer. It was a blow for him. He has been receiving answers to his prayer and he asked us why the Lord permits suffering. We shared the plan of salvation with him and were able to testify of the Gods desire for us to feel joy and happiness in this life. For me it was very spiritual because I had studied that same topic in the morning. The Lord truly guides us and I know that he prepared the opportunity to share our testimonies with Kevin in that moment. 

This week we also were able to go to the temple as a zone! It was very spiritual. I love the temple and want to invite you to take advantage of every chance that you can to be able to attend! take a night off and Go as a family!