News from the north country

Hi Gang, We took this picture today of the snowmobile races on Black River.  You can see that the weather is still holding, cold. It's a pretty wide river with a lot of weight on it and no one seems worried about cracking.  Mom and I couldn't believe they were out there.  Our week was busy with visits and travel.  We took dinner to two spouses and their families. One who was very sick and needed help. She has two small children, her husband just deployed as a sniper to Afghan. We also visited a spouse of a deployed soldier.  She has 5 children one of which is autistic. You can imagine how full her plate is.  She is 34 and has a 17 year old son, do the math. She was young when she had him. She also has 15 and 12 year old daughters, the 5 year old autistic son and a two year old boy.  She is holding things together pretty well.  When we asked if we could help her with anything she mentioned that her vacuum wasn't working.  I took a look at it and found two very large nails lodged in the belt. It took about 5 minutes, the daughter immediately began to vacuum with it.  The husband is in the heart of things in Afghan. I recently sent him some serviceman's  scriptures that he asked his wife for.  They have been an inactive family for about a year. We made two white knuckled trips to Utica this week also in snow storms.  One for Zone conference on Thursday and another for a couples party on Friday.  We have three couples leaving in the next two months and one couple just arrived.  It is always fun to get together. We have a great sit down dinner at the mission home and President Eckersley always brings us up to date on the world wide missions progress.  He talked about how the economic down turn has dropped the Church's stock portfolio by 40% and how this will effect the church and the missions.  Already senior couples going of missions are down by 14%.  We are all in for some interesting times ahead.  A good time to fill up the old oil vessels. We certainly enjoy this work and the great military people. We also miss you all and pray for you.  Take care of yourselves give the kids a big hug for us.  Mom and Dad