We wish we were in Park City with the rest of our family

Saturday July 18

THOUGHT: "IF YOU STUMBLE, RISE UP, GO ON!"         Boyd K. Packer 

Saturday I had my steering committee at the clinic on the temple grounds.  a 45 minute meeting turned out to be almost 2 hours.  I have 80 service missionaries as doctors throughout Mexico, but 64 of them are to be released before August 2015.  There are not another 64 doctors out there willing to serve as service missionaries.  I went to the area presidency and asked them to approve the calling of volunteer doctors in missions -not an official mission call with name tag, but volunteer status, but most important - without release.  They can serve as long as they are willing.  We reviewed the list of service doctors and eliminated some (too old, too sick, not helpful when called) and I have about 55 calls to make across the country to ask them to keep on serving.  We will see how this goes.  I have already called about 30 new volunteer doctors and they are working pretty good.  This is totally redoing the way things have worked previously in the mission - the previous area medical advisor was Mexican and tried to set up these service missionaries but now that he is released some no longer have any loyalty to me or their calling.  He also instituted a yearly training meeting.  Doctors come from the entire country to receive 3 days of training, mostly at their own expense.  As we expand the numbers I don't think this will be possible (especially since the just took out the cafeteria on the temple grounds).  My plans are to send training by email and do webx training sessions about every 2 months - we should be able to reach a lot more (only 46 of the 80 came to the training meeting) and we can keep things current.  I started the tradition of training at our steering committee meetings.  This is a tall order.  We then got back we just hung out at our apartment doing computer things, but at about 5:00 we piled 3 couples in our tiny toyota Corolla and went to a large shopping mall to eat at Cheesecake Factory.  It was a 90 minute wait but we explored the mall.  It was even harder to stuff us all in the car when we were full.

Cheesecake factory with Griffins and Hackings

Sunday July 19

THOUGHT:  “Keep the fire of your testimony of the restored gospel and your witness of our Redeemer burning so brightly that our children can warm their hands by the fire of your faith.”

Sacrament meeting was about doing temple work and family history work.  One of the young speakers told of his wife's mother who was inactive who had a dream that here mother was waiting for her to do the work, and she noticed that her father was far away from her mother there in heaven.  She worked for a year to be worthy to go to the temple and did the work for her mother and had the work done for her father - that night she had the dream again and her parents were together.  We had quite another rain storm and went up on our roof perch after the storm and took in the fresh smells and the clean air.  Mom is sure feeding me well as well - need to lose 5 lbs.
( 5 lbs?????)   Hummm!

One of our views from our new chairs on the roof!!
- after a rainstorm!