We didn't post last week because of pressing issues. Elder Evans, the area president over our mission came to meet the missionaries and see how we were doing. President and Sister Tateoka invited us to have dinner with Pres and Sis. Evans the evening before the conference. He had asked the APs to come for a mission meeting at 8:30 after our dinner was finished. They had been at a Primary activity and he asked them how much missionary work was accomplished. One of them made the mistake of saying, "this was a support the ward activity, not a missionary activity." Well, they didn't get finished with that meeting until 11 p.m., long after missionaries are supposed to be retired. President Evans stayed up longer than that and the next day at mission conference he attempted to change the thinking about missionary work. I've never seen anyone talk for 5 or 6 hours with only a lunch break in the middle, but Elder Evans did. He told the missionaries that until they change their attitudes and approaches, the mission will scrape along as the lowest producing mission in his area. He taught how to follow Preach My Gospel, how to tactfully obtain referrals, how to get members to assist, and how to be more bold about asking people to commit to baptism. Well, we'll see what happens. We believe we are seeing some changes occur.

We're attempting to be better missionaries also, working harder on the language, talking to our English students about discussions, and going out one evening a week with the young missionaries.

I had a commitment from another one of our students to let the missionaries talk with him and his wife. He walks 3 km every morning at 5:30 a.m. and I'm going to walk with him on Tuesday morning to work out the details. So far we don't have any rejections, but we don't have any baptisms either.

I decided to put in a picture of one of the colorful spiders that live in our neighborhood. They build huge web networks and then wait for something to get caught in them. By clicking on the picture you can blow it up to get a better look. This one was above the bushes out in front of the mission office.

This past week 7 new Elders arrived, one from Japan and 6 from the U.S. We now have them started on their way and go back to a regular schedule for another six weeks. New missionaries create a domino effect that results in many of the missionaries moving on transfer day, either to pick up one of the new elders or to make a shift so that everyone has the proper companion. We lost one of our office elders, Elder Shurilla. He went to the north of the mission as a zone leader. Elder Porter is our newest office missionary. We will enjoy working with him. He's a great young man. We also had 4 missionaries leave to go home. Transfers are getting easier for us since this is the 4th one that we have done.

It's hard to believe that we've been here for 4 months or that we've been full-time missionaries for 5 months. Despite the work load and stresses accompanying our work, we're really enjoying our experiences. It's great to see people embrace the gospel and follow the Savior. The Nagamachi Sisters had another baptism last Sunday and had another lady commit to baptism this past week. If that baptism goes through, they will have had 7 baptisms since we came in May. I wonder if the elders are getting a complex. They haven't had one in that time.

As we've told you earlier, when we discovered the kerosine leak from the tank sitting on the carpet in our living room, we took the tank out, removed the carpet as well as the plywood underneath, and replaced everything. We're now finished except for re-connecting the tank. It looks nice even though I'm not much of a carpet layer.

We discovered that we could watch general conference on our laptop, so Ruth watched the woman's conference and then this morning we got up early and watched the Saturday sessions before we went to church. We'll be able to get up early and see the Sunday sessions in the morning. Isn't that exciting about the new temples--especially the one in Rome! Who'd have thought? The majority of members here don't get to see it until next weekend when the Japanese DVDs arrive.

We would appreciate your comments about Conference. Could each family share with us something they learned that will make an impact in their lives? I hope we will all rededicate ourselves to living the gospel a little better than we ever have before. I also hope we will remember that the Savior is there to help us when the going gets rough. We love you all and share our testimonies to the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is only through obedience to all the commandments and enduring to the end that we can experience true joy in this life and in the life to come.

Love,

Dad andMom (aka Dale & Ruth and Elder & Sister Hansen)