Week 52 more on Joel

As for Joel, his family is tough lots of them have already died, his
mother lives in Texas and he does not know her well, he lives with a
drug dealer brother, his sister is a completely inactive member also
that lives in the continent and that is about it. But he is already
helping us with all sorts of things as far as the missionary work
here.

I am super jealous of the big family trip up into the mountians and I
am glad that Ganny is getting the 5 class service that she needs and I
am sure that she will recover quickly for someone that has her age.  I
cannot believe that she is already 77!  I thought she was more like 72
or 73.  But anyways it is good to hear that everything is going a
liltte better this week and that you are all getting some quality time
togther.

This week we started really tearing apart and updating our ward list
here.  We have been going in and putting the addresses and stuff in as
the proper format so that we can get that all up to date and start
sending people out after these lost sheep.  We also have been putting
a bunch into the unknown file which is really kind of fun and really
nice so that we can get the people that we just know are gone and have
no other real form of contact to get to them, we can send them into
the European office and the missionaries there can search for them and
then they and the other people that we actually have here will get
more attention and they will hopefully be brought back into activity.
 Another thing that we did this week is the home teacher assignments
and we are starting the process of making all sorts of callings for a
lot of members that need them here.  That has been taking up a lot of
our time.  We are called in the presidency, Elder Thomas is also the
secretary and the first councilor in the Elders quorum presidency and
also we have been taking over the young men all summer as the
president has been gone, also there is no Sunday school pres. so we
need to work with that too.  So we have a lot of work to get done in
the branch and we really want to get this branch organized and running
properly because nobody has done it and as far as members the ones
that can are just doing all they can to keep the branch a float.  So
we have really wanted to take the load off of the branch president a
little bit because he is loaded down with work, a young family, and a
branch with a massive welfare load..  Anyways with us spending all
that time working on the computer and in meetings and making calls and
stuff it has taken a toll on our proselyting work a little and we have
had our leaders all over us about that but we feel that this is what
this branch and the people here need more then anything else.  This is
necessary to strengthen and nourish all the young members here and
help it out so that we can have a better retention rate.

Esta semana estamos a aprender muito sobre como nos podemos balançar o
peso dos ambos lados de trabalho missionário e o lado de liderança na
Igreja.  Sou grato que tenho esta oportunidade de aprender todos estas
coisas e como usar o tempo do Senhor com sabedoria.

PS keep me updated on what you are thinking about picking me up and
also as far as school and reapplying to Utah state if you want to look
into that a little that would be awesome. I am good on things for now
but I will try to let you all know if I think of anything.

I used the work gloves already.  We filled in the holes in a member's house.

HAPPY ANNAVERSERY AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM DAD AND JESSE!!!!!

Love Elder Hobson