Hi Family

Hello, this is Dad.
I just wanted to write to thank everyone for writing, this can be a fun way to keep up with each other.
Our life seems to be very busy, I have lots of church work going on, I just finished redoing all the home teaching assingments, and I ended up with a huge list of personal families to home teach. We had a stake leadership meeting last week, and the stake president said that for the second quarter the stake averaged 48% home teaching. Unfortunately, our high priests group didn't do anything to help that number!
Our ward has not had home teaching PPI's for at least decades, so I have started doing mine, but my assistants have yet to catch the vision. No one in our ward even remembers what they are, so they are having a hard time being motivated to do them. I decided this morning that I needed to teach the brethren what home teaching is, I think the whole thing has become lost somehow. We haven't been home taught once since we moved into the ward the end of February. I emailed the Bishop this morning and asked if I could take a whole lesson time with all the priesthood (Aaronic included) and go teach them about home teaching. It will be interesting if he gives me that opportunity.
I have been having some really great experiences lately. I have been focusing on the gift of charity a lot in my personal life and prayers. I see this as the single most important thing that I need in my life. As some of you may know, when Mom went to pick up Bex from Idaho this summer she stopped at the distribution center and called and asked if I needed anything. What I had her get me was a stack of pass-along-cards. So I have started to try to hand out this cards to all that I can, and I was averaging about 4 per week, but this week has been a big zero! I'm bummed about that. But what does that have to do with charity you might ask? To me it's easy, if my charity for a person is bigger than my fear, I will be willing and able to give them a pass-along-card, if on the other hand, my fear is bigger I won't. Pretty much it is as simple as that, the only reason why doing missionary work is considered "hard" is our charity is too low. So, rather than having talks about missionary work, we could just get to the core of the problem and talk about charity. The real thing, I have been intregued lately with Elder Oak's talk called "The Challenge to Become", which in my opinion is perhaps one of the most doctrinally amazing talks I have heard in along time. Anyway, in that talk Elder Oaks says that charity isn't something you do, but rather it is what you are. Pure charity is a description of what the Savior is. I have always thought of it as something that someone posessed, but not as what they are. So it has been interesting to think about this.
Well, this has already been too long - I look forward to hearing from everyone. Things are going well at work, we have had two companies come to visit us, one from California, and one from The Netherlands. Both of those companies want to pay us for doing some development work for them as a proof that we can do what we say. So, life is very good, and it is exciting to have some companies interested. I hope that things all work out well, we are certainly trying hard.
Yesterday was my annual lecture at Texas A&M university, so I spent the day in College Station, and on the way home there was a really bizzare rain storm that resulted in bad accident on the freeway, which brought it to a total stop in south Dallas. So I figured I could bail from the freeway and find my way home. Really bad idea - I got totally lost! Thankfully Bex had google maps up and could guide me home! I would have been lost without google and Bex!
Well got to run to take Rach to volleyball!
Love ya!
Dad