Best Wishes to nephew Lance, and to Alicia, getting married on Wednesday! (3rd family wedding since we left on our mission!) Gary celebrated his 64th birthday on Sunday. We celebrated by going out to dinner on Saturday and to church on Sunday - oh yes, and by opening cards and presents too. He received lots of birthday messages and phone calls and the YSAs even sang to him at Family Home Evening tonight. They like Elder Mumford. We had several special events this past week. On Saturday night we attended our first Indiana wedding reception. The couple, both active members of our YSA Branch, got married the day before in the Nauvoo Temple. They came to the Branch on Sunday for their last time and to get released from their callings.

All those are missionary cars's - many with bike racks (and a zone leader's truck). On Thursday we traveled to Kokomo, Indiana for a combined Zone Conference for half of the mission. We heard testimonies from an Elder and a Sister who will soon finish their missions. Those are tender and powerful testimonies. They hate seeing their missions

come to a close. Elder Golden, of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy, and his wife, were there to speak to us. They are from South Africa and have fun accents. He opened the floor to doctrinal questions and the young missionaries were bold in their efforts to learn. He praised our mission president as one of the best presidents and priesthood leaders he has seen. President Collins gave a great talk on studying the scriptures. We made it back in time to grab salads from Wendy's and I snarfed it down before teaching our Institute lesson. A special day. We were lucky to have our granddaughter, Kaitlyn, stay with us for 4 days and 5 nights.

We found lots of fun things to do: Biking on the Cardinal Greenway Trail, going to the National Model Aviation Museum - and watching "pilots" fly their remote controlled gliders out in a huge field, seeing the sites on campus and the campus art museum, visiting the Minnetristra children's garden, playing at the Children's Museum, eating frozen yogurt at Berry Winkle, pancakes (for dinner) at IHOP and spaghetti at Fazoli's. Kaitlyn got pretty good at ping pong and was impossible to beat on steelball soccer. She helped make cookies for Munch & Mingle and listened to her grandpa teach the lesson on the Parable of the Two Sons. We did lots of extra lesson prep the two weeks before her visit so we would have time to be with her - fun week.

Sacrament Meeting was excellent - good talks from two YSAs and from our Stake President. President Burdett recalled from his boyhood attending stake conference quite some distance from home and eating a picnic lunch between the morning and afternoon sessions. The afternoon session always had less attendance and when he asked, his father explained that some families went home after the first session but that they were "a second session family." He encouraged the Young Single Adults to remember the "adult" part of their designation and to be "second session attenders" for stake conference (the Saturday evening session) and for General Conference. Gary has been preparing for our first Church History lesson next week - on the reformers. He is really enjoying all he is learning.