Dear Family

Hey how has everything been going? Thanks for the package you sent. That was great to get that. Thanks for the pictures. They are great to look at. Everything in the package was great. Thanks so much. We have been listening to the talks. Well everything has been going great here this week. Elder arnold and i have had a pretty good week. We have been working alot with Tyree. He is getting baptized on sunday. He is pretty excited. He is inviting a lot of his friends to come watch him. It is going to be great. We have also been talking a lot to a guy named Ray. He is hopefully getting baptized on Sunday too. He has to get interviewed by the mission president before he gets baptized. so hopefully everything goes good with that. He is a really great guy. His wife is a member. They have a goal to go to the temple together and get married in the temple. She has taught him a lot about the church. When we first met him, he already had a testimony of Joseph Smith. He said it made since that God would call prophets today, just like he called prophets thousands of years ago. He really enjoys reading the Book of Mormon too. He is always trying to learn. I think he will really like the Doctrine and Covenants too. He is really smart. probably one of the smartest people i have talked to in a long time. We are excited for him to get baptized. Transfers are coming up this week. One of us are probably getting moved. We have both been here for the last 6 months now. I'm thinking its going to be me that is going to get moved. I think Elder Arnold is going to train a new missionary. It will be good for him. We will find out a week from today what is going to happen. We are taking Elder smith to the temple on Monday too. He is going home. He flies home on Tuesday. It will be sad to see him go. the three of us have been around each other for the last 6 months. Well i hope you have a great week.

Love Elder Marshall

Quote of the week: “We are given the gift of the Holy Ghost after our baptism, but often we leave this gift on the shelf, forgetting that He will help us in the most important judgments of our lives. The Lord gave us this gift, knowing we would face difficult decisions in life. Listening to this voice is vital in developing good judgment. A relationship of listening often requires a quiet environment in which we can take time to ponder and hear the still, small voice. This peaceful environment is both external and internal.”

-Gregory A. Schwitzer

We had a really fun Summer this year. Here are a few pictures. While we were at Lagoon Corey was able to go to the National Scout Jamboree in Virginia so he is not in the Lagoon pictures.

We got to see a Moose in Island Park

We were able to go to John and Susan's cabin for a few days.

We were able to take the girls to Lagoon this summer. We all had fun but Kaitlyn is excited for Steven to come home so he can go on some of those "exciting" rides that the rest of us don't do anymore.

These pictures are probably out of order a bit but it will kind of give you an idea of what we got to see on our Alaskan cruise.

We are walking back to the boat after visiting Victoria.
I got these next pictures mixed up. When we went to dinner the night of the 17th our waiter brought us a little dessert and sang us a love song for our anniversary. It had a candle in it and we got to blow it out. We thought that was nice of them.

Every night (actually every meal) we had fruit. It was the best fruit especially the pineapple.

We got our cabin door decorated for our anniversary.

This is one of 6 pools on the ship.

Dinner time. It seems like we were always eating.

The second day on the boat I was not feeling very well...

These are just some fun things that they made there on the ship.

This is Gregory and I in front of Mendenhall Glacier. This is just outside of Juneau Alaska.

This is a big chuck of ice in the water. The ship had to go by a whole bunch of these to get to the Glacier.

We were able to go to a State Park that was full of totem Poles. This was in Ketchikan Alaska

This picture was taken in Ketchickan. We are just getting ready to get back on the ship.

This is a picture of part of the inside of the ship. Very nice!!

Dear family

Hey how has your week been going? How has getting ready to go back to school been going? Is it still pretty hot there? It hasn’t been to hot here. Its supposed to be getting cooler this week too. That will be nice. So when does school start? Is it this week or next week? It started a couple of weeks ago here. Everything has been going good here for us. We have been staying real busy. I was with Elder Smith again this week. We had meetings again. We had the last one on Friday. They were really good. The missionary department is putting a lot of emphasis on teaching skills. So we were doing a lot with that. Pete went to the temple on Friday. He got baptized back in April. The ward did a trip for all the new converts and the youth in the ward. We weren’t able to go, but we heard it was really good. Pete said he had a great time. We have just sarted working with a new family. The Martin family. The wife has been coming to church for a couple weeks now. She is the granddaughter of a member in the ward. The husband came for the first time this week. We went and saw them yesterday. She is a member already. She has been to the temple to do baptisms and everything. Its just been a while since she had come. The husband though isn’t a member. When we went over yesterday, he started telling us how he wants to go to the temple with his wife and get married there. That kindof surprised us. Most people we talk to don’t know much about the temple at all. Before we left, He told us he wanted to get baptized too. He wanted to set a day that he could get baptized before we left. It was great. We are hoping to see him get baptized before one of us gets transferred. That’s coming up in about two weeks. I think the 4^th is the last day of the transfer. Well I hope you have a great week.

Love Elder Marshall

Quote of the week: “Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!”

-Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf