I hope you guys are ready for school. It's weird because I can't really accept that anyone has grown since I left. I've had a great week. We are teaching a bunch of younger families right now. It's hard finding families that are ready to progress. I've found a lot families to teach, but they are often comfortable in their ways. However, we have some really great people that we are teaching right now. I'll let you know a little about them. But let me give you an update on office work first. It's not very spiritually uplifting but people keep telling me it's necessary. Sometimes I doubt that a little bit - ha ha. Actually it is important, it's just that there is ministering and administering in the church. They are both important. My great adventures lately have been focused around two big things - MLS and shipping to the mission. MLS is finally moving forward in earnest. We start this week to update all the leadership records in Madagascar. I wonder how I can put on my resume that I helped reorganize a record keeping software for a country larger than Texas with 10,000 individual records in it. (Sorry Texas, I know you think no one is bigger than you:) I'm excited to finally see some progress with it because I've been working on it for so long. It's weird having to read Handbook 1 and stuff on how to recreate records or remove duplicates, etc. The next thing I've been working on is shipping to Madagascar. We haven't received supplies as a mission for over a year! We have nothing, even though we've ordered tons of stuff and been charged for it. I have a great big puzzle to figure out, trying to follow back the lines to determine where all our stuff is and how we can get it here. This is one of the harder challenges that I've had in the office. I love finally working in an environment where the answers aren't certain. In school there is so often one answer, sometimes hidden but you just have to find it. Here, there may be no answer, yet you still have to find a solution. My expedition so far has led me to call Salt Lake, Germany, and South Africa. I accidentally called clothing rental at the Frankfurt, Germany temple. Needless to say, they didn't quite know what an IROP number was. Thankfully the grandma that I scared in Frankfurt spoke just enough English to let me know I must have the wrong number - ha ha. So I'll give a shout out to them for being so wonderful. Also, I think I've made a couple of peoples day by calling from Madagascar. They usually say, 'wow, I've never had someone call from there before!'

We have some wonderful recent converts getting ready to go on missions. And our ward mission leader just opened up a butcher store.

(note from mom: the rest of the letter was generally private notes to family. I typically ask Alex if there is anything that he would like me to send him. In the early days of his mission he appreciated American treats and reminders of home. Now his requests are for soap, toothpaste, and deodorant - the "luxuries" that we don't even think about.)