Did you hear about the "Hooter Tooter" that was arrested and hauled off to jail? He got out of his car at a stop light and pulled a 78 year old man out of his car and beat him up. Why? Because the older man didn't pull out into traffic just as the light turned green. Do these people have a short fuse or what? There were plenty of witnesses and the cops got the man and took him away. The older man will be fine, he did the interview with the news people and the story made it on the ten o'clock news.

Well, I learned a very valuable lesson this week. Don't let just anyone use your computer to email or whatever. It took me three hours one morning to clean off all the games and crap that piggy backed onto my computer with a stupid office program. I can't believe I was so gullible. Anyway, hopefully not too much damage was done, but I can't get rid of weather bug. Anyone out there know a cure for that little monster? There were over 31 games that attached to my computer. I also had help from one of the young missionaries, trying to clean up the mess. I really miss Elder Parry. Now the Hogge's are leaving and I can't stand this part of our new life. It breaks my heart to lose these fine people. We have come to depend on them so much. Maybe that is what we're suppose to learn next. To stand on our own two feet and get the job done. It's "apartment inspection" time again. We have five different opinions on how to route the apartment schedule. That's a pain, at the last minute, after the missionaries have been called and the appointments set up. So, here we go again. Zig zaging across Miami, on the turn pike, off the turn pike, on the freeway, over the bridges, back and forth into the traffic. What joy, what fun! But we do get to go out to dinner tomorrow night. Real Italian home cooking! There are benefits to all the confusion.

It has been over a week since I had the first set of injections around my eye sockets. For the most part I can see better. I think there is a little bruising around the sides of my eyes, but Elder Graff doesn't think so. I go back to the doctor on March 3 for a check up. In the later part of the day, when I am tired, I have to fight to see and keep my eyes open. But in the mornings, I feel great. I am grateful that we know what the trouble is. It would be nice to have these injections be a one time thing, but that is not the case. So only time will tell.

We are working with a non member at the mission office tomorrow afternoon. She walked into the office Friday afternoon and started asking all sorts of questions about finding out about her family history. I started her in Roots Magic and we listed 14 brothers and sisters for her from the same parents. She had to call her sister for a little help with who was the oldest, but what a family.

We have appointments at the Ft Lauderdale Chapel Tuesday, from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM. We have started taking two boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts with us to the Chapel and the young missionaries are bringing us the people to teach. Bribery goes a long way!

We have a very tall lady from the group home across the street from the chapel, show up as soon as we get the car unloaded. As soon as she gets her doughnut, she goes home. Maybe we'll get to teach her one of these days. The missionaries say she comes over every time she sees cars pull into the parking lot. She has learned that the Mormons always have food.

These are the last of the baby ducks that came and went so fast. We watched this mother patiently sit on her nest for several weeks. Then got to take this picture after we noticed that there were egg shells around the nest. While she was hatching them, I got a good look inside the nest. She had pulled down from her body and had it all around the eggs. It breaks my heart that all the ducklings are gone. I know it is a balance of nature. But so hard to except. She is taking these little ones to the canal, to give them the water experience. But that is where they are captured by the big birds. Wish I could tent a small section and give them protection. Elder Graff says the fish and game would come lock me up for interrupting mother nature.

This is Sister Lima and Sister Mills. They are the ones that did the Spanish Translation for me for Roots Magic. We now have it finished and printed and ready to begin working with more of the Spanish speaking new converts. This day our reward for them was lunch at Dominos. Then we took it back to the Kendall Chapel and waited for our appointment to show up. We found 14 names for the sister to take to the temple. she was very thrilled to see all that down in black and white and is looking forward to going to the temple in April. These are the days that keep us going.

This train station is just off I 95 and Hollywood Blvd. I want to stop there sometime this coming week and get a schedule and price. I think it would be fun to take the train to Orlando and then a taxi to the temple, instead of waiting for the bus to go each month. Our next trip will be Friday, March 11. We think there will be a full bus of new members. That will be a lot of fun. I will need to get more starfish ordered. I am going through them at a very fast rate. That's a good thing. That means we are doing our job.

CVS Pharmacy has a unique feature that we had not heard about before. They have a PA on duty that sits in a cubicle near the pharmacy counter and is there to help people that have questions or concerns about the medication or advice about what may be ailing them. Sister Hogge loves this about the pharmacy close to the mission office. Elder Hogge teases her about going to the "Doc in a Box". But he has given her excellent advice and we are grateful that there is that type of service close by.

One of the homes on our canal boat sighting tour. This "small" dwelling lists for around 20 mil. Their power bill is more than we earn each month. They have live in care takers and are not even home most of the year. They have a yacht tied up to their private dock. One of the homes we saw, had a powered water surfing machine. One of three in the world. One of which is on a cruise ship. The teenagers that live there "HAD" to have one.

I celebrated my birthday Thursday at the eye doctor's office. He injected around each eye socket with five injections. There was a little discomfort, but nothing like I thought it would be. You could see some bruising, but really very little. I had a strange sensation under my left eye, but nothing to take a pain pill for. Today, it has been three whole days and I have both eyes open as I write the blog. That is a big improvement. Computer work has been very stressful these last two weeks. I have had to have the students read me what the program was saying. I am glad I have worked with them so long that I remember what comes next. In the future, the work should go better and faster. I had forgotten to sign out of Ancestry.com on the office computer and when we tried to teach a lady on Friday, we couldn't get into the program. That is the first time that has happend. I'm not sure why, but I think it is because of the firewall they have on the office computers. But we went back to the office and signed out. I was able to get on again when we got home that night. The Brown family told us we were the reason they were able to go to the temple Saturday. That is a very humbling feeling. We are making a difference here in south Florida.

This is Maslin, Clovis, Elder Graff and I with the Brown Family. We have just been in the Orlando Temple to do baptisms. We are now on our way to the plaza to spend some time while we wait for the rest of our bus load to finish their work at the temple. We visited the LDS Book Store while waiting. They have just about everything that Dessert and Seagull have. They even have a replica of the door knob of the Salt Lake Temple for sale. I found a book to read on the way home. My eyes are getting better.

Clovis is one of the oldest people that we have been teaching. He wanted to go to the temple again, so I had him do two of our Moore names. I showed him a picture of my dad and mother that are in the locket I wear most of the time. And told him that the names were my family. He started to cry and say that he asked the Lord to let him know something about the names that he would be doing. He is so loving and appreciative for any small gesture of kindness. We love these people.

This is Maslin. He was born in Florida and his mother died when he was six years old. We have been teaching him and have found a family of ten for him to take to the temple. He has met with us three times and has been fun to get to know. We took him and Clovis to lunch at a Chinese Garden. We had to wait until the rest of the people got out of the temple at 2:30, so we had the bus driver pick us up and take us to the Plaza to eat and go to the LDS book store.

This is one of the smaller tomatoes we bought at Knaus. The larger ones went on Bacon and Tomato sandwiches as soon as we got home. No cores or blemishes or bugs. We eat out way too much, but we passed up all the fast food to go buy bacon and sweet onions for our sandwiches. BLT in February. What a treat! The next day we had chopped tomatoes on La Rosa tortillas. If you haven't tried the LaRosa brand, search for them. I love them nuked and then put butter and salt on them and roll them up and enjoy. Yes, we love the food down here.

We finally found the farm lands that we kept hearing about in south Florida. We stopped at "Robert is here" and bought some produce. Then we went to Knaus Berry Farm and bought tomatoes and cinnamon rolls. What a treat. We were given some strawberries that are as big as limes. You can even go out and pick your own produce if you would like to. The corn will be ready in six weeks. We can hardly wait. If it is as good as the strawberries it will be wonderful.

After sightseeing on the canals of Ft Lauderdale viewing the homes of the rich and famous, we celebrated at the Cheese Cake Factory. This was my first time at the Factory. What great food! It was hard to decide which cheese cake to try. The service was exceptional. We will try t o take our next visitors there. Is that a bribe to visit South Florida? Maybe, we'd love to see you. Yes, I mean you! Come down and get out of the snow at home.

This is the best I could do for a picture of "G,Normus"; the three foot alligator that came over to see if he could beg some chicken from us. We were all told that the wildlife people had a camera on us so that we wouldn't feed him. I guess they must have, because the boat man didn't even try to feed him. This alligator is the only survivor of 30 babies that the mother hatched. Apparently the other wildlife like baby gator along with baby ducks. The food chain is alive and well in the glades.

This is another of the predator birds. The White Egret is another one that enjoys baby ducks for dinner. They are pretty birds, but I had the pleasure of chasing one away from the duck population by the canal close to our house. We saw this one on our air boat ride.

The small yellow things among the water lilies are the flowers. They are yellow ball shaped flowers. Quite different than anything else I have seen. A lot of the birds hunt in them for small frogs and geckos.

We are getting ready to go out on the air boat. This one has room

for thirty people. It was a lot of fun, especially when we went side

ways. We plowed over the water lilies. Their roots only go down six feet, so in that area the water is not very deep. But I wouldn't want to get out in it. We saw a lot of birds, gators and even a racoon. He came out and ate popcorn. The ride takes about an hour and we see a lot of the glades. We were told that they cover about 30,000 acres of south Florida. Most of them are only visited by boat. There are very few roads going across them.

This is one of the gators that we saw at the park. They come out of the water and enjoy warming up in the sun. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the park very much. They even have panthers lurking somewhere in the glades. There are caution signs along the road to be very careful. I'm sure the gators and the cats don't get along very well. The fish in the canals are very big. We saw Bass and Garr hiding in the roots of the trees in the water. The water lilies are beautiful. Wish I could grow them at home.

These are the Turkey Buzzards that are eating all the baby ducks.
They are not very pretty and are bigger than chickens. I wanted
to go up and kick one of them. But I didn't want to lose a foot. There was a sign indicating that the white egrets were nesting and i am sure these predators are just waiting for the chicks to hatch. I guess there is balance in all things, but I still wanted to protect the little chicks. We were warned not to feed any of the wild life. So I guess I would get in trouble it I gave them the alka-selser treatment.

Our experiences at the Everglades National Park continued when Jiffy, Grey, Tanner, Skylar and Jake came for a visit. The birds and animals do not seem at all bothered by humans invading their territory. There was an alligator sleeping just over the fence past this bird. I tried to get a closer picture, but he raised his head and I was out of there. They must not be too aggressive, because there isn't anything keeping them away from us. The birds are very tame acting, but I think they could take a chunk out of your hand if you got to close.