Elder Malm and his wife are visiting our mission this week.  They were having a mini-zone conference for the Camarillo and Ventura zones at the Ventura Stake Center today and Sister Felix made all of the food.  Sister Miles and I just had to show up and serve it and clean up.  I came back to the office because Elder Ruse was in the office all by himself answering all of the phones, collecting the mail and receiving 15 bike racks!  A woman came to the door of the office and said she was meeting Elder Sandholtz and Elder Hall here and then she proceeded to tell us a story that her son, Ben Sandholtz, has been here on a mini-mission.  They are from Provo and Ben has down-syndrome, graduated from Seminary and his brother Elder Sandholtz, said, "wouldn't it be wonderful if Ben could have a mini-mission?"  Well, President Felix made it happen.  All three elders told us that this morning, Ben committed an investigator to baptism, and he will be baptized in October!  It brought Elder Ruse to tears.  It was an amazing story.  I asked Ben what has been the best experience this past week, and he said all of it!  Here are the three missionaries together before Ben and his mother fly home to Provo:

Dreams really do come true! 

I am so glad I was in the office to hear this amazing story!  Thank you President Felix for making this happen.

Good things this week.  Because transfers are next week and time goes by quickly and you never know what is going to happen - and most times we miss the moment, we took the Assistants to the President to McConnell's for ice cream: Elder Wallace, Elder Lee and Elder Kleinman.   Jimmy is the manager and he immediately recognized all of the elders and even remembered Elder Teeples who apparently was a regular at the ice cream parlor!  Here are pictures of Elder Ruse with the assistants eating our favorite ice cream.  Jimmy told us that the record of small tastes in one cone, was 38 different scoops!

We did get to go to our nephew, Jeremy's wedding in Idyllwild and that was very nice.  We left early Saturday morning, and stopped to see Elder Ruse's parents and George.  It is always good to see them.  Then we drove to Hemet and went up the mountains.  We left Hemet in 1979 to move to Utah and Hemet has really changed!  It is soooo dry everywhere in California but it was extremely dry and noticeable in the mountains.  Here is a picture of Gene and Jana and me (which I hate having my picture taken).