People who read this blog on their computers see a banner area that counts down the number of days / months to Christmas and to our scheduled release date (today it reads 7.97 months to our release date and 6.49 months to Christmas). This week we completed fifteen months on this mission and have just eight months remaining. That doesn’t seem like very long! Before I can turn around, it seems, the time will be gone and we’ll be headed back stateside.

For some reason, people who read this blog on a mobile device don’t see the count-down banner. I’ve no idea how the software makes that decision.

Some very good friends in our Ward in Colorado Springs came into the Visitors’ Center today, Peter and Rebecca Burnette. They now live in American Fork, Utah but Rebecca has friended Nina on Facebook so they knew we were here. We had a fun, short visit and just after they left Nina and I both realized that we hadn’t taken a picture! That’s unfortunate. Meanwhile, next Wednesday some friends from Pocatello will be here and we’ll go with them to the Polynesian Cultural Center. He’s a top-drawer firefighter and she has her own physical therapy business. Both of them are ham radio operators and over our time in Pocatello we’ve worked a lot of ham radio events together. We’re really stoked about Glen and Joni Powell arriving on our doorstep for a day. Life is grand!

Ta ta for now!