July 21 The last few days of the week were devoted to the young missionaries. One sister called and said that something in her mattress kept poking her all night and she couldn't sleep. She thought she had to go and buy herself a mattress. Jerry told her we'd be right out, so on Thursday we took her a new mattress. She was so excited. When it was unwrapped she just rubbed it and lay down on it and sighed. The elders were there to take the old mattress out and carry up the new mattress. We all had a good laugh and then we took them all out to lunch in Port Orchard. If you don't follow the Hallmark Channel then you should and here's why. There is an author who lives in Port Orchard who has written many books and one of her books is being made into a movie for TV series called Cedar Cove. It has views of the Puget Sound and scenes from Seattle. It was so fun to watch and realize you'd been there. Next time I need to find out where she lives and go and get an autographed copy of her book. The elders knew exactly where they wanted to eat lunch and it was a great Mexican restaurant. Then that evening a sister had an emergency appendectomy and an elder passed a kidney stone. Sister Weaver was very busy. The elder was so much better, but the sister has two weeks of recovery. Sister Weaver now has a new companion for two weeks. I'm sure she'll get extra special care. Saturday we had a new adventure. I wanted to go to the Lavender Festival in Sequim and Jerry wanted to go see Hurricane Ridge. So we compromised and saw both. The Trotters went with us and their friend and granddaughter were visiting so the car was filled. We think everyone in the area went to the festival. The cars were a solid line and backed up 10 miles out of town. We stopped at the first lavender farm which was the largest and smelled our way through beautiful lavender and learned a number of things about lavender - a perennial crop, hand harvested, dried, seeds broken out of pods by hand, crush for oil. The harvest is in July and early August. They sell everything from oil to lotions, to decorations to perfumes, to edibles and everything is decorated in purple. We then got back in traffic and went to the John Wayne Marina, got out of traffic and had lunch at the marina. It was so pretty and we ate and watched the fishermen come in with their catches of crab, clams and oysters. I had clam chowder and Elder Trotter had oyster stew. Jerry had a chicken sandwich. You can tell who is adventuresome. Saw a starfish on the rocks of the harbor and a seal swimming around in the harbor, so it was very picturesque. Back in the line to downtown Sequim and parked and walked the Street Fair where more lavender was sold. It looked like a combination of Art in the Park and Western Idaho Fair - food and booths galore. Then after suffering through all our shopping Jerry finally got his wish and we drove up to Hurricane Ridge and saw a spectacular view of the Olympic Mountain range. On one side the mountains went forever and the other view took us across the Strait of Juan De Fuca and you could see clear to Victoria, Canada. The drive up and down was cliff hugging and the scenery awed us completely. Jerry thought he'd made the best choice of the day. There were also deer walking around and so relaxed with all the people taking pictures of them. I will post some pictures of our day. Ready to relax today and prepare for work on Monday. We found out Friday that three military relations couples are coming this Fall to the Mission. That will up our number of seniors to 25 but then 6 will be going home - including guess who. (Still not counting, right.) Have a new book for all of you to check out. It's called "The Life of the Savior - compiled solely from Scripture." Karen Coleman gave it to me and it's such informative reading with the actual scriptures all compiled together. Hope you all have a good week and cool off. We've been rather cool here and maybe a tender mercy to us is that it's the driest summer they've had in 60 years. Love, Carolyn