It was fun to see Bill Ronhaar and his children Emilie and Bryce from Mount Vernon, WA. Bill grew up in Lynden. His mom Bea was the checker at Harold's IGA and later Ennens Market in Lynden for as long as I could remember. Bill joined the Church 17 years ago and was in Salt Lake to send his oldest son on a mission to Jamaica. Converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not common in Lynden so it was fun to hear his conversion story. He graduated from High School the year we moved to Lynden, then he moved to Mt. Vernon, married a less-active member and the rest is history.
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This is the page of the Temple Square Times newsletter that featured all the "young photos" of the Senior Missionaries. It has been fun to hear the comments of the Sisters about the pictures.

We are so proud of our Temple Square Mission Choir. Each transfer they present a program entitled "Come Unto Christ" which features songs and testimonies. Elder Millet and I have been the Senior Couple for this program for 5 performances and they get better and better. The Sisters are all so very talented. It is a pleasure to get out of their way and watch what they can do and how well they do it.
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Here is our schedule for our 6th transfer. Time is flying fast.

We love to have friends come to visit. Barbara Kendall, daughter Katie Cummins, Raymond Kendall with Jared and Lance. The Kendall's are from Ferndale. It was fun to catch up on the news.
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We had a beautiful trip to Logan. Sardine Canyon was all dressed up for fall.
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We had a wonderful evening touring Deseret Printing. What a marvelous work and a wonder. We were very, very impressed with the magnitude of the operation. We invite you to come along and see for yourself.

A sampling of the items that are printed at Deseret Printing - manuals, pictures, posters, scriptures, fine art, etc.
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The Church magazines are also printed in braille.
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Part of the maze of warehouses that cover 320,000 square feet.
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Thank goodness the paper rolls - it would be impossible to lift. The press makes an automatic splice as one roll ends and another starts. Any signature that is printed on the splice is tossed.
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In a 24 hour period 605 miles of paper are used. Deseret Printing uses 25 million pounds of paper per year.
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The main press is huge and has many compartments such as this. All color work is done here. This job is printing Preach My Gospel and the press runs 24 hours a day, six days a week.
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The press runs very fast and a dryer this long is required to dry the ink so the product can be folded.
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The press is so huge it cannot be captured in one photo. Impressive!
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The quality of the work is checked from time to time. If it below standard the page is tossed. Notice how bright the colors are.

This is a good example of a signature. As you can see, Preach My Gospel is printed in a 16 page signature or 8 pages front and back. When folded in half, half again, and again the pages are in sequence - 1 thru 16. If the press run is for 2000 copies each signature is printed 2000 times.
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The signatures come off the press, are dried, then folded. A conveyor belt takes them to a stacking area. A block of wood is put on the bottom of the stack and they are dropped one by one to a certain height. Another piece of wood is put on top. The stack is steel banded and a robot picks it up and puts in on a palet.
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The signatures are stored until all the pages are printed and the book is ready to be assembled, trimmed, and bound. Preach My Gospel is spiral bound on a special machine. The printed books are also saddle stitched (stapled), glued, or sewn.
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Each of these tanks holds 750 pounds of ink. Every color of the rainbow can be mixed and used in the presses.
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You'll never guess what this plastic is used for - sacrament cups. Since the Church used thousands and thousands every Sunday they produce their own in a small room using a remarkable machine.
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The cups are actually vacuumed into shape. The warm plastic is pulled into the form. They are ready to be trimmed, cut, stacked together and packed into boxes by the same marvelous machine.
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This little press is for items that use an attached duplicate such as donation slips or Bishop's welfare order forms.
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This is just one area for storage of either signatures ready to be put together or finished products. The warehouse if 320,000 square feet - huge.
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This press is used to print the Church Magazines. It's quite a process to be repeated each and every month.
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The magazines are saddle stitched (stapled), trimmed, and ready to ship.
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The magazines are colated into subscription orders - The Ensign, The New Era, The Friend - or whatever combination you want. Your address is affixed and they are wrapped in plastic ready to be mailed.
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This is the press that prints the scriptures on fine delicate paper in signatures of 32 pages - 16 on both sides.
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This is the warehouse where the printed pages of the scriptures become books of all styles - paper back, hard back, Seminary issue, imitation leather, fine leather, non-indexed, and indexed.
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This is the machines that sews the signatures together. The less expensive scriptures are glued. The advantage of sewing is that the binding lasts longer and is much more flexible.
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The scriptures are printed in sets of two. These signatures have been sewn together. They are now ready to be cut into two volumes, trimmed and bound.
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The scripture covers are varying grades of leather in many colors. The genuine leather is much harder to process which makes it more expensive.
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The gold foil is cut to size and fed into the laminating machine. The piece on the left is for a quad.
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The books are pressed tightly together so there is no air between the pages and then sent through this machine that laminates the gold or silver on the edges. The wonder of the machine is that it will do one side then turn the book for the top edges and then turn it again for the bottom edges.
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These scriptures are now ready for their covers.
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The markers for the index tabs are placed by hand at the beginning of the designated chapters.
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The book is then fanned out and the index markings are carefully cut out by a steady hand.
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A perfect job. Only a few employees are trusted on this project. Nineteen quads can be indexed in an hour's time. Can we see why they the indexed scriptures are so expensive?
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Yes, all the waste is recycled.
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These trikes are used to traverse the huge warehouses and all the many departments. Looks like fun.
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Huge copy machines are used to reproduce the fine art prints that are produced by the Church such as you see hanging along this hall. There is also a small department that creates the frames for the art work that can be purchased in the distribution centers.
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Deseret Printing also has a small museum which was very interesting. A printing press like this one was used to print the first copies of the Book of Mormon. Each signature was inked by hand and then pressed. The rack to the left of the picture showed how the pages were hung for the ink to dry.
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Type like this was used in Joseph Smith's time - all set by hand upside down and backwards. We can be very thankful for the computer.

Thanks for joining us on the tour. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
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I was thrilled to read this article in the Church News. Please look further down in our blog and take a tour of Welfare Square and learn more about aid to Ephiopia and the Church Welfare Program.

LDS.org - News and Events Article - Church Sends Atmit to Ethiopia

LDS.org - News and Events Article - Church Sends Atmit to Ethiopia: "Church Sends Atmit to EthiopiaSeptember 15, 2008 — News from the Church

The Church plans to send to Ethiopia more than 1.4 million pounds (540 tons) of Atmit, special food for the severely malnourished, over a span of three months, with the final shipment scheduled to arrive in the drought-stricken country by November 2008.

At least 14 million Ethiopians are in need of food or cash assistance. While the crisis stemmed mainly from a severe drought that destroyed the entire spring crop in some places, the country has also dealt with high food prices, a number of disasters, and a rebellion in the Somali region that disrupted food delivery.

Remembering the significant aid the Church provided during the 2003 famine, government officials in Ethiopia sent a request for help. The Church answered by setting up a plan to send more than 30 containers of Atmit to the country. Beginning in late August and scheduled to end in October, the Church planned to ship five containers per week to the country, with each shipment taking six to eight weeks to arrive.

As in 2003 the Church worked closely with Project Mercy, a nongovernmental relief agency with experience in Ethiopia. In close coordination with the Ethiopian government, Project Mercy will oversee the distribution of the Atmit.

Atmit is a mixture of oat flour, powdered milk, sugar, salt, vitamins, and minerals that is mixed with water and cooking oil to reach the consistency of cream soup. It has been proven a successful resource for feeding the severely malnourished.

The Church is the only organization that produces Atmit.

Our darling granddaughter, Emily, (Troy and Leslie) just turned 3. She was so excited about her castle cake.


The cousins were invited to her party: Anna, Samantha, Emily, Robbie, Christian, April, and Ryan. Have these kids grown or what!

Our garden has exceeded our expectations - wow!


I cannot resist posting the before and after pictures. The garden was planted April 23. This part is outside our front door in front of the living room windows.

MIRACLE-GRO REALLY DOES WORK WONDERS.
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The Roma tomato plant grew up into the little bush you saw in the previous picture so we tied it up. It is almost as tall as I am.

The tomato plant in the corner grew behind the hose carrier and is just as tall as the Roma. The bell pepper that was planted beside the tomato has grown through the tomato foilage and attempted to find some sunlight. So far it has not produced anything but height.
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This garden is around the corner and in front of the house. We had 5 big helpings of broccli before we took out the plants to make room for the other things Elder Millet Planted.
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