This is a great young active family in our branch.  The young lady on the right is the non-member girlfriend of the boy next to her.  He invited us to their family home evening to teach her about the gospel.  The lady on the far left next to Sister Peterson is the non-member mother of the mother of the family standing on her left.  So we got to teach two non-members and it was a great evening.  We had dinner first which included catfish and hush puppies.  Yes we have tasted our first catfish and actually it was quite good!  Hush puppies are flour and cornmeal rolled around a sweet onion and deep fried or baked.  They very a lot according to who makes them but these were good.  After the lesson we played games in their big yard and had a great time.

This is a beautiful Southern Style home in Morgantown that we drive past and finally decided to stop and take a picture.  It is an older home that has been refurbished and added onto.  There is a large three car garage in back although the picture doesn't show it very well.  We are told the inside is also very beautiful with flooring of the period and very nice furnishings.  The columns are a prominent feature of the older homes.  This is a beautiful example of what one might picture as "My Old Kentucky Home".

This is a beautiful large Baptist Church called Belmont.  It is about five miles out of town in a wooded area. There is a school in part of it but it still is very large and seems to have a large congregation.  We have several members nearby that we visit and there always seems to be a lot of cars there on Sunday.  It has even affected the branch a little because occasionally wayward members will defect here.

This is what most of the small churches look like out in the country.  They are everywhere in small communities.  Most are Missionary Baptist churches but there are some Church of Christ chapels and an occasional Methodist one.  This one has some class room area.  Most are smaller and only include a chapel.  However there will always be a covered picnic area with tables for dinners and a small cemetery.  There are small cemeteries throughout the area.  Some are private family burial plots but most are near these small churches.  We were driving down a gravel road one day looking for an inactive family when we saw a side road we thought might take us to their home.  Instead it wound up the ridge through the trees to a very secluded cemetery completely hidden in the trees.  There were fairly recent headstones so it was still in use.

We were attracted to this one because of the name.  We learned later that lick refers to a salt lick that deer and other animals frequent for a taste of salt.  This one was named after Barnett.  It was interesting that the church and the area would take the name given the old salt lick.  Unfortunately we have one inactive member that has decided to return to this particular church.  His grandparents were the first to start this Baptist congregation in the Barnetts Lick area and he has returned to the church of his forefathers.  In a area that is so strongly Baptist/Protestant, we get more of that than we would like.,  Some will join but don't really get converted and after a few months drop away and return to their easier religious lifestyle.

This has been an interesting week with some real dog days that we seemed to get little accomplished.  Then we had a couple of days at the end of the week where we seemed to catch everyone we stopped to visit.  We taught two investigator lessons this week and have another new investigator starting the lessons this next week.  So we are doing some missionary work along with visiting a lot of inactive members.

We are still enjoying our surroundings and have heard our first whipper-wills and really enjoy the lightning bugs or fire flies that are prominent here especially after a rain storm.  The other night we were driving home and the fireflies were everywhere.  They flash for a second or two then are gone and will flash for a second some where else and the light is surprisingly bright.  With all those flashes of light, I was afraid some might be deer eyes reflecting the headlights.  I was very jumpy and a good thing because a big doe walked in front of us and we had to slam on the brakes to miss her.  Later the same evening we had to swerve around a possum in the road that was blinded by the headlights and didn't move.  It is very common here to see road-kill possums.  They are about like the jack rabbits used to be at home.  Oh well, that is probably enough gory details.
Elder and Sister Peterson (Sittin' in our rockin' chars 'n' watchin' the farflies)