Dear Family and Friends,
After our exhausting weekend with Stake Conference last week Monday became our belated P-day so we stayed home and cleaned house, took naps, and did laundry all day. Tuesday was our District Meeting in Tuscaloosa. It was really a special meeting. Transfers are going to be this next week and we know some of our missionaries are going to be leaving the district. Elder Johnson, the district leader ( attachment #1), has been in the district for six transfers. He gave us training on bearing testimony and we ended the meeting with everyone bearing testimonies. Sister Humphries has been in Demopolis for three transfers so she is sure she will be going this time. It’s the first time transfers have affected us directly. We will miss them both very much. So next district meeting we will have a new sister in our area and a new district leader.
We stopped at the hospital in Tuscaloosa with the sisters and went to visit Brother and Sister Rogers. Brother Rogers doesn’t look to us like he is doing very well. He doesn’t really seem to be improving. They moved him to the long term care floor this week. His wife said he has come back from worse than this before. Hopefully he will get better. He is 75 years old. We met Brother Nichols from Tuscaloosa, who was leaving when we arrived. He used to be a high councilor assigned to the branch. He told us the last time Brother Rogers got really sick that Sister Rogers said she had been praying and she knew that if the Lord would heal him one more time, she would start paying her tithing and they would go to the temple. She didn’t quite understand how it works with the miracle coming after the trial of our faith.
Wednesday we went to the church and opened the Family History Library and planned to be there alone for the day. Right after noon Mary Barton came to the door. She was the non-member we worked with last week. She said she had gotten confused and wanted a little more help. We were able to identify her great grandfather from a census record and connect him to her family. She didn’t have the name of that particular relative and when we identified him and connected him to the tree that connected her to several generations that were already in the system. She was very excited. When she left she said she was going to see if her daughter wanted to come next and have us help set up a Family Search account for her.
We had three non-members join us this week in Book of Mormon study in Greensboro. Debra is always there, and Brother Whites friend, Cristopher, came again and a social worker joined us that works with a few of the people that live at the apartments. Brother Borden that is 72 years old and works three jobs brought chicken, bread, cake, and lemonade again.
Thursday night we had branch council meeting (first one since we received our callings in the branch) because the James were going to be gone with family today for a family reunion. We finally got to get a picture of them (attachment #2 and #3) somewhere besides the service project at the Rogers. Sister James said she would tell us about her conversion someday. Since Sister Humphries is leaving we prevailed on her to share it with us that night. They lived in South Carolina in 1988. There were disturbances in their town and her husband was working ninety miles from home. He had given her strict instructions that she was to keep the door locked and not allow anyone in the house when he was away. The elders knocked on her door and said they had a message about Jesus Christ. They told her that people in the area had not been very kind to them and they knelt and prayed that the Lord would send them to someone that He had prepared to receive the gospel and they were led to her house. She ignored her husband’s instruction and invited them into the house. The elders taught her the plan of salvation and she said she had a witness that day that what they taught her was true. She said Satan did not want her in the church and fought very hard to keep her from joining. It took her three months before she was baptized. Her husband had members of his family that were Jehovah’s Witnesses and for a while they would alternate having missionaries and Jehovah’s Witnesses in their home to teach them. She finally told the missionaries that she wanted to be baptized and they set a date. The night before her baptism she said she had a very strong feeling that she needed to be together with her husband at church and decided she was not going to be baptized. One of the missionaries just looked at her and didn’t say anything, but got very emotional. She saw the tears in his eyes and had the distinct impression that he knew something that she didn’t know and that if she didn’t get baptized she would never know what it was. She told him that she would get baptized and if she decided she didn’t like it she would never be back. She has been active since the day she was baptized. Her husband was baptized about two months later.
We are finally getting a handle on where all the people are in the branch. We have the branch list divided up by location so we can start visiting everybody in the various towns as we are in the area. The attached map (Attachment #4) roughly shows the boundaries of our branch. All the yellow dots indicate the different towns where we have members. The little red dot just below Demopolis is where our humble garage home away from home is (in our GPS it is labeled Home 2). Tuscaloosa is at the top of the map. That is where we go every week for district meeting. Of course Birmingham is a little further northeast where we go for Zone Conferences and the temple.
Our branch was assigned along with the Stake YSA to go to the temple Saturday to help clean after they closed. We have eight current recommend holders including ourselves. Two of them are in their late 70’s and early 80’s (Sister Owens’ councilor in RS and the Branch President’s councilor). We were the only two from the branch that ended up going. It was nice the YSA was there. We had eleven of us altogether. Nobody should complain about helping clean the church or the temple at home. We drove two hours each way to help clean the temple (just saying).
We want you all to know that living the gospel is the only thing that brings true happiness. Say your prayers and read your scriptures so you can know your Savior. If you haven’t yet, memorize “The Living Christ.”
We appreciate all your prayers, love and support. We love you back!
The gospel is true. Keep the commandments and read your Book of Mormon.
We love y’all.
Elder and Sister Owens
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