Dear Family and Friends,
Monday this week we spent the day preparing food for the family and going to the funeral for Johnny Rogers in Tuscaloosa.
Tuesday was district meeting in Tuscaloosa. I had to be there for a follow up appointment with the opthylmologist. I saw him a month ago and he actually didn’t think I have glaucoma. He took me off the eyedrops for a month (right after I purchased a new 30 day supply) and wanted to see how things were this month. He said my pressures are fine and he says to stay off the drops and we can check it again in six months. Yay!! I hated those drops.
Wednesday we worked on records again and went out to extend personal invitations to the Priesthood celebration we had planned for Saturday. We got to see Latasha Vaughn and Cedric and invite them to the celebration and we set an appointment to meet with them in their home next Tuesday. We have been trying to meet a non-member family whose two children have been baptized but have never caught them at home. We went there with a flyer and their son met us at the door. He is fifteen. It was the first time we had ever seen him. He hasn’t been to church since we arrived here. The first thing he said before we even told him why we were there was, “I’m coming for sure this week.” We told him we were glad and we would be excited to see him. We told him about the celebration and gave him a flyer and he said. “I’ll be there, I’m coming for sure.” When we left we weren’t sure he even knew we were talking about an activity on Saturday as well as church on Sunday.
On Thursday we spent the day in Greensboro looking for people who haven’t been to church and trying to find people who have insufficient addresses on the branch records. Our appointment with Sister McCleskey that we set last week did fall through, but we called her from her doorstep and she told us she forgot about an appointment they had in Jacksonville. She said she really didn’t do it on purpose because she really wants to meet with us. We re-scheduled for next Thursday and later we noticed that I have a doctor appointment scheduled for the exact same time in Tuscaloosa that I have been trying to schedule since we got to Alabama. Now we have to call her and re-schedule. We actually got to visit with one sister from the ward who had all of her siblings at the house when we got there. They were all siting on the porch visiting. They were all in their 50s and 60s and had been helping her cut her grass which had grown about 3 feet tall. They were just taking a break when we arrived. We had a nice visit and stopped for a selfie on the way home (see attachment). We had no luck at all trying to find any of the people with bad addresses. We had our Book of Mormon class in the afternoon. There are only two drivers among the active members in Greensboro that can get people to Demopolis for church. Brother White has dialysis on Saturday so he was not coming to the celebration. Brother Borden was scheduled to work so they wouldn’t be coming either. So nobody from Greensboro would be at the activity. We decided to make arrangements with the apartment management to use the lunch room (where we have study class) for two hours and we would show the video next week instead of having class. We would just have to arrange for access to the Internet somehow because as far as I could tell we could not download the broadcast, All we could do was re-play it.
Friday we spent most of the day at the church laying out our plans to accommodate everyone in our one room building for the viewing of the “Be One” event we were going to have on Saturday. I had the thought cross my mind that I should hook up the laptop and check and make sure everything was going to work to re-play the broadcast. I did so and clicked on “play video” and it just came up with an unknown error and said to try again later. I tried again 3 or 4 times with the same result and ended up calling the IT person in the stake for some guidance. We talked through everything and still couldn’t get it to work, so he told me to call the person over him because we had reached the limit of his expertise. I made the call and he was not home. His wife said she would do some research and get back to me. Then the IT guy called me back and said it must be a problem in Demopolis because he brought it up on his computer and it played just fine. Sister Hearle called me back and gave me a link to the media section of the Church website and said to play it from there. I brought it up and it actually gave me the option to download it, which I did (for an hour and thirty minutes). So I had it and didn’t have to worry about buffering during the activity Saturday. And now we don’t need the internet in Greensboro next Thursday to be able to show it.
The Sisters dropped by while we were at the church and told us about a biking miracle (the missionaries across the mission post them everyday showing how the Lord guides them when they decide to use their bikes instead of their cars so they save miles on their cars) They decided to bike to a teaching appointment and when they stopped at an intersection a lady hollered at them and was running to meet them. The Sisters didn’t recognize her. She said, “Hey, aren’t you LDS missionaries, I was baptized into y’all’s church, I’ve been trying to find you” She is one of the members who no longer lives at the address shown on the branch records and there was no phone number for her. She moved out of state to help take care of her niece who has cancer and just moved back to the area. She was excited to come to the activity on Saturday and to church Sunday. I don’t know if the Lord was rewarding us for our efforts or just getting the work done in spite of us. The Sisters never would have met her if they had driven to their teaching appointment. The appointment fell through, by the way.
Saturday we had about 40 people come to the activity. After the video started I noticed the boy sitting at the table next to ours was the young man we visited Wednesday that promised he would be there. After about an hour Latasha and Cedric came in (they are super shy, she hasn’t been to church for about 8 years). Sister Owens and I were both pleasantly surprised and jumped up to go greet them before they turned around and left. Since they were late they only got a hotdog each and a spoonful of baked beans, but they stayed and watched the video. We visited with them for a few minutes afterwards and they said they would come to church Sunday. Our big disappointment was that that the Webbs (Baptism date set for July 6) said they were coming but didn’t show up. They were going to come to Stake conference in the van with us and didn’t make that either. Sister Ramirez that chased the Sisters down on their bikes was there with her children and we got her current address and phone.
So church today was great. A member of the Stake Presidency and his family were our speakers. Unfortunately, none of the new people that said they were coming showed up, but we’re getting used to that. Sister Ramirez actually spent the day in the emergency room with a terrible toothache. So I had the video from yesterday on my start bar and decided this morning to close it. I went to open it this evening to make sure I would know where to find it Thursday for Greensboro and it is nowhere to be found on my laptop. I chose the open option instead of Save Friday when I downloaded it and it did not give me an option to save it to a location when I closed it this morning. So here we are at the church downloading it again (saving it this time). Since it’s Sunday it is taking about three to four hours this time instead of the hour and a half it took last time. At least it was good to find out it was gone tonight instead of Thursday at Greensboro. I’m so glad the Lord takes care of us and helps us get the work done even when we do some dumb things.
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