Dear Family and Friends,
So, we have been killing two or three pretty good sized spiders every week for a while now in our apartment. Monday night I was in the bathroom and had just sprayed one and within five minutes another one came creeping across the floor that was even bigger than the first. It was a little closer to me than I preferred so I swatted it with a booklet I had in my hand and it rolled across the bathmat and hit the wall, then started crawling behind the cabinet below the sink. As it crawled away, I noticed a little pile of baby ants where it originally hit the wall and thought we must have just had a hatching of sugar ants. I grabbed the nearby spray and sprayed a puddle behind the cabinet and hit the little pile of ants (so I thought) as well. As I did they started scurrying in every direction. As I widened my spray pattern the spray hit the edge of the bathmat and it came alive with hundreds and hundreds (literally) of tiny baby spiders. So, of course, I dowsed the bathmat with the spray and stopped to check the effectiveness of my efforts. I saw no movement, whatsoever, and thought I had surely eliminated them all, since the mat was actually pretty wet. I decided to give it one or two more squirts just to be sure and as the first spray hit, it came alive again as if I hadn’t done a thing. At that point I all but emptied the container re-drenching the bath mat. then I waited a minute or two and sprayed it one more time just for the heck of it and saw no movement. I went to bed and told Sister Owens all about it and, of course, she had to use the facilities right then (which did not make her very happy). Neither of us spent much time in the bathroom the rest of the night. After that fun experience, I remembered seeing once on the internet how the female of some species of spiders carry all of her young on her back for a certain period of time after they hatch. That explained why that spider was so much larger than all the others we had seen. That was the last straw for Sister Owens (not enough Campbell in her). The landlady got a call about 7:30the next morning and was told to get someone out and treat the apartment for spiders. We were in Tuscaloosa that day and when we came home we found powder all around the outside of the apartment and in several places along the walls on the inside. We are happy to report we haven’t seen any spiders since, except for the huge one that was curled up and dying on the floor in the middle of the living room the next morning.
Now to the more enjoyable experiences of the week. We had District meeting, of course, on Tuesday. It is interesting that we pick up the Sisters here in Demopolis and the four of us drive an hour to Tuscaloosa to meet with the District Leader and his companion for district meeting and then drive home again. Our district originally consisted of the six of us and one other senior couple and another Sister companionship. The other senior couple went home in May and they closed the area for the other set of sisters. We have good meetings though. Our District Leader, Elder Foster from Montana, is really a sharp Elder. Interestingly, another district of about four or five companionships meets for their meeting at the same time just down the hall from us in the same YSA facility. After we got back to Demopolis we dropped the sisters off and Sister Owens and I went to our appointment with Latasha and Cedric. One of their daughters came to the door and said their mom wasn’t home. We were a little bummed and another sister came and said (we thought), “She is just down the street, I’ll get her.” We waited on the porch for a few minutes and then decided if she was just down the street, we could go meet them as they were coming back. We walked a ways and didn’t see Latasha or her daughter anywhere. We decided to go back to the house and wait. As we got back to the house Cedric came around the corner from the back yard and soon Latasha appeared. They were waiting for us and invited us into the house. They had been sitting in the back in the shade where it was a little cooler. I have to tell you what Sister Owens said to the daughter that opened the door when we got there. As the other sister started down the street, Sister Owens told her to go ahead and close the door so they didn’t let the cool air out (it was a very hot day). After we went inside we saw that they only had a fan sitting on the coffee table in the living room and it was actually hotter inside the house than it was outside. The sweat was literally dripping off my chin as we were visiting with them. Sister Owens gave me a tissue and said I had to wipe my face. We had a great visit with them for about 30 minutes or so and found out how Latasha had lost contact with the church when she moved from Birmingham where she had joined. Before we left I asked her if she still had her Book of Mormon and she said she left it in Birmingham. I told her I would go to the car and get her one and Cedric asked me if we would leave two of them. Of course we were happy to do so. We suggested that they have the Sisters come and teach them the lessons so Latasha could be reminded of what the missionaries had taught her and Cedric could understand a little more about her church. They said they would like that. We also found out that they did not come to church last week, the day after they watched the Priesthood Celebration broadcast, because she went to Cedric’s church with him. We told the Sisters about them and they actually had their first meeting with them this week.
Wednesday was Sister Owens birthday and we got to take the Sisters to Selma so we could all be interviewed by President Sainsbury. It was a great experience once we finally got to the church about 40 minutes late. We intended to use the church website and find the LDS church when we arrived in Selma, which we did. It told us where it was and we put in in the GPS and started on our way. After we got about ten miles out the other side of town I was starting to feel we were not going to find a chapel. The GPS had us turn at the Correctional Institution and after another 3 or 4 miles in the middle of nowhere we were blocked by three mobile homes in a semi-circle with the GPS showing our destination about a thousand feet past them on a road that did not exist. At that point we called the Selma Elders and asked them where the meeting house was. We put the address in the GPS and it took us back to the road where we stopped to look up the meeting house on the website. It was about three miles up the street. We still waited about 30 minutes after we got there before the President was ready for any of us. So at least we weren’t responsible for messing up his schedule. Sister Owens was very careful not to let anyone know that it was her birthday. I was upset with her at our last Zone Conference when she was supposed to go to the front with everyone else that had birthdays this transfer and be sang to and get her treat. She said that was just for the young missionaries. Anyway, at the interviews missionaries started coming out of the woodwork and wishing her happy birthday. Our sisters were a little upset with her that she didn’t let them know. Sister Sainsbury had a newsletter that she was giving everyone while they were waiting for their interview and it had Sister Owens on the birthday list. She didn’t get to keep the secret any longer at that point. After the interviews we stopped with the sisters at a funky looking BBQ joint in Selma to try some ribs and pulled pork for the birthday celebration and everyone that came out as we were going in said everything they had was the best. We tried ribs here in Alabama once before and were extremely disappointed after Slow Bone in Dallas and I refused to try them. Sister Owens ordered them and of course they were very good (my luck will never change). Then when we got back to Demopolis the Sisters treated us to frosty cones at McDonalds, the best way Sister Owens’ day could have ended. By the way Sister Owens says thank you to all of you who sent her special wishes etc. for her birthday.
Thursday everything went off without a hitch when we went to show the Priesthood celebration to the Book of Mormon class in Greensboro. Deborah (our non-member who always attends) was there waiting for us when we got there. Christopher, our other non-member we hoped would be there was not around when Brother White went up to get him, but he came down a little while later and afterwards said he really liked it. He and one of the inactive men both told us they were going to come to church this Sunday. They have let us down the last couple weeks. The Sisters got a text from the Webbs during the video. They had an appointment scheduled with them right after the class. They met with them earlier in the week and had planned their baptism service for July 6th. The text said they had changed their mind. They do not want to be baptized. They are staying in their own church. They don’t need our services anymore and they don’t want the Sisters to come to their house anymore. The Sisters left the room and spent quite a while crying and then motioned for Sister Owens to come out and they told her about it. We all felt really bad, but it is all in the Lord’s hands now. They were referred by Bobbie Jean’s closest sister who was recently converted in Selma. Her sister had given the Elders several referrals and had gone on teaching appointments with them. She was really a ball of fire. Something happened just in the last week and she has become extremely anti. She is posting several really bad videos on facebook that she has made defaming the church and feels it is now her responsibility to prove the Mormon Church is not true. We know Bobbie and Johnny have both felt the spirit and will someday either change their mind or come to regret the decision they have made.
It was a blow to loose the Webbs but today Latasha and Cedric came to church and so did Christopher from Book of Mormon class. The sisters have another appointment with the Kirks (Cedric and Latasha) this week, and Christopher said he enjoyed church and wants to come again next week. The work goes on!
I hesitate to mention this because I don’t want anyone to think that we are out here needing money. That is not the case. But we want everyone to know that we are fully aware of and grateful for the way the Lord takes care of us while we are in his service. We have established a budget to follow while we are out here that covers all of our expenses from home along with all the expected expenses in the mission field. We have expected all along that June would be a month that we would exceed our budget because it is the month that we make our property tax payment at home. We were prepared for a tight month and knew we could handle it. Last month we rented the van for Stake Conference and it took us about $57 over budget for May (well within our cushion). We knew we would be a little over this month because of the tax payment. Having received money from many of you who have been so generous we are actually going to finish this month within our set budget. We would have been just fine going over the budget, as we were sure we would and had actually planned for, but the Lord has blessed us anyway. We are grateful to Him for his blessings and know that they come to us through the generosity of others, as they have for all of our lives. Thank you to all of you for all you do and have done for us for so long.
We truly love y’all,
Keep the commandments and read your Book of Mormon!
Elder and Sister Owens
P.S. About the attached pictures. A group has built replicas of the Nina and the Pinta and sail them around the waterways of the Eastern US and up and down the east and west coast for people to tour them. Our ward mission leader said they invited non-members so they wanted us and the Sisters to come for the tour. That way we would have enough that we could get the tour for a special group rate. We came. When we got to the ticket stand we told them we were in their group, pointing to the Smiths. He looked at Sister Smith and said, “who all are in your group?” She pointed at everyone that was standing waiting for the tour and said, “Oh, they all are.” As far as we could later surmise the only one with them besides the four of us was a young man that was already a member of the church. They have a large family, but we were actually a little short of the fifteen people we needed for the special rate that we paid. It was a very interesting and informative tour though. We enjoyed it very much.
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