Sunday, December 30, 2018

Week 40: A very merry Christmas in Alabama

Dear Family and Friends,

Monday was our District Council in Tuscaloosa.  It was the only day this week we could have it.  We are having to change the day because our District Leader and his companion have been designated the technology specialists for the mission so they will be traveling most of the time on Tuesdays to help other districts with technology problems.  Sister Owens just rescheduled her monthly Relief Society meeting to Friday so our Branch President’s wife could attend.  The district chose Friday to start having District Meeting (just our luck).  We told them of the conflict and it might be changed to Thursday.  The meeting was later than usual and everybody took a dinner break before going caroling as a district along the river in Tuscaloosa.  I heard the sisters from our area explaining to the other sisters that they came with us and would have to go to dinner with us.  Then they went to Sister Owens and asked her very timidly if they might be able to go to diner with the other sisters in the district.  She told them she thought that would be okay (yippee, only two for dinner tonight).  It was so funny that they felt so apologetic about asking.  We got to go with the Hursts (the other senior couple).  We went to the Cook Out restaurant.  We got to have our traditional hamburger supper for Christmas Eve.  They had a hamburger, two sides, and a drink for $5.  Not bad.  I ordered a double burger with cheese and Sister Owens’ single had more meat on it than mine did.  We were excited that we got two sides for such a reasonable price until we got our order and noticed that the side of onion rings was four onion rings.  But all in all it was a pretty good deal.  Everybody was supposed to be back at the Institute by 6:00 PM but nobody showed up until 7:00.  It was already dark for two hours and we still had to drive home.  Our sisters were good to be willing to leave for home instead of going caroling with the rest of the district so we didn’t get down to the river.

We spent most of Christmas day preparing the turkey dinner with all the trimmings that Sister Patterson delivered to feed us and the sisters.  It was a fifteen pound turkey.  We had Turkey, yams, dressing, gravy, brown and serve rolls, canned cranberries (we gave those to the sisters) and bags of frozen black eyed peas in every stage of growth you can imagine.  There was also a bag of frozen whole okra which Sister Owens gave to the sisters as well, so we don’t get to try it now.  Sister Patterson also gave us one of her award winning buttermilk pecan pies for desert.  The sisters had their lunch appointment at noon so we thought they would be over by 5:00 since we had an appointment at 7:30.  They called about 4:30 and asked if they could come for dinner at 6:00.  They were going to the church to skype their families at 5:00 so we were pretty sure they wouldn’t be over by 6:00 for dinner (which was ready to eat at 5:00).  We texted them at 6:07 and asked if they would mind if we started without them.  They showed up about 6:15 and we all ate cold turkey (see attachment #1) and headed to Greensboro.  We were all invited to the Merrills to see their twenty-four Christmas trees that they have set up in their antebellum mansion (see attachment #2).  We visited with the Merrills  until 9:00 so we got the sisters home a little late.

The Branch President got a call from one of the branch members on Monday advising him that their water was going to be turned off that day because their bill hadn’t  been paid.  More times than not President James usually pays things like that out of his own funds because we are always negative in our Fast Offering fund.  They had done a lot for different members for Christmas and Sister James called us to see if we might be able to help in some way.  We told her we would look into it and take care of it.  We couldn’t get an answer when we called the member so we called the water department and they weren’t open.  If they weren’t open we were pretty sure they weren’t going to be turning off anyone’s water on Christmas Eve.  Wednesday we made some calls and went out to Livingston to pay the bill as it would be turned off the next day.  We found out the members daughter and fiancé are living with her and had agreed to pay the water bill.  When they were advised that it would be turned off the member asked her daughter why she hadn’t paid the bill.  She said, “Nobody reminded me.”  When we went to pay the bill we learned it hadn’t been paid since October.  It had two late payment fees of $50 each and 10 percent interest on the unpaid balance each month.  If we hadn’t paid the bill when we did there would have been another $50 late fee the next day and it would have been shut off.  It is so frustrating that almost everybody here knows they can just ignore their bills and when they threaten to shut off the utilities then the church will step in and take care of it and it is always at least twice as much as it would have been if the bills were paid on time.  Anyway, we certainly appreciate so many of you that sent us funds (which you really shouldn’t do) this month which made it possible for us to help several people this season.  We took the sisters out to Linden to keep a couple of appointments in the evening after our coordination meeting.  Both of them said it wasn’t a good time and rescheduled the appointments.

Thursday we went out with the sisters to help with an eagle project for one of the Smith boys.  The Smith family along with their grandparents and the sisters and us were the only ones there, but we accomplished quite a lot of work.  We were  clearing a birding trail at one of the parks in the area (see attachment #3).  We also put up several markers identifying different trees along the trail. Sister Owens got to run the leaf blower for the first time in her life.  She was pretty excited about it.  One of the park caretakers followed along with her and spelled her about every ten minutes so it went pretty well.  We had Book of Mormon class in the afternoon and drove home in a torrential rain storm.  At 11:55 PM  we received a flash flood warning on our cell phone.  We have a weather radio in our apartment that is supposed to come on and warn us of dangerous weather situations.  It has never gone off even though people in the area have asked us a couple times if it went off because theirs did. It was raining so hard when we left the building in Greensboro I didn’t even bother to hurry going to get the car.  I was totally drenched as soon as I went out the door.

Friday we went back to Greensboro to deliver oranges, Theraflu, and chicken soup to one of the sisters from Book of Mormon class that has a really bad cold.  We got a picture of the pastures where the cattle were feeding the day before the rain storm (see attachment #4).  Since both of us spoke in church today we spent Friday afternoon preparing our talks.

Saturday we got to do our laundry and cleaning and finish preparing our talks and pack up all the dishes, etc. that we used for our Christmas dinner.

Brother White had his interview today with a counselor in the Stake Presidency.  I didn’t get to find out from the President when he is going to be ordained but we think it should be soon.  We are excited for him.  The sisters called us this morning before Branch Presidency meeting.  They needed us to pick up some people they started teaching this week.  Luckily Andrea called us before that to say they weren’t coming so we didn’t have to pick them up as we usually do.  It was a lady and her nine year old daughter.  We had quite a fiasco in the third hour trying to set everyone up with accounts at Family Search and Ancestry.com.  Probably not the best introduction to the church.  And we had to explain that it is all going to be different next week with the new meeting schedule. Her daughter came out from primary and asked her mom if they can come back again next week.  When we took them home the mom asked us what lesson we wanted them to study for next week and said they were planning to come again.  It may prove to be a bit of a logistics problem if we are picking up Andrea and her mother next week as we usually do.  We are sure it will all work out some how.

We hope y’all had a merry Christmas and wish y’all a happy new year.

Keep the commandments and read your Book of Mormon and study Come Follow Me this week with your family.

We love y’all,

Elder and Sister Owens

PS.  Brother Hurst says if y’all means you all then w’all should be what you say for we all.





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