Dear Family and Friends,
Monday was our zone conference. They had us go to Montgomery again to save fifteen minutes driving time for us. We kind of miss meeting with our own zone and the rest of our district but the drive to Montgomery is much better than the drive to Birmingham. It makes for a very full day anyway. We left town at 6:40 AM and got home at 7:30 PM. Conference is always a very encouraging experience for us.
It seems like we are becoming the financial advisors for a number of the members of the branch. President James had us do a Needs Assessment for one of the sisters on Tuesday. She assured us when we got there that her outgo was definitely more than her income, which it was. The whole state seems to have an entitlement mentality. It is hard to convince people that they are actually supposed to work at getting to the point where they can be self-sufficient. A lot of them just look to the church as another source for ongoing benefits to pay their expenses.
Wednesday we went to Tuscaloosa for our district council. On the way home we took the sisters to the West End Grocery again for lunch in Eutaw. Sister Weaver (from Chicago) was a little more comfortable there than Sister Shreeve was last time we went. Poor Sister Tennyson just kind of goes along with anything we do. Ruthie Brown (from our branch) is the cook there and we have never been disappointed with the food yet. We had chicken and I really felt bad we weren't coming the next day when she said she had to start the meat marinating for the next day. She was doing a Boston Butt and meat loaf for tomorrow. We wanted to get by there to see her because she is really stressing over some dealings she has with the courts over her finances. She has to go to court next Thursday.
I am having a hard time accepting the fact that the two of us do not get through a whole gallon of milk before It goes sour. Of course only one of us ever drinks it anyway (that might have something to do with it). Milk is about $3.85 a gallon now and we are having to pay ¾ of the price for half the milk when we buy a half gallon so we can finish it before it goes sour. So we had half of the last gallon of milk go sour and we were going to make some sour milk pancakes but never did get around to it. The milk got about as thick as rice pudding and Sister Owens said we had to throw it out but I wouldn't let her. We got a recipe from Tami for sour milk chocolate cake and made one for Book of Mormon class (they will eat anything) It was not the easiest thing to make with soda dissolved in boiling water and all, but it ended up being a very good cake. We are keeping the recipe. We also had to make some chicken noodle soup for the RS luncheon on Friday. The noodles were only supposed to boil for twenty minutes but by the time we got to that point we were out of time and had to leave for class so we put it in the crock pot and figured they could go a while on low.
Friday was a very big busy day. The monthly meeting for Relief Society included a presentation by Elder Owens on budgeting (we'll see how much good that does) and then we had the chicken noodle soup and French rolls from the "made too much" rack at Walmart for a Budget meal. One of the sisters complimented Sister Owens on the soup and told her it reminded her of Egg Drop soup at Chinese restaurants (so much for cooking the noodles on Low in the Crock Pot). Of course we had to make our run to Greensboro to bring the sisters in for the meeting but one of them was not home when we got there to pick her up. That ended up being a good thing because the other sister decided to stay in Demopolis for the afternoon so we didn't have to take her back to Greensboro. We had a baptism in the evening. Cedric and Tasha Kirk's daughters were baptized. They had told the sisters when they were teaching Cedric that there was no way they were being baptized. They are turning seventeen and fourteen this year. We took them to the temple with Cedric and Tasha when they were baptized for the dead. The younger one, Ja'Nylia, cried all the way to Birmingham because she did not want to go the temple. She was the one that bore her testimony on fast Sunday and asked if she could speak after she was baptized. There were between thirty and forty people there and she got up and thanked everyone for coming and told them that she hoped they would get baptized just like she did. There were a lot of her cousins that came for the service. Before the service Sister Owens told her she would be her crazy little white grandma. We took a picture of the family (Attachment #1, this was after I coaxed them all to actually smile) and Ja'Nylia whispered to Sister Weaver that she wanted to have her picture taken with Sister Owens (Attachment #2). It's so neat to see how much the girls have changed over the past several weeks. They are both so excited to be with the youth in the ward. They are registered to go to the Youth Conference in February. They will have five stakes involved. It will be quite the experience for both of them. Ja'Nylia's sister is Zyeronia. A couple more of the very interesting names they have here. Sister Owens commented once that they give everybody such exotic names here and then end up calling them Kiki or Cecee or Pepee or Tata, etc. Very interesting. The Kirk girl's names are pronounced Janyla and Zereyawna.
Saturday we thought we were finally going to have a day to ourselves to get our cleaning and laundry done. Not so. A sister in Greensboro called and said she was out of food. President James asked us if we would take her some necessities and do an Needs Assessment while we were there. We got one grocery list from her and one from President James. She was probably a little disappointed but she got the items on President James list and not hers. We did get our wash done before we got to bed.
We were looking forward to resting up a bit tonight but the sisters needed us to take them out to some teaching appointments. They had four backup appointments and we ended up actually getting in with a mother and her daughter that are planning on being baptized in two weeks. We read a chapter in the Book of Mormon with them. We managed to reschedule two of the other four appointments.
Keep the commandments and read your Book of Mormon (and read your Come Follow Me lesson)
We Love y'all,
Elder and Sister Owens
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