Dear Family and Friends,
We found out Monday that Brother White actually got into his physical therapy program in the Greensboro hospital and went to see him in the evening. He has been doing very well on the therapy program and has been gaining back some of the weight he lost over the past few weeks. He told us they are counting the time he has been in the hospital at Tuscaloosa as part of the therapy so he actually only got to be in the program for about a week and a half. He had to go home on Saturday. While we were visiting with him we found out he did not have a way to get to his dialysis appointment on Tuesday so we told him we would see that he got there. So Tuesday we left Demopolis and drove to Greensboro to get Brother White, took him to Eutaw, drove back to Demopolis to get the sisters, and then drove to Tuscaloosa for our District Council meeting. Brother White was going to call us when he finished Dialysis and we would tell him how soon we would be able to get there to pick him up. We had Sister Weaver pick a place for lunch after our meeting since it was her birthday. Brother White called just as we got our food and told us he found a way home so we wouldn't have to pick him up. That was good since it was going to be a pretty cozy ride home with the sisters and us and Brother White.
Wednesday morning we headed back to Greensboro to get Brother White again to take him to Tuscaloosa for his three month follow up with the surgeon after his neck surgery. Four out of five of the vertebrae that were pinned are healing properly but the bottom one is pretty much disintegrating. The surgeon said because of his diabetes and dialysis his bones are actually like butter. He said they will have to go in from the front and graft some bone from the bone bank to the bad vertebrae and he is afraid it won't heal properly because of his failing health. Brother White told me he is really scared to have the surgery and every time he thinks about it he hears his sister (she had surgery the same day he did and died the next day) telling him, "Don't do it, Manuel, don't do it!" just like she was sitting next to him.
Thursday just before we were going to pick up Sister Jones to go to Book of Mormon class in Greensboro, Sister Morgan (her husband is President James' councilor) called to tell us Brother Morgan fell and she needed us to come and help her. We are just a couple minutes from their house. He had been working in his yard and could not stand up (she thought he had fallen but he actually hadn't). The neighbor helped her get him into a chair but she couldn't get him into the house. He is a very determined man. He is used to doing everything that needs doing and has really gone down hill fast during this past year. He is seventy-nine this year and is severely disabled from a boiler explosion at work thirty years ago. We wanted to help him get up and get into the house and he wouldn't let us help him. He just kept asking us to bend the branches of a tree down where he could get a hold on them so he could lift himself up. He finally had to let us help him and it was very hard on him. We got him into the house and were visiting and his wife said he was a very stubborn man. Then she said, "I guess I am pretty stubborn too." I told them I guess it takes one to know one. They said that was right. He stayed in and rested the rest of the day and seemed to be okay. They think it was just some heat exhaustion.
After Book of Mormon class we took Sister Bordon and Sister Jones by the hospital on the way home so they could visit for a minute with Brother White. I went in first to make sure he could have visitors. He was sitting on his bed when I walked in and he stood up and walked over by the TV and said, "Hey Brother Owens, how's this?" He was standing up straight and had his head up and was taller than I had ever seen him since we have been here. He was at least a foot taller than I am. The physical therapy has really made a difference for him. He told us that he has decided he is not having the second surgery. He didn't mention that to the surgeon and we never had him explain the implications of forgoing the surgery. We will have to check on that.
Friday was Relief Society meeting day. That always pretty well takes the whole day with taxi service to Greensboro and back and the meeting and the luncheon and then the clean up. When we got back to the church to clean we noticed that Sister Smith had vacuumed the chapel and set up the chairs. Since it was our turn to clean this week, we were really appreciative of that. We finished the rest of the building and went home. Sunday we read the program and saw that it was the Smiths turn to clean the building. Our turn is next week after the Easter activity on Saturday. We love being old.
Early Saturday morning we got a call from Beth to tell us Ollie called her at four in the morning and was really upset because her husband had been yelling at her. She said Ollie really wanted Sister Owens to come and see her. We called her and went over to see her after we went to an appointment with the sisters. She talked to us for a while and wanted us to go in and talk to her husband and she was sure if we told him to be nicer to her that he would be. She wanted me to give her a blessing, which I did, and then we went in to talk to her husband. We told him she really feels bad when he yells at her. He said he cant help it, when she makes him mad he just has to yell at her. Sister Owens asked him to try to be nicer to her and he said, "I'll try hard to be nice to her, for you, Sister Owens." We told him we wanted to come and read with both of them some more (it has been falling through the last couple weeks). He said he would like that and that it might help a little bit.
We went to a wedding in Epps Saturday afternoon. It was the oldest son of one of the sisters in the Branch (attachment#1). He is 32 and we have never seen him since we arrived a year ago. He is not active in the church. The wedding program was a fan for the ladies to use during the hot humid day at the wedding (attachment #2). It wasn't actually very hot, but we did have two or three good rain storms before it was over. We're glad they had a nice big canopy up for the occasion. President James performed the ceremony. He told us today that they aren't married yet because they haven't signed the paperwork that needs to be turned in to the courthouse. He told us he married a couple several years ago and he got all the signatures and they were supposed to turn in the papers and they never did. They wanted a divorce some time later and found out they didn't have to get a divorce because they were never married because they failed to turn in the papers to the courthouse. I love Alabama.
Sister Rogers, from Eutaw, sent us a text Saturday afternoon asking if we were going to have church Sunday. I thought that was a little strange. She hasn't been for a few weeks and we did have Conference last week but I wouldn't think she would think there would be any reason not to have church this week. I told her we were and she texted back that there was a severe weather warning from 3:00 AM to 3:00 PM on Sunday. She didn't know whether she would be coming in or not. We don't hear much about the weather forecast. And our weather radio has never gone off to warn us of severe weather (we can't figure out why). So at 12:30 AM our phone went off advising us of a tornado warning and said we were to seek shelter immediately and to stay away from windows. We had a terrific light show for the next hour or so and felt bad that we couldn't stand by the window to watch it, but we thought we probably better not. We just had a discussion with Joe Davis Saturday night and told him Satan would make all kinds of things happen to discourage him from being baptized on April 27th. We found out today that the only Tornado that touched down was on his property out by the turnoff to Greensboro and it destroyed his barn. We did have a beautiful day today until later in the evening when it clouded up and got cold. The Self Reliance coordinator from the stake came and spoke in Sacrament meeting and then did a Self Reliance devotional for the branch during second hour. We will start the Personal Finance class the week after Easter. We are holding it right after church because of the difficulty people have traveling so far to the church building. A couple is coming from Tuscaloosa every week to facilitate the class. They were a senior missionary couple here a few years ago. We have high hopes but we haven't been able to get these people to church twelve weeks in a row, I'm not sure we can get them to a class that often. We are going to be providing food, though, so the prospects might be a little better.
We had a little inconvenience today after church that ended up being a bit of a miracle. For some reason the MLS system is making us change our passwords now (it never has before). President James got a pop up screen last week telling him he had to change his and that he could log in one more time with his old password. So we knew we would be good for this week when we were doing the tithing after church. When we went to authorize the batch it said this was the last time he could use his password and he would have to change it. Then it didn't allow us to authorize it. We didn't want to close the batch, but could not determine what we had to do so he could change his password. To make matters worse, we had a young man that had a ride to church for the first time today and Brother Smith (picked him up for church) had to leave to give a blessing and we said we would take him home but I had to do finances first. So he was waiting for us. After about 20 minutes we logged out of the program and President James logged in and it brought up the password screen so he could change it. Then we logged back in and completed the batch and were leaving to go to the bank. Just as we were leaving a family drove up in a minivan and the husband walked up and said he was a missionary here in 2000. Had we not had the problem with the password the church would have been empty when they arrived. They got to renew their acquaintance and visit with President James (who was the Branch President when he was here). Unfortunately Timothy, our new friend (investigator) was sitting in the car with us waiting another fifteen minutes for the visiting to get done so we could go to the bank before we could take him home. He was a pretty good sport about it.
Keep the commandments and read your Book of Mormon every day!
We Love y'all,
Elder and Sister Owens
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