Dear Family and Friends,
Sister Owens has been feeling better every day so we decided to start venturing out this week. Monday she stayed home and did a little laundry and I went without her to the church and did some clerk work. Then we took the sisters out to Greensboro in the afternoon and evening. We had a couple of sisters we had to follow up with for addresses on their daughters and the sisters had an appointment with a single man at a park that evening. He is a member who knew the elders when they were in Greensboro and they had a branch there. He and his sister are on the branch list and we had tried to locate them before but could not find the address. We were excited to find out where they lived and he was pretty excited to meet with the sisters. Neither of the ladies we wanted to see were home (it was a holiday). Neither of them would return my call I had made previously. We all went to the park and waited for Jonah for twenty-five minutes and called him once and texted him twice with no response. We finally left to come home and on the way he called and asked if we were still at the park. He said he was sorry but he was asleep and didn't wake up. So we had a nice test run for Sister Owens but didn't really accomplish anything as far as the work goes. It did tire her out quite a bit.
Since we tired her out pretty good we decided to keep her home Tuesday to get ready for Wednesday when we had committed to take a sister to get a medical test in Birmingham. So other than some of our P-day chores she just spent the day resting. Wednesday we had to leave at 6:20 so we could pick up Sister Borden in Greensboro by 7:00. We were a little apprehensive about going to Birmingham because they have closed all the freeways into downtown to do some major revamping of the roadways into town. We found out the test she needed was actually being done at a facility in the outskirts of town so we didn't have to deal with that at all. On the way home we got a call from a sister in Greensboro and told her we would stop and see her after we dropped off Sister Borden. We visited with her and found out she has been off work for a few weeks because of blood clots and heart problems and she was going to need help getting her rent paid for June. We didn't get home until 4:00 and Sister Owens was too tired to try to go to Coordination meeting with the sisters and Brother Smith so we called and told them we wouldn't make it. When we don't get there Brother Smith has to meet with them in the parking lot because he can't be in the building alone with the sisters. It is starting to get pretty warm now so that isn't really very fun. We discussed the rent situation with President James and he said we could use fast offering funds to help her.
Thursday morning we picked up Ollie and took her to the church to help her with her checkbook. We can't take Sister Owens in their house anymore because of the heavy cigar smoke from her husband's smoking. In the afternoon we went to Book of Mormon class in Greensboro. Brother White was there after having his dialysis in the morning. He looked really good. Sister Owens told him he forgot to bring his pillow down He said he wasn't going to use it. He sat up in his chair for the whole class. They removed a stint in one arm that has not been used for quite some time and placed another one in his other arm. If it works they will be able to remove the port they currently have in his chest for his dialysis. It should reduce the amount of pain he has been experiencing everyday lately. After class we went to find the sister's landlord to give him the check for rent and get a receipt. It was a very frustrating wild goose chase. I've never known of anyone that makes it so hard to find them to give them money. We drove to his home, his daughter's home, and an employee's home trying to get a phone number for him. We finally got his wife's phone number and didn't get any answer. We finally told the sister to tell him to call us and let us know where we could meet him to pay him and left to come home. He showed up at her house about ten minutes after we left and nobody ever called us. I just decided if he wanted the money he would call us and I wasn't going to worry about it until we heard from him.
Friday we picked up the sisters and went to Tuscaloosa to District Council. We have been planning to take Timothy to the temple to do baptisms but as yet he did not have his recommend. President James was going to be in Linden for work and said he would come over to the church if we could get him there for an interview. So we picked him up in Forkland on the way home from Tuscaloosa and brought him to the church. We thought we would probably have to stop in Greensboro to deliver the check but nobody called us so we didn't worry about it. Timothy had his interview and we took him and the sisters home and then we got a call from Greensboro. They said the landlord would be there at 4:00 for us to give him the check. Since it was 3:45 we told them that wouldn't work but we could be there by 5:00. Then we only had to wait about twenty minutes for him to show up and we finally got that done. We had one more appointment at 6:30. President James wanted us to go visit a recent convert who had sent a letter to the church asking to have her name removed from the records. Her cousin and his wife live with her and are very hateful toward the church. They have been pressuring her to remove her name. We were supposed to find out if that was really what she wanted of if she had changed her mind. We had to meet with her outside on the porch and his cousin was hanging around us the whole time listening. Finally a lady that was living there came over and interrupted our conversation and accused her of lying to us and not telling us what she had been telling everyone else. Everything went down hill from there pretty fast. Her cousin called the Landlord and asked if it was private property, which it was, and he said those dang Mormons are here again and he wanted to call the police and have us removed from the premises. He was being extremely rude and had the landlord on speaker. It kind of backfired on him. The landlord said, "Man, you don't want to call the police on a Mormon. If you want them to leave just go out in the front yard and start yelling obscenities and they will leave." Then the cousin said, "Yey, I have you on speaker, they're hearing everything you say." We asked the member to give it some thought and address a letter to President James and let him know what she had decided and excused ourselves. It was definitely not a fun way to end the day.
The next morning we left about 7:30 to pick up the sisters and Timothy to take him to the temple in Birmingham (see attachment). After stopping on the way to get gas, we arrived at the temple and drove into the parking lot and just happened to pass a group of people walking from their cars to the temple. Sister Owens said, "That is our son-in-law's parents." I thought that was crazy. It might have been someone that looked like them but it couldn't have been them. They live in Pocatello. I hurried and followed them to the side of the temple were they were going to have some pictures taken and sure enough, it was them. They were there for a niece's sealing. Had we not driven into the parking lot at that precise time neither of us would have known the other was there. It was such a perfect tender mercy from the Lord that just seemed to give us such a boost and made us so happy after the experience we had just had the night before. Then we got to top it off with the opportunity to see Timothy baptized for the dead. It has been two weeks since he was baptized.
Today we had an awesome testimony meeting. Sister Weaver bore a beautiful testimony. We and she knows she is leaving this transfer, but no one else in the branch does (except her companion). She will be going a week from this Wednesday. We are really going to miss her. She is an awesome missionary. After we got everyone home following the Self Reliance class the sisters texted us that they had an appointment with a single male tonight and wondered if we could go with them. We were pretty tired but told them we would go. They had met his neighbor and had been invited to her home but had gone three times to see her and she was never there. Marquise lived next door and opened his door every time they knocked on the neighbor's door. Finally the third time they told him they were missionaries and they gave him a Book of Mormon and set an appointment to meet with him tonight. It was a really good discussion. He seems very sincere and says he has been thinking lately that he wants to get closer to God and find a church that is right for him. He hadn't started reading the Book of Mormon but he said he was going to start reading it tonight before he goes to bed and he said the closing prayer. We are excited to meet with him again this Wednesday night.
It is so neat to know the gospel is true and see the Lord's hand in the work.
Keep the commandments and read your Book of Mormon everyday.
We love y'all,
Elder and Sister Owens
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