Dear Family and Friends,
What a week of firsts and we have been out well over a year already. Tuesday we drove the sisters to Bessemer to the stake center and the whole zone lined up in the hallway at the church to meet and shake hands with the new Mission President. He was Stake President in Grantsville, Utah. He is going to be a great mission president. He kind of looked through each of us as he shook our hand. Then we all went to the chapel and he spoke to us for about an hour. He shared some neat things about when they received their call. He talked about how all of us were foreordained in the premortal life to serve here together at this time in this place. He said he is sure President Sainsbury was there as well. It was a neat experience.
Wednesday we spent time working in our branch callings. I did some clerk work and got some reports done and Sister Owens worked on revising the ministering districts in the Relief Society. Then we had our coordination meeting with the sisters and Brother Smith.
Thursday the entire zone volunteered to help at the American Village in Montevallo (attachment #1 some of the group). They have several buildings representing the colonial era and do various reenactments of events throughout the history of the country (attachment #2). They had us cover three different two hour shifts. Each of us worked one shift and got to tour the facility during the other four hours. We were assigned the last shift (5:00 to 7:00). We got some lunch and then went to see Ben Franklin (attachment #3). Sorry, I can't really tell you much about what he had to say. You see, they had a packed house and it was very hot. The A/C couldn't really keep up with the heat and the open doors because of the crowds. As Brother Muck (formerly President Muck, councilor to President Sainsbury) put it, I am now internationally famous for having stole the show at the Ben Franklin Reenactment when I passed out and had to be carried out of the assembly room. Two of the men that helped carry me out were both named Scott. Sister Owens thought that was interesting. I did thoroughly enjoy the attention I was getting as I was waking up in the middle of the floor outside the door with about fifty people looking on. They were pouring water all over me and put a nice cold water bottle behind my neck which felt really, really good. After a few minutes they helped me stand up and walk outside and over to the Oval Office where I sat on a chair in the lobby (much cooler there) and the paramedics came to pay a visit. They took my vitals and told me to stay there until they came back in about an hour to see me again. While I was there President Truman arrived for his scheduled press conference and visited with me for a few minutes before he went in to the conference. I was still there when he finished. As he came out I told him he sounded really good in there. He thanked me and wished me well before he left. Then a driver showed up with a shuttle to chauffeur me over to our assigned building (all you have to do is pass out and you get all kinds of special privileges). Our assignment was at the colonial chapel for the Colonial evening prayer service (an actual religious service) and then Patrick Henry giving his "Give me Liberty or give me death" speech. We didn't get to hear his speech because we had to stand out in the lobby and keep people from coming in after it started. We had to hold the door shut because people were ignoring the "Do not enter, program has started" sign hanging on the outside door knob (attachment #4). My phone rang while we were in the lobby and it was Sister Hurst telling me they had the whole army there (all the senior couples and some of the elders). She said they were there if I wanted a blessing. I told her I was fine and we were holding the door shut because the program had started. She said we were doing a very good job. They had been outside trying to come in to give me the blessing. For the most part, it was all a really special experience. We have to try to get back there sometime to actually see some of the events. As we drove home we learned from the sisters that they had gone to the Ballroom during their "off time." Several of the elders were there as well. All of a sudden a nice old man came up to Sister McCreath and asked her to dance. She told him she couldn't. He kept pressing her and she told him she was a volunteer and her shift was starting and she had to go. He asked her when her shift started and she told him 4:30 so she could leave. He told her she still had two minutes so there was still plenty of time and was dragging her onto the dance floor. It got to the point where she was making a scene trying to resist him, so she just went with him and danced. Her companion got all of it on video. She was really embarrassed. We had just found out our interviews were scheduled with our new president for this Saturday. I told her she was going to have to tell him about it. Then I said, "Actually, you probably won't have to, because the rest of the zone will probably have already told him." She was really embarrassed about the whole situation. She and her companion are Sister Training Leaders responsible for helping to train the sisters and split with all the sisters in the zone to give them training.
We had a great district council Friday. Sister Owens just got put on her third round of anti-biotics for her bronchitis (she is getting pretty tired of it). She asked for a blessing after our council meeting. We had all the elders in the district stand in for the blessing.
We spent quite a bit of this week on the road. Bessemer Tuesday to meet the Allreds, Thursday to Montevallo for the American Village experience, Friday to Tuscaloosa for District Council, and Saturday back to Bessemer for Interviews with the President. We had a really nice visit with President Allred. He told us to call the office Monday and check his schedule and get a Sunday for him to come to our Branch to speak. We are excited for that. Saturday was Sister McCraney's birthday so we stopped on the way home from interviews to treat her to lunch. We had lettuce wraps for an appetizer and I was distracted by something as the waitress was taking the plates off the table. She gasped and said how sorry she was and I looked and saw the sauce from the wraps was splashed across the table and there was a puddle of it in front of me. Then she said she would get me some soda water. Then I looked down and noticed that the sauce was also splashed all down my white shirt and tie. Unfortunately the soda water didn't really do much. I couldn't help but wonder what everyone thought as I walked by them on our way out of the restaurant.
It was neat at church this morning. President James and I walked out of his office about ten minutes before Sacrament meeting was supposed to start and the hallway was full of people (I say full, there were probably ten people, but that's a lot here). They were all visiting. When we got in the chapel everyone was sitting quietly, waiting for the meeting to start. They had remembered our discussion from second hour last week about Elder Holland's Conference message. We got a break after our self reliance class today. A lady offered to take Beth home to Linden, and Ollie wasn't feeling well and didn't come. If Andrea's cousin hadn't let us down this week (he has come to pick her up the last two weeks), we would have had no one to take home today. But Andrea just lives here in town, so it was pretty nice. After the rest of this week, we actually came home after class and took a nap ("senior couples get to do anything they want").
Keep the commandments and read your book of Mormon everyday.
We love y'all,
Elder and Sister Owens
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