Called to Serve: Not a good week...

Janie: I was thinking about my mother and my brother, Mike, this past week. Mom's birthday was Wednesday (she died in Feb. 1988), my brother's birthday was Saturday (he died Christmas Day, 1995). Well, the week got much sadder when my sister, Judy, called Friday afternoon to let us know that she had come home from work and found her husband, Mike, had passed away while she was gone. What a shock! Still can't believe it. She is strong and is doing well, their three sons came right away and have been such a support. She is still hoping to come from Arkansas here to West Virginia to see us the end of September. We look forward to that.

Other frustrations this week: the second 2-hour meeting with a nice couple who are trying their hardest to "save" us - the husband, Scotty, has gotten a lot of anti-Mormon info off the internet and as he throws each item at us, we patiently explain the whole context or the real truth or what we really believe. We thought they would eventually listen to our message, but I guess not. We asked them to pray about what we are saying and to check out lds.org, mormon.org, or even the fairmormon site that goes point by point with the anti site he has been visiting. But it seems he is not interested. Sad, because they are really nice "god-fearing" people and seem sincere. Don't know if we will go back there again.

Also were dropped by one referral, and had good friends turn back to their Pentecostal roots after seeming so strong in our faith. Discouraging.

And Wayne worked all week on a great talk for sacrament meeting about the armor of God, only to have two speakers ahead of him and the Stake President visiting our ward today. Wayne was told at the last minute to leave time for him to speak, so Wayne only took about 5 minutes instead of the 25 or so that he had prepared. But he has been on the other side of that one and totally understood...

We did get to work at the Food Pantry on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That is always fun. We helped out at the nursing home a couple evenings. We had good zone training in Woodstock. We made some nice visits, even took the Relief Society president out with us one afternoon to meet some ladies she didn't know. I did indexing one night and helped Janet with genealogy after church today. We were probably the only missionaries in the Maryland Baltimore Mission that didn't travel to Baltimore on Friday night for Mormon Night at the Baltimore Orioles baseball game. Too far and we really don't like baseball. A ward member took our Elders and because of the long game, the difficulty of getting out of the parking area, the bad traffic and just the distance away from here, they didn't get home until after 2 am. We just watched the BYU/UConn game in our comfortable living room. Didn't feel guilty at all. We also were adopted in to yet another family and invited to their annual family Pig Roast last evening in a large barn on the family farm outside of Moorefield. They had wonderful pulled pork, lots of other good food, and live music from family bands all evening. It was great.

Please pray for my dear sister in her time of loss. And tell your family members that you love them. We sure love our wonderful family, each one of them. What a huge treat to get first day of school pictures of all our grandchildren that are in school! So cute. Really helped our hearts. Thank you, thank you. Happy 16th birthday to Dakota on Thursday.