Jackson Branch Testimonies

Hi Everyone,

It’s getting a little cooler. The last few days it has felt like Portland,in the mid 80”s and rather low humidity. The “natives” say it is a teaser and won’t last but we will take what we can get.

We hadn’t planned to be home tonight. We were to have picked up Elder Gerald Lund at the airport and then drive down to Hattiesburg to our zone conference, but his plane was delayed in Dallas because of a thunderstorm (they actually had to close the airport). He will not be arriving in Jackson until early in the morning. We have a busy four days planned with him and his wife visiting all the zones for training. What a great experience! That will be in the next email.

We attended the last testimony meeting on Sept. 3rd in the little Jackson Branch. We love going there because they have a great spirit and we meet such interesting people.

The first testimony was by Katherine. She is a single mother with four children from about 6-12. She has not been coming lately. Her aunt that lives with her, has been trying to discourage her about being a member of “that white church”. (a lot of the black members experience this). She said she had had a hard week but she started reading her scriptures again and the Spirit told her that she needed to go back to church. The Saturday before Fast Meeting, she composed a song about her feelings of wanting to live in heaven with Heavenly Father and so she sang the song for her testimony. It was a wonderful beginning to the meeting.

The next was Sister White. She has been a member since she was young. She is in college working on her third degree. Her husband was next. They had just gotten back from Arizona where they spent a week visiting the senior couple that helped his family become members. He said that his whole family was active and they always had family home evening and prayer. Then when his two brothers got older, the family home evenings got less and less and then the prayers got less and less. He is now the only active member in his family of 6 children… He credits this couple from Arizona with helping him stay active and go on a mission. He is so grateful for his temple marriage and for their little girl.

Sister Walker (she was ba ptized this last Sat.) bore her testimony next. She is Katherine’s mother and has been taking the missionary discussions for the last several months. She talked about how Satan pulls at you when he knows that you are getting close to the church and about how hard it is to stay strong but how much she wants to be baptized.

A young man about 18 (I don’t know his name) says he tries to get his friends to come to church with him but they always have hangovers on Sunday mornings…what a waste he says.

Your Dad received a phone call from the church operator a couple of weeks ago. There was a man on the other end from the Gulf Coast who had tried to find the church on Sunday but there was no one there. He wanted to know about church. He said he had been given a Book of Mormon on the street down there about 3 years ago and he started to read it. Then Katrina hit and now after reading the Book of Mormon he knows the teachings in it are true and he wants to be baptized. (The building he went to is being rebuilt since the hurricane and it will be dedicated in a month or so.) Dad called the missionaries in that area and he committed to baptism the 23rd of this month. The harvest is truly the Lord’s. The missionary that gave him the Book of Mormon will never know the effect of his obedience.

The Lord is truly looking out for the missionaries. We have had at least two incidents in the last few days.

First, we had an elder break out with a terrible rash on his face and then progressed to his arms etc. I had him take Benadryl and get some gel for it. (He is about 6 hours away from here so there is no way I could see him). He went out to meet with an investigator who was being baptized on Saturday. This investigator had to have an interview with the mission president, who then called and asked a counselor in the stake presidency who lives closest to them (a one hour drive) to do it. This counselor just happened to be a physician, and when he met with the missionaries, he was able to give this elder a prescription for poison oak. The next day, the elder was much better and didn’t have to go another night before getting some help. The question is “Were did he get the poison oak?”---no one knows.

Second, we had an elder have a seizure while they were checking his blood in a medical center. The area doctor thought he should see a neurologist. He is in a small town in rural Mississippi. We thought we might have to transfer him up to Jackson for some tests. When we told him we needed to find him a neurologist and that we might have to come to Jackson – he said,” I know a neurologist, we tracted him out last week and we are teaching him and his family tonight. I checked, and he is approved by the church and so we will be able to have him treated where he is.

We were in Monroe, Lousiana this last weekend for stake conference. The visiting authority was Elder May of the Seventy. We had a great two days – I even got through my 2 talks. They do not have a full-sized stake center so they have a big Conference Center built across the parking lot that is the size of a huge cultural hall. It has the high council room and stake president’s office, a seminary room and several other areas.

Thanks for the phone visits, Andrea, Hayley, Andrew, Becca and Olivia. We missed you, Parker.