Thanksgiving

We had Eric and Krystal at Grandma James' house for Thanksgiving. They are doing well and waiting to find out where/if Eric is accepted to grad school. Katy came down from the DFW area. We missed Haley but know she is doing what the Lord wants her to do. We also had Kevin and Tammy. Susan went up to Colorado. Kevin was going to go but was still recovering from a bad cold.

Thanksgiving 2017 in San Antonio

Gordon and Alison's family was in an accident when a lady pulled out in front of them. They are bruised but are OK. Johnny and Tommy benefitted from their child seats. It was the other lady's fault but she was significantly injured.

Accident in Houston

We went hiking with Eric and Krystal at Camp Bullis park.

Hilltop view with Eric and Krystal

Mission Memories:

It was around the time of my first Thanksgiving on my mission (1977) that we met two Jehovah's Witness sisters in St Gallen. These were two sisters living together. We tracted them out and they wanted to hear our message. When you walk into a Jehovah's Witness house, you pick up right away what their religion is because of the cheaply-bound colored books lying around. Surprisingly, these ladies did not start drilling us right away. They listened to our message about the Book of Mormon and agreed to buy one and read it. The next time we met with them we discussed prophets. We asked them if they had read in the BoM and they said they had a little. We asked them if they had prayed they said they had not prayed about the BoM because they didn't think it was true. We challenged them to read and pray and made another appointment.

On our next appointment, we discussed the Plan of Salvation...this is when the JWness started to become obvious. We then showed the filmstrip, "Man's Search for Happiness". We could feel the spirit during the filmstrip, especially at the end when the Grandpa dies and meets his wife in the spirit world. They then told us that they had this weird and intense feeling during the filmstrip. We told them it was the Holy Ghost testifying of the truth being presented. They said that they, as JW's, do not believe in being swayed by feelings because feelings can deceive. The only source of truth for them was intense study of the Bible. They told us that what they felt during the filmstrip scared them and that we should not come back. That is when we realized how difficult it is to make progress with JW's. As long as they deny the spirit, there is little progress to be made. We dropped some cookies by their place at Christmas time and they sent us a nice thank you note, even though they don't believe in celebrating Christmas.

Wedding-Thanksgiving

My niece, Rebecca, and her fiancé, Scott, were married Nov 18, 2017. Scott's family attend the St Luke's Episcopal Church and that is where the wedding occurred. This was the fanciest wedding we've ever had in our family. Scott's Grandmother owned ranch land on which oil was discovered...so that family is pretty well situated, financially.  The reception was at a very fancy country club and included fireworks. There was a really good dance band with 3 singers, a drummer, a lead guitar, a bass guitar, a trumpet, and a saxophone. Here are some of the photos.

I also added some photos of Johnny.

L-R: Katie, Bill, Rebecca, Scott, Tammy, Valerie

Happy couple watching fireworks

Bryan, Felicia, Valerie, Krystal, Eric, Alison, Gordon

Eric and Krystal

Alison and Gordon

Family came from all around. Here are pictures of the visitors.

John with BB8 coat

John

The day after the wedding Bill had a heart attack so that put a damper on the wedding experience. He had some stents put in and they released him from the hospital. KB and his family did not stay for Thanksgiving because their dog was ill.

Dogs, Swine, and Forbidden Baths

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you (Matt. 7:6) 

It was good to read of the progress Haley and her companion are making with investigators. It was also cool that she got to go to the Temple there. I found the pictures we took when we visited Las Vegas, including the forbidden picture with Haley and Eric and the parrots.

The guy wanted $20 to take a picture with the birds. I snuck this picture when he wasn't looking

Reese's Store in Las Vegas

Las Vegas Temple

We had a family meeting this week to discuss getting more help for Grandma Reese. She is having trouble taking her medications so we agreed to let River Meadows have $300 more per month to take care of that. It will come out of the money my Mom has saved. 

They are now pushing Janet outside in a wheelchair to get her more stimulus. They couldn't do that until the MRSA was gone. She is still not aware.

Mission Memories:

Continuing the St. Gallen apartment saga: about one week after the wash incident was solved in Oct 1977, we started getting awoken at 1AM at night by Herr Blum (who lived right above us) pounding on the door in a drunken rage, screaming (in Swiss German), "Mormon missionaries in my house! Dogs! Pigs! Pig-dogs! Go back to Salt Lake City!" This went on for several nights in a row and then on a Tuesday night he kicked the door so hard the lock sprung back and the door came flying open. There we were sitting up in bed in the one-room apartment looking at him standing in the door. He mumbled, "Salt Lake City" and Elder Nguyen yelled, "Herr Blum, got to your room!" I was sitting with my arm raised to the square in case I needed to expel him with the priesthood. He turned around and walked up the stairs. I got up and closed the door. 

The next day we called the President Worlton and told him what happened. He told us to go see the landlord. We tried to visit the office of the landlord two days but he was either out or in meetings each time. We told Pres Worlton we had not been able to get with the landlord and Herr Blum was still coming home late at night drunk and screaming at our door. He told us to go across town and sleep with the other Elders (only on the floor). President Worlton or the zone leaders were able to get hold of the landlord by phone and the landlord sent a letter to Blum and copied us telling him to stop harassing us or he would be evicted.

Letter warning Herr Blum for kicking our door open and yelling every night

Well, that worked for about two weeks and then we were contacted by the zone leaders and got a letter from the landlord saying that we had been disturbing the other people in the house by bathing and doing laundry at night and that we had until Jan 31 before we had to leave the apartment. Never mind that an American would find bathing and doing laundry at night not the least disturbing (the bath and laundry room were both two floors below any body else in the house). The accusations were completely false, but by then we realized that we could not stay in that apartment. We wrote a letter to Pres Worlton saying the charges were false but we would begin looking for an apartment the next day. 

Our apology letter to Pres Worlton for being falsely accused of bathing at night

Being a servant of the Lord is not easy and sometimes you just have to accept that you are not wanted at a particular location and move on.

Great and Spacious

Yesterday (Saturday) was the start of our Ward's turn to clean the building. Felicia had Tennis so I rode my motorbike down. I was  mopping the kitchen and Heidi Crosby came in to clean the countertops. There were Halloween candy crumbs and wrappers all over. I mentioned that we hadn't had as many teenagers trick-or-treating this year. She asked if I thought that was because their house didn't do the Tunnel-of-Doom like Larry Andrews did. I told her that I thought that was exactly the reason. She said the first Halloween after they moved in, their babysitter had overheard people giving out the Crosby's address (formerly the Andrew's address) in the halls of the High School and telling people to go there. Heidi decided she needed to let people know things had changed so she got a sheet and wrote "He Moved" on the sheet and hung it on the garage door. Some people thought that the message was funny and others swore and said, "How rude!" it is hard to predict people's reactions.

Investigators are especially hard to predict. They may want to follow and know the truth but the "Great and Spacious Building" is , well, great and spacious. It seems there is almost always some external unexpected challenge a person studying the church runs into that they must overcome in order to get baptized.

Mission Memories

Elder Nguyen and I were both only 3 months in the field and weren't very good with the language when first made companions. We tracted for 2 weeks straight all day and didn't get a single person to let us in...and then we met Frau Brotzer. She was  a relatively young woman. We told her of the restoration and sold her a Book of Mormon then made an appointment to come back and teach her and her husband. When we came back, we taught the rest of the C discussion about prophets and apostles and then asked them if they had any questions. She said, "Yes. What is this tingly feeling I get when I read the Book of Mormon?" Elder Nguyen and I looked at each other and told her it was the Holy Ghost testifying of the truthfulness of the book. We had a prayer and made an appointment to return. 

When we came back, she had read half of the Book of Mormon and Herr Brotzer hadn't read anything. He was willing to listen to us though. It was clear she was making big spiritual progress and he was being dragged along...but he was coming along. We had a young member couple come teach with us who had been baptized about a year. They made a big impact on the husband but we still couldn't get him to read. To be honest, he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. We challenged them to set a baptism date. They agreed.

One of the cigarettes taken from Frau Brotzer

Many things happened after that. They had been trying to move to a new apartment and it came available on the date we set for baptism, so instead of having a baptism we spent the day helping them move. Then they had Catholic family members from Italy come to stay with them. We tried to teach them while their visitors were there and it did not go well. The visitors were dead set against us. In the end, Herr Brotzer backed out of being baptized but said his wife could do it if she wanted. We took away her cigarettes (see picture) and we had her interviewed (she had to interview with our mission President because she had had an abortion) and the day before her set baptism time, her husband refused to give permission. The last we visited her before I was transferred, she bore testimony of the Book of Mormon. I don't know what has happened to her since then but I have never seen any investigator gain a testimony faster than Frau Brotzer in St Gallen, Switzerland.

Tucson

I rode over Gate's Pass after cleaning the building last Friday (while your mom was at tennis). That area including the Saguaro National Park has a unique beauty.