Saturday, August 3, 2013

What a wonderful day! This morning Elder Gowans went up to Sister Arnett's house, along with several other men to help her move from her Townhouse that she recently sold, into an apartment where she will live until a new job comes along for her. She attends the Fort Gordon Military Branch since she works nearly every Sunday of the month. She is able to get off for church services most Sundays, so her church records stay in our branch; she also serves in the Relief Society Presidency. We began our labor around 8 am and concluded right around noon.

After returning home, we did some work around the house and then we headed up to Post to visit our AIT students. Over the last 3 weeks or so we have received around 11 new LDS student/soldiers. We had been unable to locate a couple and then some of them we simply haven't found at the barracks. Finally, this afternoon, we were able to visit with all but two of the soldiers we set out to see and to find. In the middle of this is a very funny little story. One of the soldier we set out to find has the last name of Priddy; another one of the soldiers, in the same company, has the name of Stanke; both of these soldiers were in formation when we arrived at their company, both are brand new arrivals as of yesterday. Well, we are standing in the foyer of the company building waiting for the formation to break up and the soldiers to come in. After several minutes they start coming in. Brother Priddy comes in and we both see each other at the same time. He lets out a yipee and expresses how happy he is to see us. Just after that Sister Stanke comes in she looks at us and claims she is not a member of the church. We tell her thanks  for taking a minute to talk to us and then she goes on her way. Also, about this time another soldier who we had met two weeks ago comes over to talk to us, Brother Otwell. So the four of us talk a little and we learn that both of these young men are very desirous to be advanced in the priesthood and want to know what they can do to progress. Well, after talking to them both for a while, brother Otwell leaves and now we are just talking to Brother Priddy. He tells us how he is often kidded with over his name, Priddy, in fact just today he says that he and Sister Stanke were standing next to each other in formation and the Platoon Sgt. couldn't help but giggle when she called out their names one right after another, Priddy Stanke! Good thing he has a sense of humor.

We had made phone contact with one young man, Brother Oysten. We set up an appointment with him at 7 pm. After we had seen everyone we wanted to see, we decided to go to a little fast food shop called the Huddle House. After we had ordered our food in walks a young soldier and what appeared to be his wife and a mother figure. As he turned toward us, we saw on his name tag the name, Oysten. We had to get up and go over and introduce ourselves; what a funny coincidence to see the next young man we were going to meet there in the same establishment as us.

After dinner, we set out to go meet Brother Cooper King. We found him in his room on Post and had an interesting visit with him. It is very obvious that something has happened in his life where he has lost his testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we concluded our visit with him, we asked if we could leave him with a prayer, he responded, "No". We tried to leave on a positive note and hope that as we visit with him in the future, we will be able to find out what has happened in the past that has brought him to this point in his life.

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