Weekly Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

We want to start with an experience we had this past week that taught us the importance of listening to and heeding the spiritual promptings we receive.  We have a good member of our branch who is so faithful but can't participate in everything because of health and mobility issues.  He has some kind of arthritis in his back and he is a really big man (500+ pounds).  He is in pain most of the time and it seems to be getting worse. Last week he fell and couldn't get up and laid on the floor for at least an hour before his wife got home from work. He started thinking he was a burden to everyone and couldn't see any purpose for him to be alive. He was really depressed and in a lot of pain. He had just renewed all of his pain medications and sleeping pills and thought he could take all of those and be done with it.  We had heard he had fallen and and were going to go by at some point and visit.. On our way to deliver another invitation, I got a strong feeling we needed to go see him now.  We stopped by and visited with him for a couple of minutes and then told him we were going to go bet him a hamburger.  He loves hamburgers and fries. We dropped them off and visited for just a couple of minutes and went on to our next stop and didn't think much about it.  They had us over for dinner a couple of days later and he told us then about the thoughts he had been feeling just before we took him his hamburger and how that simple act of kindness, which seemed no big deal to us at the time, brought him back from that dark place.  The lesson we can all learn from this is to pay attention to the promptings of the spirit and act on them now.

We had our branch Christmas dinner on Friday.  I will attach a couple of pictures to show the turnout.  It's certainly nothing like any of us are used to.  We had less than 20 people.  Our budget only covered the turkey and dressing and everything else was pot luck.  A sister in the branch cooked the turkey and dressing and it was really good. Even Mom liked the turkey.  We sang some Christmas Hymns and cleaned up and went home.  One good thing is that the inactive brother we invited did come and really enjoyed himself and it was good to get to know him better.

We had an interesting visit this afternoon.  Our Branch President got an email from another senior couple in the Pittsburgh mission telling him that we had a lady move in to our branch who is not LDS but had some prior contact with our missionaries.  She needs some help moving some things around in her house and couldn't do it herself.  We went to visit with her and see what needs to be done.  She is a devout Catholic and told us she lives to pray. She said Jesus talks to her and helps her and guides her.  When Jesus told her to get out of her house, she packed up her car and left. She started looking for other places to live but couldn't find one that met her needs.  Jesus then told her it was OK to go back home.  She has great faith and wants to follow Jesus.  She is an interesting lady that we look forward to getting to know better.  We are arranging to get the young elders over to her house to help her get things moved around.

For my scripture I am going to share one of my favorite Isaiah scriptures that I mentally put into song every time I read it, especially at this Christmas season. Isaiah 9:6, "For unto us as child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."  May we all remember whose birth we celebrate at this time of year.  Let us all try to emulate Him a little more by serving others and helping those who need us to be there for them.

We hope you are all doing well. We love you and pray for you daily.

Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandad

Jamee And Kerry

Sister and Elder Cooper