Weekly Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

It's been another busy week.  For our P-Day we decided to drive to an area we hadn't visited before.  It is so pretty right now.  All the leaves are out and there are wildflowers everywhere. We will post some pictures. We didn't have our Family Home Evening this week because our good friend Brian Flanagan was not feeling well. Since we have FHE at their house, we postponed for a week.  We miss it when we don't have FHE each Monday. That is our chance to sit down with our branch friends in a little more casual atmosphere to study the Come Follow Me lessons and visit with each other. We should have it tomorrow and I am the teacher this week.

We had our annual branch hot dog roast on Friday so we spent most of Tuesday delivering invitations to those we don't see too often. None of them is likely to come, but it's nice to see them and let them know we are still thinking of them.  We also had some birthday cards and candy bars to deliver.

I had an interesting experience late Wednesday night.  Just before midnight I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize so I didn't answer. After a couple of minutes I got a text that said, "Elder Cooper, I am standing at your door and I really need to talk to you."  It was our friend Daniel that the Sisters are teaching and we are helping teach.  He has some emotional issues he is dealing with and he doesn't have a positive home environment.  He's a good kid but has some serious issues.  We talked for nearly two hours.  I made sure he wasn't suicidal and gave him some advise and we worked out a little bit of a plan.  I think it helped him.  The Sisters and had an appointment with him on Thursday and we joined in.  He definitely needs more interaction with people more his own age. Our branch is really good at fellowshipping but we are all old.  We also had another teaching opportunity with the Sisters on Thursday. They met, kind of by accident, a young man whose grandmother and sister live next door to the Flanagans.  His name is Alex.  They gave him a doorstep message and invited him to the Flanagans to have a lesson.  We joined the Sisters and the Flanagans for a really good lesson.  By the end of the lesson he had committed to a baptismal date. He's a nice guy looking for the truth and hasn't found it yet.  As we taught him, he said it all made sense to him.

Friday we had our branch hot dog roast.  It was a great evening with good people and good food.  Alex and Daniel both came and we had a total of five non-members.  Sister Schurger is a guitar player and has a nice voice and some of us sat around the campfire and listened to her play and sing and we joined in with her.  It was a really nice evening and a nice kick-off for the Memorial Day weekend.  

Today we had the tourists show up to church.  Most of then come from the Washington D.C. area.  We normally have about 25 members at church on normal Sundays.  Today we had 92!  We filled the chapel and three classrooms.  We broadcast the meeting to the classrooms.  Mom had twelve girls in Young Women's today, none from our branch.  One of the girls that is a class president in her ward conducted.  We have yet to have that in our b...

Some how I hit the send button before I was through.  There is just a little more.  Mom really enjoyed Young Women's class today.

Mom's scripture is from John 13:34. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; As I have loved you, that ye also love one another."  

We love you and pray for you daily.

Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandad

Jamee and Kerry

Sister and Elder Cooper

The pictures are Sisters Stay and Schurger, Us at our Zone Conference, Small Church out in the country, Landscape, Rhododendron, Our back yard, campfire with Sisters Stay and Schurger and Alex,Keven Matthews (aka Santa), Brian Flanagan