Wednesday, July 29, 2024

Wednesday, July 29, 2024

• Jesus heals a blind man twice
• Working with members all day

This morning in reading a conference talk from the April general conference by Brian K. Taylor he spoke on adversities we have in life. He referred to a blind man in Mark 8 who was from Bethsaida that came to the Savior wanting to receive his sight. The Savior put spit on his eyes and ask the man what he could see. He said he could see men walking but they looked like trees, meaning he could see but it was not clear. The Savior then put his hands again on his eyes and the man could see clearly. I know I have read that before because I have read the New Testament many times, but I have never picked up on him blessing the man twice to heal him. This is the first time I have ever heard anyone talk about it also.

In our companion study this morning we were focused on a family in our Branch here that has asked for help now and again. We discus how we could really help them long term. We decided that it would be through a budget and teaching the principle of tithing and fast offerings. What she was asking for at this time was a big bottle of propane because they were out and she couldn't cook.

On our way to visit this family we stopped by Yohan's to help him get a couple of bags of cement from the local lumber yard. We did that first and then went to the family we were meeting with. We were thinking the entire family would be home, but only the wife and children. So we pretty much followed what we planned to do and went over their entire budget and how we could help them out and how they could help themselves out. It was a real revelation to them about how their money was spent. We went over a get out of debt plan and she was really receptive of it, weather they follow it I'm not sure, but she seemed to be excited about the prospects and hope they could get out of debt. I really felt good about the information we gave her. I think she was also a little over whelmed because these people do operate like this. They just pay where they think they can afford and if they can't afford they pay enough to keep whatever they must have on. For example, if they are going to get their power turned off, they pay what ever is required to keep it on. 

Once we completed this we went to take their girls to get their passports, but we had all kinds of problems with that. First, when you enter a business building you must dress with business atire, The girls mother had wore a nice pair of jeans, but they had hole's in them, on purpose, that is the style right now. They would not let her in the building. So Tina took the girl up and when they got up there because Tina was not a parent, they would not do anything, so we will have to come back next week.

We took them back home and then went home ourselves. The above took all day. It was 5 pm when we got home and I was starved. After dinner we rested for a bit and then went to the church for our Literacy classes. 

I ended up meeting with a sister, Sister Kennedy about a situation we was in with her rent and getting behind during covid. She got behind during that time because everything was shut down and she could not afford to pay her rent. We now her landlord is wanting her back money. We discuss this for some time and decided we needed to do the same with her as the family above so I set up an appointment for Sunday.