Second and Third week in Oakland.

We spent most of our time during the second week of our mission going over the ward directory which is 36 pages of names. We began by taking a map we had received from the young elders who had divided the ward into numbered zones, and placed a number with every name so we would know which zone they were in.  Another thing we did was to visit with a member of the ward, Joe McMurran, who has lived here for many years and has known just about everyone who has come and gone and was at least contacted in some way. Joe was a wealth of information and sat with us for hours going through the ward directory.

We were able to meet an older couple who haven't been to church in awhile, Emmitt and Mabel Jones, who we instantly connected with. Mable has had lots of health problems but Emmitt was out doing yard work when we walked up and said hello. As it turns out, Elder Felt and Emmit had crossed paths years ago in Southern California. Emmit has a deep interest in terrorists and, in fact, has a published book about terrorism. Elder Felt believes Emmit will love studying about the secret combinations and Gadianton robbers in the Book of Mormon as soon as we introduce him to them (He's not yet read the complete Book of Mormon in any detail). We hope to visit them often and encourage them to come back to church.

We continued to teach with the young Elders all of the second week. We met Gregory Blackman from Panama, and Raul Nieves from Puerto Rico, and both have also recently attended church and several ward activities but haven't committed to preparing for baptism. We also visited a sister who is originally from Mali, Africa. She has lived in Oakland for the last 9 years and owns a shop that sells beautiful articles from Mali. She also does African hair braiding at her shop.  She says it takes anywhere from 6 to 9 hours to do hair for one person. Her name is Bintou Diarra and she has been a member of the church for around 3 yrs. but needs a ride every week and hasn't always been able to get one. We have picked her up several times. She is a very sweet sister. She travels to New York City several times a year to meet her sister who flies in from Mali where she buys statues and African artifacts from her sister and sells them in the store in Oakland.

We had the young Elders over for dinner one evening and have been to our first district meeting and attended another ward activity and then on Sunday we watched the Church's World Wide Broadcast "The Work of Salvation". Made Sister Felt wish she were back at the MTC where such talks by general authorities are more commonly held.

After the broadcast our mission president asked that we meet with him, and  during our little interview he reminded us of the last line of our mission call where it says, "Your assignment may be modified according to the needs of the mission president". He asked us if we would begin assisting the Housing Coordinator and his wife because they were swamped and also almost ready to go home. Our assignment was to furnish the new missionary apartments. Our first one was for a Senior Couple who were arriving in a week. We were asked to go to the Salvation Army and pick out a sofa, chair, possible love seat and any other furniture we felt they might need. We also needed to transport the furniture in a trailer to the apartment in San Bruno which is south of San Francisco. Elder Felt thought his days of towing trailers was over when he came on the mission. Not so!! But we are so happy to be of service in any way we can. We will also continue for a time to help the couple coming in a few weeks to be the new Housing Coordinators.

The end of the third week was also mission apartment inspections. Most of the Senior Couples are given the assignment of inspecting young missionary apartments every two months. We had 6 apartments to inspect before July 10th.  One of the best things about the inspections, though, is that we get to meet more of the young Elders and Sisters as we do them.