To start the day, we needed to find a Post Office to mail our packages. We discovered there aren't any that are very close. The nearest one to us is a contract post office operated by the Amish community. We have discovered a very large Amish and Mennonite community lives in Sarasota. Some of them live here year round while apparently others are snowbirds and return to their farms, etc. in the midwest come spring. As I understand the story, the US Post Office was going to close the small post office located in the area where the Amish live. I assume the Amish don't use the internet, so mail is important to them. So the community purchased the small post office building and operate it. And they don't take credit cards for purchases there.
The Amish and Mennonites are quite noticeable in the community. They wear plain clothes with not makeup on the women. The women wear a type of bonnet' and the men mostly have beards. Since they don't drive cars, their form of transportation is to pedal three-wheeled bicycles. They look like large tricycles.
We had a meeting with the Sarasota Stake High Councilors who work with the missionary effort in the stake. We drove to pick up Elder Nelson for the meeting while his companion went with another member to teach a lesson. Because of the traffic, we were late for the meeting with the High Councilors, but we were still able to have a productive discussion. I commented about the need for newly baptized members to have home and visiting teachers. They understood the concerns but noted that none of them had home teachers. And at least one was not assigned as a home teacher despite his requests. Yes, home teaching and visiting teaching statistics are low.
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