Sorry for the confusion--the "them" I'm waiting to hear from is the family member-so, I haven't reached out to southwest, yet. My question -can I still make a change to the flight by calling southwest since I can't do it online anymore?
Yes it's fine to call it in. They didn't remove the two free changes. They only removed the ability to make changes for no cost online. The same ability to change online also happened to be the status notification that you have free changes. Now, you need to review your old emails to verify whether or not you have free changes.