ASSOCIATE MEMBERS?

September 28, 2011 Wednesday

Yesterday we dropped in on Lillian Head, the 85-year old inactive sister we met a couple of months ago. She’s sharp as a tack. As we visited she had a question about the Sabbath Day being Saturday. (We figure she must have an Adventist friend. She commented that all of her friends but one now live in the local retirement housing.) So this morning we went back with some info on the Adventists and an article from an OLD Improvement Era about how the translation from Greek into English allowed for some of the “mix up” about that. Anyway, we finally found her out in the “back 40.” Her lot is about a half acre and there she was out pulling weeds at her age. We told her we’d try to get some help over there for her. There’s no way she can handle all that by herself. She’s fun to visit with and has a sweet dog, a kelpie, who brings you a ball so she can retrieve it.
This afternoon we drove to Katanning to visit Jim and Di Jardine. She’s the one whose family were members but her dad took all of them out of the church when she was 14. We asked her how they felt about her being baptized again. We’d mentioned it on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Jim explained that Di has an incredible fear of water due to almost drowning when she was little and also having to be “pushed under” twice when she was baptized as a kid. He then said they’d like to continue as they are or maybe be “associate members” and come to FHE’s and sort of continue as they have been. We spent quite a bit of time talking to them about the importance of doing God’s will and not our own. We also explained that only in the celestial kingdom would they continue to be husband and wife. They agreed to let us teach them (especially her) the lessons so she has a better understanding of why these things are important and then let her decide about baptism. They seemed quite relieved when we said we were not going to force anything and that moving ahead would be entirely up to her. There is such a good spirit when we visit them. We would love to see them become a “forever family.” They are awesome people.
Tonight we gave another lesson to Michael, Jeremy Priest’s brother. We went into a lot more detail about the Book of Mormon and he committed to read and pray about it. We challenged him to read through 1 Nephi 13 by the time we meet with him again on Monday. Jeremy offered to read with him. It’s so great to have a family member there helping out! We love it.