For several years in high school I dated a girl named Twila Greene. An only child of Earl and Vivian Greene, Twila was a member of a group of about a dozen kids I ran around with. Even before we started dating, her parents were more like parents to me than my own were. Every Monday evening they drove to Ashland, about 1 ½ hours from Klamath Falls, to see a ‘faith healer’ named “Mom” Crowder and receive a ‘treatment’.

I can’t remember what malady took them to Mom Crowder in the beginning but as I recall it was something to do with Earl and sinus problems of Vivian’s. Their illnesses were corrected and they referred many people to Mom. After we started dating, I often went to Ashland with them, not for a treatment, but just to be with Twila.

In my teens, and off and on since then, I had really bad acne. We didn’t have today’s medications back then and nothing the doctor tried worked completely. The diagnosis was that I had allergic skin, oily skin and large pores and I would eventually grow out of it. The one thing that helped somewhat was treatment with ultra-violet light. I went to the doctor’s office several times a week for a treatment until my parents ended up buying a lamp to use at home. This resulted in a real disaster.

On one Friday after school, I laid down under the u-v lamp to read for a few minutes before getting ready for a semi-formal dance that evening. The next thing I knew, Twila was on the phone wondering when I was going to pick her up. I had fallen asleep and had been under the lamp for a very long time. I hurried, got dressed and by the time I picked her up, the side of my face most exposed to the u-v was starting to turn red. As the evening wore on, my face became redder and started swelling. By the end of the evening, my eye was swollen almost closed.

The next morning, my parents contacted our family doctor who saw me in his office. He gave me some pain medication and took a blood sample. He then told me to check in the first of the next week to schedule a blood transfusion because the u-v light had destroyed most of my white blood cells. When I got out of the doctor’s, I went to see the Greenes. By then the right side of my face was really swollen and was white in some areas – having gone beyond ‘burned red’.

When I told them what the doctor said, they said I shouldn’t wait until Monday but should try to get over to see Mom Crowder right away. They called Mom, explained what had happened and were told to bring me over to Ashland as soon as possible and not to wait until their regular Monday evening appointment. Earl was a barber and didn’t get off work until late afternoon but as soon as he was off, we set out to see Mom.

As soon as we arrived, Mom finished with the people she was seeing, told others waiting that she had an emergency and would be delayed, and took me right in. Mom did not heal by the ‘laying on of hands’ literally, but held her hands close to, but not in contact with, a person. She would move her hands over a persons’ body and could feel heat generating from an area that was diseased or in someway not in proper health.

She would mentally block out her surroundings and ask Heavenly Father to remove the illness from the person. She never claimed that she was healing anybody, only that she was an instrument being used by God. And she didn’t speak or in anyway carry on while she was treating you. Obviously she did not have to use her hands to diagnose me.

She worked on me for a long time, slowly moving her hands about my face and head and silently praying. As she moved her hands over my face, they felt cool to me. When she finished she told me I would be okay and that I would not need a transfusion. She appeared very tired. When I got back in the car and looked in a mirror, I saw that my right eye was open about half way, the swelling was almost gone from my face and my color was better. There was no pain.

Over the weekend, I continued to improve. When I went to the doctor Monday morning, he took another blood sample to confirm his previous findings and to get ready to schedule a transfusion. He came back, expressed astonishment and said that I did not need a transfusion. He couldn’t explain it but my blood count was normal. He said that if he hadn’t seen it himself and done the tests himself, he wouldn’t believe it.

Needless to say, this experience made me look at spiritual powers in a whole new light. I went back to Mom many times. On one visit I mentioned a problem with my mother. She had an accident when she was in high school and one leg was shorter than the other. She had to have the heel of one shoe built up and this still didn’t completely help the pain and discomfort.

Mom asked if I could bring my mother over to see her and said probably not – she was still skeptical even after witnessing what happened to my burn. Mom said that was all right, she didn’t necessarily need to see someone in person to ‘see’ them and help them. She asked me to just watch my mother and see what happened.

After a short period of time, my mother’s leg grew longer and she no longer needed to have her shoes built up. She was grateful that it happened but still would not go over to see Mom. I don’t believe she was ever fully convinced that her healing had anything to do with Mom. This, to me, is one proof that you don’t necessarily have to have faith to be healed. As long as the person doing the healing has faith, it is often enough.

In I Corinthians 12, Paul talks of gifts saying that some are given the gift of healing.  He did not say some men, or some priesthood holders, he simply said “To another faith by that same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by that same Spirit;”.

This is expanded upon in modern revelation. In the Doctrine and Covenants we read:

19 And again, to some it is given to have faith to be healed;
20 And to others it is given to have faith to heal;
(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 46:19 – 20)

From Pauls writing as well as modern revelation it is difficult for me to see where it is required that a person has to have faith to be healed. The two gifts, faith to be healed and faith to heal, are not co-dependent. Yet, many seem to hold that belief. The faith of another, such as a parent’s faith that a child can be healed, is often enough. My mother was a good example of that. She had no faith at all but Mom Crowder’s faith and gift of healing was sufficient.

These two examples of healing by Mom Crowder proved to me beyond a doubt that this was possible. Several months after my burn was healed, Vivian Greene told me that she had been told by Mom that I had the gift to heal and asked whether or not I was aware of it. She told Mom that she was sure I had no idea of this and I confirmed it to Vivian with a bit of skepticism. I could accept someone else doing this, having the faith to do it, but not me.

I was to learn that my skepticism was unfounded. More on this latter.

I started this some months ago and as you can tell from reading, this is not the first time I have re-started this. It is very difficult for me to write about myself and especially of those things that are spiritual in nature. I think I feel somehow that what I write will be made light of. None of us want to leave a heritage of ridicule.

I wish I had kept up my journal over the years. The morning I began to write this some years ago, I started reading parts of the Journal I was keeping at the time our family joined the church. It brought back many fond memories. From time to time I have tried to start a biography to leave for my posterity.

Thinking about some events in my life over the past few days I realized that there are many details that I have completely forgotten. In setting out the following there may be some gaps but the essence I hope will be there so my children and grandchildren will have a better idea and understanding of who I am and why my testimony is so important to me.

Rather than a complete biography this will be more a history of my gaining a testimony and my relationship with the Savior. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe in Heavenly Father. I can remember walking to school in about the fourth grade and talking to Him as though He were walking beside me and knowing that He heard me. I did not realize it at the time, but I had a strong gift of faith. Looking back on this it seems strange, but at the time it didn’t.

To me it was the most natural thing in the world. The reason it does seem strange in a way is that my family was not a church going family. I cannot remember my mother ever having been in a church. My older sister Delores and I attended many different Sunday schools as youngsters but none of them for an extended time. From time to time, depending upon where we lived, we attended Baptist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Nazarene to name only those that I can remember.

My earliest recollection of Sunday school is of one we attended when I was 4 or 5 years old. It was a black evangelical congregation with less than a handful of whites. There was an old gospel song I faintly remember that contained words something to the effect “park your (something and) chewing gum on the door” as you enter the church. And that is what we children did. We took out our gum, stuck it to the door frame and picked it up again on our way out. Not a very sanitary custom, but we didn’t pay as much attention to those things back then.

From the eighth grade through high school I attended primarily the First and United Presbyterian churches. One of my friends, Lynn Shaffer, who was in high school band with me was a Mormon. He invited me to services one Sunday and after the normal church service we went to a Sunday School class where he introduced me. After the instructor welcomed me he immediately called on me to offer and opening prayer. Somehow I got through that but never entered an Latter-day Saint chapel again for almost 30 years.

That was as bad of an experience as I can remember as far as religion is concerned. I was in my teens, didn’t know anyone else there and was very self-conscious as are most teens. But it did not make me think any less of Lynn or his older brother Lyle, who played trumpet in the band. From my association with them in school I knew they were regular people just like the rest of us.

Interestingly, growing up in Klamath Falls, I don’t recall a lot of prejudice against any religion or against any ethnic group. That was to come in later years, but not in the 50′s in Klamath Falls. I don’t know but maybe I just was not attuned to such things.

My early faith and belief in God did not keep me from getting into trouble. Some years, I’m sure, my parents and school officials thought ‘trouble’ was my middle name. In spite of my rebellious nature and trouble with authority, I always held on to my knowledge that there was a God.

(To be continued…)

Jacob Royal Johnstun, our oldest grandson (b 24 August 1985) has a birthday today! He received his most wanted birthday present a little early when his sweetheart, Clarice Cristin Fielding of Idaho Falls (b 8 September 1989) accepted his proposal of marriage.

He announced their engagement at the St. Helens, OR home of his parents, Jesse and Diana Johnstun yesterday. The couple are students at BYU-Idaho and will be returning there the end of this week.

They plan to be married for time and for all eternity in the Idaho Falls Temple over the Christmas holidays and have asked me to perform the ordinance.  What a wonderful blessing for me to be a part of their celebration!

Thank you Jacob & Clarice!

I call some of the stories my Grandmother told us “bedtime stories” only tongue-in-cheek. The stories were fascinating to us youngsters but I don’t think any of them were guaranteed to put us to sleep.

Like the story of the young girl who road her horse to school because there was no bus service and it was really too far to walk.

Her path to school cut through one area of forest. I can’t recall for how many miles she was in the woods, but it was quite a distance. One evening she failed to return home and her parents became worried and set out to find her. They never did find the girl but they did find her horse; frightened and with claw marks on one side and rear haunch. They suspect a cougar attacked her and her horse and dragged her off somewhere. Exactly what happened they never did discover nor did they ever locate the girl or any of her clothes.

The story that always intrigued me involved a lost boy and his dog. This took place in the 1940′s. The boy lived with his parents in a logging camp in Western Montana. Toward evening, his mother sent him out to let his siblings know it was time for dinner and that they should come in.

When they never showed up, the mother went out looking for them. She found the other children, but not the son she had sent out nor his dog. Search parties were formed and they searched all over the area for several dasy but could find no trace of the boy.

Finally, a man came into the camp one evening at dark and told them he was a smoke jumper that had been dropped into the area to aid in the search. He said that he had heard a dog whine and when he tried to approach, the dog growled at him so he did not go closer. He wasn’t positive but it looked as though the dog was guarding a boy that lie on the ground at the base of a cliff.

He said that he could not lead them there that night as he was exhausted and had to get some rest. He described the cliff and the area. It was familiar to the people in the camp who set out to find the boy.

They were able to find the boy who had apparently fallen from the cliff the first night and had been dead since. His dog would not leave him and was quite starved and thirsty.

This obviously was not a happy ending but at least the parents had closer. That is something that many parents and relatives of lost children do not enjoy.

There are two intriguing, to me, aspects to this story. First is that talking to some smoke jumpers the next day, the parents were told that none had been dispatched yet. They were unable to identify who the mysterious man was who led them to their child.

Second, several years ago I met the widow of the top ranger who established the smoke jumpers in Montana. She lived with them all during their training and while on duty in Montana. According to her, there were no smoke jumpers in Montana until the mid 1950′s.

Life is strange sometimes.

The election of Ronald Reagan to President of the United States was a very high moment in my life. I admired his honesty and the fact that he absolutely refused to give in to pressure groups, whether domestic or foreign.

As Governor of California he hired prisoners to harvest crops that farm laborers were refusing to. This should have told America what type of President he would be but many refused to believe that he would honestly try to carry out his campaign promises. Boy, did they get a shock!

In my mind Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century and I do not hold that belief simply because he was a republican. I feel the second greatest and the most unsung was Harry S. Truman.

Following is a letter I wrote to President Reagan in 1981. To view the letter full size, click on the letter and then click again on the image when it opens.

This is the reply I received several weeks later:

I sure wish we had a Reagan or Truman in the White House today!