I met Leona Koehn Nichols in July at the Valley Home Educators conference and thoroughly enjoyed visiting with the lovely lady. We traded books, and I started reading it then--but didn't finish it until this week. I, um, forgot to pull it out of my briefcase... Sorry, Leona!
Anyhow--this was quite a book. Leona was a teacher. The grammar and punctuation were faultless, but that wasn't what impressed me about this book. Leona laid her soul bare for inspection by the world. Not an easy or pleasant thing to do, but very effective.
Mrs. Nichols was born into a Holdeman Mennonite family, and until two years after she and her husband Willis's youngest child child was born, she thought she and her family would be loyal members for all of their lives. She and Willis were active in everything of their church in central California, popular with their family and friends. They loved the people, and they followed the rules faithfully, even the ones they didn't understand.
Then they were visited by some other Mennonites from Glenn, CA who had a glow about them. The Nichols had invited some other couples and these visitors for what Leona thought would be a pleasant evening of eating, singing, and games. Instead, this couple began talking about Jesus in a way the Nichols and the others hadn't heard before. Before they left, they prayed like Leona and Willis had never experienced before. When everyone left, the two of them stood in the middle of the floor with their arms around each other, and in reverence they experienced being bathed in the love of God. They stayed this way for several minutes, almost holding their breath in the holiness that pervaded the room.
Leona and Willis began to want to know more about Jesus too. They studied the Bible, they prayed, and they began to talk about what happened with anyone who would listen.
That was the beginning of their troubles. You'll need to buy the book to discover what happened, though. Available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
No comments:
Post a Comment