Real Mothers

Dad
July 2, 2004

November 18, 1975DFO No.389

—From a Real Family Discussion!

1. WHERE ARE THE OLD-FASHIONED MOTHERS who consider it their calling from God and their life ministry just to love a husband, have a family and cook and keep house and rear children?—Where are they? We just don't seem to have very many today.

2. SO MANY GIRLS WANT TO BE SOMETHING ELSE, anything else‚ anything but a mother! They're willing to toss their kids to the winds and take off and do anything else except take care of them, or even take care of their husbands, much less keep house or cook or clean or do all the hard work it requires to be a housekeeper. We just don't seem to have many women anymore who want to do anything like that.

3. THIS WOMEN'S LIB IDEA!—THEY WANT TO BE LIBERATED FROM BEING WOMEN! (Maria: I guess modern women have been brainwashed out of motherhood, so now we have to "brainwash" them back into it by constant preparation for it.) Thank God for the women in Catholic countries who are taught and trained and expect that's to be their life's work, just to be a good wife and mother and raise a family!

4. BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY ISN'T THE LIFE'S IDEAL OR AMBITION OF MOST AMERICAN WOMEN, and it doesn't seem to be the aim of many of our own girls, I'm sorry to say. I remember when I was a boy we had all kinds of women governesses and helpers—nurses, housekeepers, cooks, etc. We had oodles of people working for us during the Great Depression when they were tickled pink just to have a job and something to eat! They worked hard and were happy to do the housework and the cooking and take care of us children and all.

5. BUT A LOT OF WOMEN NOWADAYS, EVEN OUR OWN GIRLS, SEEM WILLING TO BEAR CHILDREN, BUT A LOT OF THEM DON'T SEEM TO BE TOO EAGER TO TAKE CARE OF THEM AND BE MOTHERS, to really rear them and take care of the home and the housekeeping and the cooking, as well as being a wife to their husband. (Maria: We need them so much, too‚ because of all the children we're having!)

6. THERE'S A HECK OF A LOT MORE TO BEING A MOTHER THAN JUST HAVING A BABY! Anybody can have babies—dogs, cats‚ rabbits, mice‚ guinea pigs—but it takes a real parent to raise them & take care of them and do all the work that's involved, keep house and cook and wash and clean and scrub and care for the little ones—it's a fulltime job!

7. EVEN IN A SMALL COLONY I DON'T SEE HOW ANY REAL MOTHER HAS TIME FOR ANYTHING ELSE but to take care of her kids and keep house and cook and wash and keep the kids clean and train them and teach them—including litnessing—and take care of her husband! But they seem to think these Childcare Centres are someplace to dump their kids and take off!

8. THESE GALS NEED A LITTLE TRAINING IN THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD! Even if you have some other important job, as many people do, then God has got to raise up some girls with a desire for real motherhood and childcare to help you‚ like some of the nurses and governesses we used to have when I was a kid. They didn't have children of their own‚ so they spent their full time taking care of us kids when we were small. We had oodles of them!—I can still remember several of them.

9. (MARIA: DID THEY COME JUST FROM THE OUTSIDE OR WERE THEY CHRISTIANS?) Oh, they were Christians all right!—Church Christians, be that as it may. I remember one old German governess we had, Adelle Grondorf—we called her Groan-Dorf! We didn't like her, but she was a good one, good on discipline‚ a hard worker, good cook, immaculate housecleaner and tough on us kids!—And I'm sure it was good for us. One thing for sure: She didn't spoil us!

10. I LIKED DELLARINE BETTER.—SHE WAS A PRETTY YOUNG GIRL‚ BUT SHE BROKE MY HEART when she gave me that black mark for putting my toy box on the table when I was trying to entertain her friend's little kid. I was only trying to be nice and I didn't think about the toy box getting dirt on the table. I thought she was real mean to give me a black mark for that and I never forgave her for it!—It offended my 4-year-old sense of justice and fairness! (Maria: Did she tell you ahead of time she was going to give you a black mark?) Not for that particular offense, no, but it was part of our demerit system.

11. I THINK THE DEMERIT SYSTEM IS REALLY GOOD, and I used to use it in schoolteaching—a behaviour rating system. It was fine, and we kids all agreed to it and it was great‚ but I just got caught in something I didn't know was wrong and therefore I didn't think I should have been judged so harshly for it. I was especially worried about that record being shown to my folks when they got home.

12. (MARIA: HOW OLD WERE YOU?) I WAS FOUR.—That's pretty old you know—you can think quite a bit when you're four. I remember lots of things when I was four besides lots of things when I was three and quite a few things when I was two! Goodness, I can remember nearly everything since I was three!

13. I FELT I WAS PRACTICALLY FULL GROWN WHEN I WAS THREE! I can remember every place we lived and every place we were, all the trips we made and everything, and the people we knew and whatnot! (Maria: How can you?—I can't remember a thing!) It's simple: I Just remember it, that's all!

14. SOMETIME I'LL TELL YOU THE STORY OF MY LIFE FROM THE AGE OF TWO! I could swear I remembered the house where I was born when they took me back there and showed it to me! I left there when I was already a year-and-a-half, so why shouldn't I remember it? At a year-and-a-half you can walk & talk & remember and whatnot, so why should I forget the place where I was born and lived the first year-and-a-half of my life?

15. (MARIA: TAKING CARE OF CHILDREN FULL TIME IS REALLY A SACRIFICIAL JOB.) IT'S A HARD JOB! I think the Catholics are right: You've got to actually feel like it is your duty to God and that you do it in obedience to His commandments whether you like it or not! It's like being crucified, it is sacrificial hard work difficult—I mean it's a real, real strain, a real drain! (Maria: That's the trouble: If you don't have that attitude ingrained into you, you have to have something that pushes you along all the time.)

16. THE CATHOLICS HAVE REALLY HAMMERED MOTHERHOOD HOME!—They believe that's what a woman's made for, to be a wife and a mother and homemaker and rear her children.—That's her duty, her job, her calling, her ministry, her whole life!

17. THAT'S PROBABLY WHY CATHOLIC FAMILIES ARE HAPPIER and generally more wholesome‚ more God-fearing and have so many children. Besides, they don't believe in murdering them by pills or abortions—they believe in having them! Thank God! They believe in taking care of them‚ "Bringing them up in the way they should go" (Prov.22:6).

18. I WISH WE HAD MORE MOTHERS LIKE SOME OF THESE GOOD CATHOLIC MOTHERS who really give themselves to it and make it their life's work! It's not easy.—It's probably one of the hardest jobs there is in the whole world, bringing up children, It takes the strength of Samson and the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job!

19. (MARIA: YET MOTHERHOOD NEVER IS APPRECIATED ENOUGH. You can tell people, but people that don't have to do it just can't appreciate what a job it is!) It takes great faith and a whole lot of plain hard work. I'm going to write something about it someday. (Maria: If you were going to write something, what would you write?) I'd probably say what I've already said.

20. MOTHERHOOD IS JUST A HARD JOB! There's just not any way to make it easy. It's just plain hard work, that's all‚ just plain hard work. These silly little American girls who are so immature, they don't even know what hard work is! They never turned a hand at home for anything. They just sat around and read magazines, watched TV and chewed gum and listened to pop records instead of learning how to keep house or help their mothers or cook or anything.

21. THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN THEY'RE PLUNKED DOWN WITH A FULL–GROWN MAN AND A BABY AND THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH EITHER ONE OF THEM—much less the house and the housekeeping and the cooking! Some of these poor little girls, they try. But they're so far behind it's going to take them the rest of their lives to catch up! They never learned anything at home‚ their parents never made them and they didn't care to and didn't want to.

22. BOYS WERE SOME KIND OF A ROMANTIC SUBJECT AND HUSBANDS SOME KIND OF A DREAM. Future life with some man was supposed to some kind of a romance, apparently with no work attached. They've got all kinds of gadgets in America to take the pain out of housekeeping and washing and cooking and washing dishes and whatnot—frozen dinners and dishwashers and vacuum cleaners and all that stuff.—TV dinners where you even throw the dishes away‚ and washers and dryers where you don't have to do a damn thing but fold the clothes! But I've never heard of any kind of machine they've ever invented to take care of kids! Children are just a fulltime job and a big job!

23. AS I SAID, IT TAKES THE STRENGTH OF SAMSON‚ THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON, THE PATIENCE OF JOB AND THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM! He had an awful lot of faith: He was the father of faith and the father of the faithful.—It also takes the love of God, that's for sure!—And you could also say the insight of Daniel and the courage of David!—At least the administrative ability of David, that's for sure! David was a fighter, and it takes a lot of fight to be a mother! What a job!

24. I THINK MOTHERHOOD IS JUST ABOUT THE BIGGEST CALLING IN THE WORLD‚ the greatest calling in the world!—Mothers of the next generation! They are the ones that are moulding the future and making the world! They make it through their children. The world of tomorrow is what the mothers of today make it, according to the way they raise their children.

25. THEY USED TO SAY, "THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE RULES THE WORLD!" AND THAT'S THE TRUTH! My mother had the greatest influence over me of anybody in my whole life! Others had a great influence over me too—my grandfather and my father. But I never knew my grandmothers very well—one died before I was born and the other when I was very young and lived elsewhere.

26. MY MOTHER UNDOUBTEDLY HAD THE GREATEST INFLUENCE OF ANYBODY OVER MY LIFE AND HELPED TO MAKE ME WHAT I AM TODAY. (Maria: Even though she couldn't be with you all the time?) I should say so! I was constantly conscious of her spiritual presence and her love and her feeling about things. (Maria: Even though very busy she still felt a great responsibility for you?) Yes, indeed! That's why I got so mad at Dellarine for giving me that black mark, because I was so worried about what my mother would think when she saw that—at four years of age!

27. THE THINGS I COULD TELL YOU THAT HAPPENED TO ME WHEN I WAS THREE AND FOUR! It's a wonder I ever lived through it! I tell you, my mother's faith and her encouragement helped pull me through those difficult years from two to six and seven. By the time I was seven I'd pretty well made the grade, pretty well been moulded into the shape I was going to be. From then on it was kind of an accumulation of facts and figures and personal experiences.

28. BUT I'LL TELL YOU, MY MOTHER AND THE PEOPLE WHO TOOK CARE OF ME REALLY MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY! Everyone of them had a hand in it, thank the Lord! (Maria: So in a way it was good to have that variety, because you got something from each of them.) Well, I got discipline from Adelle Grondorf, the old German lady, I got a little more love and affection from Dellarine, and I really wanted to please her.

29. SHE WAS YOUNG AND PRETTY AND I REALLY FANCIED HER AT THE AGE OF FOUR and wanted to please her. That's why she hurt me so when she gave me that black mark for doing something I thought was a good deed! I was trying to help entertain the little boy of her friend who was about my same age so I was pulling out my toys to let him play with them. I never realised that setting the box on the table would get the table dirty.

30. SHE COULD HAVE SCOLDED ME and told me not to do that, but she didn't have to go and give me a permanent black mark on my record when I was trying to do something nice, hospitable and kind to somebody and share my toys. So I guess the main thing I learned from her was a sense of injustice.

31. THEN WE HAD A LITTLE GIRL, 13, LAVENA FOOT, whom we met a year later in Oklahoma who helped to take care of us kids physically but she was hardly old enough to take care of herself much less us. So she didn't do much for us except trying to keep us from hurting ourselves, etc. She was just a kid herself, and you can't learn too much from kids that don't know much themselves.

32. THAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH A LOT OF OUR OWN PARENTS IN THE REVOLUTION, OUR GIRLS AND EVEN BOYS: THEY NEVER LEARNED ANYTHING AT HOME so how can they teach their own kids? They have to learn everything from scratch—it's pitiful! Their parents never taught them anything, never made them learn anything‚ never made them do anything, never made them do any work‚ never taught them how to cook, sew, keep house or clean toilets‚ much less take care of children!

33. THE KIDS THAT WERE RAISED IN THE BIGGEST FAMILIES WHERE THERE WAS THE MOST WORK AND THEY HAD TO DO SOMETHING ARE PROBABLY THE ONLY ONES THAT LEARNED ANYTHING—and those were probably Catholic families or they wouldn't have had so many kids! (Maria: Do you think the discipline you learned from Adelle Grondorf you retained?) We hated her! That's another case were I learned the meaning of injustice! I thought it was unjust of her to pinch us in church so hard we could almost scream just for being a little restless—but I guess we needed it. Those pinches of hers!—Wow! How could she expect us to be quiet when she was pinching us so hard we felt like yelling bloody murder!

34. (MARIA: THAT DISCIPLINE ADELLE GRONDORF TAUGHT YOU, WAS THAT PERMANENT?) The scars weren't permanent, but it made us appreciate love, anyway, and my own mother and her fairness and love and how she tried to persuade and teach and show us why we should do things right & why we should do so-and–so. After we got to Miami‚ Mother was with us more for a while and took care of us more while we lived there. She settled down there in a pastorate, and so we got to be with her more and that was a help, as she didn't go away so much.

35. (MARIA: WHEN YOUR MOTHER WAS AWAY‚ WERE YOU STILL CONSCIOUS OF HER INFLUENCE?)—Of course! Even then we were with a lot of good people who took care of us, like Greta Ackerwald, a sweet Swedish lady who kept house and cooked for us and was our governess for a while. She was very loving and very sweet and I liked her a lot. Then there was old Mrs. Mason‚ Mother's secretary, a grouchy old maid I didn't like very much, but she wasn't too bad.

36. I THINK THE ONE I ADMIRED THE MOST IN THOSE DAYS WAS A MAN, DEAR OLD LELAND VALENTINE, who acted like a father to us and was sweet, humble, loving, kind, faithful and funny, but firm. He really made us kids toe the mark, but we knew he loved us and so we really tried hard to do what was right.

37. WE HAD A LOT OF HOUSEHOLD SERVANTS IN THOSE DAYS WHO TRIED TO HELP US KIDS—IT WAS JUST LIKE LIVING IN A COLONY! Goodness, we had an oversized colony! There must have been at least 25 people living at our place taking care of us kids and the house and everything while our folks were gone. (Maria: Were you still conscious of your parents even when they were gone, that they were your parents?) Oh yes!—And we were especially concerned about being good so they'd have a good report to give our parents.

38. (MARIA: AT WHAT AGE WERE YOU CONSCIOUS OF YOUR OWN PARENTS? Didn't you think that the people that physically took care of you most of the time were more your mother and father than your real mother and father?) No, never! We always knew who our real mother and father were. We appreciated the people that took care of us‚ but we never confused them with our parents.

39. (MARIA: HOW DID YOU KNOW WHEN YOU WERE SO LITTLE?) For God's sake, Honey, when I was one and two and three years old I knew who my mother and father were!—Why shouldn't I? I don't know why.—Maybe it was the Spirit! Or maybe I knew because they were there a lot of the time and they loved me like a mother and father. Anyhow, I just knew they were my mother and father—And, after all, that's what everybody called them! We knew the other people, even though they loved and cared for us, weren't our mother and father, but they were trying to do their best.

[...]

43. I KNOW THAT GRETA AND ALL THOSE DID THEIR BEST WITH US. They fed us and they clothed us and they washed our clothes and they tried to keep us corralled. But I don't know that some of those did too much for us mentally or spiritually.

44. FRANKLY, BY THE TIME I GOT TO BE FIVE AND SIX YEARS OF AGE I COULD READ, so that then probably had more influence on my mental and spiritual growth and capacities.—Especially sitting in church all the time, nearly every night, listening to all kinds of preachers I probably got a pretty good education! (Maria: When you were little, real small?)—Of course!—I remember it now!—It is probably influencing our kids a great deal if they have morning or nightly meetings at their Colonies like they ought to have, even if they just listen.

45. WE LITTLE KIDS LISTENED AND WE COULD SORT OUT THE PREACHERS PRETTY WELL—the ones that we thought were really sincere and meant it and the ones we thought were just big blows. Little kids have a great intuition for sincerity and honesty and truthfulness and so on. They are very sensitive in the spirit and can pretty well sense who's good and who's bad, who's honest and who's a liar and so on.

46. (MARIA: SO HOW MUCH REAL SPIRITUAL TRAINING DID YOU HAVE DURING YOUR FIRST FIVE YEARS BESIDES SITTING IN CHURCH?) The governesses and all the Sunday School teachers read us the Bible and told us Bible stories and I loved the Bible and Bible stories, and I believed them and I think they were a tremendous influence on my life. The Bible itself and the Bible stories presented properly were a tremendous influence, because I really knew it was God and the voice of God and the book of God!

47. SO GOD WAS A TREMENDOUS INFLUENCE ON OUR LIVES. The Lord was the greatest influence of all through our teachers and Mother and Dad teaching us. We knew the Lord, and He was a powerful influence on our lives. In those early years in Miami from 1924 to 1936, probably all those various preachers had a tremendous influence on my life, missionaries going through and teachers and children's workers and so on. Old Uncle Charlie was a great one for teaching children with visual aids and it was all very interesting and taught us a lot of things.

48. OF COURSE OLD DR. KOGER WAS LIKE A FOSTER FATHER TO ME. I almost worshipped him he was such a saint‚ such a great man of God. I knew he was the real thing, so loving and sacrificial and sincere. he taught me more by example then by word‚ with his love and sacrifice and caring for the poor and the sick, and I admired him tremendously. When my mother went away to evangelise elsewhere, I had a lot of teachers and famous men and missionaries that I listened to and admired. Then later for awhile I lived mostly with my father while mother was away.

49. MY FATHER 'S TEACHING WAS A TREMENDOUS INFLUENCE in my life too. That's when I was beginning to be a young teenager and very interested in the Bible and Bible prophecy and current events‚ and my father taught me a lot in those days as a young teenager. Of course at that age you begin to learn a lot from the world and worldly friends too and so on. Some was good and a lot of it bad.

50. I GOT INTERESTED IN RADIO THROUGH BOB ANDERSON OUR SCOUT MASTER. HE WAS A GREAT INFLUENCE IN MY LIFE when I was a subteen, he taught us a lot of things that young boys like to know‚ sailing and all about knots and campfires and camping out etc. He's the one who taught me how to build radios and things like that. I also had a young Sunday School teacher‚ Bob Rice, that was a great influence on my life. I really knew he was sincere. We boys really liked him.

51. I THINK I EVEN LEARNED SOMETHING FROM RADIO IN THOSE DAYS‚ because I loved music, and listening to Latin American stations I learned Spanish pronunciation and a love for Spanish music. So radio was a big influence on my life in those days. I think then after that reading probably took over as a young teenager‚ reading the famous classics, Sir Walter Scott and Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc.

52. EVEN TARZAN WAS A BIG INFLUENCE ON MY LIFE. Ha! He was a kind of moralistic hero fighting for the right. I was also greatly interested in scientific fiction‚ and Edgar Rice Burroughs was author of a lot of books on such subjects.

53. I READ NEARLY ALL OF SIR WALTER SCOTT'S BOOKS and all the famous historical classics. All these were a tremendous influence. So reading, I think at that stage as a young teenager, was probably one of the greatest influences on my life in those days, with its idealism and heroism. You begin to form very strong ideas of what you think is right as a very idealistic young teenager, very choosy about what you like and don't like and who you like and don't like, and your ideas and ideals and morals and high goals and standards and hopes are crystallising.

54. SO I THINK READING WAS A TREMENDOUS INFLUENCE ON MY LIFE in those days, along with all the preachers I heard—and the teachers I had in school too were a great influence. Books and teachers in those days I think were the greatest—and preachers. And then of course when I finally was out of school and dropped out and went out to help my mother in fulltime evangelistic work, she was undoubtedly the greatest influence of all in my life.

55. MY MOTHER'S MESSAGE AND HER SERMONS AND TESTIMONIES FOR YEARS WERE THE BIGGEST INFLUENCE—from the time I was 16 until I was nearly 30—even for five years after I got married! So kids are influenced by a combination of a lot of people and a lot of things—early parents, early nurses, even uncles and friends they admire, teachers, scoutmasters, Sunday School teachers, movies, TV, radio, books. Nowadays kids are probably more interested and influenced by television, at least in the United States.

56. BUT THEN OF COURSE WHEN I WAS FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT AT THE AGE OF 19, THE HOLY SPIRIT HIMSELF BECAME THE GREATEST INFLUENCE IN MY LIFE. Then I just lived in the Bible and ate up the Scriptures and read the Word all the time. I would say from then on Jesus really became the greatest influence in my life, from the age of 19 on. Then I got married at 25 and moved away from my mother and started pastoring at 30.

57. I'LL TELL YOU, A WIFE IS A GREAT INFLUENCE IN YOUR LIFE! Eve was a good influence: She loved the Word and loved the Lord and loved the Lord's Work and she helped to keep me close to the Lord in some ways, especially in the early days.

58. AND I'LL TELL YOU ANOTHER TREMENDOUS IMPACT OF INFLUENCE: ALMOST THE GREATEST INFLUENCES IN MY LIFE WERE MY OWN CHILDREN! I'll tell you, they really make you serious and inspire you to be good and be an example and train them up in the way they should go and try to do what's right. You realise the serious sober responsibility of a little child's life in your hands and that they're going to be what you make them. Boy oh boy, I tell you that's an influence in your life!

59. PROBABLY THE FINAL GREATEST INFLUENCE IN YOUR LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE LORD IS YOUR CHILDREN. They influence you to do good, be good and try to do what's right. Your own children ought to be one of the greatest influences in your whole life. But it doesn't seem to even phase some of our kids for some reason—they just toss their kids aside without a second thought and leave them with somebody else and go off and forget them!

60. (MARIA: GOD WILL STILL HOLD THE PARENTS RESPONSIBLE because He's given them the children.) Oh absolutely, He'll hold them responsible, He's going to hold you responsible, me responsible and them responsible for every child born in the Revolution. We're going to answer for every one of them before the Throne of Judgment one of these days—every one!

61. MARIA: EVEN IF THEY CAN'T TAKE CARE OF THEM PHYSICALLY, THE LORD MUST HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE SPIRITUALLY.)—Amen!—They can see to it that they are cared for by somebody that's capable and qualified to do so—either that or they better take care of them themselves! (Maria: Just from the very fact that the Lord gave them to them, He must mean for them to be responsible.) God is going to hold every one of our folks responsible‚ every one of our parents responsible for their children‚ and I mean hold them responsible!

62. IT IS A SERIOUS SOBERING ALMOST TERRIFYING RESPONSIBILITY! If they don't do what's right about it‚ God's going to hold them responsible and judge them accordingly and they are going to really get it if they don't take care of their kids properly! There's no excuse for it in this world, even if they have to give up everything else except God's work to take care of them!—And that's part of the Lord's work—taking care of your own kids!

63. YOU SAY, "WELL I'M GIVING UP MY CHILDREN FOR THE LORD'S SERVICE!" Let me tell you right now‚ your children are a part of the Lord's service, and you need to recognise the fact that you need to take care of your own kids as a service to God as well as to them! I think some of our folks have been entirely too willing and glad to give up their kids and cast the responsibility over on somebody else instead of taking care of them themselves as they should have.

64. SOME OF OUR OUTSTANDING LEADERS HAVE TO PUSH ONTO SOMEONE ELSE THE RESPONSIBILITY of taking care of our own children because we simply cannot do it ourselves if we're going to take care of the thousands of our children around the world. We have to give to someone else the responsibility of taking care‚ physically and spiritually and every other way in the time that we don't have the children that we do have.

65. (MARIA: BUT THEN WE'RE RESPONSIBLE TO SEE THAT THEY'RE DOING IT RIGHT.)—Yes! We are responsible to see to it that it is done right and they are properly taken care of—absolutely!) Maria: It's so much more important even because the time's so short and every day is important. If you had years and years and years‚ to skip a few days wouldn't be so bad.—But we haven't much time left.)

66. THE PSYCHOLOGISTS SAY THAT THE CHILD LEARNS MORE IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF HIS LIFE THAN HE'LL LEARN IN ALL THE REST OF HIS LIFE PUT TOGETHER! Those first years are extremely important‚ therefore, and you can't wait till they're five years old—every single passing day is important and what he's learning everyday.—And you are responsible as a parent to see to it not only that he's fed and clothed and protected and sleeps and is physically well and healthy, but is mentally trained and taught and spiritually inspired.—

67. YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE! If you haven't got time to do it yourself, you had better be sure you find somebody who can and who does it right and the way you know it ought to be done, or God is going to hold you responsible when you stand before Him one of these days and even before that!

68. IF YOU DON'T DO A GOOD JOB AND DO IT RIGHT‚ YOU'RE GOING TO SUFFER YOURSELF AND THAT CHILD'S GOING TO SUFFER. But you're going to suffer in that child and through that child and because of that child because you didn't, and that's one of the worst sufferings in the world, to see your own child suffer because of your neglect, physically or mentally or spiritually! That's the thing that'll really break you, to have a child suffer or go astray because of your neglect.

69. BOY I TELL YOU, HOW GOD CAN DEAL WITH YOU THROUGH YOUR OWN CHILDREN! You'd rather have God spank you and afflict you and torture you or even kill you than to have Him deal with you through your children, like He often has to do because otherwise you won't listen. You have to watch your poor kid suffer for your sins and your neglect and your lack of responsibility, and you know it's your fault—and boy, that's where it really hurts! God help us!

70. I SURE DID THE BEST I COULD FOR MY KIDS AND I'M THANKFUL THEY TURNED OUT SO WELL—all Christians, love the Lord, serve the Lord, and are doing their best to help you other kids. We made some mistakes and they're not perfect, but at least they're serving the Lord, trying to do their best for you and the Lord. We had to depend on other people a great deal to do the job, but it was our responsibility to select the kind of people that ought to do the job, and make sure they did it and realise their grave responsibility in bringing up my child in the way he ought to go.

71. IT'S A VERY SERIOUS SOBERING JOB. SO IF YOU CAN'T DO IT YOURSELF, YOU'D BETTER GET SOMEBODY GOOD TO DO IT FOR YOU! (Maria: The Lord says, "Pray that He'll send labourers into the harvest." They need to pray more for people that can take care of their children.) I want to tell you, one of the first labourers He's going to send is you! One of our biggest problems is not even that the Lord needs to send forth more labourers, but to get the people that we have to get to work and do the job they're supposed to be doing, taking care of their own kids and rearing them up the way they ought to go!

72. (MARIA: A LOT OF TIMES IT WOULD PROBABLY BE EASIER TO FIND SOMEBODY ELSE TO TAKE THEIR SO-CALLED IMPORTANT JOB SO THEY THEMSELVES COULD ACTUALLY TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN CHILDREN, and get somebody else to take over their present job.) Yes.—A lot of times a lot of people make their job an excuse for not having to do the hard work of taking care of their own kids. I grant you, the Lord's service is our first responsibility, our responsibility to the Family. But our kids are a part of that service and that Family, and we've got to do them right and be faithful to them or we're going to suffer for it! God help us!

73. (MARIA: PARENTS ARE SOME OF OUR GREATEST WITNESSES. I THINK THEY OUGHT TO BE GIVEN CREDIT ON THEIR WITNESSING SCORES FOR THE HOURS THEY TEACH THE CHILDREN!) It's mighty important! I tried to spend at least an hour or two with my kids everyday reading and teaching them the Bible, and I think they now show the good results. PTL!

74. (MARIA: WHAT AGE DID YOU START READING THEM BIBLE STORIES?) As soon as they could understand speech‚ as soon as they knew how to talk! (Maria: What is the earliest age you remember any kind of spiritual teaching? You know you had the example all along, but what kind of specific teaching?)—On my mother or father's knee listening to the Bible! (Maria: Two years old?) I don't remember just how old I was then, but I think it was even earlier! (Maria: That goes to show how little kids remember and how it's so important how you treat them.)

75. MY MOTHER AND FATHER AND NURSES READ US BIBLE STORIES ALL THE TIME WHEN WE WENT TO BED. We also heard a lot in church, so we got plenty of that. I think those little Sunday School pictures and Bible story books and then the Sunday School posters really had an influence, because we'd sit there in front of those pictures and they'd tell us what they meant and what was happening, and they had a very lasting impression and effect.—Pictures‚ video, visuals!

76. (MARIA: ARE THOSE PICTURES ON YOUR SLIDES?) I had all the greatest masterpieces, art masterpieces on the life of Christ, colour slides, Bible prophecy‚ early church, everything! That's why I've been so concerned about where those slides are, but no one seems to know—The last we heard they were in Texas or Puerto Rico. They could be such a help now to our artists for our own books!

77. I THINK PICTURE STORY BOOKS WITH PICTURES THAT TELL THE STORY ARE ONE OF THE GREATEST IMPACTS I CAN REMEMBER AS A LITTLE TINY LAD. I used to dream about those pictures and the stories. They were very real to me, they really happened!—I remember that magic forest with those talking birds‚ and I went through the looking glass with Alice—it was all so real to me, as well as the true stories, Bible stories.

78. THAT SHOWS YOU HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO TELL THEM THE RIGHT ONES because a little child can't exactly differentiate between what was true and what wasn't. The nurses and babysitters told us all kinds of crazy stories from Mother Goose and fairy tales and everything else. I guess it was only the Lord that kept us from believing a lot of junk that wasn't so. (Maria: Did you think those stories about magic forests and talking birds, that it was wrong to teach you that?) Well, I don't know. I know I used to have nightmares about some of that stuff, and that wasn't good.

79. THERE ARE SO MANY BIBLE STORIES AND SO MUCH TO TEACH OUT OF THE MO LETTERS, WHY SHOULD WE TEACH THEM ANYTHING ELSE? I can't figure out why should we teach our kids anything but Bible stories and true stories and the things the Lord gives, like MO Letters the Lord has given. Why would you have to teach them Hans Christian Andersen's or Grimm's Fairy Tales or Mother Goose Rhymes and stuff like that? A lot of that stuff I think is of the Devil! Some of it may have been true but still of the Devil. Many stories about the Devil are true‚ but I wouldn't want to dwell on him all the time just because they really happened.

80. TRY TO DWELL ON THE POSITIVE THINGS‚ THE GOOD THINGS, THINGS THAT ARE TRUE AND GOOD, "of good report", those are the things we need to dwell on, the Bible and Bible stories. There are more stories in the Bible alone than you'll ever get finished teaching your kids! I don't think I ever did get done reading the whole Bible to my own kids!

81. (MARIA: MAYBE WE NEED TO HAVE OUR ARTISTS START ON ILLUSTRATING A LOT OF THE BIBLE STORIES FOR THE CHILDREN AS WELL AS THE MO LETTERS.) Well, there's so much in the way of art on the Bible and Bible stories by the greatest masters, art masterpieces by the greatest artists the world has ever known—the Bible and Bible stories have been their greatest subject. You can even get these masterpieces even on Sunday school calendars! There are so many! You can even get them from the library. My colour slides were just loaded with them. Even the black-and-white "Bible in Pictures" are loaded with famous art masterpieces.

82. (MARIA: BUT THE "BIBLE IN PICTURES", COULD THEY BE REPRODUCED ON PAPER FOR THE CHILDREN? Why can't somebody do it?) The labourers are few! Hard workers are few. It would be a tremendous thing to have on paper! It's all back-and-white. We could make copies‚ bigger pictures of them, and the actual photographs of where all these things happened. They're too old to be copyrighted anyway. They were first produced in the early 1900s! The guy that first got those together was a dear friend of my grandfather! (Maria: They could be Bible Picture Books for the children.)

83. THE PICTURES THESE KIDS SEE ARE GOING TO REGISTER FOREVER IN THEIR LITTLE MINDS as to what God is like and what it's all like!—And all these ridiculous comedy comic pictures some of our artists have done for MO Letters are going to leave a lasting impression on our kids' minds—that God is some kind of a cartoon character and our religion is some kind of a joke and the Bible is some kind of a comic book!

84. WHEN I TALK ABOUT COMIC BOOKS I DON'T MEAN THEY HAVE TO BE FUNNY, that the actual pictures have to be caricatures or comics or funny paper characters! What we're talking about is that we need our children's letters to be illustrated with pictures like comic books have pictures throughout—all pictures. We need books for children which are all pictures. They don't have to be funny pictures, they don't have to be cartoons, they just need to be pictures. A lot of stuff that some of our artists have turned out isn't worthy of the subject—too funny, too cartoony, too comical, and not sober enough, not serious enough.

85. I'LL TELL YOU THERE'S A WEALTH OF PICTURES IN THAT "BIBLE IN PICTURES"‚ those filmstrips—a wealth of pictures, thousands of pictures! There are about 30 chapters on the Old Testament and nearly as many on the New Testament, with about 50 pictures in each chapter! A lot of them are actual photographs of the real places where they happened, too!—About 3,000 pictures!—And a lot of them are black-and-white photographs of the famous art masterpieces of the story!

86. (MARIA: THAT WOULD BE GREAT TO START ON THOSE!—WHO WOULD DO IT THOUGH?) Somebody with a burden, somebody who wants to see that the children are taught what's right. "The Bible in Pictures" are a tremendous part of Bible education. My kids and students used to sit for hours watching me show the "Bible in Pictures" filmstrips that describe the story. It makes a very simple complete story of the whole Bible events from start to finish, with actual photographs of where they happened and with the art masterpieces to illustrate the events.

87. (MARIA: YOUR GLASS SLIDES WOULD BE USEFUL TOO.) Oh boy!—Gorgeous colour!—Stuff you couldn't even get in the "Bible in Pictures"—Bible Prophecy, wonders of creation, fulfilled prophecy, all kinds of stuff, beautiful, all in gorgeous coloured pictures! Our artists, oh how they could use those! Hundreds of slides in colour!

88. OK, KIDS, WHERE ARE THEY?—Somebody's got 'em somewhere, and it's about time you coughed 'em up for the benefit of the whole Revolution and all our kids, isn't it?

89. IF YOU KNOW, PLEASE TELL US!—So we can use them for the benefit of all!—Amen?—The "Bible in Pictures" with its books and all the old First Family films and the heavy 3" x 4" glass colour slides.—Where are they now? This is an S.O.S.!—Please help us! I had to forsake all to make my great escape, but now we need 'em. If you know where they were last seen, please write us now!—Thanks! God will bless you!—And has anyone seen my old art collection of pretty nudes?—Ha!—Well, that reminds me again of our real subject:

90. "REAL MOTHERS!"—Of course, any girl can strip and make love and get pregnant and have a baby!—But how many of you are real mothers to these precious, priceless, eternal children? How many of you really love and care for them and "train them up in the way they should go‚ so that when they are old they'll not depart therefrom!"

91. —WHEN YOU ARE OLD YOU'LL BE THANKFUL!—AND SO WILL THEY!—The children who had real mothers!—Are they going to be thankful for you, Mother? I hope so! God bless and help you!—I'm praying He'll make each of you a Real Mother!