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Show in my father's house/ 331 why my father had spoken to me about Brother Butchreit. I knew that the man was a member of the Priesthood Council, one of my father's oldest and most dedicated supporters. His leaving was significant in more ways than I could think LaVona about. It would give Aunt A" .: more ammunition in her argument against my father's priesthood authority. And it must have shaken him deeply. I sensed his loss, a gaping hole in his feelings; it was the same emptiness I had perceived in him regarding his first wife, Aunt Karen. But why had he spoken to me about it when he never mentioned anything else to me? Was he afraid that I, too, was leaving? Did he believe that I, too, was being led into hell? Why were his words to me always tainted with warnings of evil, the instead of^love and reassurance he gave to others? It was not for many years, after several such disjointed communications from my father, that I began to understand why he told me certain things. The incidents he described eventually formed a pattern - a pattern which was to lead, step by step, to his death. I had stopped going to the Sunday meetings of our group. Even home evening had become a strain, but I was much more comfortable around the other mothers and their children than with the cousins and old familiar faces of the group. What was it that unsettled me? Was it my father's brand that made me feel so oppressed in their presence? Or was it the strangers which peppered the growing crowd of believers that pointed up the unworthiness of me, a native to the Principle, and set like an anvil on my conscience. |