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Show 272 white-haired strangers who had vanished without waiting to be thanked. They came and went enigmatically, and consistently were reported as having white hair, which reminded you that they were still mortal, though the aging process had been slowed to a crawl. At least some of the recorded sightings of angels could have been sightings of one of the three Nephites instead. She found old men boring. They described the nature of the three degrees of glory, the telestial, terrestrial, and celestial kingdoms, as far as they were understood, and explained that marriage and the family unit existed only in the celestial kingdom, and only those marriages that had been sanctified in the temple carried over into the celestial kingdom. Alice wanted to know if that meant everybody stayed horny in the other two kingdoms. Lorin wondered that too. They explained the doctrine of eternal progression. They had covered the ban on liquor, tobacco, and stimulants like caffeine a long time ago, but now mentioned the importance of modesty in dress, chastity outside marriage, morality in daily life. She attended the investigators' class at the branch, not taking Richard with her, and eventually the thing was accomplished. On a bright spring afternoon she descended, dressed in spotless white lounging pajamas, into the local YMCA swimming pool, various elders and authorities like the district president scattered through the bleachers to watch, where Lorin, his heart pounding, stood with her, also in white, the cold oily water up to his hips and shrivelling his groin, held her left hand in his left hand, raised his right arm above and behind her head, said the baptismal prayer, and gently eased her under the water while she held her nose with one hand and clutched at his wrist with the other. His right hand at her back, he brought her upright again, her face shiny, her hair streaming water, her white lounging pajamas clinging to her |