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Show 3 The bishop arrived about two o'clock, and already there was a congregation awaiting him; by three at least twenty-three were ready "to receive the laying on of hands." With the church filled to capacity, the charming giant in pur-pIe officiating, the expectant attitude of the adults and children, it was an experience never to be forgotten. There are still over a hundred in the area for our own· Bishop to confirm when he can get here, but we are most grateful to him and to Bishop Welles for what has been done. It must be hard for you who read this to put yourselves in the place of these people. Can you imagine going to be confirmed when you had never seen the inside of a church building before? Or the outside, for that matter, except in the movies! For. many of our children, after many months of patient instruction week after week, were baptized in a school house or other secular building, and many had been admitted to Holy Communion, for we had no way of knowing when they might have the opportunity of being confirmed. Many had seen no church building save our little log chapel at St. Christopher's, or St. Mary of the Moonlight hoghan church at Oljeto, or San Juan Bautista Chapel at Montezuma Cree·k. But many others had never seen any altar except a portable one, had never seen stained glass windows, steeples, pulpit or pews, nor had heard an organ or a choir. Perhaps - who knows? - we are well off; perhaps it is easier for us to think of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, in which we are made members by Baptism. Sixty-five were baptized just in the month of May. crass at Aneth School. All who had not previously been baptized were baptized on May 22, 1960. |