Ken Anderson:
February 19, 2005, Conference room, Approximately 9:15 a.m., Trying to get organized.

Prayers:
Helen Luke, Rick Voss, LaReen Pierce, JoAnn Wiedman, Bill Bryan, Barry Bartlett.

[Stillness]

MICHAEL (JOYce): You are all so eager to serve, and to love one another. You came here with great expectations … came to give and to receive. You will not be disappointed. I am Michael. I love you, my children. I love you with a love beyond anything you can imagine. We ask you to be still. … Not to hurry. … Be happy. Be full of joy. … Know I will be with you. You are my hands. You are my feet. You are my voice, my touch. Your touch is my touch. Your words are my words. Your smile is my smile. Give that you may receive. Enjoy one another. Enjoy this time of fellowship. Enjoy opening your heart, to see open desire come to fruition. I am your brother, your older wiser brother. My love for you is so intense, so real. Do not think your love is any less than mine. There is no degree in love. Love is. It is who you are, what you are. Love is who you are now and what you are becoming.

[Stillness]

Leoma: This love is our divine inheritance. It is this flow that is healing the family, person by person, and we are people who can learn to be useful to energy. We can learn to channel it from the Father, through our bodies, to others. And as we practice this more and more, we will grow and become stronger so that people simply in our proximity can feel it. This, in Father’s time. To all of us. When we experience it in our bodies, we know it is Truth. We all know that this is what unifies all of us. Not just all of us on the planet, but with all the celestials who are here to help us. They are giving and receiving this love, as well. It is the unifying force of Monjoronson to be so. So be it.

Jo Ann: Let’s just take a minute and empty ourselves and let this energy flow become a part of us.

[Stillness]

Leoma: Now that we have this energy flowing, we have created a great potential that we could use for so many things, and I tell you, until we focus our intent all at the same time, it remains in potential

JoAnn: We have one line of energy, flowing around the circle. It seems it would be right to build a merkaba. Because when we have energy flowing around a circle, it united our hearts and souls with intentions, and we will do that, a dome of light occurs over the circle, and with intention, adding our mind line energy, the same energy circle, we make this into a sphere, a sphere of golden protective light. Let each of us become aware of our own light chords, opening the crowns of our head to universe energy, to Father’s light and love, and letting it flow down through our energy bodies, all the way down through each chakra, letting it cleans and chase away shadows, drawing it slowing all the way down, down through root chakra, out the souls of our feet, letting that energy cord, becoming aware of how it goes, right into the very center of our planet, to the very still point of Mother Earth.

And becoming aware also of that earth energy flowing up the soles of our feet, noticing it at the higher point below the navel, and at the soul seat over the thymus. It flows up in our awareness and out the crowns of our heads so we are encircuited both in cosmic and earthly energies. We have the energy lights flowing around the circle. With intention, we united our light cords above and below our circle, at the elements of our sphere. In the light core, the light column, appears in the middle of the circle, and into the sacred space, with our intentions, we invite our unseen friends.

Any who will work with Christ Michael for the upliftment of this planet are welcome here. And no others. So we invite you, our Teachers, our angels, friends, Melchizedeks, midwayers, to speak with us and through us, to teach us, to enlighten us, and work with us we would like to work with you.

[Murmuring, sharing, laughing, mostly about healing.]

Virginia: One night before my surgery, and I was suffering a great deal of pain, and I could not sleep, and my son is not yet sure what he thinks about the practices of his father and his sister, said, “Mom, maybe we should put hands on you!” in healing, because we do that, and I said, “Gregory!” and he said, “Well, let’s try it.” And he put hands on my feet,, took hold of my feet to try to relieve some of the pressure and pain and emotion that I was feeling. And he said, “Mother, I feel it, but I don’t believe it.”

LaReen: He’s a hard one, that boy.
.
Virginia: So you know, when we respond to energy that cannot be seen, it does touch other people.

Leoma: I’m finding that even with people I am working with in our church, that having that experience is worth ten hundred hours of talking about it. We’re -- in the Lutheran Church, we’re so good about talking. We study the Bible and talk about Jesus and talk about this and talk about that, but do we sit in Stillness? Real Stillness?

Eugenia: It’s changing.

Leoma: I start—actually, there’s more hope in our synod. The synod powers-that- be seem more open to it. I recently talked with them about doing – slowly – teaching stillness from that level, and they said “Well, have some success with it first in the church and then come to us.”

Rick: Which is that?
Virginia: Administration.

Leoma: Yeah. I was recently at a prayer conference sponsored by the Synod, and I got a lot of hope, much more than I feel at our church right now. There is openness. And the people I’ve seen coming through seminary now are spiritually much more open. I got a lot of hope, going to that conference.

Dolores: Why don’t you try using different terminology, for the same thing. They’re not familiar with the term “stillness”. A lot of people really restrict prayer, meditation, and they use different names.

Leoma: Actually ‘stillness’ I’m finding is fine, as long as we explain it as prayer in meditation. So that’s where we are. It’s becoming fine to say. And at another retreat in New York, I was with his sister at a prayer retreat, and in a workshop they had learned about a book written by Jane Yong, who is a Christian writer. She lived right after the time of Martin Luther. And in the same way that Martin Luther was instrumental in getting the Bible in the hands of the people, she encouraged people to find that voice within that God tells you inwards, and she was writing to a public that a lot of them couldn’t agree, so she was trying to reach people, to understand that they didn’t need an intermediary. They didn’t need a priest, they didn’t need someone considered holy, they could get it direct from God. And that is what her book is about, and of course I don’t agree with everything that’s in it, but it’s one of those bridges to increase humanity in what we’re doing here. So if you are interested, she wrote a number of books, actually, but the one I got is “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ” and she actually talks about Stillness in that book, so you can use a book like that to approach Christians with. And she is considered a great Christian.

Barry: On the energy theme, we start with – we ran a minute’s silence for the tsunami victims, in the vocal path of interdenominational, so Christians, of course, includes everybody, and afterwards, the lady that was running it, there was a couple of people still left and she said, “Oh, are you still here?” And he said, “Yeah. 25 minutes ago I was an atheist. I’m not so sure now.” (Laughter) We did virtually what we did here, but not with a bloody text. You know, we had a lady reading the aura of the whole theme. She could see his chart by reaching in it.

JOYce: It’s funny because I just said at the dinner table last night, we were talking about emotional experiences, and Eric had a very awesomely wonderful emotional experience, and I said, “Well, I had one in 1975 and my catholic priest said, ‘Don’t tell anybody you had an emotional experience’ so I really kept it quiet and never told anybody, but I made this statement that that one experience could last me the rest of my life. It was May the seventh 1975 at 10:30 in the morning. And this is what I said at the table, “I don’t need one more experience for the rest of my life,” … and right now … (laughter) came this tremendous experience. After I said I don’t need any more, I was very amazed to find out how I loved it, and I wouldn’t mind having some others! (laughter).

Eric: Oh, good! Please don’t leave us there. What happened at 10:30 on the morning of May seventeenth.

JOYce: This is such a cool thing. My one son ran away. I threw him out because of drugs, and he left home for … he was gone six months … and immediately having done it -- it was the 18th -- I was sorry. It was a frenzy and I found the drugs and I just went crazy and I threw him out and was screaming and hollering like a maniac on the street, and he left. He was gone. And I didn’t hear from him for six months, and then I heard … he called and said, “Mom….” I’m never going to be able to you the hell that I’ve been through with him gone, but there was his voice on the phone, and he said, -- this was 1975, and this was the big Jesus movement, and Jesus people all over the country, and he said, “Mom, I got saved. I found Jesus.” What’s saved? We’re Catholic! (Laughter) What are you talking about? He said, “I just want to tell you that I love you and …” This is a kid who never loved me. And I wasn’t even sure I loved him, but the thing about it is he left long-hair, pot smoking, popping pills, LS-- he did it all. And for just for such a trauma, this voice telling me that he loved me. He came back with his girlfriend. They ran away. A little Jewish girl and little Catholic boy ran away and her family just was destroyed.

** and got saved.

JOYce: She got saved too! So she came back and her mother wouldn’t let her come home because they’re Jewish. And this was Jesus. Everything was Jesus. So I took them in, but I remember them coming in the door after not seeing him. I remember who left – this freaky, whacked out angry person that was just … what can I say? I still to this day see their two faces shining. They came in my – shining faces! – it was such a … I still didn’t understand it. So this week that they lived with me, I had six children, one by one, every day one of these kids was getting saved. (Laughter) And I didn’t know what saved was or what was going on, but on the morning of May the 7th,--

In fact, my husband was afraid of my son. He said, “This is -- I don’t understand it; the kid is going bananas. What’s going on?” They had bible study at our house. Their friends were coming over and asking Jesus into their heart. The whole thing was a zoo. But my husband said to me this morning, he said, “I want you to sit down with this kid and tell him to cut it out. I’m embarrassed. Giving tracts to the milkman and going on the boardwalk and the whole thing. He said, “You take this day and you straighten this kid out.” And every kid but one got saved. And the mother wasn’t saved. So I’m folding clothes and out they come. She was sleeping with Katie and he was back in his own room and so I’m folding on the big table, always the mother, folding clothes, through my mind how to stop this insanity.

Okay. She comes and out and goes like this (gesturing), “Jesus told us this morning ….” And I went, “Wait a minute. I’ll accept a lot of this stuff, but I will not accept that Jesus talks to you.” Just like that! I was infuriated by that. And my brains are trying to formulate “I gotta stop…” This was really insane at this moment. This is totally bad that I would ask them to part, so here they are, with their shining little faces, me trying to—and he says, “Mom, you know you’re a sinner.” (Whoa!)

I went (made a face) “Oh, if he knew (laughter) what a sinner his mother is! (Laughter)” like that. And then he said, “And you’re sorry for your sins.” He was leading me in the sinner’s prayer, but I just didn’t know about the sinner’s prayer. And here was this instant in time, I swear I’ll never forget this as long as I live. I had gone to Catholic school all my life, every member of the Catholic school room had the Christ up there. I went through Catholic education. I loved religion. I got 100 on every test. Understood it. But all of a sudden, two hands are on my shoulders and I see this cross. And I see so clearly the hands pulling against the nails. And like, very aware of the chest, but I never thought about the crucifixion all those years. And I could feel the nails in the hands and I was just overcome with this incredible sorrow. For my sins. It was just so real. And he said, “I know you’re sorry for your sins,” and I said, “I am, I am.” And I began to weep.

And he said, “Ask Jesus into your heart.” And I said, “How do I do that?” And he said, “Just ask him. Just say, ‘Jesus come into my heart’.” And I went, “Jesus come into my heart,” and I said this real fast. “Be the Lord of my life.” I said, “what is this ‘be the lord’?” He said, “Just say it, Mom. (Laughter) Say, ‘Be the Lord of my life.’ So I said ‘Be the Lord of my life.” And I swear … she was here, he was there. Two arms came around me from the back and from this day ... (gasp) … such love. And I leaped into the air hollering, "It's true! It’s true!” (Laughter) And that’s it. I knew they were there, and they were there, but there was something. There was Something. So that’s what happened.

** How long ago was that?”

JOYce: My boy at that time was 19. Just turned 19, and Amy was about 17. They did get married and … this is a continuing quite a story that I could occupy easily six volumes to tell the things that I will never forget. Never. And it’s funny. When we think about the Lord of my life, I ask that in prayer. I had no idea where I would go. It’s just been an awesome, incredible adventure with Jesus from that moment on.

Eugenia: I really, really appreciate hearing what you have to say. One of the things that we were discussing, but perhaps it’s time for us to start sharing some of these stories of how God has touched our lives, and I really would like very much to take away from here some of the narratives, which, if this has been recorded, and it has, we will all take the courage to talk about their journeys, because what it’s chronicling is the personal relationship we have with God, that he enters into our lives in the most profound way that we need based on where we are at a point in time, and gives us these incredible experiences that other people can nod their heads and say, ‘okay’ and it’s not necessarily where they are, but what it does is it encourages the rest of us to acknowledge and pay attention to and find support in the fact that we have all had a personal experience with God that we have been given that is meaningful and changes our lives.

Every single one of us has been tapped on the shoulder. In fact, it’s almost the title: “I was tapped.” How was I tapped? But it started with a tap and you paid attention to the tap. And I think that we all have those, and I would absolutely love and glory in hearing all of your stories. I would love that.

Virginia: There might not be enough time in just one short weekend. (Laughter)

Eugenia: It’s a start! And I think that what it does is by talking about it in a personal way, I think it could, perhaps, become a vehicle to share with a wider circle of people, because it really does, whenever you give a personal testimony, it touches something in somebody, not necessarily everybody, but somebody will relate to what had happened to you, and it encourages them and it validates their own experiences and encourages them to think more about what it is.

** Is there already somebody slated to do that?

Eugenia: No, this just happened.

Eric: I’ve got an experience to give in a couple words. Not quite as dramatic. I was that age when my experience happened, working in a church camp down in the Black Forest. I had been thinking about Jesus and wondering lots of things, you know, did Jesus really exist? What was he like? And I remember one time, in the shower, and I was thinking about Jesus really loved all of us, and for a bunch of us to have crucified him on the cross, I empathized with how much that must have hurt, to felt, to have that love be spurned. And I wept for him. I got rid of that, but that really was the beginning of my connection with Jesus on a much more intimate, personal level.

And I’ve had some other experiences since then, after my heart transplant, reviewing the chronicle of all the events that led to my getting this new heart and how I was getting everything I needed exactly when I needed it and I had for years believed that the Lord will provide, especially in times when I was unemployed, and that had always proved to be true, and I could see very clearly that there was no way anybody could make the argument that all the sequence of events that had lined up so perfectly arranging for the reception of my heart, and the healing and the things that went on after that, and that continued to happen every day, could have been coincidental, or accidental, and so I intellectually … this was proof to my way of deductive thinking that God really did love me an awful lot.

And that opened the door, saying, well it must be true, then allowed me to experience, very much like what … Leoma was just describing in her energy work, that I felt God’s love going 400-fold stronger than I had ever felt it before, and I was just … in a hospital bed still rocking and holding my Sovereign and sobbing. I had no idea God thought of me that much. I had no idea. I had no idea. An absolutely awesome experience. My childish fears – if I try to connect with God too closely, God is going to be judging me for all of my sins, and that wasn’t a reality. That experience in being totally surrounded in God’s grace. I was in heaven. I was literally and spiritually and whateverly in heaven at that moment, and, having just been through a kind of hell, and be in heaven, was such an amazing contrast, among other things, to really feel God’s love. I just became a total witness for God after that experience, and I know what I felt of God’s love was the tip of the iceberg, and God also felt that for each and every one of us, and it gave me a much greater appreciation for lots of things, among them, you can only know by experiencing them, and my God, what an experience.

Eugenia: Along this vein of suffering along with Christ and understanding him, I had an experience is the Czech Republic.

[turn tape]

JoAnn: I keep hearing, “This is appropriate.”

Eugenia: Well, we talked about this very briefly on TML and then I cut myself off and I don’t know whether the conversation continued, but I had made the suggestion that it was maybe time for us to begin to chronicle our experiences to some … you know, a time for a collective of testimonials.

JoAnn: When we opened the merkaba and invited spirit, and this is what we are being prompted to do, so it’s right.

** It’s “How I found the Urantia Book” in a different context.

Eugenia: It’s not necessarily Teaching Mission, but it affects the Teaching Mission and as we know, Teaching Mission is not an organization. What it is, is a coming together with people who want to know God better.

I was going to relate my experience to finally connecting to Jesus’ suffering -- which is appropriate, after having a year of “The Passion of Christ” according to Mel Gibson. I didn’t go to the movie because I have had my own experience.

I was in Cheske-Krummel, which is an absolutely gloriously, beautiful Medieval town in the Czech Republic. And to give you the setting of it, it’s a bow of a river, the Baltimore River, I believe. It comes around like this. It goes around and it’s a beautiful river and there is a huge castle that surrounds … this is the castle that … it’s up on the ridge, and then down very very sharply is this beautiful river valley, and then there’s sort of a flat area with a precipice.

And all of those kinds of towns, they always built the churches on the very highest place in the area, so here is this very beautiful church up at the top and we come into Cheske-Krumoff and it’s beautiful and we were walking around the town, and we go into the church. You have to walk up this gorgeous set of stairs. There’s a music academy here and they’re playing music. Beethoven, I believe it was. We walk up the stairs and go into this old, old, old church – which is very beautiful but, as many churches are, you know, it’s been added on and added on and added on and it’s kind of eclectic.

I walked the stations of the cross. I am not Catholic. I’m Episcopalian. And I had never walked in the stations of the cross before, but somehow or another I was led to do it in this church. I had sat and just meditated and just taken all of this in, and something just took me and led me to each one of those stations around the church. And as I walked that whole experience, you know, that whole experience of Jesus just flooded through me and I felt all of his suffering. I mean, I didn’t feel it all, but I certainly felt that … profound deep pain and sadness and the burden of the cross. The thing is I got through it. It was just an amazing experience, and it was just something that just sort of took me by the hand and led me around.

To backtrack, I always knew God. Never for more than a nanosecond did I ever doubt his existence, but I certainly didn’t know who Jesus was. And so when I met the Urantia Book, that’s where I was. I needed to know Jesus and I was still having lots and lots of difficulties with Jesus, and that experience certainly helped me greatly, understand him more. It was very profound and I will never forget the whole setting and the whole time there. It’s amazing.

Leoma: Speaking of the Passions movie. We have a little experience, don’t we? Our daughter, teenage daughter went to see it and she likes horror movies. She’s seen all kinds of gory stuff, but she came back and told me about this movie and she said, “Mom, I was looking for the big vomit.” Half the time during the movie she really thought she was going to throw up and she told me more about the movie and I decided right then and there – we were going to this, and I said, “I can’t see it. And I don’t want David to see it.”

Eugenia: I couldn’t see it.

Leoma: And I continued to be glad that we were forewarned. But I … I prayed about -- how do I understand this? I sat down in the closet one day. Right after Florida at Celestial Nights. I sat down and asked my Teacher: how do I understand this? I feel so heavy about this. And my feeling was that the bad parts were in a way perpetuating what mother is trying to heal us from. All the guilt and shame and all that, and for that reason I knew I couldn’t go. Personally. And so I asked Michael, “How do you feel about you being portrayed in this way?” And I usually get answers in sentences. I don’t very often get visual answers, but this was … I immediately saw this huge stethoscope come down and check my heart. And you know, immediately you think of Jesus as the physician. He was in turn checking how I felt. And it took me … I’m still understanding the depths of what that means. For me personally it means that he cared about how I felt and that it was my opinion, my… it was not for me to judge how anyone else should feel about it.

And I also realized that Mel Gibson had good intentions for making this movie, and look how many people were talking about it. Everyone was talking about it! And so many people that maybe didn’t have a relationship or feel that closeness, like you have with Jesus, that that would bring them to him, and the answer too was that, well, God always uses everything for good. And I’ve seen it! Even our oldest daughter who went to see it. Our other daughter. She said, you know it really made me think of what he did for me. Redemption. What that was. And while I can’t go see it, I feel … I don’t need my heart injured by seeing the visual.

JOYce: I want to say something. Something you’re wrapped up in the emotionalism of what I portrayed was happening to me. Very simple thing is lost. And that is that I did ask in faith to Jesus into my heart. I don’t know what makes me say this now. And I asked him to be the Lord of my life. And that was in 1975 and in my evolution with him, through all these years, every single thing that I needed to make him the Lord of my life was provided for me. Every book I needed. The Urantia Book.

You want to hear a story, I went in the library looking for something spiritual to read. Packed shelves. Looking like this for titles. And my hand went --- and I went (laughter) because I couldn’t believe it because it was going up. This giant book, which I pulled down, opened it up, eyes went down. This is what I saw: Universe(s) and I went “Why not?” And I just … you know the experience, I went home and it was like THIS BOOK! This book! And I’m saying how he honored my childlike prayer the next 30 years. I mean everything -- the Course in Miracles, 10 o r 12 years studying that. Every single thing for him to be the Lord of my life. There is no doubt at all that he is absolutely unequivocally the Lord of my life. That childlike prayer was so honored, because my heart was in the prayer. It is just awesome what he has done.

JoiLin: I’d like to share basically what you do. What’s your name?
JOYce: Joyce.
JoiLin: That used to be my name. (Laughter)
JOYce: How could you not be Joyce anymore?
JoiLin: I changed it.
JOYce: Oh.

JoiLin: Some of you don’t know part of these … and I’m going to jump because I know exactly what you’re saying in knowing, believing that everything will be there. I made my commitment when I was 14, although I didn’t really know – I didn’t understand what it was that had happened to me. From that point on … I became a seeker. I opened every door that came to me. I read everything. And when I became a transcendental mediator, that was how I got introduced to the big blue book. That’s another story, but all along the line every time I ever needed anything, it was always there.

And then I got married at 19 and I realized that I got married too young. (inaudible) and then I jumped right from the frying pan into the fire because I realized, Holy Smokes! (laughter) and this man is not going to take care of my children.

JOYce: How many husbands did you do?
JoiLin: Three. Three’s a charm.
JOYce: Me, too.

JoiLin: I married husband number two right away and he was (inaudible) and I was married for 15 years, and I remember one day – I mean, we had money, but I didn’t have a life. I had no personal life. And I remember standing in my family room one day just almost screaming, “There’s got to be more to life than this. There just has to be! I mean, there has to be!” So the next day I sat down and wrote a letter to God. “Dear God. I know that you want everybody on this world and all of your worlds to live a spiritually grounded life, to have a spiritual partner who supports who they are, what they are and where they’re going. I know you want that for us. I know you want that for me. And if you want me to have this person” (and here I am still married!) – “if you want me to have this person, you’re going to have to bring him to me, because I’m not going to go look for him. You bring him to me. If you do, (inaudible) (laughter).

He should be a computer programmer or better, because I was just getting into computers and I didn’t know squat about them and I needed somebody who could teach me. He had to be Urantia Book reader and it would be really nice if he was in the Teaching Mission, because I was a T/R. You know, all these things.” I’m a rock freak.

I have rocks for you, Mary.

Mary: By the way, I have a rock for you, too.

JoiLin: And a beard would be nice, because I had never gone out with anybody with a beard. And so I folded up my letter to God and put it in my God box and I locked it, and about a week or two later – I had been to conventions in my life, but I heard about this conference out in Flagstaff Arizona and it was for the Urantia Book and I just – some thing just said, “You’re going!” and I bit. I had never done that, but I went, and on the last day of that conference, almost the last hour, my friend Helen Luke, from Tallahassee, which is where I was living, brings this big guy up to me and she says, “I was just talking to Eric and he told me to give JoiLin a hug when we got back to Tallahassee and I said, well, she’s here.

So she introduces us and, you know, I’m getting ready to go to the teaching mission thing, and that’s where my mind was and I said, “It’s nice to meet you Eric. I’ve got somewhere I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you later.” And he had said, “I’m really sorry that I got off Urantia-L (e-list) without saying goodbye, because we had kibitzed back and forth on Urantia-L. I’m departed from that list and so is he, but so are a lot of people.

So I went to this Teaching Mission meeting and -- I’m a Reiki practitioner -- and I walk in and I see a number of people I can just feel their energy, so I think I can work on them, and all of a sudden here’s Eric standing in front of me and he said, “Can you help me? I’ve got a crick in my neck.” Sure. So I mean, that’s where it went. And we were married within several months.

Eric: It’s the old heart I knew her.

JoiLin: That was the old heart.

So that’s the beginning of “How did God give me everything that I’ve asked for?” I mean to the letter! And then like – you know, I moved out here to Colorado from Tallahassee and Eric and I got married and then in 2001 he lost his job as a computer expert and the bottom fell out and we were waiting and the contract that didn’t come in, and I have a friend in Colorado who would always ask me to T/R for her, but when I do, she’ll slip in questions that she thinks I want answered, so after we have gone through months and months trying to find a job – which is a new experience. He had always been wined and dined! – she would say, “Well, are they coming to the end of their trouble? Are things going to get better?” And my teacher would say, “No, they have a lot more to go through.” So Mary would tell me, and I’m like, “More to come.”

So then he lost his health. And I put him in the hospital December 20, 2002, and we’re told that he needs a new heart. We knew he had heart problems, but we didn’t know it was anywhere near like that, so in the meantime, we’ve got no income coming in. I wasn’t working. But we never had any of our important bills that went unpaid. I mean, God filled every crack that needed to be filled and –

So then he’s in the hospital and I’m literally watching this that and the other shut down. But I remember that, so … my friend would get my teacher back on the line again and say, “Well, are have they finally had enough?” “No, they got more yet. (Laughter) But remind them they’re going to make it.” So that became my mantra: “We’re going to get through this. We’re going to get through this.” And I knew we were.

And so then on December 21st the doctors said to me, “Your husband-- Has anybody told you how ill your husband – how bad off he is?” And I said, “No! I keep asking, and they say Oh, he’ll get through this. He just needs a tune-up.” It was funny, this one heart surgeon was honest with me. He said I don’t believe you all can make it. He needs a new heart.” Need a new heart?!!?! Tears. “And I want your permission and I’ll get your husband’s too. We need a transplant. We’ll take him to the University Hospital for the evaluation.” Well, the evaluation took seventeen days. Every day I would go talk to his group and I would say, “Is he on the list yet?” Because he can’t even get a heart until he is on the list. “Are we on it yet? Did you put him on the list?” “No not yet. We still have one more test. One more test.”

And so finally on the seventeenth of January, I went home a little bit early from the hospital, and up until then my faith was solid. I knew we were going to get through this! But as I was watching Eric, going through dialysis, I’m watching his liver, his kidneys fail, and I just … I knew. He was going to die. And I went home and as I’m driving home, I’m just bawling. I can barely just see to drive. And I’m saying, “I’m begging. “I’m begging. Please God. Please don’t take this man from me. You brought him to me; don’t take him from me.”

And about the time I got home, I threw myself on my bed and I realized something: That’s selfish. You faith has been intact all this time. Don’t think that. God needs him to come home. I know that this life is not the end of our lives; it’s a beginning, to begin with, so Okay. You got bigger plans for him and the opportunity. You have to take him, because he’s suffering. I’m not going to like it but do it. And it was like God took the weight of the world off my shoulders. I admitted that. I said, “Okay. He’s yours. I’m yours.” And I went to bed.

And I got to the hospital the next morning and four of his team members came rushing up. “Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Johnson, we found his heart. We found a heart!” Ahhh! And I said, “But he’s not even on the list!” Oh, he got on the list late last night, when I was talking to God. (Laughter) And he said, “But don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up. We haven’t even evaluated his heart yet and we’ve gotten as far as the operating room and we’ve had to turn back,” and I said, “Piece of cake. He’s fine. I know he is.” And that’s my faith and I’m not letting go of that. That’s his heart.

And it was his heart. So we got a heart in, what, 15 hours, and he was put on the list and his whole team said it was absolutely unprecedented, it’s never happened anywhere. It’s usually anywhere from a minimum of three months, usually 5 to 15 months after you’re on it.

So then, he has his heart and … every day, you’ve never seen anybody wired like this man’s been wired. Oh, my God. I would go in there and I would look at the monitors. I’m looking at the monitors and the minute I saw a number fall, I knew it was a triple number. I was out there. If they weren’t here already, doing something, I was out there.
And so all of a sudden I’m looking at his skin and he’s getting white as paste. I thought now what?!?! What’s wrong with him now. And so I told the doctors, I said, “There’s something wrong! There’s something wrong.” And so they had been checking his toes and they were getting black. Apparently, he had a lesion in his ascending colon. They began giving him blood; they were giving him blood and he was losing it faster than we could give it. So they rush (this is ten days after his heart transplant) him into surgery to do emergency surgery and they took out all of the <inaudible> transfers.

You know, I knew we were going to get through it! Because I’d been assured that no matter what, no matter how bad it got, we would get through it. And Eric just celebrated his second year. And he had zero rejection …. [Applause]

Edith: I’d like to tell you something wonderful that happened to me, and God is wonderful, and he hears and he answers prayers. My husband had been feeling bad. He was 92. He was in his chair and all of a sudden he put his hands up like this and said, “Oh, God, please take me!” and before he could drop his hands, he was dead.

** Wow!
** Wow!

Edith: And I thought that was a miracle in itself. And since then I have had miracle after miracle after miracle happen to me. I’ve been promised that I won’t hurt if I fall, and I’ve done it. I’ve fallen on cement on my face and my teeth got out of my mouth. I come up, I did not have one red spot on my face.

**Wow.

Edith: I had baked a cake for a little girl and I had a big platter. A big one. And I’d made a cheesecake and I started to open the back door of the car … and I started to fall and I yelled, “Michael!” and something picked me up and took me over and put me on the other side of the car. And I found out it was a midwayer. But he answers prayers and he is so wonderful. And I never call him Jesus. I always call him Big Brother. And I didn’t know why I did that, but I found out … one evening we were sitting in the house and Eugenia T/R’d and I had this funny feeling about this clothes closet. I knew something happened in this clothes closet but I didn’t know what it was. I could see the shelves and I compared them with all the clothes closets I had ever been and I never did figure out what it was. This was in 1920. And the soldiers were all coming back with the flu, you know, and everyone is dying around us? And I thought I had done something bad, so Michael told me. And he come to me and he says, “I am your Big Brother and I’ve come to help you.” As a child I hadn’t remembered, but I always called him Big Brother.

Eugenia: There’s a little more to that.

Edith: Oh, yeah.

Eugenia: She thought she was dying and she thought she had done something wrong. Everybody else was dying around her and it was in 1918, that period of time, lots of people had died and she was afraid that she was going to die, too. And that’s when Michael came to her and said, “I’m your Big Brother and I’ll take care of you.”

Edith: I was five years old.

Eugenia: I remember that was a pretty powerful experience. (Applause)

Edith: And another thing is that I was kind of depressed one day and I says, “Michael, all I think would help me is a big hug,” and honestly, I could feel the hug! (Laughter)

Eric: Yeah. Angels are good huggers.

Eugenia: I asked her one time why she always prayed so specifically. You know, people will pray and they’ll say, but Lord, your will be done, not mine. And she says, “Well, you’d ask your Big Brother to help you if you thought you needed help, wouldn’t you?” She said, Of course I’m gonna pray specifically because he will help me! That’s a testimony.

Eric: Well, he does
Edith: Well, he does. He’s something else.

Leoma: After I saw that stethoscope came down and I thought about it for awhile, then I felt arms around me, too, and that embrace …

Edith: It’s an odd feeling, isn’t it, when you say something like that and it happens. Like, “All I need is a big hug.”

Eric: Maybe he’ll do a passage to, where he’ll ask you to take the Urantia Book and do the morontia appearance afterwards, with his exact words.

Eugenia: I’m waiting for the artist to come with the sequel of that and give the other story.

Bill: I was going to ask, did the movie cover the resurrection at all?

All: No.

Bill: That’s what’s really frustrating me. I see people focusing on the crucifixion but they never talk about the resurrection. And that’s the point! It wasn’t the crucifixion, it was the resurrection.

Edith: I have an old Aramaic bible, and the difference in it and the King James is something else. Ands when Jesus was on the cross, according to the Aramaic bible, he said, when he died, he said, “It is finished.” That isn’t what the Bible says. It wasn’t that. He just said, “It is finished.” But there’s so many different things, but when that King James Bible was written, they didn’t know anything thing about this Aramaic Bible.

Linda: Did they get it off the old Latin bible? The King James was taken from the Latin and made into King James’ English.

Edith: No, this one wasn’t. Mine was Arab. And it has never had anything but one, from the Arabs writing, and it’s the darnedest looking writing you ever saw.

JoAnn: I have a little companion story to Eric and JoiLin’s that I’d like to share. When Eric was in the hospital, after receiving his transplant, and the whole community is going “Yea, now everything’s going to be all right.” I was planning to go visit him and do some Reiki and some praying for him and it was a Monday and I thought, “No, I don’t think I’m supposed to go today. I just had this feeling it wasn’t the right day to go, and the next day was Tuesday and I knew I should go, but I had a lot of things to do, and I kept getting, “Well, go ahead and go later, go later,” and all of a sudden I started this: “Get ready to go!”

And so I started putting away my things I started getting, “Go now! Go now! Go now!” and so … I wasn’t T/R’ing then. This was just my own spiritual guidance. I was listening to the familiar to me, so I get in the car and I think, “I really need to stop at Wild Oats.” “GO NOW!” (Laughter) So I drove to the hospital. I got a parking place one space away from the hospital without looking at all, which is really unusual. And I went up to his room and … the minute I came to the door I looked at Eric and JoiLin and they both had these like totally stressed looks on their face and I knew something wasn’t right. And so I just came in and started praying for them, and I said, “Well, I think I’ve been called here, you know, to bring you the energy of the merkaba that we use and to bring Father’s energy to you and to take it with you wherever you go,” and Eric just suddenly went, “(Sigh)” and he got this peaceful look on his face, and a little smiley face and that was how he went up into surgery. You could just feel the energy just calm him entirely.

And then I stayed and talked with JoiLin and I found out a day or two later that from the night when they had started knowing that something was wrong, and all these tests, in the whole day before you went into surgery, there was one 20-minute period when anyone could have gotten in to see him. And I showed up then. And that’s an example of what JOYce said before about – not JOYce, but Michael, said, “You are my hands and feet. You are the ways that I work in the world.” And so if when we respond to those inner urges, that’s how God works in the world, through each of us. And it’s really a beautiful and profound experience to be the receiver, and to be in the position of being the giver, because we’re all experiencing the same love. It’s beautiful. Yeah.

Eric: And the proof that the love was there.

Lucille: It’s the love that really heals.

** We can heal everything through love. That what Jesus taught.
** It was his love that did the healing. That’s it!

Eric: It goes beyond that, though.

JOYce: It’s a love that ... that love, this – is all love. It’s all love doing it. And we could sit here all day, and sing it. Every one of us has experienced this.

Helen: There’s an expression: Everybody has a story.

JOYce: Everybody does have a story.

Eric: It goes beyond that, though. God doesn’t just heal us. God rules the entire universe. Imagine, if you will, this world being ruled -- temporally, and our government -- being ruled by God. It’s hard to imagine that now, but that’s the direction we’re headed.

Barry: It’s going. Slowly. But we’re pushing … because the mind set will be light and life. Which is what we’re trying to teach the children now. That’s the way I see it. Don’t worry about Jesus. Or books.

Linda: Eric, you really are a miracle story. You really are, because I see people in your condition all the time, and you know they simply die. And people, all their friends are around them, they pray for them, they pray for miracles, they appeal to God’s love. I think a lot has to do with the person, whether they want to be healed, whether or not they believe they can be healed. I think a lot of times the illness, you know, lack of energy, the drain of the disease simply overpowers them. And they simply want to give up. They do. And even though it’s like there are a few miracles happen here and there, for the most part they don’t. SO I don’t know whether this is just this ‘not fair thing’ you know, in their soul course to have a miracle! But you never want to give up that hope or that doubt your faith thing. You know, you don’t want to change that, but being in my profession and being realistic, we sort of say, “It’s not going to do any good you guys,” but we never tell them that. You know, because you can never … but I’m sure they approached you with ‘he’s dying. This guy’s got a dying heart,’ you know?

JoiLin: They never told me he wasn’t going to make it.

Linda: That’s what I—They don’t. They don’t. Because you don’t know! And you don’t want to dispel that.

JoiLin: Well, Eric had people all over the world, literally, praying for him. Everybody that we knew and knew us or knew somebody who knew us put them on their church whatever prayer list.

Eric: Also, when they were telling me that I would probably have a 9 to 15 month wait, I could hear God inside me saying, “You’re not going to have to wait that long.” Well how long does that mean? (Laughter) What do you mean by soon? (Laughter) Because our time and divine time are totally different things, so it was a total shocker to me, even, that … the next day?!?! (Laughter) From 9 in the evening, and I’d have a new heart by noon the next day. Oh, you really did mean, “Not that long.” I knew I wasn’t going to die. I knew I was going to make it. But that might have something to do with the kind of goals that I have, and the ways that I want to glorify God, that might have added in some way to why they wanted to keep me going.

Linda: -- to survive so you could tell these stories and pass on this faith.

Eric: Well, that’s certainly part of it. You have no idea how many of us are … I had been told a couple of years before that I had been working my guardian angel overtime.

JOYce: When we hear stories like this, we begin to bring forward these miraculous things that have happened. There is a tendency to begin to babble, without realizing it’s happening; it’s a subconscious thing, but for some of us to believe that there are degrees of love, because we see someone who –

Virginia: Has a miracle.

JOYce: -- who made it. As opposed to someone else, a woman I knew who has churches praying all over the place, laying on of hands and every conceivable thing that could be done, she died. And then the tendency was to hear about: You lived and she died, and we begin to think God must love this person or that person…

Eugenia: But that’s an erroneous viewpoint.

JOYce: It’s that person has a tendency – there is a tendency to begin to feel this way. We have the tendency to ask the question, Why this one and not that one? There are no degrees in love. It’s just simply: Love is.

Mary: Healing may be done by Michael!

Helen: There are degrees of receptivity. And there are degrees in love. You can have as much as you can really hold.

JoAnn: As much as you can receive. Or accept.

Helen: Your receptivity, is what I’ve been told, is all that’s holding us back here.

Linda: So sometimes … surface-wise … a person may think, “yeah, well, of course I want to live.” Especially if they don’t have our sense of adventure that we know what’s beyond, and I don’t think any of us would say, “No! I don’t wanna go there!” but people that think that this is the only life I have and it’s not fair, it’s black (it’s) darkness or something, but still I think the person who’s dying, that person is the one that makes the decision -- that … nobody dies without their permission. And some people would rather be rid of all this stuff than continue on with the suffering or the disease or the condition, or even just going back to that fantasy life. I think a lot of it is escape. A lot of them took themselves to that point, too, and so it’s … like you say, everybody’s loved. There’s help there for everybody, but it’s up to that individual.

JoAnn: Yeah, even our belief systems can limit how we receive healing energy. Like you could have somebody in the hospital bed with 12 people around them, laying hands on them, with the energy flowing in and the person lying there is going, “Good things never happen to me.” (Laughter) “Miracles are really rare!”

Helen: But receptivity – we said the morontia form of Jesus. Are we really ready for that? I mean, to the bottoms of our shoes, are we really ready, because if we could come into a union, a total receptivity at this point, right here, right now, that’s the only thing, I think, that holds us back.

JoAnn: Right.

Helen: And I’ve said to him before, “If you showed up at the foot of my bed, how would I respond? Like … an alien, or what? So there’s a lot of stuff going on.

Bill: I’d like to tell you how thankful I am to be here today. There’ve been plenty of times in my life when I didn’t know I was going to survive. I’ll tell you about one time. Down in San Antonio. I had a wonderful time riding the boat around the river that goes through the town. I turned from the ride and stepped out of that boat and started walking down the street. There were a lot of things going on there that day; it was a Saturday and there were a lot of people around. Anyway, I guess I wasn’t watching where I was going. I tripped over the cobblestones that had been raised up a little bit. I tripped on it and fell flat on my face. I got my hand down and protected my face and I broke my kneecap in a couple of places when I fell. It just almost knocked me out. Eugenia was there. I didn’t know what to do.

Eugenia: He was in almost shock at this point, because it was very painful and the knee stopped him in his tracks.

Bill: Anyway, there was a GI there with his family, a young man. He came over to me and there was a big crowd there and nobody seemed to know what to do. He just picked me up, carried me over and put me down on the bench, a park bench, and he knelt down in front of me, put his hand on my knee. He says, “May I pray for you?” Perfect stranger. Well, he did. My wife put her hand over his hand and they both did that. It was wonderful.

Eugenia: There were some other miracles that happened. We had just passed by an emergency room. It was Saturday afternoon. We were supposed to leave here. We had packed our bags. Left them at the hotel. We were going to fly out on the last flight of the day. So I had remembered that there was an emergency room just around the corner, but we are down in the Riverwalk, and there’s no elevators except in the Hilton Hotel. Otherwise there’s just stairs. I mean, there really no way to get up. It’s amazing. Everything just orchestrated beautifully. A waiter came from a restaurant that was right next door and he said, “Is there anything that I can do to help?” I said, “Well, we could sure use a wheelchair, because he can’t walk and I can’t carry him.” And this poor man, you know, who had the children and his wife, he sent his wife and children to go wait for him while he tended to Bill as much as he felt he needed to. That waiter disappeared; the next thing I know he ran over to the emergency room, talked them out of the wheelchair, got the wheelchair back there. This man, the Air man, he had just graduated from some course. He was going to be flown off somewhere the next day. This was his last day with his own family. I said, “I think I can push it on over there.” And he said, “No, I think you need some help, so I’ll see that he gets to the emergency room. We get over there, get to the emergency room, they don’t want to deal with him, he’s in pain, they don’t want to give him any medication for the pain, you know, and some other person was in the back of the emergency room screaming and they just kept saying, “Well, no we can’t deal with you.” Well, I finally said, “I’ve got to have a phone. I’ve got to find out if we can cancel our flight. What are we going to do.” They began to realize our plight and pitched in to help us and that help was there for us all the way home, everything just orchestrated like little clockwork. We made it to the airport. They gave him a special seat. It’s very very funny. We get into the airplane and they had moved somebody and given Bill a chair so that he could have his knee elevated, which was in a brace at this point. Now mind you, this is Saturday and we’re – this poor man comes in and this poor man had broken his hip! And he had been moved! The neat thing about it was, they had given him a seat, but the seat that they put him in was really better for his situation than Bill’s situation, and Bill needed the – It was so weird, how all of this – so we get home. The wheelchair is there waiting us because we have to go down and get up and we get back to the car and everything just went smoothly, and it was as though it was orchestrated.

Eric: It was!

Eugenia: Of course it was orchestrated. We don’t always recognize these methods. And we went through heart surgery, too, and we’ve got stories about that, too. Ours was, in our own way, as dramatic, but again, I can tell you about the orchestration.

Bill: I may be 82 years old but I’m so thankful. My life has been preserved a number of times. (Applause) I could write a book about it.

Group: We need to take a break.


 

Back to the Retreat Homepage