Between the services, we visit the sick and give food and clothing to the poor. Late Sunday evening, we pack up the bibles and song books and leave for home. He has to be a work at the mill at 6:00am on monday. This pattern has been going on now about six years but it never gets old. The four churches under his care are, Antioch, Blue Ridge, Commons Creek, and Smithsville. All are small churches with about 10-21 members but several shuts in at each location. Time to time there are weddings but mostly funerals and wakes. I guess that is the way life goes. My story is centered around one of those fellowships. It was a very cold Sunday in Commons Creek and a snow fall had come the night before. We were late arriving and didn’t expect many to come out in such weather. I remember arriving about 30 minutes late and seeing just one wagon pulled up the the church. We hurried inside the church to find three adults and two children huddled around the pot belly stove trying to stay warm. At first I didn’t recognize the family but after hearing the voice of the wife, I knew it was the Dudley family. They had traveled many miles just to get to the church and were intent on hearing a sermon. What we didn’t know was that they were also expecting two of the children to be baptized in the creek. I remember this was January of that year and of course the winter weather had set in. We had noticed that the creek had frozen over. Now understand that the church had no baptism pool and the only place was the creek. Below zero temperature, combined with snow had made the creek very dangerous. Nothing doing but to have the baptism.
