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Sad Day
I spent a lot of today with a very close friend who about a year ago was diagnosed with early onset dementia at the young age of 55. Those of us close to him feel that he actually began suffering from this several years before he was diagnosed.
I had not seen him for about six months and was hoping his medication was helping keep the dementia at bay. The change in this person is heartbreaking.
In a shallow two or three minute conversation he appears to pretty much be himself but he no longer can really carry on a conversation beyond simple exchanges. Even then he sometimes struggles for the right words to come out and you can tell that the word that does is not the one he really wanted to use. Sometimes they make sense and sometimes don't.
In conversation today I found out that he could not remember what year he got married and he would call people by the wrong names which I knew because based on the other parts of the conversation I knew who he really meant.
This man was a Pentecostal preacher who has started churches from nothing and taken small run down churches and fixed up the physical plants and pastored the people with love and dedication. The last church he pastored he was there 7 years in a church that had chewed up and spit out pastors an average of once every two years over the 50 year history of the church.
I know that he has a desire to witness and conduct bible studies even today but in his present condition there is no way he could do that. Very sad situation. This is one of those life situations that we just don't have any answers for and have to trust God.
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"I think some people love spiritual bondage just the way some people love physical bondage. It makes them feel secure. In the end though it is not healthy for the one who is lost over it or the one who is lives under the oppression even if by their own choice"
Titus2woman on AFF
"We did not wear uniforms. The lady workers dressed in the current fashions of the day, ...silks...satins...jewels or whatever they happened to possess. They were very smartly turned out, so that they made an impressive appearance on the streets where a large part of our work was conducted in the early years.
"It was not until long after, when former Holiness preachers had become part of us, that strict plainness of dress began to be taught.
"Although Entire Sanctification was preached at the beginning of the Movement, it was from a Wesleyan viewpoint, and had in it very little of the later Holiness Movement characteristics. Nothing was ever said about apparel, for everyone was so taken up with the Lord that mode of dress seemingly never occurred to any of us."
Quote from Ethel Goss (widow of 1st UPC Gen Supt. Howard Goss) book "The Winds of God"
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