Teaching, Preaching, and Healing: Memoirs of a Missionary

By William T. Guthrie

It seems God had a way of communicating his will to me through daydreams. Bill Guthrie is a natural storyteller. His rich, warm voice brought the gospel alive to congregations all over the world. He was also gifted in collecting and telling family stories. These gifts combine to create a body of knowledge with personal, spiritual, and religious significance. As Bills voice began to grow weak, it was feared that these stories, these unique observations and recollections of times of war, recovery, poverty, and prosperity would disappear. In 19xx Bills youngest daughter, W. June Holstrum, began to gather Bills stories on audio cassette. She transcribed them, then passed them on to her youngest daughter, Shawn M. Davis, to assemble and edit them into this volume. Inspirational in nature, this book is a testament to the power of faith and prayer.

From a rambunctious childhood, through the penniless depressions years, and into a ministry that led him throughout the United States and Korea, William T. Guthries memoirs gives a personal look at one mans relationship with God and how that guided him throughout his life. Wherever he went, he had the ability to look through outward appearances and connect with people, all people, regardless of age, race, circumstances or religious belief.

His journey begins in the hills and hollows of Missouri and Illinois. There, he transforms from a church skipping, pool-hall haunting youth into a somewhat over-serious young minister. No stranger to hard times, his story reveals occasions of near tragedy and despair averted through prayer. In clear and vivid details he recounts healings and other miracles which could only have been brought about by a loving God.

Although Bill believed in miracles and the power of prayer, he also believed in the value of hard work. He sawed wood, pounded nails, and did any manner of hard labor to ensure that people had a place to worship. When his ministry took him to war-torn Korea, he didnt just save souls, but also changed lives. Whether allowing a young Korean woman to take a long, hot bath or arranging for a disfigured young boy to have reconstructive surgery on his face, Bills priority was always people, their welfare, and what he could do to help. And his wife, Jane, was always by his side

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465334251

William T. Guthrie

Bill Guthrie was born in Nebo, Illinois in 1917. By 12 years of age he was doing a mans work on his fathers farm. He married Jane at 17 and they were inseparable until her death in 2000. In 1938 he was ordained a priest in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and in 1947 he became a full-time missionary. He didnt just preach from the pulpit; throughout his ministrywhether in the United States, or abroadhed get his hands dirty helping build churches and lives. He died in 2003 at the age of 86.

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Copyright © 2007 by William T. Guthrie.

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Contents

HERITAGE

YOUTH & HORSES

COURTSHIP

THE CALLING

SANCTIFY YOURSELF

EARLY MINISTRY

HARD TIMES

PROSPERITY

PRAYERS AND FUNERALS

THE CHURCH COMES TO TOWN

REGRESSION

THAYER

SPIRITUAL GIFTS AND GUIDANCE

EXPERIENCE AND INSPIRATION

MOVING ON

THE AGNOSTIC

SPIRITUAL UTTERANCE

CHEROKEE

FAITH AND HEALING

TAKING THE GOSPEL INTO THE WORLD

HORSES AND CATTLE IN THE STREET

WHAT IS OUR MISSION?

EXPERIENCES IN MAINE

CONTROVERSY

SILENCED

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX D

DEDICATION

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Bill and Jane Guthrie, who spent their lives helping others. Jane Guthrie believed in the importance of education. In all the places she went, nationally and internationally, she helped children to learn. All proceeds from this book will go to the Bill and Jane Guthrie Foundation, a non-profit project that assists eligible students in Belize, Central America to continue in their high school education. In Belize, families are responsible for the majority of the cost of education beyond the eighth grade. Scholarships are given based on previous academic success and financial need.

HERITAGE

To begin, I’d like to talk a little bit about my heritage. I believe heritage is of great importance. I don’t mean we should use our upbringing as an excuse: saying my problems today are because I had a hard time when I was a child, or I was neglected, or I was abused, or my parents weren’t this or that. I think that we can overcome our problems. But, everything we do, are, think, and even the language we speak, of course we borrowed that from our parents. What I’m trying to say is that some of these incidents that I will relate now had a bearing on my life.

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Merle and Bill Guthrie—1917

To set this in order, make a beginning, I’ve gone back to the book of Enos, page 193 of the Book of Mormon. Enos writes a very short story of his life. He is very thoughtful in the way he begins it. He says, Behold, it came to pass that I, Enos, knowing my father, that he was a just man: for he taught me in his language, and also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And blessed be the name of my God for it. So Enos was thanking God for the teaching of his father. He owed a lot to his parentage and his background. He believed in God, to begin with. He believed he could pray to God. That alone was a rich heritage.

He was taught right from wrong. He was taught the principle of repentance: that we could turn to God and be shed of our sins, turn over a new leaf, and live a new life. These simple principles of life are just as true today as they were then. I find a lot of myself in Enos. I have much to be thankful for.

The farthest back I can remember was when I was three. Dad had a big old stallion that he bought (he was always bringing in something) that he called wobbly Pete, because he was so big that he walked kind of awkward. I remember Dad coming down that lane from the barn with wobbly Pete and some other horse hitched up. I was out there with Mom; she was always out and around, sharing the farm work; she loved the stock, the same as Dad did. Well, Dad lifted me up on that horse. Now, that’s no big thing to get excited about, but for a three year old, that was kind of a big moment, and that lift etched itself into my memory to this day of sitting up there, astride that big horse, me a three year old hitched to a wagon with the harness on it.

Now, my Grandfather, William A. Guthrie, was a minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He wasn’t a good administrator, but he was a great missionary, counselor, and preacher. He was wise. When neighbors had land disputes, he could be a go between and bring them back together. He was led and directed, and I listened to those things he talked about. Then, two generations later I experienced the same things and that confirmed to me the truth of what he was telling me. When I first started in the mission field, one fellow appointee said that I almost ruined my ministry by talking so much about my Grandfather. Well, it was that heritage that I was speaking of. It was me and what I had felt.

Grandpa was quite a funeral preacher. He was so good, there were people who said that he made you want to die, he made it sound so good. I never heard him preach a funeral that I can remember; he had a sickness before I became re-interested in the church and made my way back. Anyway, he had a great reputation as a funeral preacher and preached funerals far and wide: members and non-members, sinners and reprobates and all kinds of people.

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William A. Guthrie

Grandfather of Bill Guthrie

This was in the days that people had formal debates over their religions. These debates were organized, scheduled, and advertised. Grandpa used to share with me some of the points that he’d make.

In our area, there was one branch of the Church of Christ that did not believe in miracles of any kind. They would preach and debate that the days of miracles had ceased. One time a missionary for our church came to hold a revival meeting. It wasn’t a debate, but some of our neighbors from that Church of Christ attended. They were good people, and devout in their faith. A whole family came that night. They objected to some of the things that the preacher had said about miracles. When it was over, they walked down front to tell him so.

The people were slow in getting out, listening to the impromptu debate. Grandpa wanted to help our brother missionary. There were so many people in the aisle that he couldn’t get to where they were arguing. So he up and walked down the pews, stepping over the back of one pew to the next. He walked over all the pews to get to the front of the church.

Then Grandpa said to this neighbor, Mr. Bunn, when you get medicine from the doctor to give to your family, don’t you pray over that medicine before you administer it?

Grandpa knew that they did, and that they even had a special name for the blessing.

Oh, yes, Mr. Bun said, we always bless the remedy.

So Grandpa said, Well, Mr. Bunn, do you realize that if your prayer changes the effectiveness or potency of that medicine one bit, if God raised one finger, to make that medicine better for you to take, then a miracle has occurred. Why do you pray for a miracle, and then argue so strongly that they don’t exist?

That kind of logic appealed to me. I’m not telling you that story to criticize a people, or denomination, but to illustrate some of the things that I grew up with. Grandpa had a way of putting things in plain English and explaining them to people. He was very adept and he could stand up to small and great and defend this gospel that we know as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He always emphasized the truth of it.

When I was a boy, our little county church wasn’t always open. I can’t remember really, when it was open. That may sound strange.

At one point, the church building had gone down, the roof was leaking, the weeds grew up, and my uncle had a hog pen and a loading chute built on the back of it. He used it as a farm building.

Then there’d come a time where they’d really get busy. The women had some sales, raised some money. They put a new roof on it. They had to re-plaster the whole building. We had services from time to time, primarily through the instrumentation of my Aunt Bernita and Laura Puterbaugh. Laura’s parents were members there in the hollow; she was a very gifted, devoted member, very good in worship services. It was really the leadership of the women.

Then finally a missionary was engaged by Grandpa and was a very good speaker. He was a big, dignified, older man with lots of speaking experience and an eloquent voice. He had been to Europe and around, had a pretty good message. That helped the family. We had become careless. We were playing pinochle in our home. We had always been opposed to that sort of thing. Anyway, we cleaned up our act somewhat.

My dad always liked to do things big. He was going to make his fortune with sheep. He didn’t know anything about sheep. He just pressured and pressured Grandpa to back him. Finally, he bought a carload of western sheep and shipped them in. They weren’t acclimated to our climate and lots of them died, then the price went bad. Dad tells the story about those old sheep dying and they would go out there and skin the hides to sell the pelts to salvage a little bit, but that’s all they got out of these sheep that they had borrowed money to buy.

That’s just one example. He’d tell about when he had a hired man that skinned the sheep. One time one of the sheep died and the man wasn’t there, so dad decided to do it himself. So a man told him to take a chew of tobacco and that would kind of kill the odor of the dead, ripe sheep during hot weather. Dad didn’t know which made him the sickest: the odor of the sheep or the tobacco. But he got so sick that he nearly died skinning that sheep.

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Mamie and Oral Guthrie

Parents of Bill Guthrie

My dad was careless in his stewardship of business and did things that I shudder at today and was often angered with, but, there were a lot of other things that he taught us. He taught us right from wrong. He taught us of God without ever saying God, and about prayer without having grace at the table. He taught us respect for God, respect for the Lord’s Day, and he taught us to be courteous with older people and thoughtful of younger people.

I never remembered hearing them pray and they didn’t talk religion much; they didn’t even go to church as much as they should have. In fact, I don’t remember going at all during those early years, but maybe they did. They didn’t talk about the Book of Mormon or what was in it, and yet it was a part of my heritage and helped to draw me back into the church after I neglected it.

We were people of very limited funds. I never felt poor, because in many ways we were rich. Our parents didn’t quarrel in front of us. I remember a happy home. Mom was an excellent cook; we always had plenty of food. Home grown, home spun, and home flavored. The sheets were always white, the clothing was always clean, and the house was always clean. There wasn’t much money and we carried our water from the spring, quite some distance, and we carried our water for washing our clothes. She washed them by hand on a board—a washboard. A lot of things we didn’t have, but I like to think of the things we did have.

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Bill Guthrie—Age 4 years

Sitting on one pet pig scratching the other

When I was about 4 or 5, we had a big oak tree that I played under. I’d harness the kittens like they were workhorses. I’d hitch them to shoe boxes. I had a lot of run-a-ways; they didn’t agree with what I was doing with them. I would gather little twigs, and make orchards. I played under that tree with all homemade toys I created myself.

One day I was playing there when suddenly the thought came that someday I’d have to die. I guess that thought comes to all of us at times. None of us that I know of has the complete answer.

I panicked. I started crying wildly and ran up the hill to the house. Mom thought something was wrong, that I’d been hurt. She gathered me up in her arms and began to dry my tears. She comforted me and tried to get out of me what was wrong.

She finally could tell what I was saying: someday I’d have to die. In such a comforting and motherly way, she said, Yes, that’s right son. We all do, but that will be a long time from now. And in the meantime, you will see your grandparents, then you will see Dad and I go, and all the time you’ll be learning more about it and by that time, you’ll understand and it won’t be anything to be afraid of.

That comforted me. I had a feeling that my mother, who didn’t appear to be a religious person, had a little help from the Lord on that answer. There was inspiration in what she said. She had a knack for saying the right thing at the right time to her children.

I did a few ornery things when I was a boy there. One time, there was an old cast iron stove. I threw a handful of 22 cartridges in the fire one night. Of course those things all exploded and went off like a gun shooting. They’d strike the sides of the cast iron, but luckily wouldn’t go through.

The worst thing I did, we were having the Christmas play. Bernita was coaching it. We were all there rehearsing. It was cold, but we didn’t have any wood for the stove; I guess no one wanted to cut it. So I got a bright idea. We had some old truck tires that had been blown out and thrown away. So I got an axe and cut some of those tires up into stove lengths and took it up there and built the fire from them. I filled the stove full of those old tires. I didn’t realize they would burn so hot. The old stove got red all over. It had a long pipe that went straight up to the ceiling and then turned and went along to the end of the building, about 25 links. The whole stove pipe was red. They had to move the pews out; they were scorching, smoking, and burning. Everybody moved back and had to get way over against the wall until that fire burned down.

I was guilty of a few things of that kind back in those days. I could name a number of incidents. On down the road was the main road that went below the house. Dad had a little car shed is what we called it—a garage—down there, and sometimes tools would be parked there that needed repairing. I remember once a horse drawn mowing machine was sitting there. It had a seat on it that was metal and had a big wide metal spring that was bolted on; that is, it was just a flat piece of steel that had spring in it to soften the ride. I stood up in that seat and started jumping up and down. Dad, in his kind way, told me to be careful and not do that, that I’d get hurt. I went ahead, and he told me a second time that I’d get hurt, maybe a third time. Anyway, I gave a spring on it, and somehow it flipped me. Of course, the seat was high. If I had been standing on the ground, the seat would be waist high. The ground was all rocky around there, gravel, hardest of earth. That flipped me in the air and turned me a somersault and I lit flat on my back, down on that hard earth and knocked the wind out of me. That was a lesson in obedience that I learned, by nature—not by heavy hand from my father.

There were other lessons like that. There had once been a dam across the creek so cars could cross. Water ran over it all the time. It bored out a deep hole that the community used for swimming. I never swam; I was afraid of the water. Mom would go down near there to wash her clothes because she could dip that clear water out of the creek and that was our only water source. The spring was up the road quite a ways. I would run back and forth along the wall of this dam and then through the water that ran across, which was mossy and slick. My mother told me several times, Be careful, son. Don’t run across there. You’ll slip and fall in.

I kept on running, and finally it happened. Quicker than you could snap your fingers, my feet flew out from under me and down over that dam I went, right into that deepest water. I had never been in that water, didn’t know how to swim. I just settled to the bottom and got up and walked out. I don’t know how I knew to hold my breath or what, I just feel like I had some help. I calmly started walking. Of course it wasn’t a deep hole, just burrowed out and a gravel bar just below it. I just walked out on that bar, no problem except I was wet. Nevertheless, I had learned a lesson.

In my early days Dad had gone to Independence to work for a brief time. I was 10 years old. One Sunday after church we were having dinner and I said, Dad, they’re going to have a baptismal service on Children’s Day. I’d like to be baptized. A lot of the kids I know are being baptized.

He said, Why are you being baptized? Because they are?

No, because I really want to. I couldn’t give him a reason, I couldn’t explain the doctrine. I didn’t know much about the church. I had one year of Sunday School that I could remember. But something down deep said that it was the thing to do. That was at the Walnut Park Church, in Independence, in 1927. I can truthfully say that I’ve never doubted that one time in my whole life. I knew that it was the thing to do.

YOUTH & HORSES

During the summer of ’29, when I was 12, Dad was unemployed; he had had a number of jobs, and had been in business twice in the two years that we had been there. But he finally went to Kansas in the summer for the wheat harvest. It was very lucrative; he was either driving a truck or had a job in the elevator that received the wheat as it was brought in from the fields. My folks sent me back to stay with my grandparents in Howell Hollow. I visited with my mother’s mother and my mother’s sister, Aunt Em, and Will Shaw, over near Nebo. So I passed around among them but spent most of my time there at Grandma Guthrie’s. It was kind of a stopping place for a lot of the grandchildren.

One cousin, Dorman, who was my favorite, was near the same age as me and we had things in common. Dorman was mature in some ways for his age. He was a steady influence and a kindly boy. There was no harm in him. He lived his Baptist religion as he was brought up to. We really had some good moments together. He might not have been as creative as I was as to what to get into mischief over, but he was more of a steadying influence and of a sobering nature, which I could use a great deal of.

Anyway, it was kind of a gathering place. They had an acreage there; plenty of land and left over animals from different ones in the family were taken there. When Dad moved to Missouri, he hadn’t disposed of an old, black, one-eyed mare. She wasn’t any larger than a saddle horse but was built, as we used to say, blocky. You know, thick bodied, heavier legs, a work animal. She was kind of temperamental, a fussy old mare. I think at times when she saw us boys coming, she knew about what to expect. She would lay her ears to scare us off, but we’d call her bluff and catch her anyway, even though she was threatening to eat us up.

We rode her. We took the axle from a boggie, an old cart, and metal cultivator wheels that were only maybe three feet or less in diameter. Then we ran shafts up and tied them to this axle and rigged a harness up. We put an old car seat on—it was a pretty flimsy outfit—and we would travel all over the country with it, working this old black mare. Then, my second cousin, that would be grandpa’s own nephew, left a mare there: a little taller, slimmer mare, bay color. We worked her, too. Usually I remember horses’ names, but I can’t remember the name of either one of them.

The story I want to tell is about the bay. Once in a while we tried our hand at fishing. Our creek there had a branch that came all the way down Howell Hollow. It was fed by spring water and was clear and you could see all the fish that were in it. There weren’t any deep holes. Anyway, it went on down and emptied out of Howell Hollow and got down into the flatter river bottomland. After a flash flood or heavy rain, water would come roaring down, just in waves, muddy and washing a lot of gravel with it. Then when it got on down and leveled out in the river bottom, it gradually lost its swiftness and left its debris: tree limbs and stumps and all kinds of things. It would drop it’s gravel so that, way down this creek, maybe a mile from where it came out of the hills and entered the river bottom land, it would be just a flat, level, dry, creek bed. It made a good road. It was really the only road you had down there.

You go down far enough and it became a drainage canal that was dredged. It was mostly just mud with a little water in it. The water started again down there but it was muddy water and of course, a bottom river type fish would come in there—carp and trash type of fish that weren’t the best in the world to eat, but fun to catch because they were good sized.

We went down one day with the cart and the old bay mare and a little fishing gear. We kept going until we came to where there was water. The gravel was sort of washed up to a ridge down the center that rounded off and one step from the gravel ridge that we were on was the muddy water where we would fish. We drove the mare right down the center of the creek on to this gravel bar where her front feet were just a short distance from the water. We decided that we would walk down the bank a way and try fishing.

We thought we had better tie the old mare up; she was standing there with the cart facing downstream. So, we led her across off this hump; it was just a little muddy there, sticky, didn’t seem bad. We led her over to the bank to tie her to a willow. As I led her, she stepped off the gravel bank that was solid and hard. She began to sink in the mud. She began to pull up her front feet and kept going forward and soon she was over near the bank and was up to her belly in mud and water. We tried to get her out, but she was down too far and she just kept going. She would go forward more and get in deeper. She just kept on going until finally the mud was up to her mid-side and she had to hold her head up to keep it out of the water.

We got the harness loose from her and pushed the cart off and backed it up the creek out of the way. Then we began to try to get her out. By this time she was way down and it was approaching going over her back. I don’t remember anything ever exciting me more. It was a guilt feeling as if I had done something wrong, that we were in deep trouble, to say nothing of the old mare being in trouble. We got her by the bridle bits. One pulled on one end and the other whipped on what was left of her hips and back sticking out. She wiggled a little but didn’t make much effort. I guess she was confused by the whole mess. Maybe as scared as we were. I don’t know, but she wouldn’t do much to free herself.

Finally, we just thought she was going to disappear right on down through the mud. It was a mile back out to where the Jennings lived, the people that lived at the mouth of Howell Hollow in that big farm. We hated for anyone to know about it, but somebody had to. So I asked Dorman to stay there and watch the old mare while I went for help. I ran most of the way; I was barefooted and ran right up that gravel creek.

The Jennings were eating their dinner. They got up from their meal, left their dinner unfinished, and went to the barn and got a big hay rope. I don’t know what they were going to do with that rope, but the hired hand and Clarence Jennings came down with me. They didn’t seem to be excited. Here I was scared to death, just breathless with excitement. We started walking down there at a fairly rapid pace and got about half way down the creek. Suddenly there was Dorman coming running up the bank crying like his heart was breaking, like he was injured or something, crying and yelling to me. He said, She’s gone in deeper, just out of sight. So, we thought that when we got down there the mare would be completely gone, under the water.

We quickened our pace and went on down with this big man who had the big rope over his shoulder. We went right straight down the creek; we didn’t bother to get up on the bank. We got down there and the old mare was out of the creek. She had mud and water all over her. She had gone clear under. Apparently she had gotten excited in struggling for her life, and as she struggled she thinned that mud and moved forward, further out into the water. The water was more liquid than mud and she could maneuver in it and maybe get back over and get her feet on the gravel in the center. We don’t know for sure.

All we know is that she was standing on that same little bar or peninsula of gravel that we had stopped her on when we first went down there. But she was headed back the other way as if she had just waded out of that water someway, and was standing up on that bar. Well, I was glad to see her and sorry I had bothered the men. I thanked them as best as I could and they went on back.

We set about washing the old mare off. She didn’t enjoy that very much. We’d splash water up on her to try to get the mud off her to hide our sin. I don’t know why I felt so guilty but we didn’t want anybody to ever know. We swore those men to secrecy and so on. I don’t know if they ever told anybody or not. But anyway, that’s all that came of it. We hitched her back up and repaired our harness and got the mud off of it. We didn’t fish, needless to say. We were too excited to fish. We just loaded up our gear and went back home. Well, that’s a horse story.

We had several incidents during that summer. In the fall the folks came back with all their earthly belongings on an old 4-cylinder truck, which had four wheels like a pick-up, only they were larger and heavier. These were big, what we used to call Uncle Evert, Dodges, set up high. Ran real well and we were proud of it. But, then he traded it for a team of bay mares. They were old when they were broken, eight or nine years old. They were real foolish, jumpish, and crazy. They didn’t seem to have a brain in their head. We had them to put up with. Dad always gathered up something cheap, so we never knew what we’d have to work with, but it gave us a lot of experience anyway.

He had come back with some money in his pocket from the wheat field: