Mercy Me Read Free Page A

out of ink, and I had a mischief of a time finding anything to write with. The only thing Icould find without getting up was a stub of a pencil in the drawer, so I finished out the letter with that.
    Well, Beatrice, the Willing Workers are on the warpath hot and heavy. Boris Krantz has got all the teenagers running after him and Clara says we have got to put the kibosh on that. Mercy me, I say it’s better they run after him than some hell-bound rock star. By the way, Clara has already heard about a music director being fired by Cold Water Baptist and you can bet your bottom dollar she’s checking to find out if it was Boris they let go. Woe be unto him if it was.
    Well, I got to get up from here and do a few things. Let me hear from you.
    Your friend,
    Esmeralda
    I waited to mail the letter until Friday, when I went up to tend to old Mrs. Purdy, because thataway Beatrice would not get it before Monday. If she didn’t wait months to answer a letter, she was bad about writing right back. Having shot off my mouth about Percy, I was sure she would answer right away. The more space I could put between mailing that one and getting hers shot right back at me, the better.

3

    I guess people think the Willing Workers run the church, and between them and the deacons, in fact, they do. The preacher we’ve got they take for a wimp. Young and old alike call him Preacher Bob like he has not got a last name nor seminary training to boot. In public I make it my business to call him Reverend Osborne, and in private, Pastor Osborne, and I can tell he appreciates this, though he is not the kind of man to put himself forward. As Splurgeon would say, “He whose worth speaks will not speak his own worth.”
    The wife he has got was once the saddest looking creature you ever laid eyes on. But she wasn’t always like that. When they came to Live Oaks sixteen years ago, she was the prettiest bride ever you saw, and they were both full of pep—full of fun and anxious to do good things here. They worked together like hand in glove. Wentknocking on doors and got people in church who had not darkened the doors for years. They really wore theirselves out reaching the young people. They’d take them on hikes, hayrides, wiener roasts, summer camps, and such, don’t you know. Both of them could sing, but then she quit singing in the choir. I don’t know how many young people went off to Bible school because of the Osbornes’ work. But a lot of the older people criticized him for spending too much of his time with the young people when there were shut-ins and sick folks he needed to be taking care of.
    Back then, Reverend Osborne preached with passion and held street meetings long after that kind of thing was not done anymore. That’s when the deacons told him they wanted him to “move along with the times,” and little by little, that’s what came to pass at Apostolic Bible.
    Reverend Osborne didn’t cave in, but there were changes in Live Oaks that had a bearing on the way things were going in the church. When the mill closed, people had to move away to find work, so there weren’t much point in preaching on the streets if there weren’t nobody listening. And as soon as the teenagers needed jobs, they left town, and that was the end of the youth work.
    So Pastor Osborne was left having more funerals than weddings, but he didn’t leave; he kept right on tending the flock, visiting the sick and holding their hands when they were dying. It wasn’t until this new crop of young’uns came along that the deacons decided to hire a music director who could keep the teenyboppers in church.
    I watched our preacher through all of this, and to my way of thinking, it seasoned him. People said the light in his study at the church was on late at night. Of course, there was a mean opinion going around that he dreaded going home, but I knew he was in there poring over the Scriptures and