Last weekend (Saturday, September30) we had our circuit
assembly in St George, UT, and were feeling spiritually upbuilt. Sunday I
watched the Dallas Cowboys game and then as usual went to the Spanish meeting
and enjoyed the fellowship of the brothers.
Sunday night around 10, I turned on the TV to catch up on
the day’s news, and what had been a normal routine weekend became something
totally, horribly unbelievable. How do you wrap your mind around the fact that
some crazed individual has shot more than 500 people only about 5 miles from
your house?
Like most Las Vegas, I could hardly sleep and then woke up
early Monday to find out more than 50 people were dead. While I was trying to
digest that, I got a text from a brother saying that six of our congregation
members were at the concert. Now it became very real. Then I received a
communication from the circuit overseer to have all the group overseers in the
circuit contact every person in their group and report back.
It turned out that none of the Las Vegas brothers were hurt,
but sadly a sister from Massachusetts, visiting here with her husband (an
elder) and their 6 year old daughter was shot and killed. There was immediate
help from the brothers to comfort the brother and help anyway they could in a
very terrible situation.
We arranged immediate shepherding calls on our local
brothers who had been there. It was clear they were traumatized, as anyone
would be. Few of us have been in a situation where bullets are flying and we
are seeing people shot and killed and wounded all around us, and we have to
flee for our lives.
On Tuesday we had our midweek meeting and all 6 were there,
but you could tell they were still stunned, and the sisters especially were
emotionally raw. Kindly, the circuit overseer paid a visit and gave a very
encouraging talk and spoke personally to each of the publishers who had been at
the concert.
Invariably, events like this cause people to question why
these things happen. Of course, as Witnesses we know the reason, and we are
happy to reach out to others who are hurting and offer them comfort from God’s
Word. While these events sadden us, we know there is a positive future that is
ahead when these terrible things won’t even be brought to mind, and our dead
loved ones will live again
I think even for Witnesses, when these things strike close
to home, it causes some introspection as far as what we are doing with our
lives. When we see how quickly some random event could cause us to lose our
life, we become even more determined to do worthwhile things with the time left
that Jehovah has given us.
