Las Vegas- October 1, 2017 Sadness

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.