Dear Laura,

Here I am just now answering your December email. I'm truly sorry. In reality, some of these guys are just so far gone in their perverse ideas against women that you get a sense that no matter how much time you devote to an answer, they just won't change.

We believe that the detailed answers which are given as answers to some letters are more for those who are searching for answers now and who want to learn by seeing what other people have to say in regard to any given subject. So it is never to much of our time to answer a respectfully written letter on any given subject, that many may learn or at least be prompted into a study of their own.

We of ourselves cannot make anyone change how they believe. All people must ultimately work out their own salvation which is between them and God. Some who have the gift of teaching are to teach, even if it means that we someday die because of what we are teaching. Many of God’s people had those who didn’t want to hear it come right after them with a force and in many of those cases those who were speaking truth were killed.

When we answer letters within our newsletter, we really don’t expect the person that we are answering to change his or her stance on any given subject. If we are able to just plant a small seed in that person that can be used at a later time, great, we have done our job.

Dianne McDonnell writes:

This past year my husband and I were able to baptize a person who had a past that would make most church members blush to hear about it. And this person is now excited about having God's Holy Spirit and starting a whole new life. Any man that tells me I should not have taught, preached, counseled and baptized that person is just not speaking according to God's Holy Spirit. Sometimes I just get too busy DOING the WORK of GOD to respond to those who are DOING NOTHING themselves, but wanting to be sure that a woman can't serve God just because she is female. Some of them God will have to change in the Resurrection! I hope God puts them under Deborah or Phoebe.

Laura, just keep serving God as you are doing. Don't let these guys discourage you for one minute-- you are doing a top notch job. Love, Dianne

Thank you for the encouragement. The mail I get from men who believe women should not speak or teach is probably nothing in comparison to what you get because you deliver sermons and I do not. I wanted to make this particular letter public as I wanted people to see that you do make a difference in the lives of other people because of what you do, even though you are a woman. Had you not been there to teach and baptize the person you spoke of in this letter, would that person now be working their way down the right path or would they still be aimlessly wondering through life with no hope? We did take the liberty to edit this letter to conceal whether this person was a man or a woman and to remove some things we considered to be personal.

We all have our job to do if we are one of God’s chosen people and we best be doing it, whether we are men or women. I do think that women do have a harder time teaching because of the lack of acceptance they receive in general, but we still have a job to do and we need to encourage each other and get that job done.

We want to publicly say to you that you are doing a great job and that we here truly appreciate the well researched articles which you have sent to us and that we have printed so far. Please continue to send more articles to us as you have them so that we might consider them for print. We need more women like you who are willing to publicly be there to teach others. We also need more men who will teach people to accept women teachers as men are accepted as teachers of others. Being a teacher is a gift from God and no place in scripture does it say that the teacher gift is only given to men.

To those who still disagree, saying that women should not teach/speak publicly, we hope that you will be far more respectful in writing to us than was David Ben-Ariel. We also hope you don’t get mad and run away before the discussion is over as David Ben-Ariel has done.