Baptized In a Reservoir...

Acts 8:36
Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?”

If you want to get baptized, you must have water. In Arkansas, in our little store front church building, we didn't have a baptismal pool or any such thing, and we firmly believed that in the early Church they went down into the water (as in getting dunked) instead of having some water sprinkled on their heads. So we had to find a river or lake or swimming pool when we were planning a Baptismal Service. I didn't get baptized in Arkansas, though I did receive Jesus as my Savior on June 15, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi. I was spending the summer with Aunt Tot (Lottie), Mama's youngest sister. (That's another story...)

When we moved to California, we were hindered from finding the Church of God near Bakersfield, so we found the one in Earlimart, and moved there. Later we moved to Delano, but still attended the church in Earlimart. But the Church of God people are connected pretty closely throughout the denomination; everyone knows a lot of other people in the church in other places, and every summer there is a "State Convention" where not only all the ministers and leaders go, but also the lay people attend. So our church members in Earlimart knew the people, at least some of them, who attended the church near Bakersfield, which was only 30-some miles south on 99 Highway.

We had heard about the Guinn family, even before we came to the San Joaquin Valley from Arkansas, but while in Bakersfield we had been unable to find the church and meet them. In those days, you couldn't do a People Search on the internet. If you were going to look someone up in the phone book, at least you had to know in what city they lived. Besides, we didn't even have a telephone in the tiny apartment on Chester Avenue, and therefore no telephone directory.

Once settled in Earlimart, we found out there was a church in Weedpatch (which was later moved to Lamont) and the majority of the congregation was the Guinn family. We visited that little church during the late summer of 1955, and met them. Sister Guinn was the primary mover and shaker around there. I'm not sure how many children they had, but it was a great big family. Many of their children were already grown, maybe even married by that time, but some were around our ages, and at least one, their "baby" was younger than me. I think they owned, or at least lived and worked on a farm there. That's where I first encountered a reservoir.

I've been told the San Joaquin Valley is the Bread Basket of the World. Maybe that was said by some local person and I received it as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... Anyway, they do grow a lot of food in the Big Valley. But since it does not rain in the summer there, where do they get water? The whole valley is irrigated by a system of canals, which fill reservoirs on farms, and somehow the farmers get that water into the fields, and ... there you have it, potatoes, peaches, grapes... and sore backs.

It's the reservoirs that I always connected with the Guinns, because their home was where I first saw one. We visited them when we lived in Earlimart, and as it was hot that day (Every Day), their children were swimming in the reservoir. We watched from the bank. We didn't have swim suits, though that wouldn't have been a problem if we had brought a change of clothes; some of them were wearing cut-offs or whatever.

I think it was within a year of that visit that we heard the tragic news that Sister Guinn and four of her children and/or grandchildren were involved in a head-on collision. The Guinns lost five of their family that day, including their mother. I thought it was awful at the time, but it was not until I was grown with children of my own that I could appreciate what a life-changing loss that was for the dad and remaining children.

In 1956, a couple of years after I had received Christ in Arkansas, I was baptized in a reservoir somewhere in the San Joaquin Valley, I think near Delano. Our pastor who baptized me was the same one whose sermon we interrupted when we walked in late to the service in Earlimart, and he had greeted us and then continued.

Unlike the Delano High School Swimming pool, the reservoir water was murky, as walking into it we stirred up the soft mud on the bottom. Out in the middle, it was only about waist deep for the preacher, a little deeper for me. The congregation, including my parents stood on the levee around the reservoir, balancing carefully lest they fall in. Brother Cannon said, "Jean Lusk, I now baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," and he pushed me down backwards while supporting me enough that while I was completely under, I didn't go all the way into the mud. Thank God.

Afterwards, I felt great. I had done what the Bible says to do. All we needed was water. We found some in a reservoir.