Naomi McIntosh

Naomi was and still is one of the dearest and most amazing people I know! She is what missionaries would call "Golden." She was definitely prepared by the Lord for us to teach her! A little background to her story, she was very involved in the community and the Christian Appilation Project. The area she lived in was very poor and there were very few members there. The missionaries had been taken out of the area and the Church really struggled to have any sort of presence there. About 8 months before I got there the sister missionaries were finally put back into the area. The only people that attended church when the missionaries first got back into the area were the Branch President and the Missionaries. The missionaries did a lot of work reactivating the members there. One of the rules in that area was that missionaries were not allowed to go tracting (knocking on doors) because people were known to shoot unknown or unannounced visitors. One of the ways the missionaries found to find people and develop relationships with the community is through clogging. Clogging was a major community event/hobby. Naomi was not a clogger but she was always at the community clogging lessons and events. The first Sunday I was in the area we went to the Fire Station down the street from our little house we lived in where they were having a community clogging lesson. Naomi was there, the first time I saw her I knew that if she wasn't a member yet that she needed to be. I knew of all the past problems that area had had so I was a little cautious about who I approached and what I said as to not offend someone. When I asked my companion that night about Naomi she told me that the missionaries had asked her several times if she would be interested in hearing more about the Church and always declined. Feeling a little frustrated we went about our other missionary work and I kept praying that we would find a way to teach Naomi. The answer came in the most unexpected way!!! We taught a weekly class that was supposed to be for the community but always ended up being the same few less active members that came. One week we challenged the class to each invite someone to come to class the following week. We told them that we would invite someone as well. When the expected date came, we had 2 guests in our class, they were Naomi and her husband Virgil. After we taught what was our first discussion, I went up to talk to Naomi and see what she thought of our lesson. Her response was..."Why hasn't anyone ever told me about the Book of Mormon before?!!!!" I just smiled and said, "Well, we have told you now and here is your very own copy!" Over the next few weeks we continued to teach her and she just soaked it up like a sponge! She would take our lessons and condense them into one or two sentences and one day I remember after we taught her about the plan of salvation she said, "that is so simple, even a child could understand that!" We just smiled and told her that was exactly right! She was baptized and now she has been through the temple! She is currently the Relief Society President in the branch! I am so proud of her and grateful for her example to me! When I left the area we were up to about 25-30 people at church each week! I think they are down to about 20 now, but they have had a lot of people move and some branch boundary changes that have effected their numbers, along with some other issues, but despite all of the struggles this area has with keeping the Church strong, Naomi has been strong and hasn't let it shake her testimony!

Here is a recipe similar to what Naomi taught me. She didn't measure a single thing, so I had to look up a recipe to get an idea of what amounts she was actually using.

2 cups corn meal
1/4 cup butter (don't use margarine, it has too much water in it)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Grease an iron skillet and preheat in a 400 degree oven
Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet. Mix well.
Pour the mixture into the hot skillet. Bake until golden brown. About 20 minutes.

Note: This isn't the sweet cornbread that most of us are use to but it is so good! It goes well with beans or anything else that you would eat cornbread with, it just doesn't have all the sweetness! I absolutely love it!