Contented Cows
Story as retold by granddaughter, Joye Marostica, entitled
"Visiting Teaching With a Sense of Humor"
Delila loved her calling as a visiting teacher. To go into the homes of the assigned sisters once a month with a gospel message was to her a wonderful opportunity to show compassion to others.
Sister MacLemore was her companion, and the sisters they visited looked forward to their words of encouragement and occasional baskets of garden produce, homemade bread or other small gifts.
The lessons to be taught always came from the Relief Society General Board in Salt Lake, and their purpose was to help the women of the church to be better homemakers and mothers, and to point out ways of living the gospel in their daily lives.
In the early 1900’s some people had still not heard of milk pasteurization - Delila was one of these.
As Sister MacLemore and Grandma were preparing to do their visiting teaching one day they came upon a new word… pasteurize. They discussed it at some length and finally concluded it meant ‘putting the cows in a lovely green pasture in order to produce good rich milk.”
After a word of prayer asking the Lord for his guidance in this important health lesson - they started out. Among the ladies on their route was the wife of Doctor Edward Croft. Before reaching the Crofts they stopped to see Sister Stewart, fortunately Brother Stewart happened to be home… after their very ‘informative’ lesson, he very tactfully explained the concept of heating milk to prevent disease - much to their surprise!
Delila was so grateful they had started with prayer and had their act together before reaching the Doctor’s home.
That evening Grandma laughed as she told the family of her blunder… turning humiliation into an extremely funny joke on herself.
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