I Am Content
It seems that I have always been a teacher of some sort. As a young girl, I was showing my younger siblings how to do various jobs around the house. As a teenager, I began teaching my own age group in Sunday school because our regular teacher (s) didn't always show up for the class. My peers would say, "Natalie, why don't you just teach us? You always read the lesson ahead of time and we will listen." Now that was quite a job for a teenager to accomplish, but I loved it. I so enjoyed the "stories" in the Bible and the more I taught, the more I learned to love and follow God's lessons.
When I graduated high school, I went to a Bible-based college, Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi, W.Va., where I earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in teaching (go figure that one!). During my years as a public school teacher I also taught Sunday school classes for grades 5 and 6 in various churches. My mother was a Sunday school teacher too and she was probably my first teacher at home and at church. She has always been the model for me when it came to my following God and His teachings.
When I entered the Wintersville United Methodist Church in 1973, I found the Sunday school class was comprised of several folks I knew. The very second Sunday I attended that class, the group of teachers asked me to join them as a rotation teacher and I have been teaching that class ever since. My devotion to God and my fellow man/woman has increased every year since first beginning to teach here. I have been called to teach several Bible study classes about women in the Bible and the classes pulled me closer to the members who joined me during these sessions.
I am content to be a follower of God and teacher of His Way and His Word. I thank my mother for starting me in the Evangelical United Brethren Church in Middlebourne, W.Va. when I was only two weeks old. She taught me to love Jesus and to follow God in my life activities. I have tried to stay on this path through the teaching at my church and the joining in for the prayer and praise meetings we have each Wednesday evening. I pray I am able to continue doing my small part for the fellowship of God in my church.
Natalie Kay Johnston Doty, Wintersville UMC
