| OCR Text |
Show 2 - OUR TIMES - OCTOBER 1992 Castle Valley on Faith— an Interview with Virginia Halley Virginia lives in a double wide nestled in maturing trees. She has her own orchard and garden and, at seventy-six, cans “everything I can get my hands on.” Her slim figure and neatly cut white hair belie a spry, feisty woman who has strong beliefs and convictions. She has seen and done much in her life and has many stories to tell. This is a part of her story. “I came here (to Castle Valley) because I was directed to come here,” Virginia begins. From previous talks I know that Virginia was directed not by humans but by her inner relationship to God. She had told me earlier of several years and numerous false starts leaving Salt Lake where she had lived most of her life before she understood exactly where she was to come. “When I first saw this place I said, ‘whuf,”’ a disgusted look on her face. “Four days after I arrived here I was sitting up in by. It said ‘Yes’. And so I did, I didn’t worry about it anymore. But in the last couple of weeks something’s beginning to push—that urgency to get things ready. I know it's coming. I don’t know how, why.” When I ask her about the children, Virginia elaborates. “They are going to be babies, little children, bigger children, and teenagers. AndI see me directing the big ones to take the little ones on their backs. The voice said I would take them into the mountains, and there I would be met with help. Though I don’t understand, I know that that is what I am to do.” Virginia goes on to explain to me that the earthquake will start in the Wasatch area where there is an active fault, and that it will trigger the fault that exists in Castle Valley. She is also adamant that she is not the only person who has been “shown.” She tells me of a visit with Elizabeth Gregger, a former resident of Castle Valley. Elizabeth volunteered while looking at Round Virginia started her training at twenty-two. The eldest of eleven children, she was already proficient at taking care of people. Her teachers encouraged her to seek a degree in medicine because she was bright, with a keenly questioning mind. Her own experiences with traditional medicine, however, led her into other areas. She worked primarily with elderly patients, those with chronic conditions such as strokes and heart attacks—as Virginia puts it, the ones other health workers didn’t want to see. Virginia reports working long days, sometimes from four am. until 10 pm. She was always available for emergency calls. She continued at that pace until she moved here in ’81. Some of Virginia’s bitterness toward the medical profession was evidenced when she talked about her children. She lost her first babies, twins, when they died in utero after she was given a shot to stop labor. She reports having insisted on their being Mountain,”You know, that thing is going to blow it’s stack.” Virginia asked, “How do you know?” Says ready to be born; she had carried them couldn’t hear them in the city—the meadowlarks and the swallows—and I thought, Oh, Lordy, I don’t believe it!” Virginia smiles as she recalls the moment. “The next thing, a voice said, ‘Go to the front window.’ That I did. And the voice said, ‘What do you see?’ And I said ‘Oh, no.’ It was Round Mountain. ‘That thing is a volcanic cone and it is going to erupt.’ When? I don’t know, the voice didn’t tell me. But I was shown. The thing I am to do now is wait, because I wasn’t shown that I would return to my home or that my home would even be here. There will be a terrible, terrible earthquake, and that side of the mountain (she points to the east) is going to blow out and the center of that valley will cave in all the way. There will be a running river of molten lava going right down the middle of the valley. This is what I was shown. I was shown before I came out here. I’m to take the children out of here and they’re not the children that Virginia, “She said, ‘I was shown!” I said, “Thank God I’m not the only nut in this Valley.” Virginia says that when she’s told people about her conviction, they think she’s crazy. Her belief, her “knowing,” has lasted the eleven years pain in her face, Virginia recalls carrying those twin babies for four more months before they were surgi- she’s been here. eight months, spotting. She felt the her name from Joanna Ehlers, whose evoked. But she has clearly not been live here. I don’t understand. But I shoulder had been healed by Virginia, and called on the off-chance Virginia would be available. In one session she straightened out my recalcitrant back, then sent me home, prescribing an apple cider vinegar bath and an hour’s bed rest. When she called to check on me the next day, I was fine and have had no problems since. defeated by her family losses nor the deaths of many of her patients. She remains a strong self-determined, selfsufficient woman who will fight for what she believes in, even when it bed, and I could hear the birds. You worried so about it for about a year that . . . I stopped the car and I said, ‘Please, Lord. Can I please have this thing set so that I won’t worry about it any more? The winter’s ready to happen. You’ll let me know so I’ll be ready to do what you want me to?’ And the voice was just like a soft wind going Virginia is a healer. She has worked all her life as a massage technician and a nurse. She specializes in “bare foot shiatsu” and “body alignment.” Though basically retired, she still sees patients in Moab and CV. She is a nutritionist and herbalist and sees the healing process holistically, using vitamins and minerals as well as manipulations and massages. She continues to work with patients until they are cured. My first introduction to her, besides the Church potlucks, was on an emergency call one Sunday morning when my back had gone out. I could barely move or breath. I remembered full term. The doctors said they weren’t big enough, so stopped her labor. With cally removed, dead. Her second pregnancy also ended prematurely. She reports being in the hospital at just baby coming, but went unheeded when she told the attending nurse to get the doctor. When the doctor arrived a few hours later, it was too late. She lost her third child. Virginia went on to have two healthy sons. Her eldest is manager of the Pepsi-Cola plant. Her youngest died in Vietnam. Virginia tells of this loss with tears in her voice. A precious beloved son lost “needlessly.” She also talks of burying two husbands, after divorcing the first who “didn’t want his sons.” (She has lived alone since 1973.) It is apparent that these losses sit heavy on her heart, the pain and sadness still accessible if makes her unpopular. She has numer- ous stories of confrontations with doctors, and their mistreatment of patients. By Virginia’s account, the |
