Lisa Barry: Today on Gateway To Joy, we're beginning a brand-new series that I know you're going to enjoy. It's a challenge to take seriously the charge in Titus 2 for older Christian women to teach the younger women the valuable lessons of life. This has long been a passion of Elisabeth Elliot, and now several more have joined with her. One of those people is Donna Otto.

Donna has been on this program a number of times, talking about a variety of subjects, from stay-at-home motherhood to getting more done in less time. Her latest book is called THE GENTLE ART OF MENTORING. We're going to find out why Donna has decided to write that, as we begin this Monday edition of Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking today with my friend from Arizona, Donna Otto. Donna has written a number of books. Welcome, Donna.

Donna Otto: Thank you.

Elisabeth Elliot: Tell us the titles.

Donna Otto: The titles. GET MORE DONE IN LESS TIME, which is a book about finding order in our world. Chaotic world, often. THE STAY-AT-HOME MOM, which encourages mothers who are at home and those who want to be at home, as well as motherhood, period. BETWEEN WOMEN OF GOD, which is a book about the role that we play in each other's lives as women, especially older women.

THE GENTLE ART OF MENTORING, which is a handbook of sorts, a guidebook, to help an older woman sit down across the table, as you have done so many times in my life, just to walk through life on topics that are meaningful to her. Then the MENTORS FOR MOTHERS program, which is a curriculum that I've written to help churches do what I'm asking them to do, which is to help older women get invested in the lives of younger women. The new one that I'm about finished with is called MOMENTS ALONE FOR MOMS.

Elisabeth Elliot: Good. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate you being here. I want to start with reading that crucial verse that you and I know so well. In Titus 2, the Apostle Paul is giving to a young pastor instructions as to what he is to teach in his church. It's very interesting that he does not tell this young man to get involved teaching younger women. It says, "Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."

Paul is saying here, "These are the crucial lessons that the older women must be taught, in order that they in turn may teach the younger women."

Donna Otto: Well, my mind is a flurry of thoughts as you say that passage-as you read that passage. I came to Christ when I was 16. My parents were not married when I was conceived, not married when I was born. They were married when I was two years old.

I spent the first two years of my life with two-what my grandmother called-spinster women. I don't think they use that term anymore, but they were two maiden women who loved Christ and lived in Modesto, California. They felt called to take me as an infant into their home.

My mother worked. She worked in a turkey factory for some years, providing enough money for these women to care for me. When I was about two years old, my parents were united and married. We moved back to Chicago, Illinois. My father was Roman Catholic, an Italian Roman Catholic. In those days, if you married someone in the church, which is what they did, you signed a document saying that you would raise any children brought into this marriage in the Catholic church.

So the first eight years of my life, after going back to Chicago, I went to Roman Catholic schools and churches. My mother was never very invested in the church. Their marriage was very rocky. It finally ended in divorce. My mother, I think somewhere in her heart, had a notion that if my father ever stopped going to mass or anything ever happened to the two of them, she would find another church. She wanted so to raise us better than she had been raised and to give us a good foundation.

So she opened the Yellow Pages of the Chicago telephone directory. If you know anything about how thick that is, it's at least four or five inches deep. She ran her fingers up and down the columns until she found a church that had a bus ministry. In those days, that was very avant-garde, very mission-minded. There was a church in the city of Chicago, inner city now, that ran one big yellow school bus every Sunday morning. My mother phoned them and asked if they would pick us up.

So my brother, my mother and I began waiting on the corner, winter, summer, spring and fall, for this school bus. Years later, I had the privilege of going back as an adult and visiting with some of those bus drivers. It brings emotion to my heart, because the weather in Chicago, Illinois-I can't imagine what time those people had to get up at an early hour in the frigid cold and get on a cold bus to come and pick us up. They did that.

For eight years, I rode the school bus and came to Christ in the basement of my church. A young man had come to speak on a Friday night. The older women in our church-the families in our church-had befriended me. When I look back on it now, it is only the work of God.

I was an ugly duckling. Tall, skinny, gangly girl with this huge nose that I still own. My parents were divorced and separated. We were never an emotional part of the church-never a financial part of the church, certainly. We did nothing to support the church. Yet the local church supported me in so many ways. There was always a recitation given to me for Easter or Christmas. The birthday bank on Sunday morning. We learned our birthday song. The Sunday school teachers who helped me memorize portions of Scripture that I didn't understand by giving me a Hershey candy bar. These families took me in in their hearts.

One Friday night, a young man was invited to come to speak. He told the story of Christ and His immeasurable love. I call it the big "yes." It's that first "yes." You know, the big "yes" when you say, "Yes, I'll love Jesus," and then a million small "yes's" that follow in trying to be obedient to our dear Lord.

That night when I got up from this wooden railing in the basement of our church, as profound an experience of receiving Christ as it was, three of the families-women, particularly-put their arms around me and they said, "We have been praying for you for eight years."

Elisabeth Elliot: How old were you?

Donna Otto: I was sixteen.

Elisabeth Elliot: Sixteen then.

Donna Otto: And I look back on that and I think, "They had been praying for me for eight years. Why did a group of families, particularly women, in a church in the inner city pray for an ugly duckling, except that they were not dishonoring the Word of God?" And just what you have read out of Titus. They had been taught to teach the next generation, to share their lives with the next generation. They had been available to me. They modeled.

I can still remember Mrs. Robinson, who was the kindest Sunday school teacher, and the softness in her heart. I watched her be soft to her husband. He would come toward the end of Sunday school hour, almost every Sunday, and ask if she was ready to go upstairs to where church was being held. He would help her gather her materials, the crayons and the books and the things that she brought for those of us in her class. I had never seen kindness modeled between a husband and a wife. Not only was he kind to her, but she was so gentle and gentle to him.

So the Titus 2 passage began working itself out in my life, I believe, since my birth. First, two older women who would take me into their home to care for me. And I really believe they read the Scripture to me. I've never met them. I don't even know their names. My grandmother could not remember their names, when I first heard this story in my late teen-age life. I look forward to meeting them in heaven.

Elisabeth Elliot: Are there many older women today who are doing what you've described?

Donna Otto: I think there are some. I think the ones that I observe in churches where they've been taught to do this, where the concept is respected instead of discarded, yes. But I think there are far too many who are not, far too many who are finding other things more important, more valuable.

I think there are a number of reasons why. I don't want to give anyone an excuse for not being obedient to the Scripture. Of all things in the world, we should not give to one another an excuse. But I think sometimes we confuse words and actions. This is an incredible story.

The city of Crete is very much like America in the 1990's. It's very busy and metropolitan and that's where Titus is. Paul is writing to Titus as a young pastor of the church. These old women are doing what a lot of old women do in life. You know, their families are grown, so they might be called "empty nesters" in America today. Their marriages are settled. Maybe not blissfully settled, but settled. They've recovered the sofa as many times as they need to, and so the house is done. They've probably gathered too much stuff.

What was happening was they had some time on their hands. So in the afternoons, they would go to visit from house to house and sip a little wine. Paul is saying to them, "Tell them not to do so and not to be malicious gossips, sipping wine in the afternoon. But instead, here's what they should be doing." I don't know about you, but I don't need a glass of wine to be a malicious gossip. I can do that on my very own.

Elisabeth Elliot: You can do that without that kind of stimulation.

Donna Otto: That's exactly right.

Elisabeth Elliot: I'm afraid we're all tarred with the same brush, when it comes to the propensities of us women. We do love to gossip and we love to tell stories about other people. We can waste an awful lot of time, if not going around other people's houses, then gazing at the television, which the people that Titus was talking to didn't have to worry about.

So many of the older women that I meet are tooling around in fancy motor homes, or they're going to places like Arizona to play golf, or they're going back to get another degree in college, or they're learning underwater macramé or something equally useless. They've been told, not only by the world, but by the church too, "You did your job. You were a wonderful mother. You raised your children. Now it's your turn to do something for yourself."

Well, Donna, I ransack the Scriptures in vain to find a verse that tells me that I'm supposed to do something for myself. I just don't find that.

Donna Otto: Well, I couldn't agree more. Francis Schaeffer said something that inspires me. He said, "The spirit of the age seeps into the church."

Lisa Barry: That's painfully true, isn't it? So why not take this opportunity to reverse that trend? "But where do I start?" you ask. Let me suggest our Mother's Day packet. It includes this tape series called DAUGHTERS OF THE HEART, helpful leaflets, a flip calendar, a book by Glenda Revell and much more. The cost for the entire package is $30.

You can send that, along with your request, to Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Well, if you've ever thought that being an older woman was getting the short end of the stick, be sure and join us for food for thought on tomorrow's edition of Gateway To Joy.