Small world

When I read my sister-in-laws father's obit I found an interesting thing.  Her father was baptized by would-be Uncle Art Slater.

Obituary

Robert Louis Stilmar (Bob) passed away peacefully at home on the evening of December 16, 2017 at the age of 99.

...

He went to work for the federal government as a civilian and after the Pearl Harbor attack transferred to the Army. He served during World War II in the Philippines running early warning radar.

It was there he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being baptized (by his Army buddy, Arthur Slater) in the Pacific Ocean off the island of Leyte on April 22, 1945.

Sugars comments:. My dad said he ran into him somewhere and he was reading scriptures or Art came up to him when he was reading scriptures.  Something.  My father had started reading the Bible.  Art asked him if he wanted to know more or some some thing.  Gave him a Book of Mormon and started teaching him. 

Baptized him in the ocean but had to write to get permission from salt lake first is how the story goes.  

Although the first official Mormon conference was held in the Philippines on May 13, 1945, it was only attended by Latter-day Saints in the U.S. military.


The Philippines wasn’t dedicated for the preaching of the gospel for another decade; on August 21, 1955,