Patricia Paiwonski—Reverend Foster

Patricia Paiwonski’s relationship with Reverend Foster is the story of a seeker’s conversion into a devoted, ordained Fosterite. Foster’s preaching and personal attention gave her a religious community, a sense of happiness, and a place among the church’s permanently saved members. Years later, the marks and rituals of that conversion remain part of her life, even as she welcomes Mike and Jill into a water-sharing bond that she understands through her own faith.

Before and During Conversion

When Foster preached in San Pedro, Patricia was already a seeker, but her husband, George Paiwonski, had attended only a few Sundays and had not yet embraced the faith. Their life together was affectionate but imperfect: George drank heavily, and both spouses sometimes tolerated or reciprocated flirtations with clients. Patricia also felt an unfilled lack in her life. Though raised by an Ulster Protestant father and a Cork-born mother, she had inherited no settled religious allegiance from their household. Her fondness for snakes, and the comfort she found in keeping them, offered companionship but not the spiritual belonging she lacked.

Foster’s message offered a decisive explanation for that lack. Patricia later described the New Revelation as a restoration of Jesus’ true teaching, which she believed had been distorted during the Dark Ages. In her account, Foster had been sent to clarify the faith anew, and its central promise was that God wanted people to be happy. The conviction was not merely doctrinal: Patricia said that the real change was inward happiness, beyond the outward transformation she wished to show Mike and Jill.

Foster’s approach combined a public-facing church with more selective levels of membership. Anyone could attend the outer church and remain a seeker; the middle church offered the saved a busy communal life, while an unnamed Inner Church reserved its mysteries and leadership for the utterly dedicated. Foster personally selected inner members until the organization grew too large, and he approached married candidates as couples. This structure matters to Patricia’s story because her conversion did not end with attending a revival: it brought her and George under Foster’s personal notice and into a more enduring religious identity.

After Foster first brought the Paiwonskis into the faith, they made their confessions that same day. When he returned to check on the local branch six months later, their commitment had impressed him enough that he gave them personal attention. Patricia remembered that George’s conduct changed after he accepted the faith: he continued to drink, but did so in church and in moderation. His involvement in a major tattoo design was already under way when Foster returned, and the couple wanted their leader to see it.

The Kiss and the Mark of Belonging

Patricia’s most tangible connection to Foster was his kiss, represented as a tattoo placed over her heart. George incorporated the mark into a larger image so that it could pass unnoticed as part of the design; Jill initially mistook it for part of a sunset. Patricia explained that the mark identified a genuine church member who was eternally saved, and that Foster himself had placed it there. She treated it as private religious evidence, not a decoration to be displayed indiscriminately.

Foster’s return to Heaven nearly twenty years before Patricia told her story made direct access to him impossible for later converts. An ordained priest or priestess could give Foster’s kiss by proxy, signifying that God was in the recipient’s heart. Patricia, however, belonged to the earlier generation whose kiss had been given by Foster himself. She emphasized that distinction when explaining her unique status to Mike and Jill, and she wanted to tattoo their marks herself if they someday received them.

The mark also carried organizational force. Patricia explained that a tattoo alone could be forged, so a visiting member seeking admission to an Inner Temple Happiness meeting sent fingerprints ahead to be checked against the master file of the eternally saved at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle. Local churches verified the visitor’s identity before welcoming her. Patricia’s rare, extensive sacred designs could make her an attraction at meetings, but the formal record, rather than appearance alone, authenticated her membership. Her personal bond with Foster thus persisted both as a bodily sign and as a status maintained through institutional procedures.

From Fosterite to Teacher

By the time Patricia met Mike and Jill, she was an ordained priestess. She taught beginners’ Martian and helped novitiate brothers, combining her established religious role with work in Mike’s Church of All Worlds. Alongside Dawn and Jill, both described as high priestesses, she introduced Fosterites to the idea that joining Mike’s church need not conflict with their existing faith. Patricia presented the relationship between the communities as compatible affiliation, not an enforced choice between them.

Her account of Foster’s kiss to Ben Caxton likewise shows how she used her own conversion to help explain the new community. She described the mark’s significance and its relation to Mike’s miraculous counterpart, which Ben saw on her. In her teaching, signs of religious identity could orient newcomers toward a deeper discipline, but they did not replace the effort of learning. Her work with beginners and novices made her a bridge between Fosterite practice and the growing community organized around Mike.

The bridge was not the same as an equivalence. Patricia remained a Fosterite, while accepting a new water-sharing bond with Mike and Jill on its own terms. Before offering the glass, Jill explained that sharing water meant trust, complete partnership, and an enduring relationship; she also stressed that Patricia could refuse if the act troubled her faith. Mike reinforced the invitation and its seriousness. Patricia chose to accept. Jill drank first, then Mike offered Patricia the water of life, and Patricia drank in turn. The exchange created a bond that the participants regarded as permanent, while leaving Patricia’s own religious commitments intact.

Ritual, Community, and Continuity

Patricia’s later work in the Nest carried her teaching beyond the first meeting. When she showed Ben the large, circular Innermost Temple, she identified its central pool as the place where new brothers were received. Her invitation to share water there was explicitly open-ended: Ben could wait or simply swim. That patience echoed the choice Jill had offered Patricia, making room for readiness rather than treating entry as an obligation.

Patricia also helped newcomers understand that membership involved preparation and gradual progression. The church’s circles organized instruction and spiritual development, while the Innermost Temple and its pool served as the setting for admission into the Nest. She told Ben how Mike had selected Sam and Ruth for water-sharing when they had only just entered the Third Circle; Mike alone could reliably identify someone ready that early, though Dawn or Patricia might sometimes recognize a candidate for special promotion and training. The account places Patricia within a community where discernment and teaching were shared, but ultimate confidence in exceptional early readiness rested with Mike.

The account of Sam and Ruth’s entry into the Nest makes the emotional stakes of the ritual visible. Ruth recalled struggling with jealousy and uncertainty as the couple advanced, and fearing that she could not join the group fully. In the Innermost Temple, the gathered members called them to share the water of life; she entered the pool and described herself as never having come back out. Patricia responded to Ben’s hesitation with reassurance that he would learn the language and discipline with the group’s help. Her pastoral role grew directly from the faith she had once entered as a seeker: she now welcomed others toward a communal identity without denying the difficulty of the threshold.

Patricia’s own joining of Mike and Jill’s water-sharing bond is especially significant because she understands religious belonging through a different tradition. She does not discard Foster’s kiss or claim that the two faiths are identical. Instead, her conduct joins inherited devotion to a new relationship of trust. The later practice of teaching Martian, guiding novices, and helping Fosterites approach Mike’s church extends that pattern from personal conversion to religious mediation.

Significance of the Relationship

The narrative sets Patricia’s personal memory against a broader account of Fosterism as a movement that combined charismatic leadership, graduated membership, ritual, and carefully managed organization. Foster had repeatedly faced opposition before developing methods that enabled the church to expand; its members could regroup under new congregational names when resistance forced them to close or move. In a later conversation, Sam describes precisely this strategy of closing one congregation and reopening elsewhere under another name, while building a disciplined core. Patricia’s enduring attachment to Foster therefore belongs to a faith whose survival depended on both personal conviction and institutional adaptability.

Patricia’s story also shows how religious authority can outlast its founder through signs, proxies, records, and trained successors. Foster’s direct kiss became a mark that ordained clergy could confer after his death, while fingerprint checks distinguished authenticated members from imitators. Patricia’s own status as an ordained teacher made her one of the people who could carry that tradition forward. At the same time, her willingness to share water with Mike and Jill demonstrates that this continuity need not prevent new bonds. Her connection to Foster remains the foundation of her religious self-understanding, but her life in the Nest gives that inheritance a new setting and a wider community.