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BOB FLAHERTY

Cynthia Badillo, left, of Meriden, Conn., came to the convention with her family, including daughter Tiffany.

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GORDON DANIELS PHOTOS

Josh Haywood, 12, of Branford, Conn., left, and Julian Williams, 10, of East Haven , Conn., relax during the break at the District Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Josh said he’s been attending “all his life” and Julian for five or six years.

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The start of the afternoon session of the District Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses at the Mullins Center at UMass. Members of the church from across the Northeast will gather over the next six weekends, with more than 40,000 people attending.

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GORDON DANIELS

Katherine Hus of Coopersburg, Pa., attends the Witnesses’ gathering.

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GORDON DANIELS

Bill Casper of Hadley, the program overseer for last weekend’s District Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

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GORDON DANIELS

Josephine Casper of Roanoke, Va., left, and Dorothy Casper of Hadley attend the Jehovah’s Witnesses convention.

AMHERST - The floor of the Mullins Center can be transformed from hockey rink to basketball court to mosh pit in short order - but a swimming pool? As the banners of hoops legends Burke, Erving and Roe fluttered overhead like towels on a line, the blue water of a large oval swimming pool twinkled beneath them.

For six weekends to come, the pool will be there at stage right and as many as 80 people may be baptized in it. Once again, the arena this summer is a staging ground for this faith's campaign for the only government its members acknowledge - "God's Kingdom."

At a lunch break Friday during the kickoff of Jehovah's Witnesses' district convention, thousands of happy worshippers in Sunday best and vibrant dress spilled out of the Mullins and shared good news and fellowship in the Valley sun.

The program advises baptism candidates to assemble in the reserved section by the front of the stage and bring a towel and a modest bathing suit. It also makes clear that there'll be no saving of seats, unless "for those traveling with you in the same vehicle, living with you in the same home, or currently studying the Bible with you."

Since close to 6,000 faithful were converging from places like Pennsylvania, New York, Nantucket, Virginia and Lexington, Ky., seats were at a premium and not to be taken lightly.

"It's alive - a live faith," said business owner Bill Casper, 64, of Hadley, who was baptized into the faith at 15. Casper, a member of Amherst's Kingdom Hall, has been an elder with the church for 40 years. "It's a volunteer ministry," he said. "Everyone you see here today is unpaid - they've all got regular jobs."

It's a telling point, he believes.

"The state of religion is a mess," he said. "Nowadays there's no right or wrong. That's not true with us. We base our beliefs 100 percent on the Bible."

For most, encounters with Jehovah's Witnesses are limited to the sight of conservatively dressed strangers coming up the drive armed with copies of Watchtower magazine and answers to any argument about salvation you'd care to mount.

Casper, like all Witnesses, has had his share of doors slammed in his face. "It's a rejection of the message, not of us," he said with a smile. "On the whole, people are very good. We're not here to make pests of ourselves, just to share the good news."

Urgent news

The news, Witnesses believe, is of an urgent nature. All the signs of the last days are here, they say, plain as the nose on your face and the tornadoes in your backyard. When God, as prophesied, swoops up his 144,000 chosen to help him establish a new government, those left behind better have their ducks in a row. As predicted in Daniel, God's Kingdom will crush all other kingdoms so, "Let God's Kingdom Come!" The theme of this seven-week convention is a declaration that the Kingdom called forth in the Bible is a real government, to supplant all other regimes, and that it means to be carried out on Earth.

Jehovah's Witnesses sing out and deliver this news, here and in city after city throughout the world.

"Think of it," Casper said of the Mullins proceedings this summer: "Seven conventions consisting of 60 congregations, all getting the same information. What does that do to unify people? While other churches are dwindling, our Kingdom Halls are running 100 percent. You get there 20 minutes early and you're still there 30 minutes after the service has ended."

Casper lost his first wife to cancer over 12 years ago, a three-year ordeal. But Casper says he never had a moment when he pointed a finger at the deity who allowed it to happen. "I know it wasn't God doing it, but it was God who gave me the strength to get through it," he says. "It's putting your faith out there every day, loving your neighbor. If you love one another, that gets you through anything. The Bible foretells a time when there'll be no sickness or suffering."

It also tells Casper that Jesus didn't perform all those miracles to show off. Witnesses believe those acts were previews as to what will be available to all believers once God's Kingdom takes hold.

It's the end of "a wicked system of things," said Casper, referring to Satan, who has reigned over Earth since he slithered into Adam and Eve's garden. But his time is getting short, and the "last days" full of war, pestilence, money and slander are well upon us. "All the signs are that it's culminating now," said Casper. "The government in the hands of Jesus Christ is about to assert itself - so hang on for a ride."

Casey's second wife, Dorothy, who also embraced the faith as a teenager, sang courtside at the Mullins. At her side was her mother-in-law, Josephine Casper, 97 years old, coming all the way from Virginia.

And while they sang, a fast-moving cadre of volunteers, 500 strong, went around washing smudges off windows and doors, just as they had done days earlier, washing every seat in the house. People in the men's room were seen washing their hands in the sink and then toweling up the drops afterwards.

Speaker Reginald Payne reminded the brethren of the blessings in life, including this "three-day convention," his voice rising, "a spiritual feast at the expense of our brotherhood!"

And the Mullins Center was awash in song, a multiracial chorus of 6,000 souls.

"I believe I'll be living forever," said father of four Paul Davis of Leicester, taking a break from the singing to let his 2-year-old son Levi stretch his legs in the sunny air outside. "I'll be healthy and strong, just as I am now," he added, with a grin as broad as his shoulders.

Eternal life, to many, means a life after death. Witnesses believe eternal life to be just that, to be lived right down here with the cars, trees and trucks, while God and his 144,000 reign above.

Davis became a Witness in 1985 at age 20. "I tried to refute it but couldn't," he said, and immersed himself in the Bible. "With learning comes responsibility," he said.

For some, Jehovah's Witnesses entered their lives at just the right time, tossing out enough rope to save entire families.

"If I wasn't in the Truth, I'd have fallen through the cracks," said Cynthia Badillo of Meriden, Conn., there with her husband, David, and their children Jason, 29, Tiffany, 27, Sherri, 25 and David, 23. "I would be lost. I don't know what I would be. I had a hard life."

"I was molested (and became pregnant) ... ran away at 15, nowhere to go," she said. She found herself in deplorable shelters for battered women, had foster parents for a short spell but they died. "The system let me down," she said.

And then there was the baby, Jason, and the two became separated as social workers sorted things out. "I wanted to put him up for adoption," Badillo said. "My brother said 'Don't do it, you're going to regret it.'"

She met her future husband, "a petty thief," on the streets. Both knew there was something more than the drugs and alcohol being offered out there. "Me and him put our heads together; I got my son back in three months," she said.

She was raised in a different faith, but when life got crazy, the answers she asked for were vague. "I wanted to be shown; I wanted proof," she said. "Specific questions I asked my past pastor, he couldn't answer. 'You just got to have faith,' he told me. I was not satisfied. Why is there so much hatred?"

Two visitors

Then, like the doorbell-ringing messengers they would soon become, two visitors with a satchel full of Watchtowers stood outside David and Cynthia Badillo's door and changed their lives. God doesn't cause problems, she would come to accept, "but God steps inside."

"A bad walk of life is going to be a good one," said her husband, who got a job at a drive-in theater, checking each car to make sure people weren't hiding in the trunk, while his wife studied to be a certified nursing assistant, which she is to this day.

Their children, Witnesses all, were never forced into the faith, only raised in it. Each, like the offspring of most Witnesses, is expected to either reject or embrace the faith on their own terms.

"No one made me; I worked at it, said Tiffany Badillo, who started taking Bible study five years ago and was baptized last year at 26. She and her mother are often seen witnessing together, bringing the news to as many strangers as possible before it's too late.

"The future of the world is in chaos right now," Cynthia Badillo said. "An ungodly and unjustified system is going to be done away with."