This week’s lesson was about love, and Carter “taught on a subject that exemplifies who he is – loving your neighbor as yourself”, Shoulta said.

Most had no way of knowing that this was one of the former president’s favorite opening lines whenever he teaches Sunday school.

Carter said he originally thought he might have only “a few weeks left” to live when he first learned of the diagnosis.

But it was the first time he had done so since announcing this week that cancer had spread to his brain, and starting a programme of radiation treatment in an effort to halt its advance.

Carter is the second-oldest living president separated by just over 100 days in age from former president George H.W. Bush. “It’s not often that we get a chance to be a part of something historical and significant for our country in a positive way”, Lilian Beck from Columbus, Ohio, said.

“I didn’t know if the treatments would make him sick later and he wouldn’t be able to teach”, she said. “If anyone has led a full life up to this point, it would be him”.

According to his Grandson and former Georgia state senator Jason Carter, his class Sunday was his 689th.

But right here, he nonetheless seems to be the identical hard-charging Jimmy Carter who handed out awards for nicely over an hour underneath a blazing solar finally fall’s annual Peanut Pageant and who by no means misses a board assembly of the Plains Higher Hometown Program. “The dates he’d blacked out (when he wasn’t out there to show) have been due to journeys he was taking for the Carter Middle”.

“No matter how bad things are, we have company in this world”, she said.

“He was wonderful. I feel uplifted”, Chet said, holding his wife’s hand.

“My roots are there, and my closest friends are there, and our little church is there, which is very important to me”, Carter said to the AP.

There has been much speculation in the worldwide press about Carter’s health since the initial August 12 announcement he was battling cancer. On Sunday, she warned hundreds seated on benches inside the church that they were not to offer a handshake when Carter sat for photos following the service.

However, Carter did say that he plans to cut back a bit from his tireless schedule that also includes his work at the Carter Center, Emory University and Habitat for Humanity, among others.