A Life Time of Service

It is almost impossible to believe that President Thomas S. Monson, currently the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has served as a General Authority for more years than I’ve known I was alive.


A life time of service—that is what we see throughout the church. The frail, home bound sister that I visit, it is my call to serve her, to share with her a message of hope and inspiration. Yet with every visit, I come away with a tidbit of wisdom I’d not grasped or even imagined before our visit. Is the sister old? Frail? In failing health? Yes, but she is also a teacher, teaching me how to endure to the end in faith, with hope alive in her eyes, in her demeanor, in the very fabric of who she is. She, like me is a daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves us. And we, as his daughters, share that love with those around us.

It is not only the women or the aged that serve here. Let me share a lesson learned years ago.

I was taking a walk, back then I lived in a rural area west of the Salt Lake Valley. I happened to meet a country neighbor leaving her drive for a walk with her baby boy. That boy is now a teenager and very different than the wide eyed child in the stroller that morning. Of course we had to stop and visit. Her husband had recently returned to work after a difficult battle against nature to deprive him of life. If memory serves, he’d contracted Lyme Disease following an outdoor excursion. His wife, at the time heavy with their first child, had cared for him in less than favorable circumstances. We and others had fasted and prayed for many weeks in their behalf.

I don’t recall the conversation with the mother as much as the conversation I had with the child. I bent low, I may have even knelt on the frozen ground in front of the little boy.

“Eric (name changed),” in the instant I spoke his name a strong impression overwhelmed me. I felt directed to put my impression into words, possibly for his mother’s sake, or even mine. “Do you remember your Heavenly Father? Did you sit on his knee and beg him to let your daddy stay here? Did you tell him how much you would need him to become a man?” Little Eric smiled at me for the first time. He reached his tiny hand out to me as if in answer and jabbered in the language only babies can speak.

“Do you really think Eric sat on God’s knee?”

I knew Eric’s mother had a testimony of Jesus Christ. But I also knew that Eric and I needed to give his precious mother a gift. It is possible that only Eric’s infant ears had heard his mother’s lament that morning—Eric’s and the Savior’s. What gift did we give, that frosty morning on a country road? Hope and reassurance that God, in all His Majesty, is mindful of us and our needs, no matter how large or small.

And the lesson I learned? (Smile) To act on those promptings no matter how seemingly insignificant. A life time of service from the cradle to the last breaths of life. Is it within me? Is it within you? I hope so.