Hard Lessons

You know when you are working hard and doing what you feel the Lord wants you to--but still hard things happen?  That is true even when you are a missionary!

For me, it has been a collection of migraines including a four day long one at the first of September which required two visits with my doctor, a new medication, and finally two shots and more sleeping to finally get passed it.  It was not fun and I was not a happy camper.  But that is a minor thing compared to our sweet Sister McClure.

She is the one who went to the temple with us in July and than again at the end of August.  She is so happy and kind and she and Jena have developed a cute relationship.  She is a widow who decided to serve a mission so she sold her house in Texas, visited her children, and came into our mission in July.  She grew up in Samoa and has a pretty singing voice as well as plays the ukulele.

At the end of August, she wasn't feeling well--very nausea and dizzy and having trouble with standing so her granddaughter took her to the ER.  There she was given fluids, ran tests, and then sent home.  The next morning everything was worse and her daughter who had spent the night with her in her apartment here called the ambulance.  She was taken to the closest ER and then moved to the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray.  She had a brain bleed which caused a stroke.  She has been in the hospital, then in a rehab center and just was released on Friday to go to her daughter's home.  She is so sad to not be able to serve her mission right now, but we are all just glad that she is still alive and making such great recovery. 

It has been so great to watch the missionaries pray for her and prepare cards and visit her.  They all love her as well.  We had a couple of sweet experiences which I want to record.

After she had been in the hospital for a couple of days, she asked Gary to come and give her a blessing.  He invited Elder Allan to go with him as they work together in the SPC lab.  Gary said that when they arrived at the hospital's ICU unit, they were approached by a women and asked if they could come and give her dad a blessing (wearing missionary tags and suits makes you stand out in a crowd, I guess.)  They explained that they were going to give a blessing but would be happy to come back down when they were done.  She agreed.  The blessing was a sweet experience and when they left her room, someone else approached them about giving another blessing so they went into that room, visited for a minute, and then gave a blessing.  Then they returned back to where the first woman was, they couldn't find her or anyone by the name that she had given them.  That was the only downside that they couldn't find her.  

Gary has had the opportunity to give a number of blessings since being here and it is such a sweet experience for him (and for me.)  You truly need to "be prepared" when you are a missionary.

We were able to go visit Sister McClure at the rehab hospital.  As she was only allowed two visitors at a time, I went in with Jena first and then later Gary and I switched places.  When Gary came into the room, this is what he found:

Gary said that the two of them sang and played for about 20 minutes.  Her daughters told us later that it made Sister McClure's day.

We also found that Sister McClure had posted Jena's card from the first few days in the hospital in her room at the rehab hospital.  She had told her daughters that she wanted it where she could see it any time to give her encouragement.

Sister McClure wants so badly to do her work as a missionary and it doesn't seem right to her that she has to deal with this challenge instead.  But she knows and we know that God's timing is smarter than ours and that we must do our best and manage things as they come.  She is a great example of that to all of us.  We love Sister McClure and know you would all love her as well.