The Miracle of Service

This last Tuesday Dan and I and a bunch of people from our ward at church got together and drove down to help a widow from another ward. There are a bunch of widows in this particular ward, and they were getting together to help them and invited our ward to come too. We arrived at their church building, where we had a prayer, and then the guy in charge of the widow we were going to help took us aside to explain what we were going to do.


With tears in his eyes, this man told us that this lady's husband had had medical problems for a few years before he passed away, leaving her with three children (who I found out later were something along the lines of 11, 7, and 5). This lady was in her late twenties, perhaps early thirties, and it had been a rough thing for the entire family. He went on to tell us that she had been going back to school and had taken a job to help care for her family, and had accepted very little service. Our original intent was to show up and do a lot of yard work for her (she owns a good chunk of land around the house), and she had said that she didn't need help cleaning the inside...


...until half an hour before we were to show up. At that point she was taking her daughter to the hospital to check on a rash that she had gotten (I think it was hives), and she had called this man, half an hour before we were to be there, and said that we could go inside and help clean her house as well. As he was telling us about this phone call, he had to stop for a moment to make sure he could tell us. It was very touching, and I was pumped to go and help this woman.


We showed up at this adorable little house, and we were a little sexist and the women were sent to clean the inside while the men went outside to do the yardwork. Inside was a disaster- cheerios were all over the floor, the childrens' bedrooms were covered with toys and papers and clothes, the kitchen needed help, and the laundry room looked sad. The other girls attacked things as they got there, and I admit I wanted to go back outside; I'm one who'd rather be painting the fence or shingling a roof than clean! But I ended up in the girl's room, where I organized toys and papers and refolded all of her clothes.


Fifteen minutes into the cleaning, a couple of the girls had gotten two garbage bags and were stuffing all of the dirty clothes in it, including some icky-smelling sheets from the boys' room. They soon left in a car for a laundromat where, they told us later, they did 16 loads of laundry- using double loaders.


The widow (her name is Emily) came home just as the house was starting to look in better shape. I had finished the little girl's room and was waiting for the vacuum so I could clean the cheerios from under the couch and the table. (When the girl came into her room she looked around and called, "Mommy, look! My room is clean!" She sounded shocked, as though she never thought it possible!) The kitchen was just about done, and the boys' room was being attacked with a vengeance. I looked outside (at first to see where Dan was) and saw they were collecting branches on one side of the house, and in the front yard they were scraping off the old, worn paint on the fence and then painting it. It looked so nice! I didn't realise how much a new coat of paint on a simple fence could make it look that much nicer. A guy was mowing the lawn, and another gal (we dubbed her the queen of the weed-eater) spent a good chunk of time knocking down the VERY high weeds in the back.


Near the end of our time there, one of the guys in our ward who was almost an electrician came in and fixed a bunch of things for her, including two light fixtures, a light switch, and an outlet. More dishes were done, dusting, vacuuming, painting; the men were still working on the fence, despite getting eaten by mosquitoes, and the gals who had run off with the laundry still weren't back. I'm sure I don't have a clue about everything else that was going on. We were there for three hours that evening, and by the time we finished we were amazed at the transformation that this house and its yard had undergone. It was absolutely amazing. Emily made sure that we had enough to drink, and that we all had ice cream sandwiches. Another lady from the ward went home and baked cookies for all the workers, and brought them to the house fresh from the oven.


We waited for an extra half hour for the girls with the laundry to come back, standing in the yard in twilight watching bats fly around. Everyone was talking. Emily was showing some people a scrapbook and handing out jars of peach jam to anyone who would take one. We finally went back to our church building for root beer floats, donuts and cookies. We laughed and joked and we were all tired from standing and cleaning. Dan and I went home, showered, and passed out an hour before the time we usually go to bed.

Even just looking back, I'm amazed by how much we were able to get done. Everyone attacked that house ruthlessly, and we left it in wonderful condition. I can't even begin to imagine the impact that must have left on Emily's life, how much of a help it was, if I'm humbled just thinking about it...

It's something that I hope I never, ever forget.