Line upon Line

My friend Betty Johnson was a teacher.  She arranged her schedule so that she could spend some time one year helping at our school at Rising Star Outreach in Tamilnadu, India.  She wrote and shared this story with me:

While serving at Rising Star, I received a care package from my daughter. She sent a flashlight, candy, and other little things. When I received the package, everything in it had been stolen except one piece of red vine licorice.

I wondered what I could do with just one piece of licorice. I decided I would offer it as a reward for good behavior in my small class of nine 8th graders. So, I awarded the piece of licorice to a deserving boy.

Then the most interesting thing happened. He cut the stick of licorice into nine equal pieces and gave each student a tiny piece of his ‘award’. I will always remember how quiet and attentive those students were while he was cutting the licorice. There were no shouts of someone getting more than another, etc. They just patiently waited until the pieces had all been distributed. Nobody ate a piece until everyone was served. Then they all ate their candy together. It was AMAZING. One little stick of licorice. What a lesson for me that was!

One stick of licorice, yet it fed the entire class!  Sometimes we erroneously tell ourselves that we would share with others if we had more.  Sharing is not a matter of having more; it is a matter of having more heart.

After my mother died, my father lived alone for many years.  Each winter we would bring our family to visit him and while there, we would use his home as a base for skiing the beautiful mountain slopes of Utah.

Dad was retired, so I knew he didn’t have a lot of extra income.  When we would come with our ten children, I worried about him feeling stressed over the increased food bill for the week.  Thinking to put his mind at ease, as soon as I got to Pleasant Grove, where he lived, I headed for the Kohler’s grocery store, so I could buy the necessary food for the week.

Upon arriving back at the house, as I was bringing all the food in from the car, to my surprise, Dad acted hurt and disappointed.  “Now what did you do that for?” he asked with some obvious irritation.  I explained simply that I was only trying to keep from putting a strain on his budget with all the extra mouths to feed from our family.  I was surprised that he was not pleased.  In fact, he acted as if I had done something terrible.  I was a bit confused.

The next day, I realized what I had done.  As Dad and I were coming back from visiting my sister, Diana, as we were about to pass the Kohler’s grocery store, Dad said suddenly, “Pull into the Kohler’s parking lot.” Instead of complying I asked, “Why?  I’ve already bought everything we need this week.”  But he was insistent.  He said, “Well, we’re going to need more butter.” I objected, “Dad, I bought an entire package of butter.”  He countered with, “Well, we’re going to need something else.”  We were about to pass by the Kohler’s.  He insisted strongly, “Pull into Kohler’s!”

I could sense an edge in his voice.  So, I reluctantly pulled into the parking lot.  We got out of the car and went into the store.  Dad kind of wandered around the food aisles a bit.  I asked him what he was looking for, thinking I might be able to help him find what he needed.  He seemed not to know what he was looking for.

Finally, he said, “Aha!  Here it is!” and grabbed some obscure sauce from the condiment shelf.  When I asked him what he was going to use the sauce for, he mumbled, “You’ll see.”  He now seemed excited as we approached the checkout lanes.  There was a lane open, so I quickly headed into the checkout.

He said, “No!  No! Let’s use this lane over here” as he took my arm, backed up, and pointed to a checkout lane two rows down, that had a young teenage checkout clerk who was ringing up a long order.  Mystified by this crazy behavior, I didn’t even protest.

When the man in front of us finally paid for his groceries and left, I was surprised that the checkout girl broke into a big smile.  “Hi Don!” she said enthusiastically.  “I wondered if you would be coming in today.”

Dad was clearly pleased.  His entire face lit up as he grinned his biggest grin and said, “I know, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it. Thank heavens I remembered I needed this sauce.”  This checkout girl rang up his purchase.  Then as she prepared to hand him his receipt, she came around the counter and gave him a hug along with his receipt.

She couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17 years old.  At that moment, she suddenly seemed like the most beautiful girl in the world to me.  What a sweetheart!  Dad was beaming!  As we walked back to our car, he seemed transformed.  Instead of irritated, he was ebullient.  “She hugs me every time I come in,” he said exultantly.

Now everything made sense to me.  With Mom gone, Dad didn’t get many hugs.  This sweet girl had sensed that and made sure that every time he came to the store, he got a hug from her.  Consequently, I instantly realized why Dad was so displeased when he saw all the groceries I had bought.  He needed an excuse to go to the store every day—he needed that hug!  It was the high point of his day every day.

I work in India with people affected by leprosy. I have many opportunities to speak about my work throughout the U.S. and in several foreign countries.  Typically, after I speak there is usually a line of people wanting to know how they can get involved in our work.  What’s stunning, is that even though I do not mention the Church in my talk, it inevitably turns out that most of the people in line, turn out to be members of the Church.  It doesn’t seem to matter which state the forum is in, or even which country I am speaking in.  The result is almost always the same.

Why is this?  In the Church, we are taught from a young age that we serve God by serving others.  It just becomes a part of who we are.  It’s part of  being a member of the Church.

One of our former Executive Directors at Rising Star Outreach, Amy Antonelli, had a similar experience one time in Palo Alto.  She had joined a local service organization.  They were preparing for an event.  They needed volunteers to help pull off the event.  Amy offered to get the volunteers.  One of the women said to her, “You’ll need help.”  Amy responded that she thought she could handle the assignment herself.  The woman warned, “You have no idea how difficult it is to get volunteers in Palo Alto.  In this place, no one has time to volunteer.”    Amy said “Well, I’m a Mormon. . . .”  Before she could even finish her sentence, they all in unison shouted, “YES!!!!”  Clearly, problem solved!  I love that even non-members of the Church can recognize that as a characteristic of members.

Isn’t that wonderful?  We don’t have to have a large bank account or a lot of leisure time.  We don’t have to have influential friends or be successful.  Each of us has the power within us to bless the life of another person.

When we were serving as Mission Leaders in the Dominican Republic, we challenged our missionaries to spend part of every Prep Day doing volunteer service in their communities.  In Monte Cristi, the missionaries began assisting the Mother Teresa Foundation which was providing medical care for the Haitian workers in the Bateys.  The Bateys are extremely poor areas of the Dominican Republic where Haitian workers work on sugar plantations or banana plantations. They are not recognized as citizens of the D.R. and so receive no services.  They have no access to medical care or even schooling for their children. They earn only pennies per day. The poverty in the Bateys is crushing.

The Mother Teresa Foundation was run by a woman named Petra.  She had our missionaries carrying people to and from the clinic for treatment, who were unable to walk. They provided interpretation for the patients and helped with their medications.

After we did a joint medical clinic together, Petra was effusive in her praise of the missionaries. She said of them, “I simply love the missionaries.  They’re such good workers!  So clean!  So respectful!  So happy!  So humble!  And the work that your Church is doing in this country is wonderful!”

Then she said something that stunned me, “It’s not only this country. Your church is doing great work all over the world.  In fact, I told my sister who is having problems in Mexico not to waste time looking for help from the Catholic Church.  I told her to ‘Go find the Mormons!’”  While it drew a laugh from all of us, I have to admit that I was pretty proud to be a part of a Church that even Mother Teresa’s missionaries could recommend without reservation to someone who needed help!

So, let’s all live up to our reputation!  And each time we reach out to serve, our own life can be blessed.  Pres. Spencer W. Kimball taught, “Only when you lift a burden, will God lift your burden. Divine paradox this! The man who staggers and falls because his burden is too great can lighten that burden by taking on the weight of another’s burden. You get by giving, but your part of giving must be given first.” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 251.)

Lewis Carroll once famously said, “One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.”  Notice he didn’t say it had to be big.

I once read that we each meet around 10,000 people in our lives.  If we could change two people for the better this year, and next year each of those could change two more, and the next year each of those could change two more, by the thirtieth year we would have lifted and changed the entire population of the earth!  Imagine!  These simple acts of service, given freely from the abundance of our hearts, (not necessarily of our pocketbooks) have tremendous power to bless.

We all carry burdens.  What a wonderful gift to know that we can lighten our own burdens by reaching out to help others.  From the abundance of our hearts, we can lift and heal, often through simple acts of kindness.