Of Service

A few months ago our church Elder's quorum received new home teaching assignments. After many attempts to meet with the one active family on my route, this Sunday I was finally able to make my first visit. Meeting with the family went well and we went over some basics of what they were looking for from their home teachers.

One thing that I thought was funny was that they want to keep our visits to an hour or less, which I thought to myself, "Why wouldn't our visits be an hour or less?" When they told me that the home teachers from their previous ward would stay easily two to three hours...they never knew when their home teachers were going to leave. Well after assuring them that I had no intention of "staying for a movie" I let them know that I wanted them to feel like I was the kind of home teacher that they could call with any kind of problem any time of day. I shared with them that on more than one occation I have called my home teacher in the middle of a night to ask for a blessing when really sick. Well it just so happened that today I was able to be of service.

During our visit on Sunday the father of this family shared with me that the flu has been making its rounds around their home and that he was taking his turn battling the bug. Sunday and Monday came and went, when he called me early this evening to ask if I could stop by to give him a blessing. I glady told him that I would be right over as soon as I wrapped up a few things at work. It just so happens that I work with the President of the Spanish branch in our area and we went together to give a blessing to this husband and father.

Still dressed in our work clothes we knocked on the front door. After a few moments someone on the other side tried opening it but for some reason the latch on the door was stuck and we were let in the side door. After telling the family how glad I was that they called me to help we gave the father a blessing. As we were starting to depart I mentioned that if they wouldn't mind that I'd like to take a look at the problem they were having with their door. They gave each other that...Well if he wants to...look, they consented and they gathered up some rudimentary tools. It was pretty apparent that while this couple was by no means an uneducated couple, they certainly weren't the handy type.

Taking the doorknob apart I was able to open the front door and the problem was obvious almost right away. The door knob had a poor fit to the latch...it didn't look like they were a matched pair...but after some generous application of WD-40 I had the latch working as best it could. After a few more minutes of re-assembly we were ready to part company, when the father made a sweet comment. Having just been through PPI's this last Sunday (this being my first in oh, about ten years) he told me that when I reported on my home teaching for this month to let my Priesthood leader know that I had earned the Super Home Teacher award (figuratively) for the month. I smiled and laughed, shook his hand and bid him a good night.

Reflecting on the visit on the drive home I thought to myself how nice it was to help someone out with something, that for me was a simple task, really solved a problem that may have been very frustrating for them. But more importantly I had that sweet uplifting feeling that I had been of service, and reminded me of the following quote:

“As we love our God, as we love our neighbor, we can be the recipients of our Heavenly Father’s love. Of all the blessings I have had in my life, one of the sweetest is that feeling the Lord provides when I know that He has answered the prayer of another person through me. As we love the Lord, as we love our neighbor, we discover that our Heavenly Father will answer the prayers of others through our ministry” - Thomas S. Monson