June 7, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
June 7, 2011

This week’s journal entry is a story. It is more about “It’s not where you go so much as who you meet when you get there.”

Sister R____ and two of the Three Nephites

There is no evidence that God loves the rational person more than the rest of us. Each of us is subject to periods of varying shades of insanity during the different periods of our lives. Surely, we all have looked back over some event in our lives and thought, “What was I thinking?” A similar phrase, “What were you thinking,” was sometimes accompanied with a cuff to the side of the head when I was an errant boy. And if any of you think you have always been a perfectly rational person, your parents can probably recall periods of temporary insanity during your adolescence.

Sister R____ is in her mid-60’s. She is short and heavy. She wears a brace on one knee, and sweat band on the left wrist under her watch. Her hair, always appears freshly washed and still wet, is combed back. Her piercing eyes are a color of light gray and they seem to bore a hole through your chest when she fixes them on you. Think of a picture of Wilford Woodruff and you have a good likeness. In her younger days she drove big rig trucks. Now she totters back and forth a bit as she maneuvers her wheeled walker along the hallways at church, shoving it along in front of her. In one’s imagination it isn’t hard to replace the walker with a grocery cart to see how she looked nineteen years ago when she was a homeless person on the streets of Philadelphia. Of her faith after becoming a member, Sister R____ once said she had wanted to pay her tithing. Lord, she said, helped her remember where bits of money were hidden around the house.

Sister R____ is a woman without guile. Bluntly honest, she tells the truth with persistence that makes ‘normal’ folks squirm a little. “Dear God,” she volunteers to pray each week in Sunday School, “Bless these people to answer the teacher’s questions today so I’m not the only one” [who responds in class.] Or to Sister Blattman, “You forgot your name tag.” Sister B. mumbles something about she forgot but hoped that no one would notice. “I noticed,” said Sister R____ loudly, “You need to wear you name tag all the time.” A glance at Sister R____ ‘s quadruple scripture combination shows it to be tabbed with little pieces of tape and well-worn from frequent use. Indeed, her answers given in Sunday School class show she knows well what the scriptures say and her answers, like those who people read to learn rather than are taught, are not just the typical Mormon-speak but show a real understanding.

So, Sister R____’s story of meeting two men who she claimed may have been two of the three Nephites piqued my interest. I’ve heard and read a lot of stories over the years that left me more skeptical than Sister R____’s account. You see, her story simple: She ran into two men who said and did nothing out of the ordinary, but the encounter, she said, “Made my heart leap in my chest.” It was the same feeling she had in a similar experience near the time that she joined the church nineteen years ago.

It was the morning of the Broad Street Run, and annual event. The North Philly church where Nancy and I attend is on Wyoming (Wyoming is a Pennsylvania name by the way) and Broad Street. We had to park on the wrong side of Broad Street and wait while 30,000+ people ran past, or most of them anyway, so we could at last thread our way between the less fit and gasping lagging runners without fear of being trampled. That morning, Sister R____ said she had to take three different busses to get to church -a considerable struggle to negotiate with her walker and bad knee. At one bus stop, two men approached her and asked, “Sister, what church do you attend?” She replied, “The Broad and Wyoming Chapel.” The men kindly wished her well. She labored onto the bus. When she turned back they were gone. That’s it! These were her angelic visitors.

She described the men as very old, dressed in heavy old coats, and they both had deeply lined faces. “But their eyes!,” she said, “Their eyes were bright! And when I looked into them my heart leaped in my chest. I knew they were messengers from God!” She needed no more affirmation, she simply knew who they were.

An old woman was moved to grateful tears by kindly passing remarks made by two old men at a bus stop in inner city North Philadelphia. North Philly is a place where as Nancy and I drive along and gape at so many disheveled persons hobbling along the sidewalks, we often remark about how many people we see limping. It is a place of row houses, asphalt, and trash; of poor people, people with canes, walkers, wheel chairs, and what looks like an abundance of hopelessness. What more likely place would angels come to lighten the heart of a faithful old woman?