A bit more run down, but this is nothing.

I just got a call from a good friend. The idea of "mouring with those that mourn" was never more clear to me than right now.

 After being married at 17 and having several miscarriages, she finally had a beautiful baby girl. Unfortunately, not long after that, her husband began having an affair. He left them and remarried within the week the divorce was final. She survived on her own--just her and her daughter. One relationship landed her in the hospital with such critical injuries and such an extensive stay that she lost everything she owned and custody of her daughter as well.

Upon exiting the hospital, steal healing from massive injuries, she stayed at the WCA, where she was taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ by our lovely sister missionaries. She got out and started to get on her feet and struggled to stay faithful in her new found faith.

This is where I met her. I was the Junior Primary teacher--yep, all of it. So, I taught her daughter and my daughter and they quickly became friends and loved Sunday school together. Her ex-husband took her to court and actually got a judge to rule that she could not take her daughter to church with her when she visited on weekends. This blew me away. I saw it with my own eyes as it unfolded. We were not allowed to teach this beautiful little girl who truly was gaining a testimony anymore about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In the coming years, the adversary worked hard on my friend through various temptations and negative thoughts and years of loneliness. Once, she told me that had I not come to her home, no one would have known if she were dead or alive. She had no one else. Now, I know she had faithful home teachers, and I was her visiting teacher, but we were friends too and I think she was really talking about friends. I believe he did this to make her struggle, in the hope that she and her daughter would eventually be lost.

I'll tell you that Heavenly Father loves his children and she is one of his most precious daughters. He has never forgotten her in her trials. And she has remembered him. A couple of years ago she married. A couple of months later her husband accepted the Gospel, though she had been very reserved in sharing--God sent a messenger--a wonderful bishop who was guided by the Holy Spirit. Her husband was baptized and confirmed and later received the priesthood and they were sealed in the temple this last August. They have been in frequent temple attendance since.

I must tell you a couple more things. Her husband has sickle-cell anemia and is dying...eventually of the disease. They knew this before they were married. She is looking forward to life in a wheelchair, for in the years since I met her, she was diagnosed with a rare, genetic disease that would cause her spinal column to grow closed and crush her spinal cord. She is in a wheel chair much of the time now.

And today her husband is in the hospital for what may be the last time. This has been a long entry, but I must tell more! While in the midst of pain, of his heart and mind, he has refused all visitations and is questioning, "Why? What have I done to suffer like this?" He refuses to talk to his wife.

My friend expressed to me how sad she was, she's only had him in her life such a short time, and how much it hurts to not be able to stand at his side in his suffering. How this time it is different, having been in the hospital several times since they've been married--but this time he is giving up.

What can we do but pray? We are too far away to offer any other assistance. But already we have seen our prayers answered. Her bishop called her again and is doing all he can to reach her husband. In these cases, what is there but the intervention of the Lord, whether through his servants or the Holy Ghost? There is faith! I know my friend's faith is great. Because of that there is hope. Each passing moment is filled with more hope, though she's received no communication yet from her husband. Finally, there is charity--I cannot begin to describe all of its aspects or all of the directions it is coming from, especially from her Savior.



I Corinthians Chapter 13: 4-13

4^aCharity ^bsuffereth long, and is ^ckind; charity ^denvieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,     UAdd a Note 

 5Doth not behave itself ^aunseemly, seeketh not her ^bown, is not easily ^cprovoked, thinketh no evil;     UAdd a Note 

 6Rejoiceth not in ^ainiquity, but rejoiceth in the ^btruth;     UAdd a Note 

 7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.     UAdd a Note 

 8Charity never ^afaileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.     UAdd a Note 

 9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.     UAdd a Note 

 10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.     UAdd a Note 

 11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.     UAdd a Note 

 12For now we see through a ^aglass, ^bdarkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.     UAdd a Note 

 13And now abideth ^afaith, ^bhope, ^ccharity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Thank God for this wonderful gift. 

And she finally reached him and he's letting her come to him in the hospital, though he does not believe he will live beyond the morning.

Thank you Heavenly Father for how you love us and how you answer our prayers. 
My friend said I could share this--that it might strengthen someone else. That they might know the power that our prayers have.