"Meet Cheryl"

      Trinidad Port of Spain Mission

            December 5, 2017

      I was so glad to be heading back to the airport to head ‘home’ to Curacao. It had been a week and a half of intense training for my new position as the Trinidad, Port of Spain Mission Secretary. I had sat in a chair in the Stake Presidents office nearly a year ago answering his question of, “What do you want to do on your mission”. I replied, “I don’t know what I want to do, but I do know what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to sit in an office every day. I’d rather go out and knock on doors!”  “Really,” he responded, with a very wide grin on his face. “Why do you seem so surprised?” I queried.  “Well,” he said with the same grin on his face, “When I ask most people that question, their answer is just the opposite! The last thing they want to do is knock on doors.”

     And here I am now, preparing to become “THE” Mission Secretary. What I feel at this moment is despair, so overwhelmed that I can’t even begin to have a nervous breakdown, because I don’t know where to begin! Sister Stecker, my trustworthy trainer, bless her heart, reassured me time after time, “Just remember, take it one day at a time” and my favorite,  “No- body died!”

     I find myself repeating to the Lord, “I really just wanted to teach the gospel and bring people to thee.” I LOVE sharing the gospel. It is so easy for me. I don’t know why, but it has always been easy for me. I look for opportunities to place myself in positions where I might be able to talk about the gospel with them. 

      It is the same feeling you have when you get the most wonderful gift you have had, and you are so happy that you want to call your friends and ask them if the want to go for a ride in your new car, or have a taste of that ‘World’s best Lasagna’ recipe you just made and it is the world's best lasagna! 

     But the best part is watching their face and seeing how happy it makes them too, when you do something nice for them and see that smile on their face. There is no greater joy than to be the barer of joy!

      We walked in the airport and moved to the departure isle and stood visiting with the Steckers while waiting, when to our left we heard this awful commotion and yelling. There we could see an airport security employee rummaging through this very short but large women’s luggage. We could hear her yelling profanities at him and telling him what a horrible person he is, to be going through her personal belongings and messing up her things. The whole airport was watching her, us included. 

      The airport employee was patiently responding to her, telling her that it is an airport policy to check bags randomly. But this would not be the first time he would check her bag, because she quickly grabbed her bag as he was finishing, and drug it back out to the hall at the back of the line and dropped it on the floor, yelling and shouting as she went, to repack it. When she brought it back up, expecting him to take it, he explained that he was going to have to recheck it because once you take your luggage back out of the checking area, it has to be rechecked. 

       Well that really started the yelling and screaming.   At that moment Elder Parr leaned over to me and said, “Let’s hope we aren’t sitting next to her!” We all chuckled, but deep inside me I felt sorry for her. People that get upset like that, do so, because things aren’t right in their lives. I began to wonder at that point what her life could be like to cause her so much hurt and frustration.     

       It was a full flight but thank goodness Elder Parr had booked our flight early enough to get seats close to the front of the plane. As I boarded, I could see that there were no open seats as far back as I could see, and as I continued to walk toward the back of the plane it became obvious that we were headed to the next to the last row and as I grew close enough to see the seats, there were two seats left on the plane; the center seat and the window seat. But our tickets were for the center seat and isle seat and sitting in the isle seat was Cheryl, the woman who had yelled and screamed about her luggage.

I kindly said, I think we have the isle seat and the center seat. Then she asked me if I would want the window seat. I knew dad didn’t like the window seats, so I said, we really would prefer to sit in the seats we were assigned.” And the complaining began, but she moved over to the window seat. I turned to dad and said I would sit in the middle, as she was quite large, and he would be so uncomfortable sitting in the middle.

I sat down and could see that she was having a hard time fitting in the space and noticed that the arm rest was down and asked her if she would rather have it up to give her a little more space. She let me lift it and said thank you. I knew then that she couldn’t be all that bad. She saw my missionary badge and started asking me questions about it. We quickly became friends and I knew then why we were sitting where we were. There are no accidents. 

Then the flight attendant, trying to please my friend, asked dad and I to move!!! So Cheryl could have an end seat and be more comfortable. “NO!!!” I thought. I am just getting to the good part! And then Cheryl spoke up and said, “NO! I like her! I like what she says!”  I leaned back around and told her we were fine and that we were friends. The attendant looked at me in disbelief and asked, “Really?” and I said, “Yes, we are friends and want to stay here.”

      And that is when we began a lengthy discussion about the gospel. She was interested and asked me if I had a Book of Mormon. I didn’t have a Book of Mormon, so I gave her a pass-a-long card and got her name and phone number, so the missionaries could contact her. She told me that she would be returning to Trinidad on Thursday, so the missionaries could call her then.

      We ate breakfast this morning with President and Sister Egbert, and just before we left the house it occurred to me that they would probably be on the same flight as Cheryl headed to Trinidad. So, I grabbed a Book of Mormon on our way out the door, I wrote her a note inside promising her great blessings if she read the book and pray about it and signed my name, Sister Deborah Parr.

      I will never travel again without a Book of Mormon in my carry on bag! My heart was filled with JOY! I had such a love for her when we finished talking. I will never forget that smile on her face as she nodded when I told her truths and she recognized the truth in them.  This gospel is true! It is the Peace the world is searching for. It is the Lord’s true Church here on earth and it brings me SUCH JOY that I just can’t help but want to share it.

                                                             LOVE you all,  NANA

“Two always know”

     When Dan Simon's was our Bishop, he always used the phrase, “Two always Know”. Sometimes we think when we do or say something that is not nice, no one will ever know, but that is not true. Our Savior knows, because He watches over us. That is something I recognized as a very young child and it has stayed with me ever since.
     I was listening to the “Music and the Spoken Word”, a Sunday morning program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and they started singing this song. I was reminded again of this phrase that Bishop Simon's taught. When I leave my house in the mornings I imagine myself walking out the door with my arm wrapped in the Savior's arm, taking Him with me. If my arm is wrapped in His I know that I can’t go anywhere that He would or could not go and it is easier for me to remember to be kind in all I say, because I would not want to offend Him.

     This is such a beautiful song and it is such a sweet remembrance of what I can be when the Savior stands beside me.

If the Savior Stood beside me, would I do the things I do?

Would I think of His commandments and try harder to be true?

Would I follow his example? Would I live more righteously

If I could see the Savior standing nigh, watching over me?

If the Savior stood beside me, would I say the things I say?

Would my words be true and kind, if He were never far away?

Would I try to share the gospel? Would I speak more reverently

If I could see the Savior standing nigh, watching over me?

If the Savior stood beside me, would my thoughts be clean and pure?

Would His presence give me strength and hope and courage to endure?

Would His counsel guide my actions? Would I choose more worthily,

If I could see the Savior standing nigh,watching over me?

Watching over me, watching over me,

He is always near me, though I do not see Him there,

And because He loves me dearly,

I am in His watchful care,

So, I’ll be the kind of person that I know I’d like to be

If I could see the Savior standing nigh watching over me.

The Story of a Monarch Butterfly

                                   The Story of the Monarch Butterfly

      When I was a young girl we lived in a small town in Nevada called Fallon. There were only about 5,000 people living there at the time. It was a farming/ranching community and there was a lot of open spaces. We lived out of town around those farms and ranches. 

     Every year the Monarch butterfly's would pass through there on there migration north for the summer. It was a beautiful site. I was very fascinated by them. I loved to see the chrysalis's formed by the caterpillars and see the magic of them turning into a butterfly from the caterpillar state they began. 

      One day I took a stem off a weed that had one of these chrysalis fastened to it and took it home and put it in a jar so I could watch it. Well after a time I could see orange and black colors appearing in the jar and the green color of the chrysalis disappearing.  Soon I could see movement in the chrysalis and I new the butterfly would soon be working his way out of the chrysalis. When that day came, I sat and watched with great anticipation. It seemed to take forever and it appeared that the butterfly was struggling and was not going to get out without some help. So I took a pencil with a very sharp point and began to help ease the chrysalis apart. When I did, the butterfly dropped to the bottom of the jar and laid there without much movement. It soon died. I ran to my father and asked him,"What went wrong? That is when I learned a great lesson.

        My father sat down with me and explained how the butterfly needed to struggle 

to strengthen its wings and to be able to dry them out. I was so sorrowful to know, that what I thought was helping the butterfly, was actually preventing it from living.

        I learned a great lesson that day about the need to struggle. Our Heavenly Father knows that for us to grow and develop spiritually, we need to struggle sometimes to prove ourselves worthy of the great blessings he has in store for us.

        President Hugh B. Brown said, "Being denied and forced to struggle, they (we) would develop those qualities which would later be needed."  We know that the pruning of a fruit tree gets rid of the surplus wood which strengthens remaining branches, increasing the yield, and improving the quality of the fruit.

        Our Heavenly Father is a perfect parent. He tells us in the Doctrine and Covenants the purposes of adversity. In sections 98:12, 14-15, and 101:4 we learn it is to try and prove us to see if we will obey his commandments. In section 122:7 we learn that it is to give us experience and to help us grow. And in section 136:31 We learn that these experiences will prepare us to receive the glory that He has for us.

        While suffering greatly in the Liberty jail, Joseph Smith wrote home to the members of the church and said this;

       "Trials will only give us the knowledge necessary to understand the minds of the ancients. For my part, I think I never could have felt as I now do, if I had not suffered the wrongs that I have suffered. All things shall work together for good to them that love God."

         President Wilford Woodruff said, " It appears plain that it is God's purpose....and I do not think we should complain, because if we had no trials we should hardly feel at home in the other world in the company of the prophets and Apostles who were sawn assunder, crucified, etc. for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ." "It is impossible...for the Saints of God to inherit a celestial Kingdom without their being tried as to whether they will abide in the covenants of the Lord or not."

      

       There are promises given to those who are faithful in adversity;

D&C 3;8 He extends his arm out always and supports us, with us in every time of trouble,

D&C 112:13 He will be with us, stand by us and heal us in our afflictions, and in

D&C 58:2-4 We will have a greater reward in heaven; glory, joy and other blessings will be ours.

        The Lord has descended below all things. He has experienced all things so that he might have compassion necessary to lift us up through our trials and tribulations. I know that Joseph Smith had confidence in the Lord. He understood that his trials would prepare him for eternal life and the glories that would await him.  He understood the importance of the struggle and how like the butterfly it would give him life-- Eternal Life.  It would shape him into a Celestial being worthy of the elect that had gone on before him. 

      I pray that we will all be able to hold onto this same knowledge that our Heavenly Father loves us and that he has a plan for us and we just need to have faith in that plan and know that through our trials we also will gain our salvation.

        I love you all so much and pray for you always that you will have faith during your trials and instead of turning away from your Savior during those trials that you will turn toward Him. He Loves you so much. That I know.

Love you, Nana

The Ballad of the Oyster

There once was an oyster
Whose story I tell,
Who found that some sand
Had got into its shell.

It was only a grain,
But it gave him great pain;
For oysters have feelings
Although they're so plain.

Now, did he berate
The harsh workings of fate
That had brought him
To such a deplorable state?

Did he curse at the government,
Cry for election,
And claim that the sea should
Have given him protection?

No! He said to himself
As he lay on a shell,
"Since I cannot remove it,
I'll try to improve it."

Now the years have rolled by,
As the years always do,
And he came to his ultimate
Destiny--stew.

And the small grain of sand
That had bothered him so
Was a beautiful pearl
All richly aglow.

Now the tale has a moral;
For isn't it grand
What an oyster can do
With a small grain of sand?

What couldn't we do
If we'd only begin
With some of the things
That get under our skin.

Author Unknown



* * *
Sand and Pearls


Do you know where pearls come from? They come from oysters.
An oyster is a shellfish that lives in the ocean. They have a very hard shell that protects them,
but sometimes something like a small grain of sand can get inside the shell
and it causes a lot of pain and discomfort for the oyster.

God has given the oyster a way to ease that pain.  When a grain of sand gets in there, the oyster oozes out a liquid that coats the grain of sand and then it hardens. The oyster keeps doing this over and over until the grain of sand no longer causes pain. This is how these pearls are made. Something that started out being painful turned into something very beautiful and valuable.

The same thing happens to us. Sometimes something comes into our life that causes a lot of hurt and pain. When that happens, God gives us something to help ease the pain. He gives us His love. If we ask Him to, He will ooze out His love to ease our pain and suffering. Often what started out to be very painful in our life can turn into something beautiful. 


Hopefully we will remember that the Savior can take the most painful hurts in our lives and turn them into something beautiful.

Tabby's Eye

                                                                  Tabby's Eye

When I had a couple of teenagers, I realized that my children weren't having enough 'spiritual' experiences that would strengthen their testimonies. That is a hard one. You can't always "plan" a spiritual experience that you know will strengthen and build a persons testimony. Many factors are necessary for someone to have a  faith promoting experience. And I knew I could not make each situation perfect for that to happen. I began praying for my children that they might have testimony building experiences come to them. 

Brother Michael Wilcox, who taught a religion class I attended, told us one day that every family needs to have a miracle at least once during the course of raising their children or each individual needs to have their own personal miracle happen in their youth. 

As I prayed for faith promoting experiences to come to our family, opportunities began to come.

I learned to watch for them and to take advantage of those opportunities and prepare my children for a potential miracle and then let the Lord provide.

You all should remember the miracle of Tabby's eye!

We had a cat named Tabby who faithfully came to the back door every night to be let into the garage on  summer nights. Well one night she didn't come home. I stayed up late calling her but she never came.

It was not like her. We were leaving in two days to go to Lake Powell and I was too busy to worry too much about her.Well we found her at the door in the morning and she looked terrible! She looked like she had been drug through the field. Her left eye was weeping and swollen shut. When I pulled her eyelid back to look at it, it looked horrible. You could not make out the different parts of her eye, it was so swollen and injured.

It was Sunday morning and I didn't have time to wait to take her into the Vet since we were leaving early Monday morning to head out for Lake Powell with some other families. So I called the Vet and Jenny and I took her in to see him.

He said he would keep her in the hospital and administer antibiotics while we were gone. I thought that would be great. We left and I didn't give it another thought, knowing that she would be well cared for.

When we got back a week later, we discovered that not only was her eye not better but it looked to be much worse. The Vet gave us two choices. We could have her eye taken out, which would cost us $350.00 or we could have her put to sleep. Jenny who was with me, began to cry at the thought. It didn't make me feel too good either. I didn't know what to do. So I asked the Vet if he would give us a few minutes to think about it before we made the decision. 

I didn't want to put her to sleep and neither did Jenny, but I also knew that I couldn't afford to have her eye removed.

I asked Jenny if we should pray about it and she said yes.  We each bowed our heads and silently said a little prayer. As I was praying I got a mental picture of Tabby and she was looking at me with two very normal eyes. I knew somehow her eye would be healed and I felt that we should take her home. I asked Jenny how she felt and she said, "I feel like we should take her home." She confirmed my feelings and when the Vet came back, I asked him if it would hurt if we just took her home and continued with the antibiotics to see if it would get better. He said he thought that it would be ok, so we did.

We  began to pray for her and her eye. I fasted for her and asked Heavenly Father to bless our family with this miracle. Her eye began to improve almost immediately!  We could see the different parts of her eyeball. It began to look very bloodshot. When we took her back to the Vet a week later for a check up, he was amazed and said her eye looked "2,000% better!" He explained why her eye looked so bloodshot. He said, "Look, her eye is forming hundreds of blood vessels that are repairing and mending her eye".  He sent us home and told us to keep doing what ever we were doing and come back in another week.

We came back in a week with a nearly perfect cat. A small scar on her eye was all that was left. The Vet said there had been another cat in with the exact same injury and he had sent them home and told them to do the same thing that we had done, but the cat's eye became so bad that they had to remove it. I told him when he asked me what it was that we had done, I had to answer truthfully, "We prayed for her." 

It was a miracle. I could have easily let it pass and just said put her to sleep, but I took advantage of an opportunity that could be, if the Lord allowed, a faith promoting experience, which it was.

I bare testimony to you that the Lord will always bless your children with those experiences, if you pray for them and watch for those opportunities when they come. And notice, that he gave us a witness that it was a miracle, by showing us that a cat in the same situation did not have the same results as Tabby did. I have seen that many times, that the Lord will give me proof of the miracle. I bare testimony to you that the Lord will always bless your children with those experiences, if you pray for them and watch for those opportunities when they come. 
I am thankful to our Heavenly Father for blessing our family with these testimony building experiences. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen..

Love, Nana