In 1986, while a member of the Millcreek 2nd Ward, Salt Lake Millcreek Stake, the value of Relief Society - and its visiting teaching program - became very real to me. I had a stroke, and I was not expected to live. My right side was paralyzed. While I was in the hospital, I didn't know what was happening to me. I thought, `What am I going to do?'
Then one day, the Relief Society president came to see me. She talked to me for quite awhile. That night, my visiting teachers and members of the Relief Society presidency visited me. They brought me roses from their gardens and cheered me up. While they were there, I moved my toe. They were excited for me, and I felt much better after they left.During the weeks I was in the hospital, I had visitors from the Relief Society every day; many times they were my visiting teachers. I felt they were angels.
After I got out of the hospital, the Relief Society president and two new visiting teachers came to see me. They got me talking about the travels my husband and I have taken through the years. It was during this visit I realized that I was receiving from them, and in return, they were receiving from me. We were giving each other love and encouragement.
Throughout my recovery, my visiting teachers and other sisters also brought in meals for my husband, Harry Jack, and me.
It was through the love and constant visits from these sisters that I gained the will to live again after my stroke. These sisters came with a show of love, and without this love I could not have succeeded in overcoming the terrible depression that followed the stroke.
Through the years since I joined the Church in 1950 in Los Angeles, Calif., I have found the Relief Society motto "Charity Never Faileth" to be a constant source of faith, love and hope. I have been strengthened. Relief Society has been my mainstay of wanting to live and serve the Lord in any way I can.
My husband and I are now living in a residential care facility in Salt Lake City. We no longer live in the boundaries of the Millcreek 2nd Ward, but sisters and others from the ward still keep in touch with me. Because I have been treated so kindly in the past, I want to do so to others. I try to be a friend to others in the nursing home who don't have anyone to talk to.
