One Sunday afternoon as we were sitting around visiting, my sister shared a poignant story she had heard in Church that morning. It touched me so much that I have never forgotten.
One of the speakers shared something that had happened to her years earlier. She had just finished spending a week at girls camp, coming home Saturday morning just a couple of hours before her husband left to take his scouts on an outing to Lake Powell.
There wasn't much time for them to talk, but her husband quickly told her how the week had gone and about their children. Everything had gone well, except their eighteen year-old-daughter was sad because her boyfriend was expecting his mission call and it was going to be hard for them to say goodbye for two years.
After her husband kissed her goodbye and left for Lake Powell, she got to the work unpacking and cleaning. She visited with all of her kids, but she couldn't find the eighteen year-old-daughter. Figuring she must be over at her boy-friends, the mom worked on cleaning the house, but her daughter never came home. After awhile she began to get worried, and eventually went looking for her daughter, but she couldn't find either her or her boy-friend. When she questioned the younger kids they told her their sister's boy-friend had received his mission call that morning, and unable to face the prospect of being separated for two years, the couple had eloped to Las Vegas.
The mother couldn't believe that, so she spent the afternoon and evening trying to track down her daughter. Of course, by this time she was really anxious, but she couldn't get a hold of her husband up at Lake Powell (this was before cell phones), her parents were on a mission in the Philippines so they couldn't help her, and her in-laws lived up in Utah so they couldn't help either.
The poor mother spent the whole evening on the phone, eventually learning that her daughter really had eloped, but while she was occupied she asked her other older children to watch the younger ones. They stayed out swimming in their backyard pool longer than usual. Somehow they lost track of their little two-year-old brother, and he drowned.
You can imagine how heart broken this mother, and her whole family, were. She understood the Gospel of Jesus Christ, she knew that she would see her son again, but this mother still suffered. For a month she agonized over loosing her baby, the unfairness of it all, and her desire, her need, to hold him again and be able to raise him.
She went to her Bishop, then to her Stake President, asking them to please explain how things were going to work in the Millennium, and if she would be able to have her baby back and get to raise him and have all the experiences she felt she had been cheated out of. Neither of them were able to answer her questions to her satisfaction. She said she worried and worried, and finally decided she needed to talk to one of the apostles to get her questions answered. In fact, she decided she needed to talk to Elder Neil A. Maxwell. He was such a great scriptorian and knew the Gospel so well that she felt sure he would be able to help her. But how could she talk to him? People don't just barge in on an apostle.
One Saturday morning, about four weeks later, she was upstairs cleaning bathrooms when the phone rang. She yelled downstairs to her kids who were watching Saturday morning cartoons to get the phone. They called upstairs to tell her she was wanted on the phone.
“Who is it?” she yelled back at them, cross about being interrupted in her chores.
“It's Elder Maxwell,” her kids yelled up.
“Yeah, right!” she muttered crossly as she crossed her bedroom and picked up the extension. “Hello,” she grumped into the phone.
“Hello,” a male voice greeted her pleasantly. “This is Neil A. Maxwell.”
She couldn't believe it, but it really was! Apparently, Elder Maxwell had been in the Philippines earlier that month, and had met her parents over there. They had told him about what happened, and he had felt like he needed to call and talk to her because something similar had happened in his own family.
“I just want to know what it's going to be like in the millennium,” this woman begged Elder Maxwell after they had talked for a few minutes. “I want to know that I am going to get to hold and raise my little boy, and have all those experiences I would have had with him if he hadn't died.”
“I'm sorry,” Elder Maxwell told her consolingly, “but I can't tell you exactly how things are going to work there. I don't know how God is going to make everything work out. But I can promise you this, however things work out in the eternities, you will never feel like you have been cheated.”
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