She Changed Me

I met Sarah this past weekend at a young single adult conference in Nauvoo. She is from Rock Island, IL which is near the quad cities area. She is in the Davenport Stake. One of the high council men in the stake who was giving some closing thoughts said that he was changed a little because he had met some of us this weekend. I didn't really get to know Sarah that well, but watching her touched me.There was a group of four of us from our ward that showed up to the conference on Friday evening. We walked through the doors of the lodge and went to register.



As I was waiting for the others to complete their registration a young lady walked up to me. She was wearing gym pants and a long t-shirt. She was thin and had short hair. She wore a thick, dark blue headband. She looked at one of the guys in our group who is only 5'3" and said, "Should I tell him a short person joke?" I was a little surprised that someone we didn't know would ask a question like that for a first contact with someone, so I shrugged and said, "I don't know." In mind my I was wondering if she was serious and then thought maybe she was mentally slower and, therefore, didn't know that her joke probably wouldn't go over very well.



Later that evening as the girls all gathered in the sleeping area we were choosing rooms and Sarah chose our room. There were a couple other girls who knew Sarah and were also joining us. Just before bed as we were all settling in, Sarah pulled out her dress and began asking some other girls if it was modest enough to wear to the temple, which we would be attending the next day. She was genuinely concerned, but I balked a little because it was completely modest and fully appropriate. (Her backup dress was a long sleeved mock turtle-neck dress that went down to her ankles. :))



As I was desperately trying to fall asleep later that night Sarah came in a little late and the lights were out. Everyone in our room was already in bed, but she had been socializing with the other girls. I was a little frustrated because she kept walking back and forth by my bed and the floor would creak. It was adding to my sleeping problems. I gave up trying to sleep and opened my eyes. I watched her try for about 5 minutes to put her "backup" dress on a hanger. One of the other girls finally asked if she needed help. (They must have been having problems sleeping too.) I realized after a little while that the problem was not that she had an inability to put clothing on hanger. The real problem was that the lights were out and she wasn't able to see well enough. My heart softened a little as I realized that her concern was probably more for us trying to sleep.



In the morning when I woke up I noticed that Sarah had slept with her tennis shoes on. Instead of thinking how strange that was, I smiled to myself and thought of the night before. Maybe she thought that trying to take off her shoes in the dark would cause more problems too.

Sarah got up to the pulpit nervously on the last day to bear her testimony. I watched curiously as she told her story. She told us that she had been baptized last May and that this was her first opportunity to attend the temple to do baptisms for the dead. I smiled as she expressed how “cool” it was to be in the temple to perform important work for those who had passed on. She quoted from memory this line from the hymn “The Day Dawn is Breaking”:

In many a temple the saints will assemble
And labor as saviors for dear ones away.

She told us of the regret she felt for being “lazy” and not getting her own family names prepared to take through the temple (and here I am a lifetime member of the church who has not investigated my own ancestry enough). Her desire to progress through the essential ordinances of the temple was real. She concluded with a heartfelt testimony of the prophet today and sat down.

As I sat in that meeting a thought came to me that I had had earlier in my life. People who are living this mortal life with disabilities or disorders of whatever shape and size, through no fault of their own, often test all of us around them. Like I said before, I didn’t get to know Sarah very well this past weekend. But I watched those who obviously did. They were far better educated in the school of life than I was. Perhaps they had been changed by Sarah like she had changed me.