A comfort to us all

Wonderful thing for Tuesday: a visit with Jennie, whose sister is undergoing chemo, and who spends almost all her time at her store in Florence or at the hospital. What must it be like? Your sister may be dying, and at any rate is in a very bad way, you live alone and have to be at your little shop nearly all the time. Not much space for relaxing, not much time to be merry. Though her own health is suffering from the strain and the lack of sleep, she has a great attitude. She said she is constantly encouraging her sister to fight this, to have a positive outlook. She herself keeps her scriptures at the shop, relies on prayer, and has received priesthood blessings of comfort. She was very gracious and grateful for our visit. We spoke of the compassion the Savior has, as manifested at the grave of Lazarus, where even knowing what He was about to do, He wept for their grief. We shared personal assurances based on our own experiences, including the promise as in 3 Nephi 13:34, that for every day, He blesses us with everything we need to face that day's challenges. We had a prayer together. I think we were all strengthened. I don't know why, but for some reason when I publish this, it won't accept a paragraph break; hence, I am adding a verbal paragraph break: Okay, fun thing: I am like the three little kittens, and have now lost both my mittens. The first I lost Saturday at San Gemignano, after having it returned to me twice as it was, by the ever watchful Elder Kekoolani. The second one I remember having picked up when we exited the car to visit Jennie; then, on the way back to the car in the bitter cold, I noticed my pockets were entirely empty, devoid of both the lone mitten and my cell phone. Luckily, the phone was in my purse. As we walked up to the car, I spied a glove on the street: it was Blaine's. We are a pair! A pair with missing mittens.