One more visit
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Edna Rudd was a spunky lady of 87 when my husband, Joe, and I were asked by the bishop in 1990 to regularly visit her at a retirement center.
She had joined the Church at age 79, the only member of her family to do so. She had already had the temple work done for her deceased husband and son and had their sealings performed.I promised that I would help her be sealed to her parents and brothers and sisters, except for her brother Earl, who was still alive and living in another part of the state.
However, the temple could not accept the forms I sent because there was no date or place for her parents' marriage. Edna just couldn't remember it. Her grandchildren were not sympathetic to our desires, and I didn't know how to find Earl, her brother.
For the next six months I prayed for direction and searched the marriage and census records from Montreal, Quebec; South Dakota; and Bakersfield, Calif., points along the route her parents had taken when they came from Canada. But I had no luck.
Then Edna took a fall and was placed in a convalescent home quite a distance away.
Fearing her days might be numbered, I felt the need to visit her right away and ask her one more time about her parents.
So in December 1991, I put aside the pressing errands and Christmas shopping and made the visit.
I had not been there more than five minutes, holding her hand, looking into her eyes, asking her questions, when an old man with long, white hair walked into the room. He went straight to the bed and took her other hand.
"Edna, I am your brother, Earl," he said.
He soon told me their parents were married in Toledo, Ohio, in 1900. (How would I ever have known to look there?) I have since received copies of the marriage license.
As I drove home that day I thought, what if I hadn't come? What if I had come an hour later?
I marveled at the miracle I had just witnessed in Edna's behalf. - Sharon Richey, Clovis 6th Ward, Fresno California North Stake
(Another in a series of "Family History Moments." Illustration by Deseret News artist Reed McGregor.)
