Follow Savior's example, and 'We will be blessed'
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At the October 1994 general conference, President Thomas S. Monson of
the First Presidency spoke of a visit he and his wife had made to a nursing
home in Salt Lake City. One of the residents they visited was a 95-year-old
woman, Nell, who was found sitting silently in the dining room, staring
into space. President Monson noticed that she held firmly to a Christmas
greeting card.
"The attendant smiled and said, 'I don't know who sent that card, but she will not lay it aside. She doesn't speak, but pats the card and holds it to her lips and kisses it,' " President Monson said. "I recognized the card. It was one my wife, Frances, had sent to Nell the week before."
President Monson said that he and Sister Monson left the nursing home more filled with the Christmas spirit than when they entered. "We kept to ourselves the mystery of that special card and the life it had gladdened and the heart it had touched. Heaven was nearby.
"We need not wait for Christmas; we need not postpone till Thanksgiving Day our response to the Savior's tender admonition, 'Go, and do thou likewise.'
As we follow in His footsteps, as we ponder His thoughts and His deeds, as we keep His command- ments, we will be blessed. The grieving widow, the fatherless child, and the lonely of heart everywhere will be gladdened, comforted, and sustained through our service, and we will experience a deeper understanding of the words recorded in the Epistle of James: 'Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their afflictions and to keep himself unspotted from the world.' " (James 1:27.)
