Family history moments: The right number
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
A few years ago, I noticed a phone number displayed on my phone caller ID. It was from a chemical company in Alabama. I remember thinking it odd to receive a call from a chemical company but discounted it as someone having simply dialed a wrong number.
However, a week or so later the same number from the chemical company showed up again on the caller ID. Curiosity caused me to call the number to find out why I was receiving calls from them.
To my surprise, a woman answered the phone whose last name is the same as mine, Bankester. We talked, and I learned she had not called my number nor did she have any explanation for her number showing up on my phone.
I learned she had a brother in my area of Florida and could not resist asking her a final question about the mysterious appearance of her number on my phone. So I asked if it was possible she had mistakenly called me instead of her brother. Her reply sent chills up and down my back. With courteous indignation she responded, "Don't you think I know my own brother's phone number?"
I wondered then why we had been brought together over the phone and continued to chat with her. As we talked about the Bankester family, I learned from her invaluable information about some of my ancestors about whom I knew nothing until we talked.
When I brought this occurrence to the attention of a dear friend in the Church, he immediately used the information about my ancestors to perform a search on the Church Web Site that eventually led to my friend and my daughter and me traveling to the Birmingham Alabama Temple and performing the first ordinances for any of my dead ancestors that had ever been performed. Being able to share the performance of the ordinances with my daughter, my friend and me as proxies was amazing. I shall never forget the blessings! How mysterious are the methods our Heavenly Father uses to help us fulfill our obligations to others. — Larry Bankester, Jay Branch, Pensacola Florida Stake
