A Good Sunday Thought

Earlier this year Jeremy and I got new callings in our ward. (For those of you who aren’t LDS – it’s the responsibilities we have been called to perform in our church.) First, Jeremy received the calling of Elders Quorum Instructor (teaching the men in the ward). I did not envy him. For a few weeks I was off the hook until my calling came… Relief Society Instructor (teaching the women in the ward). I was terrified, to say the least. I even started crying. I had never taught anything besides nursery (the 1-3 year olds) so I didn’t feel qualified for this very important calling. Anyway, after a nervous breakdown before my first lesson, which went very well, and a successful second lesson, I’m feeling much better. It’s nice because we both teach the same lessons so we get to prepare for them together. However, he has to teach three times a month and I only have to teach once a month. Again, I don’t envy him. This week’s lesson is one that I don’t have to give but Jeremy went through his lesson with me and I loved this story so much that I just had to share it. The message is so wonderful! I hope you like it too!

“Years ago, when my brothers and I were boys, our mother had radical cancer surgery. She came very close to death. Much of the tissue in her neck and shoulder had to be removed, and for a long time it was very painful for her to use her right arm.

One morning about a year after the surgery, my father took Mother to an appliance store and asked the manager to show her how to use a machine he had for ironing clothes. The machine was called an Ironrite. It was operated from a chair by pressing pedals with one's knees to lower a padded roller against a heated metal surface and turn the roller, feeding in shirts, pants, dresses, and other articles. You can see that this would make ironing (of which there was a great deal in our family of five boys) much easier, especially for a woman with limited use of her arm. Mother was shocked when Dad told the manager they would buy the machine and then paid cash for it. Despite my father's good income as a veterinarian, Mother's surgery and medications had left them in a difficult financial situation.

On the way home, my mother was upset: "How can we afford it? Where did the money come from? How will we get along now?" Finally Dad told her that he had gone without lunches for nearly a year to save enough money. "Now when you iron," he said, "you won't have to stop and go into the bedroom and cry until the pain in your arm stops." She didn't know he knew about that. I was not aware of my father's sacrifice and act of love for my mother at the time, but now that I know, I say to myself, "There is a man."

This is taken from Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s talk Let Us Be Men from the October 2006 General Conference.