1) Today we waited in line for hours for our government debit card, to help with the expenses of living away from home. While we waited, the woman in front of us must have heard me sharing my worries with my husband. She turned to me and said, “Don’t you worry. Those Mormons will be there to help.”
2) Recipe for a flooded house:
● Take the contents of a city sewer. Pour liberally – approximately 4,800 cu. ft. of it – into the downstairs of your home. It should be thick and black and slimy.
● Allow to sit for ten days at high heat.
● When the mixture has thoroughly saturated everything, carefully take a peek. The smell should make you gag.
● Remove everything, including furniture, carpet, drywall, insulation, wall studs, fireplace, freezer, furnace, hot water tank, wiring, children’s baby books and special boxes, and every treasure, until you have nothing but cement. Throw into front yard. Do it all without running water or working toilets or power or phone service.
● Garnish with mosquitoes as big as sparrows.
● Shovel muck and scrape and haul, shovel muck and scrape and haul, shovel muck and scrape and haul
● Powerwash and squeegee
● Powerwash and squeegee
● Powerwash and squeegee
● Bleach every inch
● Clean with anti-mold
● Be sad
3) I used to think of angels as always clean and white, doing the pristine work of the Lord without ever getting their hands dirty. But now I know different. Angels put on their worst clothes, and leave their families and march into the devastated homes of strangers. Angels do the dirtiest kind of work all day, and all day the next day, and all day the day after that, in the heat and filth and stench. They do it until they are exhausted, and they never complain. Angels smile. Light comes from their faces. I know what angels do, now. I have met them.
4) Sunday one of the little boys in my Primary class said, “Our house didn’t get flooded at all. God did that. God loves us so much.” Not from my lips would that little boy hear anything different. I just said, “Yes, he does. He loves you so much.” But someday, as this little boy matures in the gospel, he will come to know that keeping the commandments does not ensure everything will be easy and lovely all the time. The lives of the prophets teach us that righteousness does not protect us from trials. The death of innocents teaches us this. All the Lord absolutely promises us is peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come, the most precious blessings of all. Life is about working hard and getting knocked down a time or two and getting back up and persevering and getting tired and coming to the end of it and saying, “Wow, that was hard. And that was amazing.” For some, the miracle was that their homes were not flooded. For others, the miracle was in the flood. But all of us were always in the midst of miracles.