Love, Your Sisters

Our ward Relief Society has several sisters with serious health problems who are unable to attend our regular Sunday meetings. Feeling concerned for the loneliness and heartache that resulted from their isolated circumstances, we searched for a way ward members could convey their love and appreciation to them.

Our presidency decided to devote an entire lesson period to giving service through writing letters to as many of our homebound friends as possible. This gave our sisters a chance to rekindle their good feelings of love toward those who could seldom attend.

When the appointed Sunday arrived, we handed out lapboards, pens, and sheets of stationery. We listed the names of the homebound sisters on the chalkboard, and peace settled over the room as we began to write. Soon several sisters had used all their stationery and asked for more. At the end of our meeting, we collected all the letters and sorted them into stacks to be delivered by the presidency.

The day I delivered my stacks of letters, I had a strong feeling I should go first to visit Verda, a fragile, sweet woman whose age and eyesight severely limited her activities. I rang her doorbell, and as Verda opened the door, I became aware that she was trembling and distressed. Tears filled her eyes as she saw me, and I wondered if I had chosen a bad time to come. I asked her if she was all right.

Verda explained she had just returned from trying to get her mail from her mailbox across the street, a task usually performed later in the day by her daughter. Due to Verda’s diminished eyesight, she had not seen a car, which narrowly missed hitting her on the busy road. Shaken and upset, she had returned home without her mail, resigned to a lonely day.

With a smile I held out my handful of letters. We sat together for a long time while I read each one to her. Every letter was filled with love, appreciation, and encouragement and brought fresh tears, which streamed down her cheeks. My heart was full, and as I drove away, I felt as though I had been sent as a special courier to her home that morning. Since then, our Relief Society letter project has touched many other lives.—Bonnie Cook, South Weber, Utah