This one in a series of posts in which I will share some of the things I have experienced because I am a Mormon. In each of these posts, I will give you a basic background and share a small experience. I hope that through the sharing of these small things you can have a glimpse into my experience as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I will also try to explain principles and doctrines of my faith that bring me so much happiness.

Background: During my junior year of college I lived in an apartment with wonderful friends. I attended church with them in a congregation (ward) made entirely from college-age young men and women within a four block radius. My responsibility was to serve as first counselor in the Relief Society presidency. You can read about what a Relief Society President does here. We visited many young women and organized many activities. One of my responsibilities was to see that Sunday meetings always had a teacher, music, and that an uplifting message from the manual was being taught.

The Body hath Need of Every Member

I have always been wary of big social situations. Add to my shyness the highly charged dating environment of a “singles ward” at Brigham Young University and that I had just broken up with someone in the room and you can visualize me sneaking out the back door of the party to go home and hide in my apartment.

So what I tell you about this experience is not boasting. I was simply escaping a really stressful social situation when I decided to visit this young woman.

As a member of a Relief Society presidency, I was aware of an apartment with 4 girls who were not coming to church on my pathway home. As I scurried down the street, I decided to knock on the door of this apartment and say hello.

The only young woman who was home that evening answered the door wearing her usual hat with her long blond hair streaming down her back. I knew her name, but nothing about her. I told her that I needed a place to escape and she invited me in. We talked for a long time. She showed me her collections. I learned she had served a mission for the Church. I learned that she was a cancer survivor. She removed her hat to show me that one of the consequences of her brain tumor was that her hair wouldn’t grow back on the crown of her head. “Male pattern baldness” was the reason she always wore hats.

I’m not fooling when I tell you that I admired her. So often as I have visited women over the years for Relief Society, I have found unique and beautiful stories. Mormon women are incredibly diverse. Some may dress alike or act in similar ways, but visit a Mormon woman in her home and you will see that she is no copy.

Our friendship grew. It was natural that we would share things that were important to us. She shared her books. I just liked talking with her. I invited her to come back to church.

Within a few months she and her roommates did come back to church. It was a happy time to see them feel welcome there. I got married at the end of the school year and we said goodbye and I moved away.

My friend’s cancer returned while I was living in New Mexico and she passed away about a year after we had met.

My desire to see my friend come to church was a little bit like the desire I have to see her again in heaven. Truly, the Church has need of every member, quiet and outgoing, healthy and unhealthy, rich and poor, wounded and strong.

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:4

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12

Also the body hath need of every member, that all may be edified together, that the system may be kept perfect. Doctrine and Covenants 84:110