"How do you know, love, and serve God? How do you prove that you love Him? In the family, the father proves his love by all that he does for his children, for his wife. We prove our love for Jesus by what we do, by who we are.” (Mother Teresa)
Besides giving tours at the he Mormon Battalion Historic Site seven days a week the sister missionaries also give service around San Diego. One of the services that they do is to clean the public parking lot across the street from battalion historic site. They do this every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings by cleaning up all the trash and emptying the large barrel garbage containers. You can imagine how dirty and disgusting it can be to do this service. On the most part our sisters heroically do it without grumbling.
Since cleaning and yard work are things Stan likes to do and is naturally good at, he eagerly jumped right in and joined the sisters in this service, and it didn't take him long to expand it to weeding and trimming trees too. The sisters come from 7-7:30 but Stan goes from about 6:45 - 7:45. Besides giving him a bit of exercise in the out-of-doors, it's satisfying and even therapeutic. An added benefit is that he meets some of the neighbors out walking, is able to strike up a conversation with them and makes new friends. All things he loves doing.
Stan anticipated, before we even arrived in San Diego, that he would be helping in the parking lot, so he had brought his old pruners and gloves from home. Noticing the condition of the pruners and Stan's enjoyment of pruning, Elder Bob Ottley bought him new pruners with a holster to hold them in and presented him with a "concealed pruners" card. Maybe this contributed to his exuberance on Saturday, May 11th when he went to cut a branch off a tree, he misjudged the force of his thrust and the distance between clippers and branch and sliced his hand open.
With his left hand hurt and his right hand trying to stop the bleeding it was tricky trying to get into the car. A homeless man must have been watching, knew Stan was hurt, and came over to the car to try and help open the door for him; a very touching jester. You can imagine my surprise when Stan walked into the apartment with blood on his clothes and bloody napkins wrapped around his hand. He knew it was going to need stitches, but we had a meeting we needed to be at. So, he cleaned up, and we wrapped up his hand and went to the meeting. After giving a very stirring message about the importance of the words we use, we drove to an emergency care center in La Jolla to get the stitches. One of the PA's on duty was a member of the Church and noticed his missionary tag and requested to tend Stan's hand. Of course, they made connections and a picture was taken of his new friend.
As most of us know, it isn't always easy or without pain, but we can come to know and love God when we loose ourselves in selfless service to others.
 |
| He had 5 stitches which have healed up very nicely. |
 |
| Sister Anderson and Sister Stoddard |
 |
| Sister Azpeitia & Sister Polanco |
 |
| (Stan carries this in his wallet.) |
No comments:
Post a Comment