The Lord Calls (6)

May 2020

Staying at home and trying to keep myself occupied, during the COVID-19 pandemic, has led me to searching out friends, whom I have not seen for years.  There is joy when you find and reconnect.   I am saddened when I learnt that they have passed away.   I am more saddened if  it happened just a week or two before I found them.   If only I had call her number earlier.

Thanks to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, I am comforted that my friends have gone to the spiritual world and there is the hope of meeting again in the next world.    I have no pictures of the following friends, but they will not be forgotten.

Nancy Vera Pennington Phelps and I had spoken and messaged each other in April 2019.   We lived in different states.  We had planned to meet, during a visit to her city, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the visit was cancelled. Neither of us made contact after that.  We were both busy with our own lives.   The desire to call her came this year.    I think I called her number around the 23-May-2020.    Her son answered her phone.    On the 27-May-2020, I learnt from her son that Sister Phelps had passed away on the 14-May-2020.

I wished we had met last year.   I wished I had called her between April 2019 and May 2020.

Sister Phelps was once my Visiting (Ministering) Sister.   She had been there when I needed help.   She helped me clean the house the morning I was moving to another city.   And the last friend to see me off from my home.

Sister Martha Louise Johnson was my angel.   Because I didn't have my own vehicle, she had volunteered to take me to work and back from work, even when it was like almost midnight at the end of my shift.  She also volunteered to take me to my medical appointments.   I learnt of her passing (24-March-2019) when I reconnected to another Sister on the 24-May-2020).

Shirley Brown was a sweet little lady whom I had the pleasure to work with, for 18 months.   She was always good to me.    She gave me some money as a parting gift when I left the company and moved to another state.   She told me I am welcome to stay with her if I have no place to go.    It is very humbling to hear that kind of gesture and love from people.   I only knew of her passing on the 12-January-2017 through another colleague of ours.