LOUETTA A Missionary Experience

We were out tracting, and we came upon this door. We knocked a couple of times, and no one answered. Finally we knocked the third time, and still couldn't get anybody to answer the door.

We started down the sidewalk and were about to turn the other way, when we heard this feeble little voice say, "Don't go boys!" We turned around. Standing in the doorway was this little woman, a little black lady with pure white hair, who must have been in her middle eighties.

She said, "Come back!" We went up and she told us that her name was Louetta Fry. Louetta was very lonely, maybe a little senile. However, I learned on my mission that it's very important to answer the needs of the people.

A lot of times you have to fulfill those needs. When they see that someone cares enough to satisfy those needs, they are interested in why, What's motivating you to take this step that no one else has before? Then they are interested in your message.

Louetta talked to us, and that's all she did. For about an hour she just talked nonstop. She talked about her family, and of her husband who had passed away about ten to fifteen years earlier, and she told us that she was just basically getting over losing him. When she finished, she just let out a big sigh and she said, "Thank you for listening now I'm sure you must have come with something to tell me, so I'll listen to you because you listened to me." We taught her the first discussion and we left her with a challenge to read a copy of the Book of Mormon. It wasn't the best discussion we had ever had, and as matter of fact, we didn't even make a return appointment.

She was just a little lonely old senile lady who needed someone to talk to. About two weeks passed. We had a morning full of appointments, and every one of them fell through. We found ourselves Tracting. That wasn't getting us anywhere.

The Spirit said, "Go visit Louetta." We went back and she invited us in. Her house is like every Grandma's house in Iowa. It's stuffed to the hilt with memories. It had an over stuffed couch, one ratty dog that likes to chew on your shoe, and when you sit in the couch you just fall into it. Again, for about an hour, all she did was talk to us.

She shared many things about her life. Same thing when she finished, she'd sigh and say "Now what do you have to tell me?" I said, "Well, Louetta, did you get to read anything that we asked you to?" She said, "Yeah, I read some!" I said, "Do you have any questions?" "No....well, I understood the Beatitudes or the Sermon on the Mount better in that Third Nephi that I did when I read in the New Testament. Is that what you want?" "Sounds good to me."

Elder Green said, "well, anything else:" She said, "Yes I do have a question. Now I read about some people called Jaredites, were they the people scattered at the time of the tower of Babel?" Now, Elder Green and I are intelligent missionaries. We know that the Jaredites are not in Third Nephi. That was our reading assignment, Third Nephi, chapter eleven through eighteen. This makes us pretty excited.

We explained to her that they were indeed the people. Wow! She'd read more than we had asked her to read! Third times a charm. "Anything else?" She was so cool! She has no teeth. She just puckers up them lips, then she goes, (smack) "I read about two boys! You know, their father's a prophet: their brother's a really righteous man.

God shows an angel to them. Oooo! You just can't teach some kids anything!" I would like to have leapt up and kissed her. I knew who those two boys were. They were Lamen and Lemuel. I was definitely bright enough to know that Lamen and Lemuel were in the First Nephi, and not Third Nephi. I said, "Louetta, how much of this book did you read?"

She said "I read it....and I loved it! I READ ALL OF IT." I get something in my eye, and my companion gets something in his throat, and we know that maybe Louetta has potential. We ended up that day challenging her to baptism. She accepted. I wouldn't tell you the story if she didn't. Teaching her was so cool. She was like a little child in a candy store. She wanted everything, and she wanted it now.

She was just so beautiful! We found out she was eighty-four, and she weighed like ninety-five pounds. Both of us baptized her, because she was so frail. In everything we put on her she'd look like a tent, no matter what. We baptized her, we took her out of the water, and when it was over she was crying. She said, "It's done. After eighty-four, it's done." We went over the next day. Louetta was way cool...She made us sign this little sheet, (she had a friend at the bank who notarized it for her) that we had certain responsibilities as her adopted grandchildren. We had to listen to her stories, we had to drink her hot chocolate, and we had to come by at least once a day for twenty minutes. We came by the first day, and we were so excited. We were going to tell her all the things she could do. We wanted her to plan on a date so that she could go to the temple and be sealed to her husband. We told her about home teaching and visiting teaching, and Elder Green said, "Do you want to get a Patriarchal Blessing?" We explained to her what that was, and she said, "Ooooo! I want one of those." She wouldn't let us leave that day until we called Patriarch Botts, and made an appointment for her. She got an appointment for about three days later. We'd been coming by every day, generally about two o'clock in the afternoon, visiting with her. One morning about nine o'clock

(It's been about two weeks), She called, and said, "You coming over today?" I said, "Yes Louetta, you know we're coming. We're always going to come at two o'clock." She said, "No, no it came!" "Louetta, what came?" "That blessing. That blueprint thingy." I said, "well, that was quick, they generally don't come that fast." "Well it came!" "Okay, We'll come over this morning." We went down, and sat down with her, and she handed it to me. She said, "Elder Carpenter, will you read this to me?" I said, "No, I think it's personal, Louetta. I think you ought to read it first to yourself." And she said,

"No Please, read it." Again I declined. I said, "No, I really think that it's important that you read it first yourself." Her eyes got big, and she looked at us for a moment, and for the first time that I'd taught her she called us "Elders." She said, "No, Elders, you don't understand, do you?" And I said, "Louetta I don't understand what?" "Elders, I can't see to read. For twenty years I haven't been able to see the words on a written page. But when you left that book with me, for the first time in twenty years I saw words on a page, and I saw them until I finished it. The Lord wanted me to read it. But I don't have those eyes now. You have to read this to me."

This was more than we could handle. I started to read to Louetta her Patriarchal Blessing. It was a beautiful blessing. I got about three-quarters of the way through, and there was a paragraph that talked about her and the elect lady that she was. It said that if the Elder who had been called and appointed of the Lord to teach her would have accepted his call, that this fine lady would have joined the Church some twenty-five years earlier. Now, after some sacrifice and trial, and some testing of the missionaries now with her that had proven worthy to teach her, she had embraced the gospel, and that she'd done what the Lord needed her to do.

It was three days later that I stood at the grave side of that woman, and dedicated her grave. She'd done everything that the Lord had wanted her to do, and her mission in this life was complete. That's when I really understood just how important it was that we go where the Lord wants us to go.

Tags: Faith Enduring Missionary Conversion Book Of Mormon

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