Elder Blair,
How’s it going? We’ve
sent a couple of Pouch letters. Did they
arrive? Glad to hear you got the Christmas package at last. LOVE reading your blog. You have such an eye for seeing the Human
Experience.
I wrote to you a few weeks ago about my feelings about the
Savior, but at your stage in life, it’s probably more important for you to hear HOW
I came to be where I am. So here it is,
in installments.
Growing up a Mormon in California, I believed what I was
taught. My mother told me her patriarchal
blessing promised she would raise her children to manhood and womanhood. At age seven I got a severe
electrical shock. The light went out in our
bathroom so mother put a desk lamp on the floor for us, plugging it into the
far wall. After she left, standing in
the tub I reached over to move the metal lamp and when I grabbed it, the shock
was so severe I couldn’t let go and just screamed. Mother rushed in and unplugged it. In those days it wasn’t uncommon for people
to die from electric appliances (no grounding, etc.) Anyway, Mother scooped me up in a towel and
took me to her bed to make sure I was OK, and she knelt beside me and prayed. When I
asked why, she said she prayed in gratitude that I had lived. I said, “I wasn’t going to die. I couldn’t
die. Your patriarchal blessing says I’ll live until I grow up.” I don’t know why I believed like that.
In school, as I made new friends, I often asked what Church
they went to. The answers interested
me. Lutheran. Catholic.
Or, “I don't go to church.I’m Jewish so I go to synagogue.” (Only after many years did I realize that I must
have been a weird kid. In spite of it, I
still managed to make friends.)
Meanwhile, I did as I was
taught. Prayed. Went to Primary after school. Learned to pay tithing. I
read the Sunday School lesson manual and liked the stories, the pictures. At home we didn’t put pictures of Jesus on the walls—no one did-- but we did get the Church Magazines, said family prayers, and we
always attended. I envied
people like Joseph Smith who got to see
God. Why couldn’t I? I wanted to see beyond the veil. I was told not to expect anything like that
to happen. I was too ordinary. Revelation was for prophets walking alone in
the halls of the Temple. So I continued to pray and expected
nothing in return.
At age 13, I began babysitting every day after school. The Friday I got my first paycheck--$15.00—I was
overjoyed. I was RICH. Never had I had so much money. As I hurried home under the eucalyptus and walnut
trees, I began to skip and dance along for joy.
Feeling grateful, I wanted to thank Heavenly Father. Sister Hadlock, our Sunday School teacher,
taught us we could pray anywhere if we wanted, so I began. “Heavenly Father, thank thee…” To my
great astonishment, the love of the Father and his awareness of me suddenly overwhelmed
me. It filled me with such love and
reverence that I stopped leaping and walked on in awe because I felt such deep respect, wonder, SO happy. Afterward, I thought about it a lot,
pondered. The Heavens had opened—to
ordinary me. God had “spoken” back to
me. He was there—and I knew it.
The next thing I’ll share happened when I was 16. By now I had questions. What did it mean about "God answers prayers"? Does He? What did the Holy Ghost "feel like," do? At that time I held the publicity office on the HS Student Council and regularly put up posters, banners at school. At one point I was feeling big pressure because the PTA needed a big display from me to advertise their Paper and Rag Drive. In fact, my deadline loomed, but I had nothing. NO ideas.
Not even bad ones. As I worried
and paced through the house that evening, paper in hand, the thought occurred
to me, “Donna! You forgot to pray! No
wonder you can’t think of anything!!”
With that I stepped to the couch, praying before I even sat
down. Instantly, a flood of ideas* came
to mind—and they were ALL clever, if I do say so myself. I wrote quickly before I forgot any of it,
so intensely that when I finished my hand felt cramped. That’s all on that one.*Ideas: Guy wearing a barrel because he "gave his all" for the rag drive--winner of the "Noble Prize;" our staid principal was W.C. Noble. "Rags to Riches" machine with rags going in and Monopoly $ coming out. And more. photo: Van Nuys High School, 1962 
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