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So here I was, married to the love of my life but living so far from my family, in a strange place where everything is different from what I was used to. My husband was working two jobs so that we can save up money to go back to school so his days started off at six in the morning when he leaves for work and didn't come home til nine at night. I didn't know anyone except for my in-laws. I didn't know how to drive so pretty much anywhere I needed to go, my hub had to take me. So I just kept to our apartment.
My first Sunday in our new ward, a beautiful red-head introduced herself to me and not long after that, she started visiting me at my apartment. As it turned out, she was assigned my visiting teacher. That first visit to my place, I met my other visiting teacher. These two ladies ended up being two of the most charitable ladies I've ever known. They were not the regular kind of visiting teachers who just come to visit me once a month and then relayed the message and then I don't see them til the next month's visit.They started taking turns to come visit me if not everyday, every other day. On those days that they didn't visit, they would call me to see how I was doing. Phone would ring and I'd pick it up and it's one of them calling...
"I'm heading out to the grocery store, I thought I'd come pick you up and bring you along in case there might be something you'd be needing from there." or
"I'm taking my kids to the pool, want to come along and keep me company?"
One of them home-schooled her kids so she would call around lunchtime.."I'm making my kids lunch so I thought I'd come pick you up to join us...how's tuna sandwich sound to you?"
The other lady would call and say.."I just got a feeling to call and see how you're doing. How about I come pick you up and you can hang out with me, keep me company while my kids are in school and we can visit?"
Little things like that, totally meant a great deal to me. I was alone during the day and they kept me company. And they might make it sometimes sounded like I was doing a favor when in reality they were the one helping me. They had gone beyond the call of duty by taking me under their wings and did some of the things that I couldn't have done by myself. And mostly, they have shown such great love and compassion by being wonderful friends who would go out of their way to make a stranger feel welcome.
A few weeks before my baby was born, they called me up to let me know they wanted to throw me a baby shower but they wanted me to pick the date I wanted. Where I come from, we celebrated the 10Th day of a baby's life...something about when a baby is ten days old, he/she is kinda out of harm's way (I'm not even sure if that's true or not). So these two wonderful women went out and invited every RS member in our ward (only a handful of them I knew) to come to the shower. They had instructed each woman to come with a gift(any gift of their choice) plus a blanket and then on the side, they had gotten together with these ladies also to make a baby quilt for my baby. I went to the shower and had the one of the best times of my life and came away with almost two carload of baby stuff.
It was the most generous thing any one's ever done for me. I was humbled and in total awe of these two ladies' incredible compassionate attribute and their generous act of kindness. They reached out to me when I needed it most and even in all those times they were helping me, to help me fit in, they never once make me feel pathetic like I was some helpless child. Everything they did for me, I could truly feel the genuineness of their act. To me, they were like these guardian angels sent to earth specifically for me. To this day, I will always remember these two angels masquerading around on earth as humans who had taken a very young and unsure bride and mother under their wings to care for her as if she were one their own. Because of what they did for me in that early year of my married life, I hope that one day (I am always looking for ways to help anyone who might have been in my shoes back then) I can return the favor and show the same act of kindness to someone else who may need it.
