Description
“Thank You For Your Love” Spencer Kimball
Many years ago a severe winter storm snarled air traffic at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Flights were delayed or canceled outright. Passengers waited in long lines, many to learn they were stranded until the storm cleared. Many became impatient and angry. Among those caught in this mess was a young mother trying to get home to Michigan. With her was her two-year old daughter, and she was expecting her second child. The lines were long and interminably slow.
After so long with her needs not met, the little girl plopped down on the cold wet floor and began to cry. Her mother, sick and weary to the bone, could not pick her up. The doctor had warned her against lifting anything heavy. All she could do for her little one was slide her along on the floor with her foot. People around her became angry at the child’s cries and critical of this mother’s actions, yet none offered any help.
Then out of the crowd came an older man with a kindly smile who offered to help. He scooped the little girl up off of the floor and cuddled her next to him. Offering her a stick of gum, the child soon quieted. The distraught mother explained her plight. The kindly benefactor then went to the front of the line and explained to the other passengers this women’s situation and asked if they might let her come to the front of the line. They readily agreed. He spoke to the ticket agent, and soon had her flight secured. After walking her to her gate and making sure she was set, he disappeared into the crowd without ever introducing himself. Not knowing who the stranger was, she returned home to Michigan.
Some months later she picked up a newspaper in her hometown and noticed an article announcing that the Mormon Church would be holding a conference in the city. Pictured in the article was the visiting authority who would be addressing the Conference. She recognized the man in the picture as the same man who had helped her in the snowbound airport. It was Elder Spencer W. Kimball.
That story is powerful enough, but its sequel is just as compelling. Twenty-one years later a letter came to the office of the President of the Church in Salt Lake City that read as follows.
“Dear President Kimball:
I was sitting in [a] meeting last week, when a story was told of a loving service which you performed some twenty-one years ago in the Chicago airport. The story told of how you met a young pregnant mother with a … screaming child, in … distress, waiting in a long line for her tickets. She was threatening miscarriage and therefore couldn’t lift her child to comfort her. She had experienced four previous miscarriages, which gave added reason for the doctor’s orders not to bend or lift. You comforted the crying child and explained the dilemma to the other passengers in line. This act of love took the strain and tension off my mother. I was born a few months later in Flint, Michigan. I just want to thank you for your love. Thank you for your example!”
The young man was a student at Brigham Young University and had just returned from a successful mission in Munich, Germany.
I offer this story as a timely reminder that a little more kindness can go a long ways for good.
Source: Gordon B. Hinckley, “Do Ye Even So to Them,” Ensign, Dec. 1991, 5
