Finding a replacement

I have nursery duty at church on Sunday but I'll be out of town, so I took out the master list and started calling people who are up on Sundays close to mine to see if I could arrange a swap. The first person I called was a teen named E., but she wasn't home so I ended up talking to her mother. Her mother, L., is in her umpteenth round of chemo for ovarian cancer and asked if I would pray with her, as she was feeling a bit stressed. Her mother and grandmother and aunt and cousin all succumbed to cancer, and L.'s hope is that she won't die until her son and daughter graduate from high school (they are a senior and junior respectively).

We took turns praying, and L. thanked God that He had given her this special opportunity to show the powers of darkness His ability to glorify Himself. As she prayed that, I thought of the Indian fellow who long ago had said to Marylin Heavilin after her sons died: "What a privilege it is to meet a person to whom God has entrusted such suffering."

But E. has already swapped nursery duty with someone, so I had to make another call. I dialed C.'s number, as she is also on the schedule for November, but ended up talking with her mother. C.'s father also has cancer and will be going to an orthopedic guy this afternoon to find out why there's pain in the arm where his "pic" line is. We prayed, and K. thanked God for giving them grace day by day.

I had spent a lot of time on the phone so I tabled my mission for a while and went back to work. One of these days I will find a person to swap with for nursery duty.