I Blessed Jessie,

There are those who believe in light gatherers.

A light gatherer is one who absorbs light from Elohim and because of it, they become like a light set upon a bushel; they become an example to raise the spiritual plane of those around them. History lauds several of them whose lights were as signal fires set upon a mountain: Moses, Socrates, Ghandi.. Others are less well known to history, but closer, whom we can know personally and thus even more important, a teacher, a coach, or a local minister with vision.

Those of us who yearn to be light gatherers ourselves will often travel thousands of miles and endure hundreds of hardships in an effort to light our own lanterns from their torch. I have had the privilege of personally knowing some of the very great light gatherers whom Elohim has sent to the earth in my time.

Jessie was the greatest light gatherer I have ever personally known face-to-face.

Jessie was a light gatherer. 

Of this I am certain.

It would seem that at the turn of the last century, missionaries from our Church came upon Jessie and her family in Seaton Dump. You can probably guess by the name of that community that Jessie lived far and away from any light gatherer history has recorded in its annals. The missionaries must have spent months teaching her.  At one point, dim in the cloudless shadows of time, her grand daughter Jean was baptized too and gradually our Church lost contact with both of these.

In my struggles to survive I too have found strange places to live in. Thus it was that when my abode changed to Snake Island, our Church asked me to find those members near me.  The grand daughter was still on our records even though no one had seen her in twenty years. The search for Jean was not easy for I was very poor.

At last my search had narrowed, and narrowed again until I finally had an actual phone number.  But it rang and rang and rang and no one ever picked it up. But such is the missionary zeal of the Church that I would not quit.  Indeed, I became more insistent than ever that I reach Jean even though it was a foregone conclusion that she wanted no contact with the Church or she would have come to us. But as this history will show, that is not true 100% of the time.  Every day, every night for several weeks, I called. Then came a day in which I resolved that I would not be denied.  At noon, I called.  Every hour thereafter, I called.  Midnight came,  crystal clear -- and I called.  It was well after midnight when finally Jean answered the phone.

She was tiredly annoyed that someone was calling her that she did not know.  Then I told her who I was and why I was calling.

There was a long pause.  The she asked, "You're the Mormons?" 

I hesitated because we are NOT "The Mormons;" we ARE the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  But on this call I was prompted to respond simply in the affirmative. "Yes."

A silence stretched to the breaking point over the phone line.

Then she said: "For years we have prayed that you would come back.  For more than a year we have been praying desperately for you to come. I thought you would be too late. My grandmother, Jessie is in the hospital -- with cancer. She is not expected to make it more than a few days. Can you come now,

"tonight?

"or at least in the morning?

"She wants a Mormon blessing to stop the pain she is in."

Now, at that point we had no inkling that Jessie was a member of the Church.  But, someone that we knew was a member of the Church was asking us to bless her.  I responded with alacrity that we would indeed be there.  The next morning Brother Kremer and I walked into the hospital room where Jessie lay dying. Her immediate family was there, suffering with her. As I stepped lightly through the door and my unsuspecting eyes found the face of Jessie, the Lord's voice spoke to me as clearly then as any voice I have ever heard in this life: "This is one of my choicest daughters. She is a chosen vessel unto me. Bless her."

So strong was the desire to embrace the light and the love I saw glowing there that I lunged towards Jessie as a moth plunges into the flame. To me -- whom she had never met -- her arms raised automatically in a welcome as joyous as my own.

And I stumbled as I came, and I fell as I got there, and to keep myself from falling upon her, the point of my elbow came down upon her leg.

To save myself from falling, all two hundred and forty of my pounds came down with brute force upon the freshly sewn stub where her right leg had been amputated in that battle against the cancer eating away at her body.

I, who had come many miles to ease her pain, had delivered one final blow of pain, deep pain that shall ever sear my heart.

As a privilege, and an honor to me, Jesus Christ had let me come there to bless her.  "This is one of my choicest daughters. She is a chosen vessel unto me. Bless her."  and I had hurt her instead.

To this day I can imagine it. 

Over and over I do imagine it and relive the horror of pain that I sent coursing through her body.

The moment passed. The pain showing on her face could not have registered for even a whole second before she hid it. Then Jessie wrapped her arms around me, and into my ear whispered sweet words of comfort to ease my pain, and my guilt.

Only then did her family there stand as they considered the two strangers who had stormed into their midst. Jean then cocked her head to one side, and asked me, "Are you the one I talked to on the phone last night?"

"Yes," was all I could say for inside I was weeping with joy too great to bear and shame -- also too great to bear.

Jean turned to Jessie. "Mama, these are the Mormon Elders you prayed for us to find."

"I know," she replied as her eyes studied me to the depths of my soul. "I know him well."

So much was she like her master that her voice was timbred like the soft, loving voice of Christ.  It was like hearing Christ saying the words himself:  "I know him well."  The light in her eyes gathered me in once more, warmly and forever. 

I raised up and looked into her eyes.  She nodded.  "Do my work for me."  Her hand came into my own and I clasped it in solemn promise that her work would be done.  

Jean said that her pain never came back.  A few days later Jessie slipped calmly away from this life and returned to the presence of the greatest source of light that exists, anywhere. When Jean told me that my light gatherer was gone I bawled more earnestly than any of those who had known her a lifetime.

Jean begged me come to the funeral, and who could have kept me away?  It was held in the largest building within thirty miles of her home. That building was packed inside full to capacity. Where there were no seats to get in the way there were people jammed together so close you couldn't jab a square toothpick between them. In the hallways, it was the same. In the overflow there were people constantly trying to nudge themselves forward.  There were no cars in more than half the sprawling parking area because mourners who couldn't get inside had come early enough to take up that space and refuse to move so cars could park.

As I wandered aimlessly among the mourners I heard countless Jessie stories from them, how when there was no food she raised it with her own hands from the earth and gave it freely, how when some contagious disease raged in a household, she entered the homes unafraid and labored for their relief with those families to whom none would touch or breathe the same air with.

Without preaching a single word, Jessie had raised faith and given hope to the community around her.

Mourners had come in cars and on foot. They came in all the local colors and in all sizes or ages. Some were poverty stricken. Others were wealthy beyond my comprehension.

The sheer numbers of them who came stretched out beyond the parking area, down the road, and into the woods where some stood sobbing into the bark that they could get no closer to this woman they had loved so deeply.

Just being there at that funeral was a religious experience in pure testimony of how much good one person can do.

The Pentecostal minister that was privileged to preach the funeral proudly admitted that Jessie did not belong to his flock.  "Jessie belonged to all of us, Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic, and Jew.  Any of you here, of whatever faith you may be, are here because you have testimonies as great as mine that Jessie was a saint. She belonged to all of us. 

"Like the Savior himself, she went about doing good.  With her own hands she raised the food she gave us to eat.  With her own hands she cut the wood that made hot water so she could wash our clothes.  With her own needle and thread she darned up the holes in our raiment.  Of all the women I shall ever know, Jessie was the most like Christ. in every way possible."

There was more, much more and it seemed there was no end of my tears.

After that Jean clung to us as if we were her last link to Jessie and she welcomed our monthly visits even though she had no recollection of her own baptism.  However, to my knowledge she has never come back to the Church with full purpose of heart. 

In the hospital Jessie's last request of me had been that I do her genealogy and take her name through the temple. Unfortunately, it was several years before her family would let Jean put enough information into my hands that I could complete Jessie's genealogy and do her work in the temple.

As we took Jessie through the Endowment session her proxy was my dear wife Marleen.  To us it was already an honor and a privilege to do that work, but more like the Savior than ever, Jessie paid us twice.  In the sealing room Jessie met us at the altar and expressed appreciation for the work we did.

I have not seen her face or heard her voice since then, but Jessie is very much alive in my memory.  "This is one of my choicest daughters. She is a chosen vessel unto me. Bless her."