D (12:04)
And gathering and going out all over the whole world. There's several lessons in this chapter. We're going to take you to different parts of Nauvoo for each of the lessons. But we chose this part because one of our favorite lessons from. From 124 happens here. And it's in verses 22 and 23 are where I'm going to start, and this is going to tell you a little bit about this house. It says, let my servant George and my servant Lyman and my servant John Schneider and others build a house unto my name. Such a one as my servant Joseph shall show unto them upon the place which he shall show unto them also. And it shall be, the scripture is so good, I have this hanging in my house right above my fireplace. And it shall be for a house, for boarding, a house that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein. Therefore, let it be a good house worthy of all acceptation, that the weary traveler may find health and safety while he shall contemplate the word of the Lord. And then a little bit down in the next verse from that, it says, if it shall be built unto my name, it shall be holy. I love that verse so much. In fact, several years ago, I read that verse in August. For some reason, I was in this section of the Doctrine and Covenants, and I read that verse and I thought, I really want that to be my house. That's. That's how I want my house to be described. And I was riding in the car with Megan and Grace, and I said to them, what if we choose a theme scripture for the school year? We had never done that before in our life, but just that year, it felt like the right thing to do. And maybe you've always picked a theme scripture for your school year, or maybe you never have in your life and there's an invitation for you. Some years are really good for a themed scripture for the year. So my girls loved the scripture, too. So we were like, yeah, that will be our scripture. And what we wanted to learn from it was this idea of that people could come, it would be a good house, everyone was going to be welcome there, and they'd find safety there, and you'd be able to talk about the word of the Lord there. I just loved that it was this welcoming in and this gathering spot. And in my mind, this is what I envisioned for that year. Megan was a senior, Grace was in ninth grade. And I thought to myself, what I will do to live this scripture is I will make sure my pantry is always full with brownies and stuff to make Rice Krispie treats. And I will get enough stuff that if anyone wants to come over for lunch ever during the school year, my girls could bring their friends home and we would give lunch to people. And in my mind, that was how we were going to live out that scripture. It's so interesting to me when the spirit and I Do not have matching visions of how the year's going to turn out, because what really happened, I did go buy all the brownies and the Rice Krispie treat stuff and also all the lunch stuff, just in case someone showed up. And then what happened is in October, someone did show up. There was a knock on the door, and it was a boy from the lacrosse team my husband had coached who wanted to turn his life around. He had seen what had happened in Garrett's life. Garrett was currently serving his mission, and he wanted to have the same experience and start going to church again. And he wanted to prepare for a mission. And he asked if he could move in the house. And so we put him in the room upstairs. No one was using it, so that was perfect. We put him in the room upstairs. Well, in December, Greg's sister called and had been having troubles in her marriage and had decided that she needed to separate from her husband for a time. And she called to ask if we had a place where she could come and stay while that was going in. And so she moved in with her kids. And as we thought about the best thing to do, we decided maybe she should go in the basement where the girls room was. Megan and Grace. And we decided to move them into the little living room with the grand piano, which was fine because we just put bunk beds in there. And I bought one of those little divider things and also those little standup hanging things for their closets. We just stuck them in there and that was perfect. Greg had an office upstairs where there were six people who. Their business was up there. So that was the other bedroom. And. But it was going to be fine. Everything was going to be fine. And then we had a son come home from his mission, and we just stuck him up in the room with Ian. And four months later we had another son come home from his mission. So we stuck him up in the room with Ian. And there was a boy in our neighborhood who was struggling at the time. He was okay to sleep at his house, but he wanted to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and spend every waking hour at ours. So he lived in the kitchen. That's where what happened with him. And then Caleb was going to come home for the summer from college. His. His thing, his rent had ended, and by the time we got to Caleb, there was going to be 11 people living in our house at that time. And I can remember when Caleb was coming home thinking, somebody's got to go, like, we don't have any more room and we don't have any more Money for all these people that we're feeding. And. And I knelt down to pray about what were we going to do. We had a business that was not thriving. We had all these people living in the house. Meanwhile, all those four kids who were now in high school who lived in my house did bring their friends home for lunch. And we made turkey bacon avocado sandwiches every single day for lunch and used all the brownies and all the Rice Krispies all the time. And I can remember kneeling down and saying to the Lord, I don't have any more room. The only place that was left was to put a mattress under the ping pong table in the basement. That was it. That was all that was left. And as I thought about who was going to go under the ping pong table, and I just knelt down and said, stop, we have no more vacancies here. The spirit said to me, and, and no way to feed all the people. The spirit said to me, is the boy upstairs more important than the ping pong table? Which is clear as day. And of course, the boy was more important than the ping pong table. And then the spirit said this. You provide the space. Let me provide the means. And we were provided for in that time, miraculously provided for. And I look back at that time and it is some of the sweetest memories of the house that we live in. And what I will remember the most for the rest of my life about our house is that little window of time which was what we call the welcoming inn. That's what it was. And the moments I will remember most are around the kitchen counter making those brownies and their ice Krispie treats and the turkey sandwiches every day for lunch. You even came over sometimes that year for lunch with all those kids in the kitchen.