This has been a week of Tender Mercies of the Lord. First of all, my missionary son's letters seemed to have been lost in the mail. We had received a very brief email from him over a week previously saying he was mailing letters (plural) that day. That was welcome news since we hadn't had any letters or emails since he'd arrived in his mission. By last Monday, I was sure the mailman had misdelivered them to some neighbor, and I was crying and upset when I talked to my daughter on the phone. Later that evening, by "chance" a pair of missionaries showed up to Jeanne's FHE. She asked them if they ever saw Elder _______. They said they saw him all the time. So she told them to "yell at him" because "our mom is crying" because of not hearing anything from him since he got to the mission. Apparently they called him, because he came in with his companions the next day to the place where Jeanne works. It turned out he hadn't been able to find a place to mail the letters. His companions just email their families, and they get mail delivered to them by the Zone Leaders, but Jordan hadn't found a mailbox or place from which to mail his letters home. So he handed the letters to Jeanne, and she mailed them after she read them to us.
His being called to the same mission as Jeanne has been a blessing in itself in many ways, for both Jordan and us. Even though we hadn't gotten letters from him for weeks, at least we knew he was okay. Jordan and his companion were protected from a vicious dog that bit someone else right after. That's a tender mercy.
And Jordan is the "designated driver" among his companions since one companion doesn't have a US driver's license, and the other one is handicapped. His Mission President had told him that when stopped at a light, to wait till the count of seven after it turns green before moving forward. Following the Mission President's advice may have saved their lives. Jordan counted to seven after the light turned green, and when he got to five, a car came whizzing through the intersection. The driver had run the red. That was a big tender mercy, or at least a blessing from obeying the council of his leaders.
Another "tender mercy" was that we had gotten a tax bill for a previous year that said we had underpaid, and with penalties and interest, it had gone from $105 to $435. Ouch! However, we ended up getting some extra income that we hadn't expected, and it's enough to pay the tax.
I'm not quite sure if this quite qualifies as a tender mercy, but it was a blessing: I saw the pool truck parked in our shared driveway. It meant that our neighbor was having his pool drained and cleaned out in preparation for filling it and preparing it to be used for the summer. I also noticed the hose coming from our neighbor's back yard was set to drain the pool into our front yard! I went out and spoke with our neighbor. I remained pleasant and polite, even though I was unhappy about the situation. My neighbor assured me the water was clean, not chlorinated, and that it would drain from our yard right out to the street. I didn't believe any of his assertions, but instead I said that my yard doesn't drain well. Then I smiled and said, "If my lawn gets really long because I couldn't cut it due to it being too wet, then YOU get to explain to your wife why I'm not cutting my lawn." His wife gets really uptight if my grass gets long. The hose got moved so it went straight down the driveway, and somehow it reached just far enough that it drained into the street instead of backing down the driveway (which also doesn't drain).
And finally, here is the tender mercy that just happened today. I got a lengthy email from Jordan, and photos were attached. Among them was a photo he'd found in the basement of one of the buildings at the MTC. It looked like his grandma, but he couldn't find anyone who knew anything about the picture or who was in it. It was indeed my mother (she's the one on the left). She and my dad served a mission and spent a couple of weeks at the MTC before they went to the Independence Missouri LDS Visitor's Center. Apparently the photo was taken while she was studying in one of her classes. Jordan was the one I called "Sherlock" when he was little, because he noticed things no one else did. His two older brothers were at the MTC, but if they saw the photo and recognized their grandma, they didn't mention it. My mother died eight years ago, the day before Mother's Day, so Mother's Day is a little bittersweet for me. Jordan was 14 when she died, but still the fact that he recognized her was a little surprising to me. It was a tender mercy, though, and a nice Mother's Day present to me. Even better is that I'll get to talk to my missionary son on Sunday, too, and find out all the cool stories he said he hasn't had time to tell me.
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