Today I learned about and observed two beautiful examples of service.

First was Adam's mentioning that he'd been to Bremerton, Washington this past weekend.  He flew his plane to Stanfield and picked up Aaron.  They continued on to Bremerton arriving there at 1:00 or 2:00 Friday afternoon.  By 7:00 in the evening they had Nathan's new septic system in place and working.

Nathan's and Leslie's septic system was failing, and was going to be a huge problem.  Every option to fix it was going to cost an enormous sum.  To top  everything off, no contractor would even give them a bid on the project because hooking up to the city sewer would involve tearing up the street.

Nathan and Leslie rented the necessary equipment.  Nathan rolled their lawn up into replaceable rolls, and Aaron and Adam dug the trenches with the rented backhoe.  They all hooked pipes together, covered them with gravel, and the whole project is ready for inspection.

I love the way these boys work together, and are capable of doing anything and everything.

Then there was stake conference this weekend.  The adult members of my family were to sing a special musical number in the adult session.  I was to sing with them, and Marjorie was going to accompany.  We sounded marvelous in our practice session, but Marjorie and I ended up not going to conference in La Grande because of my knee surgery two days before.  I intended to go anyway if I could look dapper walking in with my cane.  I was so dependent upon that cane, though, that I didn't look dapper, and everyone would have been rushing to help that poor, old man.

Marjorie and I went to the Baker meetinghouse to listen to the broadcast.  The talks were wonderful, but the special musical number was abysmal.  The sound system would only occasionally pick up a discordant note.  There was no tune, only silence and an occasional garble.

The same thing happened Sunday with the opening hymn.  But then something beautiful happened.  In the middle of a talk I observed Russ and Alayna Carpenter get up and reseat themselves at the front of the chapel.  That was odd.  I wondered why.  When the intermediate hymn was beginning, Alayna went to the piano, and Russ began leading the congregation in the same hymn the stake was imperceptibly singing.

The same thing happened with the closing hymn.  It added much to the meeting, and saved the conference.

This is the most beautiful example of acting on a prompting, and of doing things without being commanded, that I've seen in a long, long time.