The Gift That Keeps on Giving
By Nicole Antoine; Edited by Brandon Boey

Editor’s note:  Nicole Antoine is originally from South Africa and served a full-time mission in San Francisco. She currently resides in Northern Virginia and attends the Shenandoah YSA ward of the Ashburn Virginia Stake.

I never really understood the meaning of being “led by the Spirit” until I served a mission, and even then I was often merely a vessel through which the Lord chose to work. Do not get me wrong — I was hardly a ventriloquist’s puppet who was being blindly led against my will. But I was, for the longest time, oblivious to the power of the Spirit and its all encompassing power to use me to touch the lives of others.

About three months into my mission I attended a missionary meeting in which we discussed this very idea, and I began to think about the two sister missionaries who taught me the gospel. I refle—cted on what they shared, and how their lessons of love and friendship seemed to extend far beyond the gospel teachings they conveyed.

I had been a difficult student, and was never baptized while they taught me, only making that choice many months after they left the area where I lived but their example was one of the deciding factors in my becoming a member of the Church. I thought it would be wonderful to be able to tell them that their efforts were not wasted, and that I was now serving a mission seven years after they even went home. For some reason I thought particularly about the sister that came from America, and after more than a month I made enquiries as to how I could contact her.

With the help of my mission office, I was able to write to the Church records department and include a small account of my reasons for wanting to get in contact with her. The Church would forward my note to her, with my address enclosed, and she would then be able to contact me if she felt so inclined.

More than three months went by. The assistant to the president called me one night and told me that she had called and left an address. My American missionary promised that she would write me, but another three months went by and I still had not heard from her. I was discouraged, wondering why I had felt the need to contact her at all. It was the Christmas season, and though reveling in the work I was doing, I was missing my family terribly.

On New Year’s Eve, we came home early, and sat glumly preparing dinner while listening to the New Year festivities of our neighbors. I heard my roommates come in, and then one of them passed me a thick envelope addressed in a handwriting I did not recognize.

It was my missionary! After reading her name on the envelope, I eagerly tore it open and hungrily read the ten-page letter she had sent me. I felt as if I could hear her voice speaking to me as she told me the effect of that short three-sentence note I addressed so innocently to her so many months ago.

She told me of how her life had changed since she went home to America after her mission. She told me of how she moved far away from home to do her postgraduate work and met a man who was not a member of the Church, how she fell pregnant, and had a beautiful baby girl. She went on to tell me how she had stopped going to church, and how she was torn between wanting to be a part of the gospel and wanting to be with the father of her child.

She had reached a crossroads where she knew she had to choose one or the other, and she had chosen her man. It was not two days later that she received a letter from the Church records department, and she feared opening it. She left it on her dresser for three days, and when she found the courage to open it, she could not stop crying as she read my note. She knew than that while she had given up on Heavenly Father, he had not given up on her, and that He was reaching out to her to let her know that her life was not for naught.

She reversed her decision, and started on the long and arduous journey to strengthen herself spiritually once again. She decided that she didn’t want to contact me until she was back in full fellowship in the Church and was active again. She wrote to me on Christmas Eve, and as I read her letter on New Year’s Eve, she was engaged to a great man in the Church who was recently widowed.

Her gift to me had come full circle, and in giving me faith and teaching me strength in the gospel, I had been given the tools and means to be able to share my faith and strength with her at a time when she was in need. Something as simple as writing a note to someone who had touched my life so long ago allowed me to touch her life in turn. The Lord knows us all, individually, and as we strive to be close to the Spirit, He will work through us to be of service to others, so that we can assist the Lord with His work.