There Are No Coincidences in Life!

We are at the MTC now, and guess what.....it is not so scary after all! We are learning a ton and meeting so many other couples that are  experiencing the same things we are, it is incredible. But I need to write about one experience that we had today that stands out.
 Today , we met with a lady who I will call LP. She is a member of the church, who volunteers to let us missionaries practise our teaching on. She is an artist and loves to paint, so we had an immediate connection as I also enjoy painting. She had brought along a portrait to show us, plus a booklet of several of her pieces, including portraits of her mom and grandchildren. She is a very talented artist.    We began to chat and soon learned that she has a real life degenerative eye condition, that will likely mean she will slowly lose her sight in both eyes! We were stunned, and tears came to our eyes, then we all started to cry, for we could see what this would mean to her. We sat and wept together for a few minutes, then I felt to promise her that I knew that her HeavenlyFather was aware of her, that He knew what this meant to her, on many levels,  and that she was not alone, He would guide and strengthen her, and direct her path. I did not feel to tell her that this burden would be miraculously taken away, but only that as she continued to read the scriptures and pray to her Father in Heaven, She would feel His love for her and His awareness of her situation.  She mentioned that as she had been reading her scriptures, it was the paintings in the front of the Book of Mormon that caught her eye, some of them done by the artist, Freiburg .She told us how much she liked Frieburg, and Elder Harding told her about the painting above our mantel that Frieburg had painted , the one with the Savior  standing in the  boat, while the storm raged around Him, and He calmed the storm. Again, we all began to cry as Elder Harding bore his witness to LP that The Lord was mindful of her and would calm and help her. Well, we had by then been crying for a while, so we started to laugh at ourselves, and decided that we needed to drop the lesson plan we had come in with and asked LP what she would like to talk with us about that day.
  She said that she did not understand what she had been taught the week before abt priesthood authority, so Elder Harding pulled out his scriptures and the spirit directed the lesson and soon we were all crying again. It was beautiful....I asked LP to share with us what she was feeling and it touched our hearts as she opened up and told us some things. We exchanged email addresses afterwards ....it was an unexpected and beautiful meeting and LP said that although she has been doing this volunteering for some weeks now, she had not had this kind of an experience before...it was no coincidence that we met, I do not doubt that it was as much for us as for her. This is why we come on missions, to have these kind of experiences, with members, non members,less actives, it does not matter, for don't we all need someone to really listen to us, cry and laugh with us, and give us water to drink from the well of  Living Water!