“Jim Needed My Help,” Ensign, Sept. 2010, 71
Jim Needed My Help
Jean Partridge, Utah, USA
Shortly after our marriage in the Salt Lake Temple, Jim and I found ourselves living in a rented cottage on the Oregon coast. Jim was a topographic engineer for the government, in charge of checking and correcting a map of the Oregon coastline. Each morning he would leave with another engineer to continue the work of the previous day. His work was difficult because the coast was heavily forested.
One evening as I was about to start dinner, a strong impression came into my mind that my dinner preparations were not important. Jim would not be home for dinner that night. Another thought followed: Jim was in trouble and needed my help!
I did not hear a voice, but the message came as clearly into my mind as if it had been spoken. I had to help him, but where was he? He worked each day along the coast, but I had no idea where he was working that day. I felt impelled to get in the car and drive to the main highway, but in which direction should I turn? With only slight hesitation, I felt that I should turn south. I then passed many side roads, any one of which could have been the area of Jim’s work.
I was impressed to leave the highway and follow one of the single-lane roads. It was raining, and after a mile or two the road became a muddy trail. I decided I had better turn around and head back. It was getting dark, and I thought, “It was silly of me to have come.”
But no sooner had I turned onto the highway than I came upon two tired, despondent engineers, so covered with mud that no one else would have wanted to pick them up. Jim and his co-worker told me that their truck had become stuck in a mud hole. They had tried to free it but finally left it and hiked through dense undergrowth back to the main highway.
“How did you know where we were?” they wondered, relieved that I had found them. My relief was equal to theirs as I explained how I had been guided by the Spirit.
As Jim and I knelt in prayer that evening, we gave thanks for the influence of the Holy Ghost, which had come to me in answer to my husband’s prayers for help.