Uniquely Blessed by Indexing

By Diane Sagers

The author lives in Utah, USA.

Shortly after Karrie Palmer was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that makes her joints ache, her stake leaders called her to be the stake assistant indexing director. She looked at her stiffened hands, considered her health, and wondered if she could do it. Nevertheless, she had a testimony that her stake leaders were inspired men, so she accepted the calling.

As the high councilor set her apart and gave her a blessing, one sentence stood out to her: “As you participate in this work, your maladies will be tempered.”

She held on to that promise, but as the work became a reality, Karrie quickly became frustrated. “I just couldn’t seem to do it,” she says. “I felt impatient to get a lot of names done quickly, but I was embarrassed to ask for help.”

One day as she worked, Karrie came to a name from an obscure town in Prussia (now Germany), a town whose name she struggled to decipher. The task seemed impossible. The following day she went to the temple seeking answers. As she prepared for the session, she was given a name card and discovered that it had the same last name and the same town in Prussia that she had been struggling to index the day before. She now had the right spelling of the town; it was the miracle Karrie needed.

Now serving as stake indexing director, Karrie has learned to accept her limitations and to work slowly and methodically. “Indexing has become interesting,” she says. “I found that as I did the work, I was able to forget about my pain. And as time went on I got better and better at indexing.” Each time as she finishes working, she feels better both physically and spiritually.

“I am not cured, and my hands are still bent and sore. But I am doing better,” she says. “And when I sit down to do indexing, I feel like it is a little temple experience for that time.” As she works, she finds calm and also clarity about life, her children, and her grandchildren. Turning on her computer to do indexing brings instant peace to her home and her heart. She says it’s as though someone on the other side of the veil is cheering, “Go, Karrie, go!”

For Karrie Palmer, indexing has become a source of strength.