“Come Running”

By Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Did you know that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once worked as a paperboy, a grocery bagger, and a service-station attendant? He loves all people and has taught us to be kind and giving.

“For the sake of retaining a remission of your sins,” King Benjamin [said], “… ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath” (Mosiah 4:26). …

Amidst the terrible hostilities in Missouri that would put the Prophet in Liberty Jail and see thousands of Latter-day Saints driven from their homes, Sister Drusilla Hendricks and her invalid husband, James, … arrived with their children at a hastily shaped dugout in Quincy, Illinois, to live out the spring of that … year [of great suffering].

Within two weeks the Hendrickses were on the verge of starvation, having only one spoonful of sugar and a saucerful of cornmeal remaining in their possession. In the great tradition of LDS women, Drusilla made mush out of it for James and the children, thus stretching its contents as far as she could make it go. When that small offering was [eaten by them], she washed everything, cleaned their little dugout as thoroughly as she could, and quietly waited to die.

Not long thereafter the sound of a wagon brought Drusilla to her feet. It was their neighbor Reuben Allred. He said he had a feeling they were out of food, so on his way into town he’d had a sack of grain ground into meal for them.

Shortly thereafter Alexander Williams arrived with two bushels of meal on his shoulder. He told Drusilla that he’d been extremely busy but the Spirit had whispered to him that “Brother Hendricks’ family is suffering, so I dropped everything and came [running].”

May God, who has blessed all of us so abundantly, bless us to hear the whispering of the Holy Spirit when any neighbor anywhere “is suffering,” and to “drop everything and come running.”
(Ensign, May 1996, pages 30–31.)

Illustrated by Amy Hintze