The woman I didn't remember

Before I got married, my friend John and I had the chance to go back to Japan. Someone found $500 courier tickets and we jumped at it.

Being back was surreal in the best way. I visited people I had grown to love. Sister Suzuki was a stake missionary in Taniyama, my last area. I still carry the image of her chasing my bus for three blocks when I left for home, tears streaming down both our faces.

In Nobeoka, two sisters I had taught were now fully active. One had been baptized while I was there. The other had called me a year after I came home to tell me she had made the same decision. We attended church with them in a small branch on the east side of Kyushu.

Walking into that chapel, I felt something I was not prepared for. Sitting in the congregation were people I had taught. People I had baptized. Still coming to church, still partaking of the sacrament, still living what they had embraced years before.

For a returned missionary, there is no greater joy than that.

Then a woman walked up to me.

I did not recognize her.

She told me who she was, and slowly a memory surfaced.

She had been a door contact. My companion had spoken with her while I spent the afternoon in the hallway playing with her children. One visit. One transfer, and she had completely vanished from my memory.

Three years later, she told me she had just been baptized.

I have thought about that moment many times since.

I did nothing significant that afternoon. I played with her kids in a hallway while my companion did the actual work. I do not remember her name. I do not remember the city. I could not have picked her out of a photograph.

And yet.

The Savior knew that afternoon. He knew the children. He knew her. He was still working in her life long after I had moved on and forgotten she existed.

That is what Lesson 1 is really about, and it is harder to receive than it sounds.

We want to know that our effort mattered. We want to see the result. We want to close the loop. And missions, like most of life, rarely let us do that. You teach someone and get transferred before the baptism. You say something to a person on a bus and never see them again. You spend an afternoon in a hallway with two kids whose names you never learned.

The temptation is to call those days wasted.

They are not.

The Savior does not need you to see the result for the result to be real. He keeps that record. He knows every door, every hallway, every small moment of faithfulness that looked like nothing from the outside.

Your job is to show up. His job is to know what it meant.

D&C 18:15 puts it plainly: “If it so be that you should labor all your days… and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy.” One soul. All your days. And even then, the joy is His gift, not your achievement.

You may never know in this life whose heart you touched or when the seeds you planted will finally grow. That was never your responsibility.

Faithfulness is.

Ponder this: Is there someone you served, taught, or simply noticed, someone you have always wondered about? You may never know what that moment meant to them. The Savior does. That is enough.

The full story is in Chapter 1 of Learning to Walk with Him, available June 1 at learningtowalkwithhim.com. The Five Lessons Guide is free right now at learningtowalkwithhim.com/guide.