Game Changing

This week I read a sweet blog about how some experiences are game-changers, in that they change our perception of a situation.  You can read it HERE.
When I commented on Facebook about it, a friend said that I should write about my experience.  So this is my story.
Neal and I were married in June 2000 and spent the summer in Seattle.  We attended the ward we lived in but it always felt like we were just visiting.  I was asked now and then to play the piano in Relief Society but mostly we just attended and then went home. We worked in different time zones so at the end of the summer I returned to Montana to teach and Neal stayed in Seattle to work at Boeing.  We spent a lot of time on flights between Seattle and Billings and logged lots of frequent flyer miles.  The following summer our Seattle meetinghouse was being remodeled so we attended whatever ward happened to be meeting when we arrived at the stake center.
One Sunday we walked into Benson Hill ward and sat down across the aisle from a young mother with three children.  I must have seen the husband help everyone get seated before he took his place on the stand because I was aware of the mom sitting alone with the children.  The program indicated that the Relief Society would be singing a special number and I wondered to myself if the mother was going to leave those children and join the other sisters to sing.  When it came time for the musical number, the mother left the two older children, crossed the aisle and placed her beautiful baby girl on my lap before going to the stand.
My heart stopped. I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes because someone had trusted me, a stranger, with a precious baby. I felt like I had come home, to a place where I could be of service. After they sang, she picked up her baby and returned to her seat.  At the end of the meeting, we introduced ourselves and my husband recognized her accent - she was from Scotland, just like Neal's father.
That experience was the beginning of our determination to find a home within the Benson Hill ward boundaries.  Feeling needed even for a moment made a difference in how I felt about living in Washington state.  Benson Hill ward still feels like home, like it is truly a ward family.