Everyone's Worst Nightmare Came True For Nicole.

On my first week back to church since having my surgery, I sat down in our family's pew and started to read the program for the day.  Then, I turned to Nicole and asked her to read it.  Her face lost all of it's color when she saw her name as the youth speaker! She had totally forgotten that she was supposed to speak!  Can you even imagine the sick feeling?!?!?  Pure panic!!!  Poor girl.

Luckily, I was there.  If  David had been the only parent there, I'm not sure what would have happened because he couldn't have left the other kids to help her. Nicole and I slipped away before church began and went into the cry room (more like "panic room" at the time). I calmed her down, discussed the topic a little bit to get her juices flowing, looked up one or two related scriptures with her, emailed the member of the bishopric who was concerend about her whereabouts to tell him that she would be speaking, then we went back in to the chapel.

When it was her turn to speak, Nicole got up and explained her situation. She apologized for her mistake, then proceeded to bear her testimony about the topic she was assigned to speak on.  It was beautiful, thoughtful, and honestly better than many people could have done even with time to prepare.  It was a tender mercy from the Lord, for sure!