Hand of the Lord
At the October 2007 General Conference, Elder Eyring of the First Presidency gave a talk entitled O Remember, Remember.
In it, he said, “When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day. … I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. … Trying to remember had allowed God to show me what He had done.”
In October 2022 - Stake Conference, President Kreutz gave us a challenge. The challenge was:
Pray for specific opportunities to serve and for God to place people in our lives that we can serve
Recognize and identify the hand of the Lord in your life and record it for 30 days. He promised that if you do those things, the Lord would send people to you that needed you in their lives and that you would grow closer to the Lord as you recognized Him in your life.
Immunotherapy
I am now going to tell you a story from my life where I witnessed the hand of the Lord. We’ve never told this story in public, only snippets of it. We talk about it in our home from time to time. In fact, it took us years to fully comprehend the significance of it (October 4th, 2020 is when we first recognized it as a prophecy).
Seven years ago, for those of you who weren’t in the ward, our oldest child, Caden, passed away from cancer on October 4th, 2017. He was 16 years old. He was noble - faithful.
April 18th, 2017 he started an experimental immunotherapy with a baseline CT scan.
He would have another CT scan in seven weeks to see if it was working. We would know if it was working based on whether the tumors grew while he was on the medication. At this point one tumor was the size of a small grape in the middle of the liver, and the other a small raisin at the edge.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017 - 7 weeks later
He had a follow-up CT scan and the tumors had grown into each other and were now the size of an apple, a Washington-sized apple.
Clearly the immunotherapy didn’t work. There was nothing more that anyone on earth could do. Our Oncologist met with us, and described the pain and suffering people go through the months preceding the end of their life with this type of cancer. She painted a pretty grim picture in order to prepare us for what was to come.
Pain became our greatest fear and the focal point of all of our fasting and praying. Wednesday, June 7th was the day we found out that it would be Caden’s last summer.
Sunday, June 11 - Elder Neil L. Andersen
Dan and Kristi Ostrowsky used to be in our ward. Their son Landon passed away about 6 months earlier and Elder Andersen was Dan’s mission president in France. They were meeting in the High Council room with Elder Andersen and asked if we could also be brought in. So, 20 minutes before the meeting we went in to meet with him. Caden wasn’t there because he was too tired to go, which was the hand of the Lord. He wrote Caden a handwritten note.During that meeting he asked Stephanie how she was feeling. She said she was scared, terrified even, of what was to come. He asked her what she’s afraid of. She replied that she was afraid of having to watch him suffer and see him in pain. That pain and suffering was our greatest fear. As soon as Steph said that, he immediately said, “Oh no, Caden won’t feel pain.” He said it in sort of a dismissive way. It was as if he was minimizing her concern. Later, Steph said of the experience that she was angry with Elder Andersen for saying that and for how he said it. She thought, “How dare you say that. You don’t know our circumstance, you don’t know my son or his cancer. You didn’t hear what the oncologist told us. Don’t just sit here and try to tell us not to worry."
And that was our meeting with Elder Andersen and how we started the summer of 2017, knowing it would be Caden’s last.
Focused Prayers
We began to focus our prayers on one thing. We specifically prayed that his days of suffering would be minimized and the number of good days maximized.
We took advantage of every spare moment to make memories. As long as Caden felt well enough to go, we would go. We went boating, camping, played games.
We had a monthly follow up call with our Oncologist at Seattle Childens. For the months prior to his passing, every time she spoke with us, she could not believe that he wasn’t experiencing more pain. She told us that he will not feel well enough to go to Homecoming. After all, that was more than a month away and he should already be needing morphine.
3 Final Weeks
Saturday, September 16th, Homecoming Ritchie Style
Saturday, 23rd, Oahu
Monday, 25th, Polynesian Cultural Center
Friday, 29th, he attends seminary for the last time
Saturday, 30th, Richland Homecoming
Sunday, October 1, watches every session of General Conference - After the last session he asked for his first pain pill, which easily took care of the pain.
Tuesday, October 3, In the evening, Caden received a morphine pump, which managed his pain well. He sat on the couch for me to give him a priesthood blessing. In that blessing I told him that his mother is going to be okay which was important for him to hear.
Wednesday, October 4, At 1:30 AM he sat up in bed and one by one, met with his siblings. Around 2:00 or 2:30, Bishop Kreutz assured him of his readiness to serve a mission on the other side of the veil. After that, he was in and out of sleep. His sight was leaving him. Around 3:00, he woke up confused by what he was seeing and told us that he sees us. We’re sitting around his bed, but he’s above us. At 4:35 am, he fell asleep and peacefully passed away. That was 58 hours after he asked for his first pain pill.
The story doesn’t end there.
Two days later on Friday, October 6th, Steph talked to Sue, the oncologist, again. After hearing our story, she shockingly emphasized, "Stephanie, I just have to say: It does not happen like that!" After 20 years of childhood cancer care, she has seen and heard much. It doesn't happen that fast! She told Steph that it was truly a miracle the way it happened.
We finally got a miracle.
I don’t know what this talk was about for you. Maybe seeing the hand of the Lord in times of both trial and prosperity. Maybe it was about writing them down for posterity. That’s what I thought it was going to be about. For me, this ended up being about an Apostle and of the Lord.
Remember what Elder Andersen said, “He won’t be in pain.” As he spoke those words, there were angels on the other side that were listening and prepared to make that happen.
He wasn’t just trying to quell a mother’s worries. He was following the spirit. The Holy Ghost put those words into his mind and he just blurted them out. A living apostle prophesied that he wouldn’t be in pain. And he wasn’t. A prophet, seer, and revelator gave our family our own personal prophecy.
It was a miracle that he wasn’t in pain. But the fact that it was prophesied makes it even more remarkable.
The biggest miracle in this story is that Jesus Christ has prophets, seers, and revelators on the earth again.
Before Elder Andersen prayed with us, he said, "I am going to add Caden's name to a special prayer roll for the session that the Quorum attends on Thursdays."
After Caden passed, Elder Andersen wrote, “They will see their noble Caden again.” I’m going to count that as another prophecy.
Back to the challenge of President Kreutz. I want to renew that challenge. 3 weeks before General Conference when we will hear from prophets, seers and revelators.
The challenge was:
Pray for specific opportunities to serve and for God to place people in our lives that we can serve
Recognize and identify the hand of the Lord in your life and record it for 30 days. He promised that if you do those things, the Lord would send people to you that needed you in their lives and that you would grow closer to the Lord as you recognized Him in your life.
(The reason it's written like a talk is because is was written for Randy's sacrament meeting talk on September 15, 2014.)
My Grandma & Grandpa Fuller served their mission in San Jose between 1993 and 1995. I wondered if they'd ever attended church in this building. It made me feel close to my Grandma, who passed away almost a year ago when we were driving around San Jose.
