A dear family friend of mine was prompted in 2005 to do family history work. She sat down with her ten-year-old daughter, and for the next four years they worked together on a family line.
During those years, her family faced intense financial instability. They lost their house and were renting. But family history felt like a light in a tumultuous time as they slowly regained financial stability.
Then, one day their landlord said they had to leave. My friend and her family had built up savings and decided to try and buy a home.
They got something lined up, but then, just days before they needed to be out of their house, they received word that they needed a specific letter from the IRS. She began to feel anxious at the thought that they could be homeless for a period of time.
She drove to the IRS, praying the whole time in the car. When she got there, she asked for the letter, but to her dismay, the woman behind the desk said she couldn’t write it.
Immediately, the words came into my friend’s mind of another way the woman could formulate the letter and the exact words she could write. My friend asked the woman behind the desk if she could write the letter with those specific words used instead.
The woman thought for a moment and said “yes, I can do that.”
As my friend stood there, the words “Philip E Houtz” came to her mind. She knew immediately he had given her the words to say.
When she went home, she looked up his name. He was the Springville recorder and accountant and the Utah County Recorder and he was from the line she had been working on with her daughter. An angel, hand picked for her exact situation.
When they moved into their new house, she put a picture of Philip up so she would always remember that help that comes from the other side and the angels, hand picked just for our needs.
Malachi states, “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.”
As it says in D&C 128:15, “For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect.”
This service is not a one-way street.
They need us.
But also,
We need them.
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