the healing of sister rushton

by Elder Richard Stucki  

When I was reassigned with a new partner to work in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I met the Rushtons. He was a typical rough'n ready man. She was very spiritual. Their boy, in his early teens, was like his mother. They lived several miles out of town.

Sister Rushton had searched and prayed a long time for the true church. One day after such a prayer, her room was filled with a brilliant light. Moments later, two Mormon missionaries knocked on her door as they came tracting through the area without purse or script.

That fall, my companion and I made a weekly bus trip from Halifax to the Rushtons to have a cottage meeting with them. One such evening, on our arrival, we found Sister Rushton ill in bed. She had been having increasing pain and trouble in one of her legs which had been badly mangled when she was a little girl when a runaway team and wagon ran over her leg. She did cleaning for a living which aggravated the leg trouble. And with her leg getting so bad, she wasn't able to go to work. They needed the income from her work very much, since her husband wasn't working regularly.

Because she wasn't feeling well, we told her we would come back another night for our meeting. She asked us if we would give her a blessing before we left. She mentioned that the Elders had taught her in the discussion that the same Priesthood power had been restored that had allowed Jesus' disciples to heal the sick in their day and that laying on of the hands and healing the sick was again being practiced in the restored church today. We gave her a blessing and left with the promise we'd return in a week.

On our return visit we found Sister Rushton ​well and working without any of the pain and trouble she had been experiencing for a long time. The pain had left shortly after our blessing. As long as I was in the mission field and in touch with Sister Rushton, she reported that she had no further trouble with her leg.

Eventually we baptized Sister Rushton and her boy.