Picking up the Pieces
By Brandon Boey

If you have any missionary experiences you would like to share with Meridian readers, please send them to Brandon Boey at missionary@meridianmagazine.com. 

He was a broken man — his right leg having been fully severed at mid-thigh from an automobile accident.  Over the stump had grown a callused knot of scar tissue. A prosthetic made of hard plastic sat beside him as he gazed at us with tired eyes. The stark, flat fluorescent light overhead did little to hide the shadows of a prematurely aged face. Scents from stale exhaust fumes crept into our nostrils through the door as we sat across from him in his home — a bare concrete room in an underground parking garage.

We searched through the pages of the book with greased fingers. The tissue-thin pages of the Book of Mormon clung together, moistened by the tropic humidity from within our satchels that were damp from a sweaty bike ride over mountains in summer heat. He laid his head against the wall and stared at the ceiling as he waited patiently for us to begin.

We met this man several weeks ago outside a nearby store. His hand felt rough as we shook it. He was a former construction worker with little formal education.  Following the accident, unable to provide for his family like the man he used to be, his wife and children eventually left him.  Over the years, his eyesight began to leave too, and he soon found that the only way he could make a living was by watching other people’s cars in a dingy basement parking lot. 

The owner of the garage opened up the storage room as a place for him to stay and keep what few possessions he had. The irony of the job was that even if someone were to steal one of the cars, it would be all he could do to hobble out and watch the car drive off. Yet he was a rather large, strong-looking man and could probably scare away any would-be thieves.

Although the occasional driver would curiously peer into his strange home, the rest of the world had largely forgotten him. We began dropping by (he was always at the garage) to visit, and started reading the scriptures to him, fumbling over the words and trying to fill in the blanks when we could not recognize the characters.

I found myself wondering where all the possessions one must accumulate from nearly 50 years of life had gone. His room was as sparse as a prison cell. There was little occupying the rectangle of four concrete walls, bare floor, and a sheet draped over a string to separate his bed from the rest of the space. By the door was an old metal desk with various items that had been given to him — a calendar, a small electric fan, and an old TV. He had a little tea set made of terracotta clay from which he would serve boiled black tea. It finally dawned on me one day that there is not much you can hold on to when you don’t have the means to move often.

He wore the same clothes every time we saw him. Quite a few of his teeth had fallen out. There was no running water or bathroom in the garage, so washing up had to be done in public restrooms. While we felt compelled to keep returning to visit this man, it was because we felt sorry — sorry and unable to do much but read to him. It was all that we knew how to do. Still, he seemed to enjoy the company, savoring what little relief it gave him from loneliness. 

Yet sometimes it was hard even for us to be around him. The conditions were such that we occasionally had trouble relating to him without feeling pity. The feelings became so obtrusive that sometimes we could do nothing but sit and stare. It was a shame.

Then one day we came to find an elderly woman fussing around the room. It was his mother. In another reminder of how life had taken a toll on the man, we noticed that side-by-side, it was difficult to tell who was older. They both looked to be in their seventies. She beamed when she saw us, and it was apparent that he had told her about our visits. She waved us in, and we took our usual seats on the odd chair and stool. He seemed somewhat embarrassed by it all, but we brushed it off with a cheerful assurance.

As we talked, his mother cleaned.  From the energetic way she was moving in contrast to his crippled state, one would have thought that she was the daughter and he the aged parent. As my missionary companion continued to talk, I watched as she wiped the dusty tabletop and television set, folded his one other shirt, organized his medicine and cleaned out his tea cups and eating utensils in a bucket of water outside the room. 

I saw her fuss over this man and his pitiful living quarters — picking up a bit of trash here, straightening a little bit of that there, and suddenly my heart washed over with deep emotion. The room, once so much a dungeon, seemed to grow faintly brighter. It then struck me how this was so much like the way Heavenly Father feels toward His children. 

Despite the sentiment of the world or how damaged we are in its eyes, God cares for us like the true Heavenly Parent that He is. In the wake of harsh storms that tear through our lives, leaving pieces of what once was, He is there — picking up the pieces, straightening the way — ever the constant and concerned presence. It was a reminder that no matter the depths we have sunk or the darkness underground, we are never abandoned by the one who gave us life.