Editor's note: This article was written by Stephen E. Sowby. If you have any inspirational missionary stories you would like to contribute to Meridian Magazine, please write to Laurie Williams Sowby by clicking here.

It was a freezing cold day in Woodstock, Illinois, in 1965. We had no appointments, and we had run out of referrals from the one member family in town, so all we could do was tract. Night was coming on and we were miserably cold, but after being rejected all day, my companion and I resolved to tract one more street in the light snow before we returned to our room to get warm.

We felt inspired to tract on a certain street. We had heard stories of how it was always at the last door of the day that the missionaries finally got to give their message or help someone, so we thought we would beat the odds and start at the opposite end of the street. Our idea didn't work, but we continued tracting back up the street because we just had to find that person who needed our help.

As we stepped up on the porch of the next-to-last house on the street, we noticed a large oval picture window. As we walked across the long porch to reach the door, we could see through the misty window a woman kneeling in prayer, a small child in her arms. We knew we had been led to this house.

In a letter I received from her 14 years later, Mary Berkheimer recalls what happened next. (She had recognized the last name on the missionary tags worn by my parents, who were serving at the Mesa Temple Visitors Center in 1979, and shared with them the story of a priesthood blessing without end.) In Sister Berkheimer's words:

I was soon transferred and lost contact with the Berkheimers until they visited the Mesa Temple and chanced to meet my parents. I was happy to hear the rest of the story.

When Walt was nearly five, he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a blood disease with numerous complications. He was given eight months to live, but through priesthood blessings, he lived to his 12th year. His extremely low blood count left him open prey to infection. Sometimes his blood platelet count dipped under 1000, and it was seldom more than 7000, yet 33,000 is the level at which humans could hemorrhage to death instantly, his mother explained in the letter.

"Under these conditions," she wrote, "he should have been constant prey to respiratory illness, yet never did he get even a bad cold. When he died in March 1976, he convulsed so severely for so many hours that the doctor gave him an injection of medicine, which should have stopped his breathing completely. The shot was repeated again and again, to no avail. Yet not once did Walt labor for breath. Even his last breath was effortless and easy."

Her son had no fear of death, said Sister Berkheimer, for he had kept the commandments very carefully so he could be eligible for the Celestial Kingdom.

"This boy who should have had so many respiratory infections over seven years and complete respiratory failure his last day on earth never drew one difficult breath since the day you and your companion gave him that special blessing," she wrote. "It has been a great testimony in our lives."

So it has been in mine. After I received Sister Berkheimer's letter, I again read the words of my patriarchal blessing, given just before I began my mission in 1964:

I recognized the truth of that blessing the day we laid our hands upon baby Walt and his breathing was eased, but little did I know that it was just the beginning of a blessing that would last throughout the young boy's life.