Janina Murzyńska is one of the long time members of our branch. She is 71 and has never married. She has, I think, five advanced degrees, including a doctorate in architecture from BYU. She was a university professor here in Gdańsk for her career. She speaks four languages: English, Polish, Russian and French. She has always lived alone. She tells us she has no close relatives. She was converted as a middle aged woman many years ago on a hiking trip. As she was traveling to her hiking destination she encountered a set of our missionaries who gave her a Book of Mormon. She carried the book on her trip. When she got to her hiking destination it was raining and she didn’t have anything else to do but read the Book of Mormon. She was converted and baptized in 1991.
Janina tells us she has lots of health challenges. Lately she has told us she does not have anything to live for. She says she is alone and that no one has her problems. A couple of weeks ago she expressed her feelings pretty forcefully in Relief Society, weeping and carrying on, much to the dismay of Sister Dil, who was giving the lesson.
A couple of days later, Sharon and I went over to help her. She was still in an awful mood talking about how she needed to die since she didn’t have anything to live for. “Give me one reason I should live,” she would say but would not listen to our reply. It was with difficulty we got her out of her apartment to go with her on her weekly grocery purchase at a discount grocery store called Biedronka located about a block away. She brightened up (as most women do) as she shopped for her weekly groceries. As we were standing in line to check out, Janina suddenly decided she needed more cherry tomatoes and she ran back to get some. After this last errand we then checked out of the grocery store and walked back to her apartment carrying the groceries. When we needed her keys to get through the gate into her apartment complex, she suddenly said, “Where are my keys?” She didn’t have them. We knew she had them in Biedronka because we had seen them during the shopping. She said that she would run back to Biedronka and find them.
In about ten minutes she reappeared with the keys and told us what had happened. She said she had gone to find them in the grocery cart but they weren’t there. She tried asking the cashier but the cashier hadn’t seen them. She said she then began asking the people still grocery shopping if they had seen the keys. No one had. As she was beside herself in the fresh vegetable aisle she said a lady was standing watching her and playing with the cherry tomatoes with her hands behind her (the lady’s) back. Indeed, this lady was standing facing Janina with her back to the fresh vegetables just kind of idly running her hands back and forth in the deep box full of cherry tomatoes as she looked at and listened to Janina. Janina thought it was very unusual and not very sanitary but suddenly the lady turns around towards the tomato box, digs down and pulls out Janina’s keys! She says, “Here they are!” and gives them to Janina! Janina must have dropped her keys into the cherry tomato box as she got tomatoes on her last errand. They had sunk out of sight in the box and would doubtlessly have never been found until the last tomatoes would have been sold except that this lady had found them with her hands in the box.
Janina knew this was a miracle. I think it was a tender mercy from the Lord to Janina to let her know that He knew how she was feeling. Her attitude certainly brightened up after this experience! We left her in a much better mood than when we came. We all acknowledge the Lord’s hand in our lives, even in the little details. Sometimes we even get a miracle!