Never Postpone a Prompting: Bishop Monson, the Unseen Hand, and Kathleen McKee's Answered Prayer

“Long years ago, when I served as a bishop, I received notification that Mary Watson, a member of my ward, was a patient in the county hospital. I went to the hospital to visit her. As I identified her bed and approached her, I said, 'Hello, Mary.' She was pleased to see me. I gave Mary Watson a blessing, shook her hand, and said, 'Good-bye,' but I could not leave her side. It was as though an unseen hand were resting on my shoulder, and I felt within my soul that I was hearing these words: 'Go over to the next bed where the little lady covered her face when you came in.' I did so. I have learned in my life never to postpone a prompting. I approached the bedside of the other patient, gently tapped her shoulder, and carefully pulled back the sheet which had covered her face. Lo and behold! She too was a member of my ward. I had not known she was a patient in the hospital. Her name was Kathleen McKee. She was weeping. I asked her, 'Why are you crying?' She exclaimed through her tears, 'Oh, Bishop, when you entered that door, I felt you had come to see me and bless me in response to my prayers. I was rejoicing inside to think that you would know I was here, but when you stopped at the other bed, my heart sank, and I knew that you had not come to see me.' A blessing was given, a prayer was answered. I bestowed a kiss on her forehead and left the hospital with gratitude in my heart for the promptings of the Spirit. It would be the last time I was to see Kathleen McKee in mortality—but not the last time I heard from her. Upon her death, the hospital called with this message: 'Bishop Monson, Kathleen McKee died tonight. She made arrangements that we were to notify you, should she pass away. She left for you a key to her basement apartment.' Kathleen McKee had no immediate family. With my sweet wife accompanying me, I visited her humble apartment. I turned the key in the door, opened it, and switched on the light. There in her immaculate two-room apartment, I saw a small table with a note resting beneath an Alka-Seltzer bottle. The note, written in her own hand, said: 'Bishop, my tithing is in this envelope, and the Alka-Seltzer bottle contains coins covering my fast offering. I am square with the Lord.'”

— Thomas S. Monson, "Christ at Bethesda's Pool"