“Where the Action Is”

Though her rheumatoid arthritis rarely allows her to venture outside her home, 79-year-old Mable Koester has helped bring about hundreds of baptisms, endowments, and sealings. Propped against a backrest on her hospital bed in the living room—“where the action is,” she says—Mable inputs family history information on a computer mounted on a custom-built desk.

Not only does Mable submit the names of her ancestors for temple work, she has also prepared two family histories of a hundred pages or more that include pictures, pedigree charts, recollections, personal stories, and even a family crossword puzzle.

For years Mable has been her ward’s magazine representative, and at one point she taught home Primary to her young niece who was ill from the effects of chemotherapy for treatment of leukemia. She studies scriptures and takes turns giving family home evening lessons with her sister, Bernice Wright, with whom she lives. When the family gets together, toddlers and preschoolers always seem to gather on Aunt Mable’s bed to read books, work puzzles, play educational computer games, or just visit.

With the help of friends and family members, Mable is sometimes able to attend Church meetings. Recently Mable’s friends packed her wheelchair into a van and drove her to the Chicago Illinois Temple, where she had the satisfaction of doing ordinance work for her ancestors herself. She is a member of the Farmington Ward, Cape Girardeau Missouri Stake.—Denise Wright, Farmington, Missouri