That was really the beginning of many wonderful things for Mommy. She made a little ceramic tray for Mrs. Ivey with a bluebird on it to bring her happiness too. The new writing led to her taking a trip all the way to California in the summer of 1951, and she was happy.

She got to work on the program. She decided to write to Mr. John Charles Thomas (8) to ask permission to use his recording of "The Lord's Prayer" as the ending for the program, and she told him about her idea.

One day she found in the mailbox a catalog from the Music Academy of the West. Mr. Thomas had just been made the new director. Next she received a letter from the secretary telling her she could apply for a scholarship at the Music Academy. She mailed the records made from the program to Mr. Thomas, and then he wrote her a letter giving her the scholarship. She sang a few little songs on the records. Mr. Thomas wanted to help her.

She was very happy about it, but she couldn't decide whether she should go. There was someone who helped her to decide to make the trip to Santa Barbara.

Laura met Mommy around the time this happened. Laura was about twenty-one years old, and she liked to have fun and see people dress up and be happy.

They met each other because one day Mommy went to retrieve her books on the history of making chinaware that she had loaned a friend who had ceramics too. The friend lived near a drugstore in downtown Baltimore, near the Washington Monument and Walters Art Gallery and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

The woman, who was supposed to be home waiting, had gone out unexpectedly, and Mommy left her a note saying she'd be back, and wrote her name-Mrs. Ian Ross MacFarlane-on it.

Mommy walked over to the drugstore and had a Coke, and then she decided to sit down at the table where a girl sat with an older woman. They had just come from a church. The girl was talking about the color of the vestments of the priest. Mommy was particularly interested in the colors used in churches and the meaning of the colors in the churches because of something wonderful and tremendous that happened to her a few months after I left her.

Mommy had a vision that was close to God, and she thought about it all the time. The girl in the drugstore started talking about a vision she had in November 1950, when she had been sort of half awake and half asleep, and smiling.

Her sisters couldn't waken her. She dreamed she was in a church, the St. Alphonsus Church on Park Avenue and Saratoga Streets, and an angel in the radiant chapel glistening with light beckoned to her to come to the altar. She was afraid. She didn't want to go. That part of the church is to the right of the altar. It's the Purgatory Chapel.

Finally, she went and the angel said to her, "Do you see this woman standing here?" The angel pointed to a beautiful woman in a lovely, white satin wedding gown, holding her arm bent for the arm of a man who was not there. The angel said, "Say these fifteen prayers for this woman, and you will receive great graces in heaven."

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