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I was speaking to a crowd of people who gathered in the zechut of a young woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, lo alenu . Afterward, the woman requested to speak to me. She thanked me for the words of chizuk , which were aimed at getting the crowd to make a kabala in her merit. Then she said, baruch Hashem, she herself did not need any chizuk . She has been learning emunah for many years and because of it, she is rock solid. She said she is going to utilize this time to get even closer to Hashem and appreciate her life even more. Then she said she wanted to share some words of chizuk for others to realize how valuable their kabalot and deeds really are. About ten years ago, her grandmother passed away and her father was lamenting the fact that he would no longer be able to communicate with his mother. Then he got chizuk from some words he read in the sefer Ahavat Chesed from the Chofetz Chaim. There, the Rabbi was discussing the subject of helping those who have already passed on. He said not to spend large amounts of money on monuments or the like, but rather to use the money for zechuyot for the niftar or the nifteret . That is the way in which we will truly help them. Her father then spoke to the entire family, telling them that the way they could all still communicate with his mother was by doing good deeds in her merit. He then gave them a mashal to bring out the point. He said he once heard that when the Mirrer Yeshiva was on the run, escaping from the Nazis, Rav Aharon Kotler was working feverishly to send packages to them to help them survive. The Rabbi did not know if those packages were actually reaching them or perhaps they were being dumped into the ocean, but he did not stop working on their behalf. Later on he was told by those boys that the packages, indeed, enabled them to survive. The father said, “Similarly, we do mitzvot and good deeds on behalf of those who passed away. We don’t know if our deeds are reaching them but one day we are going to see how much each and every deed actually did benefit them.” This woman was inspired by her father’s speech and she took the initiative to organize something the entire family would do to raise the neshama of her grandmother. Every year two weeks before the yahrzeit , she would send fliers to the entire family, requesting that each day they would each give two different people either a compliment or lift up their spirits, as well as give a small amount of tzedaka l’ilui nishmata . This went on for four years. In the fifth year, she saw her grandmother in a dream. Her grandmother was saying she was going to come eat with her that Shabbat. She then went to her closet to pick out her Shabbat clothing but she said she couldn’t see the clothing. She kept searching and saying, “I can’t see the clothing. I can’t find any of my clothing.” Then she said she wouldn’t be able to eat with her because she didn’t have any Shabbat clothing to wear. The woman woke up troubled by the dream. She related it to a rabbi who told her that clothing in the Next World represents a person’s deeds. She must have been saying that she is lacking certain deeds. That is when the woman realized it was already just one week before her grandmother’s yahrzeit and she forgot to send out the papers reminding everyone to do the deeds in her zechut . She then appreciated how much her family’s actions were really benefiting her grandmother in the Upper World. There is so much that goes on that we can’t see. We must never underestimate how special our mitzvot are. We may not be able to see their effects now but one day we will see how valuable each and every one of them really are.