It once happened that a couple had no children. After ten years of fertility treatments, a friend of their suggested that they go to a rabbi. They were quite removed from Jewish observance, and were not willing to accept her advice.
A year later, the wife said to her husband, "When you come right down to it, why don`t we try and follow my friend`s advice?" They did as she had proposed, and they went to a rabbi, who told them: "I am not a prophet, and I cannot foresee the future. But I know that if you observe the Sabbath and if your husband will put on Tefillin, and you observe the laws of family purity, the Lord will help you." After they left the rabbi`s house, the husband turned to his wife and said, "I told you that the rabbi cannot help us." And so they went back to their normal lives, without following the counsel of the rabbi. Some time later the wife met her friend. She asked the wife if they had gone to the rabbi and what he had told them. The wife told her what the rabbi had said, and her friend asked, "Well, did you do what the rabbi requested?" The wife replied, "No." Her friend immediately explained to her that it was worth a 7try, and after consulting with her husband, they accepted the rabbi`s request. Within a year the couple was blessed with a baby boy, and they continued to observe these three commandments.
Due to his lack of knowledge, the husband, an IDF colonel, would get up in the middle of the night to put on Tefillin, because he was embarrassed to do so before other people. One day, he woke late and went into his room at the base to put on Tefillin, as usual. Suddenly, his commander, a brigadier general, entered the room and spotted him with Tefillin on his head. The moment his commander saw him, he began to shout: "Barukh Hashem, barukh Hashem [Blessed be the Lord]!" He went on to explain: "Every day I put on Tefillin, but today I forgot them at home, and I didn`t know what to do. I almost wanted to return home." The brigadier general happily put on his fellow officer`s Tefillin.