Gospel Story Finder

Years later, a group in Cedar City were talking about her and others who were in those ill-fated companies. Members of the group spoke critically of the Church and its leaders because the company of converts had been permitted to start so late in the season. I now quote from a manuscript which I have:
“One old man in the corner sat silent and listened as long as he could stand it. Then he arose and said things that no person who heard will ever forget. His face was white with emotion, yet he spoke calmly, deliberately, but with great earnestness and sincerity.
“He said in substance, ‘I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts mean nothing here, for they give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. A mistake to send the handcart company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife was in it, and Sister Nellie Unthank whom you have cited was there too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church because every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives, for we became acquainted with him in our extremities’” (manuscript in my possession).
That speaker was Francis Webster, who was twenty-six years of age when with his wife and infant child he went through that experience. He became a leader in the Church and a leader in the communities of southern Utah.

Brigham Young became sick during the trek west. When he arrived at the Salt Lake Valley, he was lying in the back of a wagon. Looking at the valley, he declared: “This is the right place,” and the pioneers settled there. See if you can find the hidden objects in the picture.

In 1993, after I had served as president of the Mexico Tuxtla Gutiérrez Mission, we traveled as a family to see my parents, who lived in northern Mexico. During the trip we talked about the joy of serving the Lord and seeing the change in people who had accepted the gospel during the three years we were in the mission. We were commenting about those people who were baptized, confirmed, and had received the priesthood and the ones we knew had entered the temple and were sealed as families for eternity.
My youngest son asked a question that made me reflect: “Dad, are you sealed to your parents?” I told him that because my father had been less active for many years, he and my mother were not sealed in the temple. To help him become active, I thought up a plan. It involved my children, and I explained to them how we would do it: Every Sunday my father would get up early to take my mother and sister to church, only to return home, wait for the services to end, then go back to pick them up. So I assigned my children to go with him and say, “Grandpa, would you do us a favor?” I knew his answer would be, “Whatever you want, my children.” Then they would ask him if he would go with them to church and stay with them so he could listen to their testimonies. It was the first Sunday of the month. I also knew my father would give any excuse not to go, so I planned to enter the room to help my children convince him.
The time soon came for executing the plan. My daughter, Susana, approached my father and asked him about the favor. Sure enough, my father told her he would do anything he could for them. Then came the invitation to go to church, and just as we had predicted, he used this excuse: “I can’t because I haven’t even showered.” That’s when my wife and I, who were hiding behind the door, shouted, “We’ll wait for you!”
When we realized he was not making a decision, my wife and I entered the room and, together with our children, began to insist, “Shower! Shower!” Then what we expected happened. My father came with us, he stayed for the services, listened to the testimonies of my children, his heart was softened, and from that Sunday on he never missed church. Months later, at the age of 78, he and my mother were sealed, and we, his children, were sealed to them.

What lessons have we learned from our fathers? Years ago a father asked Elder ElRay L. Christiansen (1897–1975), Assistant to the Twelve Apostles, what name Elder Christiansen could suggest for the man’s newly acquired boat. Elder Christiansen suggested, “Why not call it The Sabbath Breaker?” I’m confident the would-be sailor pondered whether his pride and joy would be a Sabbath breaker or a Sabbath keeper. Whatever his decision, it no doubt left a lasting impression upon his children.

During his third year of law school, his wife was pregnant with their second child and he was an associate editor of the law review when the call came to serve as elders quorum president. “At this challenging time I accepted the call and prayed to Heavenly Father to make up the difference,” he said. “I needed help to fulfill my calling, successfully complete my education, find employment, and care for my young family. The blessings we received were far beyond what we deserved. That experience gave me great faith in the goodness of the Lord and His blessings upon those who earnestly strive to serve Him.”

By noon the group was hiking toward another lake. The trail switched back and forth gently, dropping down the slopes. Sometimes a lower part of the trail would be only a few feet away.
“We thought it was crazy not to take a shortcut,” Mike Worthington said. Some tried it. Greg stopped everybody.
“Stay on the trail,” he advised. “You think you’re saving time, but you’re not. And if the trail erodes the wrong way, you ruin it for people who come after you.”
“The next lake has golden trout in it,” Greg announced. “If we hurry, we might be able to catch a few before dark.” Packs were repacked and lifted to shoulders again.
Even though they’d been warned once about shortcutting, some of the young men thought the route back to the main trail was too roundabout and tedious.
“It looked like we could just cut through the trees,” Clay Drake said. “But we got lost. It took two hours for us to get back together with the rest of the group, and they all had to wait while the guides went back to look for us. The next time a guide tells me what to do, I’ll listen to him.”
There are times, the Explorers and Scouts found out, when you have to trust someone else, times when your safety and well-being depend on it. The young men also learned a little bit about perseverance. They hiked more than five miles each of the four days they spent in the Wind Rivers. Every day it became easier and more enjoyable.

A number of years ago in general conference, Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles told the story of Joseph Millett, a little-known member of the Church.
He lived in the early days of the Church and came across the plains with other faithful members to tame a desert and to find a new home. In those first years, food was often scarce. Winters were particularly difficult, and often the days stretched further than the food that was stored.
Joseph Millett wrote in his journal: “One of my children came in and said that Brother Newton Hall’s folks was out of bread, had none that day.
“I divided our flour in a sack to send up to Brother Hall. Just then Brother Hall came.
“Says I, ‘Brother Hall, are you out of flour?’
“‘Brother Millett, we have none.’
“‘Well, Brother Hall, there is some in that sack. I have divided and was going to send it to you. Your children told mine that you was out.’
“Brother Hall began to cry. He said he had tried others, but could not get any. He went to the cedars and prayed to the Lord, and the Lord told him to go to Joseph Millett.
“‘Well Brother Hall, you needn’t bring this back. If the Lord sent you for it you don’t owe me for it.’”
That night Joseph Millett recorded a remarkable sentence in his journal: “You can’t tell me how good it made me feel to know that the Lord knew there was such a person as Joseph Millett” (Diary of Joseph Millett, holograph, Historical Department Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; cited in Boyd K. Packer, “A Tribute to the Rank and File of the Church,” Ensign, May 1980, 63).

Merrell: After my mission I was hired as a part-time employee of the BYU Sound Services while studying music theory and composition at the university. I began by recording concerts and recitals, then moved into producing records, and eventually became a full-time musical supervisor. My first big break came when I was given the opportunity to do the arrangements for The First Vision. The music was very difficult to write, especially the revelation sequence. I listened to many of the great pieces that have been done concerning deity—such as Ben Hur and Crawford Gates’ music to the Hill Cumorah pageant—but nothing came to me. I wrote a lot of ideas down on paper, but none of them really made sense. So finally I shut the door of my studio and got down on the hard linoleum and began praying. I told Heavenly Father, “I’ve written this idea and this is how it goes, and now I’m not sure just what to write. I’ve done everything I can. Now what should I do?” When I finished, I knelt there for a while, hoping something would happen, but nothing did. So I got up and walked over to the piano and sat down and started looking at my favorite theme. Then suddenly I saw how I could take that idea and add another idea to it and write this little thing in between and put this together and take that and bridge this and change that one and do all this and that was it! I started writing, and about 45 minutes later I had written the whole sequence. What I’ve learned from that experience, and over and over again since then, is to put all the effort and research into my music that I can, and then just relax and let the Spirit take over. I don’t feel I can ask the Lord for help if I’m not working as hard as I can.

It was the first Christmas I got to work. My friend and I cleaned gardens, scrubbed walls, and did all sorts of jobs all month. We ended up with $10 each, one week before Christmas.
Everybody had already bought their gifts, and I was debating whether to give my $10 away or not. But when Christmas day came, I gave the money I had worked so hard for to my mom. She cried because she knew what I’d been through to get it.
I felt so happy! I felt I had really done something good. I’ll never forget that Christmas, ever!
—Vao Paongo, 13Nuku‘alofa, Tonga

Valerie and Mama walked to the market. Valerie saw colorful fruits and silver fish. She smelled the beautiful flowers for sale. Valerie looked around. Where was Mama? Valerie was scared. She folded her arms and bowed her head. She whispered, “Heavenly Father, please help me find Mama.” Valerie waited. Then she heard someone calling her name. There was Mama! “Thank you, Heavenly Father,” Valerie whispered. Valerie was happy she could pray when she needed help.

In The Gambia, Samuel and his friends met often in the home of his friend Charles Amoah to partake of the sacrament and teach one another. This was in 1994. Sometime during the latter part of 1994, they met the Endecotts. Michael Endecott was a member of the Church from the United States and was living in The Gambia with his family. The friends met in the home of the Endecotts on a couple of occasions till the Endecotts travelled back home to America. During that time, two of the Endecotts’ sons were baptized in The Gambia.
Later all the friends, except Albert Frederick Alexander, left The Gambia. Some travelled back home to Ghana whilst some travelled abroad. Charles Amoah travelled back to Ghana and is currently serving as a counsellor in a mission presidency in Cape Coast; Stephen Amoah travelled to the United States and lives in Utah with his family. Ernest Arko sadly passed away in Cape Coast after a brief illness during one of his visits to Ghana. Samuel Amoah lives in Ghana.

As a new convert to the Church, I experienced a spiritual rescue through the saving hands of a faithful member of the Church. I grew up in Matsumoto, Japan, close to where the Nagano Winter Olympics were held. My hometown looks very much like Salt Lake City, a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains. When I was 17 years old, I met two American missionaries, Elder Carter and Elder Hayashi. Though our ages were only two or three years apart, the elders had something wonderful that I had never felt before. They were diligent, cheerful, and filled with love and light. I was deeply impressed by their qualities, and I wanted to become like them. I listened to their message and decided to be baptized. My parents, who were Buddhist, strongly opposed my baptism. Through the help of the missionaries and the Lord, I received permission and miraculously was baptized.
The next year I entered the university in Yokohama. Living alone, far from my hometown and the people I knew, I became lonely and strayed from the Church. One day I received a postcard from a Church member back home. She wrote that she had heard I was not attending Church meetings. She quoted a scripture and invited me to return to church. I was overwhelmed by the words of the scripture. This helped me realize that maybe I had lost something important, and I pondered and struggled for many days. This also caused me to remember a promise the missionaries had made to me: “If you read the Book of Mormon and ask in fervent prayer if the promise found in Moroni is true, you will know the truth through the power of the Holy Ghost.”2
I realized that I was not praying with all of my heart and decided to do so. One morning I woke up early, knelt in my small apartment, and prayed sincerely. To my surprise, the confirmation of the Holy Ghost came upon me as promised. My heart burned, my body shook, and I was filled with joy. Through the power of the Holy Ghost, I learned that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, live and that They truly appeared to Joseph Smith. I made a commitment in my heart to repent and faithfully follow Jesus Christ for the rest of my life.
This spiritual experience changed my life completely! I decided to serve a mission out of gratitude to the Lord and to the Church member who rescued me. Following my mission, I was sealed in the temple to a wonderful girl, and we have been blessed with four children. Not coincidentally, this is the same girl who saved me by sending a postcard to that lonely apartment in Yokohama many years ago. I remain ever grateful for the mercy of the Lord and the help of this Church member, who invited me to once again come unto Christ.3

I saw the promise come to fruition that my doctors would be guided. When I awoke after one of my operations, the surgeon came to see me.
“I was all done,” she explained, “but something told me to go deeper, and I found additional problem areas, which I was able to remove. We’re fortunate to have found them.”
She is not a member of the Church, but the promise of the blessing I had received early on had come to pass. The Spirit had guided her.

President Monson spent his life helping people. On his 81st birthday, someone asked what he wanted for a birthday gift. He said, “Find someone who is having a hard time or is ill or lonely, and do something for him or her.” Many children sent letters and cards telling how they had helped others. President Monson said, “My heart has seldom been as touched and grateful as it was when Sister Monson and I literally spent hours reading of these gifts.” He believed that we are the Lord’s hands as we serve others.

“The operation and power of the Holy Spirit of Promise is best illustrated by the ordinance and contract of baptism. An unworthy candidate for baptism might deceive the elders and get the ordinance performed, but no one can lie to the Holy Ghost and get by undetected. Accordingly, the baptism of an unworthy and unrepentant person would not be sealed by the Spirit; it would not be ratified by the Holy Ghost; the unworthy person would not be justified by the Spirit in his actions. If thereafter he became worthy through repentance and obedience, the seal would then be put in force. Similarly, if a worthy person is baptized, with the ratifying approval of the Holy Ghost attending the performance, the seal may be broken by subsequent sin.

By then, running had become a way of life. She challenged herself more, pushed herself harder, and then, in 1978, faced the two greatest challenges of her life. One challenge was to run completely across the United States. The other was to accept the message of the Mormon missionaries.

She met the missionaries just before she left for the United States and asked them to come back because “I was frantic with last-minute preparations.”

In some real though not yet understood ways, that gruelling run had prepared her for the gospel. The open road “opened my mind and heart to the hidden reaches of a hidden existence. I was ready to discover myself.” Beyond the fear of failure and the pain of the hard work lay an unshakable sense of self, a self that honored the truth and despised sham. And the “purifying solitude” of long runs had given her an instinct for joy.

The chance to plunge into another layer of self-discovery came within a month of her return to Johannesburg. Two missionaries—different ones—called on her. She participated enthusiastically in the six discussions, “sure that they would keep coming indefinitely since I so greatly enjoyed their visits.” But when they asked her if she would be baptized on the next Saturday, “I was completely stunned, I made sure that I was lousy the next Saturday—and the next, and the next.”

But she knew too much about herself now to avoid this second great challenge. “I knew I was just making excuses. I also knew that if I choice not to join the Church I would lose my way again, for I knew there was light in my life that hadn’t been there before.”

The clarity of the decision she must make did not make it any easier. She would have to be baptized alone, the only member of her family to join the Church. She would be changing her life-style for a third time. These things would hurt. But she prayed and “felt the Spirit of Heavenly Father telling me that I must do the right thing.” The Spirit also whispered “that only I could make the choice.”

She made her decision. On 30 September 1978 at 4:30 P.M., she was waiting in Ramah Chapel for her turn to be baptized. It was emotionally a repeat of her experience in Los Angeles. “There were many people being baptized with me. They all looked so calm, so sure, and so radiantly happy. I was very nervous and very unsure and, at that moment, very unhappy. Had I prepared properly? Was I doing the fight thing? It was an enormous commitment—would I be able to keep it?”

And was joining the Church worth it? Again, yes! “I know that I made the right decision. I know there will be many times when I will pray for strength merely to take the next step, but I knew, after I was baptized, that I could get to the end of the road. This is the most important journey of my life.”

Since her baptism she has served as Sunday School secretary, Relief Society social relations leader and visiting teacher, and—naturally—as athletic adviser to the Activities Committee.

Before basketball games, there is always a sense of excitement as adrenalin starts to flow. When I was in junior high playing for a local team, the feeling was no different. Everybody in the locker room would be riled up and excited, ready to play the game. But before we would head out onto the court, I made it a habit of going to a corner of the locker room by myself and kneeling in prayer.
Then one day things were different. Instead of praying alone, I was joined by two of my teammates who had asked me where I was going. When I told them, they asked if they could participate with me. Before long, word had spread and all my teammates knew about the prayer I had before every game. It was then we decided to have a prayer together as a team. When we asked Coach Thompson to join us, he obliged as long as he didn’t have to offer the prayer. That day in that huddle of young men there was a spirit that cannot be described.
At our next game, we were playing horribly and nothing was going right. In the middle of the second quarter, Coach Thompson called time-out and told everybody to drop down to one knee. He was going to offer a prayer. Though there were vocabulary words not often heard in prayers, the Spirit was felt.
By the end of the year I received some awards for the season I had played. However the most meaningful award for me was when I saw old rough-and-tough Coach Thompson, humble and in tears, talking about the basketball team that taught him how to pray again.

One was Erroll Bennett, one of the top soccer players in Tahiti, whom Eli read about one day on his mission. When Brother Bennett joined the Church, he decided to withdraw from his team because he chose not to play on the Sabbath. When Eli read the story and saw how dedicated Brother Bennett was to the gospel, he was impressed. He says, “I knew I wanted to be a man like that, with that kind of commitment and dedication to what I knew was right.”

Easton’s first sacrament meeting in Germany had just ended. He thought it would be really different, but it was a lot like church where he used to live. Only here he got to wear headphones to listen to the talks being translated into English.
Mom and Dad were talking to the family sitting behind them. It looked like they had a boy his age!
“These are the Finottos,” Mom told Easton. “GianMarco will be in your class at school.”
“Cool!” Easton smiled at GianMarco. His name sounded kind of like “John” and “Mark” squished together—with an “o” at the end. “So where are you from?”
GianMarco smiled back. “We’re from Italy. But we just moved here from China.”
“Wow!” said Easton. “I’ve never been to China.”
The next day Easton went to his new school. He was a little nervous. But then he saw GianMarco waving at him from across the classroom. At least he had one friend already. There were kids from all over the world in his class. Maybe he would like this school.
“Good morning!” The teacher smiled at everyone. “I’m Ms. Albano. To start off, can anyone tell me what identity means?”
A girl raised her hand. “It means who you are—what’s most important to you.”
“Exactly!” said Ms. Albano. “So let’s get to know each other. What are some things that are part of your identity? What things make you you?”
“I like video games!” said a girl in the front row. Ms. Albano smiled and wrote hobbies on the board. “What else?”
GianMarco raised his hand. “I’m from Italy.” Ms. Albano nodded and wrote down country.
Easton tried to think of something to say. “I go to church,” said a boy in the back.
That’s a good one! Easton thought. I should’ve said that.
Someone laughed. And then some other kids started laughing. Easton looked at GianMarco, confused. GianMarco looked confused too. Why would they laugh?
When he got home, Easton told Mom what happened.
Mom nodded. “Some people don’t understand why church is important. They think it’s silly.”
“Oh,” said Easton. He didn’t think church was silly at all.
A few weeks later, Ms. Albano asked the students to do a presentation with a parent about their family’s identity.
“What should our project be?” Mom asked as they set the table for dinner.
Easton thought about how the class had laughed. “I think we should do it about the Church,” Easton said.
Mom smiled. “That’s a great idea.”
“And could GianMarco and Sister Finotto do it with us?”
“I’ll call them after dinner to find out.”
The next day GianMarco and Sister Finotto came over. First they all talked about what they thought was most important about the Church. Mom wrote down all their ideas in a notebook. Then they got poster boards and found pictures of Jesus and prophets and temples to glue onto it.
When it was time for the presentation, Easton stood with GianMarco and their moms at the front of the class. He took a deep breath.
“We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he began. They each took turns explaining things about the Church. GianMarco talked about scriptures. Mom talked about prophets. Sister Finotto talked about family home evening. Easton talked about baptism.
Easton felt pretty good when they were done. Nobody laughed—the kids actually seemed to like it! He was glad he could share something so important with his class. He smiled. He knew his identity. He was a child of God!

We all have our own examples of the power of love. More than twenty-five years ago I recorded some memories I had of my father, who died before I was eight years old. What I wrote then illustrates the power of love in the life of a boy:
“The strongest impression I have of my relationship with my father I cannot document with any event or any words I can recall. It is a feeling. Based on words and actions long since lost to mind, this feeling persists with all the clarity of perfect faith. He loved me and he was proud of me. … That is the kind of memory a boy can treasure, and also a man” (“Memories of My Father,” 15 Oct. 1967).