Gospel Story Finder

George Q. Cannon had a large family. Forty-three children. It wasn't always easy to keep them straight, as I found out in a recollection of Collins Cannon, one of the younger sons. Here is what Collins wrote:

"I was about eight and one day I came upon Father and Uncle Angus M. on Main Street. Before I go further with this anecdote I must [explain that] Uncle Angus was a kisser. He kissed all and sundry, young and old, male and female alike, and it didn't matter whether it was on Main Street or wherever...Uncle Angus had grandson twins...They were called Jack and Chick. They were about my age...I had chanced upon Father and Uncle Angus and I was attempting to slide by unnoticed on account of my dread of the kissing ordeal...Angus spotted me, halted me and you guessed it—he kissed me...Father looked on and said, 'Angus, which is that, Jack or Chick?' My world tumbled about me...and I cried out, 'No, no, Pa! I ain't Jack or Chick! I'm Aunt Martha's little boy.'"

This past spring two different bird families built nests in my yard. A small sparrow chose a rose tree on my patio for her nest. Time after time she flew back and forth, carrying blades of grass and small twigs in her beak. Carefully she manipulated her way through the rose thorns, depositing her building materials in the chosen spot. She worked without resting until the tiny nest was finished. I was amazed at how carefully the grasses were woven to make a strong and stable structure. I was almost moved to tears when I saw in the bottom of the nest four small pieces of cotton, placed in just the right spot to make a soft bed for her little ones.
The second bird, a robin, chose to build her nest in front of my house near the rain gutter, up high where ground predators could not reach it. Since she was larger, so was her nest, and in addition to being bigger, the outside of her nest was glued with mud, which kept the grasses and twigs together and held it in the crook of the rain gutter. Inside, single blades of grass were woven into a soft, cuplike shape that perfectly cradled the bird.
When the nests were completed, both birds laid their eggs and began the daily vigil of protecting and nurturing. Hour after hour, day after day these birds sat on their eggs. After the eggs hatched, the mothers worked full time to feed their hungry babies.
One particularly hot day I noticed the robin sitting on her nest, panting with her beak open. Obviously she was uncomfortable in the glare of the sun. I wondered why she stayed. Then I realized she was not sitting deep in the nest as she had when she was keeping her babies warm. Instead she was carefully stretched over the top of the nest, forming a protective shelter to keep her featherless babies from being sunburned.
I began to read about birds and the great pains they take to build homes for their families. Did you know that barn swallows make more than 1,200 mud-carrying trips in order to construct their nests? One single nest of a hooded oriole was found to contain 3,387 separate pieces of material. It seems to me that birds invest everything—their time, their energy, their means, their own comfort—to make a home and rear their young. It is not a priority that is given second place or avoided. It takes first place.
Since watching the birds in my yard, I have wondered who taught these birds what to do. How did they know how to build a nest and to shade their fledglings from the sun? Birds follow instincts to provide, protect, and nurture. These are God-given instincts, and pondering on them caused me, along with the Psalmist, to exclaim, “O Lord, how great are thy works!” (Ps. 92:5).

Mom has always told me that Sundays are special days. They did not seem special to me, though. I didn’t get to play with my friends or have fun at the park. I thought Sundays were boring. Mom said that Jesus asked us to give Him just one day of the week for His very own. She said that there were many things that I could do to give Jesus His one day.
One Sunday when I was feeling especially restless, I decided I would try to give Jesus more of the day. I remembered that Grandma and Grandpa wanted me to send them a letter, so I sat down and colored a picture of Jesus for them. I put it in an envelope and got it all ready to mail. It made me feel good inside to think about how happy Grandma and Grandpa would be when they got my picture.
The next Sunday when I found myself with nothing to do, I decided to give Jesus more of that day, too. I looked at my Friend magazines and found some pictures of Him that I liked. I showed them to my dad, and he read me a story. It made me feel good inside to spend some quiet time like that with my dad.
Each Sunday after that, I found things that I could do to give Jesus His one day. Every time I do something special for His day, I feel good inside. Now I believe my mom. Sunday is a special day. It’s true that I don’t play with my friends or have fun at the park. I have a different kind of fun—the kind you feel inside your heart when you’ve given Jesus the one day of the week that He’s asked for: the Sabbath Day.

As I flipped through the pages of a dictionary, I decided to look up a word that means a lot to me—family. As I read the definition, I thought how different it was from my definition. The dictionary read, “two parents and all their children living in the same house.” Well, all my 11 brothers and sisters don’t live in one house, and we are not from the same parents. But we’re a family, a very special family.
I knew why we gathered that night. I could hardly make myself come to believe it, but I knew. So did everyone else. Looking at my father, I could tell he was trying hard to control himself in front of us. But in his eyes, he couldn’t hide the pain.
We were brought together that night for the strength we knew we would receive through prayer. We all knelt, my grandparents, my father, and five of my brothers and sisters. Each of us held another’s trembling hand as we called upon the Spirit to help and guide us in whatever our Father in Heaven had planned. For a moment, it felt like everything was all right. We were a family, and my mother seemed to be there, smiling and looking over us so proud and happy. It seemed like our little circle was hurled into space where nothing could enter, not even the ugly disease that was slowly taking our mother away from us.
After the prayer we all knew the Spirit was there, even though my mother wasn’t. Every few seconds you could hear a little sob, but nobody looked into anyone’s eyes for fear of not being able to hold in all the emotion. My father broke the semisilence with tears in his eyes when he said, “Everything’s going to be all right.”
A week later my mother died. How would it be in a motherless home, without the encouraging look of a proud mother to push us along when times got rough? I thought mothers were always supposed to be there. Who was going to teach me all the things mothers are supposed to teach their daughters? Who was I going to have those special talks with? Why did it have to be my mother?
My father knew it was up to him. It must have been like a building falling on him to have all the responsibility of raising the family. After losing the woman he loved so dearly, he had to be strong to set the example for his family. He did. I remember him standing there and asking us if we understood about paradise and heaven. We all hesitated, as if a nod of approval to his question was an approval for her to die, but then with great effort he told us she was gone. My father’s a big man, but he was even bigger then, when I knew that inside his heart was broken and he was full of loneliness.
For about a year I played the role of the mother of the house. I loved my family, and I wanted to take care of them, but I sometimes wondered, “Why do I have to stay home and watch the little kids, fix supper, and do the laundry?” I was only in junior high school. In those moments when I would start to cry, I’d see my father. He tried so hard to make our home happy. All day he would work hard and then come home and listen to our problems and our complaints and smile and say he loved us. I never once heard him complain or break down in front of us. He knew the whole family depended on him. If he broke down, the family would also. But if he were strong, the family would follow.
I remember those days and all the pain and testing we went through. Looking at pictures that were taken then, I can still see the pain when I look into the eyes of those in the photographs.
The bond of trust that grew between my father and me was so strong that when my father asked me what I would think if he remarried, I was able to answer truthfully, “Do what you think is right.” Some of my older brothers and sisters didn’t agree with me, but I trusted him to do the right thing.
As the time grew closer, I grew excited to meet the woman my father loved and wanted to marry. But as I walked into the room, I saw a tall, slim, dark-haired woman who wasn’t my mother kissing my father. For a split second a door within me burst open, spilling all the hurt, jealousy, and anger that I felt for this woman. Then just as quickly, it closed without ever changing the smile on my face. That door was destroyed then, never to be opened again.
Many of our relatives and friends loved my mother and wouldn’t accept anyone else. They kept telling my father that he was wrong and was making a big mistake. But he wouldn’t listen, and neither would I. All I knew was that I had to trust my father. When I saw my two youngest sisters cuddled up to this woman while she sang them little songs she made up, I knew it was right. She was to be our new mother, and we all needed her, especially those two. As we grew to know her, we all eventually grew to love her.
My new mother left behind a big, beautiful house when she packed up her four children and moved into our little green house, a home in which she knew she wasn’t totally accepted. I admired how strong she was to be able to make a move like that, but I knew Heavenly Father, and maybe even my mother, helped her.
From then on it was more a matter of time. Slowly, with all of us pulling, we became closer, a family again. Together my father and new mother brought two more spirits into the world and into our family, making a grand total of 12 children. If nothing else made us a family, it was those two little spirits. Their presence created an unbreakable bond between two families that needed each other.
We were a family by our own special definition.

One evening, as I conversed with President Harold B. Lee, I said to him, “President Lee, you seem different someway.”

He smiled and said, “You know what it is, don’t you?” I shook my head and said that I really didn’t know. Then he shared with me this remarkable experience, saying:

“After I became the President of the Church, I thought a great deal about what the Lord wanted me to do. One night, while I was sleeping, President McKay came to me in a dream. He pointed his finger and looked at me with those piercing eyes of his, as only President McKay could do, and he said, ‘If you would serve the Lord, you must love and serve his children.’ I awakened with a compelling desire to learn all I could about love that I might serve the Lord.”

He went on to say, “After I had read everything the scriptures had to say about love, I began to put into practice all that I had gleaned from my study. That’s what you can feel. It is my newfound ability to truly love and serve his children.”

I watched President Lee a little more closely that night and noted that not one person who came to the table to shake his hand left without receiving a special word of encouragement or an extra question that indicated the concern of the Prophet. No one went away without seeing his smile or hearing his words of love.

I have thought of his wonderful example many times as the years have come and gone. President Lee is not with us now, but the spirit of that love which he exemplified still lives in my memory.

I joined the Church at age 16 and at 17, against all odds, left England for America to escape a life of poverty. I was completely alone and frightened, but I was determined. I had one plan: to become rich and famous. A few years before, I had seen a documentary about orphanages in Romania that deeply impacted my young, fierce heart. I was no stranger to childhood trauma, so I set a goal to get enough money to fund an orphanage and truly make a difference in the world.
I couldn’t have known then how different my life would turn out. I got married at age 25, and my husband soon joined the Church. By then I had managed to become quite successful, but I was still looking for true “success” (or at least what I thought was success at the time: fame and fortune). I longed to make a big difference. Strangely enough, I didn’t want to get pregnant, but I had a strong feeling that we shouldn’t do anything to prevent pregnancy. It turned out that my feeling was right because after about a year, nothing had happened.
Growing up, I always loved children, even though my plans didn’t include having more than one or two of my own in the far distant future. I didn’t think I’d be too disappointed if I couldn’t have children at all, but when suddenly faced with that very real possibility, I was devastated.
Over the next two years, I became angry, resentful, and desperate. Ironically, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” came out around the time I got married, and that message increasingly affected me in a negative way because I felt like I couldn’t fulfill my duty to have children. When my husband and I visited doctors, they couldn’t find any reason for the infertility. It seemed so unfair. I wondered why God had done this to me. Little did I know, my heart was changing. I had always been hyper-focused on success, but now, for the first time in my life, my heart wanted a baby more than anything else.
As time marched on, I felt more and more forgotten, desperate, alone … abandoned by God. I pasted on a cheerful smile, but no one understood what my husband and I were really going through. One day, I spoke to my husband’s grandmother, who was very wise and spiritual. As I shared my feelings with her, she said, “You know, there are many other ways to be a mother.” I felt her words penetrate my heart to its core. I was humbled. I knew this was an answer from Heavenly Father. I had only been fixated on having a baby through my own body. A glimmer of hope emerged as we considered other options. We became foster parents.
Soon our first foster baby, Benjamin, came to us. My bond with him was overwhelming, but I felt faint promptings that he wouldn’t be with us forever. I was heartbroken at the thought of him leaving us. And I was desperate for a baby I could keep. The Church’s Family Services was helping couples with adoptions at the time, so I went to my bishop to get information. The next week I got a call from a social worker who was looking to place a baby in a foster/adoption home. This was music to my ears. Despite the possibility of the baby having developmental issues, we felt the Lord’s hand directing us and we had faith to go forward. I’m not going to lie—I was scared. But it felt right, and baby Daniel was delivered to our home that very night.
Within days he became gravely ill, was hospitalized, and given a 50 percent chance to live. I sat by his crib for 11 days alternately praying and crying over him. I never once left the hospital. When Daniel’s birth parents came to see him (the adoption wasn’t final yet), there I was, looking like a complete disaster! But they seemed disconnected and showed no emotion whatsoever when they saw him.
This was a huge “aha” moment for me. I realized then that I really was Daniel’s mother! It didn’t matter that I hadn’t given birth to him—he was meant to be mine. I learned a lot about motherhood in those 11 days. I would have done anything for him.
Daniel’s life was spared. Benjamin returned to his biological family. But the Lord stayed by our side. Since then, we have adopted six more children and have miraculously had two of our own. I could shout from the rooftops about the miracles I’ve witnessed in my life. I have such a testimony of Heavenly Father’s promise to us that we can have the blessings we desire, even in ways we might not have originally expected or when we expect them (see 2 Nephi 10:17; Alma 37:17).
Having nine kids is hard at times. It’s nonstop laundry, it’s different personalities, and each child comes with different issues. But I know they were all heaven-sent. Honestly, it feels like my dream of making a difference and owning my own orphanage has come true after all!
My trial of infertility led me to my greatest blessings. I feel like I had to be truly humbled so I could submit to God’s will instead of my own. I experienced that “mighty change of heart” (see Alma 5:13). And through this kind of submission, He has guided me. He has blessed me with dreams, visions, and miracles that have led me to each child. He always had a plan for me! Even when I felt forgotten, He was there.
Infertility can be very dark and lonely. I think back on those days when it was hard to go to church without children—when the family proclamation held a bitter sting. I couldn’t see then what I see now. The loving words in the proclamation always applied to me. Regardless of our circumstances, we do each have a place in Heavenly Father’s eternal plan.

One day, my grandchildren, Seth, Cole, and Paige, were visiting me. Paige and I were playing a game in our downstairs family room. Seth and Cole were upstairs in the living room, playing “cars.” They were taking turns to see whose car could go the fastest and farthest.
I didn’t actually know what they were doing until Seth came downstairs and said, “Grandma, you need to come upstairs for a few minutes.”
I went upstairs, and he pointed to my favorite porcelain figurine of two boys playing marbles. “Grandma,” he said, “my car accidentally hit the figurine and broke the head off the boy.”
I was pretty upset, and he knew it. But I said, “Maybe my superglue will fix it.” We got it out, and I was able to very carefully mend the figurine. I didn’t tell Seth how proud I was of him for admitting what he had done, because I was still upset. Both boys know that they shouldn’t play cars in the living room!
The next day, after Seth had gone back home to Idaho (I live in Logan, Utah), I started to think about how much courage it must have taken him to choose the right and tell me the truth about the broken boy.
I wrote him a letter right away and told him so, and that I was proud of him. He could have blamed it on Cole, or he could have never told me at all. I also told him how glad I was that only a porcelain figurine had been broken and not his testimony of choosing the right.

I had the good fortune to be introduced to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through a friend. I was taught by missionaries who were called by God to bring the light of the gospel to the world. Two years after my baptism I was called to serve in the Italy Milan Mission. Before I left, I had a profound spiritual experience.
My parents, who were not members of the Church, didn’t share my joy in this missionary opportunity. We had terrible arguments that caused me much suffering.
Two days before I left on my mission, both my parents suddenly became seriously ill. My mother had a health crisis for which she was hospitalized. Nothing the doctors tried seemed to help. My father had cirrhosis of the liver, from which the doctors said it would be difficult to recover.
That evening I knelt and prayed to my Heavenly Father, saying, “Father, help me. My family is sick, and I can’t leave them in these circumstances. I pray, Father, help me know whether it’s right to leave or stay.”
I meditated on my situation for a few minutes. Then I felt a subtle but penetrating voice that said, “Have faith, and everything will work out for the best.”
Notwithstanding the sorrow I felt in seeing my family in poor health, I decided to get on the airplane that would take me to Rome and then to the United States, where I attended the missionary training center. My nights at the MTC were not happy. I thought over and over again about my parents. Finally, with the approval of the MTC president, I was able to call them to see how they were doing.
On the phone, my mother told me with great joy that she and my father had had a miracle from the Lord—words I never would have expected to hear from a woman without a lot of faith. She told me that after I left, their health had improved, and the doctors couldn’t explain it. My parents were healthy and happy. My joy was full.
Through this experience, my testimony of the power of faith, prayer, and obedience grew. I am grateful that the Lord took care of my family during my mission.

Nine years ago, I was going through another valley. I was 61 years old and needed to find new employment. It is hard to find work at that age, but especially hard when my talents do not fit neatly on a LinkedIn profile. One of my colleagues described one of my talents as “You ask good questions.” I have never seen a job description that was looking for someone who asked good questions.
After applying for many jobs over three years, I was discouraged. Why wasn’t the Lord helping me? Then, through a unique series of events that I can only describe as miraculous, I found myself employed at BYU-Idaho. It was miraculous because the job did not exist when I applied.
In the rear-view mirrors of my life, I can see the miracles.

Time moved forward, and I remained on the island of Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji. I went to stay with my older sister, who had moved away from home years before. In the chaos of the tragedy, President Davis lost track of me, and I lost track of the Church. Learning that I had survived, however, he instructed the missionaries to search for me. They looked for months but to no avail. President Davis’s time as mission president came to a close, and he passed the search on to his successor.
The years passed, but because of poor communication systems, I could not be found. The family I was staying with was not interested in the gospel, so I had little hope of finding the Church during my teenage years. I struggled with the loss of my family and wondered why I had been left alone. But I carried in my heart the truths my parents had taught me. Although at times I gave in to weakness and temptation, I always remembered my father’s testimony concerning Jesus Christ and His true Church. Eventually I got married and settled on Vanua Levu, the northern island of Fiji.
In March 1985 I was at work cutting coconut copra not far from the main road when an elderly couple in a small car stopped and called out to me. They asked me if I knew a man named Joeli Kalougata. But before I told them they had indeed found him, I asked what they wanted. They introduced themselves as Elder and Sister Kimber and explained that they were missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Finally they had found me! It was a glorious moment. Following six missionary discussions in two days, I was baptized on 18 March 1985, along with my wife, Elenoa. Our lives have never been the same since.

It might be said that the idea of BYU began with a boom.
On April 5, 1876, the day before general conference, three gunpowder reserves in Salt Lake City ignited. The ensuing explosion sent rocks and rubble across the city. The blast was felt as far north as Farmington, Utah, and numerous homes and buildings sustained damage—including the Twentieth Ward schoolhouse. A newspaper report at the time read:
The walls [of the schoolhouse] are cracked and the roof broken. The building will have to be greatly repaired before it can be considered safe.1
The Twentieth Ward schoolhouse’s principal happened to be none other than Karl G. Maeser. After assessing the damage to the school, Brother Maeser went looking for his bishop, John Sharp. He found Bishop Sharp in counsel with President Brigham Young. Brother Maeser reported to both men on the schoolhouse’s damage, but it became clear the prophet’s thoughts were elsewhere.
“Brother Maeser,” President Young interjected, “I have another mission for you.” He was “considering the establishment of a Church school” and was searching for the right person to lead it. The prophet then declared: “You are the man, Brother Maeser. We want you to go to Provo to organize and conduct an Academy to be established in the name of the Church—a Church school.”2
By month’s end, Brother Maeser was headed to Provo. It was then that President Young offered up his famous charge “not to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God.”3
...
Let me return to Brother Maeser and President Young. One night, not too long after taking the helm of Brigham Young Academy and shortly after the passing of President Young, Maeser had a vision within a dream.
He found himself “entering a spacious hallway with open doors leading into many rooms, and [he] saw President Brigham Young . . . beckoning [him] to follow.” Among other rooms, he saw an “upper story . . . and a large assembly hall.” He awoke “deeply impressed” and immediately “drew up the plan” for a building based on what he saw. He then “stowed it away without any apparent purpose” or understanding of how to interpret the dream.40
Six years later, in January 1884, the original academy building burned to the ground. This “calamity,” Maeser said, brought back to “remembrance” his dream. He found the paper with the plans he had stowed away six years earlier. With the aid of Brigham Young’s son, an architect, Maeser’s dream provided the first concepts of what would become the iconic Brigham Young Academy building, which today serves as the Provo City Library.41

A few months ago, my secretary said that there was a man out in the hall who wanted to talk to me. He brought in his seven-year-old boy, who was going to have a birthday in a few weeks. The father said he was concerned because his son wanted to be baptized but not when he was eight. He wanted his brother who was serving a mission to baptize him, and that meant waiting another year.
I asked the little boy to read some scriptures with me about baptism. Then I asked him what he thought Jesus Christ would want him to do. He said, “Well, He would want me to be baptized.” I asked him if he wanted to let his father baptize him on his birthday. I told him to go home and pray about it. On the night of his birthday, I called and asked him if he had been baptized, and he said yes. He had thought about it and prayed about it and realized that that was the right thing to do. So he had had the faith to be baptized. Reading the scriptures was an important part of that experience because as he read the scriptures, he thought about what Jesus wanted him to do.

Some people divert their best efforts from constructive accomplishment by investing them in mental anguish and continual worry. The Lord has taught me a great lesson about worry that I now share with you. After completing meaningful full-time missions, my lovely Jeanene and I were sealed in the temple. We began life together with every expectation of happiness. I was blessed through the kindness of the Lord to obtain a job in a new, highly developmental pioneer effort to place a nuclear power plant in a submarine. The work was fascinating, challenging, and absorbing. When combined with the natural growth experiences that come with the formation of a new family and Church assignments, I found each day filled to overflowing.

Within eight months I was being examined by a doctor to determine if I had ulcers. For weeks I returned home from work each night with a severe headache, and only after long, quiet periods of isolation could I calm my nerves sufficiently to sleep briefly and return to work the next day. I began to prayerfully consider my plight. All I wanted to do was to be a worthy husband and father and honorably carry out my Church and professional assignments. Yet my best efforts produced frustration, worry, and illness. In time the Lord led me to a solution. I was prompted to divide mentally—and physically, where possible—all of the challenges, tasks, and assignments given to me into two categories. All of the things for which I felt responsibility but for which I could do nothing to resolve I put in a basket called “worry.” Then all of those things for which I had some ability to control or resolve I put into a basket called “concern.” I realized I could not resolve those things in the worry basket, so I tried hard to forget them. Later in the process I learned that putting them into the worry basket didn’t mean they wouldn’t be taken care of. They were resolved by those who could best handle them—and most often that was the Lord Himself. The items in the concern basket were ordered in priority. I conscientiously tried to resolve them to the best of my ability. Although I could not always fulfill all of them on schedule or to the degree of competence I desired, I did my conscientious best.

As I was learning to control worry, occasionally I would feel my stomach muscles tighten and tension overcome me. I would cease whatever I was doing and, with earnest prayer for support, concentrate on relaxing and overcoming the barrier that worry produced in my life. I would mentally say, “I am not going to do another thing until I begin to control my emotions.” Over a period of time those efforts were blessed by the Lord. I came to understand how He is willing to fortify, guide, and direct every phase of life. The symptoms of illness passed, and I learned how to face tasks under pressure.

Might I relate one experience that illustrates what is being done as these Health Services missionaries serve in so many countries. Several years ago I had an opportunity to visit Bolivia. On the Altiplano, high above the city of La Paz, at an altitude of 13,600 feet on a beautiful Sabbath morning, I visited a Sunday school of one of the branches. I felt the spirit of those wonderful people as they met there. I watched a wonderful Sunday School president conduct with great ability. When one of the 2-and-a-half-minute speakers did not show up, extemporaneously he delivered the 2-and-a-half-minute talk. What a spirit I felt as he bore his testimony to the divinity of the gospel. And even though I didn’t understand his Indian dialect, I felt of that spirit and that testimony.

After Sunday School, this good man introduced me to his lovely wife, the branch Primary president. Strapped to her back was a little bundle—their six-week-old baby. When they learned that I was a physician, they asked if I would come with them to their home to examine the baby to see if it was doing all right. I went with them down the unpaved streets to their little home. It was built of adobe brick, had a dirt floor, and was perhaps ten by fourteen feet—about the size of a single-car garage. As we went inside, I saw it was immaculately clean. One could feel the good spirit in that home. In addition to the parents and the baby, the family included two older sons.

The mother sat on the bed and began unwrapping the layers of blankets that she had placed around the baby to keep it warm. When the last blanket was removed, I looked down and gasped. There was a little baby that was no more than skin and bones. Untactfully I said, “What happened? Why is the baby so thin?” and then they explained to me how this mother had become very ill during the latter part of her pregnancy. There had not been enough food in that home to provide her with the nourishment she needed. She had developed all of the symptoms of what we here call toxemia of pregnancy. Somehow she had been able to give birth to that baby, but her sickness was so severe that she was unable to nurse. The family did the best they could. They bought a can of a dried-milk formula, but with an income that was barely twenty dollars a month (converted to United States currency), they couldn’t afford to buy more when the first can was gone. I asked them, “What are you feeding the baby now?” they showed me a baby bottle filled with fluid so diluted that I could have read newsprint through the bottle. The fluid contained only a few drops of milk from a tiny can of condensed milk. The can had to last three or four days. I gave them what instructions I could to help and, as I left their home, said to the branch president, giving him a few pesos, “Please see that this baby receives all the food that it needs.” I heard several weeks later from the mission president that the baby had died. It had gone past the point of no return.

Oh, if we could have brought it here to Provo to the Utah Valley LDS Hospital or to the Primary Children’s Medical Center and started intravenous feedings and some of the modern techniques that we employ here, perhaps the baby’s life could have been saved. But the baby had lived too long in that environment.

That was three years ago. Today in Bolivia nurses and a doctor, called as Health Services missionaries, are teaching through priesthood and auxiliary channels lessons on home nursing, care of the baby, care of the pregnant mother, nutrition, sanitation—a whole series of subjects that help people better understand how to stay strong and healthy. These health missionaries have investigated what local health resources exist that the people can use. They learned that this little family could have obtained milk from a source that was available in the community. And so today the Saints are being blessed through resources that exist locally that many didn’t know about before. The Saints are being blessed in this far-off land through the Health Services missionaries. And in Guatemala, Thailand, Taiwan, and many other places here upon this earth, the devoted efforts of Health Services missionaries are being extended to lift up our brothers and sisters and their nonmember friends.

All of Moonta’s friends, even children much younger than he, knew how to skate. But for four long years there had been no ice except during a time when Moonta was ill and had to stay in bed. Moonta yearned for a chance to learn to skate as well as his champion parents, and finally a big freeze came. Moonta was out on the ice long before anyone else in the village of Wierum, at the edge of the North Sea. His eagerness and impatience to skate led Moonta into all kinds of exciting adventures.
Illustrations by Nancy Grossman give a genuine feeling of the Dutch atmosphere.
Meindert DeJong was winner of the 1954 Newbery Award for The Wheel on the School and of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1969 for Journey to Peppermint Street. Both of these excellent books are memorable, powerful stories about the Netherlands.

One of the nursing students who went to Australia for Study Abroad wrote in her final paper about an uncomfortable experience she had that helped her to gain a more Christlike perspective. She prefaced her story by saying she had been distressed by a relative’s rather crude and derogatory remark about the work she would be doing for the rest of her life because she had chosen to be a nurse. With her permission and in her own words, Jenn Jackson said:

One of the most beautiful moments I had on this trip was watching Amanda—one of the nurses at Best of Care—talk to, touch, and treat a patient. The patient was one who many of the caregivers refused to take on their caseloads because his house was filthy, he owned seven or eight cats, and he was completely unhygienic. There was a horrible odor exuding from who knows where. Not only that, sometimes he was known as being grouchy and critical. With all that being known to Amanda, she took us to his home and introduced us to him. She treated him with the utmost respect, talked to him about his life and his family, sat on his cat-fur–lined sofa, and touched his hand. She then began teaching us about some of the problems he had, and at one point she took off his socks with her bare hands. His legs were disgusting and lined with dead skin. He had gout in his toes and fungus on his nails. I couldn’t believe it when she held his foot and touched him without being repulsed. . . .

After telling us some things about his feet and legs, she gently put his dirty sock back on, patted his shoulder, wished him a good day, and took us home. As I thought about that experience, I thought about the Savior and how He touched the lepers on their rotten skin, washed the dirty feet of the twelve apostles, and went places that were not always the nicest places in town. The Savior went to people’s homes regardless of how rich or poor they were. He touched them, without gloves, regardless of how disgusting they were. He cleansed them regardless of how dirty they were.

Now when I think about the statement made by my relative, I don’t get frustrated. It is still a completely simplified statement of what I will be doing with the rest of my life, but I realize now that it may not be all that inaccurate. I will be serving my brothers and sisters, Heavenly Father’s children, and will be doing for them what they cannot do for themselves, just like the Savior. If the King of Kings and Lord of Lords can humble Himself enough to touch and cleanse the lowest of the low, then I can do it too. I can be a tool in His hands by touching, cleansing, and healing, and there is no disgrace in being a tool in the hand of the greatest Healer of all.

At the end of World War II, I was seated in my office in Salt Lake and received a telephone call from a man in New York, a multimillionaire who had made 30 million dollars by the time he was 30 years of age. He had a son in a military camp just outside Salt Lake City. This boy had expected to be shipped overseas, as many others had been. Then the war ended and so they were crowded into that camp, like sardines in a can. This boy was discouraged, and his father was worried about him. So he called and said, "Would you please call him on the telephone and see if you can cheer him up a bit?" I said, "Of course, I’d be happy to." And I called him and said, "Would you like to come into the office for a little visit?" And he said, "I sure would." He was a bit delayed in coming, and I was just ready to leave for home when he arrived.
I said, "Would you like to go out to the house with me and eat with the family? My wife doesn’t know you’re coming, but you’ll be welcome." So he said, "I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do tonight than that." So we went out, and we had our dinner, and we had our prayer. We gathered around the piano afterwards and enjoyed ourselves with some singing. Then after we visited for awhile, I drove him down to his bus. In a few days I got a letter from his father, and you know, you’d have thought I’d saved that boy’s life. The father quoted a letter from his son in which the son had said, "Father, I didn’t know there were any people in this world who lived like that." Yes, we take it all for granted. Here was a man worth millions of dollars—could buy his son anything that dollars could buy and never miss the money—and yet this simple thing of prayer and devotion in the home had passed him by.

I learned about some of these acts of kindness through letters that he kept from people who wrote to him in gratitude. This letter is typical of the kind he received: “Out of desperation I wrote concerning our oldest daughter. … You took the time and gentle caring to call her in for a visit, giving her your personal telephone number. She was surprised and amazed that you found her of worth. That call and personal visit was a genuine turning point in her life.” The letter then tells of her return to the Church, her sealing in the temple, and her happy and productive life. “After reading your statement [about kindness in the October 1994 general conference] it brought tears to my eyes to realize that you have been practicing for years what you are now encouraging all of us to do.”

Allow me to share with you an experience I had when I served many years ago as a full-time missionary in Germany. Just after my junior year of college, I prepared to serve a full-time mission. I waited anxiously, as people will for their mission calls, and I had a very strong feeling that I would be called to Germany. And I was. When I found out what mission I had been called to—the Germany Frankfurt Mission—I was immediately concerned to know whether the city of Cologne was in the boundaries of that mission. And, at the time, the city of Cologne was. I had no particular interest in that city. I just had a feeling about it.

I entered the mission field and served for four months in Dusseldorf, a city quite close to Cologne. Then I received a letter from my mission president stating that I was going to be transferred to the city of Cologne. I thought, “This is it, this is what I’ve been waiting for, there’s something there for me to do.” For the next two months, my companion and I worked diligently to find people to teach. Things were going relatively well, but I always had this sense that something critical was missing. We also had some very challenging experiences. So challenging, I think, that I reached a point, as so many missionaries do, when I began to doubt and wonder why I was doing this. It was not only one of the most challenging but also one of the most rewarding and most transforming experiences of my life.

After I had been with my companion for two months, she was transferred, and I received a new companion, who had been my companion during my two months in the Missionary Training Center. She brought with her the news that a mother and a son who lived in the ward she had just been serving in had a son and brother living in Cologne. He was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the mother had urged the sister missionary to go by and visit this son and his family. It was actually outside of the area where we typically worked. The city was divided into regions, with two sets of elders that served there as well. Although it was rather out of our way, my companion had a direct connection to this family, the Maass family. So we decided we would make an effort to go and visit them.

Most of the travel that we did on our mission was on bike, but my companion was recovering from a broken leg, so she actually had a car for a few weeks. The car made this rather lengthy, out-of-the-way trip more viable; so several times we drove over to their home to try and make contact with them. And every time we failed. We tried at various times of day, and we never found them at home. One evening as we were preparing to go to bed, I said to my companion, “We’ve made a genuine effort, but this is taking us out of our area and away from other work that we need to be doing. We haven’t been able to reach them, and she can call her son and say hello if she needs to.” My companion agreed.

The mail came quite early, so we got it before leaving to set about our business the next day. Among the mail that we received was a note from a sister missionary who had been serving in Cologne some months before I arrived there. She outlined in a letter that she had met a woman on a streetcar who was interested in having a copy of the Book of Mormon, that she had completely forgotten about this, and would we please go by and visit this woman.

I don’t know the exact population of the city of Cologne, but those of you who have ever been in an older European city know the massive, tangled, warren of old streets that they tend to be. Cologne is certainly a city of more than a million people. The address of the woman that she wanted us to visit was on a street called Roonstrasse, Roon Street, which is the same street that the family we had been trying to visit lived on. This struck me as quite an extraordinary coincidence, and I thought, “Maybe we should have kept tracting on that street. We would have met this woman who wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon.” We went back to the street and went to this woman’s apartment, but she had moved to Israel, and so we were unable to give her a copy of the Book of Mormon. But since we were on the street again—and by now were back to using bikes—we decided to make another attempt to meet the Maass family. Again they were not home. We decided we’d try one more time, which we did the following day, and we did not reach them. I said, “Okay, back to the regular business of our work and our lives. We needn’t make that attempt again.”

The next day when the mail came, there was a referral card. This was in the mid-1980s when there was still an East and a West Germany. The referral was from missionaries serving in West Berlin. The missionaries had met a gentleman at a street display who had expressed some interest in hearing more about the gospel. They provided his address: his apartment was on Roonstrasse, the same street that we had been to. Cologne is a big, complex city. The chances of three referrals all being on the same street was quite extraordinary.

It so happened that my companion and I were doing a split with the stake missionaries that night. Since my companion had a connection to the family, she said, “Why don’t I follow up on this referral and also make one more attempt to meet the Maass family.” She and one of the stake missionaries went to the home of the gentleman to whom we had been referred by the missionaries in Berlin. He was not happy to see them. He was not actually interested in having missionaries visit him, and his wife chased them off in a rather hostile fashion. I think it involved a broom.

At any rate, my companion did make one more attempt to meet the Maass family, and this time they were home. When she explained that we had come by several times, they said, “Oh, we’re so sorry.” As far as I knew, our task was simply to come by and say, “Your mom says hi,” to which I thought, “For heaven’s sake, the woman can call him.” Clearly, I’m a little obtuse, and I needed some guidance in this regard, so we were continually sent back to this street until we made contact. My companion made an appointment with this family to come back at another time and have us visit them.

So, after these many weeks we finally were prepared to go and visit them. Then when the evening came that we had scheduled to visit with them, I didn’t want to go. I mean, I really didn’t want to go. There was a ward party going on that really sounded fun—lots of food, chocolate probably. I was sort of hesitant, thinking, “Well, they haven’t been there, maybe we could just call and delay.” Then I thought, “This is ridiculous! Try to remember why you are a missionary.”

We got on the bikes, drove quite some distance to get across town, and went to meet this family. The moment we walked in the door and the husband greeted me, I had an overwhelming sensation such as I’d never experienced before and have not experienced with anyone since—no offense to my husband. It was the feeling that I was encountering someone I already knew very well and was intimately associated with. We shook hands and sat and visited with them for about half an hour. Through the entire visit and immediately after the visit, I felt like I had found that critical missing piece: this family, and particularly the husband, was the reason I had come on my mission and to this city.

The day after we finally made contact with this family, my companion, who had been the connection to this family, was transferred out of the city, and I got a new companion who had been out in the mission field only a few weeks and who didn’t speak much German yet. My new companion and I then began, though irregularly, a wonderful experience teaching them. We had a certain plan that we followed when we were meeting with people and talking to them about the gospel, and things never went according to plan with this family. But in many ways they went far better than we could have imagined. We invited them to church on a number of occasions, but they hadn’t come yet. At the end of every appointment, we hoped that at some time Klaus Maass would offer the prayer, but he always called on someone else to pray—my companion or myself or his wife or his son, but he never prayed himself. They finally agreed to come to church, and we gave them close directions. We offered to come and pick them up. They said they would meet us there. They never showed up, which is, as anyone who has served a full-time mission will know, a devastating disappointment. We tried to reach them after the church meeting ended and were unable to do so for the next couple of days.

We were in the habit of always having a standing appointment with them on Tuesday evenings. Tuesday came around, and as it happened, at the advice of our mission president, we switched our preparation day activities so that rather than stay home in the morning and do laundry and write letters, we did missionary work most of the day and laundry and letters in the evening in preparation for leaving the next morning for a conference of all the sister missionaries at the mission home in Frankfurt. So we happened to be home just slightly after dinnertime in the evening, which was rarely the case, and the phone rang. It was Klaus Maass, and he wondered why we had not come to their house. I explained our unusual schedule that week and that we had tried to reach them. He said, “Oh, we thought you were mad at us for not coming to church.” I replied that we were very sad not to see them there, but we weren’t angry. He explained that there had been a death in his wife’s extended family, and they had been out of town.

We spoke briefly about that, and then there was a pause in the conversation and he said to me (my maiden name is Mahoney), “Sister Mahoney, I know you. Do you know what I mean?” I said, “Yes, I do.” He said, “After you left the first time you visited, I turned to my wife and said, ‘I know her; how can I know her? She reports that she’s never been to Germany before. She’s certainly never been here before. I don’t actually recognize her, but I have the overwhelming feeling that I know her.’” I assured him, saying, “I do understand. I know you too.”

We spoke briefly about the premortal existence and my conviction that he and I very well may have known each other there and made some kind of covenant, commitment, or agreement together that one of us would share the gospel with the other some day. Then he said, “I’m afraid to read the Book of Mormon.”

I asked him why. He answered, “Because every time I take it into my hand, it burns like a fire.” Then he added, “Can we have a prayer?”

I said, “Yes,” expecting that he would ask me to offer it.

But he said, “I would like to pray. This is the first time I’ve prayed.” And he offered a prayer on the phone asking for the courage to do what was right, whatever that may be.

The next morning my companion and I left for the sister missionary conference. There were workshops to choose from, but every sister missionary was asked to attend in either the first or the second hour of these lessons a presentation that was being given by the wife of Elder Derrick Cuthbert, who was in the area presidency at the time. Sister Cuthbert was giving a presentation on teaching by the Spirit. My companion and I attended Sister Cuthbert’s presentation during the second hour.

Sister Cuthbert began her talk, introduced her subject, and then stopped. She said, “I would not be a very good advocate of teaching by the Spirit if I did not now heed the promptings of that Spirit and do what it’s telling me to do. Instead of what I’ve prepared, I would like to tell the story of my family’s conversion to the gospel.”

She then shared with us the story of her family’s conversion in England. Specifically, she told about one particular missionary and their experience with him and his teaching them. I can no longer remember any of the details of what Sister Cuthbert said, but one of the things she did say was, “This will not be true for all of you, but for some of you it is the case that you were called to this mission at this time to teach some particular person or family that you had a covenant with, and you must find the person you were called to teach.” I felt as if she were speaking directly to me. Then she added, “Elder Cuthbert had a hard time accepting the Book of Mormon.” And looking directly at me she said, “I did not even need to read it to know that it was true, because every time that I took it into my hand, it burned like a fire.”

Sister Cuthbert cannot have known that what she said was a direct translation of what Klaus had said on the phone the previous evening. She concluded her presentation, and I approached her to thank her. She knew that for whatever other reason she may have been giving the presentation, it was in part for me. We said nothing; we just gripped each other’s hands and cried.

The next day my companion and I returned to Cologne. We met several more times with the Maass family and invited them to be baptized. They agreed. At their baptism Klaus spoke, and one of the things he shared was his fear of reading the Book of Mormon and making a commitment. He said that he prayed about this fear, and the answer that he received was a powerful reminder of the Savior’s atoning sacrifice and the recognition that if Christ could, in spite of all, give that for us, then surely he could overcome his fears to follow Him.

The experience I had as a missionary taught me many things. It confirmed in my mind the rightness of the work we were doing, the truthfulness of the gospel. But beyond that, what I knew the moment Sister Cuthbert looked at me and quoted Klaus and what I have known absolutely since is that Heavenly Father knows me personally and will never forget me. He knows you, too.

I had a friend who decided that his would be a scientific marriage—one built on the qualities of his wife, rather than his feelings for her. He lived in California in a large ward and a large stake where there were many attractive girls his own age. In the pursuit of his quest he made a chart. At the top of each column he set down some worthwhile quality such as beauty, education, ambition, a wealthy father, and so forth. Then down the side of his chart he wrote the names of all the girls he knew. He then graded each, and rated them in numerical order—1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. He proceeded to make his conquest.

Expectantly, he called Number 1; she refused to go out with him. Number 2 also had an excuse. Number 3 gambled on one date, the last; and he ended up marrying Number 4. A year later someone sent me a copy of the local paper in which my friend gave notice that he no longer would be responsible for debts incurred by his wife. Divorce followed shortly after that. Forty years have passed and my once-burned and loveless friend has never remarried.