Gospel Story Finder

Ugh! I just don’t get this assignment. Why can’t I be more like Abby? She’s so smart. And everyone likes her.
Later …
Abby, are you OK?
I … It’s nothing. I’m fine.
You’re really lucky.
Me? Lucky? But you’re so smart, and you have lots of friends, and …
But not close friends like you do. And you always look so … happy. I wish I could be more like you.
Later, Mandy tells Mom about her day …
I wonder if it’s easier to see the good stuff in other people than in yourself. I think Abby and I both have a lot to be grateful for.

One such dear friend of mine had limited experiences with God. But he longed to be with his departed wife. So he asked me to help him. I encouraged him to meet with our missionaries in order to understand the doctrine of Christ and learn of gospel covenants, ordinances, and blessings.
That he did. But he felt the course they advised would require him to make too many changes in his life. He said, “Those commandments and covenants are just too difficult for me. Also, I can’t possibly pay tithing, and I don’t have time to serve in the Church.” Then he asked me, “Once I die, please do the necessary temple work for my wife and me so that we can be together again.”
Thankfully, I am not this man’s judge. But I do question the efficacy of proxy temple work for a man who had the opportunity to be baptized in this life—to be ordained to the priesthood and receive temple blessings while here in mortality—but who made the conscious decision to reject that course.

My brother is a missionary in Russia. I like to draw pictures and write letters to send him. I draw my brother and his companion wearing white shirts and ties. I draw a big circle around the two elders and write “Force Field from Heaven” to show that I know they are being protected. Even though the force fields are pretend, Heavenly Father’s power is real, and I have faith that He will take care of my brother.Marci P., age 7, with help from her mom, Utah

The current Nassau Branch president, Edward Smith, remembers exactly how he became interested in the Church. Brother Ferrier was offering free Creole classes. As a detective inspector in the police force, President Smith wanted to learn Creole to help in communicating with the sizable Haitian population.
In appreciation for the language classes, President Smith decided to attend a Church meeting. However, he somehow got the meeting time wrong. When he arrived at the chapel, no one was there. He circled the block for nearly an hour before someone opened the building and began to set up chairs.
“It was friendly and warm here,” remembers President Smith. “I felt at home from day one.” That first Sunday, he attended the Gospel Essentials class. He noticed that the class used another book of scripture, the Book of Mormon, along with the Bible. He asked how he could get one of those books. The missionaries were glad to give him one.
As he continued to investigate the Church, he found himself its defender among his coworkers. “But I was uncertain of the depth of my testimony,” he says. “I decided I had to really find out.”
Over a period of time, President Smith prayed, attended church, and studied the gospel. One day, he recalls: “I was reading the scriptures. To this day, I can’t tell you where I was reading. I had this feeling of warmth. This was the church I had been looking for. This Church is where I want to be no matter what happens in my life.”
After his baptism, President Smith invited a friend, Claudina, to church. She was taught by the missionaries and chose to be baptized. They were married and four years later became the first Bahamian couple to have their marriage sealed in the temple.

I hesitated, then I said, “Four years ago, my dad and I took a trip to the beach. We played all day in the sand and waves. When it was almost time to go, he took my hand and we walked along the shoreline. He told me to look for the prettiest rock I could find. After looking and looking, I picked this one. It was round and smooth and had this sort of green spot that reminded me of a heart. See it?”
I pointed it out to Ray. He nodded.
“Dad asked me if the rock would change much if I kept it a hundred years. ‘Of course not,’ I said. He said, ‘Love is like that. It lasts forever.’ Then he told me he was going away and wouldn’t be living with us anymore. He said I should always keep this rock and remember that”—I couldn’t keep the tremor from my voice—“he loves me.”

I recently learned of a particular young adult sister who decided to serve a full-time mission. She had developed a capacity to connect with and relate to people from almost every belief system, political persuasion, and nationality, and she worried that wearing a missionary name tag all day, every day, might become an identifier that could impede her exceptional ability to establish relationships. Just a few weeks into her mission, she wrote home about a simple but meaningful experience:
“Sister Lee and I rubbed salve into an old lady’s arthritic hands—one of us on either side—while we sat in her living room. She didn’t want to listen to any spoken messages, but let us sing, loved us to sing. Thank you, black missionary name tag, for giving me license to have intimate experiences with complete strangers.”

During the next year, however, the Lord was able to teach me how to keep the spirit of Christmas. We served among a humble group of people living in nearly abandoned milling towns scattered along small rivers. And we loved serving among these people immensely.
We decided to share our Christmas with an investigator, Alice, and her family. Alice supported her three teenage boys, a daughter, and a granddaughter all with her income working at a fast food place. Needless to say, her budget was tight. So instead of focusing on ourselves at Christmas, we decided to serve someone else.
My companion at the time, Elder Werner, felt there were basically two things that would bring joy into the world: the gospel and good food. When we showed up on Christmas morning to cook a simple breakfast, we were hailed like Old Saint Nick himself. Her extended family was there, and everyone was laughing, joking around, and wanting to help us cook. Since our families were allowed to call on Christmas, Alice and my mom were able to talk on the phone together. Watching her speak with my family was far more of a gift than the three meals I participated in the year before. It connected someone I was serving to my family and helped my family share my mission with me. The morning was filled with a feeling of familiarity that was almost tangible. I knew I was where I was supposed to be.
During that morning, I came to appreciate the true spirit of Christmas. And it has everything to do with the example of our Savior and the teachings of the gospel. The excitement wasn’t about us as missionaries; it wasn’t even about our gesture of making breakfast. That morning was about sons and daughters of God simply sharing with one another. I wasn’t given a feast of food, but my soul was full of joy.

My grandmother Isabel Blanco was born in Potosí, Nicaragua. In my memories, she is a loving, hardworking, and faithful woman. As I was growing up, she planted in my young heart the seed of faith as I saw her pray to God with fervor and as she took me to mass every Sunday to worship Jesus. However, she did not have an easy life. Among many other things that she did, when she was young, she worked as a maid for an affluent family. As was sadly common, her employer got her pregnant and when she could no longer hide her pregnancy, she was dismissed.

My father, Noel, was born from that pregnancy, and although Potosí was a small town and everyone, including Noel, knew who his father was, Noel never had any direct contact or relationship with him.

Isabel never married, and she had two other children out of wedlock. After some time, she and her three children moved to the country’s capital, Managua, looking for better employment and educational opportunities.

At some point, we also performed the temple work for my grandmother, Isabel, except for the sealing to spouse ordinance because she was not married in her life. Just think about this, a woman like Isabel, who was not treated with respect by men and who dealt with many struggles in her life, can be given the opportunity on the other side of the veil to exercise her agency and make a sacred covenant with God through a vicarious ordinance in the temple. She, like all of us, is in need of increased faith, in need of repentance, in need of love, in need of sanctification—in short, in need of healing.

Sammy Snake was busy crawling out of his old, dry skin when Hosea Hamster scampered by. “Ha-ha!” laughed Hosea. “Sammy, you certainly look funny—like a worm crawling out of its cocoon.”
Sammy Snake turned to his old friend and replied, “Snakes always shed their skins in the springtime.”
“I don’t see why you should shed your skin. Your old one looked just fine to me,” said Hosea.
“Every year I grow bigger so my skin becomes too small,” Sammy explained. “In the winter I hibernate, and I grow a new skin under the old one while I’m asleep. When I wake up in the springtime my old skin is dry. It splits along my belly and I crawl out of it. It’s like being born again every year.”
Hosea looked puzzled and replied, “Sure sounds like a lot of trouble to me. Why don’t you just stretch your old skin? That’s what I do. Watch this!” He puffed out his cheeks, making his little round face look like a fuzzy table tennis ball.
“No, no! You don’t understand,” cried Sammy, a little exasperated. “My skin doesn’t stretch like yours. It has to be hard and tough so it won’t tear when I crawl over sharp rocks. My skin needs to be strong enough to protect me from the hot sand and from Benny Badger or he could bite through it with his sharp teeth.”
“I see,” replied Hosea. “A skin that can do all those things couldn’t be expected to stretch too.”
Hosea sat on his hind legs and watched Sammy wiggle and squirm. Finally all his old skin came off. As Sammy crawled free of the skin, he gave a sigh of relief. “Well, I’m glad that job is over for another year. I am hungry! I’m hungry enough to eat a …” His beady eyes fixed on the plump little hamster sitting in front of him.
Hosea understood what he was thinking. Quickly, he scurried down the path to safety. He paused for a moment and turned to say, “Good-bye, Sammy. I’ll see you later—maybe we can play after you’ve had your dinner!”

When my sister, Nancy, and I were teenagers, we regularly attended our local church. But we began to feel that something was missing, so we decided to investigate other churches.
That summer my sister and brother visited a booth at the Canadian National Exhibition where missionaries were showing a movie called Ancient America Speaks. After watching the movie, they signed up for a free copy of the Book of Mormon. I can still remember the excitement in my sister’s voice as she announced to my mother and me that Christ had visited the American continent.
The missionaries dropped off a Book of Mormon to my sister and asked her if she would like to learn more about the Church. That was how we both were taught the gospel.
More than a year after Nancy and I were baptized, she began dating a young man named Luke. He had a bubbly personality and seemed to radiate love and excitement. At the time Nancy met him, he was looking for direction in his life and was eager to take the missionary discussions when Nancy told him about the gospel. His sister, Leonarda, also was interested in being taught.
Although Luke and Leonarda agreed with most of what was presented, they had trouble accepting that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Once they gained a testimony of Joseph Smith then everything else (the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the gospel, and the gospel principles taught by the prophets) would fall into place.
They came to our home to be taught by the elders. Once again the discussion centered on Joseph Smith. One of the elders suggested that we should each take a turn asking Heavenly Father if Joseph Smith was a prophet and then listen silently for a minute for the answer.
I won’t forget the feeling of peace that came into that room and touched each of our hearts as the Spirit bore witness to each of us that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord. For some of us a testimony was gained that night; for others the truth was reaffirmed. Luke accepted baptism and Leonarda was baptized a few years later with her parents’ approval.
Since that night the Spirit has borne witness to me many times of the truthfulness of other gospel principles. But this experience stands out in my mind because it was one of my first experiences with personal revelation from a Heavenly Father who loves me. I learned that night the truth of the counsel found in Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” [Matt. 7:7]

Also let us remember that through any illness or difficult challenge, there is still much in life to be hopeful about and grateful for. We are infinitely more than our limitations or our afflictions! Stephanie Clark Nielson and her family have been our friends for more than 30 years. On August 16, 2008, Stephanie and her husband, Christian, were in a plane crash and subsequent fire that scarred her so horrifically that only her painted toenails were recognizable when family members came to indentify the victims. There was almost no chance Stephanie could live. After three months in a sleep-induced coma, she awoke to see herself. With that, the psyche-scarring and horrendous depression came. Having four children under the age of seven, Stephanie did not want them to see her ever again. She felt it would be better not to live. “I thought it would be easier,” Stephanie once told me in my office, “if they just forgot about me and I quietly slipped out of their life.”

But to her eternal credit, and with the prayers of her husband, family, friends, four beautiful children, and a fifth born to the Nielsons just 18 months ago, Stephanie fought her way back from the abyss of self-destruction to be one of the most popular “mommy bloggers” in the nation, openly declaring to the four million who follow her blog that her “divine purpose” in life is to be a mom and to cherish every day she has been given on this beautiful earth.

“Thanks, Mom and Dad,” I yelled as I headed for the front door, the keys to the family car jingling in my hand. “Don’t wait up for us—it’s a double feature, and the second movie isn’t over till nearly midnight.”
Dad gave first me and then my cousin Sandi the piercing look for which he was famous in our family. “Listen, I don’t like you girls staying out late all by yourselves. Why don’t you go to an earlier movie?”
I rolled my eyes. “Dad, you’re so old-fashioned. Sandi and I are hardly babies.” We had finished our first year at Ricks College, and Sandi had come to spend the summer in Rockford, Illinois, with my family. We had jobs at a local factory, and we felt pretty responsible and grown-up. I said so to my dad.
It didn’t help much. He still quizzed us. Which theater were we going to? What movies would we see there? Were we coming straight home afterward? Finally he sighed and said, “Your mother and I will be awake when you come home, so check in with us no matter how late it is, all right?”
“Yeah, Dad,” I said, resigning myself to the inevitable.
The movies were comedies, and when we walked out of the theater late that night Sandi and I were laughing and repeating our favorite funny lines. We got into the car and headed toward home.
Even at midnight there was a lot of traffic on the main streets of Rockford, so I turned onto a side street, taking a shortcut in order to avoid most of the traffic. A battered brown car followed us around the corner. I drove three blocks and then turned onto a deserted street. The brown car turned too, close behind us. I made several other turns, leading us toward home through the back streets. When I looked into the rearview mirror, the lone man in the car waved at us and yelled something obscene.
Although it was a hot night, we quickly rolled up the windows and locked all four car doors. We decided that if we ignored the driver of the brown car he would probably lose interest. But instead he moved his car closer to ours, driving nearly bumper to bumper. Then he pulled into the middle of the street and edged his car toward ours, forcing us toward the curb. By now we were getting pretty panicky.
As I neared an intersection, Sandi said tensely, “Turn right—quick!”
I did, and with a left turn at the next light I entered the main stream of nighttime traffic. Maybe in all the noise and confusion our pursuer would lose sight of us or forget whatever crazy ideas he had.
He didn’t. At every light he was there behind us, leaning out his window to yell lewdly. He was obviously drunk, but he was persistent. Even in the bright lights of Rockford’s busiest street, we were scared.
Finally we reached Fairview Boulevard. My house was only half a block away. We turned the corner, and he followed us, only inches behind our rear bumper.
I pulled to a stop in front of my house. The front sidewalk seemed miles long. Worse yet, the porch light was off, and no light showed from any of the windows. And the brown car had already pulled to a stop behind us. Sandi checked to make sure the car doors were locked.
I got a sick feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. “Sandi, we’ve got to say a prayer,” I said.
“I know. What do you think I’ve been doing all the way home?”
We were both silent for a split second, each pleading for the Lord’s guidance. I guess I was hoping for a miracle. But the stranger was out of his car and running toward us, yelling and cursing. There was no chance of getting past him, so Sandi and I sat in the locked car. The stranger grabbed the handle of my car door, then tried the door behind me. When he found the doors were locked he began pounding on the windows and trying to pry them open. He was shouting threats, and his angry drunken face was only inches from mine.
Suddenly good sense returned to me, and I pressed on the horn, making long blasts of jarring noise. Within seconds the light went on in my parents’ bedroom. Mom appeared at the window. Light from the front porch fixture suddenly flooded the yard, and my dad flung open the front door and ran out onto the lawn, bellowing, “Get out of here!” in his most menacing voice.
The man who had been so threatening and persistent moments before suddenly turned and ran. Leaping into his car, he drove off into the night.
A few minutes later Sandi and I sat at the kitchen table with Dad, giving a blow-by-blow description of the unpleasant incident. My mom bustled around the kitchen making hot chocolate and offering us occasional hugs as she passed us at the table.
Suddenly my newfound college independence didn’t seem so important. The kitchen was cozy, familiar, and comforting. Mom and Dad, scolding us because we had forgotten to write down the car’s license number, were pillars of strength and security. In that moment, my eyes flooding with tears, I thanked God for old-fashioned parents who insisted on waiting up until all their children came home.

By age nineteen, she had saved enough money to go to Chicago, Illinois, where she studied at the Chicago Art Institute under the great John Vanderpoel. Several times during her three-year course she had to go home to earn more money by working in the fields or in the classroom. But Minerva always returned to her studies. With characteristic confidence, Minerva once confronted Mr. Vanderpoel, asking why he criticized her work so harshly when so many classmates were doing much poorer work. She later recalled, “I shall never forget the disappointment on the man’s face when he answered in a choked voice, ‘Can it be possible you do not understand; those other students are not worth it, they will eventually leave school, but you—ah, there is no end’” (“Miss Kohlhepp’s Own Story,” Pocatello, Idaho, 1917).

When you have talent, people sometimes tell you it will take you straight to the top. But in Joselén Cabrera’s case, her talent took her all the way to the bottom of the world—Antarctica. And along the way she learned that worthy dreams are worth pursuing, and with those dreams there will be people to help when they are needed.
When she was 14, Joselén won a drawing contest sponsored by the Asociación Civil Antarkos in her native country, Uruguay. The prize: a trip to Antarctica for her and her schoolteacher, with a group of other students and teachers. Her father and the woman who taught her art helped show Joselén how to finish the drawing she had envisioned.
Her trip was an exciting three-stage journey: first, a military transport flight from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Punta Arenas, Chile, then an overwater flight to the Chilean base in Antarctica, followed by an overland trip to the Uruguayan outpost, Artigas Antarctica Scientific Base, some 3,000 kilometers from Montevideo. Several nations have scientific bases clustered on King George Island off the coast of Antarctica.
Joselén’s drawing and her account of her trip were featured in a national magazine, Uruguay Natural.
Antarctica was not quite the way she had imagined it, Joselén says, smiling. Her drawing showed penguins and ice. It was summer when she visited—snow in patches on barren ground and few penguins. But that gave her the opportunity to see a few more of the sights. She enjoyed hiking along the coast, where she saw Collins Glacier, the Drake Passage, and Lake Uruguay, from which her country’s base draws fresh water. She was also able to visit other bases.
The trip was a dream come true for Joselén, who is now 19 and a member of the Colonia Suiza Branch, Colonia Uruguay District. Since the trip, she has made other dreams come true as well. One of those was to complete her Personal Progress experiences and receive her Young Womanhood Recognition. Joselén wears her medallion, she says, so that she will remember what she has achieved and what she can become as a daughter of God. Now that Joselén has finished her secondary schooling, she plans to study architecture at the university level.

In the midst of the late spring rainy season in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the Tonle Sap River—which has poured into the Mekong River for months—defies its natural movement and changes course to flow in the opposite direction.
This directional change causes the Tonle Sap Lake at the head of the river to swell to five times its size, bringing much-needed nutrients to the fish and birds that feed there.
Like the river that changes direction, members in Cambodia have felt how the gospel of Jesus Christ has helped change the direction of their own lives. Their hearts now overflow with the joy and peace the gospel brings. This swell of joy provides spiritual food for their souls.
Although the country has faced dark times, the gospel of Jesus Christ has helped many Cambodians see the light of a new day shine through the darkness of the past.
During the country’s political turmoil in the 1970s, many Cambodians were driven from their homes and lost family members.
Loy Bunseak, president of the Siem Reap Branch in the Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission, was nine years old in 1975, when he and his family had to leave their home. They—along with millions of others—were required to perform hard manual labor in the country’s vast fields.
During this time, President Loy lost both of his parents and five of his eight siblings.
Despite the hardships, President Loy always had at least one thing to help get him through his pain.
“I always had hope,” he says.
The determined hope that helped President Loy get through the trials of his childhood is the same hope that later allowed him to recognize the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Because Cambodia is largely a Buddhist country, President Loy grew up without a knowledge of Jesus Christ. He began to learn about the Savior when Latter-day Saint missionaries came to his home and told him and his family they had an important message to share.
“I had never heard of Jesus Christ until I met the missionaries,” he says. “I wanted to learn more about Him.”
After intense study and discussion, President Loy and his family were baptized in 2001.
“The missionaries helped me learn from the Book of Mormon, but I received my testimony of its truthfulness from God,” President Loy says. “I could see how living by the teachings of the Book of Mormon made my family happier.”
President Loy’s experience is not unusual. Khan Sarin, president of the Sen Sok Branch in the Phnom Penh Cambodia North District, was separated from his family as a teenager and forced to work in the fields.
“I felt hopeless at this time,” President Khan says. “I did not know if I would survive.”
Looking back, President Khan feels that the Lord protected him from harm several times in his life. As a young man he joined the army and was shot at from as close as 20 feet (6 m) away but was not hit. He also stepped on many active land mines that did not explode. One land mine he stepped on did explode, but he was not seriously injured.
Because of the dangerous circumstances soldiers found themselves in, they did whatever they could to be protected. Several men in the military got tattoos because they believed the tattoos could help keep them safe.
“Before I became a member of the Church, I didn’t know anything,” President Khan says. “Now I know that it was Jesus Christ—not the tattoos—that saved me.”
After President Khan’s wife, Suon Sokmo, met the missionaries and was baptized, he was impressed by the changes he could see taking place within her. He accepted her invitation to study the scriptures together, and he soon decided to be baptized.
“The most important thing that I ever received in my life is the testimony I obtained from studying the scriptures,” he says.
Pich Sareth, a member of the Phnom Penh 12th Branch in the Phnom Penh Cambodia North District, also saw trials at a very young age. He was only five years old when he was separated from his family and forced to work in the fields. He would sometimes find crabs or frogs he could eat to quell his hunger.
Brother Pich’s wife, Seng Tha, and her family were also forced from their home. Because she was only four years old and small, she was not required to work, as other children were. She was separated from her family much of the day and was watched by elderly women who could not work.
After meeting the missionaries in 1995, Brother Pich and his wife began to learn about the love Heavenly Father has for them. “When I had problems, I could see that praying helped me get through them,” Brother Pich says. “I knew Heavenly Father cared.”
After Brother Pich decided to be baptized, his wife also gained a testimony of the gospel and was baptized.
Since their baptisms, Brother Pich and his family have recognized the joy that stems from gaining a testimony of Jesus Christ. The Pich family takes time every day to read the scriptures. As they have done this, the joy of the gospel has permeated their souls.
“We feel we are on the right path now, and we want to stay on this narrow path and continue to progress,” Sister Seng says. “I am grateful every day that we can have our children on this path with us.”
The joy that President Loy feels extends in both directions—to his ancestors as well as his descendants. President Loy and his family visited the Hong Kong China Temple in 2004. Not only were President Loy’s wife and children sealed to him, but the saving ordinances of the temple were also completed for his father, mother, and the brothers and sisters he had lost.
“I cannot even explain the joy I felt in the temple,” President Loy said. “I knew my family was being made strong. I know that the temple is necessary for families to live together forever.”
President Khan and his family also had the opportunity to be sealed together as an eternal family in the Hong Kong Temple. “The feeling I felt at the temple is something I had never felt before. It is hard to express my feelings in words,” President Khan says.
Thanks to the spreading of the gospel, members in Cambodia are receiving the spiritual nutrients they need to survive. Although the Church is growing in Cambodia, members hope that this growth is just a precursor to a huge blossoming of the gospel in their country.
Just as the fish and animals receive needed nutrients when the Tonle Sap Lake overflows, a growing number of Cambodians are receiving the spiritual nutrition they need thanks to the overflowing desire in members’ hearts to share the gospel.
“When a pot is covered, it boils over,” President Khan says. “This is the feeling I have in my heart. I must open my heart to tell everyone what it is feeling.”
President Loy hopes the residual effect of the gospel being taught in his home will be that his daughters will continue to embrace the gospel and teach their children.
“After I found out about Jesus Christ, everything became better in my life and with my family,” he says. “Having the priesthood in our home brings us together. If we have a problem, we sit and discuss it as a family.”
Since the government of Cambodia granted the Church legal recognition in 1994, thousands of Cambodians have accepted the gospel. The Pich family looks forward to the day when the gospel will spread across all parts of the country. Brother Pich says, “I hope someday there will be a temple in Cambodia.”
Sister Seng agrees: “Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, are alive. My hope for the future is that the Church will continue to grow so a temple can be built.”
President Khan recognizes the ways his life has changed since learning of the Savior. He believes the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that can heal Cambodians from their past trials.
“After I became a member of the Church, I lost a lot of the pain I felt from things that had happened in the past. I’ve received a new light that I never had before,” he says. “Everything feels new.”

Let me help you understand how this pattern of making early commitments can help you by relating the experience of one Church leader. As a young man he decided that he would always keep the Word of Wisdom and never use alcohol or tobacco. He does not remember what prompted him to make that important commitment at the time, but a crucial victory was won in his heart, and on his knees he made a commitment with the Lord to always keep that commandment. Over the years there were invitations to use these substances, but he learned that “no, thank you” was a good answer. There was no personal battle over the Word of Wisdom because years before he had made a commitment in his heart, and he had sincerely made a commitment to the Lord to obey that law.

Helping our children learn to see others as brothers and sisters can start with our family prayers. For years, our family prayers have included pleas for God to bless our family. By “family,” we mean (and specifically pray for) our direct family (parents and children), our extended family, our ward family, and our neighborhood family. We wanted our children to see those God has surrounded us with as part of our family.

We then get off our knees and try to serve those we pray for. We involve our children in loving relationships with their aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. For example, our children helped us as we cared for my angel mother for the last few years of her life. We most certainly didn’t do it perfectly, but our efforts made a difference.

We need not worry about knowing the right thing to say or do when we get there. The love of God and the Holy Spirit may be enough. When I was a young man I feared that I would not know what to do or to say to people in great need.

Once I was at the hospital bedside of my father as he seemed near death. I heard a commotion among the nurses in the hallway. Suddenly, President Spencer W. Kimball walked into the room and sat in a chair on the opposite side of the bed from me. I thought to myself, “Now here is my chance to watch and listen to a master at going to those in pain and suffering.”

President Kimball said a few words of greeting, asked my father if he had received a priesthood blessing, and then, when Dad said that he had, the prophet sat back in his chair.

I waited for a demonstration of the comforting skills I felt I lacked and so much needed. After perhaps five minutes of watching the two of them simply smiling silently at each other, I saw President Kimball rise and say, “Henry, I think I’ll go before we tire you.”

I thought I had missed the lesson, but it came later. In a quiet moment with Dad after he recovered enough to go home, our conversation turned to the visit by President Kimball. Dad said quietly, “Of all the visits I had, that visit I had from him lifted my spirits the most.”

President Kimball didn’t speak many words of comfort, at least that I could hear, but he went with the Spirit of the Lord as his companion to give the comfort. I realize now that he was demonstrating the lesson President Monson taught: “How does one magnify a calling? Simply by performing the service that pertains to it.”

In 1994, President Howard W. Hunter invited all members of the Church to “establish the temple … as the great symbol of [our] membership.”1 Later that same year, construction on the Bountiful Utah Temple was completed. Like many, we were anxious to take our young family to the open house prior to the dedication. We labored diligently to prepare our children to enter the temple, praying earnestly that they would have a spiritual experience so that the temple would become a focal point in their lives.
As we reverently walked through the temple, I found myself admiring the magnificent architecture, the elegant finishes, the light shining through towering windows, and many of the inspiring paintings. Every aspect of this sacred building was truly exquisite.
Stepping into the celestial room, I suddenly realized that our youngest son, six-year-old Ben, was clinging to my leg. He appeared anxious—perhaps even a little troubled.
“What’s wrong, Son?” I whispered.
“Daddy,” he replied, “what’s happening here? I’ve never felt this way before.”
Recognizing that this was likely the first time our young son had felt the influence of the Holy Ghost in such a powerful way, I knelt down on the floor next to him. While other visitors stepped around us, Ben and I spent several minutes, side by side, learning about the Holy Ghost together. I was amazed at the ease with which we were able to discuss his sacred feelings. As we talked, it became clear that what was most inspiring to Ben was not what he saw but what he felt—not the physical beauty around us but the still, small voice of the Spirit of God within his heart. I shared with him what I had learned from my own experiences, even as his childlike wonder reawakened in me a deep sense of gratitude for this unspeakable gift from God—the gift of the Holy Ghost.2
In teaching our six-year-old son, Ben, I thought it important to differentiate between what he was feeling, which was the influence of the Holy Ghost, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, which he would receive after baptism. Before baptism, all honest and sincere seekers of truth can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost from time to time. However, the opportunity to receive the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost and the fulness of all the associated blessings is available only to worthy, baptized members who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands through those holding the priesthood authority of God.
As I reflect back on my experience with Ben in the Bountiful Utah Temple, I have many sweet feelings and impressions. One clear recollection is that while I was absorbed in the grandeur of what I could see, a small child near my side was recognizing the powerful feelings in his heart. With a gentle reminder, I was invited not only to pause and kneel down but also to heed the Savior’s call to become as a little child—humble, meek, and ready to hear the still, small voice of His Spirit.

Once when our children were young, I decided to test the Lord’s promise by paying our tithe, even though I didn’t know where we would get money to buy food. I didn’t mention our plight to anyone.
To my surprise, my parents soon came to visit, bringing with them enough meat, potatoes, and bread to last us a very long time. But this wasn’t all. Our oldest daughter had a work-study assignment at school. Her assigned workplace was a sandwich shop, and at the end of the week, she received permission to bring home sandwiches for the whole family!
“Now we just lack some fruit,” I thought to myself. And that afternoon, returning from biking, I saw a lady putting apples into a bag. “Would you like to have these?” she asked. Surprised, I said that I would like them very much indeed.
Just then our neighbor’s young son came by. When he saw the delicious apples, he asked, “Could I have just one?” I held the bag out to him, and he chose one. Thanking me, he hurried away, his eyes shining with happiness.
I thought afterward that the Lord must have wanted to test me too. When He had given so much to me and mine, would I also share with others? I did—and have tried to do so ever since.
Jytte Christiansen, Fredericia Ward, Aarhus Denmark Stake