Gospel Story Finder

On Monday morning, Jonathan sat between Rob and Braden as the bus bumped along toward school. His friends were being really funny that morning, and Jonathan was laughing so hard that his sides ached.
Suddenly Rob joked about something that wasn’t very nice. Braden broke into hysterics and answered with another joke that was even worse. Then he threw in some bad language.
Jonathan squirmed. The bad language and jokes were happening a lot lately. He glanced at Sara, who was sitting across the aisle. She was the only other member of the Church in sixth grade. She looked back at him, her bright brown eyes wide. Jonathan looked away. Sara probably thought he talked that way, too. He looked up and saw the bus driver staring directly at him in the rearview mirror. She shook her head and mouthed the word no.
Jonathan looked down. His stomach churned like it did when he was about to throw up.
The bus pulled into the school yard, and children started to pile out. Jonathan was thankful for the fresh air that rushed in. As they stood in the aisle, Braden pushed from behind and laughed. Usually Jonathan would have pushed back or poked Rob in front of him. But not today. He didn’t feel like laughing or pushing. When he and his friends got to the front of the bus, the driver frowned and pointed for them to sit down.
“Busted!” one boy said as he walked past.
After everyone else got off, the bus driver set the air brakes with a loud spisshhh and turned around. No one said anything funny. No one laughed.
“I didn’t care for the way you were talking,” the bus driver said. “Would you talk that way in front of your mothers?”
The boys squirmed. None of them answered.
By the time the bus driver let them go, they had missed most of the free time before school.
“I hope she doesn’t call my mom,” Rob said.
“I don’t care if she calls mine,” Braden said. “My mom doesn’t care.”
Jonathan thought about his mom. What if she heard the way his friends talked? She would feel so sad. What if she thought he talked that way, too? He shuddered. It was bad enough that Sara and the bus driver thought so.
Jonathan sighed as he walked into his classroom. What a rotten way to start the day.
After math, Mr. Price said, “Everyone take out a piece of blank paper and fold it four times. We are going to make some new friends.” Jonathan knew what that meant. They were going to learn new vocabulary words. He folded and unfolded his paper and got ready to write a new word on each of the sixteen little squares. Then they would play bingo with the new words. He liked his teacher’s way of introducing new words by playing fun games with them. Mr. Price said that each time you learned a new word, it was like making a new friend.
A new friend! An idea began to grow in Jonathan’s head. As the class practiced their new words, the idea grew stronger. He would make a new best friend who liked good words and didn’t use bad words. But who?
At lunchtime Jonathan looked around. There were a lot of kids in his school. Surely he could find one new friend. He looked at a table where a bunch of kids from his sixth-grade band class sat. Most of them liked bad jokes, though. That wouldn’t help.
He looked across the cafeteria at some kids from another classroom. They were really nice guys, and he’d never heard any of them use bad language. But every seat at their table was taken. No one there would be looking for a new friend.
Finally he saw Sara sitting with her friends. She did not use bad words, and neither did her friends. But he couldn’t sit with them. They were all girls.
Sara stood up and carried her empty tray toward the kitchen. Jonathan stopped her. “Hey, that wasn’t me swearing on the bus.”
“I didn’t think it was,” Sara said. “But I wondered.”
“Well, I just want you to know I don’t talk like that. Actually, I’m looking for a new best friend who doesn’t talk like that either. Rob and Braden are still my friends, but when I’m with them I get blamed for what they say.”
“Who is your new best friend going to be?”
Jonathan looked around the cafeteria. Kids were everywhere—eating, talking, and laughing. “I don’t know,” he said.
That night he sat on the side of his bed and told Mom about his problem. As he talked, another good idea came into his head. “Heavenly Father knows who my new best friend is,” he said. “I’ll ask Him.”
Jonathan knelt by his bed and said his prayers, talking to Heavenly Father about his problem just like he had talked to his mom. Every night that week he asked Heavenly Father if there was a nice boy in sixth grade who could be his new best friend. Each day at school he searched and wondered who it could be. It seemed as if everyone had all the friends they needed.
On Monday after math, Mr. Price said, “Everyone get ready to make some new friends.” He wrote ten words on the board and gave several definitions for each word. “Choose someone in the class to discuss the words with,” he said. “You must each use every word in five different sentences. The first team to use all ten words is the winner.”
Rob picked Braden, and they started talking really fast, intent on winning the prize. Jonathan looked around. He had no idea who to pick. He noticed that a boy named Dale was looking around also. The two had never really spoken, but they both needed a partner, so they smiled and sat down together.
“The first word is keen,” Jonathan said. “My hockey skates are very keen.”
“So are mine,” Dale replied, “but I’m not too keen on the gash I got from another player’s skate after I fell on the ice.”
“I didn’t know you played hockey,” Jonathan said. “I’m guessing that someone was keen to get to the puck ahead of you.”
Dale nodded. “You obviously have a keen mind. It was a keen battle, but my team won.” He held up a bandaged left hand. “But the wind was keen that night, and my hand ached all the way home from the rink.”
Jonathan laughed out loud. This was fun. Then he realized that he had never heard Dale use a bad word.
“Your story has given me keen pleasure,” he said.
Dale gave him the kind of smile a friend gives a friend. “That’s keen,” he said. “Really keen.”
Rob and Braden finished first and won the contest, but Jonathan knew that he had won something much better.

Balancing the demands of work, Church, and family responsibilities has been a challenge for Elder Larry Young Wilson, but he has made sure family members know how important they are to him.
“The most formative experience I have had is being a husband and a father,” Elder Wilson says. “I rarely missed a child’s performance in an athletic, musical, or other event. I read them bedtime stories and said prayers with them before tucking them into bed at night. It is so important to be there.”

Toklat, the grizzly bear cub, stared at the yellow sun until his eyes watered. It was a very hot day. In all of his five months of life on earth, he had never been so warm.
His mother and sister were lying near the creek where his sister had been playing in the water, splashing fans of white spray into the air. It was a game that Toklat liked, too—but not today. His energy was gone. Not the slightest breeze stirred the leaves of the birch and poplar trees in the forest. Not a cloud drifted in the blue sky to keep the sun company. The air around Toklat shimmered with heat waves.
Toklat ambled away from his mother and sister into the forest, looking for—he didn’t know what. Maybe a cooler place in which to lie down. Maybe a new game to divert his attention from the heat.
He moved slowly to the top of a low hill. From there he could see in every direction over the tops of the trees. Everything was motionless and quiet, except for one thing: Not far away a column of black smoke was rising, as straight as a cottonwood tree, several hundred feet into the air. Then it fanned out. The smoke spread across the sky like a cloud, drifting toward Toklat’s hill.
Even as he watched, Toklat’s sensitive nose caught a whiff of the acrid smoke. His eyesight wasn’t good, as is the case with most bears. His nose, however, made up for his poor vision. It told him of dinner, when his mother caught salmon in the creek. It told him that other bears or strange animals were in the area. It warned him of danger, and as Toklat sniffed now, he felt uneasy. Does this smell mean trouble? he wondered.
As Toklat watched the smoke, a breeze began to blow it toward him. And for the first time, the young bear saw fire beneath the smoke. The breeze became a wind, causing great spires of orange flame to leap through the forest, converting trees and brush to charcoal in minutes.
If he had had any experience with fire and smoke, Toklat would have fled right then. He’d have run back to his mother and sister, and they would have headed for the bare, high hills to the south. But Toklat had never seen a forest fire, and though his instincts told him to flee, he didn’t. He stayed where he was, fascinated by the roaring flames. And that fascination almost cost the grizzly bear cub his life.
Leaping toward Toklat, the fire sent advance balls of flame ahead of its main body. They ignited trees over a wide, blazing path. Some of the fireballs were lifted by powerful thermal currents—currents caused by the fire’s great heat—and dropped beyond Toklat, starting new fires between him and his mother.
All at once Toklat was aware that he stood in the middle of a ring of fire that hissed, roared, and lashed about like a monster with a life of its own. He bawled loudly.
As the fire snarled and whipped closer to him, Toklat bawled more frantically. He coughed and darted this way and that, trying to find a way through the fire.
In just moments his mother appeared on the outer edge of the flames. She stood on her hind legs, sniffing the air in search of her son. When she finally located him, she dropped to all fours and bawled for Toklat to come to her. He answered and started toward the sound of her voice. The two cried back and forth until Toklat could finally see his mother.
How reassuring she looked—so big and powerful and safe! Toklat wanted to be with her, but the fire had almost closed its ring. There was only a small place left that he could get through. Toklat knew that he’d have to dash through it, yet he hesitated because the stifling and rambling flames were so fierce! As Toklat cowered in fear, his mother bawled for him again, and the urging in her voice stirred the cub into action. Lowering his head, he ran. Flaming limbs dropped in his path, and Toklat stepped on one. His paw felt as though a hundred porcupine quills had all penetrated at once. He yelped in pain, but he plunged on. He made it through the narrow place even as sparks were singeing his fur.
Without nosing her cub for his hurts, the mother fled, with Toklat and his sister right behind her. They ran through the forest and climbed a high hill to its summit. There were no trees at the top, nothing but shale, so the fire would have nothing to feed on. The bears were safe.
Toklat sat on his rump and licked his sore paw. His mother looked him over, grumped in her chest a few times, then wandered off in search of shade. His sister followed her, but Toklat remained where he was for a while, licking his paw and watching the fire far below. Smoke filled the valley, and the forest had turned black where thousands of trees had burned. Despite the heat of the day and from the fire, as Toklat ran his moist tongue over his burned paw, he shivered. Fire would frighten him for as long as he lived. Never again would he just sit and watch it leap toward him. At the first sign of smoke or fire, he would race for the high hills and safety.

As you plan your big project, you realize that you’ll need help, so you decide to ask some of your nonmember friends to help. This can give you the opportunity to explain why you serve, and you can also have fun serving together.

Virginia Fernandes, who looks about seventy-five years old, also does not know when she was born. She walks around the nursing home with difficulty and does not hear very well, but her countenance reflects joy in being close to her newly made friends.
They speak words of support and are always willing to help the elderly ladies, whose simple needs are easily met: a towel to Catarina, clothing to Flora or a cake to Virginia. These young people know that they are attending to the needs of a part of the Good Shepherd’s flock. They freely give of their love, affection, and kindness, which is just as freely returned.

Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson is a strong example of the power of consistency in social media. When called to serve as the Young Women general president in April of 2013, her Pinterest followers doubled overnight. Sister Oscarson’s previous pins provided ample evidence of her integrity, prompting one blogger to ask, “Would your Pinterest page pass the Bonnie Oscarson test? … Who will people decide you are if all they know is what is on your social media page?”6

Three Little Robbers, by Christine Graham, illustrations by Susan Boase. Jo, Flo, and Mo are three little robbers who live down the lane. When they discover that an elderly woman is cold and hungry, they decide to stop their thieving ways and help her.

Recently, my brother, Isaac, and I were riding our school bus. Our bus driver often listened to bad music. One day, there was a really bad song on, so Isaac and I said to the bus driver, “Please turn off the music. We don’t like that sort of music.” He would not listen to us. We asked him to turn off the bad music many times. The other kids on the bus said they didn’t like that kind of music either. We went home and told our mom about it. She talked to the principal, and the principal told the bus driver to not play that music. Now we don’t have to listen to bad music on the bus.

It’s a bright, sunny morning on June 26, 1999. The green grass at the Indiana State Capitol building is looking a little shabby. A trailer pulls up, and as 14-year-old Ryan Tripp unloads a lawn mower, it becomes obvious this is no ordinary lawn job.
There are green balloons on the lawn in the shape of a big ribbon—the symbol for organ donation—and Ryan is thronged by Indiana state officials and a large crowd. Flashing a smile, he talks from the podium about the importance of people becoming organ donors.
But Ryan didn’t see this as the end of his goal. Throughout his trip he had become increasingly concerned about the 63,500 people in America waiting for organ donors. So, even before he and his dad left Washington, D.C., they formulated a plan to further raise awareness for organ and tissue donation: they would mow every state capitol building lawn in the country, including those in Juneau, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii.
Two summers later, on June 1, 1999, Ryan set out on his second mission. This time he had a lot more company—his mother, his sisters, his brother, his Grandpa and Grandma Tripp, and his Grandpa Meidlinger.
The next 72 days were a whirlwind of state capitol buildings, governors, news reporters, talk-show hosts, and families involved in organ donation. The stories they heard from the many recipients, donors, and donor-hopefuls, buoyed them up at each stop.

All this implies, of course, that bishops have a stewardship regarding the storehouse. When Harold B. Lee was president of the Pioneer Stake in the days of the depression, he organized a welfare committee and they built a storehouse. After completion, they dedicated the building. In this special meeting, President Lee gave the storehouse keys to the bishops and in substance said, “Brethren, here are the keys to the Lord’s storehouse. You now have a stewardship regarding the storehouse. We have done the work in getting it established. It is now your stewardship to watch and see that it provides quality commodities in a timely and proper fashion to care for the poor and the needy.”

One Christmas Eve while we lived in the Philippines, my father came home early from his work as a chaplain at Clark Air Base.
“Hey, Tam,” he said, “I need you to make cookies and practice Christmas songs on your guitar. Also, gather items for Nativity costumes. We’re going to spend the evening in the brig.”
I was still angry at my parents for moving our family across the world. The last thing I wanted to do was spend Christmas Eve in a military jail. I complained but to no avail.
When we entered the brig, we were led to a stark room with chairs and a table. Soon a door opened, and my father warmly invited a group of shackled and handcuffed men into the room.
Then we sang Christmas songs, reenacted Luke 2, and enjoyed homemade treats—the same things we would have done at home. But something was different.
My adolescent heart softened that night as I witnessed the humble gratitude of those dear men. One of them, referring to our Nativity reenactment, asked, “Can I be in it too?” Others also wanted to join. Soon, additional “angels” heralded the Savior’s special birth.
Those prisoners were not where they wanted to be, and I was in a country where I did not want to be. But I knew we were seen, known, and loved by our Savior, who had also been in a place from which He humbly sought removal (see Luke 22:42). In my 16-year-old heart, I knew I was not alone.
Those men were not the only ones who wiped away tears that Christmas Eve. The life-changing event that evening was not our Christmas celebration but rather Christ’s power to lift and heal.
It’s been almost 50 years since that Christmas Eve, but it remains a sacred memory. My most special, unexpected, and glorious Christmas gift was a new heart. Everything changed for me after that.
I embraced life in the Philippines, made new friends, found ways to serve, and chose to be happy—all because of the witness I received of Jesus Christ and His powerful love that Christmas Eve in the brig.
I know that our Savior can remove the shackles from our minds and our hearts as we come to Him. He is our greatest gift.

Kwan, a teenage boy in Korea, uses the family computer often for school research, assignments, and projects. After his schoolwork is done, he fills his spare time with online gaming. His parents are worried.

Build your testimony of temple work when you attend or view via satellite at stake centers the dedication of the Nauvoo Illinois Temple on June 27. The original Nauvoo Temple was dedicated in 1846, but shortly after its completion the Saints were forced out of Nauvoo. Fire destroyed the inside of the temple in 1848, and, in 1850, a tornado demolished one of its walls. In 1999, President Gordon B. Hinckley announced the rebuilding of the Nauvoo Temple. To learn more about both the old and the new Nauvoo Temples, check out www.lds.org and read “The Nauvoo Temple: Cornerstones of Faith” (New Era, May 2002).

As we serve with others, certain guidelines can help us make our interactions more meaningful and avoid giving offense. I once lived in a large city and volunteered for a local church’s tutoring program open to the public—only to discover that the person in charge found my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unacceptable. That experience convinced me to value anyone’s contribution regardless of his or her religious affiliation (or lack thereof). I gratefully follow up on anyone’s interest in learning about the Church, but I also know that we Latter-day Saints take Jesus’s charge seriously to love our neighbor, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit the imprisoned (see Matthew 25:34–36) without expecting the conversion of the recipient or those who serve with us. Sincere and respectful interfaith engagement never requires any group, including ours, to disavow its beliefs. Rather, it encourages participants to “contend against no church” (D&C 18:20) and “clothe [themselves] with the bond of charity” (D&C 88:125).

“My father sustained a ruptured pancreas in a freak car accident when I was about ten. For some time there was a question as to whether he would live or not. When the doctors gathered our family together to explain the situation, Mother said, ‘He’s had a blessing, and he’s going to be all right.’ I remember that as a very strengthening spiritual experience because we all knew that Mom was right. In eight to ten weeks Dad was completely healed. During Dad’s hospitalization I remember that I went to the hospital several times, and Dad told me to set a good example for the rest of the family.

As part of the Rise and Reach summer programme, on August 15, September 3, and October 24 of 2020, a group consisting of youth, young single adults and full-time missionaries of the Church in Walworth, London, undertook service projects for Thames Reach at three different sites. Thames Reach is a charitable organisation that supports homeless and vulnerable individuals, some with mental health concerns, to access housing, training, and employment opportunities.

For various reasons, including the national lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, no gardening had taken place at the charity’s sites for a long time and so the gardens were much in need of care. Thus, when the offer of help was made, Amy, the manager of facilities for Thames Reach readily accepted.

The tasks for the volunteers involved cutting back overgrown foliage, tree branches, weeds, and litter-picking around the properties. The efforts of volunteers resulted in very noticeable differences in the appearance of the gardens.

Amy was delighted with the results. She remarked that finally the residents would be able to use the gardens again. She said the residents were very pleased with the transformation. Thanks to the tremendous hard work of this group of volunteers, the residents at the homes could now enjoy their outdoor spaces more fully.

When I was young, I attended a specialized preschool for children with autism. It changed the course of my life, so I wanted to give back. I decided to create interactive storybooks to help the children learn how to read.
I’d had multiple ideas for my project and prayed to know which one was right for me. The director of the school helped me know what they needed. I did the planning and organizing, but my family, friends, and quorum members helped a lot with the project. I was able to learn good leadership and planning skills.
Doing this project gave me a greater sense of gratitude for what they do at the school. It made me feel really good to help the school that had helped me so much. They were so appreciative, and they let me read one of the books to the class. I felt so good inside.
Christopher A., Utah, USA

One spring when the orchards in Magna, Utah, were blossoming, Sister Bello’s young son said, “Oh, look, Mother … popcorn’s popping on the apricot tree!” Some years later, when Sister Bello was a Primary music leader, her son’s words came back to her, and she wrote the song that includes his words.

Consider why missionaries dress conservatively in a skirt and blouse or in a suit with a white shirt and tie. How might someone respond if the missionary had unkempt hair and if he or she were dressed in blue jeans, flip-flops, and a T-shirt with a tawdry printed message? That person might ask, “Is this a representative of God?” Why would that person want to engage in a serious conversation about the purpose of life or the Restoration of the gospel with such a missionary?

My grandpa was not a member of the Church, but he taught me to be fair and honest with everyone. I remember being in the field with him when storm clouds quickly came up. Grandpa unhooked the horses from the wagon so that they could run back to the barn. Then he and I got under the wagon. As we lay there, waiting for the storm to pass, my grandpa told me all about his parents and brothers and sisters.