Gospel Story Finder

The importance of not mistreating others is highlighted in an anecdote about Hillel the Elder, a Jewish scholar who lived in the first century before Christ. One of Hillel’s students was exasperated by the complexity of the Torah—the five books of Moses with their 613 commandments and associated rabbinic writings. The student challenged Hillel to explain the Torah using only the time that Hillel could stand on one foot. Hillel may not have had great balance but accepted the challenge. He quoted from Leviticus, saying, “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Hillel then concluded: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary. Go forth and study.”

I listen to the scriptures as I get ready for seminary. I try to ponder each word so I don’t think of other topics, like tests or school assignments. From this I’ve gained a better understanding of the Book of Mormon.
Elise Ann R., 15, Colorado, USA

My bishop and I sat in his small, organized office. He peered at me through his clear glasses. “A patriarchal blessing is like a blessing from Heavenly Father. And as you go through life, little by little, more of your blessing will make sense.”
I got up from the small wooden chair and shook the bishop’s hand. He then gave me a patriarchal blessing recommend. I thanked him and left the office.
Lately I had been pondering some questions. Does Heavenly Father really love me? Does he really know who I am? Does he know me individually and love me for who I am, not just because I’m one of his daughters?
I would try to come up with as many answers as I possibly could. “God loves you because you’re his daughter,” my teachers would tell our class during Young Women lessons.
“You should feel special because you’re a child of God,” my Primary teachers had told me.
I knew those things were true. I knew he loved me. I knew I was a child of God, but would Heavenly Father be able to point me out among all of his children? Did he love me for my qualities, my personality?
I rode to the church house with my mother and walked briskly to that small office where the patriarch was waiting. He was an elderly man with a smile and soft, kind eyes.
He gave us a quick review of what a patriarchal blessing was and how sacred it was. He then put his hands on my head and began talking for my Heavenly Father.
I listened closely to every word he said. I felt the Spirit so strongly at times I couldn’t help crying. I received the answer my heart had wanted to hear: “I assure you your Heavenly Father knows you well and loves you.” The patriarch also mentioned several things only my Heavenly Father knew. I felt a complete feeling of love and caring.
I know now that my Heavenly Father loves me and knows me, just as he does each of you. He loves you for who you are.

I well recall a young man of great faith and devotion. He was my friend and my mentor during a sensitive period of my life. The manner of his living and the enthusiasm of his service were evidence of his love for the Lord and for the work of the Church. But he was slowly led away by the flattery of associates who saw in him the means of their own advancement in the affairs in which they were engaged together. Rather than lead them in the direction of his faith and behavior, he slowly succumbed to their enticings in the opposite direction.

He never spoke in defiance of the faith he had once lived by. That was not necessary. His altered manner was testimony enough of his having forsaken it. The years passed, and then I met him again. He spoke as one disillusioned. With lowered voice and lowered eyes, he told of his drifting when he cut himself loose from the anchor of his once-treasured faith. Then, concluding his narrative, like Peter, he wept.

“Before the concert at the Bolshoi,” said Ann Halversen, “I felt a hand on my arm. ‘Would you tell me more about Mormons?’ said a woman. ‘Do you speak English?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Are you Christian?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did you know that Christ came to America after he was resurrected?’ I asked. ‘He did!’ she exclaimed, wide-eyed. I then briefly gave an overview of the Book of Mormon. I felt to keep going—to tell her how we obtained the Book of Mormon. When I got to the name of Joseph Smith, the Spirit was so powerful that the instant I said his name I started to cry. The Spirit was so strong that she started to cry, too. ‘What is it that I am feeling?’ she tearfully asked. I then explained about the Holy Ghost. Immediately she reached out and stopped me and said, ‘This is what I have been looking for.’ Before the evening was over, I was able to introduce her to the missionaries.”

One of my favorite books is the British classic Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë and published in 1847. The main character, Jane Eyre, is a penniless, teenage orphan who exemplifies what it means to be true. In this fictional account, a man, Mr. Rochester, loves Miss Eyre but is unable to marry her. Instead, he begs Miss Eyre to live with him without the benefit of marriage. Miss Eyre loves Mr. Rochester as well, and for a moment she is tempted, asking herself, “Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”
Quickly Jane’s conscience answers: “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God. … Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this. … If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed. … Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
In a desperate moment of temptation, Jane Eyre was true to her beliefs, she trusted in the law given by God, and she planted her foot in resistance to temptation.

There was a time before we were married when my wife, Kristi, was struggling to feel Heavenly Father’s love and to understand His plan for her. As she prayed for guidance, an impression came that she should attend institute, so she enrolled in a New Testament class. The way her institute teacher taught from the scriptures, even the way he held them, showed how much he loved the word of God. As she attended, the Holy Ghost whispered to her that there was something in the scriptures that she needed. Her teacher’s love for the scriptures and the promptings of the Holy Ghost gave her a desire to begin a serious study of the word of God—which became a lifelong journey of deep conversion and consecrated service.

In between basketball games, Bernard introduced the gospel to another friend, Larry Rodelas. “I was wondering what got him to change his beliefs,” says Larry, who also agreed to listen to the missionaries. Soon Larry, his mother, Linda, and sister Eunice all joined the Church. But Bernard did not stop there—his other best friend and basketball chum Richard Virrey also joined the Church.

Blessings available. When I started to read my Book of Mormon, things started to change in my life. I found myself waking up so I could pray to my Heavenly Father to tell Him how grateful I was for the blessings of knowing of Him and the plan of salvation and the restored gospel. I know that I got to this place because I rose to the challenge from our prophet, who knew how much we would be blessed if we listened and obeyed.My experience does leave me with questions: Why did we have to be challenged? How long will it take us to learn that these blessings are constantly there for us if we will read the Book of Mormon daily? Angela Broderick, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

4 At 5:30 p.m., your mom drops you off at the store to buy a Christmas present for your sister. What do you get?
That’s easy. You go straight for that new basketball you’ve had your eye on for months. … She’ll probably like it too, right?
Select the cheapest item on her list—she won’t be disappointed, and it didn’t cost you much.
Find the newest book by her favorite author. You can’t wait to see the look of excitement on your sister’s face when she opens the package!

Around the world President McKay was regarded as an important spiritual leader. During a visit with the Queen of the Netherlands in 1952, President and Sister McKay were invited to have tea. When the McKays declined for religious reasons, the queen asked, “Do you mean to tell me you won’t have a little drink of tea, even with the Queen of the Netherlands?” President McKay responded, “Would [you] ask the leader of a million, three hundred thousand people to do something that he teaches his people not to do?” She replied, “You are a great man, President McKay. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”19

Last year the children in Clara’s grade-four class were assigned to give four-to-five-minute speeches. Clara chose to give a speech on the Holocaust, which she presented as if she were a girl in a concentration camp. When she first rehearsed her speech, it took eight minutes and 40 seconds to give because many of the words were hard to say. She practiced it over and over. The speech slowly grew shorter as she learned to say the words fluently. She finally presented the speech in four minutes and 40 seconds, and her classmates chose her to represent them in front of the whole school. When she did, the entire student body broke into wild applause. Many of them had known Clara since grade one, and her progress seemed miraculous. “The principal was crying,” Clara’s mom recalls. “Clara’s grade-two teacher was crying. Her grade-four teacher was cheering. It was such a victory---one of the greatest moments of my life!”
What did Clara learn from the experience? “Keep trying,” she counsels children everywhere. “Never give up.”
Of course, prayer was also a vital part of Clara’s triumph. She has great faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Primary, home evenings, scripture study, and her parents’ teachings have helped. Her older sisters have made a difference too, both through their good examples and their reading materials. As soon as Carly, 18, and Josie, 15, turned 12 in their turn, they began putting New Era Posters on their mirrors. Clara has also memorized seminary scripture mastery scriptures and learned President Hinckley’s six B’s with her sisters.

I have had the privilege of bearing testimony in ninety-eight general conferences of the Church from this pulpit and I have written a book that is being used almost all over the world containing my testimony, and that testimony I obtained in my youth through the Holy Ghost whom I received by the laying on of hands by those who had authority to convey it upon me. And it made such an impression upon me as a boy that it has been a guiding star to me all my life, and I could hardly wait until I was old enough to go on a mission.

I had always dreamed of having family home evenings like the ones I saw in Church pictures. But after my husband and I adopted a beautiful little girl, she did not want to join in. So we realized we had to make some changes in our family home evenings to reach her.
How grateful I am for the family home evening ideas published in the Liahona. Now our daughter is the first to want to hold family home evening and wishes we held it every day.

My brothers and sisters, how grateful I am to be here with you in this historic Tabernacle today. Seventy-four years ago, my grandfather Lars Peter Oveson stood at this pulpit and bore his testimony as an invited stake president from Emery County, Utah.
Although he died when I was just a boy, my grandfather has always been one of my heroes. I have studied his journal, which recounts over and over again his willingness to answer the calls that came to him throughout his lifetime. He and his parents converted to the gospel in Denmark, immigrated to this country, and came across the plains to join the Saints in Utah. One of the calls that came to him required leaving his new, young wife for six months to work on the building of the St. George Temple. He left her and their young family again to serve a two-year mission in his native Denmark. Later, the calls of bishop and stake president necessitated their relocating and rebuilding their home and farm on three different occasions. Through all of these upheavals, he remained grateful, cheerful, and faithful to the principles of the gospel, leaving a great legacy of faith to those of us who bear his name.
As my grandfather so eloquently stated 74 years ago: “I rejoice to bear my testimony to the truthfulness of this work of the Lord to the world, for I know it is true; I know it is for the uplift and the advancement of the children of God, and I pray that the Lord will help … us that we may remain faithful and true, that we may be found valiant workers in the cause of righteousness and help to build up his kingdom upon the earth” (Lars Oveson, in Conference Report, Apr. 1925, 127). To these truths I add my own witness in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

He and his brothers worked hard to have __________ in their front yard. They had to haul water in buckets to make it grow.

When some members moved into the area, and his missionary efforts continued. The little congregation grew, and for the next 25 years, he welcomed Church members and friends into his home for Church services. These efforts were unofficial as the Church did not have legal status in The Gambia, and the country had not been dedicated for the work of the Lord.
In June 1988, Elder Terrence Vinson, then-President of the Africa West Area Presidency, accompanied by his counsellor, Elder Marcus Nash, visited The Gambia. They met with Samuel, his wife, Fatou, their children Sampson, Daniel, Princess Amelia, Hannah, his sister Juliana Sandra and Albert Frederick Alexander, his longtime good friend, fellow Church member and fellow returned missionary.
Elder Vinson and Elder Nash authorised them to meet as a group and hold sacrament meetings. It was an exciting moment. The two sons of Samuel, namely Sampson and Daniel, were later baptized by Samuel after the visit by the General Authorities.

I am grateful for the many Sundays I taught a deacons quorum in Bountiful, Utah, as well as a Sunday School class in Idaho. And I even remember the times I served as an assistant to my wife in the nursery, where my main task was to hand out toys and pick them up.

It was years before I recognized through the Spirit that my simple service for the Lord mattered in the lives of Heavenly Father’s children. To my surprise, some of them have remembered and thanked me for my fledgling attempts to serve them for the Master on those Sabbath days.

Although the language barrier is challenging, North American and Brazilian missionaries also say it’s a lot of fun trying to talk with each other in the cafeteria, in their dorm rooms, in the gym, and in occasional combined classes. “Even on our first day here, we were actually able to carry on a conversation with a Brazilian in the cafeteria line,” says Sister Kathryn Sevy. “He was going really slow for us, but it was so exciting to realize that what we learned in Provo actually works!”

Elder Adam S. Bennion once told me of an incident that occurred when he was visiting the Utah State Penitentiary. If you will, speculate for a moment how difficult it is to speak at such a place with six to eight hundred or a thousand inmates. You cannot address them, “My dear brethren, I am glad to see so many of you here this morning.” You cannot address them as fellow citizens because they are not while they are felons. About every other manner of address seems quite as inappropriate.
This great teacher stood before them and said, “Now, I am going to talk with you. I am going to ask you some questions, and I want you to get up and answer me. What was it that brought you here as inmates of this penitentiary? I am frequently a speaker at various gatherings of young people and at graduation exercises, and I would like you to tell me so that I can warn them.”
With the adroitness of a skilled teacher, he finally had them on their feet, and they began to answer. Do you know what they said, almost without exception? “We are here in the state penitentiary because there came a time in our lives when we were made to feel that nobody cared what happened to us.”