Gospel Story Finder

by Cathe Chapman
The memory of piles and piles of crushed granite remains in the minds of 70 youth from the Mesa Arizona Stake. As a service project in conjunction with their youth conference, they gathered at 5:30 in the morning at the Ho Ho Kam Park, winter home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. They had been asked by the bicentennial committee of the city of Mesa to help improve the looks of the park. The piles of crushed granite had been dumped into the meridians that bordered the driveways and parking lot. Seventy-five tons needed to be shoveled and raked evenly.
“It’s a great project,” said Tony Curtis, a priest in the Mesa 23rd Ward, “because we are in service to the community.” The group worked at a fast pace because they were determined to beat the heat of the blazing Arizona sun.
When they finished the work, they were dirty, hot, and tired, and more than ready to participate in the water carnival planned for the afternoon.
The city of Mesa was so pleased with the work, they wrote a special letter thanking everyone who participated.

And now, several months later, they were following the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah, where the Colorado River and the wind have carved a canyon full of sandstone miracles.
They set up camp Friday afternoon at Dead Horse Point and began exploring on foot and bike. They walked the observation trail that winds around the edge of the canyon, overlooking a sheer drop of 300 million years. They saw an unbelievable panorama of sandstone filigreed with peaks, spires, ridges, and wrinkles. The whole broad chasm was a huge river of colored shadows, with the great brown and green Colorado winding through at the bottom.
The enthusiasm of the quorum had long since overtaken the rest of the ward, and there were more adults than priests on the trip. It was a great opportunity for a father to explain some of the wonders of nature to his son.
“Do you know why they call that the Green River, son?” asked one father, leaning over the edge of the observation wall and looking at the river far below.
“That’s the Colorado, Dad,” his son answered.
After awhile the group started drifting back, lured by the aroma of steaks sizzling on the campfire grill. The four-man cooking crew went about its work with the efficiency of old pros, using one fork and several convenient sticks for their tools.
“What do you mean, hot?” a young Navajo asked, reaching for a foil-wrapped, baked potato while his cooking partner licked burnt fingers.
The steaks cooked quickly, and what steaks! They eclipsed the paper plates and hung over the edges. Tender, juicy, and savory, they soon disappeared. Everyone said, “I can’t eat all that,” and then did.
Approaching the table one young man asked, “Do we have to use manners?” But no one stopped licking his fingers long enough to answer.
Later there was time for some fun and games, including an impromptu Olympics that featured long jumping from a sandstone boulder to the soft sand below. In the middle of it all, a huge moon came up and became an audience of one. The Indian youth pointed at it and said softly in Navajo, “Ooljee!” And everyone echoed still more softly, “Ooljee.”
An asthmatic bugle dribbled taps from somewhere in the darkness, announcing bedtime. Before climbing into their sleeping bags, the whole party got together for prayer. The priests quorum group leader called on one of the adults to pray, but before he could begin, a young man slipped to his side and whispered, “Pray for R.G.; he’s not feeling well.” It was done.
Stars seem to be made to lie awake under, but wind in pine boughs is the sleepiest of sounds, and soon most were unaware of the crackling red fire by which a few hungry young men were still roasting marshmallows.
At 4:30 the cooks were up, frying ham and scrambling eggs, long before the sun even hit the mountaintops. Before long an uproar followed as hibernating cyclists were turned out, and a frowsy-headed crew was soon attacking breakfast.
About halfway through the ham the bugler woke up. A sleepy reveille crawled from his tent and lay dying on the ground.
“What’d we bring you for?” someone asked.
Someone began singing a lively version of “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but trailed off under a barrage of glares.
Before sunup, breakfast was finished, and the cycles were gassed up and lined up in their assigned order, two abreast. On the handlebars of each cycle hung a helmet. Everything was ready.
The group formed a huge circle, and Kent Keller, the group leader, spoke with a suppressed smile.
“I guess you’re all wondering why I called you here …”
Safety rules were reviewed, last minute instructions issued, and the group knelt in prayer. Then it was to the cycles and away.
Along the rim of the chasm they went—sometimes over a thin layer of sandstone undercut with thin air—to a spot where the road gave up all inhibitions and dropped down the face of the all-but-sheer stone wall in a series of razor-sharp switchbacks hanging nonchalantly onto the edge of nothing. It was the first of many such roads. The priests zigzagged down as slick as slalom racers. The adults zigzagged down too, but some of them looked more sick than slick.
But the view made up for the nervous stomachs. The group stopped about halfway down just to look for a while.
“What do you think, Dad?”
A strong arm tightened around the young man’s shoulder. “I think it’s great, son.”
And then it was ride, ride, ride, through and over awesome desert valleys, passes, and peaks, on a road that sometimes degenerated into a trail and sometimes into an exercise in imagination. The riders often found themselves standing up more than they were sitting in order to absorb the jolts. But every bump and hill was an invitation to jump, and some young men were airborne so much they should have been licensed pilots.
They paused at the edge of the last plateau above the Colorado to make some minor repairs and adjustments on their bikes. All had been trained in bike maintenance and had received instructions in riding safety.
“Who’s got the chain lube?”
“Can I use your spoke wrench?”
Then over country steep, bumpy, and rugged, dotted with huge sandstone monoliths balanced on thin stone columns and fringed far away with pale mountains and colored mesas. Once the group went down a wash to the shore of the river, a road rough enough to test the most expert cyclist. They cut willows by the river for the wiener roast later on. Several million climbs, dips, and jumps later, they ate lunch on the wide stone ledge overlooking Monument Valley.
They built a wiener-roasting fire with the wood they had brought with them. One of the adults whittled kindling from the end of one of the huge, squat stove lengths.
“That’s not necessary, Brother Rasmussen,” one of the priests said kindly. “We’ve already got enough sticks, and you’ll never get that thing sharp enough anyway.”
Soon there was a roaring fire, just right for cremating wieners, and everyone did.
More roads, more bumps, more ruts, more breathtaking climbs and heart-stopping descents, more ravines to go around, more hours, and the group found itself down to the level of the Colorado again. By now the faces of the riders were a grimy, mottled brown. The young men were beginning to feel the wear and tear of the long ride, and some of the older men were past feeling it; and it wasn’t over yet. Ahead lay the ascent from the river back up to the top of the canyon.
It was done down dirt roads and up dizzy climbs, and finally down the home stretch through a pouring rain, and back into camp wet, muddy, tired, and happy, with 105 miles of hard biking under their belts. Had the rain come ten minutes earlier it could have made the climb out of the canyon very difficult, perhaps impossible. As it was, the four-wheeled vehicles had to grunt hard to make it.
In camp the bikes were loaded back into their trailers and the long haul back to Orem began. And in every car, jeep, and pickup, accompanied by the hypnotic squeak of windshield wipers, they all talked about the same thing. “Where shall we go next time?”

A revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith sent groups of Latter-day Saints to Missouri to lay the foundation of Zion. It wasn’t long, however, before mobs confronted them. In scenes from Legacy, families arrive in Missouri (1); soon mobs tar and feather some of the Saints (2), storm the printing office (3), attack the Haun’s Mill settlement (4), and finally force the Saints to leave (5).

James and Drusilla Hendricks came to Missouri in 1836. In 1838, James was paralyzed by a bullet. For the next year, Drusilla nursed him, held off the mobs, and did what she could to keep her family alive.

The day came when they ate the last of their food. Then “the conflict began in my mind,” Drusilla wrote. Recalling her parents’ warning that her husband would be killed, she asked herself, “Are you not sorry you did not listen to them?” Answering her own question, she replied, “No I am not. I did what was right. If I die I am glad I was baptized for the remission of my sins, for I have an answer of a good conscience.” Then she heard a still small voice saying, “‘Hold on, for the Lord will provide.’ I said I would, for I would trust in Him and not grumble.”

James survived, though still an invalid, and the family made it to Utah, united in faith and hope (in Kenneth W. Godfrey and others, Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints [1982], 96).

Some time ago several outstanding teachers were honored at the general Sunday School conference. It was my privilege to pay a tribute to a Sunday School teacher of my boyhood days—Lucy Gertsch Thomson.
Lucy was lovely and ever so sweet. She was deserving of a worthy companion. Yet such success evaded her. The years flew by, and Lucy reached the worrisome 20s, the desperate 30s, even the frightful 40s—and then she met Dick. It was a case of love at first sight.
Just one problem—Dick was not a member of the Church. Did Lucy succumb to the age-old fallacy of marrying out of desperation, with the fleeting hope that one day he would become a member? Not Lucy. She was wiser than this. She simply told Dick: “Dick, I think you’re wonderful, but we would never be happy dating together.”
“Why not?” he countered.
“Because you’re not a Mormon.”
“How do I become a Mormon? I want to date you.” He studied the gospel.
She answered his questions. He was baptized.
Then he said, “Lucy, now that I’m a member, we can be married at last.”
Lucy replied, “Oh, Dick, I love you so much. Now that you are a member of the Church, you wouldn’t be content with anything but a temple marriage.”
“How long will that take, Lucy?”
“About a year, if we meet the other requirements.” One year later Lucy and Dick entered the House of the Lord. Lucy lived the truth of the verse:
Dare to be a Mormon;
Dare to stand alone;
Dare to have a purpose firm;
Dare to make it known.
Plan your future with purpose.

On a vacation, I was traveling by ship down the Volga River in Russia, far from any LDS chapel. That Sunday I had planned to read the Book of Mormon alone in my cabin.
My plans changed when I found out the ship was leased for summer tours to a Latter-day Saint family. With permission from their Church leaders, they had scheduled a worship service for LDS passengers, including several Russian Latter-day Saints traveling on the ship. I was asked to bless the sacrament.
Later that morning when I entered the music salon where the meeting would be held, my anxious heart rested as I saw other young men in ties and young women in dresses. I looked around for something resembling a sacrament table. To my right, I noticed a white tablecloth from the dining hall had been spread over the piano bench. The bread and water trays sat on the white linen. Brother Wakefield, who had asked me to bless the sacrament, introduced me to a young man about two inches taller than I am.
“This is Sergei,” Brother Wakefield said. “He will bless with you.”
Sergei, from Moscow, had just completed his service in the militia. He had met two missionaries in the subway. That eventually led to his baptism.
“Dobray Dien!” I said, practicing what little Russian I had learned.
“Dobray Dien,” he responded with a chuckle.
“Minyah Savoot, William,” I said, introducing myself.
“Minyah Savoot, Sergei.”
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“A little.”
He pulled out a small white sheet of paper—tattered and used—and unfolded it. It was a definition sheet of LDS religious terms. He pointed to the word sacrament as if to communicate our role in the worship service. I nodded. With a concerned look, he then pointed to the word bread and he pointed to himself.
“Me, bread?” he asked.
Then he pointed to the word water and then pointed to me, and I understood. He would bless the bread. I would bless the water. He seemed eager and confident.
“Da,” I said in Russian, agreeing with his plan. “Me, water.”
The music had begun and a young man, Vladimir, led the congregation in “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” The curtains had been drawn and through the windows we saw a panoramic view of Russia’s countryside.
Sergei’s copy of the Book of Mormon was well used, and it excited me that he had been reading his Russian scriptures. He thumbed through the Book of Mormon for the sacrament prayer.
We stood and broke the homemade Russian sourdough bread. I could hear the congregation singing “I Stand All Amazed,” half singing in Russian and the other half in English. No one had hymnbooks, so we sang from memory. I was impressed to hear the combination of Russian and English—as if our voices were creating a new language.
When the hymn ended, I knelt with Sergei on the floating ship. Our knees rested on the floor, and I could feel a slight rocking of the ship. The congregation bowed their heads. Sergei began saying the prayer in Russian.
I felt the Spirit of God enter my heart and burn through my chest. Here, on a ship far from our homes and families, Sergei and I were two people the same age, from different continents, speaking different languages, and feeling the same Spirit. I understood the words he spoke, clearly and peacefully. I felt solemnity fill my mind.
After wiping a few tears from my eyes, I stood with Sergei and we passed the bread trays to three young priesthood holders, who then passed the bread to the congregation.
A few minutes later, I blessed the water in English, saying the prayer with more conviction than ever before. I felt as if I were actually speaking to the Lord. My heart swelled with joy as I said amen and stood to serve the water trays.
That day, Sergei and I had come together to do the Lord’s work. We had blessed the emblems Christ instituted just before his death and sacrifice. Sergei had spoken Russian. I had spoken English. But for all of us who were present, the language spoken was the Spirit.

Along with continuing spiritual growth came additional Church responsibilities, the adoption of two sons, and rapid professional advancement. As a colonel in the air force, Bert was known and respected for his integrity, willingness to work, and his ability to get the job done. Such a reputation made him a top candidate for assignment in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1970s as an adviser to that country’s military services. He was offered the position, but the decision to accept or refuse it was his. “I looked at a Church directory to see if the Church was there,” he says. “There were two stakes, so I thought, ‘Well, we’ll go.’” Then he and Amanda went to Washington, D.C., where he took an intensive six-month course in Spanish language and culture.
But then came a telephone call for Bert from his superiors. “They said, ‘We need you more in Bogota, Colombia, than we do in Montevideo, so we are changing your assignment.’ I could find no Church listings for Colombia, so I refused, and there was nothing they could say to change my mind.
“Then one day I had another telephone call from an officer. I tried to explain to him that I was a member of the Church and why I didn’t want to go to Colombia. It turned out that he was a member of the Church, the senior president of the seventies in his stake, and he said, ‘Brother DuPont, have you ever thought that maybe the Lord has a job for you to do in Colombia?’ It was the first time we had thought of it like that. We decided that we would go.”
Once in Colombia, the DuPonts found that the Lord did indeed have a job for them—several jobs, in fact. “I really feel,” says Bert, “though I didn’t feel that way at the time, that we were sent there to help with the Church. When the Church moves into a new area, the people who are converted are not the bank presidents or the university professors; they are the humblest and the poorest people. And all we had there were missionaries from the United States, who often weren’t accepted by the people. I was somewhat different because of my rank in the air force; being in the military helped. And I wasn’t white; that helped, too. Missionaries would tell the people something, and they wouldn’t believe it; but if we walked in the door and said the same thing, they would listen.”
Soon after the DuPonts arrived in Bogota, Bert was called to be a counselor in the district presidency; later he served as a branch president in Bogota. Amanda, warmly interested in her Colombian sisters, learned the language and was called to assume leadership responsibilities in the Relief Society and Young Women organizations. Both the DuPonts were loved and honored for their commitment to the gospel and their daily acts of Christian service.
A good part of their service embraced the missionary effort; still developing in Colombia some twelve years ago, the Church needed all the strong testimonies and good examples it could get. One returned missionary who served in Colombia recalls that the DuPonts were “great examples for the Saints. They demonstrated what home teaching and visiting teaching really were; what home evening is all about, and what it means to love and serve each other.”
The DuPonts’ home was a much-loved gathering place for the elders and sisters. Bert remembers, “We’d sometimes have as many as sixty missionaries over for dinner for the big U.S. holidays—Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas.”
From their earliest days in Colombia, the matter of heritage played a significant role in the DuPonts’ remarkable success story. Consider, for example, their participation in the Church’s first youth conference in that country. Invited to provide some Hawaiian entertainment, they drove ten hours over a tortuous mountain road to attend the conference.
Once there, Bert was asked to speak. “As I looked out into that group—the leaders and the youth—I was struck by the impression that it was like I was in Hawaii. They all looked like my relatives; their Indian background matched up with the Hawaiians and the Polynesians. So I decided I would tell them about Hagoth, the Nephite shipbuilder; I started out talking about that, and about how they looked like my uncles and aunts back in Hawaii. Our relationship with them grew from that. I told them, ‘When I say hermanos y hermanas to you, I don’t mean brothers and sisters only in the gospel; I really mean that we have a blood relationship—the blood of Israel is here.’”
The “blood of Israel” image became still more personal when Bert and Amanda invited his parents to visit them in Bogota. It was a new beginning.
“My dad was a good man,” reflects Bert, “but we couldn’t convince him to join the Church—even though whenever he visited us, he would comment about the happiness we had in our family, and how he wished the other children could have it.”
Late one night during his parents’ visit, Bert was awakened. “I was prompted,” he recalls, “to go and challenge my dad—again—to be baptized, even though he had refused many times before. I woke Amanda (I always have to confer with her, because she’s got the Spirit!), told her my feeling, and she said, ‘Well, I guess you’d better go do it.’ So I went into his room … it was like Daniel going into the lions’ den.”
Bert woke his father, bore testimony, issued the challenge. The response? “My dad put his arms around me and hugged me and cried. He had been shot, stabbed, and injured many times during his life as a police officer, and he had never before shed a tear as far as I knew.”
Within weeks, Brother DuPont had fully embraced the gospel. “The missionaries from the U.S. could not teach him in English,” Bert explains, “because they only knew their discussions in Spanish. So I interpreted for them. My parents came to church with us every Sunday even though they couldn’t understand what was going on because everything was spoken in Spanish. But evidently my father could feel something—and I believe it was the spirit of the people. There was standing room only the day he was baptized.”
It wasn’t until 1975, after Bert and Amanda had returned to Hawaii, that Bert’s testimony of the living prophet was solidly confirmed. Bert had been asked to assist with security measures for President Spencer W. Kimball who was making a short visit to Bogota. Bert’s description of the experience is a moving testimony of the prophet’s influence:
“President Kimball shook my hand, and it felt like electricity going up my arm. He looked into my eyes, and that was it; I knew. We were together a good deal of the time, and it was the most wonderful experience.
“We had family home evening at the mission home, and I was the only one without my family. I sat right next to President Kimball, and he put his arm around me. Then we knelt down, and the mission president asked the President to give the family prayer. My whole life changed in those moments; I just knew he was a prophet. It was the full conversion.”
Meanwhile, Amanda recalls with a knowing smile, while Bert was with the President, “things weren’t going too well back home. I was in a car accident; I wasn’t hurt, but the car was damaged.”
“You have to understand,” adds Bert, “that I was a person who had to have everything neat and clean. You didn’t touch my car, because you might leave a fingerprint on it.”
Amanda says their two sons, “Duane and Doug, kept saying, ‘Oh, boy, wait until Dad comes home and sees the car.’ The day Bert arrived home, they wouldn’t even go to the airport with me to meet him, so I went by myself; there hadn’t been time to get the car fixed.”
But something had changed. “Bert came off that airplane, and I think he was walking above the ground. When he saw me, all he could talk about was what a great experience it was to be with the prophet. He went right past the damaged fender on the car and didn’t even see it.
“When we got home, the boys were peeking out from behind the drapes. Bert said, ‘Okay, when my boys are hiding, something’s happened.’ So I had to show him the damaged fender. He looked at it, turned to me, and said, ‘Oh, Mom, I’m really glad you didn’t get hurt.’ Then he gave me a big hug.”
The stories go on and on. The DuPonts have opened their arms and home to a procession of foster children, less-fortunate Colombian friends and fellow Saints, missionaries whose finances and confidence needed help, and anyone else who can use a warm Hawaiian greeting, a generous sampling of Amanda’s expert cooking, or a gentle but persuasive nudge in the general direction of truth and righteousness.
“We love people,” says Amanda, “and the gospel gives us direction in serving and helping them wherever we can.”

We live in a state of constant motion. Even when we’re asleep, our hearts keep pumping. Our lungs pull air in and push it out. Our brains and nerves send and receive tiny signals. The very atoms and molecules that compose our bodies whir and spin.
Sometimes we think we achieve a condition called “standing still.” But as we stand, the wind brushes by us, the clouds roll overhead, and rays of sunlight complete a journey that began millions of miles away.
Even our earth is constantly moving. It not only rotates; it orbits at incredible speed. With other planets and moons, it rushes through darkness pursuing the sun, part of a galaxy of stars chasing stars chasing other galaxies in a never-ending symphony of light.
Heading in the right direction, at the right speed. That could have been the title of the morning session of the youth conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. But “Youth in Motion, Youth in Touch” was what was printed on the program.
Teenagers, you would think, should be experts on motion. Even now, as they queue up for lunch, they can’t stop moving. To pass the time, one young man captures and releases a yo-yo as it drops and climbs on its string. Another juggles oranges, while some of the young women race each other across the lawn.
“A world in frantic motion will look to you,” Vancouver British Columbia South Stake President Richard C. Bulpitt told them in his talk. And Bryce Winkle, a seminary teacher from Portland, Oregon, and his wife, Barbara, warned that “you will face some of the most important decisions of your life in the next five to ten years—mission, marriage, school, career—it all rushes by real fast.”
For lunch, it’s hoagies and chips, which like most things Canadian have French names, too. (The sandwiches are called “sous-marines,” and on one side of the package the Old Dutch, vinegar-and-oil flavored potato chips are labeled “croustilles.”)
But as the youth sit and talk, something interesting is happening. Prompted perhaps by the speeches of the morning, the conversations center around the theme of the conference. The young people are talking about motion—about moving in a positive direction with school, with mission preparation, with career planning, with life.
The afternoon is spent in workshops. But what workshops! In one room an airline inspector’s black light makes cracks in metal glow. In another area, an attorney in courtroom attire discusses his career. An advertiser hands out free food and hats. A marine biologist has plant specimens spread over a table for everyone to see. A computer expert encourages experiments on monitors and keyboards. An architect lectures to a standing-room-only group in the high council room. There are representatives from the media, from education, medicine, dentistry, business, public service, veterinary medicine, and more.
In the evening, there will be an amateur talent night featuring songs, skits, serious readings, and corny jokes. It will loosen people up and help them get acquainted. But already people are in touch, sharing their ideas and friendship, in the serious moments sharing gospel truths.
Not far from here, Vancouver City is hosting Expo 86, a fair for all the world. The theme is “World in Motion, World in Touch.” There are rides and exhibits, films and productions, hundreds of things to do and see. But you wouldn’t know by looking at these young people that that’s where they will be tomorrow. By all indications, the youth conference they’re at right now is the greatest thing in the world, the place of all places where they would choose to be.
Color communicates. Color becomes motion, blending and blurring into a vision of purple, yellow, orange, and green. Crimson banners, alive in the fiery sun. Deep blue skies, pierced with white sails. The bright red of a Mounty’s coat or the blazers of a bagpipe band. Oriental dragon boats, spotted with yellow and green. The hot pink hat of a man building boats. The silver blur of a monorail train or a fan of water flattened by a child’s hand. The lonely tan of a wooden mountain, climbed and reclimbed by an alpine club. Big bold balloons. The flat gray of an undulating highway, its vehicles painted the same color in the name of sculpture. Fireworks crackling, loud and pink and white, as motion, sound, and color become one.
These are the sights of Expo. These, and people. Mimes with painted faces working crowds for a laugh. Pirates ready to sail the sea. Jugglers balancing coat hangers and bowling pins. Children laughing out loud. Adults in line, tired of standing. A man in a turban, nodding his head. High-kicking folk dancers spinning plaid skirts. People talking, laughing, listening, learning. Vancouver sent out invitations, and the world came in return.
“Who are all you kids in the white shirts?” the lady said. And the answers came from a group.
“We’re Latter-day Saints.”
“Mormons.”
“Here for our youth conference.”
“Great fair, isn’t it? See you later. Have fun.”
The conversations weren’t heavy. But people were curious about all the teenagers wearing identical shirts. It was a great way to subtly share the gospel.
Throughout the day at Expo, however, there were also gospel discussions of another kind—members of the Church talking to fellow members, sharing with each other small bits of their lives.
“I have a huge church (of another faith) practically in my backyard,” said Travis Wolsey, 14. “When my friends find out I’m religious, they say, ‘Is this the one you go to?’ I say, ‘No, I go down to Richmond.’ ‘You’re crazy! That’s a 20-minute drive!’ But it gets them talking, wondering why I’m willing to go that far just to go to church.”
Rob Reid, 15, of Walnut Grove, said, “The Church is growing fast here. Last year they divided our ward, and now they’re ready to split again. But my friends at school still don’t understand. They hear me talk about getting up at 5:20 to go to seminary. They say they go to church on Sunday, but I go six days a week. Isn’t that a bit much?”
“I play lots of league sports, but I won’t play on Sunday,” Travis continued. “So I always need to explain about the Sabbath. I tell them that on Sunday we rest, avoid stressful activity, and take time to think of peaceful things. Most of them are working hard, and they say they wish they could have a Sabbath, too.”
“Some of the guys on the football team thought my habits were funny,” said John Van Rijswijck of Richmond. “So I just told them, ‘Yeah, I’m proud of it, and I’ll talk to you about it anytime you want me to.’ One of the girls at school came by our house, and she saw a certificate hanging on the wall that said I’d been ordained a priest. She really wanted to know about that.”
Others talked about life in the smaller branches.
“There’s one big advantage of living where I come from,” said Renata Koller, 14, of Smithers, a logging town. “If you get mad you can just walk outside and scream at all the trees.” There are only about 30 people in her branch, and just seven teenagers. Still, Smithers came in first overall in a recent scripture chase. “We have a great seminary program. Class starts at 6:15 A.M. I get up every day at 5:00 and walk a mile and a half to the house where we meet. On my way there I’ve seen a fox, a wolf, and two bears.”
“For the size of branch we’re in, we have a good youth program,” said Angelina Schafer, 16, of Quesnel. “There are about 25 kids.”
Shayne Olsen, 18, of the same branch, agreed. “At her school there are about four members out of 300 students. At mine, there are ten out of 700, and the bishop and his first counselor are teachers there. We’re not that large a group, but we stick together, and when you stick together it’s easier to be strong.”
“We have lumber and sawmills, gorgeous mountains, and excellent fishing,” said Floyd Brown, 18, of the Hazelton Branch. “We also have two Aaronic Priesthood holders out of 14 members who come to church. But we get to really use our priesthood. Each Sunday I say two or three prayers, help with the music, or give a talk.” Floyd, who has started work at 4:00 A.M. daily in the sawmills since he was in grade five, plans to go to dentistry school. But first, he’s getting ready for a mission.
“I’m on my third reading of the Book of Mormon,” he says with a smile.
The next morning, the youth are back at the meetinghouse again for another session of workshops and talks. They spend the third day of the conference discussing dating, relationships, and the high priority of being brothers and sisters in the gospel. In the afternoon, they converge on the chapel for what many will consider the culmination of three of the greatest days in their lives—a testimony meeting where youth after youth tells of victories and trials, of the joys and struggles of drawing nearer to Christ.
Later, everyone gathers for a group photo. Then, in the evening, there’s a dance. Some of the young people, however, take a break from the dancing. It seems natural for the group from Abbotsford to sit and talk. Maybe they’re evaluating the conference they’ve just been through. Maybe they’re just sharing, talking about life.
Taylor Strong, tall and thin, has a warm, happy wit and a quick smile. He seems to be their ringleader in righteousness.
He talks about his school. “We’re only five Mormons, out of 1,500 students. It’s kind of hard when lots of your friends don’t have the same morals. But once they get to know the person inside, really well, then they understand your standards; they respect you. People would like to know what you believe. Inside, a lot of them are lonely.”
He talks about his friend Mark, who was baptized last week. “Once you’re able to speak to your friends, that’s what happens. When you can express what you feel, one on one, with the Spirit, then the truth comes out.”
A young man named Jeff, a nonmember who came with the Abbotsford youth as a guest to the conference, starts to talk.
“When I first met Taylor,” he says, “I didn’t know what to think. I had heard he belonged to a cult. But I’d seen his family and met his friends, and I had to say, ‘How can that be a cult?’ The more I’ve been around his family, the more it’s changed my life. Example is so important. If Taylor hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have heard about the Church except from people who don’t know about it. Now, hopefully, I’m going to become a member this month.”
In another corner of the building, some young women from the Prince George Branch are talking about the theme of the conference, “Youth in Motion, Youth in Touch.”
“Sure, we’re in motion,” says Heidi Towers, 17. “We’re in the world but not of it. We’re in touch with Heavenly Father, so we know what it’s all about.”
“The Church is about continually progressing,” her twin sister Leanne responds. “It’s about moving forward, toward a celestial way of life.”
There’s another kind of motion, too, a motion more powerful than roaring winds or the pulling of the tides. It starts quietly, gently, deep down, far inside. Subtly at first, then powerfully, it tugs on the soul, awakening a sense of what is right.
Given room it gains momentum, turning us toward the light. lt impels us to bear testimony, to press forward, to serve the Lord with all our might. Like a great magnet, it draws us toward the truth and the truth toward us.
The scriptures have a name for this kind of motion. They call it “a mighty change of heart” (see Alma 5:12–14).
It’s Friday morning, July 4, 1986. The rushing and packing are finished. The handshakes are over; the hugging is done. The cars are leaving, and the buses are rolling out. With themselves, with the gospel, with their Father in Heaven—the youth of Vancouver, constantly in motion, have also shown how much they are in touch.

Let me conclude with a story about the BYU-Idaho Center and miracles.

In 2007, I took to the Board of Education a proposal to build an athletic facility that could also double as an auditorium. It used collapsable bleachers and chairs and could handle about 10-12 thousand people. It was about half the size of this building. It would not start until the new Manwaring Center was complete. The Board approved it. A couple of days later, I got a call from President Gordon B. Hinckley. He said, “Brother Clark, I have been thinking about your building.” He then talked with me for a few minutes about the possibility of making it bigger and building it sooner. And then something quite extraordinary happened. All of a sudden, his voice got much louder and much stronger as he said, “Brother Clark, I am here to tell you today to build it bigger and build it now.” He was emphatic!
And so, we did. It was not easy to get it approved, and not easy to build it. This beautiful and sacred place was built on time and under budget only with the help of legions of angels. I am so grateful that President Hinckley, a prophet, seer and revelator, foresaw that we had to build it much bigger and much faster. However, I have come to understand that his urgency about what he saw was not only about this building, but also about building up the kingdom of God and establishing Zion on this campus, and in the world.

There is an old story of a waiter who asked a customer whether he had enjoyed the meal. The guest replied that everything was fine, but it would have been better if they had served more bread. The next day, when the man returned, the waiter doubled the amount of bread, giving him four slices instead of two, but still the man was not happy. The next day, the waiter doubled the bread again, without success.

On the fourth day, the waiter was really determined to make the man happy. And so he took a nine-foot-long (3-m) loaf of bread, cut it in half, and with a smile, served that to the customer. The waiter could scarcely wait for the man’s reaction.

After the meal, the man looked up and said, “Good as always. But I see you’re back to giving only two slices of bread.”

One of the great families to join the Church in Canada was that of Archibald Gardner. From his journal, we learn of the family’s experience in Canada during the year 1843.

Robert Gardner describes the day of their baptism: “We went about a mile and a half into the woods to find a suitable stream. We cut a hole through ice eighteen inches thick. My brother William baptized me. … I was confirmed while sitting on a log beside the stream. …

“I cannot describe my feelings at the time and for a long time afterwards. I felt like a little child and was very careful of what I thought or said or did lest I might offend my Father in Heaven. Reading the Scriptures and secret prayer occupied my leisure time. I kept a pocket Testament constantly with me. When something on a page impressed me supporting Mormonism, I turned down a corner. Soon I could hardly find a desired passage. I had nearly all the pages turned down. I had no trouble believing the Book of Mormon. Everytime I took the book to read I had a burning testimony in my bosom of its truthfulness.”

Archibald Gardner added: “[My] mother … [accepted] the Gospel at once and whole heartedly, after hearing it. … Not long after contacting the new faith she became desperately ill, so ill that her life was despaired of. She insisted on being baptized. The neighbors said that if we put her in the water they would have us tried for murder as she would surely die. Nevertheless, well bundled up, and tucked into a sleigh, we drove her two miles to the place appointed. Here a hole was cut in the ice and she was baptized in the presence of a crowd of doubters who had come to witness her demise. She was taken home. Her bed was prepared but she said, ‘No, I do not need to go to bed. I am quite well.’ And she was” (in Delilah G. Hughes, The Life of Archibald Gardner: Utah Pioneer of 1847 [Draper, Utah: Review and Preview Publishers, 1970], pp. 25–27).

Christophe and Isabelle are both from France, the children of converts to the Church whose conversion stories are similar. In 1968, Isabelle’s family (the Mauclairs) was living in Bordeaux, France, when two missionaries from the Church knocked on the door. They were invited in and told their story. The visit resulted in membership in Heavenly Father’s kingdom on earth.
Christophe was born on January 21, 1966, the first of seven children born to Gerard and Annie Giraud-Carrier. When he was two, his parents met missionaries on the streets of Toulouse, France, and provided their phone number to the missionaries. Those missionaries misplaced the number and never called. Subsequent missionaries found the number, called, visited, taught and baptized the Giraud-Carriers.
Both couples were devoted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, teaching their children and serving wherever called. They served in significant ways, including in branch and ward leadership and in district and stake leadership callings.
Isabelle’s father was a physician in the French armed forces, which gave him opportunities to serve in foreign lands. Consequently, several of Isabelle’s childhood years were spent in Djibouti, New Caledonia and Algeria. The Church was not established in some of those countries. Worship and gospel living were thus family centered with no supporting Church organization. Family prayer and family scripture study were regular practices in the home, as were weekly sacrament meetings.
In the late 1970s the Mauclairs moved back to metropolitan France, first to Auch (pronounced Osh) near Toulouse. In 1978, they moved to the Versailles ward, where the Mauclair and Giraud-Carrier families became good friends, and a young Christophe met an even younger Isabelle. That childhood friendship grew into dating, courtship, engagement, and marriage. After some time in the same ward and stake, the families moved apart, but Christophe’s and Isabelle’s developing romance continued to grow as they courted by regular letters, occasional phone calls and quarterly in-person connections.
In July 1986 Christophe commenced full-time missionary service in the Canada Montreal Mission. While he was in Canada, Isabelle’s father was her district president in Cholet, France. Her father called her as a district missionary, fulfilling a promise in her patriarchal blessing. She arranged her work schedule to work three days a week and all evenings with the full-time missionaries. During her service, she became a key part of bringing about 20 new converts into the Church.
Just weeks after Christophe returned from the Canada Montreal Mission, the two, who had met as children 10 years before, became husband and wife on July 16, 1988 in Cholet, France. Three days later, at the Bern Switzerland Temple, they became a forever union. Christophe was 22 and Isabelle was 21.
Shortly after their marriage, Christophe was drafted into the French military. He served in the air force for one year. After his military service, Christophe transferred two years of college credit to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. There he earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a PhD in computer science.
After earning his PhD, the family moved to Bristol, England, where Christophe worked as a computer science professor for six years. He left academia for a time to accept a manager position at ELCA Informatique in Lausanne, Switzerland. In Switzerland, they were just two hours from family for the first time in nearly 13 years. They loved living in Switzerland.
BYU had regularly asked Dr. Giraud-Carrier if he would consider accepting a professorship at the Provo campus. The answer was always no. When the Giraud-Carriers traveled to Utah in 2004, the Computer Science department chair asked them again, “What would make you stay in Utah?” Both Christophe and Isabelle had a strong impression that they should accept a professorship at BYU. They said yes and moved resolutely forward with the direction the Lord was revealing to them.
The Giraud-Carriers have eight children, four sons and four daughters. Four of the children were born after they left Provo. Today, six of their children are married. And they are grandparents to 18 beautiful grandchildren.
Throughout their lives, they have accepted and magnified each of their Church callings. Elder Giraud-Carrier has served as a bishop, ward and stake Young Men president, stake mission president, high councilor, stake president, and mission president. Sister Giraud-Carrier has been the president of her ward Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society, and served as Primary teacher, district missionary, mission leader, and an exceptional ministering sister. Of her, Elder Patrick Kearon has said: “If I had to cross the plains, I would want to be in her wagon.”

In Farmington, Utah, there lived a good man named Bob Hasenyager, who was not yet a member of the Church. His wife, Marlene, was devoted to the gospel. She honored her covenants quietly and patiently, never pressuring—only loving. Bob was serving and helping in the local ward. One day the stake president asked Bob, “Are you aware that your wife longs to attend the temple but still waits, not wanting to hurt you?”
Bob wept when he was told this. Then he gave his full support. Marlene received her endowment and began attending the temple regularly. Bob noticed something different: not pressure, not argument, but peace. Then one day a young missionary simply suggested Bob be baptized on a specific date. In Bob’s words: “I felt the Holy Ghost. I felt warmth and joy and peace. I finally had my answer.” Bob was baptized. He was later diagnosed with terminal cancer. He and Marlene were sealed four months before he passed away.

His declaration of hope turned my mind to another experience I had as a young missionary in the New York area. After a long and tiring day of being rejected at one home after another, we finally came to a house where we were invited in. It was apparent that the lady of the house was grieving. She began the conversation by explaining that she was Jewish and that she had just lost her husband. She wanted to hear our belief about life after death. She wanted to know every detail. Would her husband be resurrected? What would he be like? Would she be resurrected? Would they see each other again? Would there be suffering? Would there be happiness?

The situation offered us an opportunity to teach and bear witness of Jesus Christ and the hope that comes from His sacrifice that was given to all mankind. We were able to explain from the Book of Mormon that Christ broke the bands of death, that all shall be raised from the dead, and that spirit and body would be reunited in its perfect frame. While we were never invited back to this lady’s home, I believe we gave her some hope. It was also a great reminder to two young missionaries of the love Christ has for us and the power of His infinite, eternal sacrifice that gives us eternal hope.

Many know Elder Clark G. Gilbert as president of BYU–Pathway Worldwide and as past president of Brigham Young University–Idaho. Many also know him for his innovative development of online higher education programs at both institutions.
Elder Clark credits meaningful Church service—helping young men in inner-city Boston, Massachusetts, USA—for preparing him to take educational opportunities to larger audiences. That service opportunity came as he was busy with graduate school and caring for a young family.
“Those young men didn’t always have a lot of support. They became a part of our lives, and we grew to love them,” he said. “I learned to listen to the Lord and knew He was in their lives. I could hear Him telling me what I needed to do for them.”
Elder Gilbert said the Lord taught him about the needs of other people. “It wasn’t just that He was preparing me for education, but He was showing me what He could do in the lives of people at a deep, personal level.”

Moses’s son Lewis stepped into those boots, although he was not a left-footer. He played for the East Ardsley High School team and later played soccer, rugby, and cricket for the West Riding Auto Company. In 1940 he was called into the army. Serving in the Duke of Wellington Regiment, he rose to the rank of master sergeant in the infantry. He fought in France and Germany and along the way played on army soccer teams. He won’t talk much now about the fighting, but he speaks with relish about the soccer. He rose from his company team to the division team and then to the regiment team, the top of the heap. After the war his team toured Germany playing other army teams. They beat the Grenadier Guards in Dusseldorf Stadium in the semifinals of the army-wide championship and finally lost to the Royal Engineers in overtime in the championship match. Most of England’s finest young soccer players were in the military, so Lewis, an amateur, held his own with the elite of professional soccer until being demobbed (discharged) in 1946.

I entered the bishop’s office feeling completely worthless.
The bishop smiled and offered me a seat. I explained to him what had happened, feeling more and more ashamed with each word. I asked with tears in my eyes, “What do I need to do? How can I become completely clean again?”
The bishop was quiet for a moment, then said, “You can definitely become clean from this. But I don’t think you understand an important part of repentance.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, a little taken aback.
You are thinking of repentance like you are flipping a switch from darkness to light,” he said. “As if you were a perfect 10, and because you sinned, you’re now an 8 or a 7.”
I nodded slowly.
“In reality,” the bishop continued, “None of us are 10s. In fact, we are probably closer to 1s and 2s. We’re not perfect to begin with. Repentance can cleanse us from sin, but it also helps us progress from 2s to 3s and 3s to 4s and so on until we reach that perfect 10 one day. Repentance helps us become more Christlike.
The bishop prayed with me and advised me to study the gift of repentance.
When I left his office, I sat in my car for a long time, thinking about what he had said.
I realized that he was right. I had thought of repentance only as a way to get back to how I was, to become a 10 once more. Because I thought I was completely clean before, the weight of that “perfection” made me feel worthless and unredeemable—just as I always felt whenever I needed to repent.
But having to repent was not a negative or shameful experience—it was the crux of becoming Christlike. It allowed me to leave my sins behind and enabled me to become better than I was before. The Savior is not a repair man, filling in the cracks in my soul, but an architect, building me up to heights I could never achieve otherwise.
This knowledge removed my perfectionistic guilt. I wasn’t perfect and I didn’t have to be—not yet. Repentance was part of my path to perfection. I entered my home with a changed perspective and a humbled heart.
I have since repented and forsaken the sin that drove me to the bishop’s office that day, and today I truly feel clean. I am still far from perfect, but thankfully, Christ’s grace is sufficient to save. With Him, I can be forgiven, healed, and given the strength overcome my weaknesses. And through His gift of repentance, I can be molded into the person I’m meant to become.

Many years ago my father built a small cabin on part of the ranch property where he had been raised. The vistas across the meadows were exceptional. When the walls were framed in for the cabin, I made a visit. I was surprised that the window with the view focused directly on a power pole that was a short distance from the house. To me, it was a huge distraction from the magnificent view.
I said, “Dad, why did you let them put the power pole directly in front of your view from the window?”
My father, an exceptionally practical and calm man, exclaimed with some emotion, “Quentin, that power pole is the most beautiful thing to me on the entire ranch!” He then made his case: “When I look at that pole, I realize that, unlike when I grew up here, I will not have to carry water in containers from the spring up to the house to cook, wash my hands, or bathe. I will not have to light candles or oil lamps at night to read. I want to see that power pole right in the middle of the view window.”
My father had a different perspective on the power pole than I did. To him that pole represented an improved life, but to me it was a stumbling block to a magnificent vista. My dad valued power, light, and cleanliness above an aesthetic view. I immediately realized that while the pole was a stumbling block for me, it had great practical, symbolic meaning to my father.
My father saw the pole as a means of providing power, light, and abundant water for cooking and cleansing. It was a stepping-stone to improving his life.

Elder Hugh B. Brown reports the following personal story that illustrates the point I am trying to make. He states:
I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants.
I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before I went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and clipped it back until there was nothing left but stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I looked at it and smiled and said,
“What are you crying about?”
You know, I thought I heard that currant bush say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me because I am not as big as they. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”
That’s what he thought he heard the currant bush say, and he thought it so much that he answered.
[He] said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.”
Years passed and Elder Brown found himself in England in the Army and in line for a very important and prestigious promotion. He was wrongly and rudely denied that promotion and he reports that as he returned to his camp on the train with a broken heart, with bitterness in his soul, every click of the wheels on the rails seemed to say, “You are a failure.”
When he got to his tent, he was so bitter that he threw his cap on his cot, clenched his fists, and shook them at heaven, and said, “How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done – that I should have done – that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me? At that moment he reports that he heard a voice, and recognized the tone of the voice. He said, “It was my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.” He reports that the bitterness went out of his soul, and he fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for his ungratefulness and bitterness. While kneeling there praying for forgiveness, he heard a song being sung in an adjoining tent by a group of LDS soldiers. He heard them sing
But if, by a still, small voice he calls
To paths that I do not know,
I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:
I’ll go where you want me to go[12]
Fifty years later in telling this story Elder Brown said that he felt even more deeply, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.”

The Holy Ghost can help us in every part of our lives. I learned this in a practical way when I was a college student at Brigham Young University–Hawaii.
At the time, I was working and taking a full schedule of classes. My wife and I also had a small baby to care for. With all these demands on my schedule, I didn’t have much time for studying. I prayed every day for the companionship of Holy Ghost. I needed guidance to help me make the most of my time. I needed assistance understanding the material as well as remembering it later during exams.
One day during class, a professor was writing sets of advanced equations on the whiteboard to illustrate a point. These complex equations didn’t relate to that class, but he wanted to talk about them briefly. After a few minutes the professor erased the board.
My next class was computer science, and we had an exam that day. Those exact equations from the board in my previous class were on the test! What’s truly remarkable is that we had never studied these before in our computer science class. All that memory came back to me from the other class I had attended, and I was able to answer the problem.
When the computer science professor graded the tests, he was so sure nobody answered that specific problem correctly that he automatically marked it wrong for every student. But when I got my paper back, I showed him that the answer I wrote on the paper was correct. It was wonderful.
The Holy Ghost helped me make the most of all my studying opportunities throughout college. I was able to achieve high grades and earn scholarships, which helped me pay for school.

One day I was playing with two friends. One of them was not a member of the Church. He kept saying the Lord’s name in vain. It made me uncomfortable, but I was afraid to tell him to stop. I thought he might just laugh at me. But I kept having a bad feeling, and finally my friend and I told him we couldn’t play with him if he said that word. He promised that he would try not to say it around us.Tanner Peterson, age 11