Gospel Story Finder

After the mission, all of my pre-mission life goals seemed unattainable with my new health condition. But with time I realized that there were goals I could accomplish while lying down. I called goals such as reading Jesus the Christ “horizontal goals” and worked on them daily.

In this picture, I’m reading a story to my brother. I like reading a lot! I am in the third grade. I also like mathematics and drawing. One of my classmates is not a member of the Church, but I taught her about the Word of Wisdom and told her to drink milk instead of coffee or tea. I also taught her how to pray to Heavenly Father, since she didn’t know. I also invited her to family home evening at my house.

In eighth grade I was in a book club. Each month we met to discuss a book, and at the end of the year we had a competition to see whose team knew the most about each book. One rule we always upheld was to read only clean books.
One month, when I started reading the next book, I felt like it wasn’t clean. But I needed to read it if I wanted my team to win the competition. I couldn’t let them down. A few chapters later, the book got worse. Finally, I put it down. I knew that I couldn’t read it—my spiritual cleanliness was worth more than winning a competition.
But I was so worried about telling my team. The night before our club’s meeting, I prayed to Heavenly Father to help me have courage to face them.
The next day I was really worried. I sat down with my team. Once the meeting started, I was about to explain to everyone that I couldn’t read the book. But before I could, the leader got up and apologized. She explained that she hadn’t read the book before putting it on our booklist and didn’t realize what was in it. She said she would take it off the list. When I got home, I thanked Heavenly Father.
I know that when we uphold our standards, the Lord watches over us. He doesn’t always take care of the situation as He did for me, but He will always give us the courage to make good decisions.
Ashleigh A., Utah, USA

I know how real the hooks of mortality can be. One Sunday, as a new convert, I was teaching a priesthood class when an unsettling conversation arose. I struggled to finish my lesson. I took offense and felt that I was the victim. Without saying a word, I headed for the exit with the idea that I would not return to church for a while.
At that very moment, a concerned priesthood holder stood in front of me. He lovingly invited me to focus on Christ and not on the situation we had experienced in class. As I looked back on the experience with him, he shared with me that he heard a voice tell him, “Go after him; he is important to me.”

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the excellent articles contained within this magnificent magazine. Somehow the articles seem to jump out and speak to me directly. Since joining the Church three and a half years ago, I’ve always looked forward to reading the monthly editions wherever I could get my hands on a copy. Since coming to serve the Lord in Japan, I haven’t always found it easy to find a New Era hanging around, so enclosed is a check for my subscription. Thank you, New Era, for helping to strengthen my testimony!
Elder Kerry B. RichardsonJapan Sendai Mission

Sister Hinckley and I were recently involved in a regional conference in Rexburg, Idaho. We had not been to Yellowstone National Park for many years. We decided to drive to the conference and on Monday return home by way of Yellowstone.

In 1988, terrible forest fires raged there. Each day the news media brought us graphic reports of the intensity of the fires as they raced over thousands of acres, destroying millions of trees. The flames finally burned out, and people literally mourned over the desolate picture of countless lodgepole pines, their tops burned and the straight, scorched trunks standing like solemn grave markers in a crowded cemetery.

But when we visited there about a month ago, we saw something of captivating interest. The dead pines still stood, but between the burned trees new seedlings have sprung from the ground, millions of them.

Evidently when fire hit the treetops, the pinecones exploded, scattering seed to the ground. There is a new generation of trees now, young and beautiful and filled with promise. The old trees eventually will fall, and the new ones will grow tall to create a forest of great beauty and usefulness.

As we drove through the park, I thought of the wonders of nature, of the rhythm of our lives. We grow old, and I am among those who have done so. Our vitality and our powers slacken. But a new generation is at our feet. These are children. These too are sons and daughters of God whose time has come to take their place on earth. They are like the new growth in the park—young, tender, sensitive, beautiful, and full of promise.

When I was a young missionary serving in Hong Kong, there was a part of the city that had many apartment buildings with security guards. It was very difficult to get permission from the guards to go inside those buildings to tract. We often tried but usually failed.
But one afternoon, my companion and I felt we should go to that part of the city. During the bus trip there, we saw an older woman pushing a wooden cart up a steep hill. She seemed heavy laden, so we determined to help her. We got off at the next stop and ran back to help the woman. Her load was so heavy that it took two young missionaries 15 minutes to push it to the top of the hill.
We didn’t realize that anyone had seen us helping the woman. But some of the security guards must have been watching, because later that day, when we walked into their buildings, they simply let us pass. That afternoon we had much success—we found three new investigators, and one of them was later baptized.
Through following the Lord’s example of obedience and charity, we were greatly blessed. I’m so grateful for a perfect example to follow.

It was said of the great General Robert E. Lee that if he was early trained in the way he should go, his mother trained him. If he was “always good” as his father wrote of him, she labored to keep him so. If his principles were sound and his life a success, to her, more than to any other, should the praise be given. A family member wrote of him:
“As Robert grew in years he grew in grace; he was like the young tree whose roots firmly imbedded in the earth, hold it straight from the hour it was first planted till it develops into majestic proportions. With the fostering care of such a mother the son must go straight, for she had planted him in the soil of truth, morality, and religion, so that his boyhood was marked by everything that produces nobility of character in manhood.” (Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, New York: New York University Society, 1905, pp. 20–22.)

These qualities of personal independence and a determined seeking for spiritual guidance were to characterize John Taylor’s entire life. At the age of 15, he became an apprentice to a carpenter in the town of Penrith, some 30 miles north of Milnthorpe. Here he continued to pray and here he was converted to the Methodist Church. He was a zealous convert and spent much of his time studying the Bible and encouraging others in the practice of his new faith. One year after joining the church, he became an exhorter, a sort of local preacher who assisted the minister in visiting the outlying circuits and working with those in need of spiritual guidance.
It was while on one of these circuits that young John received what he later recognized as a revelation that would profoundly affect his life. As he walked toward his destination, he turned to a companion and said, “I have a strong impression on my mind that I have to go to America to preach the gospel” (B. H. Roberts, Life of John Taylor, p. 28). This impression never left him and played an important part in his later decision to join his family in Canada in 1832. It was there in the city of Toronto that he was contacted by Elder Parley P. Pratt. Elder Pratt was instrumental in converting John Taylor and most of the Methodist study group John had formed in the city. When John joined the body of the Church in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1837, the revelation received on that country lane in northern England was fulfilled, for he was to spend the remainder of his life preaching the gospel, both in America and abroad.

Keoni Barney, 16, is a recent Church convert in the Mount Vernon Stake. “All the kids were just so nice,” he says. He found out about the Church when he moved in with his aunt and uncle and started dancing with the youth at their practices. He says his friends’ examples helped him gain a testimony. “I’ve never seen so much energy out of a group of youth in my entire life,” Keoni laughs. He says he can’t keep up with them, but maybe it’s the over-sized collar on his disco outfit that’s holding him back, he jokes. “I love having the opportunity to be in the dance festival.”

Brother William and Sister Johanna Buckley are converts to the Church and live on the island of Aruba. Years ago, when they were investigating the Church, they became friends with Sister Ana St. Cyr and her four-year-old grandson, Ralph, who attended the Oranjestad, Aruba branch. These two were the only members of the Church in their family and the only Haitian members of the branch. As the Buckleys integrated into the branch they found special joy in watching young Ralph’s testimony and spirituality develop.
It was apparent that Sister St. Cyr and little Ralph had allowed those everlasting waters to spring up within them.

Karissa Winterton’s great-great-grandfather William Winterton built her family’s farmhouse in the 1860s, but now it is no longer part of a farm. Grandma and Grandpa Winterton sold their dairy farm so that they could serve a full-time mission in Rochester, New York.

Work on the temple continued even as the Saints began to leave. Finally, on 30 April 1846, a special nighttime dedicatory service was held for the finished building. The following day a public service was held in which Orson Hyde, one of the Apostles, dedicated the building to the Lord. By the end of the year, however, most of the Saints were gone and the building stood unused.

As our plans progressed, however, I began to become excited about the prospect of aiding the elderly. I recalled the verse in James 1:27, which reads: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.” The previous year at Christmastime my Laurel class had baked cookies for all the widows in the ward. Sister Kirkham, a 90-year-old woman who walked with two canes, had wept when we came to her door and, when we were leaving, thanked us again and again for our visit. We all felt good afterwards. That’s what the gospel is all about, I thought as I anticipated the upcoming service project. The only thorn in my plans was Earl. He irritated me.

Two flowering nectarine trees, the first of the kind in Ukiah, have been dedicated to Bruce at his high school, along with a plaque in his memory. “The trees here will grow and be strong, just as Bruce was strong,” said his friend Mary Morris.

As a young man I read three books that also had quite an influence on my life. The first was one of Wilford Woodruff’s doctrinal works. I think that my testimony and my great love for the prophets started with reading that book. As I read, the Spirit bore witness to me of the truthfulness of the doctrine.
The second book was by William H. Danforth and was called I Dare You. It discussed these four phases of life: social, educational, spiritual, and intellectual. The third was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. These books gave me a desire to read, and since then I have been an avid reader.

The first two Icelanders were baptized in Denmark in 1851. They soon returned to Iceland, and in 1853 the first branch was organized. Today there are nearly 300 members in Iceland and two branches, one in Reykjavík and one in Akureyri. The nearest temple is in London, England, 1,177 miles (1,894 km) from Reykjavík.

Disassembled and packed separately in over 200 packing cases, the gigantic statute, Liberty Enlightening the World, sailed for the United States aboard the French ship Isère in the spring of 1885. The statue was a gift symbolizing liberty from the people of France to their longtime friends in America. The idea for the Statue of Liberty, as it came to be known, began with a French historian, Édouard de Laboulaye. He envisioned the statue as a fitting memorial to the friendship between the two liberty-loving countries.
The sculptor who designed and built the Statue of Liberty and helped raise some of the money for its construction was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. His original model of the statue was only forty-nine inches high, and portrayed the figure of a mighty woman in a flowing robe walking with a torch held high in her right hand, a crown on her head, a broken shackle at her feet (symbolizing the overthrowing of tyranny), and a book cradled in her left arm with the inscription July 4, 1776.
But when the packing cases delivered to America by the French ship were uncrated and the full-size statue assembled from the more than 300 thin molded copper sheets, it stood 151 feet high. The inner structure to support the copper-clad lady was built by another Frenchman, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who designed the world-famous 984-foot Eiffel Tower for the Paris Exposition of 1889.
The sculptor Bartholdi suggested that the statue be erected on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor, where a base or pedestal even higher than the statue was set within the walls of old Fort Wood.
Today, an elevator lifts visitors up through the inside of the monument’s base, and a double circular stairway winds on up to the crown where viewers can gaze many miles out to sea. The brilliantly lighted torch, once reached by a ladder, shines as a beacon to those who love liberty everywhere. And a plaque inside the pedestal is inscribed with a poem by Emma Lazarus:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Like my friends in Rexburg, one nonmember couple in Florida focused on helping the community rather than laboring on their own property. When some Latter-day Saint neighbors offered help with the two large trees blocking their driveway, the couple explained that they had been overwhelmed and so had turned to helping others, having faith that the Lord would provide the aid they needed at their own home. The husband then shared that before our Church members arrived with offers of assistance, the couple had been praying. They had received an answer that help would come. It came within hours of that assurance.

An example of true love and inspired teaching was found in the life of the late James Collier, who had through his personal efforts reactivated a large number of brethren in Bountiful, Utah. I was invited by Brother Collier to address those who had now been ordained elders and who, with their wives and families, had been to the Salt Lake Temple to receive those eternal covenants and blessings for which they had so earnestly strived.

At the banquet honoring this achievement, I could see and I could feel the love that Jim had for those whom he had taught and rescued and the love they had for him. Unfortunately, Jim Collier at that time was afflicted with a terminal illness and had to persuade the doctors to allow him to leave the hospital to attend this final night of recognition.

As Jim stood at the pulpit, a large smile came over his face. With emotion he expressed his love to the group. There wasn’t a dry eye to be found. Brother Collier quipped, “Everyone wants to go to the celestial kingdom, but no one wants to die to get there.” Then, lowering his voice, Jim continued, “I’m prepared to go, and I will be there waiting on the other side to greet each of you, my beloved friends.”

Jim returned to the hospital. His funeral service was held just a short time later.