Gospel Story Finder

“Diane, it’s time to pick up your toys,” called Mother. “Tomorrow is Sunday, and I want your room to be as neat and clean as the rest of the house.” Diane sighed and sat in the middle of her cluttered room to start doing what Mother had asked. She wondered why it was more fun to get the toys and books out to play with than to put them away. After putting three books back on the shelf, Diane picked up two little cars and was soon playing with them. She stacked up the wood blocks to create a big garage. How much fun she was having when Mother appeared in the doorway!
“Diane! You haven’t picked up a single toy in all this time.”
“But look at the neat garage I just built, Mom,” she said, pointing to her project.
“Every Saturday we have this problem of you not putting your toys away. You either disappear when the job must be done, or you start playing with them.”
Diane looked at the floor and said, “I wish that they’d just disappear for Sunday and come back the next day.”
“I think that that’s a good idea,” Mother said thoughtfully. “The disappear part, anyway,” she added. “If there are any toys or books that haven’t been picked up by the time I come back to vacuum your room, they will disappear into my safekeeping. But they won’t come back on Monday! If I have to pick them up, I will keep them.”
Diane thought about this and decided to pick up several of her favorite books and toys. A big beach ball, a stuffed dog, other small toys, and the rest of her dolls, cars, and books, were left on the floor.
Mother returned later and sent Diane outside to play while she cleaned. When Diane returned, the room looked neat and clean. All the toys and books on the floor had disappeared.
Diane didn’t think about the vanished toys until Timmy, the boy next door, came on Tuesday and they wanted to play with the beach ball and Diane couldn’t find it. They had to play with some of her blocks, instead.
On Saturday Diane left more toys on the floor, and they disappeared. The next week she really missed her favorite boat when Timmy came over to play in the wading pool with his. Diane’s had disappeared with other toys that she hadn’t put away. With big tears rolling down her cheeks, she turned to her mother. “Mom,” she cried, “I want my boat back. Can’t I have it?”
“I warned you that if you didn’t take better care of your toys, they would vanish,” Mom said gently as she lifted Diane onto her lap and comforted her.
“But I want them, Mom. Please may I have them back? I’ll take care of them and put them away. Honest.”
Mother kissed Diane’s cheek and thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Every Saturday when you’ve cleaned up your room, you may choose one of the hidden toys. That way you can earn them back, and maybe you will take better care of them. If you think that that will work, I’ll let you have your little boat now.”
Diane smiled and nodded.
On Saturday Diane couldn’t wait to get her toys put away so that she could choose one of the toys that had disappeared. And each week when she picked one out, it seemed like an old friend coming back to her.

Before coming to Hawaii 43 years ago, I was asked a tough question; a question that I have thought about for many years.
“What will be your major field of study?”
The person who asked the question really didn’t know me well. His name was Samiu, - my second to the oldest brother. I must admit that this brother was strict and bossy; he enjoyed being that way and we all feared him.
Being the youngest in the family, he and I were always on the opposite end of things. He didn’t seem to agree with me on anything. When he asked me the question, I cringed since I had a premonition of what his reaction would be.
I told him that I wanted to major in “art”. And as predicted, he countered and said, “You don’t have to go to America to study art. You can do that in our backyard.” I smiled without saying a word.
Brothers and sisters, I returned to Tonga, in 1983 from BYU Graduate School, not only for the dedication of the Tongan Temple, but to unveil this sculpture of the Tongan king. I wanted to confirm to my brother, Samiu, that the answer I gave him ten years earlier was based on a prompting I had while on my mission. It was my dream to be a sculptor.
You are seeing the end results of that dream; however, the process didn’t come easy. Creating this sculpture of the Tongan king while I was in graduate school at BYU had its setbacks. I used 2-inch pipes for the armature, and I heated them with a torch to bend the pipes. This was done before applying the 3000 pounds of clay. I spent months working on the statue, based on pictures that had been sent for the project. One morning I went into the sculpture studio and found the 11-foot statue collapsed onto the floor. Obviously, the heating of the pipes weakened the metal and the armature was not strong enough to support a sculpture that big.
My professor asked me what I was going to do, and I simply told him that I was going to start over again. Everyone thought that I was going to give up. Within two weeks the whole sculpture was up again.

This reminds me of another story about a certain town where an electric generator failed, throwing the inhabitants into darkness. Mechanics and engineers could not figure out what was wrong. They called an aged professor from the university who looked at the generator for a while, asked for a mallet, and tapped on the generator. Suddenly there was electricity again. He was asked to send his bill. The bill amounted to $1,000.07. The president of the company asked him to itemize the bill. The professor answered: “Tapping, $.07; knowing where to tap, $1,000.00.”
Knowing where to tap requires that we know that we belong to a church that is the true Church of Jesus Christ and that we know our Heavenly Father. Do you really understand the mechanism of the Church? Do you understand that there is only one way and that the world is not giving you that way—this art of living?

During my junior year of high school, the bishopric called a new Sunday School teacher for my class. It was wonderful because this new teacher was very entertaining. At that time I didn’t go to Sunday School regularly. Before Brother Dahl was called, I hardly went at all.
One Sunday, I was walking down the hall to throw away my little brother’s leftover Cheerios from sacrament meeting and head for the bathroom to spend Sunday School time with my friends. On my way, Brother Dahl greeted me. Shaking my hand he said, “How are you doing, Sister Whitworth?” I just smiled, pushed open the garbage can, and dropped the bag in. “I hope you are coming to Sunday School today. The lesson is one of my favorites.”
“Brother Dahl, all the lessons are your favorites.” He smiled and left for class, leaving me with a weird feeling that he knew I had not planned on going to class that day. I am always one to do exactly the opposite of what everyone thinks I will do, so I went to the bathroom and casually said, “Come on, Kristina, let’s go to Sunday School.” Kristina always went to Sunday School, but I could see the surprise on her face when I was the one who suggested it.
As we entered the class, Brother Dahl asked, “Annie, what would you like for Christmas this year?”
“Money,” I said. Everyone giggled, even Brother Dahl. Brother Dahl asked everyone in the class the same question. Some wanted a mountain bike, others a stereo, and others didn’t really care as long as they got something.
Brother Dahl said, “Every year about this time I start wondering if my wife knows what I want for Christmas. I hope this year she gets me a new tennis racket and shirt, because my old ones are getting a little worn out.” Everyone knew he was joking because he was grinning.
“But that is not what Christmas is all about,” he said in a voice that changed the tone of the lesson. He started handing out paper and pencils. “At Christmastime we should be in the spirit of giving, but we should also remember what Christmas really is. On this paper I want you to write a letter to Jesus, thanking Him for all He has given you. And tell Him what present you will give Him.”
This was not an easy assignment for me. At first, I wrote down that I would give Him all of my money so He could build temples and churches, but I realized that the money really wasn’t mine anyway; it was His.
When class ended I still hadn’t thought of anything I could give Jesus that He had not already given me. I had found someone who truly had it all, and what kind of a present can you get the person who gave you everything?
That afternoon I had to set the table for Sunday dinner. While I was matching up knives with spoons, I tried to think of a really good present, but I still couldn’t think of anything. As we ate dinner, we talked about the lessons we learned at church. No one had any suggestions for what I should give Jesus for Christmas. But when my family read scriptures that night, I found my answer.
We were taking turns reading in Matthew. When I started reading, I wasn’t paying attention until I read Matthew 25:40: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Now I realized the Savior had already told us what the best present is. I only needed to read His words for myself to understand.

Victor Vallecillo is a co-worker of Pedro Aviles, president of the Managua Nicaragua Stake. When Victor was seeking religious truth, President Aviles gave him a Book of Mormon. Brother Vallecillo feels so joyful about the gospel that since his baptism in November 2004 he has adopted the habit of inviting friends to hear the gospel, and he often goes out with missionaries to teach. His wife and two children have the spirit of missionary work too. One night, Brother Vallecillo recalls, his teenage son was studying a map of Nicaragua, looking at the northern part of the country where Brother Vallecillo grew up. “Papa,” his son said, pointing to places on the map, “the gospel is not here, and it is not here, and it is not here.” How soon, he wondered, would missionaries be able to go to those places so that others could share in the blessings of the gospel?

What are the blessings of a mission? “Can ye tell?” (Alma 26:2).
Maybe Brother and Sister William Keith Clark can. “Dear President Featherstone,” they wrote, “we were happy to receive your letter. I’m sure we love you already.” (Bless them, they didn’t even know me, and yet they could love me.) They continued: “We are not too young anymore. William Keith Clark is eighty-one years old. He has been a bishop’s counselor, a bishop, and a patriarch for thirty-one years. I, Ellen Clark, am seventy-six years of age. I have been a music director and a teacher in all the organizations of the Church, ward and stake. We have had an abundant life and love to teach the gospel. We have ten children, all married in the temple and working in the Church. We had our reunion recently—fifty-six grandchildren and twenty-six great-grandchildren! This is four missions for my husband and three for me. Our happiest moments are teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Every missionary is a story of love and sacrifice. I love them so much. Their great devotion to the cause, their love for the Lord, and their willingness to serve him, whose work this is, will bless their lives and their posterity forever.

Raquel “Liriel” Domiciano was about to sing in front of millions of people. Was she worried about messing up? A little. Was she worried about what to wear? Naturally. But what worried her most?

Only 19 at the time, Liriel, a member of the Church for five years, wanted to stand as a witness “of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” (Mosiah 18:9).

Liriel was about to perform in Brazil’s largest televised talent competition, the Raul Gil Amateur Show. She had been told she couldn’t say anything about her religion. But she knew that many of Brazil’s Latter-day Saints would be watching, and she wanted everyone to know she wasn’t ashamed of the gospel. After praying in her room before her first performance, she looked up and saw her Young Women medallion. It was the answer she had been looking for.

Liriel wore her medallion during every level of the competition. Eventually she and her partner, tenor Rinaldo Viana, won the contest, signed a recording contract, and watched as their first CD became the second-highest best-seller in Brazil’s history, with more than one million copies sold.

Wearing the medallion as she performed was her way of letting people know she was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and willing to stand as a witness, even in front of millions.

I began to urge my family to come with me to sacrament meeting. I told them I wanted us to be an eternal family. To encourage them, I would wash everyone’s church clothes on Saturday night so that the excuse “I don’t have anything to wear” was no longer an option. I told them that I had a testimony of the gospel and that I wanted to share it with them. Most important, I prayed. I prayed that my family could know the Spirit the way I did. I wanted them to go to church so that we could someday be sealed in the temple.
It started slowly and took some time, but one warm August morning, my prayers were answered as we were sealed in the Portland Oregon Temple. I felt the Spirit stronger at that moment than ever before. I knew my family could be together forever. To this day I cannot thank my Heavenly Father enough for this wonderful blessing.

Once I was awakened by a call from an anxious mother. Her premature child was not expected to survive the night. She asked for a priesthood blessing. As I approached the suffering child, the mother stopped me, looked into my eyes, and asked, “Are you worthy to bless my child?” That was an appropriate question. One never feels completely worthy, but we must do our best to be so. There came a strong prompting to bless the child to recover. The worthy mother continued professional treatment and exercised her faith. The Lord responded with the additional blessing needed. And the child recovered.

We turned down a road that led to a group of cottages on the shore of a slow-moving river. It was a clear, warm day in late fall. The leaves on the trees had turned bright yellow and gold colors. It was my first day of door contacting as a missionary.
“Your door,” Elder Higgins said, smiling.
It was a small cottage near the edge of the water. Water sports equipment leaned against the side of the house. I cleared my throat and knocked firmly.
“I’m Elder Roberts and this is Elder Higgins. We have a message about the Savior we’d like to share with you,” I rehearsed.
The inside door opened, and behind the screen door stood a very pretty girl, somewhere between 17 and 20 years old, with blue eyes, long golden hair, wearing a swimsuit. The words, the carefully practiced lines I’d repeated a thousand times on the plane, at the mission home, in our apartment, and on the three-mile walk to this cottage, completely left my mind.
“Awk,” was all that came out when I opened my mouth.
Elder Higgins looked at me grinning and then turned to the girl.
“We’re ministers in the area, and we have a message about Jesus Christ we’d like to share with you and your family.” He gave her a Christ in America pamphlet and made an appointment to meet her family.
Elder Higgins had studied musical theater in college before his mission. My first day in the area had been a preparation day and while we were washing our clothes, Elder Higgins sang popular songs to the ladies in the laundromat. They loved it. He made five appointments while our clothes were drying. He sometimes sang to people at doors. I was just a little more reserved with people—shy and scared describe my feelings more closely.
“I’ll take the next couple of doors,” Elder Higgins said dryly. He made two more appointments and serenaded another woman.
“Want to try again?” he asked as we approached a group of houses next to a church.
I knocked on the door and stood back waiting. A tall man wearing a clerical collar opened the door and smiled at us.
“What can I do for you boys?” he said with a very proper British accent. He obviously knew who we were.
I glanced at the postbox as I swallowed and stepped back. “The Reverend Richard Cutts, Ph. D.,” it said.
What could I say to this man? How could I challenge what he believed? I whispered a quick prayer. I could see Elder Higgins getting ready to jump in.
It’s funny how much can go through your mind in a few seconds. I thought of my first Primary teacher, Oma Santos, telling the story of Moses and the burning bush; my Sunday School teacher, Cloe Davis, explaining the importance of Joseph Smith’s first vision; Velda Dalton teaching about the Sermon on the Mount; and my Uncle Elton talking about the restoration of the priesthood in deacons class. I grew up in a small town in southern Utah. None of my teachers had Ph.D. behind their name. None of them read Greek or Latin as Reverend Cutts most likely did. But it didn’t matter. What they knew was much more important.
“I’m Elder Roberts,” I said feeling, for the first time, the strength and importance of what I’d been taught, what I was here to teach. “This is Elder Higgins, and we’d like to tell you about the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The expression on Reverend Cutts’s face changed. He looked a little surprised. “Come in,” he said, smiling.

In the United States Senate today, there are six members of the LDS faith. That’s a pretty good percentage given that we represent less than one percent of the country’s population. I was sworn in as a new senator in January of 2013. As you know, a term in the Senate is six years (which, by the way, is one of the founding fathers’ greatest achievements). I served 12 years, or six terms, in the House, and every other January, every member of the House of Representatives stands in unison, pledging to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

In the U.S. Senate, only one-third of the body is sworn in every two years, which allows for a more personal swearing in ceremony. Four senators at a time are escorted to the well of the Senate chamber, where the Vice President of the United States, who also serves as President of the Senate, reads the oath of office and “swears you in.” We were invited to bring our own family bibles to hold in our left hand as our right arm is raised as this rite is performed.

I, of course, brought a leather-bound quad, with the Standard Works listed on the cover. I wondered what someone in the chamber or somebody watching C-SPAN might think if they saw it, but it passed without notice. I returned to my seat in the Senate chamber and as the next group of four newly-elected Senators passed toward the well, one stopped and said, “Senator Flake, I forgot my bible, can I borrow yours?” “Sure.” I said, wondering how long it would take before he looked down to realize that he was holding something a bit heavier than just the King James Version of the Bible.

I breathed a sigh of relief when he returned to my desk without incident, handing the book back, thanking me. I looked across the well of the Senate and saw the majority leader, Harry Reid, a member of our faith, wearing a big smile. He walked over and asked, “Brother Flake, when are you going to inform that good senator that he just swore his oath on the Book of Mormon?” I said, “I think I’ll see how he votes for awhile.”

Members who follow President Hunter’s counsel sometimes find temple doors open to them in surprising ways. One such member was Kuteka Kamulete of Zaire. Although he lived thousands of kilometers from the nearest temple, President Hunter’s words touched his heart. He met with his branch president and received a recommend. Later, through an opportunity at work to travel to North Korea, in unexpected and unusual ways he was able to arrange a stopover in Switzerland and attend the Swiss Temple.
He later wrote: “How humble and grateful I felt! … I received my endowment that day, and it has been the greatest gift in my life” (“From Zaire to the Lord’s House,” Liahona, August 1997, 9).

I can remember in my high school in Portland, Oregon, two contrasting young people. One was a young man named Steve Troy. Steve as a freshman was six foot six, weighed 220 pounds. He was tall, had dark, curly hair, and was a marvelous athlete. In the course of his high school days, he was all-state in football, baseball, and basketball. I guess everybody would like to be a Steve Troy in high school. Then there was Robert Calderwood. Robert was five foot two, wore glasses, carried his briefcase to school, got straight A’s, and all of the other kids asked him for help with their homework. Do you have any Robert Calderwoods in your school?
Now it is interesting to see what happened to those two young men some years later. Both of them served in the navy. Steve Troy came back and, still a fine person, wound up working in a small shop owned by his father. The interesting thing is to see what happened to Robert Calderwood, the ugly duckling, who emerged some time later, graduated from college, and became a banker. The last I heard he was vice-president of one of the large banks in Portland and was married and had a fine family; he is a person who truly has emerged, who didn’t give up because he had been the ugly duckling at Franklin High School.

One such young man who became a casualty of this conflict was a respected husband and community member. Someone with whom he worked brought lurid bits of pornography and passed them around the office. At first it was treated as a joke, and those who viewed them kidded each other about such things of the world. This young man, however, mainly out of curiosity, thought he should study them carefully in case he might have occasion to help others combat such evils of the world. As he looked at the items more and more frequently, he was overcome by a spirit of the adversary that he did not recognize. Soon he sought more pornographic materials from his fellow employee, and the two of them began to spend more time discussing these evil things.

Still thinking he was becoming enlightened as to the ways of the world so that he could be a stronger influence for good among his friends, this young man became trapped by his own ignorance of the enemy’s ways. His associate convinced him that he should experiment with the actions portrayed in the materials he was viewing. With his spiritual sensitivity dulled, he agreed, and he approached his wife with the idea. She was surprised and shocked by his suggestions, and when he continued his insensitive pleas, she finally refused to have anything to do with him. In his distorted condition he sought gratification elsewhere, and in the end he lost her, his family, and his self-respect.

I once knew a man who attained a high position in a company. Each day he would go to his office with a briefcase. One day his wife asked him, “Why do you carry that briefcase to work each day?”
He replied, “The executive vice-president is a very important person, and the paperwork he manages is also important. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” she said. But then she asked, “How many times do you open the briefcase and use the papers?”
“The truth is, very few times,” he responded.
And she replied, “If the briefcase gives you a feeling of importance, wouldn’t it be easier just to carry an empty one?”
While he was thinking about that, she added one more thought.
“But if you carry it only for status, let me remind you that by the time you leave the office, the only person who sees you is the custodian.”

It was unlike any other commencement or baccalaureate exercise I had ever attended or participated in myself. It was held one week ago, last Thursday, on the twenty-third of May. There were forty-four graduates, all male. They did not have traditional academic robes or caps or gowns. Their attire, to a man, was light blue denim shirts and dark blue denim trousers. The ceremony was not held in a fieldhouse or a stadium or even a lovely auditorium. The exercise was held in a modest interdenominational chapel at the Utah state prison. The graduating class consisted of forty-four men who had successfully completed a year’s course of Bible study sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but open to all who cared to come and participate. These forty-four represented more than a dozen different religions, and, of course, many of them had no formal religious affiliation at all. At this very moment a lot of images and impressions are coming back to my mind, and I hope I can catch them long enough to share some of them with you.

One is of the delightful, tall, cordial, and warm inmate who conducted the exercises. He immediately warmed the group to the evening. About half were pleasantly and appropriately called “outsiders.” He said he wanted the outsiders particularly to appreciate that he was in prison even though he had hired one of the biggest criminal lawyers in America: “It’s only after I was through with the trial that I fully understood that designation. What it means to be a criminal lawyer is that he thought he was a lawyer and I think he’s a criminal.”

I remember the prayers. The opening prayer was given by a young man, but he seemed like a boy and looked like a boy and I think had not yet begun to shave. He gave there the first verbal and public prayer, according to the chaplain, that he’d ever given in his life. He was frightened to death, but it was a prayer of the heart, and you would need to have been there and to have heard it to appreciate fully what that might have meant. He was in the prison for ten years to life on an armed robbery charge. The closing prayer was given by a man who was, I suppose, forty-five or fifty years old—just a pleasant, warm, slightly chubby man who looked as if he should have been somebody’s uncle and undoubtedly was. He was in for a life term on second-degree murder.

The choir sang, among other numbers, the Hammerstein-Romberg song “Stouthearted Men.” If you could have seen the looks on their faces and felt the feeling in their voices, you would have known something about stouthearted men that you’d never understood before. I don’t think any two of them crossed paths on the same note at any given moment during the rendition. But it was a choir of angels. It really was. When they sang, “Give me some men who are stouthearted men, who will fight for the rights they adore. Give me ten men who are stouthearted men, and I’ll soon give you ten thousand more,” they knew something about rights that had been adored and lost, that were adored all the more because they had been lost, and that perhaps were desired more greatly because someday they might return.

I remember just a couple of other impressions. A young man who was now on the outside had come back to get his certificate and to encourage his colleagues. He said something that I wrote down. I’ll call him Howard, though that isn’t really his name. He looked out to his colleagues and said, “Guys, the perspective in prison is really bad. It really looks better on the outside. Try to remember that.” Then he turned to the outsiders, to the friends and families who had come in, and said, “You people are a light in a dark place. If it were not for love like yours, we would not be able to get from where we are to where we need to be.”

He was followed extemporaneously by another delightful young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty years of age. He had been in and out very quickly—I think for less than eight months on good behavior—and talked about what it was like to be back out, to be keeping a job, dating girls, going to church, and trying to live a moral and law-abiding life. He turned to friend and stranger alike and said, “Please understand that those of us at the halfway house need faith and prayers, too. We have reentered a world of temptation.”

I would also like to mention the concluding comment of the inmate who conducted the service. He said, when it was all over, with some emotion in his voice and a little mist in his eyes, “This is the most auspicious occasion of our year. It is better than Christmas. It’s better than Thanksgiving. It’s even better than Mother’s Day. It’s better because we’re enlightened, and that’s as close as we come to being free.”

Then the gates clanged behind my wife and me. That night we went home, and I confess I couldn’t sleep. Pat fell asleep, it was late, and our children were already asleep, but I couldn’t sleep. That experience haunted me and does yet at this pulpit. That’s why I choose to speak to you tonight as I do. I had in the early hours of that morning, and have had somewhat since, feelings and thoughts and a response to bondage and freedom and their relationship to enlightenment and love in a way that I confess I have never had before—even though I’ve studied those principles and read the doctrines and thought I had a pretty good understanding of what all of them might mean.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my family was not affiliated with any religious group, nor were many of my friends. It had never really occurred to me that there was a God. My Sundays were spent going shopping or doing homework. I was content believing that when I died, my body would turn to soil and I would cease to exist.
When I was 14, my family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. All of a sudden, I was with a community that had a completely different outlook on the world. At first I ridiculed them. I thought it was outrageous that my friends politely turned down my invitations to go to the movies on Sundays. I thought they were crazy for wasting a precious weekend day attending a three-hour church session. What could possibly be so fascinating at church that would make missing out on sleeping in worth it? How did my classmates survive without coffee the night before a big project was due? Why did they so willingly turn over 10 percent of their earnings to their church?
After I overcame my initial culture shock, I noticed something interesting. Despite their different ways, these LDS people were incredibly happy. In general they were friendly and had a fresh, enthusiastic outlook on life. Many of my friends were preparing to give two years of their lives to teaching people about their faith. This sparked my curiosity. Never before had I seen a religion in which the members were so excited about their faith, and so willing to invest much of their time and energy helping others. As far as I could see, there was no other motive for members to reach out to people except to bring happiness to those around them. So, I became an investigator.
When I told my friends I was interested in finding out more about the Church, they were overjoyed and very supportive. At first I had many questions about the Church and was skeptical about what it had to offer me. I was so intimidated by some of the details of Mormon culture that I failed to see the most important concepts. I felt awkward and embarrassed because I had to ask what stake conference was and what “bearing your testimony” meant. It wasn’t until I became familiar with the terminology and accustomed to the traditions that I started to seek answers to the truly important questions about the gospel.
Oftentimes, when I asked someone a question about the Church, such as “How can I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior?” the answer was, “Pray about it.” For someone who wasn’t sure that there was a God to pray to in the first place, this wasn’t a very helpful answer. When I asked about the history of the Nephites and the Lamanites, most people responded with, “Read about it in the Book of Mormon.” This wasn’t very helpful either, as I had a tendency to stumble over the language of the scriptures, which was very new to me.
However, the more I read my scriptures and the more I attended church, the stronger the urge became to pray about the decisions I was making and the church I was investigating. I began praying for a better understanding of the Church. I asked to receive an answer about whether this was the true Church. To my great surprise, I received an answer. It came in response to my seeking—a quiet, peaceful assurance from the Holy Ghost that what I was reading and praying about was true.
The Book of Mormon, which had been so difficult for me to understand, began to make more sense. The teachings of the prophet and other Church leaders touched my heart and took on new meaning. Waking up to spend three hours at church on Sunday morning no longer seemed like a great sacrifice. I knew that this was the true Church and that I was to join it.
A wonderful friend and her family generously offered to host missionary discussions at their home every week. A pair of kind, dedicated missionaries taught me and helped clear up questions I still had. I was fortunate to have a tremendous amount of support in learning the gospel. Several weeks after I started the missionary discussions I was ready to be baptized. Though my parents were not members of the Church and did not have an interest in joining, they were happy for me and supportive of my decision. My best friend baptized me and confirmed me. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
Even after I joined the Church and began preparing to obtain a temple recommend, I often struggled with some of the lifestyle changes I had made. I sorely missed cold ice tea on hot summer days. I sometimes felt embarrassed when I had to explain to friends who weren’t members that I didn’t want to see an R-rated movie with them.
However, when I remembered the eternal happiness I would receive if I kept the covenants I had made at my baptism and if I listened to the advice of Church leaders, those sacrifices felt more like blessings. I know that, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we can set a shining example to our communities. The help and support of loving Church members helped me make the decision to join the Church. It is my hope that the example of Latter-day Saints will continue to be a positive influence on the world and that many will come to know of this Church as the true Church of Jesus Christ.

Thirteen-year-old Henry Sanderson, on his way from Connecticut to Nauvoo, Illinois, was not sure if he was riding a railroad train or a boat on wheels.
This was September 1842, and Pennsylvania’s forests were becoming dotted with the reds and golds of autumn. To cross the Allegheny Mountains, Henry boarded a train with his parents and two younger sisters. It had a steam engine like a normal train, but the passenger cars were actually boats on train wheels. Near the mountain summit, trainmen unhooked the engine and snapped a cable to the cars. A motor at the top wound the cable and pulled the train cars up. At the summit, men released the cars and let them coast down the other side of the mountains without any engine at all. Then, for Henry’s final train-boat adventure, trainmen removed the wheels and put the boat-cars into a canal. Horses on a towpath beside the canal pulled Henry’s boat-car to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Henry knew his stay in Pittsburgh would be short, lasting only one winter. His parents, James and Mary Jane Sanderson, had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a few months earlier and had decided to move to Nauvoo. Henry felt glad to move because boys in his neighborhood in Norwalk, Connecticut, had made fun of him after his parents were baptized. At Pittsburgh, Henry helped his father do shoemaker’s work, a skill Henry had learned from him.
Late the next spring, the Sandersons boarded a steamboat and churned down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi River. They reached Nauvoo in the summer of 1843 when Henry was 14 and Nauvoo was barely four years old. Henry found young Nauvoo filled with new buildings, most of them small and made of wood, with taller brick houses here and there. Embracing the city on the west was a broad, crescent-shaped bend of the Mississippi River.
Soon after Henry’s family arrived, he hiked up the bluffs to visit the temple construction project. He walked around the 60-centimeter-high walls that workers were building skyward. He inspected the red brick store whose upper floor was the headquarters for the Church. On Main Street he found a brick post office and the Merryweather store.
The Sandersons became neighbors of Joseph Smith on Main Street, two blocks from the river. Henry’s parents moved into a log cabin next to Sidney Rigdon’s home, which stood between them and the Smiths’ new residence, the Mansion House. Henry saw workers put the final touches on the Mansion House, which the Smiths opened that September as a hotel.
Henry played with the Prophet’s sons. The oldest was Joseph Smith III, three years younger than Henry. Henry became best friends with Sidney Rigdon’s sons, Algernon and John W., who were near his age.
In Nauvoo, men and boys paid their tithing by working every 10th day on building projects. “My father and myself went regularly every 10th day to labor on the temple,” Henry said, “sometimes at the quarry and other times on the temple grounds.”
Henry, who knew and liked the Prophet, “had been to his house frequently and played with his boys and he would occasionally join us. I had been in games of ball where the Prophet was one of the players.”
Henry, 15, was outside his house when Joseph Smith left for Carthage. Henry saw Joseph shake hands and exchange canes with a stranger. Then Joseph rode away. That was the last time he saw the Prophet alive. Henry first heard the tragic news from Carthage Jail “when a runner went past our house shouting that the Prophet was killed.”
A day or two later Henry and crowds of others visited the Mansion House, where “I saw their murdered bodies after they were brought from Carthage.” The murders were “a sad blow to my father,” Henry said, “and for a time he was at a loss to know what the results would be, but [he] finally settled to the conviction that the Church would continue its progress and that the Twelve Apostles were the proper leaders.”
Needing income, Henry and his father went downriver to St. Louis, Missouri, to find jobs. His father joined George Betts’s shoe shop, which employed 25 men. Henry took a job at a small shop belonging to three LDS shoemakers. His mother and sisters joined them in St. Louis in the spring.
Henry’s good friends from Nauvoo, Algernon and John Rigdon, visited him in his new home. Their father, who had been Joseph Smith’s counselor, had decided to leave the Church and was moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In “the last conversation that I had with them as we were saying good-bye,” Henry said, “the boys declared that they would return to the Church. … Knowing they were … sincere, I expected for some years to hear from them but was disappointed.” (John Rigdon rejoined the Church in 1904 just before he died.)
Mr. Betts sent Henry’s father to work on a farm that the Mississippi River had flooded the year before. The Sandersons moved there and lived in a “very good log house.” They plowed and planted, and the farm prospered. But with the summer heat, river sickness (probably malaria) struck the family. Henry’s father suffered the most and died on 16 September 1845, at age 41.
Henry, now 16, returned with his mother and younger sister, Mary Jane, 4, to Nauvoo. An older sister, Maria, stayed behind to work for the Betts family.
Henry, weak himself from the summer sickness, returned to St. Louis for his sister. He earned his passage downriver and back by working on the riverboats. On the trip down he was an assistant fireman, carrying firewood and loading and unloading freight.
On the boat trip back to Nauvoo, Henry was third cook and “had the cabin dishes to wash, they being brought down to me by the cabin boys.” He liked the job because he could eat the leftover food, which was better than what he usually ate. Some plates of food came to him “untouched,” so instead of dumping the food overboard as ordered, he let other cabin boys eat it.
Henry, who was big for his age, joined the Nauvoo Legion. He “enrolled in a Captain Black’s company” when unfriendly neighbors began harassing the Mormons in and around Nauvoo. Officers gave this teenager “something of a gun,” and he “sometimes was scouting all night and took delight therein, even at times when the mob was expected every hour.”
Early in 1846, when Henry was 17, the Saints had to leave Nauvoo. For the wagon trek across Iowa, Jonathan C. Wright hired Henry to be a chore boy and drive an ox team. Henry liked this job, except for Brother Wright’s restriction that Henry walk his horses but never run or race them.
While Henry was camped with the Wrights at Council Bluffs, Iowa, a United States army recruiter arrived. “I had told my comrades that he would not get a man,” Henry said. But President Brigham Young called a meeting in a brush-covered bowery and asked that 500 men enlist in the Mormon Battalion for the Mexican War. Henry felt impressed to answer the call, so he joined the army. Mr. Wright, upset at losing his hired hand, “was wrathy and said that I could not go.” But Henry went. He was not yet 18, as required by the government, “but as I had nearly got my growth in height I passed without difficulty.”
The next summer, when he was 18, he left California, where the Mormon Battalion had completed its march, and entered the Great Salt Lake Valley just after the 1847 pioneers arrived. Wanting to rejoin his family, he returned east with Brigham Young’s company late that same year to the Winter Quarters area.
Henry and his family came west three years later, in 1850. He married and lived at Union Fort, Fillmore, and Fairview, Utah. During his adult years he was a farmer, teacher, and shoemaker.

Our season was ending, and we had one more race in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We stayed at a Marriott hotel, which had a Book of Mormon in every room. I found a teammate reading a copy. When I asked her why she was reading it, she replied that she was interested in what it was about. Excited, I bore my testimony to her of its truthfulness. Many of the other girls on the team had joined us in the room, and they asked me questions about the Book of Mormon.

When we got home I invited my best friend on the team, Rosa, to go to church with me. She enjoyed the meetings and felt peaceful there. After that, Rosa came to church almost every week. It was so wonderful to see the gospel touch her life.

About a month later I received an unexpected phone call from a young man on the men’s cross-country team, Brendan. He told me that he had taken the missionary lessons and was getting baptized in a week! I was so happy and thrilled for him. Both Rosa and I attended Brendan’s baptism. Rosa also took the missionary lessons and later chose to be baptized.

Looking back on these wonderful experiences, I am amazed that so many blessings resulted from joining my college cross-country team. I learned you don’t have to be set apart or wear a badge to be an instrument for Heavenly Father. Through my actions and living the gospel, my teammates wanted to know more about the gospel, which led them to baptism. I found that truly “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass” (Alma 37:6).

So let me tell you about my mom because it all started with her!
A few years before she passed away, I spent the summer with my folks in Southern California, where I grew up. One day I said, “Mom, let’s read through your patriarchal blessing.” So we did and by the end, I said, “Gee Mom- looks you did everything you came here to do!”
“I think you’re done!” She didn’t laugh.
So we started knit-picking through some of the details, but I kept going back to this line that read “You will open the doors for many to receive the gospel.” I remember when she received her blessing, we were so new in the church, and someone told her that it meant that she is going to do genealogy work and save her family. So she jumped on the bandwagon and did a lot of family history work. This was back in the 70s genealogy was hard work and took a long time. But looking hindsight, 45 years after her blessing was given, I know without a doubt that my mom’s mission in this life was to bring our family to the gospel; she was directed by the Spirit, and she never gave up—even though she didn’t really know what she was looking for. She was raised Catholic, received every ordinance in the church, attended a private catholic school and that’s when she began to go to church daily. There was a chapel on their campus, so whether it be mass, confession, or having personal prayer - she was there every day.
She loved God and had this undying yearning—almost like a poking or a prodding that kept her looking for more. The funny thing is, her family didn’t go to church. Everything she knew, learned, or attended she did on her own.
So when she met my dad and they talked about getting married, she insisted that he see her priest. My dad would not commit to baptism, but he agreed that all of us kids could. So we were baptized, attended catechism, confirmed, I attended private Catholic school. . . we did everything. But somehow for her-it was never enough. This yearning; this always looking for more—it just persisted with my mom for a long time, until one day we were swimming at a neighbor’s pool. My mom was chatting with their mom and mentioned how she wished my dad would just go to church, even if it was his own church. Of course the neighbor asked, “What church is that?”
“The Mormon Church,” my mom answered. And to our surprise, the neighbor said, “That’s our church too!” And being the good member missionary that she was, she offered to have her husband invite my dad to church and he loved it and has been active ever since. I wanna say “Amen!” at this point, but the journey to baptism was long. My mom was the most dedicated, loyal Catholic you’ll ever meet. So for months, we attended both churches.
One of the things that I loved most about my mom is that she sought out and received revelation long before she became a member. She didn’t understand the bread for sacrament. It was too simple and informal compared to what she was used to. She thought it should be more sacred than a slice of bread broken.
And then there were the scriptures.
My mom owned this bible from her church. It was huge and white, and leather and it was different. . . the books inside were different. She would argue with my dad, “How do you know your bible is correct?” And every week she carried it to church. In Sunday School they would look up scriptures and she could never find it.
So she prayed and asked for help to find the scriptures and understand the sacrament. One night she went to bed and woke up several hours later to a voice who told her to “ open up her bible to page “such and such,” look on the left column in the middle. She did that but found nothing. So she turned off her light and went back to sleep. A few minutes later the voice returned and told her the same thing. “Open your bible to page ‘such and such,’ look on the left column in the middle. She followed the instructions again and again found nothing. My dad heard her and asked her what was wrong. She told him and he said, “Tell me that page again.” And as they both took out their own bibles to search, quickly my dad exclaimed, “Oh here! I am the bread of life!” She needed to see it with her own eyes, but without a doubt, she knew her prayer about the sacrament and the scriptures had been answered. The next morning, she was super excited as she shared that story and announced that we were all getting baptized ASAP!
President Utchdorf reminded us that, “Our Heavenly Father sees our real potential. He knows things about us that we don’t know ourselves. He prompts us during our lifetime to fulfill the measure of our creation, to live a good life, and to return to His presence.”
Without a doubt, my mom filled the measure of her creation. And so at the end of her life, I had an even greater love for her! Not only because she had followed the guidance and persistence of the spirit that brought us to the church, but for instilling in us a love for God and an understanding that God hears us and answers our prayers.
And a funny thing. . . once we were baptized. . . . the yearning stopped!