Gospel Story Finder

One of the best ways to make friends is to invite them over, right? That’s what the Montreal Ward of the Montreal Mount Royal Quebec Stake did. Their new chapel created so much interest in the surrounding neighborhood of La Salle that ward leaders decided to open it up for tours.
And when they did, the youth of this English-speaking ward played a major role. The Latter-day Saint teens were ushers, served refreshments, directed parking, and greeted guests at the door.
“It was a good experience because it gave other people in the community an opportunity to know more about us, what we believe, and what we do,” explains Melissa Poirier, 15. More than 300 non–Latter-day Saints toured the building.

After serving for a time in Salzburg, I was transferred to Zürich, Switzerland. While I was there, Brother Julius Billeter, a member of the Church, approached me. He was a professional genealogist, and he told me he had seen quite a few Wirthlin names in his work. He offered to research my family lines. I wrote home, and my father thought it was a wonderful opportunity, so we hired him to begin.
A year later he handed me a book. It was 36 centimeters long, 46 centimeters wide, and weighed 6.2 kilograms. It was filled with nearly 6,000 names of my ancestors. It was a priceless volume that I treasured. Just before my missionary release, I packed the precious book in a steamer trunk along with some of my other possessions and shipped it home. I prayed that it would arrive safely and that the precious family history would not be lost.
I arrived home before the trunk. Weeks passed. Still no trunk. I began to worry that the irreplaceable book had been lost. Six months after I had arrived in Salt Lake City, I received a call from the Union Pacific depot. A trunk had arrived for me. I rushed down to retrieve it, but when I saw it, my heart sank. The lock on the trunk had been broken.
I pried up the lid, and when I looked inside, my heart fell further. Everything had been soaked with seawater. What is more, I could tell someone had rifled through my belongings. Some things were missing.
I gingerly removed the layers of clothing, searching for my precious book. When I reached it, my heart overflowed with joy. Not only was it there, but the papers were completely dry! I know the book was preserved through divine intervention.

“When I was in my first year of college at Logan, Utah, I bought an old car for a hundred dollars. I was eighteen and thought that I knew all about driving. It was Christmastime, and my parents were living on a ranch in Wyoming. I picked up my two grandmothers and took them to my parents’ home for Christmas. We had a grand time there. When it was time to return to school, the weather had changed and the roads were treacherous. That morning as we were ready to leave, we held a family prayer in the living room. My father prayed that we would have a safe journey. After we had loaded my car with suitcases, blankets, tuna fish sandwiches, and a thermos bottle full of Postum, Dad walked out to the car and said, ‘I want to talk to you.’ We went over and stood by the fence. ‘You have a very valuable cargo,’ he said, nodding at my grandmothers. ‘I want you to promise me that if the roads are bad and it’s snowing when you get down to Lander, you won’t go over South Pass. I want you to take the long way.’

“I promised him that I would. My parents kissed us good-bye, and we were on our way. We had nice weather until we got to Riverton; then it started to snow. By the time we got to Lander, it was snowing pretty hard. I remembered my promise, so when we came to the intersection where you turn to go up the mountain, I made a conscious turn to go the long way. I remember thinking then that it was going to take us five hours longer to get to Utah. I knew the road, and I was absolutely certain that I had made the right turn. As we drove along, we were joking and laughing, although the snow was getting thicker. Then I saw a sign that read, ‘Historic Old South Pass City,’ and I realized that I had somehow become confused in the snowstorm and had taken the wrong road! I thought, Dad will be angry with me! I don’t know how this happened—it wasn’t intentional. I had only two choices: I could keep on going, or I could turn around and go back. By this time, we were at the summit, so I decided that we might as well keep going and that I would apologize to Dad later. As we came down the mountain, the snow stopped and the roads were clear. We drove to Logan and then to Malad without any problems.

“On my way to school the next day I happened to see the front-page headline of a newspaper: WORST BLIZZARD OF THE YEAR STRANDS HUNDREDS IN CENTRAL WYOMING. I bought a paper, and it was full of stories about people who had been stranded, lost, or killed on the road that I had promised to take. I realized that the prayer our family had offered had been answered. I knew that the Lord had gotten us on the right road, and I realized how He had protected us. I was never the same after that.”

Some years ago a young “Korean boy took his weekly allowance and bought newspapers with it. Then he and some friends sold these on the streets of Seoul, Korea, to raise money to help a fellow student who did not have sufficient funds to stay in school. This young man also gave part of his lunch to this boy each day so that he would not go hungry. Why did he do these things? Because he had been studying the story of the Good Samaritan and didn’t just want to learn about the Good Samaritan but wanted to know what it felt like to be one by doing what a Good Samaritan would do. … Only after careful questioning by his father about his activities” did he admit, “But, Dad, every time I help my friend, I feel I’m becoming more like the Good Samaritan. Besides that, I want to help my classmates who aren’t as fortunate as I. It’s not that big of a thing I am doing. I read about it in my seminary manual and felt it was the thing I ought to do.” The boy did not ask, “What’s in it for me?” before performing this kindness. In fact, he did it without any thought of recompense or recognition.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bogotá Colombia Temple closed. Because I could no longer attend, at times I would mentally walk through the temple, remembering the service I had rendered there as a temple worker.
My mother-in-law became extremely ill shortly after a COVID-19 quarantine began in Colombia. When I prayed to know how I could help her, I thought of the temple.
As I thought about the temple, I felt prompted by the Holy Ghost to ask my mother-in-law if she would like to mentally visit “one of the most beautiful places on earth” with me.
In a weak voice, she replied, “Yes.”
We imagined starting from her home in Medellín, traveling to my home in Bogotá, and then arriving at the temple. We imagined entering and serving in the temple. We imagined sitting together in the celestial room, saying a prayer of gratitude to the Lord.
Afterward, we pleaded with Heavenly Father that my mother-in-law, according to His will, might regain her health and eventually be allowed to physically return to the temple. It was a special, solemn experience that strengthened and encouraged her.
Like the man with the palsy, my mother-in-law was healed by the Savior’s power through a priesthood blessing and through her faith and the faith of family and friends.

Once home, we found that Abby seemed to respond more than the neurosurgeon had predicted. However, it wasn’t long before her head began to enlarge rapidly, and the neurosurgeon had to install a small tube device to drain excess fluid. He felt it was unnecessary surgery, but for us to stand by and do nothing would have meant watching her suffer a slow, agonizing death. We couldn’t have borne that. She had a heart murmur, and we despaired that she might not make it through the surgery, but we felt we had no alternative.
Abby withstood the operation valiantly, and we marveled. What kept her alive? Eventually her appetite improved and she began to gain weight.
I noticed almost immediately when she came home again that she could hear, and we were very encouraged. But it soon proved more of a problem than a blessing. She reacted violently to the slightest sound. More than once I walked into her room and spoke softly to her, only to have her turn purple with her screaming. She had no way of relating to the different noises around her, and they terrified her.
That was the beginning of the hardest summer of our lives. Abby Ruth was up all night long, night after night, crying until Randy and I thought we would lose our minds. Many times she screamed all night until 5:00 or 6:00 A.M., then finally went to sleep. By 10:30 or 11:00 A.M., I had to force myself to go check her. What if she was dead? What would I do? I knew that how I reacted to such a situation would deeply affect my other two daughters, and the pressure became more than I could handle.
Finally, I had reached the point where a complete breakdown for me was not far off. Near the end of September we made an appointment with the chief of staff at the state training school for the handicapped, hoping to get some kind of help.
The staff at the state school were very receptive. At last we found people who really understood what we had been going through. They offered to take her, to give us one week’s rest.
At the end of that week, the same pattern began again. She cried constantly, day and night, and many were the times that we stood next to her crib or held her and cried right along with her. I felt so helpless, and I could see no end in sight. “What kind of life is this?” I asked myself. My two older children were beginning to suffer from neglect, and so was my marriage.
Another major decision had to be made, but Randy and I disagreed. He felt that placing Abby at the state school would be the same as deserting her. I looked on it as our only chance to return to a normal life and continue with our family; it would be impossible for me to go on giving her the twenty-four-hour care that she needed.
I couldn’t help but feel that I had failed her, though, and in my grief I turned to Heavenly Father. He knew the whole story, but I repeated it all to him on my knees late one night. I prayed longer and more earnestly that night than ever before. When I was finally finished, I crawled into bed and, feeling completely drained, leaned back against my pillow, staring into the darkness that surrounded me.
It was then that I received my answer. It came clearly and distinctly, a soothing response to my prayers and heartache. Not only should we place Abby Ruth in the state training school, we need not worry about her. She would understand why we made the decision to place her in the school.
Perhaps other parents in a similar situation would have received different direction. I only know that our answer came from Heavenly Father, and we trusted that He knew our situation and had inspired us to act appropriately.
On 1 November 1980, Abby became a permanent resident at the state training school. We’ve never regretted having her home with us as long as we did. Because of that, she became an integral part of our family.

Listening to the Prophet Joseph Smith tell the story of the angel and the hidden plates, young Porter Rockwell’s adventurous nature was stirred. The Smiths and Rockwells, frontier neighbors in Manchester, New York, often visited each other.
Although Porter was eight years younger than the Prophet, a bond of friendship between the two was quickly formed. Later, when Joseph needed money to publish The Book of Mormon, Porter picked berries by moonlight—after his chores were done—and sold them. When there were no berries to pick, he gathered wood and hauled it to town to sell. The money he earned was given to the Prophet.

It’s a long story. Right before my senior year of high school, I made a firm decision to follow the standards on dating in For the Strength of Youth and not have a steady girlfriend before my mission. I made this decision because earlier in high school I’d had a girlfriend. The relationship started taking up a lot of time, and even though I got the spiritual prompting, “You shouldn’t be steady dating right now,” I ignored it. Eventually she moved away. After it was over, I realized that the prompting really was from the Lord.

So I decided that in my senior year I wouldn’t have another girlfriend. And it made for a really fun year because I made a lot of friends. One girl, though, I started to hang out with a lot. I could tell she liked me, and I started to like her back. But because I had made my decision, I knew what was right. I had to tell her that I didn’t want to date. She understood, and we actually became good friends.

When we graduated from high school, I had to make another decision: should I leave for my mission now, or should I go to a year of college first? It was a huge question for me. I had already been accepted to BYU, and I didn’t know which timing would be better for me. After a lot of prayer, I felt like I should go to school first.

It was hard not going on my mission at the same time all my friends were. No one judged me too harshly, even though people definitely commented on the fact that I was “still here.” But I know that waiting was the right decision for me and that I was inspired to do it.

I saw a lot of blessings in my life because I felt so much more prepared to go on a mission after a year of college. For instance, I wasn’t afraid of the long study schedule in the missionary training center because in college, I was studying all day anyway. It was a great experience having faith in God and in the promptings I got that it was the right thing to do, and then seeing the fruits of it.

I still had another decision to make. My first year of college was hard because pretty much all of my high school friends had already left on their missions. But the girl I’d known my senior year actually came to BYU too, and she and I became even closer. We started hanging out all the time. Even though I didn’t want to admit it, I could tell—we were slowing becoming boyfriend and girlfriend.

Part of the way through the semester, I started getting a prompting, “You’ve got to stop hanging out so much with this friend.” I knew a mission was on the horizon, and I could tell that because we were hanging out all the time, I wasn’t focusing on preparing for my mission. Actually, this was making it harder for me to go.

It was a really hard prompting to get, because she was my best friend—and one of my only friends. I prayed constantly to know if it was the Lord’s will, even telling Heavenly Father, “This is going to be really hard for me.”

One day I went to the temple and asked Him, and I just felt that that was what I needed to do. So I decided I needed to follow the Lord’s will. I finally talked with her about it, and she understood that I needed to focus on my mission. Still, it was a really difficult, emotional experience.

Over the next few days, I felt so much strength and peace from Heavenly Father. I was able to focus on my mission a lot more and started feeling myself progress spiritually much faster than I had before. Scriptures started standing out to me during my personal scripture study—like Isaiah 3:10, which says that the righteous will “eat the fruit of their doings,” which means that if you do the right things, you will reap the rewards. Once again, my testimony of following the Lord’s will was strengthened.

The Lord often asks us to make hard decisions. It’s definitely easier to say “Thy will be done” when a lot of good things are happening; when hard things are happening, it gets a lot more challenging. When I was going through all of these experiences, I just had to say, “Lord, please give me strength and help me through this.” And I know that He gave me the strength I needed. Everything He did was so that I would be ready for my mission where I could serve Him. I am so glad that I did what He asked.

PCC - My best friends for life
The Polynesian Cultural Center was originally planned to be built where the married student housing is now, next to the temple. We prepared the site, got the lagoon in and then got word from Salt Lake that it was too close to the temple and should not be built there. Instead it should be built along Kamehameha Highway. Because I was the heavy equipment operator, I took the bulldozer down and cleared the land at the highway. After the land was ready we started building the PCC in 1962. We got all the materials for the huts and started to build the villages. When we were building the Tongan village, we Tongan labor missionaries were somehow not happy with what we saw we were doing, it did not seem right. So we decided, six weeks before the dedication, that we would build a REAL Tongan fale, which is called the Queen’s house today. We brought in two men from Tonga who were experts in Tongan structures and went to work. Our supervisors told us that we would have to do this on our own time because we still had a lot of work to do on other parts of the Center. So we would work until quitting time at 3:30PM and then after that work on the Queen’s house on our own time, later into the evening. We sent someone to Tonga to ask the Queen for materials to decorate the house. The Queen gave us a lot of tapa and mats to use in the interior of the building. We finished it right before the dedication of PCC was to take place and we were happy that we did that for the Tongan village. Anything is possible.

The organ music was solemn and low, and a reverent hush fell over the congregation as the pallbearers entered carrying the simple pine box. A few garden flowers had been lovingly placed on top, and nestled among them was an old mandolin, its worn but polished surface gleaming dully in the dim light. The flickering candles made the large room seem gloomier, although sunlight seeped in here and there between the rough-hewn logs.
The organ seemed out of place in this rugged wilderness. There were few luxuries in this early western settlement, and the small organ, brought all the way across the plains on a wagon, was highly treasured.
Amanda watched little puffs of dust rise from the floor as the pallbearers walked slowly down the isle.
“The coffin is so small,” she whispered to her mother.
“Your great-grandfather may not have been very tall in stature, but he was a giant in spirit,” Mother whispered back.
Amanda nodded, and bitter tears stung her dark brown eyes. Grandpa’s death was hard for her to understand. He had been lighthearted, always spreading laughter wherever he went. And music. How he loved music!
“Manda, the world would be a sad and sorry place without music,” he had said to her often. “It’s helped me more times than I can recollect, both before and after I left Denmark.”
“Tell me a story about Denmark, Grandpa. Please?” she used to plead.
“All right, but you know you’ve heard them all before.” His eyes would twinkle as the tale would unfold. “When I was a young lad in Alborg, my family tended sheep in the fields surrounding the town. The country was lush and green in the daytime, but at night everything was veiled in shadows. I had the evening watch alone. Sometimes the sheep were restless, so I always took along my old mandolin. I’d sing a quiet song, and it would settle them down. It would ease my mind a bit too. Tending sheep can be mighty lonely. My mandolin has always been a comfort to me, Manda. I’m glad you have learned to play it. Someday I want you to have it.”
A sharp nudge from her older brother brought Amanda back to the present. Bishop Madsen stepped up to the tall box that served as a pulpit and announced the opening song and prayer. Then Amanda’s mind wandered again as the service began. She could see herself bumping around in the back of the covered wagon, gazing wistfully behind them as the trial disappeared into dust. She’d missed her home and the friends she’d left behind. Grandpa hadn’t seemed to, though. He’d sat in front, constantly looking ahead.
“Let’s sing a song,” he’d suggest. Amanda would be the first to join in.
Come, come, ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day …
Their voices had been carried by the warm Nebraska wind, and soon all the settlers in their company had raised their voices to sing along.
The most precious moments had been at night around the campfire. The wagons had been pulled together into a circle, and the moon had loomed large in the prairie sky, softly shining on tired, sunbaked faces.
The trek to Utah was long and hard, Amanda thought. Grandpa had made it then. Why did he have to die now?
The bishop had finished speaking, and he turned toward Amanda.
“Amanda, we all know how much you and your great-grandfather loved to sing together. Do you think you could come up here and sing one of his favorite songs for us?”
Amanda froze in her seat. I could never sing without Grandpa, she thought. Then she looked at the mandolin lying among the flowers. It had helped Grandpa while he tended sheep. Maybe it would help her now.
She rose slowly and walked over to the casket. Her hands trembled as she lifted the mandolin from its bed of flowers. Several people in the crowd nodded encouragement. Amanda cleared her throat, placed her fingers on the strings, and began: “Come, come, ye Saints, …”
The song went beautifully until she came to the last verse. Tears welled up in her eyes, and her voice started to quaver.
Bishop Madsen stepped quickly to Amanda’s side, beckoning the congregation to join in. Instantly the little log church was filled with music.
And should we die before our journey’s through,
Happy day! all is well!
We then are free from toil and sorrow, too;
With the just we shall dwell! …
Amanda sat down, still holding the mandolin. Mother put her arm around Amanda’s shoulder and said, “Grandpa’s mandolin can become as much a part of you as it was a part of him. Take good care of it.”
Amanda smiled. It was already a great comfort to her.

When an eighteen-month-old Bolivian boy, Danny, was flown to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City for corrective surgery on his feet and hips, Relief Society sisters devotedly cared for him during his three-month recovery period.

Holladay Utah North Stake Relief Society president Sharon Kasteler reports, “The sisters who cared for Danny have the heart of the gospel in their lives today because they have shared and given.”

Let me tell of another person I met in Guatemala. He is John O’Donnal, the president of the Guatemala City Temple. He stood before a congregation and with a voice choked with emotion told his story.
As a young man he was graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in agricultural science. He was employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was sent to Guatemala to work on a project to develop the growth of natural rubber trees to meet a critical need during World War II.
As I remember his words, he said: “I was twenty-four years of age and unmarried when I came to Guatemala forty-three years ago. I had been raised with a love for the Savior and His teachings. During my work here, I walked day after day through these mountains and jungles among the native peoples of this land. I came to know them and to love them, and as I saw the poverty and darkness in which they lived, I wept for them. They were the purest people I had ever known, but they were without the light of the gospel. I cried to the Lord concerning them. I knew that their one sure hope lay in obtaining a knowledge of and a love for Jesus Christ, and in receiving the record of their forebears, which testifies of Him.
“In time I fell in love with a beautiful girl who had English and German blood and also the blood of Lehi, Laman, and Samuel. We were married and spent our honeymoon in a little house in the mountains among the native people. I told her that some day these people must hear the gospel and that they would rise in strength and beauty.
“In 1946 and again in 1947 I traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, and pleaded with the President of the Church to send missionaries. Finally, in December 1947, the mission president and his counselors brought four elders to our house. The next day we drove onto a mountain where together we had the sacrament, and the mission president dedicated the land for the preaching of the restored gospel.
“My wife was the first native of Guatemala baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today she stands at my side as the matron of this beautiful temple.”
He continued: “In 1956 I was in a serious accident and was taken to the hospital for major surgery. I almost lost my life, and in those circumstances I had a remarkable experience. The Lord showed me that a temple would be built in this land.
“Also, I was informed by a power beyond the power of man that I would not die but that my life would not be my own.”
His life has not been his own. As a scientist and administrator, he established and operated a large rubber plantation and built and operated a tire factory for one of the great rubber companies in the United States. But he did still yet a far more significant thing. In the spirit of the Master, he went about doing good. He worked sharing the gospel among the native peoples of Guatemala. For more than forty years he has lived with them, has spoken their language, has sorrowed with them in their sorrows, has taught them the everlasting gospel, and has been a quiet, unassuming, but magnificent pioneer in the development of the work of the Lord in that land.
When he walked the jungle trails alone, he was the only member of the Church in all that land. Today there are more than forty-four thousand of them. He nurtured the first little branch. Today there are eight stakes of Zion in Guatemala and many more in the surrounding nations of Central America. Once, a few members met in his home. Now beautiful chapels of the Church are seen throughout the land. On a hill above Guatemala City is a magnificent temple, atop whose tallest steeple is the figure of Moroni.

I learned kindness from many people. One of these was my grandmother Amalie Hollenweger Amacher. She joined the Church as a young woman in Switzerland and later immigrated to northern Utah. Although she always spoke with an accent, there was no mistaking her meaning when we grandchildren needed correction. She wanted us to learn to obey and to treat people well, and she wasn’t afraid to tell us so.
Once Grandma caught me speaking disrespectfully to my parents. She let me know that she was not pleased with my tone of voice. I was grateful for the reminder to speak kindly. For years after her death, whenever I was faced with a decision, I asked myself, “What would my grandmother think?” Her love for the Lord and her love for me made me want to follow her example.

Some years ago, as Sister Gong and I met a lovely family, their young daughter, Ivy, shyly brought out her violin case. She lifted out the violin bow, tightened and put rosin on it. Then she put the bow back in the case, curtsied, and sat down. A new beginner, she had just shared all she knew about the violin. Now, years later, Ivy plays the violin beautifully.

Like little Ivy and her violin, we are in some ways still beginning. Truly, “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” In these times, we can learn much of God’s goodness and our divine potential for God’s love to grow in us as we seek Him and reach out to each other. In new ways and new places, we can do and become, line upon line, kindness upon kindness, individually and together.

Blessed also with the gift of prophecy, he influenced the lives of many. On one occasion, he returned from a three-month trip to another island and saw preparations for a fiafia (celebration) in progress to celebrate the marriage of a young man and a young woman. As he interviewed the young woman, he suddenly told her, without any other explanation, that if she married the young man, she would soon be saddened.
Opapo and Toai were not spared personal trials. Eleven of their fourteen children died before adulthood. However, through it all they seemed to increase in humility, prayerfulness, and industry. Opapo reserved 5:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. for prayer, but frequently prayed at other times as well. And he always provided, not only for his own family, but also for others, especially widows and the fatherless.

“On a Friday afternoon an opportunity came up to go visit a new girl in our ward,” Emma H., 15, said. “No one wanted to do it, including me. But I think the idea of helping someone else and sacrificing my time was something I was more used to after the Fit Challenge and more used to saying yes to. I said I’d go, and I went and had a super great visit with one of the Beehives. We got her to come watch the general women’s session of conference with us. It was cool because she seemed to have wanted us to come by.”
“When you are asked to do something, whether it’s by a leader in your ward or your stake or a prompting from Heavenly Father, you should act on that,” she continued. “Try something new, work a little harder to be a little better. Those practices can really change your life if you let them.”

In the 1990s my employment with the Church took our family to Africa, where I was assigned to help with relief efforts in Burundi, Rwanda, and Somalia. This was during a devastating period of famine, brutality, and war, and the suffering was overwhelming.
Thousands were in refugee camps. Hundreds of orphaned children lived in rudimentary shelters they constructed themselves. Cholera, typhoid, and malnutrition were ever present. The stench of waste and death added to the hopelessness.
I felt driven to offer all the help I could. The Church worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross and other organizations, but I couldn’t help wondering sometimes if our efforts were making a difference in the face of such widespread atrocity and tragedy. It was hard to shake feelings of helplessness and discouragement, and often when I retired for the night, I cried.
It was during this discouraging time that a familiar passage took on a deeper dimension for me. Citing Isaiah, it tells us that the Savior was “anointed to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that were bound” (D&C 138:42).
I had seen and spoken with many people who were “brokenhearted” in the most striking ways. They had lost their loved ones, homes, and peaceful way of life. And yet many of them showed signs of having been “bound up.” For instance, often when we approached a makeshift home, its inhabitants would ask, “Will you pray with us?” The people seemed to find happiness and peace in making supplications to the Lord.
Of course, we cannot look for the impact of the Atonement only in this life. It also comes after. I know there is redemption for the dead and resurrection for all because of the Savior. The pain we experience in this life—however extreme—will be removed and healed through the Atonement.
Mormon and Moroni, who lived in times of great slaughter and death, wrote about having hope anchored in a loving God whose mercy and justice surpass all understanding (see, for instance, Moroni 7:41–42). Studying these prophets’ statements bolstered my own faith. When I wondered if our efforts were making a difference, I felt assurance that the Savior’s grace is the ultimate redemptive power. Our best efforts may be limited, but His are infinite and eternal.
There’s no doubt that the world’s conditions create many forms of despair, but none are beyond the reach of the Redeemer to heal. All of us can have the sure hope that through the Atonement of Christ our hearts can be bound up and made whole. With this knowledge, I could go on in my work, knowing that His efforts always succeed.

Let me tell you of a young man I knew when I was a mission president. He was a missionary full of faith. He was Uruguayan. He had been in the mission about three or four months when I arrived, and I noticed that wherever he served, people were being baptized. In the beginning I thought it was because of his senior companion, because he seemed too young, too new, to be the cause—that was my mistake. He knew how to make things happen.

He was called as a senior companion and a district leader. I sent him into a city that had gained a reputation of being a tough, “no results” city. Missionaries had not baptized anyone there for nearly a year—not one person! The members were discouraged. Only ten to twelve members were attending the branch. I didn’t tell him anything—I just notified him of the transfer. Three weeks later, he and his companion began baptizing. He served there about ten weeks. All of his district started baptizing.

It is great to have a missionary who can baptize, but if he can teach others how to do it, his leadership can bless the lives of many.

This missionary never wrote me much in his weekly reports. He would only write, “Dear President, I sure love you. Things are going great. Sincerely,” or “President, the Lord is blessing us greatly. I love the work. Your brother.”

He was called later to serve as a zone leader and sent to supervise the whole upper area of the mission where there were some very challenging cities. His new challenge was to teach the missionaries to do what he was doing. He served there two or three months and was responsible for scores of baptisms, and he literally changed the spirit of the whole zone, member leaders as well as missionaries. Together they wrought a spiritual miracle.

Then came a spiritual struggle for me, a restless feeling about him. I felt impressed that he should be sent to Paraguay. At that time the work was very slow in Paraguay. We averaged only 20 to 25 baptisms a month in the whole country. I wrestled with that and thought to myself, He has really proved himself here, but to put him in that situation might drag him down in discouragement as it has so many others. He may have a hard time sustaining his faith there. I had to struggle with my faith to convince myself that he really ought to go, but I obeyed the promptings.

I sent him a telegram transferring him to Asunción, Paraguay, as a zone leader and told him that he should leave the very next day. When he came into Montevideo, he didn’t even come to see me. He was modest and always a little embarrassed to see “the president.”

He departed from the mission home, but he left a letter, which was the first one that I had ever received from him. It said, in effect, “Dear President Cook, I received a telegram today telling me to go to Paraguay, and I thought you ought to know a few things: (1) You can’t baptize in Paraguay. I have had at least ten to fifteen elders tell me of their experiences there. (2) The members are not helping at all. (3) There are some real morality problems among the nonmembers there. (4) Many people live together unmarried. (5) ,(6), (7), (8) …” And he went through and listed ten to twelve of some of the most negative things that I have ever heard in my life.

I thought to myself, Oh no, unbelieving people have gotten to him.

But as he finished the list, he said, “I just wanted you to know, President, that I don’t believe any of those things.” Talk about faith! Then he committed himself, after expressing his faith, saying, “I want you to know, President Cook, that on Christmas Day (and the date of the letter was December 1), we are going to baptize 25 people.”

When I read that, I prayed for him and thought, The Lord bless you, elder. You have a tremendous amount of faith, and the Lord will sustain you. You don’t know the country. You haven’t ever been there. You don’t know where you are going to live. You don’t know your companion, the leaders, the members. You don’t know anything, and yet you, in faith, believe that you are going to baptize 25 people in 25 days.

Well, this young man was full of faith and was a real example of a great Latin leader. On December 25, he and his companion baptized 18 people. They hadn’t reached the 25, but 18 was just about all that the whole country baptized in a normal month. It was a great privilege two weeks later to participate in a baptismal service where he and his companion baptized 11 more. His district baptized about 30 that day. Can you see how one righteous man can turn around a whole set of circumstances? He believed, he committed, and he and the Lord did it.

There are a lot of fun things you could do for Mutual. The youth of the Plymouth First Ward (Plymouth England Stake) used their Mutual night as an opportunity to do missionary work.
Each of the eight young women and seven young men in the ward, which covers about 15 square miles, brought a less-active or nonmember friend to Mutual. At the activity they had a barbecue, played games, and just got to know each other better. The full-time missionaries were invited, too, and they joined in the fun.
“I was so overwhelmed at the success of the activity,” says Ruth Ng, one of the Young Women. “My testimony of missionary work was surely increased.”

A girl’s journal is often a record of her dreams, and Annapurna Guru’s journal held her most cherished desire. “Someday,” she wrote, “I will go to the temple.”
Annapurna was not a member of the Church when she wrote these words. Raised in Hyderabad, India, she had learned something about Christianity as a child in a Catholic school. Then, in 1992, her older brother met Latter-day Saint missionaries and was baptized. Annapurna was 14 when her brother, Murthy, gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon. “Once I read it,” she recalls, “I felt it was true.”
Annapurna found in the gospel answers to her most troubling questions, especially her worry about what happens after death. But just as surely as she knew the gospel to be true, she knew something else: Her parents would not allow her to be baptized in a Christian church.
During her remaining teenage years, Annapurna lived her new faith quietly. She read the Book of Mormon and the Bible. She prayed. She learned all she could. And she began to form in her mind a beautiful dream: Someday she would marry a Latter-day Saint. Someday she would go to the temple. And someday she would give her children the precious gift she lacked: membership in the Lord’s Church.
By the time Annapurna graduated from college at age 20, her parents had begun planning a traditional arranged marriage for their beloved daughter. But Annapurna never considered her dreams to be unattainable because she felt that they were not hers alone. “I had big dreams,” she says, “but actually God had His own plans for me.”
When Annapurna was 21, those divine plans started to become reality—miracle by miracle. First, she met Santosh Murala, a faithful Latter-day Saint visiting his family in Hyderabad. A medical student, Santosh was doing a surgical residency in Chandigarh, two days away by train. When they met, Annapurna and Santosh talked for half an hour. After that brief conversation, Santosh called his friend Neil Twitchell, who was then serving as India Bangalore Mission president, and confided, “She’s gold!” Santosh felt quite clearly that this was the woman he had been looking for. Annapurna felt that Santosh—the first Latter-day Saint young man she had ever met—was the man she had been praying to find.
The two exchanged a few letters, confirming their feelings. Several months later they married. Understandably, Annapurna’s family was upset at first, as was Santosh’s. But Annapurna was legally old enough to marry a man of her choosing.
Annapurna viewed this situation through the eyes of faith. “If I had married to please my parents and other people,” she says, “then my children might never have known about the Church and the whole responsibility for that would have been on my head. This one step has changed life for me and my posterity. For this life my parents may be upset with me, but for eternity they will be happy and proud of me.” In fact, Annapurna’s parents are already more accepting of her marriage. They like Santosh and even get together socially with Santosh’s parents.
Map by Randall J. Pixton
The next part of Annapurna’s dream came true when at last she was baptized. There was no branch in Chandigarh, so the Muralas made the five-hour journey to New Delhi for the baptism. Ironically, now that Annapurna was free to go to church, the nearest branch was far away. “Before I was baptized, the church was very near my house, just on the corner at the end of the road, and I didn’t have the opportunity to go,” she says. “Now the church was five hours away, so we could go only once a month.” Then Annapurna became pregnant, and the five-hour trip was too taxing for her.
But then came another miracle, in the form of two Latter-day Saint families. “God takes care of you,” explains Santosh. A British couple, Brother and Sister Beer, came to Chandigarh, where Brother Beer worked in highway construction. Sister Beer taught institute classes to the Muralas, and the Beers held family home evening with the Muralas every week. A Korean family, the Moons, also moved to Chandigarh, where Brother Moon worked for a construction company. Every Sunday for two years, this little group of Latter-day Saints met at the Moons’ home for sacrament meeting. Shortly after Santosh finished his residency in Chandigarh, the Beers and the Moons moved away too.
In New Delhi, where Santosh is receiving specialized training in heart surgery, there are two branches of the Church. Now Annapurna’s knowledge about the Church is catching up with her knowledge of the gospel. She has learned how to sing hymns and conduct meetings.
On 19 June 2001—Annapurna’s 24th birthday—her girlhood dream of temple marriage came true. The Muralas traveled to the Hong Kong China Temple when their first baby, Neil, was not quite two. During the five full days they spent serving in the temple, the most sacred and wonderful moment came when they were sealed to each other and to their son.
Today the Muralas’ lives are full to overflowing. Annapurna serves as Primary president and Santosh as president of the New Delhi First Branch. Santosh also spends about 100 hours a week at the hospital, working 18- and 36-hour shifts. In order to have Sundays free for Church responsibilities, he works on holidays. So Annapurna spends most of her time caring for their two young children and supporting her husband in his heavy responsibilities.
And she continues to dream. She dreams of sharing the gospel with her parents. She dreams of the day when her own and others’ children—the first generation of children in India to have Primary, seminary, and Young Men and Young Women—will be strong leaders of the Church. She dreams of the time when her children will serve missions. She dreams of the time when they too will go to the temple. And she even dares to dream that that temple might be in India.