Gospel Story Finder

When he felt scared or alone, it helped young Joseph F. Smith to remember the ___________ of his mother and father.

Memory started her research in 1985, when notebooks, pages of pedigree charts and group records were the conventional way of record keeping.
While patience is important in family history work, Memory says that patience is one of the keys to success in all avenues of life, and most especially in family history.
“I had been struggling to get my maternal grandfather’s records for years. And it was only after ten years of thorough research and hard work was I able to add his records to FamilySearch,” she said.

It is 1869, and President Brigham Young is concerned about the young women in the Church. He is worried that some of them, including his own daughters, are too caught up in the fashions and trends of the world.
On 18 November 1869, he holds a meeting with his daughters. He asks them to set an example by spending more time learning about the gospel and gaining important life skills rather than chasing after trends.
“I desire [you] to retrench from [your] extravagance in dress, in eating, and even in speech,” President Young tells his daughters. “I should like you to get up your own fashions, and set the style for the rest of the world who desire sensible and comely fashions to follow. … There is a need for the young daughters of Israel to get a living testimony of the truth” (A Century of Sisterhood, 8).
At first this is difficult for his daughters. These girls are some of the most popular girls in the territory, and they enjoy stylish things. Now they can’t spend hours looking at clothing catalogs from back East. Instead they must sew their own simple and modest dresses, without any ruffles, that go all the way to the ground. They must spend less time socializing and more time studying the scriptures and learning the gospel.
But these girls know their father is a prophet, and they choose to follow him. They create the Young Ladies Department of the Cooperative Retrenchment Association and begin meeting often to support each other in their efforts.
It has been almost 50 years since Brigham Young first met with his daughters, and now girls throughout the world are following his counsel.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie spoke of tears in general conference just a few weeks before his death. In one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever heard, that special witness who had full and complete knowledge that his passing from this mortal life was near said, “I testify that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and he was crucified for the sins of the world. He is our Lord, our God, and our King. This I know of myself independent of any other person.
“I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears.” (General Conference, April 1985.)
Those of us who witnessed the delivery of that magnificent address can testify that those tears were flowing even as Elder McConkie stood at the pulpit. They were not tears of sorrow, but tears of joy at the anticipation of the blessing awaiting him.

"Time to go shopping for Christmas presents!" Mom called. Four-year-old Kirsten hopped to the car. Kirsten liked getting presents. She wanted a new doll with curly hair.
As they drove to the store, Mommy turned around in her seat. "Tonight we are buying presents for another family. They won’t have any if we don’t help," she said.
"What?" asked Kirsten. "And no presents for us?"
"We are going to share our presents. You will still get some, but not as many. Remember, we talked about this in family home evening?"
Kirsten frowned.
"We don’t know the family," Mom said. "But you can help Dad and me find presents."
"Hooray!" Deanna said.
Kirsten frowned harder. Her bottom lip stuck out and the corners of her mouth pushed down as far as they would reach.
At the store, Kirsten helped Britney. They walked up and down the aisles until they saw the games. Kirsten picked one in a gray box for the boy.
"Good choice," Britney said.
Kirsten’s frown started to shrink—but only a little.
Next, Juleen wanted to buy some good-smelling soap for the mom. Kirsten helped Juleen pick a happy peach scent.
"Mmmm," Juleen said as she took a sniff, "my favorite!"
The corners of Kirsten’s mouth got a little higher. She almost smiled.
When they were done buying presents, Kirsten and her family went home and wrapped them. Kirsten wrapped a scarf for the girl and tied it with a fluffy bow.
"That looks beautiful!" Mom said.
Kirsten couldn’t help it—an itty-bitty smile kept sneaking onto her face.
Mommy put all the presents in a big box. They sang Christmas carols all the way to the family’s house. Kirsten’s smile got a little bigger.
Dad started to take the box out of the car. "Can I come?" asked Kirsten.
"Of course," Dad said.
Dad carried the box to the door and Kirsten rang the doorbell. A teenage girl with sad eyes answered.
"Merry Christmas!" said Dad and Kirsten. They put the box in the girl’s hands. The girl smiled, and then Dad and Kirsten ran away before she could ask them questions or find out what was in the box.
Kirsten skipped around the corner to where Mommy and her family were waiting in the car. Kirsten could see her brother and sisters’ smiles through the car windows. "Did you have fun?" Mommy asked.
Kirsten didn’t even have to answer. Mom could tell just by looking at Kirsten’s face—she had the biggest smile of them all.

I couldn’t help noticing Kristy, a beautiful brunette I’d had a crush on since my freshman year. She was with some of her church friends. I decided to go see what she was doing.
“Hi. Are you ready for the big game?”
“As ready as I’m going to be. It should be a good game! What are you doing?” I didn’t really care but I wanted to sound interested in what she was doing. I heard girls like that.
“I’m passing out flyers on tips that have made my life wonderful. Do you want one?” Kristy asked in a hesitant tone. Well, I did notice that she always seemed happy and confident. I guess that’s why I was so attracted to her.
“Sure. Why not?” I took a pamphlet, and she gave me a beautiful smile.
I pulled out the flyer and read the title: For the Strength of Youth.
What a strange title, I thought. I’m already strong from weight lifting, but I guess I could use some extra strength. I started reading about standards, dating, language, sexual purity, and other stuff. I had never heard anything so crazy in my life. Why would anyone want to live by these standards? I was, however, curious about some of the beliefs. Like most others my age, I wondered about life and what I was going to do with it.
I talked to Kristy the next day about what I read. I was so amazed at how strong she was about her beliefs in the standards explained in the pamphlet. She then asked me if I’d like to meet two of her friends. Her friends turned out to be missionaries from her church.
During my discussions with the missionaries, I felt something I had never felt before. I had a feeling that told me what they were saying was true. I began to understand why those standards were so important, and how I could, by living those standards, bring more happiness to my life and become a stronger person.
With the help of Kristy and her “friends,” I was soon baptized. I’ll always be thankful for her great example. She helped teach me that being strong is more than building physical muscles. By sharing For the Strength of Youth with me, I learned about standards that helped me develop my spiritual muscles.

When President J. Reuben Clark Jr. counseled those called to positions of authority in the Church, he would tell them not to forget rule number six.
Inevitably, the person would ask, “What is rule number six?”
“Don’t take yourself too darn seriously,” he would say.
Of course, this led to a follow-up question: “What are the other five rules?”
With a twinkle in his eye, President Clark would say, “There aren’t any.”6

Q. How can you get closer to the moon without leaving the earth?
A. Just stay at home and watch the moon on the horizon climb up the sky until it is directly overhead. (It takes about six hours.) While you are watching the moon change position, the earth is turning one quarter of the way around, bringing you about four thousand miles closer to the moon.

As we attend the various stake conferences, it is thrilling to meet the young leaders whom the Lord has raised up—men such as President Eraldo dos Santos. He embraced the gospel as a young boy of seventeen. When he elected to accept a mission call, he was disowned by his family and put out on the street with his meager belongings. He served faithfully, however, and later was led to a beautiful young convert girl. They were sealed in the temple and are rearing their family under the covenant. Still under thirty years of age, he is successful in his business and is a great leader in the stake. How the Lord blesses the faithful members of the Church!

I still remember my anticipation. The night was warm. An uneven breeze puffed through open window screens but did little to cool the air or my excitement. My own room! My own room! The thought pulsed like a syncopated heartbeat.
Wayne, my oldest brother, was going on a mission, and I was inheriting his downstairs room. If someone had been offering me a gold mine, I could not have felt so rich.
I kicked my single sheet to the bed bottom and flip-flopped with pleasure. Just think, Wayne’s old room! I had always lived with my little brother, Chris. Even after moving to the new house, our room was upstairs, while Rog and Wayne each had their own separate rooms downstairs. Roger alone, Wayne alone, but Brad and Chris always lumped together like a compound word without so much as a hyphen.
It’s not that Chris wasn’t an A-number-one pal. He was always good at bed-to-bed spider jumps or deciphering the secret codes I thumped out on his headboard. It’s just that I was in seventh grade now. A man should have his own room.
“Hey, Brad,” Chris whispered. I hadn’t realized he was even awake. “I’m sure going to miss Wayne. Do you think he’s doing the right thing by leaving?” The wispy breeze stirred the patterned curtains I wouldn’t have to look at for two whole years. I took a final glance around. This upstairs room I would not miss. “Don’t worry, Chris,” I comforted. “Wayne is doing the right thing by leaving, all right.”
In the weeks that followed, my life began to change noticeably. I guess it had something to do with entering junior high school and starting to grow up. All I know is that those funny little marks on my face didn’t wash off, my moods cracked as often as my voice, and what self-image I managed to salvage was as shaky as a skinny kid on the high dive. And I became rebellious.
“Gross—I don’t want to take piano lessons any more!”
“But you’ve always liked piano. Just think how much piano may help you contribute on your mission.”
Everyone I met had the same advice.
“So what? I don’t care about grades.”
“You’ve always had good study habits. You need good grades for the future.”
Even then I knew they were right. These were sensitive years when I most needed the advice and instruction, but outwardly I rejected them.
“Cut your hair,” “Read the scriptures,” and on and on. “Be trustworthy,” “Be loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous …” “Why doesn’t everyone stop hassling me?” I’d complain.
“Go on a mission!” In family home evenings, quorum meetings, and bishop interviews, the message was the same: “Prepare while you’re young.”
Night after night I slumped slowly downstairs feeling pressured and picked on. “No one understands,” I’d moan to the blue plaster walls in Wayne’s old room, a room I was enjoying because my brother was out there “doing the right thing” on his mission. I needed that perspective—weekly letters, pictures, cassettes telling what he and his companions were busy doing , not loud lectures but quiet guides that shaped and influenced me.
Every transfer Wayne had found me in front of the big mission map Mom hung in the stairwell, trying to pinpoint where my big brother was now. You see, I was beginning to enjoy following Wayne.
I remembered Wayne playing the piano for family night, working in the garden, running, studying, and reading. I remembered his straight-A report card Dad would post on the refrigerator. I wondered if anyone had ever called him names or made fun of him. I wondered but finally realized that whether they did or didn’t, it had not changed Wayne’s actions. He chose what was right. He did what was best, regardless of what his friends in junior high might have thought or said.
Wayne never told me not to smoke, but I knew he hadn’t. He never wrote to say, “Don’t skip class, read dirty books, or yell at Mom and Dad,” but I knew he hadn’t. There were no flashy sermons or overbearing orations. Wayne was simply a quiet, constant example.
Exhortations are valuable. My parents’ direction is, and always has been, important. Respected Church leaders, teachers, and friends are heard. Their interest in my life is appreciated. Yet perhaps the one who reached me the most did it quietly, from half a world away while I lived in his old room.
Now, freshly back from my own mission, I am checking right back into Wayne’s old room. My upstairs room is now serving as half den and half toy box for visiting grandchildren. But I like it down here. The walls are the same blue. The wooden shelves and desk are the same ones that held my junior high books. Nothing has really changed except me. How can I ever repay Wayne for the subtle, positive influence he has had on me? How can I show my appreciation for so many who have guided me through their quiet examples? How can I thank Christ who gave the perfect example? What can I do?
“Oh, Brad,” my sister-in-law Moana calls. “Have you seen Janelle?” Mom had been tending my niece all morning.
From upstairs came Mom’s voice in answer, “Don’t worry, Moana, she’s here. Right here in Brad’s old room.”

Brother Law has lived in our community for thirty-six years. For the past thirteen years, after his wife passed away, he has lived alone. He is a kind gentleman and a good neighbor, but just as his large garden and row of wild yellow rose bushes shield his house, there has been an unseen barrier between him and his neighbors.
The hand of fellowship, and an offer to include him in Church activities, has often been extended, but he has always politely but firmly refused.
The neighborhood children have always loved him, but a few months ago a special friendship grew between him and nine-year-old Jessica, who lives across the street.
Worried about his being lonesome, she often went to pay a visit. One day she noticed a Book of Mormon on his shelf. It was one left years ago by the missionaries. Jessica picked it up and announced that she was going to read to him some of her favorite scriptures.
Amused at first, Brother Law listened only to be nice to Jessica. Then the spirit of that great book began to warm his heart. He started looking forward to her reading it to him.
In the past when missionaries had come to his door, he had politely told them that he was not interested. But one day after Jessica had begun reading to him, the missionaries came again and he listened to them!
Jessica’s friend, Kristen, invited him to go to church with her family. As Sunday approached, however, he told her that he had nothing to wear and that he didn’t feel very well.
The following Sunday, Jessica invited him to join her family at church. When he again tried the excuse of nothing to wear, Jessica told him, “You can wear one of Daddy’s shirts.”
Brother Law chuckled—Jessica’s father’s shirts were several sizes larger than his.
Not one to give up, Jessica told her mom the problem, and the next week he was presented with an early Christmas present, a new white shirt. By this time he was running out of excuses, but he tried once more by telling Jessica he had no pants. She simply replied, “Oh, you can wear most any pants—just make sure they don’t have paint on them.”
He didn’t have a tie, either, but one of Dad’s was promptly produced, and they headed for the chapel. After seventy-one years of not going to church, Brother Law was very nervous. Once he was in the chapel, though, he felt warm and comfortable.
The next hurdle came when the missionaries approached him about baptism. He had decided the Church was a family church and so it was really no place for him.
The following Sunday one of the Relief Society sisters gave a talk at ward conference on how we are all brothers and sisters in the gospel. As she talked, the Spirit touched his heart and he realized that he really could be a part of the ward “family.” Besides, he recalled, all the children in the neighborhood were already calling him Grandpa or Brother Law.
This story has a wonderful ending, or should I say beginning. Today when you look at Brother Law, he literally glows with the Spirit. On April 10, 1994, he was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In a Holiday Inn in Detroit I stayed in bed one morning until noon writing a song committing my friendship to someone whose needs and goodness had impressed me deeply, and now the friendship is rich and enduring, and the song was adopted by Brigham Young University as a theme for their helping-hand “Friends” program.

Antonio set a goal using his Children’s Guidebook to learn how to paint. His Primary class wants to learn with him! Find 12 jars of orange paint and 19 pumpkins.

A Laurel class president noticed a Laurel-­age girl who had never been baptized and whose mother was a less-­active member. She reached out to her and invited her to girls’ camp. All the young women befriended her. How great was their joy when she was baptized.

There are many others we could mention. There is a family in Lahore, Pakistan, who came into contact with the Book of Mormon several years ago. They gained testimonies of its truth and were recently baptized. And there is a brother in Pakistan whose life was changed through reading a Church pamphlet, The Prophet Joseph Smith’s Testimony.

During that time, I hoped that one particular trial would go away. I felt I’d done everything I could think of to change it or fix it or move past it, but it was continuing to make my life difficult. I asked my husband to give me a blessing, hoping for an instant miracle.
Instead, through my husband, the Lord gave me a beautiful list of the ways that this difficult problem was changing me. He blessed me with resilience, growth, greater compassion for others, and increased knowledge and wisdom. And while the words of the blessing did give me hope that my circumstances would improve, they also helped me see that I shouldn’t try to get through this trial without allowing myself to be changed for the better.

It’s beginning all over again. Books. Homework. Essays. The cold lump in your stomach after you glance at your report card, knowing you’re going to hear all about that brilliant kid down the street when you get home. Once again you’ll jam the carbony mess of your report card into a pocket, muttering excuses to yourself, while the kid down the block passes by waving his grades triumphantly over his head.

The wicked spirit, which had inspired Governor Boggs of Missouri to issue the order to exterminate the Saints and broods forever and always over the work of the Lord, had followed them west.

President Young had said when they entered the Valley, “If they let us alone ten years we would ask no odds of them.” Ten years to the day a messenger arrived with word that Johnston’s army was marching west with orders to “settle the Mormon question.”

President Young told the Saints: “[We] have been driven from place to place; … we have been scattered and peeled. …
“… We have transgressed no law, … neither do we intend to; but as for any nation’s coming to destroy this people, God Almighty being my helper, they cannot come here.”

The settlements were evacuated, and the Saints moved south. Every stone was cleared away from Temple Square. The foundation, which after seven years’ work was nearing ground level, was covered over and the block was plowed.

Later, when the foundation was uncovered, they found a few cracks. It was torn out and replaced.

Sixteen large, inverted granite arches were built into the new foundation. There is no record as to why they did that. That manner of construction was unknown in this country then. If someday perchance there be a massive force wanting to lift the temple from beneath, then we shall know why they are there.

Joseph Smith Ordaining Parley P. Pratt as an Apostle, by Walter Rane, © 2002 IRI
Right: Parley P. Pratt recalled, “On the 21st day of February, 1835, I took the oath and covenant of apostleship, and was solemnly set apart and ordained to that office; and as a member of that quorum under the hands of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer.”8

Two friends at school noticed my CTR ring and asked if they could have one. I asked my mom if I could get rings for everyone in my class at school. I told them what it stands for, and they couldn’t stop thanking me. I felt happy inside!
Elizabeth D., age 10, Okinawa, Japan