Gospel Story Finder

“The rector’s not too pleased,” Mr. Crofton added and smiled. “It seems this preacher is baptizing just about everybody in these parts.”
“You don’t say.”
“Rector sent a constable to arrest the preacher right there at the Benbows’. When Mr. Woodruff stood up to preach, the constable stopped him. Told him he was under arrest for preaching.”
Mr. Weston leaned forward to hear the rest.
“Woodruff looked him calmly in the eye and said that he had a license to preach, same as the rector. But he promised to talk to the constable about it after he’d finished his sermon.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Father said and nodded.
“The constable sat down beside him. Then Mr. Woodruff began to preach a sermon like I’ve never heard before. He taught about Jesus Christ like he really knew him. He taught faith, repentance, and baptism. He taught about the Holy Ghost and laying on of hands to receive that gift. It was powerful!”
Father shifted in his chair and studied his friend. “You sound like you believed this preacher.”
“Let me finish my story,” Mr. Crofton replied, “and you’ll see. Well, at the end of the meeting, he invited anyone who desired it to come and be baptized, and four United Brethren preachers walked up and asked to be baptized. Then the constable stood up and everyone quieted down.
“‘Mr. Woodruff,’ he said, ‘I would like to be baptized.’ Well, you could have heard a pin drop! Now, Mr. Woodruff wasted no time. He took the constable down to a pond right then and there at the Benbows’ and baptized him with the others. He baptized seven people that night.”
Charity counted up in her head. If there were four preachers and the constable, then who else had joined this new religion?
Her father stood up and poked the fire. Then he turned to his friend and softly asked, “You were one of those seven, weren’t you?”
Mr. Weston nodded. “I surely was. I want you to come hear him, Benjamin. He preaches a good sermon, and I could just feel the spirit of truth testifying to what he said.”

A young woman in another country applied to work as a journalist, but the official who assigned jobs was merciless. He said to her, “With my signature, I guarantee you will not become a journalist but will dig sewers.” She was the only woman digging sewers in a gang of men.

Years later this woman became an official. One day a man came in needing her signature for a job.

She asked, “Do you remember me?” He did not.

She said, “You do not remember me, but I remember you. With your signature, you guaranteed I never became a journalist. With your signature, you sent me to dig sewers, the only woman in a gang of men.”

She told me, “I feel I should treat that man better than he treated me—but I do not have that strength.” Sometimes that strength is not within us, but it can be found in remembering the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

But I often felt out of place at church because I was learning so many new things. I bought some new long skirts to replace my short ones. When I wore them to church, I found out they were still too short to meet Church standards. I didn’t understand what my friends meant when they used Church-related abbreviations. I was too nervous and shy to ask them the meanings of things.
What helped was the teens befriending me and taking time to include me. They seemed to have a natural way of caring for new members. Another thing that helped was visualizing my family in the next life. I never wanted them to be disappointed in me for not living the gospel when I knew it to be true. Even though times were difficult when I was a teenager, I tried to think of the future and my responsibility to my family. If I did not live the gospel, how would my family ever have a chance of accepting it?

For the fourth time, Jenna tried to make her second and third fingers move quickly back and forth from B to B-flat. But her trill still didn’t sound smooth and even. Jenna rested her palms on the piano keys. She looked at the clock and sighed. Twenty-five more minutes to go.
From the kitchen, Mom called out, “Keep it up, Jenna! Your trill is definitely improving.”
Jenna rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t like music. In fact, she loved it. But now Mrs. Maitland was giving her harder pieces by composers like Bach and Scarlatti. Jenna’s fingers couldn’t get through the runs without stumbling over each other.
“This sonata is going to sound awful in the recital!” Jenna grumbled.
Jenna stared down at her fingers. She obviously didn’t have what it took to be a good pianist—not as good as Mia, the star of Mrs. Maitland’s piano recitals. Jenna’s fingers just weren’t coordinated enough. What was the point in keeping it up if she was always going to be second best? Maybe she would ask Mom and Dad to let her quit piano.
Jenna looked around for something else to play. There was her blue Children’s Songbook. She opened it to page 228, her favorite Primary song. “Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by our lilac tree.” It always made Jenna feel like spring. In the illustration under the song title, the little girl’s raincoat was the same color as the daffodil, and her red umbrella matched her galoshes.
Jenna smiled and put her hands back on the keyboard. She loved the part where the notes go up for “I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world” and then come back down for “Heav’nly Father created for me.” The notes weren’t exactly a run, Jenna decided. They were more like a walk for her fingers. And she loved the word expressively at the top. It was exactly the way she liked to play. As she played the notes with their gentle, rocking rhythm, her frustration started melting away.
Jenna was starting on the second verse when Mom came in. “Sister Hardy just called,” Mom said. “She has to miss Primary on Sunday, and she can’t find anyone to substitute for her as pianist. Do you think you could do it, Jenna?”
The thought of playing in front of the whole Primary made Jenna’s stomach fluttery. But she loved the Primary songs. She would have her blue songbook, and the music wasn’t too fast or too hard.
Suddenly, Jenna felt glad that she had kept up her piano lessons. Her fingers didn’t need to be the fastest. And she didn’t really need to be the star of the recital. She could play the songs she loved for Heavenly Father. And that made it all worth it.

Robert Crookston, a young coal miner, waited eagerly for the passenger steamer to cross the Firth of Forth into Dysart harbour on a beautiful spring morning in 1841. He had walked from his home in Wemyss to meet a special friend: George Darling Watt, a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Robert’s local minister had been unable to satisfy his honest questions on religion so when his aunt and cousin in Edinburgh wrote to invite Robert to hear their minister, he readily accepted. He was thrilled by the preaching of Elder Watt and said, “I believed every word of it [...] I was converted on the spot and went the same night and was baptised in Duddingston Loch.”
Robert felt the sacredness of the occasion as Brother Watt disembarked. He said, “When he took my hand I felt that he was the only man that held the Priesthood on the north side of the Firth. [...] I rented a large hall for him to preach in and the people flocked to hear the gospel and nearly twenty were baptised then.”

SHAWN: In elementary school I was diagnosed with learning disabilities, and I had a real hard time with the kids teasing me about it. In the sixth grade I started smoking cigarettes because there was a group of people there I could relate to. They let me into their crowd, and all I had to do was smoke cigarettes.

SHAWN: I remember my parents saying to me: If you use drugs, you’re going to be a freak. You aren’t going to be normal. I used drugs. I felt pretty normal. I decided they had been lying to me.

SHAWN: In the seventh grade I started using alcohol, and in the ninth grade I added marijuana and speed. Before I started using drugs, and for a while afterward, I danced, I sang, I played baseball, I wrestled. As the drug use progressed, I stopped dancing. I quit baseball. I backed out of everything. In the ninth grade I started backing away from the Church, even though I was the teachers quorum president. I slipped right off the deep end into devil worship. It was a frightening experience, but I was too numb to realize it at the time. I didn’t feel anything. I got more and more depressed. I had my first suicide attempt about the middle of my ninth grade year. At the end of that year I was arrested for possession.

I really started fighting hard with my parents. Every single day when I woke up it was a fight. Lying became a way of life. I lied so that I could keep using.

I went on to LSD. On a bad trip I beat myself up and stabbed holes in the wall. I remember seeing the walls in the house literally eating the flesh off my friends.

I started needing drugs many times each day just to survive. I still looked like a straight, clean-cut kid, but I was taking anything I could get my hands on, just to see if it would get me high. Once I overdosed and almost died.

In tenth grade I quit school and started looking really different. I wasn’t Shawn anymore. I was drugs. If I talked it was drugs. If I walked it was with drugs. Everything I did was drugs.

When I finally was forced into treatment I weighed 97 pounds. After being hospitalized for three weeks I weighed 130. That’s what drugs do to your body, and they injure your mind and spirit even more.

I wasted five years of my life that I’ll never have back. It’s gone, just gone.

SHAWN: I had totally lost control of my own life, but I still didn’t think I had a problem. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with me. I just blamed it all on my parents for being so strict.

When you’re using, there’s a gut feeling, a pain like someone’s just drilled a hole right through you, and you want to fill it up. It seems as if the only way you can do that is by denying everything to yourself and using more and more.

SHAWN: The hardest part of my treatment was when they said, “You’ve got to find God.” They called it “a higher power,” because not everybody has a religious background. I thought, There’s no way; He’ll never forgive me after what I’ve done. I can’t even forgive myself. I had been in the program two or three months before I finally understood that he forgives everyone who repents. You’ve just got to give him the chance and be willing to change. Changing is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone.

SHAWN: Even after treatment, staying sober is a day-to-day struggle. You wake up every morning and the first thing you say is, “God, help me make it through the day.” And for the rest of the day you’re working on it. It gets easier, but you never forget that you’re an addict.

I’ve been sober for a year and a half, and I still wake up in the morning and think, “Go get some speed; you need something to pump you up.” It almost breaks me in two sometimes.

My mother loved that scripture and lived its principle. The greatest affliction of her life was the death of her husband, our father, after only 11 years of marriage. This changed her life and imposed great hardships as she proceeded to earn a living and raise her three little children alone. Nevertheless, I often heard her say that the Lord consecrated that affliction for her gain because her husband’s death compelled her to develop her talents and serve and become something that she could never have become without that seeming tragedy. Our mother was a spiritual giant, strong and fully worthy of the loving tribute her three children inscribed on her headstone: “Her Faith Strengthened All.”

When I was 19, I made one last visit to my grandparents before leaving on a three-month humanitarian trip to Ecuador. My grandfather had moved to an assisted-living center because his health was declining. He suffered from dementia along with other physical ailments incident to old age.
As my family and I entered the assisted-living facility, I was sullen, knowing that this visit with my grandfather would most likely be my last. I knew he would pass away while I was gone, and I felt guilty leaving.
Just before we entered his room, a staff member had transferred my grandfather to a wheelchair. We wheeled him into the facility’s common area. My mother was talking to one of the staff members while my 16-year-old sister and I talked to our grandfather.
He was not himself. The decline in his mental state was evident, and he seemed confused. When we asked him how many grandchildren he had, he answered incorrectly. Then we lovingly teased him as we made a big deal about how many he actually had.
My heart ached for him. But then, amid his confusion and in the middle of answering our questions inaccurately, my grandfather suddenly said, “A forever family.”
I was shocked. A nearby staff member didn’t understand what he had said, but my sister and I looked at each other. We had both heard him clearly. He then repeated a second time, “A forever family.” This time our mother also heard him.
I don’t recall anything else about our visit that day. All I know is that as we walked out of the care center, I sobbed with sorrow and joy—sorrow for the man we were leaving behind and whom I would not see again in this life and joy for the tender mercy of those simple words and the peace they left in my heart.
I know that despite my grandfather’s state of mind, he was able to share one last time his strong conviction and knowledge that families are forever.
I soon left on my humanitarian trip. When news came of my grandfather’s passing a week before my return, I was at peace. I knew, and I still know, that one day I will see him again. Thanks to temple ordinances, families are forever.

I have a friend that was struggling with something very near and dear to her heart. I had no way of knowing how or what to say to her. I had been praying for her and I wanted her to find the peace that was there for her to feel, but I really had no way of knowing (really knowing) or understanding how she felt. I finally had words impressed upon my mind of what I needed to tell my friend. These words, although I believe were meant for her, they may also be meant for someone hearing this talk today. Here are the words I said to my friend:

"I want you to know that you will get through this journey. I want you to know that I am not sure how long it will take but [you will get through it]. I also want you to know that this journey you are on, is not for you. What I mean is that this journey you are on, is for you to help someone else that will be facing something similar. I am not sure when that will be, but this person will approach you and tell you their story. You will recognize it as your own. Then you will be able to tell them, 'I know how you feel, I not only know how you feel, I understand how you feel because I have walked in your shoes.' You will be the one that was sent to their aid to help them get through their journey because you have made it through yours."

Perspective.

I’m home again. Things are not going well. The cancer is back, and Tuesday I’ll be leaving for Minnesota for a bone marrow transplant. I’m not excited about it, but it’s the only hope I have. …
I’ve been in Minnesota for a couple of days now. The doctors have killed most of my diseased bone marrow, and because of that I need blood platelets and white cells. I don’t know anyone here to ask to be a donor, so I had the doctor call the mission president. Within just a few hours—can you believe it!—there were more than eight people here waiting to be typed. My doctor was amazed, and I was just thankful. It isn’t like giving blood. They had to sit by a machine for several hours while their blood was pumped out and stripped of the materials I need.
None of them even knew me, and some of them drove as far as 60 miles to help me. The Church is like a big family for me. I know I can depend on the members for help anytime I need it. It’s a good feeling.
My brother is going to be the donor for my transplant. I’m grateful that his marrow is compatible with mine and grateful he is willing to give it to me. It’s a big sacrifice. I really love him for it.
During the operation they are going to kill the rest of my bone marrow and then give me some of my brother’s healthy marrow. If the transplant doesn’t work, I’m in a little bit of trouble. It’s a chance I have to take. I don’t have a choice, not if I want to live. There is so much I want to do, but if I don’t make it, I’m grateful for what I’ve had. I have so much to be thankful for: my family, my friends, the gospel.
I still don’t know why this has happened to me. I guess it really isn’t important. What I do know is that I must trust in and obey my Father in Heaven. I know that in the end, everything will be all right. One of the beautiful things about the gospel is that no matter what happens to us, as long as we have faith and as long as we are obedient, we have hope. I wouldn’t wish what I have experienced on anyone, but I do wish that everyone could feel what I feel about the beauty of life, about the value of living every day as completely as we can, and most of all, about the beauty and strength the gospel can bring to us.

When my grandmother was about 19 years old, she developed a disease that caused her to be very ill. She later said, “I couldn’t walk. My left foot was all out of shape after I had been in bed for several months. The bones were soft like a sponge, and when I touched my foot to the floor it felt like an electric shock.” While she was confined to bed and at the height of her suffering, she obtained and studied pamphlets from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was converted and later baptized. Many times a particular challenge helps prepare us for something vitally important.

“Loser!”
I’ll never forget the sting I felt the first time someone called me that. It was in junior high school. It hurt.
“You’re such a loser!”
It made me feel excluded, unappreciated, and unable. And it was easy to find ways to reinforce the image. I wasn’t good at sports. Loser. I wasn’t good at talking to girls. Loser. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Loser. (In reality, these don’t make someone a loser, but it was hard to see that at the time.)
Then one day in ninth-grade seminary it dawned on me that I could be good at something: Losing!
Let me explain. That day we read in the Book of Mormon about King Lamoni’s father, who prayed: “O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee” (Alma 22:18).
I could be a good loser by losing my sins! I could give away and lose bad habits, bad feelings, lying, cheating, stealing … you get the idea. Not that I was having huge problems with major sins, but here was a way to quickly turn losing into winning. Or so I thought.
I knew I could lose the big, bad, awful things. The very first day, for example, I lost murder and armed robbery right off the bat. It wasn’t hard to give up things I’d never even been tempted to do. Some of the little sins were easy to lose too. Like teasing my sister. Yeah, I’d have to work at it, but I could lose it in a reasonable amount of time.
But all of my sins? I soon found that there were enough potential transgressions, sins of commission, and sins of omission that I could spend my lifetime trying to eliminate them. Maybe I wasn’t such a great loser after all!
Then we read another scripture in seminary, and something else dawned on me. “I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts” (2 Nephi 28:30). “Here a little and there a little.” Maybe one by one I could lose my sins … but where to start?
Later, in a priesthood quorum lesson, we read this counsel from a prophet: “The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you are having the most difficulty keeping today. … Put that aright and then you start on the next one that is most difficult for you to keep. That’s the way to sanctify yourself” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee [2000], 30.)
Here was my answer! I’d give away my toughest sin first. And this has become a pattern in my life. It hasn’t always been easy, and I’m still working on it. I’ve found that some sins challenge me over and over again, and they may for the rest of my life. But that doesn’t mean I’ve failed—as long as I keep trying. I now find comfort in these words:
“The Lord blesses those who want to improve, who accept the need for commandments and try to keep them, who cherish Christlike virtues and strive to the best of their ability to acquire them. If you stumble in that pursuit, so does everyone; the Savior is there to help you keep going. … He will help you get back up. He will help you repent, repair, fix whatever you have to fix, and keep going. … His divine love and unfailing help will be with us even when we struggle—no, will be with us especially when we struggle” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Apr. 2016 general conference).
I’ve also found that as I work on losing my sins, I experience a great reinforcement. It’s described in the Book of Mormon, when the people responded to King Benjamin: “The Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent … has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2).
Who wants to be a loser? You will, when you understand the joy of losing sins. I’ve found that the more I lose them, the more they’re replaced by the desire to do good. And that’s become the goal I strive for because “inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward” (D&C 58:28).

In high school I became involved with a young man my family did not approve of. Eventually, because of their opposition, I became hostile toward my siblings and hateful toward my parents. Unfortunately, I was convinced that they didn’t know what was good for me; only I knew. How could they be so opposed to my boyfriend? Yes, he said awful things to me sometimes. But I believed he hurt me because he loved me. I felt that no one else really cared about me.
Being in an abusive relationship altered my emotions and perceptions. I was angry at everyone one moment and disappointed in myself the next. I stayed away from church, eluded everyone who really loved me, and avoided anything spiritual, especially good music. I was hurting, though I wouldn’t admit it.
As I was struggling with my life and everyone around me, my violin teacher asked me for help. She was the Primary music leader in her ward, which was planning a sacrament meeting featuring songs by the Primary. My teacher asked if I would be willing to play violin accompaniment on a few songs. I didn’t want to, but I said yes. When she handed me the music, I looked through the titles. The last piece was “I Am a Child of God” (Hymns, no. 301).
I was not thrilled because I knew the power of music. I began practicing the songs anyway, while doing everything I could to repel the Spirit—from thinking of how much I hated my family to trying to keep the songs out of my mind when not practicing.
When the Sunday for the program finally arrived, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. During the program, I tried to ignore the Spirit, but when it came time for the closing song, my violin teacher did something I wasn’t expecting. She turned around and invited the congregation to join in singing.
I placed my bow on the violin strings and struck the first note. The Spirit hit me with such force that tears began streaming down my cheeks before the end of the second line. The Spirit told me to listen to the lyrics and remember that I was a child of God, would always be special to Him, and did not need an abusive boyfriend. I needed Him.
The sound of all those voices—young and old—singing the hymn’s simple words helped me hear and understand His words, the words of my family, and the words of Church leaders. Music was my weakness. Heavenly Father knew music was the way to my heart. I was the one who needed to change, not my family.
The Lord knows and understands the power of music (see D&C 25:12). It can lift us and open our hearts and minds to the Spirit. I will always be grateful for music and the spirit it still brings to my life today.

I remember one occasion with a little boy who was very ill. He was in a hospital and passed away. As Jeanene and I drove from the hospital, we pulled over to the side of the road. I held her in my arms. Each of us cried a little, but we realized that we would have him beyond the veil because we had made those covenants in the temple, and that made it much easier.

Jeanene’s kindness taught me so many valuable things. I was so immature, and she was so disciplined, so mature, and so spiritual.

As a young girl, I dreamed of being part of a forever family. I was 12 years old when my family was sealed in the São Paulo Brazil Temple. I perfectly remember kneeling with my family at the temple altar and being sealed with my siblings to our parents for time and for all eternity. I knew then that this was the type of family I wanted. I placed a picture of the São Paulo Temple beside my bed, and I looked at it every night, renewing my commitment to have nothing less than an eternal family.

My grandmother, Isabelle Bawden Bangerter, was known to be a woman of great faith. She acquired her faith as a child and worked to increase it all her life. She taught Relief Society for many years, and among Relief Society sisters she was known as a theologian, a woman who knew the gospel well and could teach it from the scriptures. She was still studying the scriptures when she died at the age of 97. Grandma Bangerter was a woman who was confident in her eternal roles and responsibilities. When I was a young mother, I asked her if it was possible to rear a righteous posterity in a world filled with wickedness. She raised herself up, and pointing at me, she emphatically said, “Yes! You must! That is why you are here!” Her teaching inspired me to become more intentional about my responsibilities and to approach life with greater faith. It is possible to have that kind of direct and inspired teaching every week in Relief Society.

Because of that example from my father, years later I was able to make a similar decision. I had just been hired by a consulting company, and they flew six of us employees from the Philippines to Sydney, Australia, to join with 400 managers from all over the world for training. We flew first class. A limousine picked us up at the airport and whisked us away to a five-star hotel, where each room had a big basket of goodies. The company wanted to show us that this was a good company to work for, and it wanted its new hires to stay.
After the first day of meetings, we had a gala dinner, a formal affair. We sat about 12 to a table, each with 10 managers and 2 managing partners who were to be our role models in the company. They told us stories about how they started in the company and grew in their careers with it. They told us of multimillion dollar deals they had closed, important businesspeople they had worked with, and major projects they had directed. I heard the names of Fortune 500 CEOs mentioned frequently and was in awe of these men because of the work they did.
We were all feeling great about our opportunities until one of the people at the table asked, “How does your wife handle all of your traveling? You’re constantly gone.” And one of the partners answered, “I was just divorced two years ago.” And the other partner at our table said, “I’ve been divorced for five years.”
I remember my thoughts: “These are not the men I want to be. I don’t think I want to work for this company because I don’t care much about worldly accomplishments if my family is in disarray.” The example of my father made it easy for me to decide to put my family first, and I found another job that allowed me to do so.

In 2016, Jayne Kyprianou was serving in the stake Primary presidency of the Poole Stake. After hearing Elder Kearon’s April 2016 talk, “Refuge from the Storm”1, the Primary presidency wanted to do something to help refugee children who were arriving in their area.
After a lot of prayer and discussion, they ended up hosting an online auction and a cake sale. They beat their goal of raising £500, by raising almost £1,800.
The money raised was used to buy items for educational packs for the refugee children. These would be packed by stake Primary children in a forthcoming Primary conference.
During that time, the stake public affairs directors, Brother Roger Head and Sister Moira Head, began to have contact with Unity in Vision, Bournemouth, a voluntary group founded by members of ethnic minorities.
Unity in Vision was invited to attend the stake’s Primary conference, and this was the start of a great working relationship between the Church and Unity in Vision.

During the global pandemic, travel to Vanuatu was severely restricted, making it difficult for the Church in the area to send out or receive missionaries. Eventually, Tanna Island had no full-time missionaries and missionary work was forced to slow down.
In early 2022, as life began returning to normal, Vanuatu’s mission president, Mark Messick, was delighted to receive a request from Tanna’s district president: “Send missionaries as soon as possible!”
President Messick learned that while Tanna was without full-time missionaries, local members of the Church and returned missionaries on the island continued to teach the gospel to their friends and neighbours, and they had around 85 candidates ready to be interviewed and baptised. President Messick immediately arranged to send his assistants to Tanna.
The plan was postponed because Tanna’s live volcano started rumbling. Then, a small cyclone hit the island, causing widespread damage—further solidifying Vanuatu’s status as number one on the World Risk Index for the likelihood of natural disasters. Just as Tanna began to recover from the cyclone, a sudden outbreak of COVID-19 shut all of Vanuatu down, and once again, travel was restricted.
It wasn’t until the middle of August that President Messick was finally able to send his APs to Tanna to interview the baptismal candidates and prepare them to join the Church. By then, President Messick was worried that the long wait had deterred some of them, that their interest might have waned.
But when Elder Silas Toa and Elder Brian Moses Nalin arrived—armed with a stack of paperwork for the baptismal interviews—they found the opposite to be true. Not only were all 85 still eager to join the Church, but their numbers had increased by 29. Now, 114 candidates were faithfully waiting to be interviewed and baptised. The elders embarked on their tour of all eight of the Church’s branches in Tanna.
After they interviewed and baptised six people at the first branch, Elder Toa and Elder Nalin headed to Saetsiwi, an isolated area tucked high in the mountains. They had no way to contact the Saetsiwi Branch president but knew he was expecting them at some point, so the missionaries drove their truck as far as they could then continue on foot for the remaining 3-hour trek. When they finally arrived, the branch president was nowhere to be found. The elders had hiked all that way in vain.
Then the big rain fell. Everyone in Saetsiwi knows that when it starts to rain hard, getting off the mountain is treacherous. Elder Toa and Elder Nalin rushed back to their truck, knowing every second counted before the local rivers swelled and became impassable. They made it to the truck in time to drive through the first and second rivers, but they knew the third river would be a challenge.
Sure enough, their truck got stuck partway. They tried to push it—no luck. They called the district president, and soon help arrived, but the truck still wouldn’t move. The river rose and flowed so swiftly that the helpers had to get out and move to safety. Then, Elder Nalin spotted something else that worried him. He saw that the waters in next river over—which converged with this river—had become torrential and threatened to break through.
In his mind, it seemed to Elder Nalin that an invisible force was holding that third river back, as though buying time for them—but he knew it wouldn’t be for long. The torrent was racing.
Elder Toa and Elder Nalin are examples of the finest possible young men from Vanuatu—responsible and excellent in every way. To them, a truck is of almost incomprehensible expense, especially in a country where families can barely afford to educate their children, much less buy a vehicle. The elders were determined to preserve the Church’s truck at all costs, but now the water was up to its door handles. They called their mission president and asked, “What should we do?”
President Messick’s response was: “Thank you for calling. Now get out of the truck and save yourselves. I don’t care about the truck; I care about you.”
As they rushed out of the truck, Elder Toa climbed into the back seat to grab their scriptures and the 114 interview papers they needed for the baptisms. He couldn’t see them anywhere. Then a voice yelled, “The water is coming! Get out of the truck!” and Elder Toa slipped out of the back door just as the truck was swept downstream.
As soon as the elders realised that their scriptures and the 114 interview papers were still in the truck—which was now well out of sight—they used the power of the priesthood and commanded the truck to protect their precious documents. “That’s what you can do with the priesthood,” the young men said later, with absolute confidence. “You can command.”
Elder Toa and Elder Nalin managed to pull themselves out to safety, and there by the side of the river, they knelt and prayed. As they prayed that the truck would be safe and that their scriptures and interview papers would stay dry, the missionaries felt a peaceful assurance that all would be fine. Then they walked the rest of the way off the mountain.
The next day, the elders received a call from the district president. Saetsiwi’s branch president had found their truck, 250 meters downstream. When the Elders arrived to retrieve it, they discovered not a dent or a scratch on the body of the vehicle, despite its journey in the river, past trees, rocks, and debris.
The inside of the truck wasn’t so fortunate. It was drenched. The engine suffered electrical damage, and everything in the cab—pamphlets, manuals, books—was soaked beyond repair, except for the Elders’ scriptures and the 114 interview papers. These sat in plain sight above everything else, completely dry.
While the truck was being repaired, Elder Toa and Elder Nalin resumed their tour on foot. At their next stop, they interviewed and baptised 48 candidates before continuing right across Tanna Island. “When you get tired of walking,” one of them told a fellow missionary, “You walk with your heart.”
Their hearts and a priesthood miracle helped these faithful elders reach and bring all 114 candidates safely into the Church of Jesus Christ.

Besides being a cast member, Julie Ashton (10) was a pageant guide. Each night before the show began, some cast members, dressed in their costumes, welcomed people to the pageant and handed out programs. She even learned a few greetings in Spanish and was able to visit with Spanish-speaking members of the audience.
One of the scenes Julie especially liked was the one in which Jesus Christ teaches the multitude and performs miracles like raising the sick and the dead. “I loved the song they played, and I loved seeing Jesus smile. It gave me a good feeling inside.”
Her very favorite part of the pageant was the finale. All the cast members went on stage or out on the grass and sang “I Know He Lives!” while Matt Hale, as the Savior, was lifted by wires 40? (12.2 m) above the ground. “I liked that best,” Julie said, “because you were bearing your testimony to the audience. It let them know that you know that He lives. I know He lives because I’ve prayed about it and got a really special feeling in my heart. I know it’s true.”