Gospel Story Finder

I also encourage all parents hearing or reading this message to make the Book of Mormon an important part of your home. As our children were growing, we read the Book of Mormon as we ate breakfast. This is the bookmark that we used. On the front is a quote from President Benson promising that God would pour out a blessing upon us as we read the Book of Mormon. On the back is this promise from President Marion G. Romney, formerly a counselor in the First Presidency: “I feel certain that if, in our homes, parents will read from the Book of Mormon prayerfully and regularly, both by themselves and with their children, the spirit of that great book will come to permeate our homes and all who dwell therein. … The spirit of contention will depart. Parents will counsel their children in greater love and wisdom. Children will be more responsive and submissive to the counsel of their parents. Righteousness will increase. Faith, hope, and charity—the pure love of Christ—will abound in our homes and lives, bringing in their wake peace, joy, and happiness.”
Now, many years after our children have left home and are raising their own families, we can see clearly the fulfillment of President Romney’s promise. Our family is far from perfect, but we can testify of the power of the Book of Mormon and the blessings that reading it has brought and continues to bring into the lives of our whole family.

“The rest of my family is Buddhist,” Chung Wen-yi, 17, of the Second Ward, said. “But among the students at my school, there are many who believe in Christ. I became interested in Christians. I saw many churches. But they all seemed to just read the Bible from the pulpit and give some explanations. They didn’t seem to care whether the congregation got the message or not. Then they asked for donations. I felt like I didn’t learn anything from them.
“Then a classmate gave my name to the missionaries. They came to my door. What they said was all so orderly, so logical and right. They helped me understand my Father in Heaven as a loving father, and his son Jesus Christ as my friend and brother. After several discussions, they asked if I would like to be baptized. I prayed about it. Sometimes I felt so happy I couldn’t even sleep at night. I knew it was right. I joined willingly, not being pushed or forced.”

There was the Relief Society leader with whom we had been discussing visiting teaching. We talked about contacting those for whom we had responsibility. At one point she began to speak, almost apologetically. “Oh, Sister, you know that none of us in the branch have telephones. So we have to ask Heavenly Father if anyone needs us.” She illustrated with many examples. She would pray in the morning, asking if anyone needed her; frequently she would receive a strong impression that she should visit one of the members; sometimes she would even feel strongly about taking food or something else. And I wondered how many times I had let the telephone interfere with that pure form of communication. …

There have also been many changes during the past general conferences. When President Russell M. Nelson closed the October 2019 general conference, he revealed some revisions to the questions asked in a temple recommend interview, and as he reiterated question 8, “Do you strive to keep the Sabbath day holy, both at home and at church; attend your meetings; prepare for and worthily partake of the sacrament; and live your life in harmony with the laws and commandments of the gospel?” (emphasis added).
I was struck by the word prepare.
I’ve realized that the sacrament isn’t something you prepare for just moments before the bread and water are passed. You can prepare for the sacrament throughout the week to help you feel the Spirit strongly and a sense of renewal every Sunday.
Since then, I’ve started preparing to take the sacrament throughout the week by:
Studying my scriptures through Come, Follow Me and thinking of ideas I can share with others and in the next Sunday School meeting.
Packing what I need for church on Saturday night for meetings in the morning (the joys of working the night shift!). I make sure I pack my scriptures and a notebook to take notes during sacrament meeting, and I pray to find answers during church about how I can improve myself throughout the next week.
Listening to spiritual music on Sunday morning before I attend sacrament meeting also helps me feel the Spirit and get in the right mindset.
Reading over the hymns we will sing in sacrament meeting and looking up the scriptures they refer to. This helps me fully realize the message and meaning behind the hymns and helps me ponder these things throughout the meeting.
Lastly, thinking about the reason for the sacrament before it’s passed. I remind myself that I need to always remember the “why” of the sacrament and its importance throughout the week—the Savior.
I’ve learned so much more about the sacrament since that first day at church. And I now feel so much joy every week as I walk into sacrament meeting, knowing that I am about to remember my Savior’s sacrifice for me and be more diligent in keeping my covenants. Preparing makes a positive difference in the Spirit you feel throughout the meeting. Before the sacrament was in my life, I often felt empty—like something was missing. I never knew that the missing piece of my life was an ordinance that is so simple, but so powerful at the same time. An ordinance that helps me deepen my love for the Savior and appreciate all He does for me.

Robert Ramsay was also influenced by the Osmonds along with his then-girlfriend, Beverley. “We dated and talked about the Church. When I read the Book of Mormon, I knew it was an ancient record. I agreed to meet with the missionaries and later became a member.”

This year I entered 10th grade in high school. My greatest fear had been that I wouldn’t fit in or make any friends. I have been praying every night for our Heavenly Father to send some comfort or guidance. When I read “Angel Unaware” in the August 2002 New Era, my prayers were answered. I entered high school with a new attitude. Instead of worrying about how many people will like me and be my friend, I will be excited to befriend as many people as I can—especially those who might need a friend. Who knows, maybe I will end up being someone’s angel.
Heidi Leigh WilckenMesa, Arizona (via e-mail)

Joseph’s father, it appears, reacted against the strict discipline required by the contemporary religions of the day. The devout people of his day were not many generations removed from the Puritans, and the goal set up by the ministers of the time was that each church member should become a spiritual athlete, that is, work unceasingly at being a religious person. Brigham Young, who was five years older than the Prophet, described how he was brought up:
“When I was young [he said], I was kept within very strict bounds, and was not allowed to walk more than half-an-hour on Sunday for exercise. [In fact, he said], all the proper and necessary gambols of youth were denied me. I had not a chance to dance when I was young, and never heard the enchanting tones of the violin until I was eleven years of age; and then I thought I was on the highway to hell if I suffered myself to linger and listen to it. … The Christian world of my youth considered it very wicked to listen to music and to dance.”3
He went on to say that the parents of his day whipped their children for reading novels, never let them go to the theater, and prohibited them from playing or associating with other children. To use his words, “They bound us to the moral law.” The consequence was that duty became “loathsome,” he said; “when we were freed by age from the rigorous training of our parents, we were more fit for companions to devils than to be the children of such religious parents.”4
The result of this strictness, he said, was that when children were in their late teens, they tended to “steal away from their fathers and mothers; and when they broke their bands,” he said, “you would think all hell was let loose and that they would compass the world at once.” They left the church and ended up not belonging to any church. (I think Milton Backman has discovered that something like 90 percent of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young’s parents’ generation did not belong to any church.) As for those who did belong to churches, they were so conditioned by their early repressive experience that they felt guilty if they enjoyed the ordinary things of life, and they expressed that guilt in a sanctimonious demeanor and grave countenance.

Perhaps his thoughts turned to his good friend Porter Rockwell, now 30, who at the last account was still languishing in the Missouri prison where he had been for seven months. Because Porter was being illegally held, it did not seem likely that efforts on the part of the Saints in Illinois would secure his release.
Apparently the 38-year-old Prophet, who had a reputation for hospitality, spent the remainder of the day with his family and associates. That evening a large group also dined at the Prophet’s house before turning to music, dancing, and other festivities in the tradition of Christmas in that day.
Latecoming guests, dressed in their best, arrived during the evening hours on that Monday. The troubles of the Saints, past and present, were temporarily forgotten as the guests enjoyed the festivities. Then the spirit of the evening was disrupted when a gaunt, seemingly drunk, unwashed Missourian, straggly and unkempt hair brushing his shoulders, forced his way into the room.
Efforts were made to throw the ruffian out, but he was too powerful. In the ensuing struggle, Joseph had a good look at the man. It was his friend, Porter!
The atmosphere cleared as friends gathered around Rockwell and welcomed him home. He explained how he had been honorably released after seven months in prison and had worked his way home through hostile territory. Because his feet were injured and men were seeking his life, it had taken him 12 days. He had just arrived in Nauvoo. The trick he’d played on the Prophet and his guests was merely his idea of fun.
Rockwell’s safe return climaxed the day for Joseph on his last Christmas, the Christmas before the summer guns at Carthage.

I could not help noticing the lady in the seat across the aisle. She was looking around the bus with her eyes wide and glossy, her thin hands clasped together in front of her. She kept squinting out the window, shaking her wispy hair, and making a funny noise. She began fidgeting more and more, and I wondered if she was going to make a scene. I turned to the window, trying to ignore her, but curiosity made me look back again.
It was then that I saw tears in her eyes. I wondered if she might be in trouble. I wanted to help, but what if she did make a scene? I wouldn’t know what to do. Besides, I thought, I have to get to school on time, and my stop is coming up.
Then I looked over to where she was sitting and saw the fearful expression on her face. The next thing I knew, I stood up, crossed the aisle, and sat down beside her.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need some help?”
Her eyes were wet and her hands were shaking. Her delicate face stared at me blankly, like a young child’s, so I asked her again, “Are you okay?”
She looked down at her green handbag and fumbled through it for a pen and a notebook. She began writing, “Have we left Ottawa? I think I took the wrong bus.”
I picked up the pen and wrote, “Are you deaf?” She responded with a nod. “Don’t worry,” I continued to write. “We’ll figure this out.”
My stop was coming up next, and I knew this would make me late, but I didn’t ring the bell. Instead, I approached the bus driver, who phoned the station for directions. I wrote the alternate route down for her, and the bus driver said he would ensure that she caught the connecting bus.
“What is your name?” I wrote quickly, before getting off at a stop quite a distance now from the school.
“Anna,” she scribbled. “Thank you. You are the friend I was praying for.” A calm smile spread across her face that made her hazel eyes sparkle. I could feel her love and appreciation. As I smiled back at her, I felt an understanding that bonded us together.
As the door swished behind me, and I waved good-bye, I could not believe that I had almost let Anna take that frightening journey alone. I ran all the way back to school with a smile on my face. I was glad I had listened to the promptings of the Holy Ghost telling me that someone else needed help.

Let me share with you two contrasting responses: The patient was a 36-year-old woman; I’ll use the name Mary. She announced that she was certain she had cancer. When asked why, she said, “My mother died of cancer, my sister died of cancer, another sister now has cancer, and I have just found this big lump in my abdomen, so I know I have cancer.” I attempted to reassure her, but when we operated on Mary, we found malignancy, not localized, but spread throughout her entire abdominal cavity. When I faced Mary the next morning, she asked soberly, “I have cancer, don’t I?” My reluctant response was, “Yes, you have cancer.” Her next question was, “How long do I have to live?” I explained the impossibility of setting an exact time. She hoped I wouldn’t misunderstand her question. She was not afraid to die, she said, for she had made peace with her Maker.

Her response was similar to the one Thoreau made on his deathbed when asked if he had made peace with his Maker. He replied, “I never knew that we had quarreled.” (August Derleth, Concord Rebel, Chilton Co., 1962, p. 201.)

Mary was at peace with her Father in heaven because she had just completed a special course for senior Aaronic Priesthood bearers. It was called “Project Temple.” She spoke of her husband and her teenage daughter who had not been active in the Church until the three of them had attended the “Project Temple” meetings. At the conclusion of the experience, the bishop had assured them that in six months they could go to the temple if they would do the things they knew they should. Mary’s plea was to stay alive for that six months so she could go to the temple and be sealed to her family. “If I can stay alive that long, then I will die without complaining,” she would tell me. Mary stayed alive for that six months. During her entire stay in the hospital, she was cheerful and seemingly without pain, even though her body was riddled with a disease that ordinarily is extremely painful and requires large amounts of narcotics. Mary needed none, and she literally folded her arms and died—without a complaint.

As I agonized over my inadequacies this week, I received a distinct impression which both chastened and comforted me: to focus not on what I can’t do but rather on what I can do. I can testify of the plain and precious truths of the gospel.

During February of this year, citizens in Nauvoo and communities across Iowa commemorated the 150th anniversary of the exodus of the Saints. In 1846, more than 10,000 left the thriving city that had been built on the banks of the Mississippi River. With faith in prophetic leaders, those early Church members left their “City Beautiful” and struck off into the wilderness of the American frontier. They did not know exactly where they were going, precisely how many miles lay ahead, how long the journey would take, or what the future held in store for them. But they did know they were led by the Lord and His servants. Their faith sustained them. They hoped “for things which [were] not seen, which are true.” Like Nephi of old, they were “led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which [they] should do.”
Fearing more of the mob violence that had claimed the lives of the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum on June 27, 1844, Brigham Young, leading the Church as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, announced in September 1845 that the Saints would leave Nauvoo in the spring of 1846. Most of those in Nauvoo believed fully that when Brigham Young announced that they must leave, they were hearing what the Lord wanted them to do. They responded in faith to the direction of the Lord. Throughout the fall and winter months of 1845–46, Church members set about vigorously making preparations for the journey.
Though winter’s chill was not yet past, heightened fears of mob attacks and swirling rumors of government intervention compelled President Young to set things in motion to get the Saints under way. He directed the first company of pioneer families to leave Nauvoo on February 4, 1846, a cold winter day. They drove their laden wagons and their livestock down Parley Street—a street that became known as the “Street of Tears”—to a landing where they were ferried across the river to Iowa. Chunks of ice floating in the river crunched against the sides of the flatboats and barges that carried the wagons across the Mississippi. A few weeks later, temperatures dropped even further and wagons could cross the river more easily over a bridge of ice.
Once across the river, they camped temporarily at Sugar Creek before starting their trek west toward the Rocky Mountains. The journey, which historian H. H. Bancroft described as a migration without “parallel in the world’s history,” had begun.
When President Brigham Young joined the departing pioneers at their campsite in Iowa on February 15, 1846, the Lord revealed to him to begin organizing a modern “Camp of Israel.” On the first of March the advance company began its push westward across Iowa. Hardships caused by cold, snow, rain, mud, sickness, hunger, and death challenged the faith of these hardy pioneers. But they were determined to follow their leaders and to do, no matter the cost, what they believed fervently to be the will of God. Their faith was challenged, and for some it faltered in especially difficult times. But it did not fail them. Many were sustained by the assurances they had received in temple ordinances performed in the Nauvoo Temple.

We promised our three sons a treat if they helped with the chores all summer, so today George took them into town to buy a bag of penny marbles.

Often this is the way faith works. I was assigned, for example, to escort Elder and Sister Bateman and Elder and Sister Steadman to their missionary assignments as English teachers in Hanoi, Vietnam. We planned and organized, but we had more questions than answers. After completing our planned agenda, we still had one full day unplanned. More remained to be done, but what and where?
That morning we decided to act by faith by walking out our doors. Events swept us through an amazing day of welcoming ceremonies at the Hanoi Children’s Palace, dinner in our honor with Operation Smile Vietnam, and other activities planned by our hosts. Our hosts had been too busy to communicate their plans to us, but the Lord knew them and moved us into place like pawns on a chessboard.

Ric ran his hands across the gold letters on the front of his new book. His friends crowded closer.
“That’s so cool!” Jake said. “I’ve never seen a red Book of Mormon before.”
“It looks like it would fit in your shirt pocket,” Jarom added.
“It does,” Ric said, slipping it into his pocket and then taking it back out again. Just then the Primary president welcomed everyone to sharing time, so the boys stopped talking. But Ric couldn’t help glancing down at his book from time to time.
When Primary was over, Ric stopped by the nursery to pick up his little sister. Dad was already there.
“Have you seen Mom?” Dad asked.
“No, but I hope she’s ready to go,” Ric said. “I’m hungry!”
Ric’s stomach was growling by the time they found Mom, but he smiled when he saw Brother and Sister Bird standing by her. Well, Brother Bird was standing. Sister Bird was sitting in her wheelchair, as always. Mom said Sister Bird had a disease called multiple sclerosis, or MS, which made it hard for her to use her muscles. Sometimes she was in pain, but she always had a smile for everyone. Brother and Sister Bird were some of Ric’s favorite people in the ward.
“Why, hello there, young man,” Brother Bird said, shaking Ric’s hand. “How was Primary today?”
“It was awesome. I got to show everyone this.” Ric held up his small red book.
“What’s that?” asked Sister Bird.
“It’s my new Book of Mormon. My grandparents sent it to me,” Ric said as he handed it to her.
“I’ve never seen one of these,” said Sister Bird, turning the pocket-sized red book over in her hands. “It’s so small and light. I love to read the Book of Mormon, but my hands get so tired holding my scriptures that I have to stop after a few minutes. But I could hold this a long time.” She handed it back.
Ric looked at his cool book. Then he looked at Sister Bird.
“Here, Sister Bird. I want you to have this.” Ric put the Book of Mormon back in her hands.
“Are you sure?” asked Brother Bird.
“I’m sure,” he said.
“Oh, Ric, thank you.” Sister Bird’s eyes filled with tears. “Reading the scriptures helps me get through days when I’m in pain. Your little book will really help me.” She reached out and gave him a big hug.
As they walked to the car, Mom said, “You’re awfully quiet. Are you sad you gave your book away?”
“Not really. It was cool, but I have another Book of Mormon at home. Besides, I think that what’s inside the book is more important than what’s on the outside.”
Mom lovingly squeezed his shoulder.
“I just hope Grandma and Grandpa won’t be sad that I gave my Book of Mormon away.”
“Trust me, Ric, they won’t.”
Ric had a feeling his mom was right.

At school one day, my friend wanted me to go up to another friend and say, “You’re so stupid, and you are mean. I don’t like you.” I said I wouldn’t do that. My friend said, “Fine. You’re not my best friend if you don’t do it.” I walked away. I knew I did the right thing because I felt good inside from the Holy Ghost.
Whitney L., age 9, Illinois, USA

When asked to think about someone Shawn has helped, his friend Bill Wright thought for a fraction of a second before answering, “He’s helped me. He’s incredibly caring. He puts everybody ahead of himself. My mother died two years ago, and he was the only one of my friends who came to her funeral. That has stuck with me. He was so caring and thought about me so much.”
Then with a touch of amazement in his voice, Bill said, “I have a hard time even believing he’s my good friend because he is such an awesome friend.”

Shyness may be due to real or imagined personal shortcomings. Greg, a handsome boy and a talented musician, is self-conscious about a slight limp, a minor defect that is unnoticed by most of his classmates. In his mind, it is a monumental abnormality, and he feels that every burst of laughter he hears is directed at him.

When I was 11, Dad decided that we needed to go back to church. At first I went only to obey Dad. But soon I gained my own testimony of Jesus Christ. I had a good feeling when I was at church. I realized later that this feeling was from the Holy Ghost.

We had a birthday party in honor of President Monson’s birthday. Everyone loved the “Colorful Layered Cake” (August 2012).