Gospel Story Finder

After we left the venue, I could see the love and joy my daughter, Angel, had towards President Nelson—and she asked me what the prophet had said to me. I told her, “The prophet loves you children. He said we, your parents, should love you and not give corporal punishment. But you also need to be obedient so we, your parents, will be able to obey the prophet!”

I always thought my relatives had already traced our family history back to the beginning of time. So in the October 2011 general conference when Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles invited youth to work on family history in order to take names to the temple, I didn’t think I would have much success in finding names. But something in his talk made me want to try, and I sat down at the computer to figure out how to find my ancestors.
Within 15 minutes, I found someone. His name was Stephen Barker, and he was the youngest member of his family. All of his temple ordinances had been performed except one—he was the only child who hadn’t been sealed to his parents. Suddenly I thought, “What if that were me? What if I were the only child not sealed to my family and I had waited hundreds of years for the opportunity?” I gave his name to my parents so they could go to the temple and do the work for him. I have never felt the Spirit so strongly, and that is when I knew I needed to keep doing family history.

Finish the sentences below. Then use the words to fill in the puzzle. Check answers below.
Sister Aurelia Spencer Rogers first came up with the idea for Primary to help _________________________ in her neighborhood.
President John Taylor was the prophet in 1878, when the _________________________ was organized.
Sister _________________________, who came up with the idea for Primary, was the first Primary president.
At first, Primary meetings were held on _________________________ afternoons.
Back then, children went to Primary until they were _________________________ years old—two years longer than children stay in Primary today.
Primary started with 215 children. Now there are about one _________________________ Primary children all over the world!
Answers: 1-children, 2-Primary, 3-Rogers, 4-Saturday, 5-fourteen, 6-million

Once, I fell off my bunk bed and hit my head very hard. I was scared because I couldn’t see. My daddy gave me a blessing. He said that I would be able to see very soon. When the ambulance men came, they shined a flashlight in my eyes. I looked around and I could see again! I didn’t feel afraid anymore. I am grateful for the priesthood in my home. I am glad that whenever I am scared or need help, my daddy is there to give me a blessing.

… When I was nine years old, I lost my older brother during a devastating earthquake. Because it happened unexpectedly, it took me a while to grasp the reality of what had occurred. I was heartbroken by sorrow, and I would ask myself, “What happened to my brother? Where is he? Where did he go? Will I ever see him again?” …

About 40 years later, during Easter time, I was pondering about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and started thinking about my brother. …

That day I realized that the Spirit had given me comfort in a difficult time. I had received a witness that my brother’s spirit is not dead; he is alive. He is still progressing in his eternal existence. I now know that “[my] brother shall rise again” [John 11:23] at that magnificent moment when, because of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, we will all be resurrected.

About 20 years ago, I was unexpectedly asked by the leaders of our Church if Kathy and I would be willing to leave our businesses and home in Florida and accept a position in the worldwide leadership of the Church. We accepted this life-changing responsibility with some apprehension and much humility. It has taken us to many parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. We have lived 10 years in Europe and South America.
I have been able to observe and hopefully encourage hundreds and thousands of people in many languages, cultures, and economic situations as they discovered or strengthened their faith in Jesus Christ.

It was a moment that 42 Eagle Scouts from the Boise Idaho North Stake will remember for a long time. Following a banquet in their honor, each of them stood and made a solemn promise—to go on a mission. What made it even more memorable was that the banquet was part of a trip from Boise to Salt Lake City to honor the Eagles, 26 of whom received their award in 1978. And one other thing made it a special promise as well—they made the promise to their former stake president, Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone of the First Quorum of the Seventy.
“I had already planned on serving a mission,” said Tim Duffy, 14, one of the Eagles. “But this really reinforced the desire.”
While in Salt Lake, the group toured the Church Office Building, Temple Square, the Church Historical Archives, and the Genealogical Library. At the banquet they were also addressed by Neil D. Schaerrer, the Young Men general president, and Paul K. Cropper, member of the Young Men General Board.

Sometimes when I am afraid at night, I pray. But I never prayed as hard as when Hurricane Fran passed through Wendell, North Carolina, where my family was living.
On Thursday, September 5, 1996, I was at school. A voice on the loud speaker said we should all go home and stay inside because there was going to be a hurricane.
When I got home, we gathered some food and water, and that night we brought blankets into the hall. At about nine o’clock the wind started blowing hard. I could hear the rain really loud. There was a whistling sound going up the chimney. The storm was pounding on our house. I was really scared.
I was in the hall bathroom. Everyone else was in the hall. I decided to pray. I said, “Heavenly Father, Heavenly Father, Heavenly Father, please help us. Please help us. I’m so scared.”
The next morning we went outside. There were tree branches in our yard. There were shingles that had come off the roof. We had no power. We went around the neighborhood. Many trees had fallen. But our house was OK, and everyone was safe. Heavenly Father had answered my prayer.
Jessica Lynn Bernard, age 12Wendell, North Carolina

I was close to a family who had a son in Young Men. During an activity while he was a deacon, a leader got after him and embarrassed him in front of his peers. He subsequently felt further discredited, quit attending activities, and sought friends outside his ward.
That experience had a tremendous impact on me. I determined that something like that would not happen on my watch if I were called to work with young men. Two years later I was called to work with the deacons.

Whenever a 15-year-old is asked to be ward organist, it’s a fairly remarkable thing. When it happened to Kuha‘o C. of Hawaii, it was even more remarkable for two reasons: (1) he had been playing piano for under three years and (2) he is blind.
Beginning a few years ago, Kuha‘o would sit and play the piano during his regular visits to his grandparents. He didn’t have a piano at home, so it seemed like something fun to try. Soon, however, Kuha‘o moved far beyond just playing around with the keys; he was really playing—and playing well. Though he took a few lessons after that, he has been mostly self-taught.
Kuha‘o was baptized in December 2009, and around that time he started playing the organ at the ward meetinghouse, usually on Saturdays while his grandfather fulfilled his building maintenance assignment. He even started waking up at 5:30 a.m. on Sundays to hear Music and the Spoken Word with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir so that he could listen to the organ. It wasn’t long before he was asked to accompany his congregation.

We were looking forward to our fast and testimony meeting, but very bad chest pains at 4 am intervened. Having had heart problems, I recognised the problem I had. My wife also quickly recognised it by the look on my face and my constant wriggling in bed to find a comfortable position to ease the pain.
Like all wonderful wives, mothers, and sisters in the gospel, she paused, picked up her iPad, and said, “I am sending you a YouTube link. Please look at it.”
The YouTube link was “Slow Down” sung by Sissel Kyrkjebe at the 2019 Pioneer Day Concert with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.1
It was a sweet and lovely piece of music with beautiful singing. At the end all 20,000 people in the Church’s Conference Center stood and applauded for a long time.
I have learned from my wife the calming effect of music. Although I have not been blessed with a singing voice and I am going a bit deaf, the sweet sounds touched me and said, “Slow down.”

My great-great-grandfather Israel Stoddard accepted an invitation to join the Church in 1842. Then he accepted another invitation to join the Saints, and the family moved from New Jersey to Nauvoo. When President Brigham Young extended an invitation to follow him west, they accepted.

As the family crossed the Mississippi River, they looked back and watched as their home was burned. Because of exposure to harsh elements and hardships their mother died, five weeks later the infant baby died, and shortly thereafter the father passed away. As my grandmother wrote, “This left five Stoddard children homeless and almost penniless but not friendless as the Saints were good to them.”

This invitation took the lives of the parents and their small child; however, it bound them together eternally.

Tammy awoke to the roar of a truck outside her bedroom window. “It’s moving day!” She exclaimed, jumping out of bed and sliding into her slippers. “Mom! Mom! The truck is here!”
“Yes, Tammy,” her mom answered, “today is the big day. You’ll need to hurry and eat your breakfast if you want to help the men pack your things.”
My things! Tammy thought, changing into her sweatshirt and jeans, pulling on her shoes, and running to the kitchen. What’s going to happen to my things?
Tammy’s father flew helicopters for the Air Force, and they needed him in Japan. During story time at the public library, Tammy had looked at the world globe and seen that Japan was far across the ocean from the United States. Far from her favorite park and its super-fast twirly slide. Far from all her friends in Primary. And far from her special Star A teacher, who smiled at her when she raised her hand to say the prayer.
Tammy’s thoughts were interrupted when two giant men with big black boots stomped into the house, carrying boxes. They headed down the hall to her room. She gulped down the last bit of milk from her cereal and hurried after them.
They had already started to put her toys into the boxes. “Not these!” she told them, snatching up her new box of markers and her coloring books. “I’m taking these with me on the airplane. It’s going to be a very, very long flight.” She grabbed her backpack and began stuffing it with other special things: favorite books, tapes, a small doll, a whistle, her baseball cards, a pack of gum, and the blue-ribbon badge she had been given for giving a talk in Primary.
“Don’t worry,” one man said, “you’ll have all your things soon after you get there. It’s Japan you’re going to, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s far away.”
“Yep, it sure is,” the other man said, adding conversationally, “I hear that things are a lot different over there.”
“A lot different,” Tammy agreed. She thought, I know they have fast trains and big shopping malls. I know they eat with funny things called chopsticks, bow to each other, and take off their shoes at the door. But do they have Primary? Will I still be a Star A? Her Primary teacher had told the class that missionaries took the gospel to all the world, but had they already taken it to Japan? Did Japan have Sharing Time and singing time and Stars?
Early the next morning, Tammy and her family went to the airport and boarded the plane to Japan. It was a long flight, but she stayed busy playing with the things in her backpack and helping to keep her little brother out of trouble. They left on Thursday, but when they landed in Tokyo, it was already Saturday! Even day and night were different in Japan.
Dad gathered the baggage, and Mom helped her and her brother into the taxi that would take them to their new house. Tammy was fascinated by the windows that rolled up and down when she pushed a little switch. As the spring breezes blew into the car, she suddenly sat up straight. “Stop! Listen!” she yelled. Startled, the cab driver obeyed.
Piano music echoed faintly in the air.
“… , Smiling for the whole world to see,” Tammy sang with it. “That’s my Star song!”
A familiar pillar atop a brown building towered to their right. “It’s our church!” Tammy yelled. “Let’s go in!”
Dad asked the driver to wait, and the family was soon walking across the parking lot while the beautiful, familiar music floated softly out an open window. Tammy ran over to it and peeked inside. “It’s a Primary Quarterly Activity!” she exclaimed with a big smile. “They do have the gospel in Japan. And they have Stars too!”

The same difference was true, too, for the group of approximately 110 teenagers from the Augusta Maine Stake, who were at the Washington (D.C.) Temple. They were there to receive baptism for their kindred dead. The youth themselves had prepared the information for the ordinance work.

For the teenagers of the Augusta Maine Stake, temple activity took on an added dimension, too. Every April the youth of that stake usually made a trip to the Washington Temple to perform baptisms for the dead. This time, as leaders formulated plans for the April 1988 trip, they urged the young people, with the help of their families, to obtain the information on one or more of their ancestors and prepare the records for the temple work themselves.

The response was heartening. Even though many submitted records too late for normal processing, by the time of the trip, the names of about 150 ancestors had been cleared for ordinance work. Virtually every active teenager in the stake—about 110 youngsters—went this time. About sixty-five of them anticipated being baptized for their ancestors.

The group rode for fourteen hours to reach their destination. They spent the next day performing baptisms for the dead. That evening, in a fireside at the Washington D.C. Stake center, many testified that they finally knew what the Spirit was like because they had felt it in the temple. The trip was especially meaningful for those baptized for deceased family members.

“I’m very grateful for spiritual encouragement every time I read the New Era.”
I’m very grateful for receiving spiritual encouragement every time I read the New Era. I am serving a mission in West Africa, and many times I hear about problems from investigators and less-active members I meet. I had been searching in the scriptures about how to answer their concerns, and then I found the one I needed in “My Favorite Scripture” (Nov. 2007). We shared this scripture with one of our less-active members, and he felt the Spirit, and decided to become strong again in the Church. I’m so thankful for this powerful scripture (Alma 36:3), and want to thank the author for sharing it.
Elder Tuvaifale, Sierra Leone

The Saints in Puerto Rico took this perspective when, a year ago, many members joined event coordinators, Hector Alvarez and his wife, Amarilis Santiago, to prepare the events leading up to the open house of the San Juan Puerto Rico Temple. Many conversations focused on the preparations for that anticipated day. Volunteers stepped up to serve in whatever capacity the coordinators needed. Through this service many seeds of faith were planted, and diligence and hope sprang forth.
Did everyone understand all the benefits of their actions? They were there to serve others, but did they realize the benefits they gained?
The members surrounding the San Juan Puerto Rico Temple exercised their faith, and like those people of Alma’s time, they were uplifted. Their actions allowed them a glimpse of the Lord’s perspective during their service at the open house. Now their passion for the temple fuels them to continue to be close to the temple. They recognized the blessings they were receiving and prepared themselves to be ordinance workers in the temple. It is important to know that our prayers, daily scripture reading, diligently attending our meetings, serving others, and working in the temple create relationships with our Heavenly Father and Jesus and prepare us for better things yet to come. This is Their plan for all of us.

In 1950, the Church was constructing Liahona High School in Tonga, but it could not find enough skilled workers to complete it. The mission president in Tonga “decided to call a group of young Tongan men on special labor missions.” These young men helped to construct the high school, much like Church members in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois, had provided labor for the building of temples. The idea soon spread to other parts of the Pacific and eventually to locations around the world. The program “blessed many branches with new and beautiful chapels while it provided vocational training for hundreds of young men.”9

Sister Giles joined the Church, against the wishes of her family who initially disowned her, after being tracted by the missionaries 62 years ago.

Opening doors to the gospel in various countries is a key apostolic responsibility: “The Twelve being sent out, holding the keys, to open the door by the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Doctrine and Covenants 107:35).
In President Nelson’s experience as a member of the Twelve, doors to the gospel have been opened differently. Sometimes the Spirit worked on a government leader until “he began to change his mind about us,” President Nelson said. Another time a man who was unwilling to talk with Church leaders was removed from office, and the Lord gave “us a man we could talk to.” In each case, President Nelson said, “the message [from heaven] to me was the same: ‘Work your heart out. … Take the risks. Then when you can’t go any further, I’ll help you.’”

My beloved brothers and sisters, over 44 years ago, in October of 1963, I stood at the pulpit in the Tabernacle, having just been sustained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. On that occasion I mentioned a small sign I had seen on another pulpit. The words on the sign were these: “Who stands at this pulpit, let him be humble.” I assure you that I was humbled by my call to the Twelve at that time. However, as I stand at this pulpit today, I address you from the absolute depths of humility. I feel very keenly my dependence upon the Lord. I humbly seek the guidance of the Spirit as I share with you the feelings of my heart.