Gospel Story Finder

Jeremy couldn’t see what all the fuss was about, just because his older sister Michelle was probably about to get married. He was, of course, glad in a way, because it meant he could have her room. Also, he had hopes her future husband would be like a brother to him. Jeremy needed that. He felt like he’d been dominated by women and girls his whole life. He was the youngest and the only boy in a family of four girls. Michelle, the next youngest, was five years older than he was and had been his chief baby-sitter as he grew up.
There was a time when they hadn’t gotten along. It began when Jeremy was eight years old and lasted for five years, until Michelle went off to college. During that time, Jeremy resented being ordered around by Michelle. “You’re not my mother,” he used to say.
After Michelle left for college, Jeremy and Michelle didn’t see each other much. But at least when she came home for Christmas her freshman year, she was sort of nice to him. That was a big improvement over what it had been.
Now, after two years at college, Michelle was about to be engaged. When she brought Christopher Kent home to meet the family, Jeremy had never seen her act so strange. When she saw Jeremy, she tousled his hair like they were, … well, brother and sister, which, technically of course, they were.
“Christopher Kent, huh?” Jeremy said. “Are you any relation to Clark? Are you like Superman in disguise? Can you leap buildings?”
“Don’t mind Jeremy,” Michelle said quickly.
“That’s all right,” Christopher said. “People say that to me all the time.”
Jeremy felt bad for Christopher because he could tell Michelle was putting on this big act to make him think she was a nice person. But Jeremy knew better.
“Has she ever grabbed your ear and pinched it when she wants you to do something?” Jeremy asked Christopher.
“Well, no, actually she hasn’t,” Christopher said slowly.
“She used to do that to me all the time. It really hurts.”
“I used to baby-sit Jeremy when he was little,” Michelle said with a pained smile on her face.
“She was really mean to me,” Jeremy added.
For one brief instant the old fire returned. “You deserved it, Jeremy.”
“What did I do?” Jeremy asked, trying his version of an angelic smile.
Jeremy was baiting Michelle to see if she’d lose her cool. He wanted Christopher to see the mean Michelle who had tormented him so much when he was younger.
Fortunately for her, Michelle displayed unusual self-control. “It wasn’t much, really, just little things,” she said with a kindly smile.
“You mean like the time I reset the timer when you were in the backyard trying to get a tan, so you got a real bad sunburn just before the junior prom?”
For Christopher’s benefit, Michelle smiled and said, “Jeremy always liked to play little jokes on me.”
For the rest of the evening, Michelle kept Christopher away from Jeremy. But Jeremy had a plan. He waited until Christopher had gone to the guest bedroom for the night, and then he went to the door and knocked.
Christopher opened the door.
“We need to talk,” Jeremy said.
“All right. Come in.”
“Actually, I was thinking maybe I could talk better if you took me out and bought me something to eat.”
“Really? Well, all right.”
“I’m kind of in the mood for pancakes,” Jeremy said.
It was not until he had finished one stack of pancakes at the all-you-can-eat pancake house that Jeremy began to talk seriously with Christopher. “Are you going to marry my sister?”
“Yes. We’re going to announce it in a couple of weeks, so don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
“That’s what I thought. See, the thing is, I don’t understand why you’d want to marry Michelle.”
“I’m in love with her.”
Jeremy shook his head. “That is so weird. Why would you want to marry Michelle? There’s lots more girls out there.”
“She’s beautiful and talented and …”
Jeremy stopped Christopher. “Hold on. You think she’s beautiful?”
“Yes, don’t you?”
“She used to spread this gunk on her face at night. I think it was made from guacamole. And she used to hang all this stuff to dry in the bathroom. It was like I had to hack my way through a jungle sometimes just to get in there to brush my teeth.”
Christopher laughed. “Really? You know, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be happy we’re having this little conversation.”
“Do you think she’s a nice person?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s not, not really. Oh, sure, she puts on this big act for you, but you should have seen the way she treated me when I was little. She called me a little brat.”
“And you never did anything to earn that title?”
Jeremy smiled, “Well, maybe once or twice.”
“I thought so.”
“You’re a normal guy, aren’t you? I mean, you like football and basketball and pizza, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Did you play any sports in high school?”
“Soccer.”
“Really? I play soccer.”
“There you go then.”
“Did you go on a mission?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. I’d want the guy who marries Michelle to have served a mission.”
“Are you going to serve a mission?”
“I guess so.”
“Good for you. It was the best thing I ever did.”
“Are you going to marry my sister in the temple?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
“Do you know what getting married in the temple means?”
“It means forever.”
“That’s right.”
Jeremy paused for a minute trying to let his mind grasp the concept of eternity. “This is so weird. I don’t understand any of this. I mean one day she goes off to college, and the next she’s back here about to get married.”
“People change,” Christopher said.
“I guess so. I just wasn’t ready for it, that’s all.”
They had finished eating. Christopher paid the bill, and they walked out to the car.
“Can I ask you a question?” Jeremy asked as they pulled onto the street.
“Sure.”
“You will treat her okay, won’t you?” Jeremy asked.
“I will, Jeremy, I promise.”
“The reason I asked is … well, even though we didn’t always get along, she is my sister, and she wasn’t mean to me all the time. Sometimes she helped me a lot. Like I could ask her questions about things that were happening in school. She’d gone through it all before, so she knew a lot of things. She helped me know what teachers to get, and what to say when people were trying to get me to make some bad choices. One time she went to one of my games, and I really messed up and lost the game, but she stuck up for me in front of the whole team. Then she took me out and bought me something to eat, and we sat in the car and talked, and she said I’d done my best and that’s all that mattered. One time when I got kicked out of class for talking back to one of the teachers, she came to my room and just listened to me, and she didn’t say I’d done wrong. She just listened to me. That meant a lot to me, but I never told her … but I should’ve … and now you’re going to take her away … just when we were starting to get along. But see, the thing is, I still need her.”
“I’m not taking her to Mars. She’ll still be around. You can still ask her advice.”
“But she’ll be an old married lady.”
“She’ll still be your sister, no matter what. She’ll still love you.”
Jeremy gasped. “You think she loves me?”
“I know she does. She talked about you on the first date we ever had.”
“What did she say about me?”
“She told me about the time in high school when she had a date, and you went out and changed the number on your house, so the guy drove around for an hour trying to find your place.”
Jeremy smiled, “Yeah, those were the good old days.”
“Jeremy, I think you need to tell her how much she means to you.”
“I could never do that.”
“Why not?”
“She’d have a heart attack or something,” Jeremy said.
“I think you ought to risk it.”
“What would I say?” Jeremy asked.
“Just tell her what you told me.”
Jeremy thought about it. “I guess I could do that.”
They drove back home.
“Do you think I’ll ever be like you?” Jeremy asked.
“I’m sure you will.”
“This is so weird.”
“It’s not weird. It happens all the time. Let’s go in and get Michelle up so you can talk to her.”
“Tonight,” Jeremy asked, feeling himself getting panicky.
“It has to be tonight. We’re leaving in the morning.”
Jeremy felt nervous. “I’m not sure how to do this.”
“Just do it the same way you did with me.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jeremy and his sister left to go get some pancakes. After that night it was months before Jeremy could look another pancake in the eye.
But at least he finally told his sister he loved her.

As Eduardo’s and María’s gospel knowledge grew, so did their testimonies. When their son Osvaldo died following a traffic accident in 2001, their testimonies—coupled with powerful spiritual experiences during prayer and in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple, where they and Osvaldo had been sealed—helped them deal with their loss.
“Perhaps some parents would have gone crazy,” Eduardo says, “but we felt a calmness that said, ‘Your son is well.’ Of course we wept. He was a good son, and we miss him. But we have been sealed in the temple, and we know where he is.”

I recently read a story about a young man named Duke Fergerson. He is a retired professional football player who is now attending Harvard Business School. He grew up in the housing projects in Merced, California. His father died when he was a boy, and his mother passed away not long ago. But when he was a young man, Duke’s mother gave him advice that sunk deep into his heart: “Do what they think you can’t do.”
In an interview, Fergerson explained how he got through high school using his wits and the help of a girlfriend. He graduated without learning how to read; since he was one of the top three high school hurdlers in California, he didn’t think he needed to. Somehow, he got into a local junior college.
But then something began to happen. He realized that he had cheated himself. So besides working hard on athletics, he began to educate himself for life. He hired tutors and took classes to make up what he had missed in high school.
He got through junior college and became a star on a college team. He got into professional football and played for the Dallas Cowboys and the Seattle Seahawks. The entire time, he continued studying, even after he had a professional football contract.
“A lot of players laughed at me when they heard I was going to school and being tutored,” he says. “The hardest part was sitting down with tutors who were younger than I was, and who looked up to professional athletes. That’s because midway through tutoring, your status changes. You become smaller. But I needed it. I had to do it” (Harvard Business School Bulletin, Apr. 1988, p. 15).
Duke was traded to the Los Angeles Rams, then released during training camp in 1983. He applied to several graduate schools, and one of the admissions officers suggested he apply at Harvard. He thought it was a joke, but he gave them a call. They accepted him. And I can tell you this—Harvard University will not be the end of Duke Fergerson’s education.
Let me tell you two of the attitudes Duke Fergerson has that I believe are two of the three keys to lifelong learning.
FIRST: You are a child of God. Now Duke Fergerson doesn’t mention God. But his mother said, “Do what they think you can’t do.” He believed that. You have a deeper reason for believing in what you can do, because you know who you really are. As a child of God, your destiny, if you work hard enough and are faithful, is to become like Him. That means that there is nothing that is true that you cannot learn, because He knows all truth.
Most people stop learning out of fear. They are afraid they cannot learn. You need never have that fear if you are faithful. Your formal schooling may be interrupted for some reason, but I want you to know with absolute certainty that you can learn whatever God would have you learn. Great learners believe that. They have the attitude that they can learn.
SECOND: Duke Fergerson talked about how hard it was to be a professional football player and yet hire a tutor. The tutors were younger than he was. He was wealthier and older. But he said that in the tutoring process something happened. He had to become smaller.
That is the second attitude of all lifelong learners: Because God is so great and I am so small, it is easy to admit what I do not know. Therefore, I am teachable.
My father was an internationally famous research chemist. When he would give talks to audiences of nonscientists, he would often give his explanation of an answer to a scientific question and then he would say, “You know, sometimes I think that God watches me and laughs at me as I struggle like a little child. Someday I will be with Him and He will show me how childlike my ideas were.”
That always got a chuckle from the audience. And it endeared Dad to people because they thought it was a sign of humility.
But it was far more than a sign of humility. It was an explanation of why he was a lifelong learner. He really saw himself as a little child. Because of that, it was easy for him to admit that there were better explanations than the ones he had already offered. He was constantly changing, constantly trying to learn.
THIRD: Duke Fergerson does not mention the third attitude, but it’s an attitude that Latter-day Saints know is vital to all true learning. This is it: Because I am clean, the Holy Ghost can teach me.
I imagine many of you have had some experience where you were taught by the Holy Ghost. You have had times in your life when you were keeping the commandments of God and the Holy Ghost could be close to you and teach you easily. If you persisted, you felt the power of the Holy Ghost adding to your capacity to learn. You felt the Holy Ghost nudging you in the direction of truth, confirming truth when you found it, even bringing ideas directly to your mind. That may not have happened often to you and it may not have lasted long. But if it has happened to you once, you know it is possible.
I gain some understanding of how powerful learning through the Holy Ghost can be by reviewing the experience of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He never stopped learning and had a range of education come into his life that can only be explained by the power of the Holy Ghost. The same would be true of Brigham Young, who had less than a month of formal education.
Remember these three beliefs: First, there is no limit to your potential learning as a child of God. Second, childlike humility is the key to teachableness. And third, living a clean life will allow the Holy Ghost to confirm and expand your learning.
If these are your beliefs, and if you live by them, then you too will be able to “do what they think you can’t do.”

Hans let his light shine brightly, even through hard times.
When he was six years old, he fell and broke his arm. That accident became a great blessing. His mom was planning to move to the United States and leave Hans in Ecuador with her sister for a time. “But when he broke his arm,” she says, “I realized Heavenly Father was telling me not to leave my son. If I did, he wouldn’t be able to go to church.”
That’s when Hans’s mother, Antonia Yolanda Nieto, was baptized. Since that time, her testimony has continued to grow and she has received her endowment in the Guayaquil Ecuador Temple. Hans was the missionary who brought his mother to the light of the gospel.

Anne and Kara were both new in their ward when Anne was assigned to minister to Kara and her young family. A friendship quickly developed between the two of them. Anne, a newlywed, enjoyed helping Kara with her four young daughters, who ranged in age from newborn to seven years old. One day, Kara’s baby sustained a skull fracture that required surgery.
Anne jumped in and watched the other children until their grandmother could arrive to take care of them. Once their grandmother arrived, Anne checked with her to see what help she might need, then brought dinner to the family that night. She also arranged for neighbors to bring meals for a few days.
The next day when she checked in on Kara’s family, Anne noticed that one of Kara’s daughters was worried about her baby sister, so Anne invited her to come make cookies to give her some personal attention. Anne also texted the ward council to let them know what had happened and told them she would keep them updated about the situation. During the next week, while the baby received treatment, Anne kept the ward council up to date and saw to the family’s needs. Anne’s help allowed Kara time and peace of mind as a parent in a difficult, scary situation.

M?l? e lelei! I’m Lui, and I shine my light by sharing what I have with others.
I live on a big island in Tonga. I have six sisters and four brothers. We live close to the Nuku’alofa Tonga Temple.
Our beautiful island has many plants and animals. I’m in class four at the Ocean of Light Primary School, and science is my favorite subject.
My father grows crops, so we have plenty to eat. But many widows (women whose husbands have died) and other families don’t have their own crops. So my parents take them some of our food. I like going along to help!
The widows we visit use coconut husks to make fires to cook their food. When we take food to them, I remind my parents to take coconut husks too. I like to help get the fire going!
Heavenly Father blesses me when I help others—not with money but with wisdom and knowledge. I love to help and share what I have with others.

In 2005, President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) asked members of the Church to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. I had never read the Book of Mormon all the way through by myself. My family decided we would take President Hinckley’s challenge; we were determined to follow the prophet. I began by reading a chapter a day, and soon found that I could read several chapters a day. I felt good knowing that I was doing what the prophet had asked me to do. Christmas came, and I forgot about my goal. On New Year’s Eve I still had 115 pages left to read. I spent most of the day reading. That evening I finished the Book of Mormon. I learned never to procrastinate what the prophet asks us to do.

One of my most memorable missionary experiences took place in a cold, damp basement apartment of a nonmember in Edmonton, Canada. My companion and I were trying to help a man who had smoked many cigarettes every day all his life to live the Word of Wisdom, and he had called us to his humble residence one night to admit defeat. He said, “I have made every effort humanly possible, and I just can’t quit smoking. I know the gospel is true and I want to be baptized, but I’ll never be able to overcome this habit.”

Our reply to this defeated man was, “Don’t give up. You can quit smoking because there is superhuman power that can give you the strength and courage you need.”

We asked him to read these comforting and reassuring words from Paul: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1 Cor. 10:13.)

Then we knelt with him and asked the Lord to give him the courage and the determination necessary to place his life in order so that he and his family could be baptized. What a testimony-building experience it was for a nineteen-year-old boy to witness the changes in this man’s life as the Spirit of the Lord magnified his strength, helping him resist temptation and live God’s commandments!

The people of this island have a deeply spiritual side to their nature as well. Many, such as Doel Irizarry of the Guayanilla Branch, were converted to the gospel because of a dream or a spiritual prompting. “In 1979 the missionaries asked our family to pray about the Book of Mormon,” he says. “That night, I knelt in prayer with my wife, Cruz, and our children, Maritza and Eric, and prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true. I had a dream that was repeated three times. When I went to church the next week, to my surprise I met the man whom I had seen in my dream. I knew this was the answer to my prayer.”

Ten-year-old Gavin is in the fifth grade, and he likes to do missionary work. Twice already he’s given friends copies of the Book of Mormon, and several times he’s invited his nonmember friends over for family home evenings. He always prays that he will be a good missionary.
One Friday Mr. Leitzmiller, Gavin’s schoolteacher, had taught his class about the Mayan Indians of Mexico and Central America. Then, after the class was over and the students were filing out, he stopped Gavin and asked if they could talk a moment. When they were alone, Mr. Leitzmiller (who was not a Latter-day Saint) said, “Do you know if Jesus appeared to the Indians in this part of the world after He died on the cross?”
Remembering what he had been taught in family home evenings, at Primary, and on other occasions, Gavin replied, “Yes, He did!”
“I once had a Mormon roommate in college,” Mr. Leitzmiller continued, “and I thought that I remembered his telling me about Jesus coming to the Western Hemisphere after His resurrection. Gavin, do you have a book that tells about that visit?”
“Yes,” Gavin answered. “It’s called the Book of Mormon.”
“Could you bring it to school with you on Monday?” the teacher asked with great interest.
Gavin said that he would.
That evening during supper Gavin told his family about his teacher’s request. They were all very excited for Gavin’s opportunity to do some more good missionary work.
On Sunday Gavin’s dad went to the stake center and picked up “Christ in America,” a pamphlet that tells what happened when Jesus came to the Americas after He was crucified.
That night Gavin carefully wrote on the inside cover of a new copy of a Book of Mormon, “This book tells about Jesus visiting America. It is a true story.”
Early Monday morning Gavin took the copy of the Book of Mormon, with the pamphlet tucked inside, to school and gave it to his teacher before class started. “Mr. Leitzmiller, here’s the book that you asked me to bring,” he said. “I hope that you’ll read it.”
The teacher promised Gavin that he would, and Gavin ran outside to play before the bell rang for school to begin.
When Gavin said his prayers that night, he asked Heavenly Father to bless his teacher as he read the Book of Mormon so that he would know the truth about Jesus.

Illustrations by Katie McDee
Ooh! This looks good. Can I check this one out, Mamãe?
Sure!
How’s your book?
I thought I would like it, but I didn’t feel good when I was reading it. There were some bad parts, so I decided to stop.
I think that was the Holy Ghost! He was helping you know that it wasn’t good to read.
I’m proud of you for acting on your feelings. We can get a new book next week, OK?
OK. Thanks, Mamãe.

Don’t just take our word for it. Last year in a small town in Utah, young men in a teachers quorum visited the youth activities website (lds.org/youth/activities) to find ideas for an activity. One in particular caught their attention: “Seven Days of Service.”

These young men decided to do something even bigger: they would provide service each day for an entire week to anyone in the ward who requested it. When 19 families signed up, the young men were a little surprised and perhaps even a little overwhelmed. How would they be able to do so much service in such a short time? But they had made a commitment, so they decided to serve all of the families.

In just one week, they gave over 250 hours of combined service, doing such projects as moving a huge pile of rocks, digging a sandbox, cleaning out gutters, and stacking wood. And it changed the young men too. (See a video at lds.org/go/serviceNE1.)

They felt awed by the strength they felt and the blessings they received. They described feeling united as a quorum and receiving divine help to do homework and other responsibilities. Now, when their ward needs service, the teachers quorum responds enthusiastically. They didn’t just serve for a week—they try to serve every day.

One of the most touching stories Nana Esi Ninsin VIII shared was about a young girl named Mary Mensah in the village, who was inspired by the queen’s example and started her own informal church group, called the Children’s Church. With no resources or formal training, the girl gathered friends and neighbors to pray, sing, and study scripture. After the children’s church service, Mary, their leader, uses their offering of one cedi each to prepare food for them, saying, “They don’t have access to their offering in the mother church.”

When Nana Esi Ninsin VIII learned of her efforts, she welcomed the girl into her fold, integrating her group into the larger church community, the Ekunfi Ekrawfo Group of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “She had a good spirit,” Nana said. “And now she’s part of our training and outreach.”

This act of inclusion not only validated the girl’s leadership but also reinforced Nana Ninsin’s belief that spiritual growth and community development are inextricably linked.

It was my second week in the mission field. I was fresh out of the missionary training center, ready and willing to face anything that came my way.
One night we rode our bikes along a slightly icy road and then came to some trolley tracks that were part of the road. My companion made it past them, but by the time he looked back to warn me, it was too late. My bike tire caught in the track, and I flew off my bicycle and slid about three feet.
I panicked. I knew I’d been hurt, so I checked my head, my arms, my knees—all were sore. Then I checked my face and discovered that some of my teeth had been knocked out. I sat on a cold, dark street wondering why this happened to me. What had I done wrong? Did the Lord not want me to serve? Questions and concerns raced through my mind as my companion sat by me and offered words of comfort. Nothing seemed to help.
I felt lost and alone, but suddenly an overwhelming sense of warmth and peace came over me, and the dark clouds of fear and hurt disappeared. I became calm. My personal relationship with the Savior grew as I felt His Atonement work on me. I realized that the Lord has taken upon Himself all of our pains and afflictions so that He can help us through them (see Alma 7:11–12).
Many good things came from my accident, and I learned that the Lord really does see the big picture. If we follow Him and seek to understand His plan for us, He will bless us through our trials.

Life choices kept Shelly away from the Church for years. With the help of friends at church, Shelly eventually found the strength and faith to move forward and be a good example to her children.
But things happened, and when we got divorced, I was excommunicated. It took me about 15 years to get back into the Church. It took a while, but I didn’t want to rush it. I wanted to be going to church for all the right reasons.
I remember when we first moved to Kentucky, USA, I’d take my son to church and stay in the car while he went inside. It was a hard time. My daughter was the first of my children to get married in the temple, and I couldn’t be there. That really hurt my feelings, but of course, it was my fault.
It just takes some people like me a long time to finally figure things out. Ward members and friends were patient with me. They let me know that they were there. One family in particular reached out to me and were really like my family because I didn’t have anybody out here. They helped me start going to church, but they never pressured me. The cool thing is that when it was time, my son rebaptized me.

As I have visited stake conferences and other meetings in recent years, I have carried President Thomas S. Monson’s call to rescue the less-active members of the Church. At one stake conference I told a story of a less-active member who returned to full activity after his bishop and other leaders visited him in his home, told him he was needed, and called him to serve in the ward. The man in the story not only accepted the call but also changed his life and habits and became fully active in the Church.

A friend of mine was in the congregation to which I told that story. His countenance visibly changed as the story was told. He sent me an e-mail the next day telling me that his emotional reaction to the story was because his father-in-law’s story of returning to activity in the Church was very similar to the one that I had told. He told me that as a result of a similar visit by a bishop and an invitation to serve in the Church, his father-in-law reevaluated his life and his testimony, made major changes in his life, and accepted the call. That reactivated man now has 88 descendants who are active members of the Church.

At a meeting a few days later, I told both stories. The next day I received another e-mail which began, “That’s my father’s story too.” That e-mail, from a stake president, told how his father was invited to serve in the Church even though he had not been active and had some habits that needed changing. He accepted the invitation and, in the process, repented, eventually served as a stake president and then a mission president, and laid the foundation for his posterity to be faithful members of the Church.

A few weeks later I told all three stories in another stake conference. After the meeting a man came to me and told me that that was not his father’s story. It was his story. He told me of the events that led him to repent and come back to full involvement in the Church. And so it went. As I carried the call to rescue the less active, I saw and heard story after story of people who responded to invitations to come back and change their lives. I heard story after story of redemption.

Her last acts were so typical of her. She was up preparing breakfast for her family. I heard her drop a dish and give a little moan. As I rushed from my study, thinking she had injured herself, I found that she was suffering from a stroke that was causing her to lose the use of her right arm. I quickly picked her up and carried her in to a little couch I had just recently convinced her that she should have near her kitchen so she could rest during the day.
There was terror in her eyes as the paralysis started to spread down her side. I told her I was going to rush a call to the doctor. She said, “First, give me a blessing.” As I laid my hands on her head that morning, the Lord in his great mercy let me know that her time had come. As I left the room to call the doctor after that blessing, she was literally fighting to move her right arm and her right leg. And the last words I heard her utter were, “I will not live as a half a person.”
Her next two hours, her last in mortality, were the only two I know of in her life that she was not carrying her full load and a little extra for someone else. The Lord in his mercy has let her pass through the veil and relieved her from her anxiety and pain. Now she is whole again, and I am certain paradise is a much more joyful place because she is there.

For the next seven years, Daniel and Thérèse served faithfully as the Church grew in their country. Like others in DR Congo’s first generation of Latter-day Saints, they learned step-by-step. In 1996, Congolese Church leaders were challenged to take the next step in their development. Although Kinshasa was nearly 4,000 kilometres from the nearest temple, in Johannesburg, South Africa, a group of over 20 local leaders were invited to travel to the temple together to be endowed with power from heaven and sealed to their spouses for eternity. It was the first group temple trip in Congo’s history.
The years after the temple trip were vital ones for the Church in Congo. In the late 1990s, stake after stake was organized in the country. Most of the men first called as stake presidents, including Daniel Kola, had participated in that temple caravan.
In 2007, Daniel Kola was called as an Area Seventy. The next year, he travelled to Utah to attend general conference and was blessed to attend the temple an additional five times to perform initiatory, endowment, and sealing ordinances for his ancestors, including being sealed to his own parents. “When I received my endowment, there was a lot I didn’t understand,” Kola reflected. “But today, I understand, and my knowledge is much more profound.”
As he developed a deeper appreciation for the temple, Kola also developed a greater interest in family history. Along with many others, he came to recognize that he lived at a crucial time, when the names and stories of many ancestors were still in living memory but at risk of being lost if they were not recorded. In 2018, Daniel Kola’s nonprofit organization contracted with FamilySearch to travel around the Democratic Republic of the Congo recording oral histories, aiming to gather 400,000 names in 12 months.

A few years ago, when Elder Merrill J. Bateman of the Presidency of the Seventy was in Japan, the missionaries introduced him to a young Japanese brother who had just joined the Church. He was from a non-Christian background. When he met the missionaries, he was interested in the message, but he could not understand or feel the need for a Savior, and he didn’t have a witness regarding the gospel. One day the missionaries decided to show him a film about the Atonement. The young man saw the film, but still he didn’t have a witness.

“The next morning he went to work. He worked in an optician’s shop making eyeglasses. … An elderly woman came in. He remembered her coming in a few weeks before. She had broken her glasses. She needed a new pair. When she had come in earlier, she didn’t have enough money and had gone away to save more in order to purchase the new glasses. As she came in that day, she again showed him her spectacles and showed him the money that she now had. He realized that she didn’t have enough yet. Then a thought came to him: I have some money. I don’t need to tell her. I can make up the difference. So he told her the money she had was adequate, took her glasses, [and] made an appointment for her to return when he had finished making the spectacles. …

“She returned later. He had the glasses ready for her. He handed them to her, and she put them on [and exclaimed] ‘… I see. I see.’ Then she began to cry. At that point, a burning sensation began to grow within his bosom and swelled within him. He said, ‘… I understand. I understand.’ He began to cry. Out the door he ran, looking for the missionaries. When he found them, he said, ‘I see! My eyes have been opened! I know that Jesus is the Son of God. I know the stone was rolled away from the tomb and on that glorious Easter morning He arose from the dead. He can make up the difference in my life when I fall short.’”2

Levi didn’t have his mind on Primary that Sunday. He was still angry with his older brother, Jason. Jason had just gotten his driver’s license. Last week, he had run over Levi’s bike, even though Levi had carefully parked it at the side of the garage. He had saved his own money to buy the bike. It had taken a long time.
“I’m really sorry. I’ll fix it up just like new,” Jason promised.
Levi looked at the crumpled fender. “It won’t be the same.”
Jason apologized again, but Levi refused to listen. “If you weren’t such a crummy driver, you wouldn’t have wrecked my bike.”
“I told you I’d fix the bike.” Jason didn’t sound so sorry now.
Levi stomped off, locking himself in his room for the rest of the afternoon and coming out only when Mom insisted he join the family for dinner.
That was last Wednesday. Levi had held onto his grudge for four days. It bothered him, being angry at Jason. Still, he didn’t feel like forgiving his brother.
After opening exercises and singing time, Sister McClure, the second counselor in the Primary presidency, presented sharing time to the older children. Starting with Levi’s class, she passed around a small paper cup. “Take one and pass it on,” she said.
Levi reached inside the cup and found it filled with pebbles.
“Put a pebble into your shoe,” she said. “Now try walking in place.”
Levi lifted up his foot and brought it down again. The little stone felt funny against his foot. He tried to move it to a more comfortable spot, but it kept rubbing against his foot.
“Now reverently walk around the room,” Sister McClure instructed.
Some of the children started giggling but stopped when Sister McClure reminded them to be reverent. A couple of the younger children started to limp and bent down to remove their stones.
Levi kept the pebble in his shoe. It began to feel a lot bigger as he walked.
After a few minutes, Sister McClure told the children to take their seats and remove the pebbles from their shoes. Once more, she passed around the paper cup and asked the children to put the pebbles inside.
Then she explained, “Those little pebbles are like the feelings we have when we don’t forgive someone who has offended us. They can start out small but then feel bigger and bigger.”
“What if the person who did something to hurt us isn’t really sorry?” Levi wanted to know.
“Sometimes we need to forgive, even when the other person doesn’t apologize or repent,” Sister McClure responded.
Sister McClure told a story about a time when the Prophet Joseph Smith forgave one of his friends who had betrayed him. Levi felt a lump in his throat as he listened to how the Prophet had forgiven William W. Phelps, even though Brother Phelps had conspired with the mobs who persecuted the Church and its leaders.
Levi thought about Sister McClure’s lesson during the rest of Primary. Following dinner that evening, when his parents asked family members what they had learned in church, Levi told them about the pebbles.
“How did your foot feel by the time you took the pebble out?” his dad asked.
“My foot was a little sore,” Levi admitted. “Sister McClure compared walking around with a pebble in your shoe to carrying a grudge and refusing to forgive someone who offended you.”
“It sounds like one of Mom’s object lessons,” his little sister, Annie, said.
Everyone laughed. The whole family knew that Mom liked to use objects in the lessons she gave for family home evening.
Before he went to bed, Levi knocked on Jason’s door. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk,” he said when Jason opened the door. “I know you didn’t mean to run over my bike.”
“Hey, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Jason pulled Levi into a bear hug and lifted him off the floor. “What do you say we work on the bike together tomorrow after school? I’ll ask Dad if we can use his tools.”
“Great!” Levi said, and as he went to his room, he thought, “I really do feel great!”