Gospel Story Finder

“Nathaniel, would you be a narrator in the Primary program in sacrament meeting?” Sister Mitchell asked before sharing time started.
Nathaniel hesitated. He really wanted to say yes, but sometimes he stuttered, especially when he was nervous. How could he narrate the whole program?
“Maybe,” he said. “But I s-s-tutter.”
Sister Mitchell smiled. “I know. We’d love your help, though. You’re the oldest one in Primary, and the other kids look up to you. I know you can do a great job.”
“Th-th-anks.” Nathaniel was glad that Sister Mitchell believed in him. Still, he didn’t know if he should say yes. What if he stuttered in front of the whole ward?
Later Nathaniel and his family gathered in the living room to talk about what they’d learned in Church that day.
“How was Primary, Nathaniel?” Dad asked.
Nathaniel sighed. “Sister Mitchell asked me to be a narrator in the Primary program. I want to do it—especially since I’m l-l-leaving Primary soon. But I d-d-don’t know if I can.”
“Hmm,” Dad said. “Are you worried you’ll stutter? It’ll be OK, even if you do.”
Mom put her arm around him. “It’s your choice,” she said. “We’ll pray for you.”
“Thanks,” Nathaniel said.
He thought about it the whole next week. By Sunday he’d made up his mind.
“I’d like to be a n-n-narrator for the Primary pr-pr-program,” he told Sister Mitchell in Primary.
“That’s great,” Sister Mitchell said. “Thank you! That will be a big help.”
For the next month, Nathaniel worked on his part. He said his lines over and over until he’d memorized them. But sometimes he still stuttered.
One afternoon he was practicing a really tricky word. “I c-c-can’t d-d-do it!” he yelled in frustration.
Mom walked in and sat down on the couch next to him. “I know it’s hard, but you can do it,” she said. “Do you know the story about President Heber J. Grant learning to play baseball?”
He shook his head. What did baseball have to do with stuttering?
“When President Grant was young, he wanted to play baseball. None of the other boys wanted him on the team because he couldn’t throw the ball very far,” Mom said. “So he saved up his money, and he bought a ball. Then he practiced until he could throw the ball as well as anyone. Eventually he made the team.”
“But playing baseball’s n-n-not the same as s-s-stuttering,” Nathaniel said.
“No, it isn’t,” Mom said. “But President Grant had a challenge just like you do, and he practiced and practiced. And you know what? He did great even though it was hard for him.”
“Mom, I want to do m-m-my best, and I have been practicing a l-l-l-lot. But what if I s-s-till s-s-tutter?”
Mom smiled. “Doing our best doesn’t mean doing things perfectly. When we work hard and ask Heavenly Father for help, we are doing our best. It’s OK if you stutter, but don’t let it stop you from trying. Dad and I will be proud of you no matter what.”
Nathaniel kept practicing his lines every day. And he prayed for help to be brave. At the final practice for the program, he said his part and only stuttered a few times. He was ready.
The day of the program, Nathaniel said a quick prayer for help. When the program started, he felt warm inside. He knew he could do his best—stuttering or not.

I was 17 years old at the time and was curious about my brother’s conversion and his enthusiasm about his newfound beliefs. He introduced a couple of missionaries to me and my sister. One of their lessons, about eternal families, grabbed my attention. This doctrine convinced me that this was the church for me—and the two young missionaries were so handsome, who could deny them? In due course, I and my sister were baptised, even though our father did not approve. As a Baptist, called to teach Japanese members in Japanese about the Holy Bible, my father had strong but narrow views about the teachings of Christ. But our mother attended our baptisms.

My baptism was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I renewed the promise I had made to my Father in Heaven two years earlier to serve him as a missionary. After my baptism, I started taking my younger sister to church. She was later baptized after I returned from my mission. Although my parents are still not members of the Church, I am grateful for the way they taught me and the desire they gave me to search for the truth.

Not long ago I received a touching letter from Sister Mori Farmer. It tells of two home teachers and the loving service they provided the Farmer family during a time when the family was experiencing some difficult financial circumstances. At the time the service was provided, the Farmer family was out of town attending a family reunion.
I share with you first a letter written to the Farmer family by their home teachers, which the family found taped to their garage door when they returned home. It begins: “We hope you had a great family reunion. While you were gone, we and about 50 of our friends had a great party at your house. We want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the years of unselfish service you both have given to us. You have been Christlike examples of untiring service to others. We can never repay you for that—but just thought we’d like to say thanks. Signed, your home teachers.”
I quote now from Sister Mori Farmer’s letter to me:
“[After reading the note from our home teachers] we entered the house with great anticipation. What we found shocked us so much we were at a loss for words. I stayed up all night crying over the generosity of the people in our ward.
“Our home teachers had decided that they would fix our carpet while we were away. They had moved the furniture out into the front yard so the carpet could get stretched and finished. One man in the ward stopped and asked what was going on. He returned later with several hundred dollars’ worth of paint and said, ‘We might as well paint the house while everything is out.’ Others saw the cars out front and stopped to see what was going on, and by week’s end 50 people were busy repairing, painting, cleaning, and sewing.
“Our friends and fellow ward members had fixed our poorly laid carpet, painted the entire house, repaired holes in the drywall, oiled and varnished our kitchen cabinets, put curtains on three windows in the kitchen and family room, did all the laundry, cleaned every room in the house, had the carpets cleaned, fixed broken door latches, and on and on. In trying to make a list of all the wonderful things they did for us, we filled three pages. All of this had been accomplished between Wednesday and our return on Sunday.
“Almost everyone we talked to told us, with tears in their eyes, what a spiritual experience it had been to participate. We have been truly humbled by this experience. As we look around our home, we are reminded of their kindness and of the great sacrifice of time, talents, and money they made for our family. Our home teachers have truly been angels in our lives, and we will never forget them and the wonderful things they have done for us.”

President Benson devoted his life to testifying about Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon. Here are my personal remembrances of President Benson:
First was his ability to sincerely communicate one-on-one directly with each of us who served with him. He would sit at his desk. I would be seated just to his right in a chair facing his large swivel chair. He would sit there with his large from-plowboy-to-prophet hands, our knees almost touching, and look me directly in the eyes with a depth of inner feeling that touched my very soul and tell me what was important for me to know or to do in my life or calling. When I left his office there was no doubt in my mind that I had been instructed by a prophet of the Lord.
Second, President Benson was fearless in the cause of truth and right. He was a living example of the words of the hymn “Do what is right; let the consequence follow” (Hymns, 1985, no. 237). God bless his memory.
On one occasion in Europe I remember kneeling in prayer beside President Benson when we were at the point of selecting a stake president. What a great joy to participate with him in prayer and understand the true order of prayer and what it means to be able to call upon the Lord for revelation.

I was baptized on April 26, 2009, by Zach’s dad, Brother Simons. I had the support of the entire ward, my family, and my friends. I have never felt so beautiful in my life as I did in my white dress and as I made that wonderful covenant with my Heavenly Father. Afterward, I was given the gift of the Holy Ghost by Brother Davis, whose entire family was especially supportive of me while I was investigating the Church. I was so touched, and I knew that the words he said were from Heavenly Father.

While my father met with customers, I had to either sit in the lobby, wait in the car, or walk around outside. I would frequently get tired of waiting for my father to finish working, so he decided to keep me busy. We went to a bank and bought 40 rolls of pennies and a collection booklet. I sifted through all the pennies and sorted them by year so I could fill up the collection. If I had finished sorting all those pennies by the time he got out of his meeting, we would find another bank and swap pennies.
My father said that if I gave the bank tellers my word that each roll of pennies I was trading had 50 pennies, I wouldn’t have to wait for them to count them. They would simply give me new rolls to replace them. Sure enough, I learned that if I said, “I’ve counted these. I promise that there are 50 pennies in each roll,” the bank tellers trusted me. I learned the importance of living up to my word. I also realized that some other little boy had probably counted the pennies I received, and that I had to rely on him to be honest as well. I never received a roll with fewer than 50 pennies, so I learned to trust others and to be trustworthy in all that I do.

Your challenge may be as ordinary as one I had not long ago. I had bought a new high-speed modem for my computer, but when I hooked everything up according to the directions, it did not work. I went through the troubleshooting instructions, reconnected everything, and called the help desk of the manufacturer, but still it didn’t work. The equipment was even tested at the store where I bought it, and they couldn’t find anything wrong. So I took it back home. But this time I remembered to pray. That was the only thing I did that was different. This time the equipment worked, and it still works.

I would like to use a short version, as I remember it, of the famous Hugh B. Brown parable to illustrate submission. When he was young, President Brown had a nice yard in front of his home with a lawn, flowers, shrubs, fruit trees, and shade trees. There was a currant bush he had carefully trimmed to be in an attractive shape and to produce the best fruit. Noticing that it had started to branch out again, he went for the pruning shears. As he approached the currant bush, he seemed to hear it say, “Oh please, Mr. Gardener, don’t cut me back, I’m just getting started and I want to be big like the shade trees.”
President Brown responded, “No, my little bush. I am the gardener here and I have planted thee to be a source of fruit and an adornment in this part of my garden, and I am going to prune thee back to size.”
Many years later President Brown was a full colonel in the Canadian forces in France in World War I. He could see the possibility of an illustrious military career. He wanted to become the first LDS general since Book of Mormon times. He was competent and well prepared. The next vacancy as a general should have been his, but when the vacancy occurred, he was called in by his superiors and told, “We are promoting someone else over you.” In effect they were saying, “There has never been a Mormon general in his Majesty’s Royal Forces and there probably never will be.”
He retired to his quarters, crushed with disappointment, and knelt in prayer asking fervently, “Heavenly Father, why couldn’t my prayers have been answered? Haven’t I lived up to my covenants? Haven’t I done everything I was supposed to do? Why? Why?”
And then he heard a voice, an echo from the past, saying, “I am the gardener here. You were not intended for what you sought to be.” Humbled, President Brown then prayed for humility and patience to endure the pruning and to grow as the Lord would have him grow.
I translated that story for him on a tour of South America. He told me afterwards, “Bob, I know if I had continued in that direction I would never have developed the way the Lord wanted me to so I could eventually serve him as an apostle and in the First Presidency.”

The family of Mary Goble Pay, who was 13 years of age, owned an ox team and wagon but promised to stay with two handcart companies. Though a handcart could usually travel faster than an ox wagon, the ox team could have forged ahead as the pioneers’ strength began to fail when early snow storms engulfed the group. But “we had orders not to pass the handcart companies,” Mary wrote. “We had to keep close to them to help if we could.” Gospel covenants made them “willing to bear one another’s burdens” (see Mosiah 18:8–10).
At great sacrifice, they honored their covenant and stayed with the handcarts. Mary’s sister, brother, and mother died from exposure, illness, and lack of nourishment (“Autobiography of Mary Goble Pay,” in A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints [1974], 143–45).

Years ago, when we were landscaping the yard of our new home, my father, who owned a hardware store, asked me if I would like some rose bushes that he had for sale at a very discounted price. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I thought that roses would look very nice next to the white rail fence that bordered our front yard. I bought more than twenty rose bushes.
We live close to the base of Rock Canyon, which means that there is very little soil and a lot of rocks. Kevin took on the arduous task of digging the holes for the roses. Due to the difficulty of digging, we decided to dig the holes just big enough to pour in enough soil to surround the roots of the roses—not really the ideal amount of soil, but, given the situation, we hoped it would be adequate. As it turns out, it was.
Our roses thrived. We really didn’t do too much to them. They were watered whenever the lawn was watered, they received plenty of sunshine, and, happily, they did well in our yard, rocks and all.
Normally I would prune the roses as soon as it looked like they needed it. One year, however, I waited longer than usual to prune them—about a month longer. The roses already had quite a bit of new growth on them, but I decided to prune them anyway. When I was finished, there wasn’t much left. I had cut them back drastically—much more than I usually did. But I was pleased with the results.
Who knew that pruning roses a month later than usual—and drastically at that—would have unexpected consequences? Immediately after I had pruned the roses, I had several people tell me that it was too late in the season for cutting roses and that I had cut them back too much. Initially it didn’t bother me, but pretty soon I began to believe them. I started to feel like I had done something I shouldn’t have. I started to doubt my decision. I was sorry I had cut my roses.
I remember one man asking me incredulously, “What have you done? Do you realize that you won’t have roses this year?”
And a woman in our neighborhood who had a lovely garden quipped, “You shouldn’t have cut them so late and so much!” And then she added, “Oh well, we live and we learn.”
I felt terrible. I believed I had ruined my roses! At that point I did the only thing I could think of doing. I called my mother! I knew she would help me feel better. She was a gardener. She had roses.
I told her about the terrible thing I had done. And, to my pleasant surprise, she assured me that I hadn’t done anything wrong. She advised me to go to a nursery and buy a book on roses. I would find that I hadn’t ruined them.
I did as she suggested. I bought a book on roses and was relieved to find out that I hadn’t ruined them. In fact, I read that when pruning roses, you should cut them back “severely.” I definitely had cut my roses back severely. The book was very helpful. It taught me that the only way I could ruin the roses was to pull them out of the ground, stop watering them, or prevent them from getting sunlight.
Now I had two sources of assurance: my mother and my rose book. Even though I had some reassurances that my rose bushes would be fine, I was still a little sensitive and skeptical. I really hoped the roses would grow back, but there remained some doubt in my mind—doubt that was reinforced by continued negative assessments from my neighbors.
I anxiously checked on my roses every day, looking for any kind of growth. Finally I saw growth and was thrilled that I hadn’t ruined my roses after all. I don’t know why I worried so much. I hadn’t pulled them out by the roots, I hadn’t stopped watering them, and they were receiving plenty of sunshine. Eventually there were fully bloomed roses in my yard again—a month later than normal, but there were roses!

A few months ago I was having troubles with the commandments and keeping them. I found this scripture one morning as I was reading 1 Nephi 10:18–22. Verse 18 says, “The way is prepared for all men from the foundation of the world, if it so be that they repent and come unto [Christ].” That verse stood out and gave me courage I needed to meet with my bishop. One of my closest friends who was also struggling spoke with her bishop as well. A few weeks ago we were able to go to the temple. I know Christ loves us and that He did atone for our sins. I love Him and I’m grateful for this knowledge.

During my mission in the British Isles, I had one companion I thought was difficult to get on with. One night, I was reading a very touching story in the New Era about charity. After that, I prayed to Heavenly Father that I would be able to develop more love for this other missionary. The next two months of our companionship turned out to be the most successful time of my entire mission.
Fredy NebelZurich, Switzerland

When our daughter Berta was born, we were grateful to finally have a baby after two unsuccessful pregnancies. Soon we realized that Heavenly Father had sent to us a very special spirit. As the oldest in the family, she was the peacemaker and the ringleader. Berta was a ­master at coming up with the silliest family jokes, and she loved to imitate my accent, which brought us a lot of fun. She loved writing and creating art, but above all she had a compassionate heart. Berta was always looking for opportunities to serve and nurture those who are often disenfranchised, forgotten, and overlooked.

Berta’s wit and command for words were never lacking. She often used this gift during her untiring advocacy work for the Latter-day Saint LGBTQ+ community. Berta loved and sought to follow the Savior by being a humble servant to those who needed love and care. She once told me that every time she served others, she felt she was breaking bread with the Savior. Berta especially advocated for homeless LGBTQ+ youths, who frequently fall victim to predators. She worked to find them a safe place to live and access to health resources. With all the love and compassion she had in her heart, Berta battled with generalized anxiety and major depressive disorders. In June 2018, Berta died by suicide.

The days following Berta’s death were some of the most difficult days in my life. I felt “like a broken vessel.”7 Sometimes it was difficult to breathe or see the light, but the Savior’s light was there, comforting us and sustaining us as He has sustained us in the past. Many angels in the bodies of family members, dear friends, and the LGBTQ+ community came to minister to us, even people I had never met before. As difficult as the passing of Berta was for our family, knowing that she inspired and touched many lives has been a healing experience for us.

It was the last day of school before the lengthy holiday break, so the students at my high school attended a special seminary session at a chapel right across the street. At the end of the session, a few kids were asked to bear testimonies before we concluded the program.
One senior boy told us about his tradition of reading 3 Nephi 11 early on Christmas morning, before anybody else in his family woke up and tore into presents. His testimony of the understanding it gave him of everything the Savior means in his life inspired me to do the same thing. I decided to read the chapter the night before, on Christmas Eve, before I went to bed.
I knew that this chapter was about Christ appearing to the people in the Americas, and Heavenly Father testifying of His Son. What I didn’t know or understand was the impact the Spirit would have on my heart that night as I felt a simple but completely powerful feeling of love.
This feeling came through well-known scriptures. In verse 7 I read, “Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him.”
And in verses 10 and 11 I read: “Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into this world. … I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.”
Indeed, these are very simple verses, but I felt an incredible feeling of love that night. I understood that I am important as an individual to Him, just as each one of us is. There may be billions of us on earth, but the Father and Jesus Christ are infinitely concerned about each one of us. We can all realize this because of the Savior’s Atonement.

I knew of two soldiers on a fierce battlefront, when during a temporary armistice in the war, one young man crossed the battle line and asked his antagonist, “Is there a Mormon elder in your lines?”

The other answered, “Yes, I am a Mormon.”

He then asked, “Would you come behind our trench lines and help me administer to and bless a wounded buddy?” Across the “no-man’s land” they walked together, these two men, former enemies. One anointed and the other sealed the anointing, and the wounded chap was blessed. A great peace entered their souls. The other man returned to his front lines to his duty, and he also had a new feeling of peace.

When Drew* was a young boy, he lived next door to the bishop of his ward, Bishop Philip T. Sonntag. The bishop’s son Mark was one of Drew’s best friends. One afternoon, Mark and Drew were playing in different parts of the Sonntag yard, when the bishop came outside looking for his son. “Drew, do you know where Mark is?” he asked. Drew knew that if he told the truth, Mark would have to quit playing and go inside. “No, I don’t know where he is,” Drew answered.
The bishop went back into his house, and Drew ran to the other side of the large yard, where Mark was playing. “Who were you talking to?” Mark asked. “It was your dad,” Drew answered. “What did he want?” “He wanted you to go inside.” “Then I’d better go in,” Mark said. He left, and Drew stayed outside. A few minutes later Bishop Sonntag came outside again. He told Drew that what he had done was not right and that he (the bishop) was disappointed that Drew hadn’t told the truth.
Drew felt terrible. He was nine years old. He had been baptized. He knew that he was accountable and that he had made a mistake. He walked home and went to his bedroom. He cried as he knelt beside his bed and asked Heavenly Father to forgive him. Then he went back to his friend’s home. When Bishop Sonntag answered the door, Drew said, “I just want you to know that I’m sorry about what I did.” The bishop put his arm around Drew and invited him to come inside.
Drew learned two valuable lessons from the experience: First, it’s important to tell the truth. Second, when we repent after doing something wrong, we feel better. Drew always remembered the outpouring of love he felt from his bishop upon correcting his mistake. He appreciated the bishop and felt that he had been forgiven.

One day when I was young, my father happened upon a little lost lamb in the desert. The lamb’s flock had moved on, and if we had left him, the coyotes might have found him. If he didn’t die because of the coyotes, he would have starved. So my father brought him home and gave him to me to care for.
I named the little lamb Nigh; I’m not sure why. I fed him with a bottle, and soon he grew strong and healthy. He and I became great friends, and I could just call him and he would come running. We liked to play on the grass together. Sometimes I would lie down with my head on his fleece and gaze up at the clouds floating by in the blue sky overhead.
One night there came a terrible storm. I usually locked up Nigh in the barn each night, but that night I forgot to do it until after I had gone to bed. As I lay there, I could hear the fierce wind howling and I could hear my little lamb bleating, frightened and fearful. But I just didn’t want to leave that warm, comfortable bed to take care of him.
The next morning I awoke to find that I was not the only one who had heard my lamb bleating. Some dogs had heard him and had killed him. My heart was broken. My father looked at me with disappointment written on his face. “Son,” he said, “couldn’t I trust you to take care of just one lamb?”
The lesson I learned that day was one I will never forget. I resolved that when a lamb needed to be cared for or when anyone needed my help, I would respond right away rather than wait for a more “convenient” time.

Before I do so, however, I would like to let you know my own story. Those who know me know I’m generally up-beat. I have down days, like anyone, and I get angry like anyone. Sometimes I’m hopeful, and sometimes I’m a complainer. But generally, I have been able to shrug things off easily at most points in my life. I tend to make bad jokes as often as possible. I know more chicken and road jokes than most of you have had hot meals. But after the birth of my fourth child, it wasn’t just my wife who got the baby blues. Suddenly I was in the midst of the deepest darkness I had ever known. Some of that experience doesn’t bear relating here, but it was more than simply a bad day or two. I did not honestly know how I would get through it. There was a long stretch where I felt more often than not nothing. There were other times when I would wake in despair each day and claw my way through a world in which I did not recognize hope. For someone who tries however haltingly and imperfectly to live according to the spirit of the Lord, I was completely unsure how to function because it was hard to feel that sprit. And what was worse, I didn’t know what was causing this. A lack of sleep, yes, and other stresses may have triggered it, but I didn’t understand why my mind and heart were acting in this way. I decided to seek help, but finding a counselor was difficult, and when I did find places to go, I didn’t find someone who understood what I was encountering. And the longer this went on, the harder it was to continue. If you’ve ever closed your eyes and tried to walk, you may know that each step gets more difficult to take, because you have less surety of what’s in front of you. I felt soon as if I did not know what steps to take.

And this leads me to my first suggestion, which is when the lights go out, keep moving, especially if you are prepared. In his famous dream, Lehi sees “numberless concourses of people, many of whom were pressing forward, that they might obtain the path which led to the tree by which I stood.” But the journey soon becomes less than pleasant, and “there arose a mist of darkness, yea even an exceedingly great mist of darkness, insomuch that they who had commenced in the path did lose their way.” When the darkness comes, it becomes very easy to just wander, and that can be dangerous, physically and spiritually. Life does not stop when you encounter darkness while you look to extricate yourself, and Satan knows that the voices of temptation can lure you away from the path especially easily at those times. But “others” were not lost. They “came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron and they did press forward through the mist of darkness.”

Brothers and sisters, I hope that when you encounter darkness that you are holding to that rod, and I hope that you keep your grip as you press forward. I can tell you that when darkness descended for me, I had little light to go on to keep pressing forward, but what led me through the mists was doing the things I had been doing—following the path I had been following and clinging to the rod that I had clung to to that point. I kept going to my classes and teaching, even when my heart was numb to it. I kept following the commandments even at those times when I didn’t get the warm feelings our primary teachers told us would be there when we did good things. And I kept fulfilling my duties to my family, even when I didn’t feel much in the way of overwhelming love when I looked at my children. Why did I do this? Because faith meant telling myself that last week I knew what was right. I had read the scriptures, and even if I didn’t feel it right now, I knew what was right because I had had the Lord reveal it to my heart in times past, and I walked on. I didn’t have new direction from the Lord, but his directions hadn’t changed. So I kept following the light I knew of. I often say that even if you don’t care now, you may in a week or two. Keep on doing what you know you need to do. And among those things was to keep reading the scriptures. Remind yourself of the lessons you have learned in the past and the things that have been important to you. Even when things aren’t so dark, this is wise. We are creatures that live in time, and we forget. Keep reminding yourself why you do what you do, or others will try to lure you into doing other things. Hold, brothers and sisters, to the rod.

One of those Scouts, Sid Payne, found something fascinating before he even got here. He and his cousin were in the car on the way here when Sid’s dad, Ed, handed the boys several sheets of paper and said, “Read this.”
What they read was so interesting that when they reached the campsite, they stayed in the car to finish the last two pages instead of jumping out of the car and into the fun. They had discovered a little-known group of real western heroes.
At first, Sid didn’t want to read that journal account on the way here. “I thought it was going to be some long, boring thing. But after a few pages, I liked it a lot.” What Sid learned from his reading was that his great-great-great grandfather, Abraham Hunsaker, had marched through this same wild desert nearly 150 years ago. “I never knew he was in the Mormon Battalion. I was really impressed with what he did.”