Gospel Story Finder

Illustrations by Kevin Keele
It was a windy day. Nine-year-old Batbayar was walking home from the bus stop after school. He hugged his coat tighter in the wind. Luckily, it wasn’t far to his grandparents’ house, where he lived in Mongolia.
“Hi!” Batbayar said as he came inside.
“Welcome home,” Grandma said. “I made some khuushuur for a snack.”
“Thank you!” Batbayar reached for one of the warm, spicy Mongolian meat pies.
“Wait! Don’t eat any until the missionaries get here,” Grandpa said. “They’ll be coming any minute.”
Batbayar loved it when the missionaries from Grandma and Grandpa’s church came to visit. He always learned a lot from them. But there was just one problem.
“Will they ask me to read from the Book of Mormon again?” Batbayar asked. “Reading is hard for me.”
“That’s why they’re bringing another book today,” Grandma said.
“What book?” Batbayar said.
“You’ll see,” Grandpa said.
Soon the missionaries arrived. They ate Grandma’s delicious meat pies together. Then Batbayar said, “Grandma says you brought me a book.”
“I think you’ll like this book,” Sister Heitz said. “It has lots of pictures.”
Batbayar looked at the cover. Book of Mormon Stories, it said. A picture on the cover showed people building a boat.
“I remember that story,” Batbayar said. “The man didn’t know how to build a boat. So he prayed. And God helped him.”
“That’s right,” Sister Enkhtuya said. “Will you try reading this book? Then you can pray and ask God if what it teaches is true.”
“I will,” Batbayar promised.
That night he read from the book with pictures. He read the story about the boat. Then he prayed. He fell asleep thinking about the man who built the boat and how God helped him.
From then on, each night Batbayar read a story. Then he prayed. And each night, he fell asleep thinking about what he read.
When the sister missionaries came again, they taught Batbayar more about Jesus Christ. Batbayar learned about prophets. He learned about God’s commandments. He kept going to church with Grandma and Grandpa. And he kept reading and praying.
One day Batbayar had something important to tell his grandparents. “When I read the stories in the book with pictures, my heart feels good,” he said. “When I pray, I feel they are true. I think I should be baptized.”
Today, Batbayar is a member of the Church. He has gotten better and better at reading. And he still reads the Book of Mormon every night!

We are indebted to Dr. Homer Ellsworth for sharing with us many years ago two contrasting stories about the happiness of mothers. Often, in the days when the gender of the child could not be predetermined, expectant mothers were very set upon having a boy or a girl. Sometimes when the baby was not of the anticipated gender, the mother was temporarily disappointed. Of course this disappointment was forgotten as soon as the mother cuddled her newborn for the first time.

Dr. Ellsworth told us that a few new mothers demonstrated their immaturity for a day or two. One who wanted a boy baby and happened to receive a girl baby showed her displeasure by throwing tantrums and objects all over her hospital room for a day or two. One wise old nurse, when feeding time came, took a baby boy born with a small facial deformity from the nursery and quietly slipped him into the disconsolate mother’s arms. The immature mother exclaimed, “This is not my child!”

The wise old nurse said, “Well, it is the right sex. Maybe its mother would be willing to trade babies with you.” There followed no more demonstrations of immaturity.

Several horses were dozing against the pasture fence as we turned into the cemetery. A stylish palomino raised its head. It looked like the horse owned by that blonde down in Glenville.
“You better not let her beat you at the barrels,” Grandma had said.
There is something I can do for Grandma, I thought. I can beat the rodeo queen in the barrel racing competition.
I was next. Ginger knew it too. She kept prancing sideways and tugging on the reins.
“Easy, girl. Don’t get all worked up before we get out there.”
The afternoon was warm. Sweat was already seeping from under Ginger’s saddle blanket. The reins felt sticky in my fingers.
The crowd roared as last year’s rodeo queen zoomed out for her turn at the barrels. I could see her blonde braids streaming behind her. She zipped sleekly around the first barrel and bolted for the next.
This blonde and I were the last two barrel racers. The other competitors’ times had been mediocre, so I felt Ginger and I still had a chance.
The rodeo queen circled the second barrel without a hitch. Uneasily, I eyed the last barrel. Maybe she would tip it over and get disqualified.
I could see the girl and her horse lean together around the third barrel. It was too close. The barrel rocked wildly. But it didn’t go over. At least it might have knocked a couple of seconds off her time. The crowd thundered as she spurted toward the finish.
I’ll show them, I thought, as I positioned Ginger for a run into the arena. But I was scared.
I charged out. The flag dropped at the starting line as Ginger and I flashed past. I hadn’t thought of Grandma until that very second. Suddenly I had a feeling that beating this rodeo queen was not what Grandma had in mind.
Ginger’s black mane flew in my face as I reined her low around the right barrel. She veered around it smooth and tight—just like a pro. I didn’t feel as much like a pro. I was slightly off balance and bumpy as we raced down the arena to the far barrel. Ginger went a little wide on this barrel, but we were still on target.
Now for the last barrel. I was in her rhythm again, so my confidence rose. “Dig, Ginger, dig,” I whispered, leaning over her neck.
She flicked her ear back briefly. I felt the tremble before blastoff.
Then we were hurtling toward the last barrel. Too fast. I tried to check her, but we were already swerving steeply around the barrel. I was off balance, askew in my stirrups. Ginger was sliding. Too far. We were falling. In slow motion, we were crashing into the barrel. Grandma’s sad gray eyes flashed before me. “You can do it,” she was saying.
“I’m sorry, Grandma. I thought I could beat her.”
I was falling.
“I was never too good with words,” said Grandma. “But you are.”
“No, my words hurt you.”
Falling. Falling.
“It’s okay,” whispered Grandma. “I know you can write it.”
“Write what?” I muttered.
Then I hit the barrel.
When I came to, I was deep in rodeo arena dirt, and Ginger’s hot breath was in my face. But I knew what I needed to do.
A cowboy was leaning over me. “Write what?” he said.
“Did I say something?” I asked.
“You keep saying you need to write something.”
I rolled to my feet. “That’s right. I do need to write it.”
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m just fine.”
I started by interviewing Grandma’s seven sons. They each gave me a different view of Grandma’s life.
“Mom was the only widow I knew who could get seven kids ready for church and still be five minutes early,” said Uncle Orvil.
“Mom would feed every hobo who’d come along the tracks,” said Uncle Russ. “I was scared of them and would hide behind her skirts. But she wasn’t scared. She’d just put them to work chopping wood.”
“I remember Mom telling me that she wanted to be Annie Oakley when she was little,” said Uncle Rolfe, “so she took her stick horse and ran away. She was gone for most of the day. Half the county was looking for her. They finally found her fast asleep in a pasture full of unbroken mustangs.”
“Long before anyone had heard of family home evening, Mom had what she called family time once a week,” said Uncle Matt. “There was no getting around it. We had to be there.”
None of my uncles knew much about the chestnut horse or the rodeo saddle.
“Mom kept pretty silent on some things,” said Sid, my oldest uncle. “All I know is that she didn’t have that horse very long.”
He motioned to several boxes of scrapbooks and letters. “But you might find something there. You’re welcome to take them home with you.”
Digging through the scrapbooks, I finally found a small picture of Grandma on her chestnut horse. “Me and Flash, 1930” was scrawled on the back. I was surprised how much Grandma looked like me sitting on that horse. Straight brown hair and freckles.
When my great-uncle Al came to town, I asked him, “Do you know any other stories about Grandma besides the ones you told at the funeral?”
“Oh, I’m chock-full of tales about my sister,” he said. “I remember her first date with your Grandpa.”
Date? It had never occurred to me that someone would actually remember Grandma going on a date.
“To be honest, I remember her second date better. It was almost the last. Her first date was kind of normal. She came home with this goofy smile on her face and walked past me like I didn’t exist. But on her second date, she came home scratching like a hen in the barnyard. I thought she must have fleas. She kept yelling, ‘I can’t stand it,’ all the while yanking at her clothes and peeling down her socks. Come to find out, Harry’s old Plymouth also served as a truck. He’d forgotten to take the chicken feed sacks out in time for his date. Harry and Annie got covered with chicken mites. They were scratching like a couple of dogs all night and didn’t dare say a word to each other. Luckily, chicken mites would rather be on chickens than people, so Annie got over it quick. But it took a few weeks for her and Harry to get back together.”
Uncle Al and my dad were laughing so hard tears were running down their cheeks. Suddenly I remembered the words from the funeral. “Whoever does Annie’s life story is in for a few laughs.”
Uncle Al knew a little more about her chestnut horse. “Oh, yes, how she loved that little mare. Annie’s dream was to become a trick rider and ride in rodeos and wild west shows.”
“A trick rider?”
“Yep, she got pretty good at it too, considering she didn’t have that horse very long. I did watch her fall a few times in the pasture.”
“Did she barrel race too?”
“Oh, no, that was before the days of barrel racing,” he said. “But she did enter some sort of horsemanship event at the rodeo. Maybe you’ve heard about the saddle she won?”
I nodded.
Uncle Al shook his head. “It’s too bad about that saddle. I don’t think she ever got to use it.”
“She didn’t?” I said.
“Nope. She sold Flash right after that.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I have my suspicions. But the person who might know is my brother Bill.”
I hugged my notebook as I entered the rest home. Uncle Bill, Grandma’s next oldest brother, always made me a little nervous. He tended to get confused when he talked. But today he seemed sharp.
“Why did Annie sell her horse?” he repeated, leaning forward in his wheelchair. “Well, the Depression was coming on. I told her it didn’t matter; I could earn the money myself. But she had already made up her mind. Maybe you know how bullheaded she could be. She wanted to do her part for my mission. She said she couldn’t stand watching Flash eat hay in the barn while I might be hungry in England.”
“And she sold her new rodeo saddle too?” I said.
“Well, I don’t recollect that she did,” replied Uncle Bill, scratching the top of his head. “I think she kept that saddle a long time, hoping to buy another horse so she could be a trick rider. Then later on she hoped to have a daughter to give it to. To be honest, I don’t know what happened to that saddle.”
I had almost completed Grandma’s history by the time I found out what happened to her prize saddle. I ran across a letter from Bishop Jensen in the box of papers Uncle Sid had given me.
“Dear Annie: I know how you like your gifts to be anonymous. But I just wanted to tell you how thrilled the Hansens are with your saddle. They were afraid of paralysis after the accident, but now their little Marie seems determined to put that saddle on a horse. I knew you wanted your saddle to go to a girl who loves horses, and there’s no doubt Marie loves horses.”
I finished Grandma’s history and made copies for my family. Everyone was thrilled, including Bishop Jensen, who turned 100 years old the day I gave him his copy.
By the way, I never did beat that sassy blonde from Glenville in the barrels. She got married that summer and moved away. But the next year, I shortened my stirrups a notch like Grandma said and won second place. First place went to Rebecca Williams, who happened to be “little” Marie Hansen’s daughter.
Grandma’s saddle deserved to win first.

Now for the experiences. Several years ago a young man who lived in an apartment with all returned missionaries came to me with a problem. He said, "Sister Bednar, I'm trying to prepare for a mission. But my roommates are attending R-rated movies, not living the standards here at the college, and are giving me such a hard time because I don't want to do the things they are doing. What should I do?"
How would you respond? I thought how some of you are so mature, even beyond your years; yet others use your youth as an excuse for indiscretion and wayward behavior.

Most of us have memories of perfect days—days that stand apart from the rest because something or someone made them unforgettable. One of mine happened when I was in the fifth grade. On a particularly bleak Saturday morning in January, my father suddenly announced that we were going skiing.
“All of us?” I asked, thinking of my brothers, John and Jim.
“No,” he responded, “just you and I.”
He urged me to finish my breakfast in a hurry as he gathered our equipment together. Half an hour later we were heading up Provo Canyon to the old Timp Haven ski resort. Dad and I spent the entire morning there, perfecting our snowplows and challenging one another to races. Later that day, after thoroughly exhausting ourselves on the slopes, we traveled to my Grandpa Edwards’s warehouse where we helped him and other family members bag potatoes for hauling. Although it was cold outside, dad worked so hard that huge beads of perspiration rolled freely off his forehead. Afterwards, he and I went to a nearby drive-in and had hamburgers, fries, and shakes—just the two of us.

Since President Thomas S. Monson announced the change in age for missionary service, youth all over the Church have eagerly responded not only to the invitation to serve but also to the invitation to prepare to serve. And one way to prepare is to learn more about what’s in store if you become a full-time missionary.
Some youth in Norway did exactly that during a day-long “Missionary Experience” hosted by one of the wards in their stake.
The youth gathered at the meetinghouse in a room that represented a missionary training center. “We received an assignment to learn about a country,” says Jakob R. “It gave us a feeling for what it must be like to receive a mission call and know that you could be called to a place that’s different from what you’re used to.”
“Then we went next door to meet a returned missionary who was playing the role of a mission president,” says Simon W. The returned missionary and other returned missionaries talked about what to expect while serving a mission. “I thought it was really neat to learn from returned missionaries what to expect during a full-time mission,” Simon says. Participants also received a name badge, were assigned a companion, and were instructed to remain with their companion at all times.
Workshops taught the youth about developing spiritually but also about managing temporal needs such as doing laundry, following a budget, and staying in good physical condition.
“I particularly enjoyed the workshop about how to start gospel conversations,” says Inger Sofie J. “That’s something I can start doing right now.”
“I enjoyed discussing how to use Preach My Gospel,” says Karl Frederik O. “I had always thought that missionaries had their own list of scriptures to learn, but I found out that what I’m already doing in seminary will help me as a missionary and so will what I’m already studying in Preach My Gospel.”
Many young men said that one of the most memorable workshops included hands-on experience with ironing a white shirt. “It reminded me that there are a lot of practical skills I can work on to get ready for a full-time mission,” says Jakob.
“I learned that there is a lot I can be doing right now to join with the full-time missionaries serving here so that we are all part of the same team,” says Sarah R. “Members are missionaries too.”
As a reminder that missionaries serve all over the world, refreshments featured recipes from a variety of nations. “That reminded me that I should try new foods now so that I’m used to trying things I don’t eat all the time. That will help me to adjust more quickly if I’m called to a place where they eat things I’m not used to,” says Simon.
“At the end of the day, after we heard the testimonies of two of the youth and two newly returned missionaries, we sang the hymn ‘Called to Serve,’” says Liss Andrea O. “I felt that if I keep singing this hymn all the time, I will have a constant reminder that when we are missionaries, we are serving Heavenly Father and He will bless us.”
By the end of the day, the youth in the stake understood that not only are they preparing for potential missionary experiences but that they can have missionary experiences right now and through the rest of their lives.

That’s what I was able to do with a friend, someone whom I considered to be the most beautiful, confident, and intelligent young woman I knew. We’d been friends for years, but it wasn’t until high school that I discovered she had an eating disorder. One day during a psychology class, we had an entire lesson on eating disorders—why and how people become consumed by them. During this lesson my friend was unusually quiet and looked uncomfortable. That’s when I first began to suspect her “internal dispute,” as we later referred to it.
After that class, I began to notice that my friend’s normal behaviors were not so normal—things like her lack of appetite, her comments about how she looked fat, or the constant facade of perfection she was trying to keep up. I became really scared for her and decided to fast and pray for her—I didn’t know what else to do.
Eventually, the Spirit told me I needed to talk to her with great love. I did the best I could and fasted and prayed that I would know what to say to her. When I finally talked with her about my suspicion of an eating disorder, we both cried as she admitted to having one. She told me she knew she was struggling and didn’t know how to help herself—or if she even wanted to change. I was so surprised that she didn’t deny having an eating disorder. The Spirit was definitely with us during that conversation. With the assistance of parents and counselors, we found help for her. And through those efforts, she’s now healthy again.
Helping her rediscover her worth was one of the best things I’ve ever had the opportunity to do. I knew she has great worth. She is an extremely special person—she just forgot how much worth she has. I wanted her to see herself the way Christ sees her, and along the way she showed me that I needed to do the same for myself.

Brothers and sisters, I did not grow up with these teachings. I didn’t always understand who God was or my relationship with Him. Growing up in Las Vegas, I was surrounded by negative influences. Some of my closest friends and family became involved in drugs, gangs, and criminal activity—some even lost their lives.

Hope was not easy to hold onto—and it was sometimes hard to find. My bedroom became my safe place—a space in which I could escape the chaos around me and reflect on my life. It was the place that led me to know who God was. There was a turning point in my life when one night, feeling confused and discouraged, I opened my heart completely to Him, sharing all my fears and questions with Him.

Suddenly an overwhelming feeling of peace and hope came over me. It was as if I heard Him say, “Jamal, things will be okay. Have hope in me. It will all work out.”

I felt that the darkness that had filled my room and my mind at the time was taken over by a bright light of hope and by the love of God.

That moment changed my life. It was that light of hope that prepared me to choose BYU over all the other universities.

When I arrived at BYU, the light here felt familiar to me, and it continued to get brighter in my life. My hope became greater, and the love of others became deeper and more meaningful. This led me to my baptism into this wonderful Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And my life has become anchored in Jesus Christ ever since.

Having been raised in a competitive and non-religious Asian country, I have always had a great desire to become a successful person, but I didn’t have any eternal principles or truths to guide me. In my country, “successful” meant being rich and powerful.
My parents always taught me that there was no such thing as God. For them, religion or God was a bunch of nonsense and only for weak people. For a long time I considered myself atheist. They taught me that I shouldn’t trust anyone but myself. So from a young age I have used my high ambitions as motivation to study and work extremely hard.
My parents had high expectations for me. They wanted me to keep my grades high at all times. It made me sad to see their disappointed faces or to hear them argue with each other when I got a bad grade. Along with my regular schoolwork, I would also have to do extra homework on the weekend so I could keep an A average.
Even after accomplishing goals I had set, I still felt that there was something more in store for my life. Deep in my heart, I knew that surely there had to be more to it.
One day I decided I was going to find out for myself if there really was a God. If He did exist, I wanted to know what He wanted for me or if religion was just a bunch of nonsense created by the imagination of human beings. I was not afraid to receive either one of these two answers. I just wanted the truth.
Around that same time, I became close friends with one of my basketball teammates named Taylor. One morning I asked him for a ride to school. He said yes, but I would have to get up an hour earlier to go to seminary with him. I reluctantly said yes, not knowing what it was. I enjoyed seminary, though more because of what I felt than what I learned.
Soon after that, Taylor asked me to go to church with him. At first I thought church was a little boring and weird, but eventually I was moved by the warm and peaceful feeling that I felt at the service.
However, I still wasn’t persuaded that the good feeling had anything to do with God. How did I know that it didn’t come from myself? How did I know that I didn’t make myself feel that way?
After many internal debates, I went to Taylor’s mom in search of answers. She told me that I could receive my answers by reading the scriptures and praying about the answers that I was looking for. I prayed without receiving any answers and struggled to obey the rules and commandments that I was learning about. I became frustrated many times. I expected a marvelous and dramatic appearance of God or some sort of miraculous event to prove that God was real. Basically, I wanted an unshakable testimony all at once. The truth is, the more I prayed, the more clarity I felt in my life. The more I followed the commandments, the happier I became. The more I read the scriptures, the more revelation I received. Gradually, my testimony increased, like the rising sun in the morning.
It took me two years to decide to be baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though I lived many good moral standards and principles before, I can now say that I have found the eternal and ultimate truth: God lives. Jesus is the Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. The heavens are open. A prophet of God walks the earth today. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is real. God really does forgive all repentant sinners. I may not be as smart or as gifted as other people, but the knowledge I have is priceless.

As a 16-year-old I learned that the Lord does indeed listen to and answer sincere prayers, even those of a young man.
My father followed the counsel of the Brethren that we should be prepared with not only food but also fuel, and so each fall my younger brother and I would help him cut and haul firewood to be stored for future need. In the area of Virginia where we lived, trees were being downed to make way for new construction. There was a time allotted for those who wanted to cut up the wood and haul it off. One bright fall day, my father announced that we would drive out to one of these construction sites and get a truckload of wood.
It was my father’s job to work the chainsaw and cut the trees into pieces that my brother and I could haul to the truck. We had worked late into the afternoon when my father announced that we could pack up. After reaching into his pocket, he looked at us and said, “Oh no. I lost the keys.” At first we thought he was kidding, but then he pulled his pocket inside out and revealed a large hole. All three of us started to search where we had been. We looked and looked but could not find the keys.
It was getting late and cold. We had not dressed for the cool of evening, and it would have been a hike of several miles on country roads to get to where we could reach a phone. It was not a life-threatening situation, but to a tired 16-year-old, it seemed desperate. After searching for as long as I could, and realizing the futility of our efforts in this maze of wood and sawdust, I took the only course I thought was left. I went behind the pile of trees and there humbly pleaded to our Heavenly Father. I explained to Him what our situation was and asked if He could help us find the keys.
Answers to prayers come in many ways. On this occasion, as I opened my eyes, I felt a distinct prompting to go to a stack of trees where we had cut earlier that day. Even though we had each searched there previously, I walked over to that spot. As I arrived there, again a prompting came to look down into a hole between the large trunks lying across each other. It was now dusk and getting difficult to see, so at first I could not see anything in the dark hole, but as my eyes became adjusted I was excited to see a glimmer of metal. Just as I was about to reach down and grab the keys, the Spirit gave me a distinct warning not to put my hand in that hole. The prompting was so strong that I decided to examine the situation more closely. I squinted and could barely make out the reason why I was not to reach for the keys. There, curled in the leaves and sawdust next to the keys, was a copperhead snake.
I did the only thing a wise 16-year-old would do. I shouted, “Hey Dad, I found the keys,” and he responded, “Where?” I yelled, “Over here.” Then with a pause and a smile I added, “And you can get them out!” When my dad got to where I was, I explained to him our dilemma about the location of the keys and how our friend the snake was guarding them. My father got a long stick, slowly lowered it so as to not disturb the snake, and pulled out the keys.
Soon we were in a warm truck with a full load of wood and ready to head home when my father asked me how I ever found those keys. I told him. He believed me and reminded me that we should take a moment to express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father for finding the keys, and we did.

Brother Bradshaw was old. At least that’s what the other kids said. But he didn’t seem old to Mikey. He remembered that for many years Brother Bradshaw had gone over to the church early each Sunday to sweep away the leaves from the walkways so that people wouldn’t slip. Now, since Brother Bradshaw had been in a wheelchair, Mikey had gone to his home each Sunday morning to push him to church. They became friends as they spent time together.
One morning, Mikey’s mom told him that Brother Bradshaw had passed away. Tears came to his eyes. “How could he?” he thought. “We were just talking last Sunday!”
The next few days were difficult for Mikey. He knew Brother Bradshaw was 91 years old, but he had never thought about him dying. He missed him so much. But as he saw Brother Bradshaw’s family arriving from out of town for the funeral, he knew that they missed him too. He knew how much Brother Bradshaw had loved his family, and he wanted to let them know that Brother Bradshaw was special to him too.
Mikey sat down and wrote them a note. He told them about how much he enjoyed knowing Brother Bradshaw and that he was his best friend. Then he delivered it to the Bradshaw house. But Mikey still felt like he should do something more. He thought and thought. What could he do that would be special for Brother Bradshaw?
Finally it came to him. Just before the funeral he went over to the Bradshaw home again and delivered another note. This one read:
“I swept off the church sidewalks this morning. It’s the last thing I can do for Brother Bradshaw, my good friend, here on earth. I can’t wait to see him again when I go to heaven. I am so thankful to Brother Bradshaw for sweeping off the sidewalks for me every Sunday. It was hard for me, and I know it was hard for him, and I never said thank you to him. My mom said he knows I am thankful, but that’s the first thing I am going to tell him when I see him in heaven.
Love,
Mikey”
As Brother Bradshaw’s daughter-in-law read the note her eyes began to glisten. “Oh, Mikey!” was all she could say, and she gave him a big hug. Mikey knew that Brother Bradshaw would like his gift.

When Lourdes Cutti de Alvarez of Uruguay found out she had two brain tumors, she told her friend Marcela Suarez Albano that she’d be hospitalized for surgery and would require lengthy post-surgery treatment. She worried about how her family of four children would cope with the stressful situation.
Marcela sat down with her 16-year-old daughter, Rocío, to ponder ways they could minister to Lourdes. Marcela had recently been in the hospital herself. She remembered the feeling of being alone and what a difference it made when Lourdes and the sisters in her ward came to visit. So Marecela and Rocío helped organize a mobile phone texting group with the sisters in the ward. This allowed them to easily schedule meals for the family. Having dinners taken care of eased Lourdes’s burden. The sisters also sent a daily scripture or message to strengthen her spirit and show their love for her.
Lourdes’s daughter, Ana Clara, shared: “It was difficult not to have Mom at home. But Heavenly Father sent help to me and my family. It was a great outpouring of His love. What Marcela did to unite the members of the ward to help us was amazing. Every time we saw another family coming, we felt, through them, the pure love of Christ. They shared words of encouragement, laughed with us, and helped strengthen us. Our Heavenly Father undoubtedly was with us in every moment. We could feel it through the smiles that we saw in the faces of those who came to help us.”
A year later, Marcela had to be hospitalized due to a coronary problem. Lourdes and Ana Clara remembered how the Lord had comforted and strengthened them through Marcela and Rocío and were anxious to show their love and gratitude in return.

Sister Groberg shared other memories about her high school friends. “There was always a surplus of girls,” she remembered, and then added, “and I was never in the real dating circle. I hardly had any dates in high school, and you know how you’d feel. The day my older sister who was always an example for me turned 16, a young man called her up, and for four nights in a row a different boy called. It was like they had all been waiting for her to turn 16. It was so exciting. I thought that was the magical thing: you turn 16 and you start dating. Well,” Jean said, with emphasis, as though she was remembering it all over again, “it didn’t happen when I turned 16.” She paused a moment, reflecting on what must have been a very disappointing experience.
“And how did you survive that situation?” I asked.
“Oh, I had a lot of good girl friends, and we had a lot of fun” she said, then thoughtfully added, “I never feel badly if a girl doesn’t have dates in high school. If you’re just a little patient, you can still have a good time. I really had fun dating in college, a lot of fun.”

I began to study the Atonement intensively. And I studied the doctrine of the change of heart and the meaning of being born again. As I studied, I developed a profound reverence for the Savior, for the power of his atonement, and for its efficacy in saving me from all of my failings and weaknesses.
One day I read Mosiah 5:7–8: “Ye shall be called the children of Christ … ; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.
“And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free.”
Now I understood the words made free. I was being released from so many personal fears, inadequacies, and negative feelings that it seemed as if tangible shackles were falling from my hands and feet. My posture changed as I began to see myself as a person who had every reason to stand tall. My children asked why I was smiling so much. My husband asked why we didn’t quarrel anymore. My mother and brothers simply asked, “What happened?”

Although just as friendly as her sister, Larisa tends to be more quiet and reserved. “She’s a great student,” her mom says. Larisa has always had a special affection for Jesus Christ and knows of His great love for children. She tells her parents, “I hope He comes while I’m still little!” In fact, when she was in kindergarten, she wanted to see Him so much that she often spent her whole recess staring up at the sky, waiting for Him to appear.

In 1834, Polly heard about the plight of the Saints who had been driven out of Jackson County, Missouri, USA, by mob violence. Through a revelation to Joseph Smith, the Lord asked Church members to donate money to help the suffering Saints redeem Zion (see Doctrine and Covenants 103:22–23). Polly didn’t have much, but she had faith in the Lord’s promise that if the Saints would relieve the suffering of others, great blessings would follow (see Doctrine and Covenants 38:35; 39:8–9). Acting on that conviction, Polly sent $150 to Kirtland, Ohio, USA, in 1834 to help supply the Camp of Israel expedition (later known as Zion’s Camp).3
One hundred fifty dollars was a lot of money for anyone—but especially for Polly, who was now 54 years old. The highest-paid women workers in the textile industry of Lowell, Massachusetts, made only about $3 per week, so $150 may have been about a year’s worth of wages for Polly.4
The day before Joseph Smith received Polly’s money, he had told Wilford Woodruff and others that the Church did not have enough resources for the Zion’s Camp expedition. But Joseph wasn’t worried. “I am going to have some money soon,” he told the group. And sure enough, the next morning, Polly’s donation arrived. Her $150 provided the means to purchase equipment and supplies for Zion’s Camp.5

Gradually and painfully Peter became more stable. With his arms and legs tied up to prevent bleeding and his eyes bandaged, the doctor told him what had happened. In the accident, he had dislocated an arm and a leg; had broken three ribs, seven or eight fingers, and his jaw; had a serious concussion; had lost 50 percent of his skin; and had another 40 percent with first and second degree burns. But Peter had one big question. Since the gas splashed into his eyes, would he ever see again?
I could hear the doctor leaving. He hadn’t answered my big question. I got my arm swinging. I must have caught his attention because he came by me and asked, “What is it, Peter?” I could only say, “My eyes, my eyes, my eyes.” He just squeezed my arm and didn’t answer. He knew what I meant. There was just the unspoken answer that there was no chance I would see again. He started to weep a little, and I could tell that things were very serious.
Peter spent months in the hospital slowly recovering. In fact, he would spend one year as a full-time patient and many more months in and out of the hospital as he underwent dozens of operations. One of the first operations to be performed was to remove the scar tissue from his eyes. Following the operation, while he was in the recovery room, Peter knew that the moment of truth would come that following morning. Then the bandages would be removed and his eyes tested.
Awake and alone in the middle of the night, Peter thought about what was to come.
I couldn’t cope with the thought of that scene when my eyes would be uncovered. On the one hand, if I could see, what a grand moment it would be! But on the other hand, what if I were blind? All hope would be gone.
Awkwardly, because his hands were wrapped in bandages, Peter started to remove the wrappings from his eyes. He managed to maneuver a pan from beside the bed onto his chest. His plan was to reflect the light from his overhead bed lamp into his eyes. He flipped the switch, and the light exploded in his eyes. He could see. As his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room, he lifted the shiny, metal pan once more.
There in all my excitement was this horrid face. Because my family had been told that I didn’t have a chance to live, they hadn’t told me about some other things. They hadn’t told me that I had lost one ear and all my eyelids and all my facial features. My nose was gone; all my mouth was gone. In my excitement to see, I hadn’t thought about what I would see. I couldn’t cope with it emotionally. I let out a big scream.
Now faced with new dilemmas, Peter spent all night with a sympathetic nurse asking her about what could be done. What plans had been made? What was going to happen to him once he got out of the hospital? What was it going to be like going to a store? What about going to a dance? What if he wanted to dance with a girl? What if he liked a girl? What if he wanted to give her a kiss? Abruptly, he started to laugh. The nurse wanted to know what was so funny.
Now here I was in the hospital remembering how silly I had been. Here I was having fought for my very life and having fought for everything I had, even though it didn’t look very good. In fact, it didn’t look good at all. Yet, I knew I could see. I took a little moment to say a prayer of thanks to my Father in Heaven because he had answered that prayer. There really had been no chance that I would see again. But I’ll never forget how silly I was about that blemish.

For nine years Professor Marvin Hill and I had worked on the book Carthage Conspiracy, which concerns the 1845 court trial of the murderers of Joseph Smith. We had several different sources of minutes on the trial, some bearing their authors’ names and others unsigned. The fullest set of minutes was unsigned, but because we had located them in the Church Historian’s Office, we were sure they were the minutes kept by George Watt, the Church’s official scribe who was sent to record the proceedings of the trial. We so stated in seven drafts of our manuscript, and we analyzed all our sources on that assumption.

Finally, the book was completed, and within a few weeks the final manuscript would be sent to the publisher. As I sat in my office at BYU one Saturday afternoon, I felt impelled to go through a pile of unexamined books and pamphlets accumulated on the table behind my desk. At the very bottom of the pile of 50 or 60 publications, I found a printed catalog of the contents of the Wilford C. Wood Museum, which Professor LaMar Berrett, the author, had sent to me a year and a half earlier. As I quickly flipped through the pages of this catalog of Church history manuscripts, my eyes fell on a page describing the manuscript of the trial minutes we had attributed to George Watt. This catalog page told how Wilford Wood had purchased the original of that set of minutes in Illinois and had given the Church a typewritten version, the same version we had obtained from the Church Historian. We immediately visited the Wilford Wood Museum in Woods Cross, Utah, and obtained additional information which enabled us to determine that the minutes we had thought were the official Church source had been prepared by one of the lawyers for the defense. With this knowledge, we returned to the Church Historian’s Office and were able to locate for the first time George Watt’s official and highly authentic set of minutes on the trial. This discovery saved us from a grievous error in the identification of one of our major sources and also permitted us to enrich the contents of our book significantly. The impression I received that day in my office was a cherished example of the way the Lord will help us in our righteous professional pursuits when we qualify for the impressions of his Spirit.

Now, some of you older sisters may ask, “Haven’t I heard every Relief Society lesson? What point is there for me to go to Relief Society each week?” The answer to those questions may best be given by relating the story of a young piano student. His mother, wishing to encourage him, “bought tickets for a performance of the great Polish pianist, Paderewski. The night of the concert arrived and the mother and son found their seats near the front of the concert hall. While the mother visited with friends, the boy slipped quietly away.
“Suddenly, it was time for the performance to begin and a single spotlight cut through the darkness of the concert hall to illuminate the grand piano on stage. Only then did the audience notice the little boy on the bench, innocently picking out ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’
“His mother gasped, but before she could move, Paderewski appeared on stage and quickly moved to the keyboard. He whispered to the boy, ‘Don’t quit. Keep playing.’ And then, leaning over, the master reached down with his left hand and began filling in the bass part. Soon his right arm reached around the other side, encircling the child, to add a running obbligato. Together, the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerized.
“In our lives, unpolished though we may be, it is the Master who surrounds us and whispers in our ear, time and time again, ‘Don’t quit. Keep playing.’ And as we do, He augments and supplements until a work of amazing beauty is created. He is right there with all of us, telling us over and over, ‘Keep playing.’”

John Hunter knew that his father, President Howard W. Hunter of the Pasadena (California) Stake, was no sports fan. Still, his father seemed unusually preoccupied that autumn evening in 1959 as he quietly stared at the players, almost unseeing, throughout the Brigham Young University–University of Utah football game. Howard Hunter could not tell his son that he was reflecting on an interview he had had with President David O. McKay a few hours earlier.
President Hunter, visiting in Salt Lake City for general conference, had not been surprised by the message he had received asking him to come to President McKay’s office between sessions that day. He had been working on a project for the First Presidency and assumed that the President wanted a report.
But President McKay’s greeting was astounding: “Oh, I’m glad you’re here, because tomorrow you’re going to be sustained as a member of the Council of the Twelve.”
“I was shocked at the call,” President Hunter remembers, even though he had broad experience in Church leadership positions. He had been a stake president for nearly ten years and had previously served as a bishop for almost seven years. He was also chairman of the regional council of stake presidents in Southern California.
Howard Hunter listened as President McKay told him how much he would enjoy his new calling and how it would change his life. Then President McKay asked him not to share the news with anyone but his wife until his name could be presented for a sustaining vote in conference the next day.
Clara May Hunter [Clairel was seventy-two kilometers away in Provo at that moment, visiting John and his wife, Louine, who had recently given birth to the Hunters’ first grandchild. Elder Hunter telephoned to tell “Claire” the news, but after he got the words out, there was silence on the line as both were overcome by emotion.
“I went to the afternoon session and sat down, and the weight of the responsibility started to rest down on me. I got so nervous I couldn’t sit there, so I got up and started to walk. I don’t know where I went,” President Hunter remembers, but the time was spent thinking about how the new calling would affect him.
It would mean giving up his law practice and the life he and Claire had built in Southern California during nearly thirty years of marriage. But, along with thinking of the sacrifices they would have to make, President and Sister Hunter also thought of the covenants they had made in the temple to serve the Lord at all costs. “We expected to honor the commitment we had given,” he says.