Gospel Story Finder

After another busy week, Elder Hutchinson, from the Merthyr Tydfil Stake, reported “I spent ten hours doing a service project in my stake, for the charity Save The Children. This meant I helped collect, load and unload lots of food items on to and off of a van ready to put into food parcels for children that had free school meals over half term. My body ached after, but it was worth it. I was physically exhausted, but it is always good to do a service project like this and to learn a little about how the Saviour served.”

Some of her greatest contributions to her community began in 1976, when riots erupted in Soweto. It was a dangerous time to be out and about in the community, but Julia was concerned about the hatred expressed by the youth. “I knew what it was like to feel isolated because of your own confusion. So I started a project in Soweto to bring young people into doing things, trying to find a message in what they did.”

Her project was to involve the youth in organic gardening—a passion she had developed a decade earlier while using natural foods to help her daughter heal from a congenital heart defect. As most families did not have enough ground for even a tiny garden, she arranged to clean up a rodent-infested plot of land. “As others watched us struggle with the overgrowth of stubborn weeds,” Julia recalls, “they too became involved, and we moved from corner to corner of Soweto replacing the useless and the ugly with the beneficial and beautiful.”

Part of the beauty Julia planted was in the hearts of the young. “When I was planting with them, I would say, ‘Now look, boys and girls, as we see this soil down here, it is solid and hard; but if we push down a spade or a fork, we will crack it and come out with lumps. And then if we break those lumps and throw in a seed, the seed will grow.

“‘This message is my message to young people. They should have it in their hearts. Let us dig the soil of bitterness, throw in a seed, show love, and see what fruits it can give. Love will not come without forgiving others. Where there has been a blood stain, a beautiful flower must grow.’ Her efforts helped repair not only the physical damage but also the moral damage caused by the riots.

In the same year as these terrible riots, Julia began working with women’s groups. Feeling an urgent need for all races to unite in solving the present and future problems, she helped found Women for Peace, an organization devoted to protecting her people and helping her nation avoid civil war. She currently serves on the organization’s national executive committee. She has also repeatedly been elected the president of the National Council of African Women.

Now that I had a testimony of the restored gospel, what about my ministry? I still had 10 months left in my contract as a minister. After much prayer and counseling with God, I decided to complete my service. For the next 10 months, I continued to share traditional Bible truths, but when possible I added the perspective of the restored gospel. People resonated with those truths, and my little flock grew from 20 to nearly 150.

One day, while waiting her turn at the dentist’s office, Heidi felt impressed to give a copy of the Book of Mormon, with her picture and testimony inside, to a neighbor lady who was also waiting. “You can have this,” Heidi said, handing the woman the book. “It’s a true book, and ours is the true church.”
The spirit of truth worked quickly. The next day the neighbor lady, Lajla Pedersen, phoned and asked if she could go to church with the Pedersens the next Sunday. Soon Lajla and her husband, Jan, were converted to the Church. Within weeks he was baptized, ordained a priest, and was able to baptize his wife, his daughter, Lisabeth, and his son, Kim.

However, when I returned home, I faced more difficult trials.
Maintaining your faith, your testimony, and your spirituality after a mission can be hard. But one thing that helped me stay firm after my mission was institute.
I made a goal to try and attend institute classes each week, and that decision was extremely important for my life.
I was also looking for a job, but nothing was working out. The anxiety of being jobless was eating away at me, and at one point a friend of mine invited me to come work with him. The job involved handling alcohol inventory and working Saturday nights—the same night I had institute, so I was hesitant to take it.
I turned my friend down, but he kept inviting me to work with him. I was running out of money, and his job offer was the only one I had. So I started considering taking the job.
I decided to ask Heavenly Father what I should do. I felt the Spirit testify to me that if I didn’t go to institute, my testimony would likely weaken. I felt the Spirit confirm to me that I shouldn’t take the job, and I declined my friend’s invitation once again.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I didn’t get a job soon, but I put my trust in the path Heavenly Father wanted me to keep following.
That next week at institute, I learned about a job opening as a self-reliance coordinator. I applied, interviewed, and got the job. I know the Lord placed that opportunity in my path.

One of the games we played that night was a relay contest. The Primary leaders had placed four plastic bowling pins across the floor of the cultural hall in a staggered formation. Each father was to blindfold his daughter and, without touching her with his hands, “talk” her through and around the pins, across the cultural hall, and then back to the starting point, where the next pair would begin. We were divided into two teams.
When the race began there was much enthusiasm, both teams cheering for theirs to be the fastest. Most of the fathers would holler “go right!” or “go left!” or “stop!” or “go straight!” It seemed such a simple game when we were given the instructions, but it was actually quite difficult. The voice of the opposing team’s father might be confused with your own, and the two girls racing each other would get the instructions mixed up. I was quite surprised at how much trouble some of the fathers and daughters had in getting through this simple course. Some of the father’s were hesitant in their directions and thus lost precious time. Many of the daughters did not follow the instructions quickly and accurately and then either went too fast or moved in the wrong direction, occasionally knocking down the pins. There were, of course, a few who seemed more organized and went through the course quickly.
But there was one father and daughter at the party who surprised us all. This father was afflicted with a serious disease that hampered his coordination. He was somewhat slow of speech and movement. An interesting thing happened when it was their turn to race. When the blindfold was in place, I heard the father say to his daughter, “Don’t worry about left or right or fast or slow. Just walk at a steady pace and listen to my voice. Just follow the sound of my voice. I’ll keep talking the whole time, and we’ll go right through.” At the signal they began, and he gently repeated over and over, “Just follow my voice” or “Don’t listen to the others, just my sounds.” I was amazed as they steadily walked with short steps right through the course, faster than any of the others, so fast in fact that theirs was the winning team.

My journey started when I was introduced to the Church in 2015 by my son (who is a Graduate student in Texas), while he was visiting Kolkata. It was then, that I had received my first Book of Mormon in Bengali and had the opportunity to visit the Relief Society President of our Kolkata Branch. Soon enough, I started taking lessons through Skype from the Elders belonging to the New Delhi Mission. On 18th June 2016, my daughter and I became the then newest members of our Kolkata Branch. My son was present then to baptize us.

The last story is about Christina (not her real name), who had been baptized and sealed to her family when she was a young girl, but somewhere along the way the family stopped living the gospel. Now she was in her late teens, and she had been making some wrong choices and was very unhappy.
One day I gave her a Personal Progress book and said, “This book will help you incorporate qualities of Christ in your life so you can make the changes you desire. I invite you to begin to work in your book today and then bring it with you to the youth fireside tonight and share with me what you have learned.” That night she said with tears in her eyes, “Today I started my personal progress.” She has written to me a few times since that day. She began going back to Sunday meetings, Mutual, and seminary. In a couple of weeks her sister and mother attended church with her. Later the father joined them, and now the entire family has been back to the temple together.

The Prophet went to visit his aunt and uncle. His uncle and his cousins were sick with the fever and chills.
Joseph, your uncle has the worst of it. I fear for his life.
Here, Uncle, have my shoes.
But, Joseph, what will you wear?
Joseph rode home without his shoes.
He sent for his uncle and had him brought to his home.
He will heal better at my house. Emma will take good care of him.
He also sent many supplies to help the rest of the family recover.
Thank you, Joseph. Thank you.
The Prophet’s genuine love for others saved his uncle’s life and eased his aunt’s burdens.

During his early youth, however, ill health and ill fortune seemed to pursue the family. When young Joseph was seven years old, he and his brothers and sisters were stricken with typhus fever. The others recovered readily, but Joseph was left with a painful sore on his leg. The doctors, doing the best they could under the conditions of the time, treated him—and yet the sore persisted. Finally the doctors were afraid they were going to have to amputate his leg.
Thankfully, however, one day the doctors came unexpectedly to the home and told the family they were going to try a new operation to remove a piece of the bone, hoping this would permit the sore to heal. They had brought with them some cord and planned to tie Joseph to the bed because they had no anesthetic, nothing to dull the pain, when they cut into his leg to remove the piece of bone.
Young Joseph, however, responded, “I will not be bound, for I can bear the operation much better if I have my liberty.”
The doctors then said, “Will you take some wine? … You must take something, or you can never endure the severe operation.”
Again the boy prophet said, “No, … but I will tell you what I will do—I will have my father sit on the bed and hold me in his arms, and then I will do whatever is necessary in order to have the bone taken out.”
So Joseph Smith Sr. held the boy in his arms, and the doctors opened the leg and removed the diseased piece of bone. Although he was lame for some time afterward, Joseph was healed.2 At seven years of age, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught us courage—by example.

Many young men and young women have started avoiding the inappropriate things found on television, in movies, in music, and on the Internet. Monica Peterson, from Mesa, Arizona, and her family have tried to specifically avoid unclean television shows.
“For family home evening, we chose to work on Be clean. We wrote down television shows that weren’t appropriate to watch. A show that makes me feel uncomfortable I know shouldn’t be watched. Now, when that show comes on, I have a feeling to change it. It was hard at first, but Heavenly Father helped not only me but my family also.”

One day my cousin Jeff came over to play. We played under the back porch. Jeff had a little dump truck and I had a windup tractor. Mom gave us an empty cereal box and we made houses and roads.
I wanted to make another road. Jeff was using the shovel, so I took Woody out of my pocket and started to dig. Woody dug nice roads. I kept making the road longer and longer until I hit a rock and then SNAP! I picked up the piece that had broken off and tried to fix Woody, but it was no use. I felt like crying, but Jeff was there.
“It’s just a dumb stick,” Jeff said.
I put Woody’s broken pieces under the porch steps and kept on playing. When Jeff went home, I crawled under the porch and got the pieces.
“I’m sorry, Woody,” I whispered.
He didn’t say anything. I put him in the cereal box and carried him down to where we planted the flower and made a hole. Then I put Woody in the hole and covered him up.
He was a good stick and I miss him a lot.

Soon after our daughter’s birth, my husband’s job prevented him from attending church most Sundays. With a new baby, five young sons, and my husband no longer available to help me, I was having a difficult time getting to church.
Many Sundays we arrived late, and sometimes we didn’t get there until sacrament meeting was over and Primary and Sunday School had begun. I spent most of my time walking the halls with my fussy and tired baby.
After several weeks, I was exhausted. We were going to church more out of habit than for anything else. I began to ask myself, Why even bother? It seemed that the only results I was getting were stiff muscles and a headache.
I began to pray for guidance. I asked my Father in Heaven why I should go to church when it was so difficult. I knew attending church was right, but I needed to know why it was important for me personally. When I didn’t receive an answer right away, I continued to ask.
When Easter Sunday came, I again spent the time during church walking the halls of our meetinghouse with my baby and whispering a prayer in my heart: Why should I bother to come? Why is it important for me to continue this struggle?
During Primary class time, I walked past the classrooms and looked inside. Every Primary class was having a lesson about the Savior’s death and Resurrection. I was amazed at the reverence and awe I saw in the children’s faces. Every one of them, mine included, was caught up in the story of our Savior’s greatest gift to us.
Suddenly it was clear why I needed to continue in my struggle to bring my children to church. Maybe I wasn’t getting as much as I wanted from my attendance, but my children were benefiting from their attendance more than I had imagined.
Occasionally we still have a difficult time getting to church. But when we do, I stop and remember the expressions I saw on my children’s faces that Easter morning. I know church is where we belong, and I often thank the Lord for showing me why.

Often in the temple, and as we engage in family history research, we feel promptings and have impressions from the Holy Ghost. Occasionally in the temple the veil between us and those on the other side becomes very thin. We get additional assistance in our efforts to be saviors on Mount Zion.
Several years ago in a temple in Central America, the wife of one of our now-emeritus General Authorities assisted a father, a mother, and their children in receiving eternal covenants in the sealing room, where the temple mirrors are located. As they concluded and faced those mirrors, she noticed there was a face in the mirror that was not in the room. She inquired of the mother and learned that a daughter had passed away and accordingly was not physically present. The deceased daughter was then included by proxy in the sacred ordinance. Never underestimate the assistance provided in temples from the other side of the veil.

Great Britain has the world’s most regal (elegant) letter boxes. The tall cylinders stand like palace guards, their scarlet tunics emblazoned with a golden crown and the insignia of the queen. One such letter box stands sentry on Cottam Lane in Preston, in front of Ingol County Primary School. From time to time a pretty eight-year-old girl approaches and reaches high to drop in a letter addressed to Masha Melnikova in Mogilev, Belarus. The sender is Lorna Wilson, a Latter-day Saint, and Masha’s true friend.
Lorna’s father, Christopher, is a software designer who spends much of his spare time working for a charity called Medicine and Chernobyl. This organization provides medical aid for the Belarusian victims of a nuclear disaster in the nearby Ukrainian city of Chernobyl. Each year the charity brings a group of Belarusian children for a month-long visit to England. These children live downwind from Chernobyl, and their resistance to disease has been impaired. A month in a healthy environment helps them rebuild their physical and emotional reserves. Masha was one of these children.
Masha arrived at the Wilson home speaking almost no English. Lorna spoke even less Russian. Still, they managed to communicate with gestures and occasional help from a Russian phrase book. Within a day, somehow, they were best friends. Although Masha had her own room the first night, the two girls’ friendship blossomed so quickly that from the second night on, they chose to share a room. Lorna’s parents had to go in each night and persuade them to turn out the lights. They’d be talking away, drawing, and dressing dolls. Neither learned much of the other’s language, but they understood each other very well. On the morning Masha left to return home, Lorna was so upset that she couldn’t go to school.
That was unusual, because Lorna likes school. A very good student, her favorite subjects are art and math. When her school formed a group called the Troubleshooters from among the most able students, Lorna was the youngest person chosen. The Troubleshooters go to local businesses and help them solve problems. Lorna’s group first went to the Preston office of the Royal Mail. They were given two problems to solve. One was that the staff wasn’t looking at the notice boards. The other was that a stray letter was occasionally left in the bottom of a supposedly empty mail sack. The Troubleshooters went to work and produced many good suggestions, several of which were adopted. In a small way, Lorna was helping to speed her letters from the letter box on Cottam Lane to her friend in Belarus!
“Lorna’s an inspiration to me,” her mother, Helen, says. “I really do try to follow her example. When I go to a parents’ evening at school, her teachers tell me, ‘What can I say? She’s just wonderful!’”
Lorna wants to be either a zookeeper or an artist when she grows up. Whatever she chooses, she will do it well. She likes to do art and sewing, especially cross-stitch, and she always tries to do them perfectly. She has been taking ballet for three years. She also is a Brownie and a skilled Maypole dancer.
The oldest of six children, Lorna sometimes feels frustrated when a little sister wrecks a project or pinches (takes) her crayons. Even so, she loves her little brothers and sisters and takes good care of them. Her mother says, “We’re lucky Lorna is the oldest, because she’s a good example to the others. She isn’t perfect, but she’s very trustworthy, and she helps the others with reading and things like that.” In return, the younger children look up to her. Adam (6) is a football player and a dreamer. He has adopted all the older ladies in the ward. Hannah (5) is a gifted artist with a keen eye for beauty. Abigail (4) has her daddy’s sense of humor and likes to tease people. Sara (2) is sunny and outgoing. Everybody at church wants to take her home with them. Joshua (1) just started walking. He is a charming, happy boy.
The Wilsons are a close-knit family who take drives in the countryside when their busy schedules allow. They also like to play games together. Sometimes for family home evening they play a Book of Mormon game Sister Wilson made. It stretches clear across the floor. For many years they invited an elderly neighbor to each of their family home evenings and adopted him as their granddad. After his death, they began to invite a handicapped man from their ward. “He’s a lovely man with a beautiful spirit,” Sister Wilson says, “but he can’t speak. He has to use a machine to communicate.” The children welcome guests with open arms. At Christmas they invite in anyone they know is going to be alone. The family also goes caroling to some of the elderly people who live nearby.
Seeing firsthand the sorrows of others has helped the Wilson children appreciate their own blessings. When the Belarusian children came, they had very little in the way of clothing, and what they had was threadbare. Their diet in Belarus had been poor too. “We learned not to waste food,” Lorna says, “because some people have hardly anything.”
The family tries to read the Book of Mormon at breakfast each day, although sometimes it’s a struggle. Lorna’s favorite person in the Book of Mormon is Jesus Christ.
Preston and the surrounding areas were the sites of some of the greatest missionary efforts in the history of the Church. In 1837 Elder Heber C. Kimball led a group of missionaries there to begin the work in Great Britain. The Wilsons have stood by the River Ribble, where the first baptisms in Britain took place. They have walked through Market Square, where the missionaries preached. They have visited many places where the Spirit was poured out upon their land. It’s no wonder that they do missionary work whenever they can. They once had the favor returned when a nonmember referred them to the missionaries! One day the sister missionaries knocked on a door around the corner from the Wilsons where some older ladies lived. The missionaries asked them if they were interested in learning about the Church, and they said no.
“Well, do you know anybody who might be?”
“There’s a lovely family around the corner,” one of the ladies answered. “They have lots of children. They’d be good Mormons.”
She was right, of course.

“We’re going to church tomorrow,” Mom announced as she laid out Piper’s dress on her bed.
“Which church?” Piper asked. She had been to different churches a few times with friends, but she had never been to church with Mom.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Mom said. “The Mormon church.”
“Oh.” Mom had been baptized in that church before Piper was born, but she hadn’t gone since Piper could remember.
“You’ll like it,” Mom said. “They have a class especially for kids. It’s called Primary. You don’t need to be nervous.”
But Piper was nervous. She wouldn’t know anyone at church. Who would she sit by? Would she get lost all on her own? Piper stared at the dress on the bed, her stomach twisting up into knots.
Her stomach was still in knots the next day when she and Mom walked to the Primary room after sacrament meeting. The room was decorated with bright pictures, and children and adults sat in rows while a lady played music quietly on the piano. Piper stood uncertainly in the doorway.
“Piper?” Piper turned. A freckled girl coming down the hallway waved at her. “I’m Amy,” the girl said. “I remember you from school. Do you want to sit with me?”
“OK,” Piper said. She followed Amy to a row near the back of the room.
“Sister Davis, this is Piper,” Amy said to the woman sitting at the end of the row. “Sister Davis is our Primary teacher.”
“Welcome, Piper!” Sister Davis smiled. “If you girls will take your seats, I think singing time is about to start.”
Piper sat down and folded her arms just like Amy. She didn’t know the words to the songs, but Amy didn’t make fun of her or even look at her weird. Later, the woman teaching held up a picture of a man in an old-fashioned suit, and everyone nodded like they knew who he was. Piper didn’t know who he was, but Amy leaned over and whispered, “That’s Joseph Smith, the first prophet of our church.”
“A prophet like Moses?” Piper asked.
“Yes,” Amy said. “But Joseph Smith is a modern prophet. He lived in the 1800s.”
Piper smiled. She could understand the lesson thanks to Amy’s help.
“Follow me!” Amy said when they split into smaller classes. Piper followed her to a classroom with four other children, all Piper’s age.
“Who brought their scriptures today?” Sister Davis asked. Piper looked around. All the other children had heavy books on their laps, but she didn’t have any.
“You can share with me,” Amy whispered. She opened her scriptures and pointed so Piper could follow along as the class took turns reading. Piper even got a turn to read aloud. When she came to a name she didn’t know, Piper stopped. Then Amy prompted her softly, “Nephi.” When Piper finished reading the verse, Amy gave her a thumbs up.
When class ended and Piper’s mom came to pick her up, Amy gave her a hug. “See you next week!” she said. “I’ll save a spot for you!”
Piper couldn’t stop smiling as she and Mom walked out to the parking lot. “How was it?” Mom asked.
“Great!” Piper said. “I think I really like this church.”
“Me too,” Mom said. “Want to come back next week?”
“Definitely,” Piper said. She might not know the words to the songs or have her own scriptures, but she knew that everything would be OK because of Amy, her Primary friend.

Norm was our patriarch, not in age as much as in patience and insight. He was a tall, lanky guy who was always the first with a practical joke or a one-liner, but also the type who seemed to know when understanding and empathy were in order. Perhaps Norm’s kindness was made even more apparent as it contrasted with the rough, seasoned construction workers we worked alongside—men who used four-letter words to replace any and every adjective possible, men who spent their paychecks on beer and little else. Three of us steered clear of the regulars, but Norm made an extra effort to spend at least a few minutes every day working in their group.
One morning, before we made our way down the twisting trench, Norm pulled a Book of Mormon out of his lunch box and walked over to one of the regulars.
“Don’t be stupid,” snapped the powerfully built construction worker as he pushed the book back at Norm. Norm took a short, nervous step back.
“Put the thing in my truck,” the man said in a hushed voice. “And put it under the seat so the guys don’t see it and give me a hard time.”
Norm walked over to the vehicle and called back to the man who was now surrounded by several of his fellow workers. “Hey, nice stereo. Mind if I have a closer look?”
“Yeah, sure,” the man called back.
Norm slipped the Book of Mormon under the driver’s seat, and we began our daily walk to the job site.
Norm answered our queries by telling us that he had struck up several conversations with the man while they worked. During one talk he discovered the man’s grandmother was an American Indian. “I listened to the stories his grandmother told him,” said Norm, “like the one where the continent is covered in darkness for three days [see 1 Ne. 19:10]. I told him, ‘Boy, do I have a book for you!’”
I felt disturbed. I knew I would have let these individuals miss out on the blessings of the gospel simply because they appeared rough on the outside. I knew Norm did not approach these men because he wanted to show off to us; he knew the joy of the gospel, and he wanted these men to share that spiritual wealth.
After Norm told his story we were quiet for a long time, walking and thinking of the blessings we enjoyed and wondering how we could walk closer to our brothers. With the time we had left on the job, we brought the other men into our work group and involved them in our water fights and our harmless practical jokes on the bosses and on each other. But perhaps most important, we let these men know what we believed and how we lived our lives. And from then on, as we walked to and from the job site, we did so together, the regulars and the Mormons—side by side.

I’ve tried studying the scriptures lots of different ways—by number of verses or pages, by time, front to back, and by topic. And I’ve been blessed in different ways no matter how I’ve studied.
But one challenge changed me.
A quorum adviser gave everyone a small notebook with simple instructions:
Don’t worry about how much you read or how long you read. Just read until something seems important to you.
Think about why it’s important.
Decide what you will do that day because of what you learned, and do it.
Use the notebook to write down what you read, what you learned, and what you did. We’ll talk about what happened on Sunday.
Connecting what I read with what I do has been amazing. I didn’t realize it was so simple. As I acted on the principles I learned, I began to recognize how Heavenly Father used the scriptures and the Holy Ghost to point out specific things He wanted me to know and do. I learned that He was there, that He loved me, and that He was speaking to me.
I still study the scriptures in a variety of ways, including occasionally just being happy I got a few verses in before falling exhausted into bed. But now, no matter how I study that day, I try to ask, “What will I do today because of what I learned?”

A woman who was required to move frequently because of her husband’s employment was planting flower bulbs in her yard. Her neighbor stopping to watch asked her, “Why do you bother planting these bulbs when you know you won’t be here when they bloom next spring?”
“I may not be here,” the woman replied, “but someone else will. I always try to leave my homes, temporary as they may be, a little more beautiful because I was there.”

It was June 12, 1895, the most important day of David Scott’s life he thought. It was his twelfth birthday and Mr. Ragan, an engineer, had promised to let him ride the train all the way to Benton, over sixty miles away. He had been in the cab of Mr. Ragan’s locomotive many times, but switching or creeping out of the rail yards wasn’t really riding on a train—not like today!
Tiptoeing downstairs, David slipped out the backdoor and into the misty chill of the morning air. If he could finish his chores early enough, maybe he could hitch a ride into town on one of the farm wagons going to market.
Hurrying to the woodpile, he carried two big armloads of kindling into the kitchen and placed them in the woodbox beside his mother’s black cookstove. As he entered the barn old Bessie, the black cow, bawled in complaint as he poured cracked corn into a pan to carry to the chicken yard. The barn cats tumbled about his feet, then followed him to the door, mewing. Like Bessie, they seemed surprised that he wasn’t milking first, but this was no ordinary morning.
By the time he finished the milking and had carried the pail of warm, sudsy milk to the springhouse, his mother had breakfast ready and a lunch packed for him. Racing down the lane, he heard Mr. Jule’s wagon coming over the steep hill. “Hop on, David,” Mr. Jule shouted as he saw the tall blond youth standing beside the roadside mailbox. After tossing his jacket and lunch into the back of the moving wagon, David leaped in, held on to the swaying side, and eased himself down, legs swinging as they traveled over the deep yellow ruts of the dirt road. I’ll make it in plenty of time, he thought happily.
At the depot he swung down from the wagon bed and thanked Mr. Jule for the ride.
“Are you ready for the big trip, David?” Mr. Ragan asked, leaping down from the cab of the steam-hissing locomotive. Such a giant of a man, David thought. He moves as easily as a cat.
“I sure am,” David answered, his face flushed with excitement. Then, stroking one of the big wheels, David asked, “Can I help you and Mr. Ellis check her over and oil her, Mr. Ragan?”
“Sure, I guess you can. My fireman will probably appreciate a little help—won’t you, Ellis?” Reaching up into the cab, Mr. Ellis handed down a large copper oilcan with a long spout. “But mind you do a good job,” he told David.
Grinning, the stationmaster said, “He ought to know how to do it, as many times as he’s watched. He heads straight here from school every afternoon. I don’t think that boy’s missed meeting the 4 P.M. train from Benton once in two years.” Turning, the stationmaster walked back into the depot with the engineer following.
Later as he perched on a box and leaned out the engineer’s window of the speeding train, David watched an approaching water tower. A moment ago it had only been a dark speck in the distance. He couldn’t believe they had already reached it. Such speed! It was almost like flying. If only I can be an engineer when I grow up, he thought, and by then trains will probably travel even faster.
Of course, it was a lot more complicated than David had thought when he first decided he’d be an engineer. You had to be pretty smart to know about all the levers and gauges and the air brakes that Mr. Ragan handled so easily. Then there were hand, flag, and lamp signals and the block signals and semaphores that tell the engineer to stop or to move ahead. These all had to be learned, besides the fixed signals along the track that told him the proper speed to maintain, the approach of a station crossing, and the whistle posts to let the engineer know when to start blowing a warning whistle. David sighed and wondered how long it had taken Mr. Ragan to learn everything.
“An engineer talks with his whistle,” Mr. Ragan had told him. “It’s like a code. Two long toots means to release brakes and one short toot means to stop. The whistle tells my crew exactly what to do—hop back on the train, protect front of train, or protect rear of train. Each series of short and long toots means something. And a number of short toots is an alarm for persons or livestock on the track.”
Eyes burning from the wind, David drew his head back inside and glanced across the cab at Mr. Ellis, the fireman. The gray-haired man seemed asleep, all scrunched down in his seat, swaying with the motion of the train. No, he looked sick! Tugging on Mr. Ragan’s jacket sleeve, David pointed at the slumped fireman.
“Can you shovel coal into that boiler, David?” Mr. Ragan shouted into his ear, above the deafening noise of the engine. “We’ve got to highball this train into Benton and get Ellis to a doctor. He looks mighty sick to me.”
Hastily David grabbed the shovel and began to toss coal into the cylindrical box of steel with its furnace at one end and smokebox at the other. “I wish we had Locomotive 999,” David mumbled, thinking of the engine that had broken all records by traveling 100 miles per hour two years before. Sweat streamed down his face as he stopped to toss more coal onto the searing fire. He had to keep it blazing to keep plenty of steam up for Mr. Ragan.
Numb with fatigue when the train finally came to a stop, David watched as the men lifted Mr. Ellis down from the locomotive and laid him on the Benton station platform. His face looked so pale that David wondered if he were still alive.
“Just leave him there a minute, boys,” the young doctor said, kneeling beside Mr. Ellis and taking a bottle from his open bag. Pouring some liquid onto a wad of cotton, he passed it back and forth under the nose of the unconscious man. Coughing, Mr. Ellis turned his head away and opened his eyes.
“How is he, doctor?” Mr. Ragan asked after a few moments. “Will he be all right?”
“Yes, I think he’ll be fine. There’s a nasty lump on the side of his head though. He must have hit it while he was firing the boiler. May be a concussion. It’s a good thing you got him here so fast. I’ll want to keep an eye on him today so you’ll have to send for another fireman for your trip back.”
“I have one,” Mr. Ragan said, smiling at David. “That is, if this young man thinks he can still handle that shovel half as well as he did coming in. What do you say, David?”
“Sure. Sure, I can, sir. Soon as I get her oiled,” David answered proudly, teeth gleaming through a layer of coal dust.
“Wait a minute,” protested Mr. Ellis, as the men started to help him into a wagon. “That boy’s a born railroader if I ever saw one, but he needs to borrow my red bandanna handkerchief to keep the sweat from running down his backbone, and my cap, too. Firing’s hot work.”
Turning to the engineer, he said, “Ragan, I predict this lad will be through school and ready to fire for you about the time I’m ready to retire. With a couple of years of study, he’ll make a first-rate engineer and have a locomotive of his own.”
Then shaking the boy’s hand, the firemen smiled. “Thanks a lot, son,” he said. And the men all grinned as David awkwardly knotted the big handkerchief around his neck and placed the high-crowned billed cap on his head.