Gospel Story Finder

This story happened in the USA.
Xóchitl lay in her bunk bed, looking up at the bed above her. Her family had just said family prayer, and it was time to sleep. She hadn’t said her own prayer before bed yet.
Why do we need to pray? she wondered. Her family always said the same things, like thanking God and asking Him for good dreams. Were their prayers really answered? Sometimes she still had bad dreams anyway.
What would happen if she stopped praying? Ready to test her new idea, she turned over on her side and fall asleep.
For the next few days, Xóchitl didn’t pray. Then the days turned into weeks. Nothing really changed. She didn’t feel that much different.
She finished the rest of the school year, and soon it was summer. Xóchitl had fun going to swimming lessons and playing with her dogs. She got to see her cousins at a big family gathering.
Every night, she joined her family for prayer. But she still didn’t pray on her own.
Soon summer had to end, and Xóchitl started to get ready for school. But she wasn’t excited at all. A few days before school started, she met her new teacher, found her locker, and got a new backpack. Whenever she thought about going to school, she felt sick. Every day the feeling got worse.
One night she stayed awake in her bed, thinking about school. I don’t want to go. It’s scary, she thought. Then she remembered what her parents taught her about prayer. They said she could pray anywhere and that she could pray for help and comfort.
Xóchitl knelt down next to her bed and took a deep breath. For the first time in months, she said her own prayer. She prayed to Heavenly Father. She thanked Him and asked Him for good dreams just like they did in family prayers. When she finished, she didn’t feel much different inside.
The next night, she tried again. And again. She asked Heavenly Father to bless the prophet and her family. Soon she was telling Him her feelings and what she hoped for at her new school.
“Heavenly Father,” she said one night, “I’m so scared about school. I can’t sleep. Can you help me not feel scared anymore?” She felt a strong feeling of peace wrap around her, almost like a warm blanket. Right away, she knew it was the Holy Ghost.
So this is why we pray, she thought. To feel Heavenly Father’s love. It was an amazing feeling. For all those months she didn’t pray, she had been missing out on this feeling.
Xóchitl smiled. She was still nervous to start school, but she felt much stronger knowing God could comfort her. She really could pray for comfort anytime, anywhere, because God really was listening.

After I completed my college education, I became a research scientist. Trained in the scientific method, I accepted only what could be sensed and proven. I lived without God’s influence in my life; I was practically an atheist.
Then one morning I received a call that my son had been in a serious automobile accident. On the way to the hospital, I felt prompted to say the Lord’s Prayer, which I had learned in childhood. I could not remember it, but I felt that I needed to pray anyway.
Even though God had called to me, when the crisis subsided and my son recovered, I continued to live without Him in my life.
Years later I began dating a woman named Rubí. She was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though she was not active. We were together for three years when she began to feel the desire to go to church. She would ask me to go with her, but I always refused.
One day the missionaries came to our door. They gave me a Book of Mormon and left me with reading assignments. I read what they requested but felt nothing. I also attended church but was always skeptical. Even so, I felt I needed to keep reading the Book of Mormon. God was calling me again.
As I continued reading, I started to feel that the book was true. My faith was growing. When I reached 3 Nephi 13:9–13 and read the Lord’s Prayer, the Spirit flooded over me. I broke into sobs. God was calling me a third time. This time I listened.
My faith in God grew. I wanted to know more. In a short time, I read all the standard works. I continued attending church, and after Rubí and I married, I was baptized. I will never forget the joy I felt when I was confirmed a member of the Church.
Today I am still a research scientist. But now I see the hand of God in all things. I agree with Alma, who said, “All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:44).

As a young girl I often went with friends to pick cherries in the summer for a local farmer. I remember one hot day in July when we had eaten our sack lunches under a tree. Being very weary, we decided not to go back to work in the afternoon but instead to strike for higher wages. We felt a sudden power and adulthood as we sat in the shade on our overturned buckets.
I was eager to report to my family later in the day about our mature negotiations with the farmer. My mother, who was normally very gentle, surprised me by expressing great disappointment. She was extremely upset that we had inconvenienced that farmer when he had a crop in need of picking.
I never did learn whether I was worth more than three cents a pound, but I learned a permanent lesson—in our family we valued service and the needs of others more than power and money. Since that time it has been reassuring for me to learn that many great people I know work for much less money than they are worth because service is a greater value to them than money. Whatever career or profession you pursue, consider the value of service.

My mother and father separated when I was two and a half years old. I would go visit my father every month, and when I was younger, this was really fun. But when I got older, we had a couple of disagreements and things got worse and worse.
I remember crying to my mother that I did not want to visit my father anymore. She said, “Pray, and everything will be better.” And I did.
God helped me and my father. Now we have a better relationship. We talk, and he calls me when he goes to his home country, Macedonia, so I can talk with my family there.

A Good Monday Night Model
It was Monday night, and seven-year-old María Fernanda Fernández of the Loma Nueve Ward, San Miguelito Panamá Stake, was in charge of her family’s home evening. María Fernanda (Marifer to her friends and family) had chosen the topic of prayer.
After leading the singing and asking her two-year-old brother, Roberto, to say the prayer with a little help from their mother, Marifer told a story her mother had helped her memorize from the Family Home Evening Resource Book, using pictures from the Gospel Art Picture Kit. Then she related a personal experience: “At the beginning of the school year, a classmate always fought with me. One day, I went to the bathroom crying after a fight and prayed that she wouldn’t fight with me anymore.”
Marifer said after that prayer, their relationship changed. “We invited her to my house and gave her mom a couple of issues of the Liahona. My friend liked them so much that she asked for more.” Marifer said she and her friend have talked a lot about the Church.
She ended with her testimony: “I know that Jesus Christ lives, that the Book of Mormon and the Bible are true, and that Jesus lived and died for us.”
Her mother, Marisol, and her father, Luis, bishop of the Loma Nueve Ward, shared their testimonies about prayer as well. Then Bishop Fernández offered the closing prayer, and it was time for treats.

A related strength that can be corrupted to our downfall is a desire to excel in a Church calling. I remember a graduate student who used his Church service as a means of escape from the rigors of his studies. He went beyond what we call Church-service time and became almost a full-time Church-service worker. He consistently volunteered for every extra assignment, giving help that was greatly appreciated in the various organizations and activities of the Church. As a result of this inordinate allocation of time, he failed in his studies and then mistakenly blamed his failure on the excessive burden of Church service. His strength became his downfall.

It is claimed that the ice-cream cone was introduced at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904. This crispy concoction was an accidental invention of Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian immigrant, who was selling a waffle confection called zalabia at the fair. When a neighboring ice-cream stand ran out of dishes, Hamwi suggested using his waffles rolled into cones. The waffle cone with a dollop of ice cream delighted the fairgoers so much that people have been eating ice-cream cones ever since.

It was a big deal when our high school basketball team advanced to the state championship game. Basketball was my passion; I was always looking for an opportunity to play in a game or shoot hoops with my friends. I was among the starting five my senior year.
We were in the locker room getting ready to warm up for the big game when I opened up my gym bag to pull out my jersey. My heart sank; where was my jersey? Did a teammate hide it? Was this some kind of joke? I looked around the locker room hoping someone’s body language or actions could confirm it was just a tease, but to no avail. Reality sunk in. I knew I had left my jersey at home.
My teammates started to realize something was wrong. Everyone’s attention was on me when I uttered the words, “I don’t have my jersey.” Months and months of practice and training were about to be washed down the drain because of my mistake.
Just as I was about to accept my fate, I heard a quiet yet familiar voice from the other side of the locker room. “Here is my jersey.” It was the voice of my younger brother. I could play after all! What a sacrifice for my younger brother to make as part of the championship team. Instead of being able to receive recognition for his hard work and practice, he sacrificed so that I could play.
My brother injured his knee the following year and was not able to play again during high school. He felt that he hadn’t accomplished much in basketball, but his sacrifice means so much to me.

Many years ago, after World War II, I was attending college. There I met Donna Smith. About that time I read that two essential ingredients to a successful marriage are a cookie and a kiss. I thought that was a pretty good balance.
I attended college in the morning and then went back to Brigham City to work in my father’s auto-repair garage in the afternoon. Donna’s last morning class was home economics. I stopped by her classroom before leaving. The door had a frosted glass window, but if I stood close to the glass, she could see my shadow outside. She would slip out with a cookie and a kiss. The rest is history. We were married in the Logan Utah Temple, and that began the great adventure of our lives.

What is it really like to be handicapped? What problems do the handicapped face every day? Helen Lesley Chick, 17, of the Hobart Australia Stake found out. She won regional, state, and national awards for her investigation of the problems of paraplegics.

For her first-hand investigation, Helen spent a week in a wheelchair (which she borrowed from her grandmother). Her week-long experience was a time of aching arms and shoulders as well as clashes with walls and people. Of her self-imposed confinement to a wheelchair, Helen says, “On the first day I wanted to give it up. It was so hard pushing along on the carpet.”

Sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the award was presented to Helen in Canberra by the Governor-General of Australia, Sir Zelman Cowan.

Helen is the Laurel class president in her ward and her seminary class president. She is studying to be a math and science teacher. In her spare time, she enjoys playing hockey, bushwalking, and cycling.

In the run up to New Zealand I had a lot of dreams about going there. I can remember this one dream in particular. I was standing on this stage with loads of people watching so when I actually got to New Zealand I had a lot of déjà vu moments. I felt like I’d been there before. It was a kind of realisation that I was on the right path, like I was meant to be there and to experience what I had experienced. I’m really grateful that Heavenly Father was helping and guiding me in the direction I had to go and preparing me, so when I got there I didn’t feel overwhelmed, I didn’t feel stressed, I didn’t feel worried. I felt quite at home, which I had not expected.

One morning my wife said to me, “Hans, I dreamed something very strange last night. Two young men told us about a different church, and we joined it. What do you think about that?” she asked hesitantly. We agreed that the dream didn’t seem to have any meaning because we would never want to leave our own church.
The dream had long been forgotten when, nearly a year later, my wife greeted me after work with the news that “two young men were here today to tell me about their church.” I saw a trace of worry in her face. “But we are going to stay with our church,” I responded confidently. “Well,” she said, “they want to come back to talk with you.” I was not happy with the prospect.
A few days later, I opened the door to see two fine-looking young men. They introduced themselves as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the conversation that followed, they asked, “Do you believe that the church of Jesus Christ is on the earth today?” My wife and I had already considered this question while studying the Bible. We concluded that if there were a true church, it would have to have all the doctrines Jesus taught. The churches we knew, including our own, were not complete. “If it exists,” I said, “it must have all the things Jesus taught. But it does not exist.”
A few days later, as I was sitting with my wife, she asked, “Hans, can you still remember my dream?”
“What dream?” I wondered.
“The one I had about the two young men who visited us. They told us about their church and we joined it. Remember?”
Memory of the forgotten dream came back. Joyfully we realized that the dream was a revelation of what was to come, and its memory a confirmation of our testimonies. It was a dream that had come true.

Called as president of the Pioneer Stake in Salt Lake City at the age of 31, President Lee became the youngest stake president at that time. It was 1930. A worldwide economic depression had begun, and more than 4,800 of the 7,300 members of the Pioneer Stake required assistance. President Lee spent long hours seeking the Lord’s help to know what to do. Hearkening to the voice of inspiration, he set up a stake storehouse modeled after his father’s ward storehouse in Clifton. He did more, providing the unemployed with work projects such as caring for a large stake garden and building a stake gymnasium.

When reverses come we need the Church and the gospel all the more. I’m satisfied that it’s possible for a man or woman who has a testimony of the divinity of this work to meet any possible reverses and still keep his spirit sweet and his faith strong. I saw members of this church in Europe right after World War II, the worst war so far as we know in the history of modern nations, when nations were fallen economically. I saw members of this church, some of them the only remaining members of once happy and prosperous families—with their homes destroyed and every member of the family killed in the war—and they stood alone as the one remaining person. I saw them and I heard them as they stood on their feet and bore testimony to the divinity of this work and thanked God for his blessings—the blessings of the eternity of the marriage covenant, the conviction that the family continues beyond the veil, that there is life after death, that there will be a happy reunion for those who live worthy.

One of my best friends in high school was very rowdy and wild. He was into all the wrong stuff. I tried encouraging him to come to church and to change his ways, but he didn’t listen to me and his problems multiplied. I didn’t hear from him for a long time. Then one day he came over to my house unexpectedly. He had been in jail and said while he was there he thought, why can’t I be more like Tom and stay out of trouble.
I think the best way we can help people is by being a good example to them and not worrying about being a little self-righteous. Just be yourself.

When I was a young mother, I found a recipe in the April 1980 Friend for Bunny Buns. They looked fun to make, so I tried them. This recipe has become a part of our Easter tradition in our family. I am the oldest of 11 children, and we have all made this recipe almost every Easter for the last 30 years. The recipe has traveled to places like India, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela as family members have served missions. Thank you for not only feeding us spiritually over the years with the wonderful Friend, but for feeding our physical appetites as well.

It was a lazy day in August. The sun was hot, and Tommy and Elija were lying on the ground near the creek, enjoying the shade of a big cottonwood tree. They had been assigned to watch the thirty head of cattle, which were grazing a half mile upstream.
“Herding cattle might be important,” said Tommy, “but it isn’t very exciting.”
Just then the cattle started to low. The boys heard them moving around as if they were frightened. “Something is bothering them,” said Elija. “Let’s see what it is.”
In a moment the two boys were running toward the cattle, but they stopped short when they saw a small band of Indians coming toward them. They had no way of knowing whether or not they were friendly. But Tommy knew that the Omaha Indians had given the Mormon pioneers permission to camp on their land for the winter and to use their water and their timber.
When the boys came within talking distance, a young Indian stepped forward and spoke to them in halting English. “Last night our enemies, the Iowas, attacked our camp. All of our men except Chief Big Head and I were on a hunting trip. The Iowas took our horses and all of our food. They wounded many women and children. Chief Big Head they left for dead. He will die if he does not get help.”
Tommy looked down on the willow bed that the Indians had made for their chief. What he saw made him want to close his eyes.
“I’ll go for help,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” said Elija.
The young Indian put his arm across Elija’s chest to keep him from going. “You stay here till boy gets back.”
Tommy knew that Elija’s safety depended on his speedy return, so he ran almost all of the two miles to Winter Quarters.
He went at once to the home of his bishop and told him what had happened. “The Indians really need help,” he concluded, “and they’re keeping Elija with them to make sure I bring some back.”
Bishop Morley listened quietly; then he put his arm around the boy to comfort him while he thought about what to do. “We must find Brigham Young,” he decided. “He might be down at the ferry. You take my horse and ride down there as fast as you can. In the meantime I will look around here.”
The ferry was twelve miles away, and it took Tommy an hour to get there. When he arrived, he found Brigham Young and told him his story.
“We will help the Indians, of course,” Brigham Young said, “but our first concern is for Elija. You must get back to him as soon as possible. Take your wagon and ask Bishop Morley to take his. These two wagons should be enough to bring the badly wounded to Winter Quarters. I’ll meet you at my house.”
Bishop Morley was waiting for Tommy. They took the two wagons and went to get Elija and the Indians.
When they came to the small sad camp, Elija ran up and began talking to Tommy. “At first they were afraid I would run away,” said Elija, “but when I took off my shirt and wet it in the creek so I could cool the forehead of Chief Big Head, they knew I could be trusted.”
“I’m so glad you are all right,” Tommy said.
Bishop Morley and the young Indian helped Chief Big Head into Tommy’s wagon, and the boys started back to Winter Quarters. The other Indians who were badly wounded were put into the Morley wagon. The rest of the Indians walked beside it.
The sun was almost setting when the wagons arrived at the home of Brigham Young. He soon determined that the Indian chief would need special care. He turned to Tommy and said, “Please go and ask your mother if she could take Chief Big Head into her home and nurse him back to health.”
Tommy was off in a flash. He returned in a few minutes with his mother, who said, “Of course, I’ll take care of him.”
Brigham Young smiled and said, “You won’t be sorry. An Indian never forgets a kindness.”
The weeks that followed were anxious ones for Tommy and his mother. Chief Big Head was very sick and needed constant care. Either Tommy or his mother stayed day and night by his side. Then one day, without any warning, the Indian got out of bed. “Chief Big Head well,” he declared. “I must go to my people.”
That night he left Winter Quarters and took with him all of the Indians who had been staying there.

Jeff and his wife, Melissa, were attending general conference for his first time. Jeff played professional baseball (he was a catcher) and is now a physician anesthesiologist. He told me, “Much to my surprise, I am moving toward baptism because it feels like the most authentic and honest way to live.”

Earlier, Melissa had apologized to Jeff’s assigned ministering brother, “Jeff does not want ‘white shirts’ in our house.” The ministering brother said, “I’ll find a way.” Now he and Jeff are good friends. At Jeff’s baptism, I met a congregation of Latter-day Saints whom Jeff, Melissa, and their daughter, Charlotte, love.

“When I was eleven, the Fourth of July was a real big event in Spanish Fork. World War II had begun, and the whole town was having a parade to send off the men who were leaving to serve in the war. The night before the Fourth I went outside to play. I sat on the porch, and my mother said, ‘You’re not going to go anywhere, are you?’ I said, ‘No, I’ll stay here.’
“Then my friend Mark came across the street and said, ‘I have a big box of firecrackers. Let’s go up to Janet’s and show the girls how to light them!’ I forgot that my mother had asked me to stay home. The only thought in my mind was to go up to Janet’s and light some firecrackers.
“We lighted all the firecrackers that would light, and the remainder we put in a cardboard box and set on fire. Mark and I were both burned in the resulting explosion. In fact, our faces, chests, hands, and arms were burned so severely that it didn’t look like we were going to make it.
“Sister Hill, Janet’s mother, came out when she heard the explosion, and she saw five kids on fire. Somehow the fires were put out, and she calmly took us into the house, knelt us down in the living room, and offered a prayer. Then she called the doctor, and we went down to Dr. Moody’s office.
“He operated on my face to put it back together. Before he started, I asked my father to give me a blessing. Dr. Moody was also an elder, so the two of them administered to me. My father said in the blessing that if I would have faith, the Lord would make me well. You have to remember that at that time my father was an alcoholic. But when he said that the Lord would make me well, I knew it was true.
“Then Dr. Moody began to work on me. I didn’t have any anesthetic because they were afraid of shock. into my mind came the words of one of my mother’s favorite hymns:
O how praying rests the weary!
Prayer will change the night to day;
So when life gets dark and dreary,
Don’t forget to pray.
(Hymns, no. 31.)
“I couldn’t speak, but I could hum. For the whole two and a half to three hours while the doctor was trying to fix my face, I hummed that hymn. When he was finished with me, I looked just like a mummy. My face and arms were all wrapped up with bandages. It appeared that I had lost the sight of one eye and severely damaged the other. My hands were as black as shoe leather, and they were hard and crinkled.
“All five of us were healed and back in school in the fall. Janet had a severely damaged finger, Mark had burns on his face, as I did, and on his arms, but we were all back in school. Someone in the ward had placed our names on the prayer roll in the temple. To Mother that was tantamount to saying, ‘Don’t worry, if your names are on the prayer roll in the temple, you can just count on being healed.’ And we were.”

In December 1987, about two weeks before Christmas, I had to go to Israel on business. Unfortunately, it was not a peaceful time in the Holy Land. There were riots in the West Bank, the streets of Old Jerusalem were deserted, and the shops were boarded up. Political tension filled the air, and to make matters worse, a cold rain drizzled most of the week. Fearful of violence, tourists stayed away in droves. Yet as I walked through Jerusalem, peace filled my heart to know that this was the city the Redeemer loved so much.

I returned to the United States late on the Friday before Christmas. When the Sabbath dawned two days later, my alarm woke me to the music of “O Holy Night”:
The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our friend.6

The music and message pierced me deeply, and tears flowed as I contemplated the glorious sacrifice and perfect life of the Redeemer of Israel—He who was born to be the friend of the lowly and the hope of the meek. I thought of my experience in Jerusalem, and love flooded through my whole being for Him who had come to earth and taken upon Himself the burdens of us all. I was overwhelmed to think that He might regard me as a friend. I have never forgotten the tender feelings of that early Sunday morning, which were as pure a witness as I have ever received.