Gospel Story Finder

Recently, I was at home with my 4-year-old daughter, Romana, and we were both in my bedroom. I left the bedroom and went to the living room, leaving her alone in the bedroom. A few minutes later, I called out to her: “Romana, you are alone in the bedroom, come to the living room to be with me and your dolls.”

Without hesitating, she replied: “Mom, I am not alone, God is with me! We are never alone, remember?” I was so touched to hear my little girl saying those words. A few days earlier, during our family study, my husband and I had taught our children that our Heavenly Father and our Savior are always with us, despite our weaknesses and challenges. We are never alone!

I have discussed the duty of priesthood leaders and members to care for their families, quorums, wards, and stakes. I should like now to discuss another aspect of priesthood responsibility, which is our privilege to sustain those in authority over us. Wilford Woodruff recorded a remarkable account which illustrates the importance of this responsibility.
In the early days of the Church, President Brigham Young asked Wilford Woodruff to take his family to Boston and gather the Saints from New England and Canada and send them to Zion. With a company of 100, they arrived at Pittsburgh at sundown. Brother Woodruff recorded:
“We did not want to stay there, so I went to the first steamboat that was going to leave. I saw the captain and engaged passage for us on that steamer. I had only just done so when the spirit said to me, … ‘Don’t go aboard that steamer, nor your company.’ Of course, I went and spoke to the captain, and told him [that] I had made up my mind to wait.
“Well, that ship started, and had only got five miles down the river when it took fire, and three hundred persons were burned to death or drowned.” What if the Saints had not followed the counsel of Wilford Woodruff? All wisely chose to be obedient. Had they not done so, they would have perished.

As a young newly returned missionary from the Nigeria Enugu Mission, to a family where my faith is strange to everyone, there were many ideas and plans running through my mind. Where and how to start was the only question I had. After a few days, I was added to the institute class in my ward on WhatsApp, where assignments were given every week for us to study.
I must confess that though we live in a world of hardships, where we have to battle with a deadly virus called corona (COVID-19), the Lord is still hastening His work of salvation (D&C 88:73). Studying scriptures every day has really boosted my spirituality level. After submitting an assignment on the First Vision and after a heartfelt prayer, I felt the impression that I should approach my elder sister and her family, who I am living with, and introduce them to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to His Church. I did it and I was so happy the many questions she had about the Church even before I left for mission were resolved by the help of the Holy Ghost. She has, for some time, stopped going to her church because of some misunderstandings. I used the opportunity to invite her to church and she promised to come after the crisis is calmed and controlled.
The institute class has really strengthened my faith and has shown me many means to invite others to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Despite the hardships and the oppositions, I know with all my heart that the work of the Lord will still move forward. Now, I have been able to create a plan to diligently assist the Lord in hastening His work. I know He is mindful of His children and I love Him with all my heart.

It happened in September, the end of summer. Typhoon number 13 was coming toward the Japanese islands, and radio and television announcers were reporting that it would possibly land near where I lived. I remembered what happened two years earlier when another typhoon hit Japan. Trees outside were buffeted terribly, and the strong wind crashed against my windows. It was terrifying. Now here we were again. The radio warned that this typhoon was just as strong as that earlier one.
I held my young child in my arms, put a helmet on my head, and started collecting our emergency bags. We had prepared the bags a long time ago, but they had been stored in several different places. Expecting the typhoon to hit about 3:00 A.M., I spent the whole day locating, then rechecking, the contents of the bags.
I went to a department store to buy medicine that I did not have in my bag, and I also put our family history and other records in it. In case the running water stopped, I filled the bathtub with water. I prepared everything I could think of, then waited nervously for my husband to come home.
Sensing my fear, my three-year-old daughter said, “I will pray to Heavenly Father for you,” and she prayed. As I listened to her prayer, a peaceful feeling came over me, and I felt assured that the Lord would protect us. When my husband arrived, I finally felt prepared physically and emotionally.
Time passed, and midnight drew close. I put our helmets, shoes, and emergency bags where I could grab them quickly, and we went to bed.
Luckily, the typhoon passed by without causing much damage. When I awoke in the morning, I gave thanks to God. I had been completely prepared because I had heard on the radio and television that a strong typhoon was coming, and I took action.

I remember other Mexican Saints who, because floods had destroyed their crops, were fearful that they would not be able to attend the conference but who, after fasting and prayer, sold some of their belongings and pooled their money for transportation. For many there was no money left for food, but it did not matter. They decided they could fast for the three or four days of the conference. As you would expect, other loving Saints filled their plates as the Lord had filled their souls.

The Mia Maids of the Bluffdale Eighth Ward in Bluffdale, Utah, decided to make a hands-on sign of their commitment to living virtuous lives. After some memorable lessons and discussions on the topic of virtue, each one of the girls traced her handprint on the flag and wrote inside it what they were committing to do to be virtuous. These were some of the promises printed on the flag:
“I promise to keep clean thoughts and to have friends that don’t promote bad things.”—Sierra Hirschi
“I promise to watch clean things so my thoughts will be clean.” —Erica Wilcox
“I promise to keep myself temple worthy and clean so someday I can be sealed for time and all eternity.”—Katelyn Pitchford
“I promise to keep the music I listen to clean.”—Karley Newbold
“I promise not to date until I am 16.”—McKayla Hill
The virtue flag now hangs in the bishop’s office so every time the girls are in his office they are reminded of their commitments.

I learned from my wife the importance of expressions of love. Early in our marriage, often I would open my scriptures to give a message in a meeting, and I would find an affectionate, supportive note Jeanene had slipped into the pages. Sometimes they were so tender that I could hardly talk. Those precious notes from a loving wife were and continue to be a priceless treasure of comfort and inspiration.

“I’m bored!” sighed Angie. “Why can’t we play a video game?”
Once again Mother patiently explained. “You know that Dad and I talked about it and decided that you were spending too much time playing those things. You need to get outside and use your imagination.”
Angelina had heard all this before, but what was she supposed to do outside? She was reminded of camping last summer. There was no TV, no computer, no video games. It seemed that her parents expected her to play with pinecones or something.
The doorbell rang, and Robin, one of Angie’s third-grade classmates, bounced in. “Angie, they have a new video game at the arcade. I’m dying to try it! Would your mom take us there?”
“I don’t know, Robin. She’s kind of down on video games right now. But maybe if I ask her while you’re here, she’ll say yes.”
The girls found Mom in the backyard. “Mom,” Angie began tentatively, “would you take Robin and me to the video arcade?”
“No, but I’ll take you to the park on Willow Street on my way to the store.”
“No!” yelled Angie. Then she turned in astonishment as she heard Robin yell, “OK!” at the same time. Angie looked at her friend. “You mean you want to go to the park? What would we do? It’s boring!”
“We can be anything we want there,” Robin explained. “Those orange trees have neat rooms underneath their branches. They could be our fort. Or we could be rich ladies in a fancy apartment, or famous veterinarians looking for rare birds to cure. Use your imagination.”
That word again! Angie didn’t think imagination sounded all that great, but the park would be better than being bored at home.
She thought that the park “fort” could have used a TV, but it was kind of fun imagining you were a famous movie star living in a mansion. Now, how did they walk and talk? Angie wasn’t very good at it, so Robin coached her. She was amazed to discover that three hours passed swiftly, and she and Robin laughed all the way home.
The next Saturday, Mother again refused to take them to the video arcade.
“Then let’s go to the park again,” Angie suggested, remembering the fun they’d had the week before.
“We can’t,” Robin told her. “It’s closed for repairs.”
“Oh, fudgits,” Angie whined, flopping down on her bed. “Another boring day.”
“Come on, Angie. Let’s go collect pop cans. Maybe we can make enough money to buy something fun.”
Several hours later the girls returned with their treasures. They hadn’t made enough money to buy the exotic colored birds they’d looked at in the pet store window, but they’d each purchased a goldfish. Now they were hunting for a large glass container to put them in.
“Let’s name them Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Robin suggested.
“Or Punch and Judy.”
They finally settled on Hansel and Gretel and vowed that their fish would be best friends forever, just as they were.
The following Saturday, Robin went to visit her grandmother. Angie was dreading the day. Mother was still being unreasonable about video-game playing, and the park wouldn’t be any fun alone. Angie shuffled to their new refrigerator. Same old food, she noticed. Then, turning away, she saw something that made her exclaim aloud, “Wow!”
The refrigerator box was still outside by the trash. She could make a playhouse in the backyard, and when Robin returned, they could play lots of games there! They might even decorate it like a real house and put their fish in it. Hey—this imagination stuff isn’t so hard, after all!
Mother gladly helped Angie find a little table, two chairs, and some curtains for the window they cut out. Angie could hardly wait for Robin to come over. They’d have such fun!
Monday was a holiday, and it was bright and sunny. After rushing through breakfast and chores, the girls met to inspect the new playhouse.
“Angie, this is great!” Robin exclaimed, jumping up and down. “I wish I had a doll so we could play house.”
Angie thought for a second. Her dolls were all china and were locked in a glass case. She never played with them. Then she remembered—there was an old doll in the bottom of the toy chest. But she hadn’t played with it in months, and its hair was a mess, and it had no clothes.
“Robin,” Angie began, “I know a poor, starving orphan with no clothes that we can adopt and take care of.” She ran to find the doll.
“What a great idea, Angie!” Robin said. “You’re beginning to have a terrific imagination.”
“Just wait until you hear what this baby will be when she grows up,” Angie went on. “I have it all figured out.”
At that moment Angie’s older brother, Marco, poked his head in the playhouse window. “Hey, Angie, Mom says that she’ll take us to the video arcade. Come on!”
Angie and Robin looked at each other for a moment, then laughed. “No, thanks, Marco.” Angie told him. “We’d rather stay here and sew clothes for the lost princess of Matagambi.”

Sister Joan Spencer, secretary: I think of a well-to-do woman in Arizona. A girl she knew had to spend the money she had saved for a mission to help her seriously ill mother. All her mission money went to pay the hospital bills. This wonderful woman paid for that girl’s mission. Both she and her husband realize that because they have been so blessed, they have an obligation and a great opportunity to share with others.

Liola Christine Nau Hingano grew up in the Church, and she often saw the missionaries serving in her community. “I wanted to serve a mission myself,” she says. However, serving would not be easy.
Shortly after Liola submitted her mission papers, she became very sick. The doctors discovered she had a tumor and had to perform surgery to remove it. While she was in the hospital, Liola received her mission call—to serve in Tonga. She had two months to recover before starting her mission, but it was a difficult time for Liola because her parents thought a mission would be too hard on her and didn’t want her to go.
“But I believed that because the Lord had called me, I would be OK, so I decided to go,” she says. “When I entered the missionary training center, the mission president gave me a blessing and said that as I served the Lord, I would be as healthy as any missionary.
“My first mission area was very hard. We walked for miles each day just to get to the area where we were working. We carried our scriptures with us, and the sun was hot. But I knew I would be fine because I had received a priesthood blessing that said so. And I was. I never had trouble because of my previous illness.
“I am very grateful I had the courage to go on a mission and not turn back. It has made such a difference in who I am today—and in my testimony. I have faith in our Savior and Heavenly Father.”

As walls in Europe break down, two LDS girls are doing their best to extend international understanding. Samantha Broadribb of the Norwich Ward, Norwich England Stake, and Geertje Bauerfeind, of the Leipzig Second Ward, Leipzig Germany Stake, have started their own exchange program.
Samantha, a 16-year-old studying German, decided to contact a fellow seminary student in what was then the German Democratic republic. Geertje invited Samantha to stay with her for several weeks to get a taste of life in East Germany. Then Geertje visited Samantha and her family in England for ten days. Geertje loved London’s lights at night.

As he was growing up, Douglas L. Callister often accompanied his father and grandfather as they fulfilled Church assignments such as visiting members, presiding at meetings, or speaking at firesides. “They wanted their posterity to see them in the context of honoring the priesthood,” says Elder Callister, “and as we drove to and from their assignments, they would always share their experience and testimony with me.”
That caring tutelage has played an important role in preparing Elder Callister to serve in the Second Quorum of the Seventy. “A life-altering experience for me,” says Elder Callister, “was that training that came from those generations of family members who were willing to teach me.” Elder Callister continues to teach his own posterity just as his own father and grandfather taught him.

As you return to Temple Square, walking downhill south on Main Street, you pass the once magnificent McCune home (14). The story is told that the wife of the original owner was serving as a guide on Temple Square when a haughty visitor asked her about the living conditions of the typical, uncouth Mormon. She assured him that she was an ordinary native and invited him to her “typical” home, with its marble floors, gold doorknobs, carved balustrades, and third-floor ballroom. The visitor was much astonished that this was the way Mormons lived!

For a while after I was baptized, I would stop going to church, then go back for a while, then stop again. But members of the ward visited me and invited me to come back. They told me the Church and the members missed and needed me. I decided to come back, and I’ve been active ever since. I realized how much I needed the Church. I can pray to Heavenly Father and feel good, and I can feel the Spirit. And so here I am!

Outside, the typhoon was raging. But inside, there was a calm, peaceful spirit.
Gathered in their small Philippine home in December 1987, the Paronda family was kneeling in prayer. Brother Ruben Paronda, normally soft-spoken, had to raise his voice almost to a shout as he prayed. Even so, his wife, Nelly, and their children had to strain to hear his words above the pounding rain and the relentless howling of the wind. The prayer was filled with pleadings to the Lord to calm the storm.
The town of Tigaon, Camarines Sur, Philippines, is in the typhoon belt—and the Paronda family has seen many storms. But this time they were more desperate than ever for the storm to stop. It was keeping them from traveling to Manila to be sealed in the temple. And this was the second time their temple trip was being threatened.
Eleven months after the jeepney accident, they had finally saved enough money again to make the trip. Then the typhoon hit! Their home and store were spared, but their crops were destroyed. Streets were flooded, and travel was impossible.
Surrounded by chaos, they still felt that their most urgent need was to get to the temple immediately. “We were in a hurry to be sealed,” explains Brother Paronda. Unfortunately, in only two or three days the temple would close for several weeks.
Finally, during the night at the height of the storm, the family knelt in prayer. “We asked the Lord to stop the storm so we could go,” says Brother Paronda. “Heavenly Father answered our prayer. The storm stopped during the night, and we had good weather for our journey.”
The next day, they rented a jeepney (their own was still not in running condition), and Brother and Sister Paronda and the eight children crowded inside for the fifteen-hour trip. After driving through the night, they arrived at the temple the day before it was to close. Immediately they changed into white clothes, and everyone who was old enough (father, mother, and six children) received the temple endowment.
Then the parents were sealed to each other, and the children were sealed to them—including their son Alan who had died twelve years earlier as an eight-month-old baby. “Even though Alan isn’t living with us at this time,” says Marilyn, “we know that someday we will be together again. He is still a part of our family.”
“I am so grateful,” says Sister Nelly Paronda, “that my whole family can now be together forever.”
When they left the temple that day, it was late. And they had had no rest from their journey. “But we did not feel tired or hungry,” says Marilyn. “We felt very happy that the Lord had answered our prayers.”
The following day, they attended the temple again. Later, the oldest son, Noel, was sealed in the temple with his wife and children. And family members have returned to do ordinance work for grandparents and great-grandparents.

In February 2022, Sister Basilisa Nadreke Lotawa was asked by the Sigatoka Branch President (a lay church leader) to serve as a temple and family history specialist. Basilisa’s job was to urge her congregation to lift their spiritual eyes to the light of the temple and to prepare themselves for temple worship. She also had to learn how to do genealogical research then teach her fellow Saints how to identify their deceased ancestors in order to participate by proxy, temple ordinances on their behalf.
Basilisa, a young mother of three, shook her head and laughed. “I knew nothing about doing family history—nothing . . . and I’m too young to do it.” Still, wanting to serve the Lord, she sought the help of an experienced genealogist and was soon able to assist her branch members. With a new conviction and passion for family history, Basilisa expressed: “I am so blessed and honoured to participate in this glorious work. It has been marvelous, tremendous! I have seen miracles and wonders. The Lord provided a way for me to do the work and to help my branch.”
With young children in tow, Basilisa spent many hours at the computer in her chapel helping others to extend the branches of their family trees. She invited them—adults and youth—to find five deceased family members who needed proxy baptisms. Branch members caught her enthusiasm and found two hundred ancestors!
As for Basilisa, there is no doubt that her love for the temple and family history work—even at this busy stage of her life, will continue to bless her. She said: “I feel the same joy doing this [work] that I felt when I served my mission.” She and her branch now keep their eyes fixed firmly on the holy temple.

Sela Feinga, who now works at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, Hawaii, remembers when she and her husband, Ha’unga, accepted a mission call in 1965 to build churches on Tonga’s various islands. Along with their five-month-old daughter, who was suffering from a high fever, the Feingas journeyed to the remote island of Fotuha‘a, an island of rocky cliffs surrounded by rough ocean.
Voyagers destined for Fotuha‘a transferred from the motor launch to an outrigger canoe and then swam to a rocky ledge jutting out into deep water. Those unable to swim had to jump toward the outstretched hands of islanders who stood to catch goods heaved from the canoe. Such landings were treacherous indeed, since their execution required perfect timing with the waves that rose to the level of the rock landing and then fell fifteen to twenty feet below it. Sister Feinga found that such a journey required a very literal leap of faith:
On the morning of our departure, the baby’s fever was still high. Little pustules began to appear all over her body from head to toe. She had measles. No amount of pleading, however, would change my husband’s mind. I wrapped our little one in a blanket and boarded the small open boat that would take us to Fotuha‘a.
As we approached the island from a distance, formidable cliffs and rocky coasts loomed in front of us. The waves around us were huge. A few of the island citizens had already begun to congregate on the rocky ledge, waiting to receive us and our goods.
The canoe came out to get us, a small outrigger paddled by a young school teacher on the island. When we got close to the rock, he said, “We will count the waves, and when one big enough comes in to lift us up even with the ledge, you must jump onto the rock or throw your goods to the people standing there.”
I was almost numb with fear as the rain fell and we drew closer to the treacherous landing. Then the teacher cried to my husband, “Prepare the baby! They will give orders for her first!”
The order came to my husband almost instantly from the man on the ledge: “Hey, you sir, holding the baby! Take off the blanket and remove all the baby’s clothes.”
“How can that be?” I cried. “The baby is sick with measles. We should not remove all her clothes.”
Our paddler spoke sternly to Ha‘unga, “You must take off everything, because you are going to have to throw the baby ashore. You can’t risk the man dropping her on the rocks or in the ocean because of the blanket or any loose covering.”
The command came from the ledge again: “Hurry up, remove the baby’s clothes.” But my poor husband simply could not do it. Perhaps by now he was as terrified as I.
The young school teacher wrenched the baby from Ha‘unga’s arms and, in a second, removed every speck of her clothing except her little diaper. In rushed a wave and lifted the canoe up, but not quite high enough. Down we went as the ocean retreated. Up again we came on the back of another wave. Not high enough still.
As we rose on the next wave, I heard the command, “Throw the baby!” I screamed and held my stomach. I couldn’t bear to see it. The next words were my husband’s: “Worry no more. The baby is safe.”
But Sister Feinga had little time to be grateful, for her turn to jump came next. Hysterical with fear, she missed the “right” wave four times before the man on the ledge shouted, “Woman, do you want to see your baby again or not?” With a prayer on her lips—“O Lord, please show thy love and help me now for my poor baby’s sake”—she jumped to safety.

“Why won’t Grandma come to my baptism tonight?” Mark asked for the umpteenth time.
Mom wiped her floured hands on her apron and handed him a still-warm gingerbread man.
“Grandma’s not a member of our Church. She wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
“But why?” Mark persisted, plucking the raisin buttons off his cookie.
“I already asked her to come, Mark. She said no. That’s all we can do.”
Mark ate the raisins, then bit into his cookie.
“Maybe if I ask her, she’ll come.”
“Perhaps. But don’t get your hopes up.”
Mark dashed out the door and across the yard to his father’s woodworking shop. It was his favorite thinking place. Things were always happening there. The sound that the saw made meant that a new creation was beginning to take shape. The smell of varnish meant the completion of a new table or rocking horse.
Today the shop was empty of projects except for a small chair that his father was building for baby Emily. All that was left to do on it was to engrave her name and birthdate on the back. Mark had one just like it with his name and birthdate engraved on the back.
“Engraved! That’s it!” he shouted. His mother was always teasing him about needing to send him an engraved invitation to get him to the dinner table on time. He would give Grandma an engraved invitation to his baptism! Mark hurriedly examined his father’s scrap pile. He pulled out a block of wood, found the tools that he would need, and set to work.
Two hours later Mark got on his bike and raced the seven blocks to Grandma’s house. He hid his bike behind her neighbor’s tall hedge and crept around to her back door. He carefully placed the wood block on the stoop, knocked on the screen door, and darted back behind the hedge. He watched from there as Grandma opened the door and looked around the yard.
“Hello?” she called loudly. When no one answered, she turned to go back inside. Then she noticed the block. Mark watched anxiously as she picked it up, placed her reading glasses on her nose, and read the uneven gouges: “Grandma, Please come to my baptism. Love, Mark”
Grandma looked around the yard once more, then walked back into the house.
Mark hurried home, his heart beating in time with his frantic pedaling. He put his bike in the garage, then ran into the house.
“Mark, where have you been?” his mother scolded. “We have to be at the church in forty minutes.”
Mark bathed and dressed in record time. Before going downstairs, he got down on his knees and prayed: “Please, Heavenly Father, help Grandma to come to my baptism.”
“Time to go,” his father called.
Mark bounded down the stairs. Mother met him at the bottom and gave him a big hug. Just then the doorbell rang. When Dad opened the door, there was Grandma, standing stiffly in the doorway.
“I thought it would be easier if we all rode together,” she said.
“I knew you’d come!” Mark cried, throwing his arms around her.
“Well, I couldn’t ignore an engraved invitation,” she said with a wink.

John Stephen Akhwari, a marathon runner from Tanzania, competed in the 1968 Summer Olympics. Even though he suffered along the way from fatigue, leg cramps, dehydration, and disorientation, a voice called from within to go on, and so he went on. Exhausted and staggering, John Stephen was the last man to enter the stadium. When asked why he would complete a race he could never win, Akhwari replied, “My country did not send me 7,000 miles [11,200 km] to start the race; they sent me 7,000 miles to finish the race.”

It was 1:00 A.M. on Christmas 1843. A band of less than two dozen, dressed against the chill, approached the Mansion House at the northeast corner of Main and Water streets in Nauvoo. The group halted below the windows of the room where the Prophet Joseph Smith slept. With well-wrapped scarves, hats pulled low, and hands gloved or pocketed, the members huddled below the Prophet’s window. One of the group gave the pitch, and they began caroling:
“Mortals, awake! with angels join,
And chant the solemn lay;
Love, joy, and gratitude combine
To hail th’auspicious day.*
As they sang the other six verses, the inhabitants of the house gathered at the window. Perhaps a few, including the Prophet, braved the foot-stamping cold to greet the singers. He later said, “It caused a thrill of pleasure to run through my soul. All of my family and boarders arose to hear the serenade, and I felt to thank my Heavenly Father for their visit and blessed them in the name of the Lord.”
The chill forgotten, Widow Lettice Rushton, a blind English convert, her five grown children and their spouses, and a handful of neighbors who made up the singing group departed for Hyrum’s house two blocks west on Water Street. Naturally at that hour the patriarch to the Church was asleep. He arose and went outside to shake hands with the singers. He blessed each one of them, telling them it was such heavenly music that he thought at first that a choir of angels had come to visit him.
For the Prophet and his brother, that Christmas was to prove their last.
Joseph intended to stay home that day. A family man, his past Christmases had not always been as pleasant as this one. In the previous Christmas season, he had met with Governor Ford concerning problems between the Saints and their nonmember neighbors. In 1839 he had spent the Christmas season in Washington seeking redress for the Saints who’d lost their possessions in the Missouri conflicts. The year before that Joseph and several loyal friends had spent a miserable Christmas in Liberty Jail.
Perhaps his thoughts turned to his good friend Porter Rockwell, now 30, who at the last account was still languishing in the Missouri prison where he had been for seven months. Because Porter was being illegally held, it did not seem likely that efforts on the part of the Saints in Illinois would secure his release.
At noon on that last Christmas, Joseph met with some brethren from Morley Settlement, located near the present site of Lima, 25 miles south of Nauvoo. He counseled them to keep the law on their side despite the depredation of marauding citizens.
At about 2:00 P.M., 50 couples sat down at Joseph’s table as guests. During the meal, Joseph was asked to solemnize the marriage of Dr. Levi Richards and Sara Griffiths. Not desiring to leave his guests, he had the request forwarded to Brigham Young, who was living on the southeast corner of Kimball and Granger streets, three blocks north and one block west of the Prophet’s residence. Brother Brigham complied with the request.
Apparently the 38-year-old Prophet, who had a reputation for hospitality, spent the remainder of the day with his family and associates. That evening a large group also dined at the Prophet’s house before turning to music, dancing, and other festivities in the tradition of Christmas in that day.
Latecoming guests, dressed in their best, arrived during the evening hours on that Monday. The troubles of the Saints, past and present, were temporarily forgotten as the guests enjoyed the festivities. Then the spirit of the evening was disrupted when a gaunt, seemingly drunk, unwashed Missourian, straggly and unkempt hair brushing his shoulders, forced his way into the room.
Efforts were made to throw the ruffian out, but he was too powerful. In the ensuing struggle, Joseph had a good look at the man. It was his friend, Porter!
The atmosphere cleared as friends gathered around Rockwell and welcomed him home. He explained how he had been honorably released after seven months in prison and had worked his way home through hostile territory. Because his feet were injured and men were seeking his life, it had taken him 12 days. He had just arrived in Nauvoo. The trick he’d played on the Prophet and his guests was merely his idea of fun.
Rockwell’s safe return climaxed the day for Joseph on his last Christmas, the Christmas before the summer guns at Carthage.