Gospel Story Finder

The service activity is on Wednesday to help with the park cleanup, Will. Can I count on you being there?
Yes, Bishop. I said I’d help, and I’ll keep my word.
I’ll keep MY WORD.
Isn’t the football game on Wednesday? I was going to watch that …
Maybe I should do my homework now while I have time so I won’t be tempted to do it later.
Hey! Come hang out with us on Wednesday!
I could just take a quick nap before I go—I’d still have time, right?
I kept my word. I’m ready to work!

Be honest with yourself, with others, and with your Heavenly Father. One who was not honest with God until it was too late was Cardinal Wolsey who, according to Shakespeare, spent a long life in service to three sovereigns and enjoyed wealth and power. Finally, he was shorn of his power and possessions by an impatient king. Cardinal Wolsey cried:
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.3

The children believe in prayer. They have seen it work. Once, before going on an outing, they prayed for protection. That day they were involved in a small accident, but no one was hurt. They felt Heavenly Father had protected them.

I have often held in my hand a black walnut. It has a shell like stone. It has many internal stony reinforcements. But in between is an unimpressive, unimportant-looking meaty substance that has a mysterious and tremendous power. If you plant this seed under certain circumstances, heat is produced inside.
Now, whether it is a seed, or a teacher, or a businessman, or a student, when we begin to heat inside, something begins to happen. Your leaders may put a lot of heat on you from the outside, but that doesn’t always do much good. The heat that does the greatest good is the heat that is generated on the inside. Success, like failure, is an “inside” job.
When this walnut begins to heat inside, it produces a mysterious power that breaks that stony shell as though it were paper, and a little shoot works its way up through the soil to become a great walnut tree. That is, there is some mysterious power inside of a walnut shell that has the ability to attract out of the soil and the air and the water all of the elements necessary to become a great walnut tree—including wood, and foliage, and blossoms, and fragrance, and fruit.

Two years ago, when I was 14, I went to visit some relatives in another city in southern Germany. I was traveling alone by train, so I was a bit nervous but also excited. After my visit, I got on the train to go home. It was getting late at night as we approached the station where I was supposed to get off the train. I looked out the window and saw the station, but I suddenly had the feeling that I should stay seated.
Though the train wouldn’t be traveling on (this was the final station), I wanted to get home because it was getting late and I was nervous. But the impression to wait was very distinct. So I did it, though I wondered why.
After a few minutes I finally did get out. I had walked only a short distance when a policeman stopped me and said, “You were lucky. If you had come five minutes earlier, you would have been in the middle of a big fight.”
There had been a soccer game that evening between two archrivals. Some fans of one team had been in the front of the train and some fans of the other team in back. When they had gotten off, a couple of them had started provoking one another, and then everyone had started fighting. I later heard that by the time the police came to break it up, over a dozen people had been injured and taken to the hospital. The police had then blocked everything off and taken all the suspects with them.
One policeman came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, saying, “Wow. If you had been there, we probably could have hauled you off as well.” I realized that if I hadn’t followed that impression, something very bad could have happened to me.
As I went home, I prayed to Heavenly Father and told Him that I was thankful that I had listened to the Holy Ghost and hadn’t gotten off the train. I knew that He had protected me.

Missionary work also expanded during this time. The Mexico Mission, officially opened in 1879, was divided for the first time in 1956; now Mexico has 34 missions.15 Brother Jorge Zamora, who served as a missionary in the Mexico City North Mission in the 1980s, has witnessed the growth. He recalls an area of his mission where members had to travel an hour to attend church; now a stake is there. He says, “It is amazing to me the way the Lord works to build the Church, regardless of what the country or culture is.”

Miriam Vasquez, who facilitated the self-reliance course on personal finances attended by Gabriela Yoshida, agrees. When her husband was unable to attend her class, she brought the class and its principles home to him and their children.

“Before the class, my husband and I had different ideas about how to manage money,” she says. But once he grasped the principles she shared at home, they harmonized their financial goals as a couple and family.

“We asked the Lord for inspiration so that each week we could focus on what the program was asking us to do and so we could reach our goals,” Sister Vasquez says. “Our differences regarding how to manage money disappeared, and we grew spiritually because we were able to rid ourselves of some financial stress in our home.”

One of the principles that blesses all who take a self-reliance course is learning the importance of saving money and spending it wisely.

“I’ve been married 25 years, and I always thought I was supposed to pay my tithing, then my mortgage, and then my other expenses. If I had any money left over, I would save,” says Sister Vasquez. “When I facilitated the class, I realized that first you pay your tithing, then you save some, and then you pay for everything else. In less than a year, my husband and I were able to save for a dream vacation.”

“Let me tell you about two of your fellow elders I was with last week who walked together up by Lukachukai.
“I learned about them when I attended a stake conference. Among the speakers that morning was a handsome Navajo boy. He was frightened by this first experience at public speaking, but he was sustained by faith and by a deep, sincere testimony. Only a few short months before, the Church was unknown to him.
“Two of our young elders drove their truck as far up a muddy, rutted road as they could go and then ‘two walked together’ the remaining eight miles through mud and snow to teach a man and his grandson. Because of their dedication and determination, this young man, now a baptized member filled with the spirit of love and testimony, was speaking to the congregation. He, too, will soon be on a mission, walking with a companion down some distant country road or city street. He will walk his way into the homes and hearts of those who are seeking the Lord. Oh, the high adventure of missionary work!”

I know that the gospel is real and that prayers are answered. I graduated from high school and enlisted in the navy in the middle of World War II. I was on board a ship that was part of a large group of ships. Kamikaze pilots were trying to destroy my ship and others by crashing their airplanes into the ships. My grandson Adam once asked me what I did at such times of extreme danger. There was no place to run or hide. “All I could do was pray,” I told him. “That was a good thing to do,” he answered.

In September Sally represented Utah in the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she performed with orchestra Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
At the close of the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Sally Peterson was named Miss Congeniality, a title valued second only to that of Miss America.
The Award was made after the 50 contestants had voted to select the girl who, throughout the exciting and sometimes exhausting week, had been most friendly, appreciative, genuine, cheerful. It is an honor which recognizes inward as well as outward beauty.
As Miss Congeniality, Sally received a $1,000 scholarship. She also won a $1,000 Grand Music Award for her performance with orchestra of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Just two days after the Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and his associates hiked Ensign Peak. Atop that peak they unfurled a banner—a yellow bandana tied to a walking stick, which symbolized an ensign or standard to the nations. The Saints were to be the light, the standard. Last April, atop Ensign Peak, we three women also unfurled a banner which we made from a walking stick and a gold Peruvian shawl. It was our ensign, our standard to the nations—our banner calling for a return to virtue.

October, 1977. With the postlude organ music filling the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square, Elder Yoshihiko Kikuchi, newly sustained as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, stood near an entrance greeting acquaintances. One of them, a stake president from Japan, introduced a friend of his, R. Gordon Porter, a stake president in Salt Lake City.
“President Porter,” said Elder Kikuchi, “didn’t you serve a mission to Japan?”
“Well, yes, I did,” replied President Porter, wondering how Elder Kikuchi knew.
They were still shaking hands, Elder Kikuchi staring closely at President Porter. “You confirmed me a member of the Church.”
Incredulous, President Porter thought back to his time in Japan. “It had been almost twenty years,” he later said, “but as we shook hands I could suddenly remember that home in Hokkaido, and I could see that young gakusei [student] standing at the door as my senior companion, Delmont Law, talked with him.”
This meeting, across two decades and thousands of miles, is an apt symbol of how the gospel has affected the life of Yoshihiko Kikuchi, taking him from one unexpected transition to another. Through all those changes, he has remained both faithful and humble.

When I was 15 years old, my older brother, Joe, was trying to decide whether or not to serve a mission. Joe was an incredibly good example to me. He had planned on going to medical school, but when the opportunity came to serve a mission, he took the decision very seriously.

One evening we talked long into the night about the gospel and testimonies and missions. We reasoned that if the Church was just a good institution, he could help more people by attending medical school and becoming a doctor. On the other hand, if Joseph Smith was actually a prophet and the Book of Mormon was really true, going on a mission would be much more important.

That evening was one of the most important times in my life. After Joe and I finished talking, I went into another room and prayed about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I got a very strong feeling that the things Joe and I had been talking about were true.

Joe chose to serve a mission, and a few years later, I followed in his footsteps, serving in the British Mission. My mission experiences greatly strengthened the testimony that had begun in Primary.

When I went to my brother’s basketball game, I made some new friends. They wanted me to play under the bleachers. I asked my mom if it was OK. She told me she didn’t think it was safe. So we didn’t play there, and we stayed safe. I’m glad that I have parents to help me be safe when I obey.

When I had been on my mission in Germany about a year, I was assigned to work with a brand new missionary named Elder Keeler, who had just arrived fresh from converting, so he thought, all the stewardesses on the plane from New York to Frankfurt. Within a few days of his arrival, I was called to a meeting in another city and had to leave him to work in our city with another inexperienced missionary whose companion went with me. I returned late that night. The next morning I asked him how his day had gone. He broke into an enthusiastic smile and said he had found a family who would surely join the Church. In our mission, it was rare to see anyone join the Church let alone a whole family. I asked for more details, but he had forgotten to write down either the name or the address. All he could remember was that the family lived on the top floor of a big apartment house.

“Oh, that’s great,” I thought to myself as I contemplated all those flights of stairs. He also explained that he knew so little German that he had exchanged just a few words with the woman who answered the door. But he did think she wanted us to come back—and he wanted to go find her and have me talk to her that very minute. I explained that all the people who don’t slam the door in our faces did not intend to join the Church. But we went to find her, mostly to appease him. He couldn’t remember the right street either, so we picked a street it might have been and began climbing up and down those endless polished staircases.

After a frustrating hour, I decided I had to be frank (honest) with him. Based on my many months of experience, I said, it was simply not worth our time to try any longer to find her. I had developed a tolerance for the realities of missionary work and simply knew more than he did about it. His eyes filled with tears and his lower lip began to tremble. “Elder Hafen,” he said, “I came on my mission to find the honest in heart. The Spirit told me that, that woman will be a member of the Church.” So I decided to teach him a lesson. I raced him up one staircase after another, until he was ready to fall over from exhaustion, and so was I. “Elder Keeler,” I asked, “have you had enough?” “No,” he said. “We’ve got to find her.” I began to get angry, I decided to work him until he asked to stop—then maybe he would get the message.

Then at the top of a long flight of stairs, we found the apartment. She came to the door. He thrashed my ribs with his elbow, and whispered loudly, “That’s her, Elder. That’s the one. Talk to her!”

Brothers and sisters, not long ago that woman’s husband sat in my living room. He was in Utah for general conference. He is the bishop of the Mannheim Ward. His two boys are preparing for missions. His wife and daughter are strong, active members of the Church. That is a lesson I can never forget about the limitations of the skepticism that comes with learning and experience. I hope that I will never be so aware of “reality” that I am unresponsive to the whisperings of heaven.

Sister Heaston shared an experience from when she served at a Young Women camp. She said:
“One of our … devotional speakers … taught us about ‘becoming.’ One of her statements … was, ‘Be someone who reaches out to know and serve others—throw away the mirrors and look through the window.’
“To demonstrate this, she called up one of the young women and asked that young woman to stand facing her. [She] then pulled out a mirror and put it between the young woman and herself so that she, [the speaker], was looking into the mirror while she tried to talk with the young woman. Not surprisingly, it didn’t even begin to be an effective or heartfelt conversation. This was a powerful object lesson that illustrated how difficult it is to communicate with and serve others if we are too worried about ourselves and see only ourselves and our needs. [She] then put away the mirror, pulled out a window frame, and put it between her face and the young woman’s face. … We were able to see that the young woman had become [her] focal point and that true service requires that we focus on the needs and emotions of others. Ofttimes we are so worried about ourselves and our own busy lives—as we look in mirrors while trying to look for opportunities to serve—that we do not see clearly through the windows of service.”

Danny found his mother’s best shoes all caked with mud and dirt after a rainstorm. He cleaned, polished, and shined them. Then he polished and shined them again. Finally, when they looked like new, he took them to his mother. She was very surprised and very pleased. She hugged him, then took some money from her purse and put it into his hand. Later, when she put on those newly polished shoes, she felt something in the toe of one of them. It was the money she had given Danny. It was wrapped in a small note that said, “Mother, I did it for love.”

We kept our eye on the Lord so we could see our blessings, including an amazing support system. My Relief Society president was wonderful. People from the school where I taught did a cancer walk for me. A colleague who wanted me to know she cared gave me a pink pen. During moments like that, you say, “You were my angel today. You were my evidence that God knows I needed a hug or a pink pen.”

One month after her baptism, Barbara first started thinking about attending the temple while she was at a family home evening lesson at the center. After the lesson, she started asking questions.
“Having friends who understood what the temple meant for them helped me understand what the temple might mean for me. As they explained to me about the temple, I felt the Holy Spirit,” Barbara recalls. “I realized that all the places I’d been thinking about getting married—a nice church or the beach—couldn’t even be compared to the temple. From that moment the temple was no longer just a building. It was something I wanted to look forward to and a place to one day enter with my future husband.”

“Why don’t you ever come with us?” the girl shouted. “Don’t you want to be a part of our group?”
It was the end of spring, and school was almost out. During breaks we played football outside, and I was the goalkeeper. As goalkeeper I was used to dodging and blocking oncoming attacks from the field. However, this game was different because I had to dodge and block attacks coming from the sidelines too.
In between the offensive assaults of the other team, I was being interrogated by a couple of girls in my class who were standing on the side of the field. To avoid their questioning, I would have welcomed the other team over for a free shooting contest, but I was not having much luck that day.
“So why don’t you ever come to our parties?” she continued. “Don’t you want to have a little fun?”
“A little fun!” I thought. Being at a party with my classmates, playing silly games, and feeling forced into uncomfortable situations was not my idea of fun. I’d rather stay at home.
“We’re all trying to get to know one another, and you are never there,” came another attack from the sideline.
“That’s right!” I said. And I would have explained why if I felt she and the others really wanted to understand. But I doubted it. How could they? I was the only Latter-day Saint in my school, and none of them understood much about the Church or its standards.
“Don’t you like any of the girls in our class?” she asked.
“It’s not about not liking them,” I said. “I’d just feel uncomfortable.”
“But why?” she poked.
My team had just lost the ball, and all the guys were now running in my direction.
“Why would you feel uncomfortable?” she poked again.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as my eyes focused on the approaching ball. Her voice was the only thing I heard, and the constant “why,” “why” kept echoing in my head. My opponent was clear for the shot, and I could see that the ball was going to hit me hard. But I was ready. He kicked the ball, which bounced off my hands with a loud slap. “Yes! Another assault successfully frustrated,” I thought, grinning. I grabbed the ball and threw it down the field to my teammates and then turned to face my other opponents.
“So?” she said.
My heart was still racing from the excitement of the game. “The reason I’m not coming to your parties is …” I started, then paused, thinking for a moment.
“Is?” she repeated a little anxiously.
I looked down the field again to see the opposition approaching fast. My heart picked up a couple of beats, and I knew I had to finish what I started to say. “Is because I am saving myself for someone special!” I blurted out.
“What!” she exclaimed.
My opponents were upon me, and my attention was again fixed on the game. The ball whistled through the air, penetrating my defenses. The other team cheered, while the girls stood there laughing.
“Saving yourself for someone,” she said, giggling. “So what is her name?”
I felt embarrassed. Although I didn’t have anyone special in mind, I still knew that one day I would meet my future wife, and I needed to be worthy to take her to the temple. That’s why I didn’t go to their parties.
My hands still tingled and my heart continued to race as I walked home later, yet there was a slight grin on my face. I might have suffered humiliation on the field that day; however, I walked away feeling victorious.