Gospel Story Finder

The next Sunday during fast and testimony meeting, a sister told a story about when she’d followed Moroni’s invitation to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true. She didn’t receive an answer, so she prayed again and again. As the days passed, she worried about whether the Church was really true. Finally, she felt the Spirit speak to her mind: “You already know it is true.”

As the youth learned, family history is a lot more than just looking at pedigree charts. They found out that part of genealogy is keeping journals and working on personal histories. Mandy Smith, of the Cumberland Gap Branch, is just 15, but she was the expert invited to speak about keeping scrapbooks for a personal history. As she puts clippings, certificates, and snapshots in her book, she also writes captions under each item, explaining a little about what she was feeling. Mandy pointed out, “Personal history is not just for your children someday. It can also be good for you. Lots of times when I’m feeling down or in a bad mood, I look back at the good times I have had. It helps me remember the things that are important to me.”

In a Relief Society Sunday lesson in my ward, we were discussing what makes a good marriage. One sister, Lisa, said: “I probably shouldn’t say anything because I’m divorced. But what keeps me going is my temple covenants.” After the lesson, I asked some new young adult Relief Society sisters what in this lesson had connected to them. They said, “Lisa’s comment impacted us most.”

And that brings me to my wife, Elisa. I remember the first time I met her. As a favor to a friend, I had gone to her home to pick up her sister, Frances. Elisa opened the door, and at least for me, it was love at first sight.
I think she must have felt something too, for the first words I ever remember her saying were, “I knew who you was.”
Elisa was an English major.
To this day I still cherish those five words as some of the most beautiful in human language.
She loved to play tennis and had a lightning serve. I tried to play tennis with her, but I finally quit after coming to the realization that I couldn’t hit what I couldn’t see.
She was my strength and my joy. Because of her, I am a better man, husband, and father. We married, had eight children, and walked together through 65 years of life.
I owe more to my wife than I can possibly express. I don’t know if there ever was a perfect marriage, but, from my perspective, I think ours was.

Reader 1: Little brother’s piggy bank, the one he made himself,
Tumbled down and broke to bits when bumped right off the shelf.
After hugs and kisses, I knew just what I could do.
Late that night I fixed that bank, with love and lots of glue!

“Yes. You see, whenever anything happens, you are the first to tell everyone. Just yesterday you ran in and told me that Mr. Allen had fallen on his steps. And because you were such a good helper by telling me, I was able to go over and help him into his house.”

Stephanie’s mother is a nanny, and her father is a cook. They prayed for years that Stephanie would be able to attend school. They wanted her to learn English and good manners. It is expensive to go to school in Delhi, and much of the family’s income is spent on tuition. Stephanie’s mother did not have the opportunity to attend school as a child. She feels that being able to help her daughters go to school is a great blessing.

We stopped at a pizza parlor on the way home from the priesthood session of general conference when I was 15 years old, and as a result I learned a lesson about tithing that I will never forget.
My father, my two brothers, and I were hungry. As we waited for our order, I saw one of my friends working as a busboy. I asked him how he got the job, and he told me they still needed extra help. A few minutes later he came back and told me that the manager would interview me immediately. Perhaps it was because I was wearing a dress shirt and a tie, but the employer seemed impressed. The interview went well. I expressed my wish not to work on Sundays, and he said there would be no problem—plenty of people would cover for me. I was hired to begin work as soon as I could.
During the next two years, I gradually worked my way up to the position of pizza cook. Then one evening as I began my shift, I noticed one of my scheduled days had been taken off the calendar. My boss told me that if I wanted to work the regular number of hours, Sunday was open. I worked one Sunday and felt rotten about it, so I declined to work on the Sabbath from then on. My relations with my employer started to deteriorate, and I began to look for another job.
It was interesting that although I was fairly adamant about keeping the Sabbath day holy, I was lax in obeying another commandment—the law of tithing. I didn’t pay tithing at all, unless my parents prompted me. Then I’d say, “Sure, sure,” and put something in the envelope the next week. I just couldn’t see the sense in giving away one-tenth of my hard-earned money.
I kept searching for a job but with no results. I prayed to my Father in Heaven sincerely, confident that he would help me find employment. One evening while praying, a thought came to me. Why should the Lord help me find another job if I wasn’t paying tithing on the income from my current job?
I studied a couple of scriptures:
“And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Mal. 3:10).
“I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise” (D&C 82:10).
I decided to obey the commandment. I went to the bank and secured a large sum of money from my savings account to catch up on the tithing I had missed. I took it over to the bishop’s house that very evening.
In my pursuit of better employment, I had applied for work in a muffler shop. This was in January, and they said they wouldn’t need any additional help until the following December. Two days after I paid my tithing, someone from the shop telephoned with an offer for me to start work the next day. By the time I left on my mission, I was making three times as much money as I had made cooking pizza, plus a handsome commission. I was able to finance half of the expense of my mission by myself. Furthermore, after I had been in the mission field about a year, my employer from the muffler shop called my parents and asked if he could help pay the rest of my mission expenses.
Some might say that all these things happened coincidentally. I would be inclined to say that I was blessed because I finally started living a gospel principle. Tithing opens a door to blessings from the Lord.

Alexander had curly red hair and 122 little round brown freckles all over his face.
Sometimes Alexander did things that he knew he wasn’t supposed to do.
One day Alexander caught a frog and hid it in the kitchen. The frog got out of its hiding place and leaped into the pudding Alexander’s mother was making for dinner.
“Alexander! What on earth am I going to do with you!” his mother cried.
“It’s not my fault,” Alexander told her. “You see, there’s a naughty little fox inside my head. He told me to bring the frog into the house. He said that if you didn’t see it, it would be OK.”
“I see,” said Alexander’s mother. “Well, where do you suppose the little fox got the idea? Do you suppose that you could have given him the idea?”
“Me? Oh no! Well … I mean … I don’t know.” Alexander gave his mom his best crooked grin, but it didn’t help.
“Well then, why don’t you just go to your room and think about it for a while,” she said.
Later that day Alexander sneaked six cookies out of the cookie jar. At dinner he ate one bite of meat, two bites of potato, and three peas.
“Why aren’t you eating your dinner, Alexander?” his mother asked.
“Well,” Alexander said, “there’s a big lion in my tummy. He growled at me this afternoon and told me that if I didn’t feed him six cookies right away, he would bite me. So, you see, it’s really not my fault that I’m not hungry anymore—except for dessert.”
“I see,” said Alexander’s mother. “Since you’ve already fed the lion in your tummy, I don’t think that he needs any dessert. Besides, I don’t think tummy-lions like apple pie—especially apple pie with big scoops of vanilla ice cream on it. So you may be excused from the table now.”
The next day was rainy; Alexander brought out his train set. He very neatly laid out the tracks with a mountain tunnel, a switchover track, and a big loop-the-loop track. Just as Alexander started his train for the very first ride, his little brother came skipping into the room and tripped on Alexander’s train tracks. The tunnel turned over, the switchover track came apart, and the loop-the-loop track lopped sideways.
“You clumsy little kid!” Alexander screamed at his brother. “Just look at what you did!” When Alexander made a fist and started to run after his little brother, he ran right into his mother.
“I’m sorry about your track, Alexander,” she said softly. “I’ll help you put it together again. But you weren’t really going to hit your brother, were you? You know it was just an accident.”
“I know,” said Alexander sadly, “but if I’d hit him, it wouldn’t have been my fault. You see, there’s a big dragon inside me. Most of the time he just sleeps, but when he wakes up, he opens his fiery mouth and lets out mean words. And when someone makes him angry, sometimes he makes me hit that person. I think he’s angry now because he wanted to see the train go.”
“I see,” said Alexander’s mother. “Well, I don’t blame him for being angry. But there is a better way to take care of those feelings. Do you think that your dragon can count? Tell him to count to ten before he says anything. Then if he still feels angry, I think that he will be able to say how he feels without mean words or hitting.”
“I don’t know,” said Alexander doubtfully, “but I’ll tell him.”
The next day was bright and sunny. It’s a perfect day to finish building my hideout, thought Alexander. All I need is something to cover it so that it will be cozy and cool inside.
Alexander ran into the kitchen, snatched a tablecloth off the kitchen table, and was headed back outside when he spied this note taped to the screen door: “Alexander, please don’t listen to the fox!”
So he didn’t. Alexander put the tablecloth back on the kitchen table. Then he just stood there for a moment and thought.
Suddenly Alexander tore through the house, threw open his bedroom door, and scrambled inside his closet. He pulled out tennis shoes and slippers. He pulled out rain boots and snow boots. Finally he pulled out an old sheet that he and his brother had used last fall as a circus tent. It would make a perfect cover for his hideout! Alexander grinned his crooked grin.
Pretty soon Alexander’s tummy began to make funny sounds. Uh-oh, Alexander thought. The lion must be hungry. I think he wants some cookies. Alexander went back into the kitchen. He was just reaching inside the cookie jar when he noticed this note taped on it: “Alexander, please don’t feed the lion!”
So he didn’t. Instead, Alexander went to find his mother. “I’m hungry, Mom! When’s lunch?”
“I’m glad that you asked,” his mother said. “I was just about to make it. Maybe you’d like to help me.”
Alexander ate all his sandwich, all his soup, two helpings of potato chips, and some chocolate pudding. “Now both of us feel better,” Alexander told his mother. “I guess the lion likes sandwiches too.”
“Even tummy-lions need a change from cookies,” agreed his mother, smiling.
Later that day Alexander and his little brother were playing with their building blocks. Alexander had built a monster-size castle with towers, thick walls, and a drawbridge. His little brother was working on a mouse-size house.
“I need one of these red blocks,” his little brother said, and he reached over and took one from the bottom of one of Alexander’s towers.
The tower started to topple, and suddenly, right before Alexander’s astonished eyes, his whole beautiful monster castle was in ruins.
His little brother got up and ran. Alexander ran after him. Just as Alexander grabbed his little brother by the arm and opened his mouth to shout angry, mean words at him, an arm appeared in the doorway, holding this large sign: “Alexander, please ask the dragon to count!”
So he did. Alexander helped the dragon count to ten; then he smiled his crooked grin, hugged his little brother, and asked him to help rebuild the monster castle. And it was bigger and better than before.

“My father wasn’t present growing up, but I had male role models (uncles, teachers, ward members) who cared about me. I wrote them notes or brought them cookies for Father’s Day. It’s also OK to skip the holiday and just celebrate it as another day we’ve been given here on earth.” —Chelsea R.

One young lady, a genealogist, was asked the question, “What if you find an undesirable character in your family tree, such as a pirate or convict or the like?” She answered, “My responsibility does not concern how he lived, but just that he lived and died. After all, I owe my existence to him, and my only way of paying that debt is to do the baptism and sealing work for him. It will be up to him to accept it.”

The way I motivated myself to do Personal Progress was to set a goal for when I would finish it. I wanted to get it done before my 16th birthday. Having that goal gave me something to shoot for and helped me pace myself. I was able to get it done two months before my birthday. So, my advice is: set a goal and work toward it.
Shirley H., 16, Arizona, USA

“When the announcement came in 2007 that a temple would be built in Manaus,” José says, “I wept for the great joy I felt, and I prayed that the Lord would allow me to live long enough to see the groundbreaking,” which occurred a year later. Now he prays that he will live to see the temple completed and his wife baptized so that they can be sealed.

A young woman sitting nearby quietly wept tears of joy as she remembered her own glorious growth from skepticism to investigation to testimony, a journey of increasing commitment that led her to be baptized in the River Jordan, somewhere near the spot where the Savior himself received the ordinance at the hand of John the Baptist.

Many units are now planning major youth conferences on a two-year or three-year basis rather than each year. Some have discovered that through careful scheduling, there are sites and facilities very close to home available for productive youth activities. One stake reported holding its youth conference at the stake center, utilizing the parking lot and grounds for some of the functions and the recreational hall and chapel for others. The report: “One of the finest youth conferences we have ever held!”

In a mountain valley, a small community is the home of a monastery with a declining number of aging monks. A stake Relief Society president, with many other compassionate service responsibilities, regularly checks on the well-being of the monks. She is the first to deliver goodies on days when they are permissible. She cares about their welfare just as she does about the members of her stake.

The converts for the most part were extremely poor. But they had been urged to save and scrimp to become a part of the great gathering. The first group to leave Wales consisted of some three-hundred-plus Saints who assembled at Swansea and there took a boat to Liverpool. At Liverpool it was necessary to divide the group, with 249 going on the ship Buena Vista and 77 on the Hartley, which was to follow. Elder Jones was to go with those on the Buena Vista. Compounding his many worries, his wife, Jane, had given birth to their daughter Claudia shortly before the departure date. It was first determined that she would remain behind and he would return for her later. She developed a different idea. After he was gone, she took passage with her baby and caught up with him at Council Bluffs, Iowa.

It was seven weeks’ sailing from Liverpool to New Orleans. Today we can scarcely imagine the misery of such a journey, with 250 people crowded on a relatively small ship for that period of time. It was necessary to take enough food for the entire trip. The shipping company was required by law to carry the basic food supplies, but the people were invited to bring other things to add taste to their meals.

At New Orleans the Buena Vista’s passengers were transferred to a riverboat which carried them to St. Louis. Though they had survived with minimum loss through the long journey across the sea, they were now faced with a plague of cholera. Between New Orleans and St. Louis and then, via another ship, up the Missouri to Council Bluffs, some sixty-seven died along the way. An individual would appear perfectly well one day and would expire the next. The boat stopped frequently along the way to permit burials.

At Council Bluffs, the first Welsh-speaking branch of the Church in America was organized. Here also the immigrants secured ox teams and wagons. These people had been miners and craftsmen. They knew nothing about driving oxen and handling a heavy wagon over a road that was really only a rutted trail. They had to be taught how to hook up and unhook, how to speak to the plodding oxen, how to care for them when their feet became sore. They left Council Bluffs on 13 July 1849 and spent 108 days traveling to the Salt Lake Valley.

On October 18 a terrible snowstorm struck when they were in the high country of Wyoming. Sixty head of their cattle died. Finally, on October 26, they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. It had taken them eight months to travel from Liverpool to Salt Lake City. One-fifth of their company had died of cholera, and others had been lost, including a few whose testimonies had withered along the way.
Today we can leave London around noon and arrive in Salt Lake City the same evening.

“Oh, Grandpa, isn’t it the neatest thing you’ve ever seen?” Jeff peered through the noseprint-smudged store window at a shiny red wagon. Sleek white letters on the side spelled Starlight Flyer.
“It’s a dandy, right enough.” Grandpa leaned closer to the glass. “It should be, for $49.95.”
“That much?”
“That much—plus tax.”
The corners of Jeff’s mouth drooped as he turned away from the window and headed home, followed by Grandpa. When they reached their driveway, Grandpa put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “I think your mother’s old wagon is still in the garage. Shall we take a look?”
Jeff followed Grandpa into the dark garage. Grandpa reached for the light switch, and piles of dusty toys appeared on shelves along the back wall. Grandpa rummaged through them. “I know it’s here somewhere. Let’s see—doll house, baseball mitts, pogo stick … wagon!” Grandpa pulled a shabby-looking wagon off the middle shelf and set it on the floor.
Jeff eyed it doubtfully. “It’s pretty beat-up, Grandpa.”
“Well-used, I’d say. Your mother loved this wagon. Your Uncle Matt would pull her in it around the yard for hours.”
“It doesn’t look nearly as nice as the one in the window. I sure would like to have that one.”
“It was a beauty, but $49.95 is a heap of money.”
“I could earn it, Grandpa. I know I could.”
“How?”
Jeff pondered silently a moment, then snapped his fingers. “I could use Mom’s wagon to run errands for people!”
Grandpa nodded slowly. “I reckon you could.”
Jeff scurried around the garage until he found a can of red paint. “I’ll give it a new coat of paint to impress my customers. Will you help me?”
Grandpa slapped Jeff on the back. “What are we waiting for?” They oiled the wheels until they rolled without a squeak, then carefully cleaned and painted the whole wagon. They were sitting on the back porch steps, admiring their handiwork, when Jeff’s mother came out of the house.
“My red wagon!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, ma’am! Jeffy’s going to use it to earn money for a brand new one.”
She walked around the wagon admiring the paint job. “Very nice! Tomorrow when the red paint’s dry I’ll repaint the white letters on the side, and it will look like new.” Jeff had noticed that there were raised letters on the side of the wagon, but he couldn’t read them under the red paint.
The next morning when Jeff went out to the garage, his mother was making one last stroke with her paintbrush. Jeff stared at the white letters. They leaned forward as if with speed and spelled Starlight Flyer. “Mom!” he said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you had a Starlight Flyer?”
She laughed. “I guess I’d just about forgotten. It’s fun seeing it again, though. A lot of wonderful memories are riding in that red wagon.” She sat down on the porch and started telling stories about her childhood and the old Starlight Flyer. Jeff tried to imagine her little enough to ride in the wagon while her brother pulled her around the yard. She smiled as she remembered, and Jeff smiled with her.
“You love this old wagon, don’t you, Mom?”
“Yes, Jeffy, I truly do. I didn’t realize how much until I saw it in the driveway yesterday.”
“I promise I’ll take real good care of it, Mom.”
“I know you will, Jeffy. And now I’d better go get some breakfast for my businessman son.”
Jeff hardly tasted his pancakes. He was too busy planning how he would earn $49.95. I’ll ask Mrs. Gallagher if I can help her bring her groceries home on Thursday. She always walks to the market.And maybe Mr. Corbett could use some help hauling his trash out to the street. Jeff’s thoughts raced faster than Dad’s computer. He would earn that brand-new, shiny, red Starlight Flyer.
Day after day Jeff pulled his mother’s old wagon through the neighborhood helping neighbor after neighbor, saving every cent he earned until one day he finally had enough.
“Grandpa! Grandpa!” he shouted. “I’ve earned $59.95—enough to pay tithing and still buy the Starlight Flyer. Can we go to the store and get it right now?”
Grandpa looked at the money in Jeff’s outstretched hands. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”
“I told you I could do it.”
“You did at that. Let’s head down to the toy store and see about getting you that wagon.”
At the store, Jeff pressed his nose against the window again, staring at the bright red wagon. Grandpa’s head was right next to his. “Sure is a dandy, right enough,” Grandpa said. “And it’s only $39.99. You’re in luck, Jeffy—it’s on sale!”
Jeff let out a whoop and ran inside the store. He stood by the wagon display, running his hand over the smooth red paint and the white, slightly raised letters. He examined the wheels and the axles, the tongue, and the bed of the wagon. His hand moved more and more slowly.
Grandpa came in and stood beside Jeff. He watched as his grandson took a step back and frowned at the wagon. “What’s wrong, Jeffy? Don’t you like it anymore?”
“Yeah, Grandpa, I like it. But … it just doesn’t look as good as I remembered.”
“It looks pretty good to me. Clean and shiny, no dents anywhere.”
“I know, but Mom’s wagon just feels better to me. And besides, I took really good care of it, and I think it’s built better than this one. Look at these wheels—they don’t look nearly as strong as the ones on Mom’s wagon. And see how the tongue is hooked to the front axle—that isn’t as good either.”
Grandpa examined each part of the wagon, rubbed his chin, and smiled. “I think you’re right, Jeffy. Your mother’s wagon is better than this one, and not only because it’s built better. It’s better because you fixed it up with your own hands and because you took such good care of it, and because your mother’s childhood memories are still being pulled around every time you take it out of the garage. Your mother loves that old wagon, Jeffy, and I think you do too.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” Jeff looked down at the new wagon one last time and turned toward the door. “Let’s go home, Grandpa. I want to take my sister for a ride in my Starlight Flyer.”

“You know, this reminds me of something that happened to me about a year ago in the Netherlands.”
Great. An inspiring missionary story. I sighed and settled against my pillows to listen, resolving that nothing he could say would make me change my mind.
“One afternoon, my companion noticed we’d run out of milk, and since we had a really busy day ahead of us, we decided to pick some up at a small store on our way home from our last teaching appointment. We’d been walking everywhere all day long, and we were pretty tired by the time we bought the milk. The girl at the register rushed us through her line without really looking at us, and it wasn’t until we made it back to our apartment that I noticed we had more money than before we’d bought the milk.”
I lifted my eyebrows at him. “Really? How so?”
“Money in the Netherlands is called guilders. A five-guilder piece is about the same size as a 500-guilder piece, and they look alike, too. As part of my change, she should’ve given me a five guilder, but instead, she’d given me a 500 by mistake. So, in American terms, she’d given me five dollars back instead of five cents.”
“Wow. Of course, you took the money back, right?”
“I wasn’t going to. I mean, it was her mistake, not mine, right? It was late, we were both tired, and it was a good 15-minute walk back to the store. Plus, an extra five dollars would’ve helped us out that month. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more angry I became thinking about the position that girl’s thoughtlessness had put me in. I knew I wasn’t a dishonest person, and I hated feeling like I was one if I didn’t take back an insignificant 500-guilder piece.”
“It’s not fair.”
“No, Jenn, it’s not. Everything isn’t always fair. If it was, we’d never learn a thing. Realizing this, my companion and I walked back to the store, barely arriving before closing time. The girl was still there, counting the register’s money, rubbing her head and looking pretty worried. She looked up when we came in, both of us in our suits and nametags, and said, ‘You two were here before, weren’t you?’ I simply said yes, and put the 500 guilder on the counter between us. ‘We bought some milk today, and I think you gave us too much change.’ She looked so relieved I thought she was going to cry. ‘I’ve been trying to count my register’s money for almost an hour now, and I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong.’ She looked at us curiously then said, ‘You’re Mormons, aren’t you?’ I laughed and asked her what gave us away. She laughed, too, before saying that she couldn’t believe we’d come back. When I asked her why, she said, ‘Because no one here has ever done that before.’
“Later, the realization came to me that we may have been the first real contact she’d ever had with the Church, and even though we hadn’t taught her a discussion, we’d left her with the knowledge that Mormons are honest people, and that maybe it would help her become a little curious about our church.” He picked up my receipt and fiddled with it before continuing.
“One of the questions you’re asked during a temple recommend interview is whether or not you’re honest in all of your dealings. Honesty is a hard principle to live—harder than most people realize. There will be plenty of times in your life when being honest won’t leave you with a good, warm feeling at first. Often times, you may walk away feeling frustrated—even angry. Especially concerning financial matters, where every dime counts. Five-hundred guilders here, $150 there may seem insignificant. But little by little, something much more valuable is being lost: your integrity.
“Strengthening your integrity through honesty takes a lot of hard work—work that often goes unnoticed or unappreciated. But the payoff comes when you realize that each time you’re honest, it’s that much easier to be honest when the next challenge comes around. That’s when you know you’re building character, one of the most important works you can spend your time on. Your character and integrity are far too precious to sell for $150—or for 500 guilders.”

When it was time for Erik’s Eagle project, he found plenty of people willing to help. “I always went out helping the other guys with their projects, and they helped me in return,” he says.
The cemetery in Patagonia sits on a hill and overlooks the town. Although it is still used, the cemetery doesn’t receive continual maintenance, and many of the headstones were buried, and weeds and trash had covered others. For his Eagle project, Erik, with the help of his family, ward members, and friends from the community, cleaned the cemetery.