Gospel Story Finder

Me … Jane, by Patrick McDonnell. How does a little girl grow up to work with chimpanzees in Africa? This lovely 2012 Caldecott Honor book tells the story of Jane Goodall as a very young naturalist.

I looked at them as they finished their story; their faces shone with happiness. In what I thought would be a closing question, I asked in halting Spanish what they were now doing in the Church. Among them were a bishop, a Sunday School superintendent, another bishop, an executive secretary, and a mission presidency counselor.
I turned to the father, Manuel, and asked what he was doing. He replied that he was serving as a counselor in a bishopric. I was ready to finish with one last item when one of the brothers added that the bishop to whom their father was serving as a counselor was one of their brothers.
Then came one of the choice moments of my interviewing life. Turning to the bishop son, Víctor, I asked, “How does it feel to have your father as your counselor?”
With poignancy, he gently answered, “I have great love for my father. He has always counseled me well in my life. He has been an example to me. He has been my inspiration. When I have had difficulties in my life he has helped me. Who else could I ask to counsel me but my father?”
Tears began to well up in my eyes, and I slowly turned to Manuel: “How do you feel about serving your son as a counselor?”
In the great dignity natural to the Spanish tongue, Manuel Cerda softly, slowly, and in an emotionally quivering voice said, “I have great love for my sons. It is an honor to counsel them. It is an honor to advise others to listen to them. I believe I feel something like God the Father felt when he said, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him.’ (Matt. 17:5.) I understand well love between father and son.”
I turned and went around the circle again. “What,” I asked, “brought about this family love?”
The father, Manuel Cerda summed up the answers of the others—“It was the gospel that changed our home. It taught us to see each other as eternal friends. It has taught me affection and love. It has taught me to esteem my children. We fight against anything that seeks to divide us, that affects our esteem for each other. The truth has changed our lives.”

Jack Stone, who was in charge of the first seminary pageant several years ago in Cardston, told of another student who had been changed by the annual event.
“One student,” Brother Stone said, “who had become inactive and dropped out of seminary, asked to be in the pageant at the last minute. We had a few extra costumes and there were several crowd scenes, so we put him in those. That year the pageant was on the Book of Mormon. As we sang the finale, the entire cast came down on the stage. It was the part in the Book of Mormon where Christ visits the people in America after his resurrection. We sang ‘I Know That My Redeemer Lives.’ It was a touching scene. I remember looking over at the boy and seeing tears stream down his cheeks. He’d been changed because of his involvement.”

Garibaldi was offered titles and money for himself and for his children, but he would not accept them. He chose instead to settle with his children on a small farm.

Five or six hundred of these last Saints crossed the Mississippi and camped on the riverbank in Iowa. They had only blankets and brush bowers for shelter. None of them had food for more than a few days, and many were very sick. Of all the Saints, these suffered the most.
On October 9, a miracle occurred. Flocks of quail flew into the camps, landing on the ground and even on the tables. The hungry Saints were able to catch the birds. The meat saved many people from starving and stirred their hearts as they realized that the Lord was caring for them.
Their fellow Saints had not forgotten them either. Many came back from the Missouri River to help. Others went into neighboring cities to seek money to aid the poor and sick. In the end, the refugees were rescued and divided among the various camps in Iowa, a few even reaching Winter Quarters.

Recently, for Thanksgiving, I drove to my sister’s house, where the family was visiting for a few days. Opening the front door, I found Grandpa in the middle of the room, seated in a wheelchair, a yardstick on the floor beside him. He was wearing a yellow cardigan and a pair of brown pants like his old work pants, except these weren’t faded or stained. I instinctively looked for his cane but didn’t find it. When I bent down to hug him, I felt his bony shoulders and his whiskery face.
He asked me how my studies were, would I get straight A’s? Did I ever see my cousin who just got married? We were talking like that when my sister Kris came into the room from downstairs; Tony, her two-year-old son, trailed behind her. After a while she went into the kitchen to see about dinner while I played with Tony. Grandpa remained in the wheelchair, his hands in his lap, his head lolling forward in sleep. Finally I escaped for a few minutes to take my overnight bag downstairs. Above me I could hear Tony tumbling around on the floor, and I suddenly wanted him to know Grandpa by his walking sticks—the staff, the sceptor, the garden implement. Not Grandpa as a shrunken body in a wheelchair, who went only from the bed to the table to the bathroom.
In the kitchen I watched Kris slice vegetables, her fingers moving quickly. When I heard Tony’s laughter from the living room, quiet at first then louder, I went to the doorway to see what he was doing. Grandpa was in the middle of the room as I had left him, but instead of sleeping, he was leaning forward in his chair, his knobby hands wrapped around the wooden yardstick that had been on the floor. He kept the other end of the yardstick poised above Tony, who lay on his back a few feet away watching him.
When Grandpa lowered the yardstick toward Tony’s belly sticking out from his striped T shirt, Tony giggled and tossed his head; then, feeling the tickle of wood on his stomach, he rolled away, his shrill giggles filling the room. And I heard the deeper laughter of my grandfather. Looking into his gray eyes, I saw again the face I had known when I knelt next to the wooden giraffe.

Construction work on the Quezon City Chapel progressed fairly well. However, I encountered a little problem—the construction approach and methods used in the Philippines varied from the construction approach and methods I was used to in the United States. For instance, it was hard for me to get used to seeing so much timber set up prior to actual digging of the foundations but I learned soon that I cannot change the methods used and expect to get chapels constructed, at least right away. But one method that I insisted the contractors use is the use of pumped concrete to the ridged frames so that there will be a monolithic pour and not have any cold joints in the truss structure. The workers were not familiar with this method but later on the men worked well in handling the moveable pipes for the flow of the concrete.

As the newly called homemaking leader in a ward in Highland Village, Texas, Margo Merrill faced the seemingly impossible task of turning scraps of donated fabric into quilts for charity. She knew she lacked the experience to piece a quilt, but she began with what she could do: she pressed the scraps, then cut them and sorted the colors. She then brought packets of fabric to homemaking meeting, where she asked help from other sisters to arrange and sew them into tops, then quilt and bind the coverlets. The sisters gladly shared their talents, and the results pleased them all.

Red Ribbon Rosie Tired of always coming in second to her best friend, Rosie cheats and wins a race—but loses her friend, even after saying that she was sorry. Now what will happen on Field Day? An easy-to-read book.Jean Marzollo7–9 years

Luke’s senior year was anything but normal.
After starting his senior year at the same Mississippi high school he’d been attending since he was a freshman, and with the same friends he’d known since age nine, Luke’s family moved to Alabama.
“I wasn’t too excited about the move,” Luke N., 18, admits. But he still tried to make the most of it. For one thing, he joined the tennis team at his new school.
And then he got to play all of one match before his whole world turned upside down.
Tennis? Canceled. Prom? Double canceled. Attending church? Attending school? Attending seminary?
You guessed it. All canceled.
Like the rest of the globe, Luke’s daily routine shifted gears in a massive way once the COVID-19 pandemic interfered with just about every area of his life.
“It’s definitely been disappointing,” he says. For Luke, the biggest heartache of all was not knowing for sure what’s going to happen with his mission call.
It’d be understandable for anybody in Luke’s situation to feel discouraged, but he says he finds heavenly help every day. “I see a lot of blessings in disguise.”

When I was growing up in Guatemala, my family owned a factory that made uniforms for sports teams.
My dad wanted the children in our family to learn to work hard. We helped him in the factory. I got in trouble a lot when I was little. I always seemed to break things! But when I was older, my dad let me take care of the machines.
My dad paid us for the work we did. Then he would ask, “What are you going to do with your money?” I knew what the right answer was: “Pay my tithing and save for my mission.”
When I was about 13, our business lost a lot of money. We had to get rid of a lot of our machines. Instead of having two hundred workers, we had fewer than five. They worked in our garage at home.
I had always paid my tithing, but I never really understood how important it was. Then I learned an amazing lesson. One Saturday morning I heard my parents talking quietly. My dad told my mom that there was enough money to either pay tithing or buy food. There wasn’t enough for both. I was worried. What would my dad do?
On Sunday I saw my dad hand an envelope to our branch president. He chose to pay tithing! I was glad he did, but I was also worried. What would we eat?
The next morning some people knocked on our door. They told my dad that they needed uniforms right away. Usually people paid us after the order was finished. But these people paid my dad that day, even before we had made the uniforms!
In one weekend, I learned a beautiful lesson that has lasted me a lifetime. The law of tithing helps us build our faith and show our gratitude for Heavenly Father. Paying tithing is a blessing!

On 6 April 1830, a group of about 40 women and men met in the home of Peter Whitmer Sr. in Fayette, New York to organize the Lord’s true Church. The Church became known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the small group of saints accepted Joseph Smith as the president of the Church and as their prophet. The following year, it was revealed to Joseph Smith that “the keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth, and from thence shall the gospel roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 65:2).

We did not know it at the time, but in 1853 Brigham Young, in speaking of temples, said, “The time will come when … we shall build … on the top, groves and fish ponds” (Deseret News Weekly, 30 Apr. 1853, 46).
In 1924 Elder James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve wrote, “I have long seen the possible erection of a great pavilion on the north side of the Tabernacle, seating perhaps twenty thousand people or even double that number, with amplifiers capable of making all hear the addresses given from the Tabernacle stands, and in addition to this a connection with the broadcasting system, with receivers in the several chapels or other meeting houses throughout the intermountain region” (journal of James E. Talmage, 29 Aug. 1924, Special Collections and Manuscripts, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah).
In 1940 the First Presidency and the Twelve had their architect draw up a plan of a building that would seat 19,000 and would stand where this building stands. That was 60 years ago. They thought about it, they talked about it, but finally they dropped the idea entirely.
These statements and actions were wonderfully prophetic. We knew nothing about them. All of them have come to our attention since we began this construction.
We have not built a temple with trees and fishponds on the roof. But on this edifice we have many trees and running water. Brigham Young may have foreseen this structure very near the temple. We have what Brother Talmage thought of, and much, much more. These services will not only be heard by all who are seated in the Conference Center, they will be carried by radio, television, and cable, and they will be transmitted by satellite to Europe, to Mexico, to South America. We reach far beyond the intermountain area of which Brother Talmage spoke. We reach beyond the confines of the United States and Canada. We essentially reach across the world.

Of all the wars that have afflicted the United States, none was so costly in suffering and death, none so filled with venom and hatred as was the American Civil War. There are few more touching scenes in history than that of April 9, 1865, at Appomattox, Virginia, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. General Grant wrote a brief statement of terms under which the soldiers of the South were free to return to their homes with their personal sidearms, their private horses, and baggage.
There was no recrimination, no demand for reparations, no apologies required or punishment given. This has gone down in the chronicles of war as a great and magnificent act of mercy.

Marjhory B., age 9, Catalonia, Spain
We made a family songbook with the new hymns translated in Portuguese. We are excited to sing the new hymns at home and at church.

In 1913 she learned of the restored gospel and was baptized in the Danube River, the ordinance being performed late one stormy night in order to avoid religious persecution. “My heart swelled with a feeling of satisfaction, and at my confirmation I felt myself filled with a new power,” she later said. Her husband, “always friendly toward the Church,” never did become a member.

The metric system was proposed first in France by Gabriel Moulton in 1670. It was tested, changed, and made as simple as possible over the next two hundred years by many scientists and educators. Basic to the metric system is the rule of ten. This means that any unit in the metric system can be made into the next larger or the next smaller unit by multiplying or dividing by ten.
In King Edward’s system, if you want to divide feet into inches, you divide by twelve; if you want to divide a yard into feet, you divide by three; if you want to divide a gallon into quarts, you divide by four. This can get complicated at times. In the metric system, you always multiply or divide by ten. Easy to remember, right?

The troubles predicted by Elder Taylor suddenly struck during one of the first nights out. Below deck nearly 400 souls were asleep in the tightly stacked berths along each side of the “extensive bedroom”—about 30 yards long and 8 wide. “In the dead of the night” a 13-year-old lad excitedly leaped from his bunk and at the top of his voice screamed over and over again the name of a fellow passenger. The boy’s parents and a brother and sister could not silence or subdue him. “It soon became apparent,” noted passenger Wilson Nowers, “that he was possessed of an evil spirit.” Through the administrations of the priesthood, the evil spirit was dispelled.

“Well, of course,” Mother said, “there was that one year when the strongest winds ever to blow across the face of the earth carried off one of my leaf houses while I was sound asleep. I couldn’t find a trace of it the next morning, even though I looked everywhere. But,” she chuckled, “other than that time, I always enjoyed playing in my leaf house the following day.”

I was in class one day sitting next to my friend. We were getting ready to take an exam, and he told me he was really nervous. I felt that I needed to teach him how to pray. Then we both bowed our heads and silently prayed for help on the test. I’m grateful prayer could help calm my friend’s nerves.
Abigail, Uruguay