Gospel Story Finder

Almost two years ago, wallowing with the muddy pigs in the onslaught of the big typhoon, a trip to China had seemed a remote possibility.
Since that night, Yung Fai had not smoked one cigarette. Staying away from the racetrack would have been tough if it hadn’t been for the rebuilding of their house, which took every spare minute and dollar. Members of his sister’s church had showed up every day to help them. At first, Yung Fai had balked at staying with a church member while their house was being reconstructed. But the bed was so dry and the rice so moist that he soon forgot his apprehensions.

Our friend Ann has a nonmember husband and was not active in the Church herself for a few years. Yet three of her four children are active; two sons have served missions and have been married in the temple. When we asked Ann how she had kept her children active in the Church, she said, “I don’t think it was anything I did, but rather that they had close friends in the Church who set good examples. When the friends decided to go on missions, my boys decided to go, too.”

I first began to understand the significance of the Atonement when my grandfather was dying. After attending law school, I was studying for the California bar exam when my mother called and said if I wanted to see my grandfather before he died, I better come to Utah. My grandfather, who was 86 years old, was very ill. He was so pleased to see me and share his testimony.
He had three concerns:
1. He loved his 10 children very much. They were all good people. He wanted them all to be temple worthy.
2. His father was one of the young men who had carried members of the Martin handcart company across the Sweetwater River. His father had died when my grandfather was three years old, and he looked forward to seeing him and hoped his father and other family members would approve of his life.
3. Finally, and most importantly, he told me how he looked forward to meeting the Savior. He referred to the Savior as the “Keeper of the Gate,” a reference to 2 Nephi 9:41. He told me that he hoped he had been sufficiently repentant to qualify for the Savior’s mercy.
All of us have sinned, and it is only through the Atonement that we can obtain mercy and live with God. I can remember to this day the great love that Grandfather had for the Savior and the appreciation he had for the Atonement.

When I was a senior in high school I was excited to be called to serve as a member of the Amarillo Texas Stake’s youth conference committee. Most of the planning for the conference was left up to an enthusiastic group of about a dozen young people. Our committee met a few Sundays a month for almost a year at our stake center, an hour’s drive from my home. We also dedicated several hours in between meetings to researching ideas and praying for inspiration. I could see that serving on the committee was bringing me closer to the Lord. Although I had to travel an hour each way to the meetings, I felt good about what I was doing.
Generally, I enjoyed having uninterrupted quiet time to myself in my car on those Sunday afternoons to ponder the items we had discussed at our meeting or just to think. However, as the seasons changed and the hours of daylight shortened, I found that more of my drive home was in the dark. Even though I had had my driver’s license for about a year, something about driving on the highway alone at night made me uneasy.
One night was particularly distressing. Although the roads were relatively straight and safe, I was paralyzed by fear. I managed to go only half the speed of the other cars on the highway. My knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel. I poured every ounce of my consciousness into focusing on the road ahead of me and, after a few miles, was nearly exhausted by the effort. I realized that by driving so slowly I was only prolonging my terror, but try as I might, I could not make myself go any faster.
Keeping my eyes open and my hands on the wheel, I said a fervent prayer aloud, asking that I might be comforted. I thanked the Lord for the opportunity that I had to serve Him while I was on that committee and asked that He would grant me the ability to fulfill my calling—which included traveling to and from my meetings.
Immediately after I finished my prayer, a scripture I had studied in seminary came to my mind. I had heard the words a hundred times: “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).
Simple as it may seem, those words were an answer to my prayer. Immediately I felt the comfort of the Holy Ghost reassuring me that as long as I did the things the Lord expected of me, I would be taken care of. I also knew that if I was obedient to the laws of the land by wearing my seatbelt and not speeding, I would be doing all I could to allow for Heavenly Father’s protection.
Relief swept over me following my appeal to the Lord. I am grateful that my seminary teacher encouraged me to learn the scripture mastery scriptures. That night I learned firsthand what a blessing familiarity with the scriptures can be.

One friend told me of an experience he had with his father more than 40 years earlier, when he was a teenager. My friend played on the high school basketball team in a small, predominantly Latter-day Saint town in Wyoming. One night a few of the other basketball players got into some trouble. Later my friend’s father said to him, “It’s sad that this happened. I know if you had been there, you would never have allowed such a thing to occur.” This statement of trust expanded the boy’s trust limit with his father as nothing else ever did. It was suddenly easier to talk to his father about matters that demanded trust.

One evening my mom read “The Secret Giver” from the December 2008 Friend to us. We liked the story a lot and thought it was a great idea. So, we made a plan with our mom and decided who we would give gifts to for Christmas and when we would do it. We even did some detective work to discover what some of our recipients would like. We dressed in dark clothes and planned to drop the presents and run. We thought that we were just having fun, but we got more than fun out of this service mission. We felt really good inside after delivering the presents, and we were excited about doing something nice for others. We are already thinking about next year’s “secret giver” mission.

Because joining the Church in Spain requires much sacrifice in breaking from established tradition, as it does in some other parts of the world, members in Spain are all the more dedicated. After Manuel and María Trancosco were visited by two missionaries in 1976, Manuel prayed about their message and studied the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. When a spiritual confirmation came to him while at his job as a mechanic, he ran home to ask the elders to baptize him immediately.

Since the family’s conversion, Manuel has devoted himself to serving in many different callings, despite a work schedule that starts at six in the morning and ends at ten at night. The family also had enough faith to drive their tiny car to the Swiss Temple, some 1,200 kilometers to the north. Their testimonies were strengthened as they traveled, for each time they stopped to ask directions, they found someone who spoke Spanish. Manuel and María were sealed to their four children and have now added four more to their eternal family.

Many years ago, there lived an unusual man who chose to live underground. Some people even called him “the human mole,” because moles are small burrowing animals that spend most of their lives beneath the earth’s surface.

Although no one is small enough to crawl through the dark earthen tunnels inhabited by moles, thousands of people have visited the Fresno Underground Gardens, an estate created by Baldasare Forestiere. This unusual “house” is a short distance north of Fresno, California, and has been open to the public since 1954.

Mr. Forestiere was born in Messina, Sicily, in 1879. When he was 21, he came to America and worked in the underground subways of New York City.

Later, Mr. Forestiere used his savings to move to California. He bought 800 hectares of land near Fresno, which was like a desert in those days before an irrigation dam could be built. Temperatures there reached as high as 120 degrees, and Mr. Forestiere found such heat very uncomfortable. He also found that he was unable to plant fruit trees because the earth was parched and hard.

Remembering how cool it had been working down in the subways in New York, he decided to make tunnels to escape the heat. At first, he was going to dig only a few rooms to live in. But his digging lasted for 40 years and his underground rooms and passageways extended for three hectares. Most of the rooms were built three meters below the surface of the ground. In some places, he also dug a “second story” about seven meters down.

Although he was only 1.6 m, Mr. Forestiere hauled hundreds of tons of earth with his wheelbarrow. He had a natural talent for designing rooms and passageways with the strongest forms of construction known—the arch, the column, and the dome. He created an interesting variety of rooms, grottoes, and sunlit patios beneath the ground.

The underground architect’s first living quarters consisted of two rooms with some interesting features. He carved seats into the sides of the walls and made notches to hold shelves. Skylight openings above each room let in the natural light and air. In wintertime, they were covered with glass to keep out the rain.

Eventually, he constructed a more elaborate apartment that included two bedrooms and a living room, kitchen, chapel, library, and bathroom. He had a snugly recessed bed, a slide-away table to provide additional space, and two fireplaces. He built sliding windows in the kitchen and a half-wall picture window in one bedroom. He also made a “see through” or peephole so that if he heard someone coming, he could see in advance who it was.

After Mr. Forestiere had lived in his home for some time, he planted flowers, vegetables, shrubs, vines, and trees in certain sections of his underground maze where they could receive the proper sunlight and air. He experimented with various sizes and styles of skylights for this purpose. Many of the trees were grown in planters placed in the center of the rooms and gardens.

Some of the trees bear strange combinations of fruit, the result of Mr. Forestiere’s experimental grafting. His “Second Story Tree,” grown seven meters underground, produces seven different kinds of citrus fruit—navel and Valencia oranges, sweet and sour lemons, tangerines, grapefruits, and cheedro (a fruit native to Sicily). Other plants grown in the underground gardens include grape, wild mulberry, Chinese date, hibiscus, rose, date palm, avocado, almond, quince, strawberry bush, Bartlett pear, coronation pear, fig, Rose of Sharon, and loquat. There is also a carob tree, the beans from which flour and chocolate can be made.

To obtain nourishment for his plants, Mr. Forestiere made many trips in his Model T Ford pickup to bring back the rich loam of ancient lakebeds 20 km. away. Water at the necessary levels was provided by a well and pump. Mr. Forestiere even constructed an aquarium for keeping goldfish and tropical fish, with places for watching them above and under the ground.

In recent years, man has left the earth and walked on the moon. He has built submarines that became temporary homes beneath the surface of the seas. A number of science-fiction books have been written about people who have lived underground. However, it is truly remarkable that this talented man, more than 50 years ago, built a home so livable, so interesting, and so rare that thousands of visitors come each year to marvel at his accomplishment.

We provide for our children as we teach them how to work. Let me tell you about my grandson Jacob. He did not want to go to school. His mother had tried so many things. Finally she sat him down and said, “Daddy’s job is to go to work and earn money. My job is to stay home and take care of you and your brothers and sister. And your job, Jacob, is to go to school.” When Jacob understood the principle, he accepted it and went to school.

My little brother, Joel, and I had been waiting for days to take our friend Robby to see the lights and the manger scene on Temple Square. Ever since we’d mentioned going, Robby had been counting the days.
You see, Robby had never seen Temple Square at Christmastime, and this was his first Christmas outside of a hospital in two years. He still can’t walk, and his right hand and arm are all crooked and bent. The only way that he can get around is in his silver wheelchair with someone pushing him.
Robby couldn’t go to a lot of places. He didn’t go to Primary, so Joel and I tried to take some Primary to him. We’d go over to his house, sit by his wheelchair, sing him the songs, and tell him the stories we’d learned in Primary. Robby loved it, and all week long he’d have us repeat what we’d done in Primary.
One afternoon in December we told Robby the Christmas story about Jesus being born in the manger. When we finished, he sighed and said, “Oh, I wish I could have been one of the shepherds who visited Jesus on that special night. Or one of the Wise Men who later followed the star. I would like to have seen the Baby Jesus and given Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
“There’s a manger scene on Temple Square,” Joel said. “It’s not the real one, but it looks real.”
Robby’s eyes got big, and his smile seemed to go from the tip of his chin to the ends of his ears. “That’s where I’d like to go for Christmas,” he said. Then his smile disappeared. “But I don’t see how I could,” he said, running his good hand over his wheelchair.
Robby had recently moved to Salt Lake City. He was the only child in his family, and his mom and dad traveled a lot. They didn’t ever seem to have time to take Robby anywhere. Of course, Robby had Mrs. Helber, who took care of him while his mom and dad were away; but she was older and didn’t drive a car.
“We’ll take you to Temple Square,” Joel declared one afternoon as we all sat at Robby’s window and watched a million snowflakes flutter to the ground. “We’ll get Dad to help us,” he said firmly, “won’t we, Jeremy?”
“Do you really think you could?” Robby asked, glancing at me pleadingly. “I’d like going, Jeremy—more than anything else!”
I smiled. “We’ll get you to Temple Square,” I told him. “That’s a promise.”
Now it was the Friday before Christmas. Joel and I had stopped by Robby’s place late in the afternoon to see if he would be ready to go that evening. Robby’s mom and dad were gone, and we could hear Mrs. Helber in the kitchen fixing supper. It was getting dark, and Robby asked anxiously, “Your dad won’t forget will he?”
I patted Robby on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be back in an hour and a half to pick you up. Dad won’t forget.”
But Dad did forget! He was getting ready for a meeting over at the church when we came home.
“To a meeting?” Joel gasped.
“But what about taking Robby to Temple Square?” I cried.
Dad groaned and hit his forehead with his hand. “Oh, no! Was that tonight?”
Joel and I couldn’t even nod. We just stared, suddenly feeling sick.
“Brother Thomas asked me to go over to a planning meeting,” Dad explained. “When he talked to me this morning, I forgot about our trip with Robby. I’m really sorry, boys. Can we go another time? How about tomorrow?”
“Robby’s been counting on going tonight,” Joel mumbled. But I don’t think Dad heard. I could tell that Dad felt really bad; he doesn’t usually forget.
After supper Dad left for his meeting, and Joel and I told Mom we were going over to Robby’s. We put on our coats, hats, gloves, and boots and stepped out into the dark night. The snow crunched under our boots, and big puffs of steam blew out of our mouths and noses as we breathed.
“How are we ever going to explain this to Robby?” Joel wanted to know when we were outside. “We just can’t let him down. He’s been waiting for this for a long time.”
“I don’t know what we can do. Dad’s already gone, and he won’t be back till late.”
Joel grabbed my arm and whispered, “Maybe we could take him, Jeremy.”
“Us?” I said. “That’s seven or eight, maybe ten blocks. Who’d we get to drive us down there?”
“We’ll push him in his wheelchair. We can do it!” Joel coaxed. “Most of it’s downhill. Besides, we just have to take him, Jeremy! We can’t tell him that Dad forgot.”
I thought for a minute. “We’ll ask Robby,” I said. “If he wants to go in his wheelchair, we’ll take him.”
When we got to Robby’s place, he was waiting right by the front door, with his coat and hat on. A scarf was tied around his neck, and a blanket was tucked in around his legs. “Let’s go,” he greeted us. “I already told Mrs. Helber good-bye.”
I pulled off my gloves and stared at the floor. “Dad can’t come,” I explained. “He had to go to a meeting.” I glanced up and saw Robby’s smile droop. For a minute I wondered if he was going to cry.
“But we’ll take you,” Joel blurted out. “We’ll push you. Do you still want to go?”
Robby’s smile returned, and he nodded furiously.
“It will be cold,” I warned. “And it’s a long way just walking.”
“We can make it!” Robby grinned. “I know we can.”
A shiver of excitement tickled the back of my neck as I gripped the handles on Robby’s wheelchair and began pushing it down the sidewalk.
We walked block after block. Since it was mostly downhill, it wasn’t hard pushing Robby at first, but after a while all that walking made my legs tired. Joel tried to help, but he could barely see over the back of the chair, so I had to do most the pushing.
I was getting a little worried about whether I’d remembered the way right, because I had never gone to Temple Square without a grownup, when Robby called out, “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Joel asked.
“That gold statue lighted up on top of the pointy building.”
Joel and I smiled. “That’s the Angel Moroni on top of the temple,” I said. “That’s where we’re going.”
“You mean that all we have to do is follow the light and we’ll find the place?”
“That’s all,” I said.
Robby smiled back at me and said, “We have our very own angel to show us the way.”
Robby wouldn’t take his eyes off the gold statue on top of the temple. And I wasn’t worried anymore because I knew we’d soon be there.
A few flakes of snow started to fall as we crossed the last street. We could see most of the spires of the temple now, and we could see the walls around Temple Square.
Joel led the way as we squeezed through the crowds of people and made our way inside the wide gates. My legs were tired, and my cheeks were numb, but I kept pushing, knowing that we were almost to the manger scene. All the while, Robby was straining forward to see the colored lights.
I glanced back toward the street and suddenly realized that it was blocks and blocks back to our house—all uphill! A sick feeling came over me, and I wondered if we would be able to push Robby back home. Then I saw Robby’s face as he stared at the Christmas lights that Joel and I had told him so much about.
Temple Square was sparkling with thousands of lights—in the trees, on the bushes, everywhere. And they all seemed to reflect off Robby’s beaming face. “It’s beautiful!” he whispered. “More beautiful than you said.”
We came to the manger scene in the middle of a big, snow-covered lawn just as a light shone down on a group of shepherds. A voice began to speak, and quiet music began to play.
Robby didn’t say anything. He just stared. The voice told the Christmas story almost the way Joel and I had told it to Robby, but it was so much better here, because we could see it almost like it had happened so many years before.
Then the light shone on the manger, and we saw Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Finally the light fell on the Wise Men who were following the special star to see the Baby Jesus. Robby turned around and whispered, “We followed a kind of star too.” He pointed above us toward the Angel Moroni. “Tonight we were like the Wise Men.”
Three times that night we listened to the Christmas story, standing in the cold and looking at the manger. Even when Robby started to shiver from the cold, he wouldn’t let us leave the beautiful manger scene.
But it was getting late, and I knew we’d have to go back. We pushed Robby through the gates, and I stopped and gulped. My feet were numb, my nose and cheeks burned with cold, and an icy wind had started to blow, making tears come to my eyes. I was so tired that I wanted to cry, but I knew that I couldn’t, not with Robby and Joel depending on me. Instead, I bowed my head and said a little prayer, asking Heavenly Father to help us get home safely.
After going about a block, a voice called, “Jeremy! Joel! Robby!” I turned, and there was Dad hurrying across the street, waving to us. He rushed up to us and hugged Joel and me and patted Robby on the shoulder. “I thought you were lost for sure,” he panted, looking more worried than I had ever seen him. “Then I remembered how much you had been counting on bringing Robby here.”
A few minutes later we reached our car. Dad put Robby and Joel on the back seat and set the wheelchair in the trunk. I climbed up front with Dad.
“I hope you’re not mad,” I said. “We just had to bring Robby.” I looked down at my hands. “We won’t do it again, but we couldn’t let Robby down, not at Christmastime.”
Dad took a deep breath as he started the engine. “Sometimes there are more important things than meetings,” he whispered. “I learned that tonight.” He put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me against him.
“It was so beautiful,” I whispered. I could feel a lump in my throat. “We followed the light and went right to the manger, just like the Wise Men.” I was quiet for a moment. “But we didn’t leave a gift,” I mumbled. “Not like the other Wise Men did. We didn’t have any gold or frankincense or myrrh.”
Dad held me close for a moment while he drove. Then he told me, “Oh, but you gave an even better gift. You gave a gift of love to Robby. What you gave to Robby, you were really giving to Jesus, and a gift of love is the very best gift of all.”
“Are you sure, Dad?” I whispered.
“I’m sure,” he said.

One simple yet profound experience with the Prophet and his family made a deep impact on young Benjamin Johnson. One Sunday morning he was sitting with Joseph in private conversation when two of Joseph and Emma’s children came into the room—“all so nice, bright and sweet, and calling to them my attention, [Joseph] said, ‘Benjamin, look at these children, how could I help loving their mother.’”
“To me,” Brother Johnson wrote, Emma “appeared the queen of his heart and of his home” (Johnson Letter, page 4).

SHAWN: In elementary school I was diagnosed with learning disabilities, and I had a real hard time with the kids teasing me about it. In the sixth grade I started smoking cigarettes because there was a group of people there I could relate to. They let me into their crowd, and all I had to do was smoke cigarettes.

SHAWN: I remember my parents saying to me: If you use drugs, you’re going to be a freak. You aren’t going to be normal. I used drugs. I felt pretty normal. I decided they had been lying to me.

SHAWN: In the seventh grade I started using alcohol, and in the ninth grade I added marijuana and speed. Before I started using drugs, and for a while afterward, I danced, I sang, I played baseball, I wrestled. As the drug use progressed, I stopped dancing. I quit baseball. I backed out of everything. In the ninth grade I started backing away from the Church, even though I was the teachers quorum president. I slipped right off the deep end into devil worship. It was a frightening experience, but I was too numb to realize it at the time. I didn’t feel anything. I got more and more depressed. I had my first suicide attempt about the middle of my ninth grade year. At the end of that year I was arrested for possession.

I really started fighting hard with my parents. Every single day when I woke up it was a fight. Lying became a way of life. I lied so that I could keep using.

I went on to LSD. On a bad trip I beat myself up and stabbed holes in the wall. I remember seeing the walls in the house literally eating the flesh off my friends.

I started needing drugs many times each day just to survive. I still looked like a straight, clean-cut kid, but I was taking anything I could get my hands on, just to see if it would get me high. Once I overdosed and almost died.

In tenth grade I quit school and started looking really different. I wasn’t Shawn anymore. I was drugs. If I talked it was drugs. If I walked it was with drugs. Everything I did was drugs.

When I finally was forced into treatment I weighed 97 pounds. After being hospitalized for three weeks I weighed 130. That’s what drugs do to your body, and they injure your mind and spirit even more.

I wasted five years of my life that I’ll never have back. It’s gone, just gone.

SHAWN: I had totally lost control of my own life, but I still didn’t think I had a problem. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with me. I just blamed it all on my parents for being so strict.

When you’re using, there’s a gut feeling, a pain like someone’s just drilled a hole right through you, and you want to fill it up. It seems as if the only way you can do that is by denying everything to yourself and using more and more.

SHAWN: The hardest part of my treatment was when they said, “You’ve got to find God.” They called it “a higher power,” because not everybody has a religious background. I thought, There’s no way; He’ll never forgive me after what I’ve done. I can’t even forgive myself. I had been in the program two or three months before I finally understood that he forgives everyone who repents. You’ve just got to give him the chance and be willing to change. Changing is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone.

SHAWN: Even after treatment, staying sober is a day-to-day struggle. You wake up every morning and the first thing you say is, “God, help me make it through the day.” And for the rest of the day you’re working on it. It gets easier, but you never forget that you’re an addict.

I’ve been sober for a year and a half, and I still wake up in the morning and think, “Go get some speed; you need something to pump you up.” It almost breaks me in two sometimes.

I used to wear my headphones throughout the day, listening to music or YouTube. I wore them while eating dinner sometimes, insisting to my parents that I could still hear them. I noticed people wearing them during youth activities and thought maybe I should too. But I soon noticed that I was spending way too much time on my headphones and phone and not enough time on important things.
I didn’t want to put my headphones before Jesus Christ. I knew I needed to make a change. Instead of listening to random music in the morning, I listened to the youth song “I Am a Disciple of Christ” while reading my scriptures. As the singer bore testimony about Christ, I felt my testimony grow. I noticed I felt happier, and my relationship with Christ grew stronger. The lyrics often stayed with me throughout the day, reminding me to act and be a disciple of Christ.
While I didn’t fully take my headphones out of my day, I started wearing them less. By changing my unhealthy habit, I was able to put Jesus Christ first.
I know that even changing something as small as an unhealthy headphone habit can draw you closer to Christ.

Illustration by Mark Jarman
Ammon sighed as he and Dad left the football game. “I don’t get it,” he said. “We have so many good players. Why can’t we score?”
Dad was a good football player. Maybe he could help.
“I think you need to learn to work as a team,” Dad said. “You all want to score goals, right?”
“Yes,” Ammon said. “But we can’t all be the one to score. Is that what you mean?”
Dad nodded. “You can’t score a goal on your own. First the defenders need to take the ball from the other team, right?”
Ammon laughed. “It’s pretty hard to score if you don’t have the ball.”
“Right,” Dad said. “Then the defenders give it to someone who can score. No one can do it alone.”
“I guess,” Ammon said.
When they got home, Mom was holding the baby while she made dinner. “How was the game?” she asked.
“We lost again,” Ammon said. “But we’ll do better next time.”
“That’s a good attitude,” Mom said.
“I’m starving!” Miguel shouted as he, Samuel, and Lucas ran in.
“Boys, can you help set the table and put the toys away?” Mom asked.
All four boys groaned.
“But I didn’t play with the toys,” Samuel said.
“It will take forever!” Miguel wailed.
Dad laughed. “I think our family has the same problem as Ammon’s team.”
“What’s that?” Samuel asked.
“We aren’t working together,” Ammon said. “We all want to score a goal by eating dinner. But we’re leaving it all to Mom.”
“Right!” Dad said. “How can we work as a team?”
Ammon had an idea. “What if Samuel and I set the table? The other boys can pick up the toys.”
“Great idea!” Dad said.
Soon dinner was ready. Ammon folded his arms for prayer. He was glad his family had worked as a team. He hoped his football team could do the same.

The current Nassau Branch president, Edward Smith, remembers exactly how he became interested in the Church. Brother Ferrier was offering free Creole classes. As a detective inspector in the police force, President Smith wanted to learn Creole to help in communicating with the sizable Haitian population.
In appreciation for the language classes, President Smith decided to attend a Church meeting. However, he somehow got the meeting time wrong. When he arrived at the chapel, no one was there. He circled the block for nearly an hour before someone opened the building and began to set up chairs.
“It was friendly and warm here,” remembers President Smith. “I felt at home from day one.” That first Sunday, he attended the Gospel Essentials class. He noticed that the class used another book of scripture, the Book of Mormon, along with the Bible. He asked how he could get one of those books. The missionaries were glad to give him one.
As he continued to investigate the Church, he found himself its defender among his coworkers. “But I was uncertain of the depth of my testimony,” he says. “I decided I had to really find out.”
Over a period of time, President Smith prayed, attended church, and studied the gospel. One day, he recalls: “I was reading the scriptures. To this day, I can’t tell you where I was reading. I had this feeling of warmth. This was the church I had been looking for. This Church is where I want to be no matter what happens in my life.”
After his baptism, President Smith invited a friend, Claudina, to church. She was taught by the missionaries and chose to be baptized. They were married and four years later became the first Bahamian couple to have their marriage sealed in the temple.

Nancy Treu of Farmington, Utah, has had one of her wishes come true. She was selected to sing a solo with the Tabernacle Choir during their weekly radio broadcast.
As a member of the Salt Lake Children’s Choir, she was chosen to compete as a soloist in the Kathaumixw International Choral Festival in Canada. After competing with soloists from four continents, Nancy took first place. “I was so frightened the night before the competition, I cried. But when I started to sing, I had a very calm feeling and I was not even scared. I know my Heavenly Father answered my prayers.”
When the children’s chorus returned to Utah, Nancy was asked to solo with the Tabernacle Choir.
Nancy is a Mia Maid in the Farmington Utah 15th Ward.

For me, joining the Church by myself, without the reassuring testimonies of my friends and family, was challenging and lonely.
Finding the Church was a long-awaited answer to my prayers to better understand my Savior and live my life as He did. But I came from a devout family actively involved in a Baptist church, and my decision to become a Latter-day Saint was misunderstood and aggressively rejected.
My parents wanted what they thought was best for me and believed that my leaving our family’s religious upbringing would destroy my faith.
Things became even more difficult when my father passed away from cancer just before I was baptized. Coping with the loss of my loving father while also having to choose between God’s will and my family’s will was almost unbearable.
I felt like I was being pushed to my limit.
When Jesus Christ was suffering in Gethsemane, God sent an angel to strengthen Him (see Luke 22:43). I believe that angel was sent to Christ’s aid as an expression of Heavenly Father’s unfailing love. Likewise, He sent angels to strengthen me.
Among these angels were Sister Neff and Sister Smallcomb, the missionaries who first taught me. They had the testimony and intellect to guide me through my intense questions. And the more of Christ’s love I witnessed through them, the more I grew to love the gospel.
Years after my baptism, I spoke with Sister Smallcomb and thanked her for still being willing to address my questions. I also expressed that I hoped I wasn’t bothering her.
“Marcus,” she said, laughing, “you can send me questions about the gospel for the rest of forever.”
It was so comforting to know that I had someone I could turn to for answers. In a way, Sister Neff and Sister Smallcomb were my mentors in the gospel, helping to guide me along my path of conversion and helping me understand what it means to be a member of the Church.
But they wouldn’t be the only ones to guide me.
I used to love having spiritual discussions with my family. But when I joined the Church, those conversations—at least for a season—became impossible to have. Spiritual discussions with my family left me feeling drained rather than invigorated.
Living the gospel without my family was not a trial I could endure by myself. Gratefully, my Heavenly Father and the faithful bishop in my young single adult ward were there to help.
No matter what I discussed with my bishop, I always grew spiritually. I felt the support and love I needed.
Maybe your spiritual needs aren’t filled through a bishop. But an institute teacher, a mission president, a senior missionary couple, a ministering brother or sister, a friend, and so many others can be there to support you.
How do we seek those mentors in our lives? One of the most important steps is doing your best to continue living the gospel. And you can trust that a perfect Heavenly Father can (and will) guide many Christlike people to help you.
You can also find a mentor by placing yourself in positive situations. Carrying out a ministering assignment, magnifying a calling, offering meals to missionaries and joining them for lessons, attending institute, and bearing your testimony are all ways to create opportunities to develop good relationships.
Throughout my journey, whenever I felt alone, Heavenly Father continued to send angels my way to comfort and strengthen me.
I realized that I was never truly in a position where I didn’t have support. Heavenly Father always led me to help, especially when things were tense at home. All I had to do was keep my faith in Him and keep my spiritual eyes and ears open for His guidance and blessings. I solemnly testify that the Savior’s words are true:
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).
I lovingly encourage you to keep yourself involved in the gospel as you pray for Heavenly Father to guide you to the beneficial relationships and mentors that will help you stay on the covenant path and return to Him.

The Prophet’s parents, Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, married in Tunbridge, Vermont, USA, in 1796. After six years of fairly successful farming, the Smiths moved to nearby Randolph to try their hand at storekeeping.3

The line of goods Joseph Sr. acquired with the help of Boston-based creditors moved quickly to eager new customers—not for cash but for promises of payment once harvests came in at the end of the growing season. As he waited for promised payments to pay off his creditors, he jumped into a new investment opportunity.

In those days Chinese markets were clamoring for crystallized ginseng root. Though Joseph Sr. had a hard-cash offer from a middleman for $3,000 for the ginseng root he had collected and prepared for shipment, he decided on the riskier but potentially more lucrative strategy of taking the product to New York himself and contracting with a ship’s captain to sell his goods in China on consignment. By eliminating the middleman, he stood to make as much as $4,500—an immense sum in those days.4

As bad luck or sinister planning would have it, Joseph Sr.’s shipment ended up on the same boat carrying the son of the middleman with whom he had declined to do business. Taking advantage of the situation, this son sold the Smith ginseng in China “at a high price” and kept the proceeds while spinning tales that the venture had been a bust, producing only a chest full of tea as reward.5

Meanwhile, just as this swindle was unfolding, the payments for a large inventory of merchandise had fallen due at the Smith store. In the face of demanding creditors, the Smiths hit a desperation point. To pay their debts, Lucy gave up a wedding gift of $1,000 that she had saved for years, and Joseph accepted $800 for the family farm in Tunbridge.6 The farm was the one thing that would have at least guaranteed a modicum of economic stability and long-term physical security in the often harsh world of the early American frontier. Now, penniless and landless, the Smiths would be forced to move eight times in 14 years, constantly looking for a way to provide for their family.

My life was changed by a saintly patriarch. He married his sweetheart. They were deeply in love, and soon she was expecting their first child.
The night the baby was born, there were complications. The only doctor was somewhere in the countryside tending to the sick. After many hours of labor, the condition of the mother-to-be became desperate. Finally, the doctor was located. In the emergency, he acted quickly and soon the baby was born, and the crisis, it appeared, was over. But some days later, the young mother died from the very infection that the doctor had been treating at another home that night.
The young man’s world was shattered. As the weeks wore on, his grief festered. He thought of little else, and in his bitterness he became threatening. Today, no doubt, he would have been pressed to file a malpractice suit, as though money would solve anything.
One night a knock came at his door. A little girl said simply, “Daddy wants you to come over. He wants to talk to you.”
“Daddy” was the stake president. The counsel from that wise leader was simply “John, leave it alone. Nothing you do about it will bring her back. Anything you do will make it worse. John, leave it alone.”
This had been my friend’s trial. How could he leave it alone? A terrible wrong had been committed. He struggled to get hold of himself and finally determined that he should be obedient and follow the counsel of that wise stake president. He would leave it alone.
He said, “I was an old man before I understood and could finally see a poor country doctor—overworked, underpaid, run ragged from patient to patient, with little medicine, no hospital, few instruments, struggling to save lives, and succeeding for the most part. He had come in a moment of crisis, when two lives hung in the balance, and had acted without delay. I finally understood!” He said, “I would have ruined my life and the lives of others.”
Many times he had thanked the Lord on his knees for a wise priesthood leader who counseled simply, “John, leave it alone.”

Toby curled himself around his mother’s feet on the kitchen floor and began to purr. “Look, Mommy! I’m a kitty,” he said.
Mommy stirred sugar and salt into a big bowl of hot milk on the table and smiled. “Oh, you’re a kitty, are you?” She bent over and patted his head. Toby gave a contented meow. The yeast in a cup with warm water had risen to the top in a bubbly foam. Mommy tested the milk to make sure that it was cool enough, then poured the yeast and a small amount of oil into the bowl.
When Mommy pulled her feet out from under Toby and went to the cupboard for the sifter, Toby slithered up onto a kitchen chair. “Look, Mommy! I’m a snake,” he hissed. He weaved and bobbed as he watched her mix the fine brown flour into the liquid in the bowl. When the dough became stiff enough to handle, Mommy dumped it onto the clean, flour-dusted table and began to knead it with her hands. Toby loved to watch this part, and he flicked his tongue and rattled his tail as he watched.
Next, Mommy put the dough back into the bowl and covered it with a red-checkered cloth. “Time to feed the baby, Mr. Snake,” she told Toby, and they went into the baby’s room. Mommy sat in the rocking chair and softly hummed as she fed Toby’s baby sister.
Toby sat on the floor and practiced wiggling his nose. “Look, Mommy! I’m a mouse,” he squeaked, and the big rocking chair creaked back at him.
“Can you be a very quiet mouse so the baby can go to sleep?” Mommy asked.
Toby nodded and decided to become a mouse statue. He held very still and tried not to squeak or wiggle as Mommy gently laid the baby in the crib and tucked the soft blankets around her. Toby and Mommy tiptoed out of the room and quietly closed the door.
“Look, Mommy! I’m a bunny,” Toby said with a little hop. As he hopped into the kitchen, he noticed that the dough had rounded up over the top of the bowl and was peeking out from under the cloth. Mommy tipped the dough out onto the table and punched it down, working it between her hands and the table. Toby’s bunny ears pricked up, and he giggled as the bubbles in the dough popped and burped at him.
When the dough was smooth and round, Mommy cut it into four parts and shaped each part into a loaf. She put them into pans and set them on the stove to rise again.
Toby hopped into his bedroom, and when he came out again, he had his white blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “Look, Mommy! I’m an angel,” he said, pulling his angel robe more tightly around himself.
“It’s naptime for all sleepy little angels,” Mommy said. Toby reverently floated into his room and onto his bed. Mommy kissed his cheek and tucked his angel robe up under his chin. Toby laid his head on a fluffy cloud pillow and drifted off to sleep.
When he woke up, a wonderful smell was tickling his nose. He jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen. Four golden brown loaves of bread were sitting on racks on the kitchen table. Toby watched as Mommy sliced a big piece off the end of one loaf. She spread butter and honey over the warm slice of bread and handed it to Toby.
“Look, Mommy! I’m a little boy, now,” Toby said as he took a big bite. “I’m glad Heavenly Father sent you to be my little boy,” Mommy said.
Toby licked the melted honey and butter that ran down his fingers. “Me, too!” he said happily.