Gospel Story Finder

A short time ago I attended the funeral of a friend’s son. Earlier in the week, the young man was traveling home late at night with friends when the driver of another car fell asleep. The second car crossed the median and smashed head-on into the first. The accident occurred with such swiftness that few, if any, brake marks showed on the highway and both cars were demolished. The accident took three lives, including my friend’s 17-year-old son.
Death teaches that we do not experience a fulness of joy in mortality and that everlasting joy can be achieved only with the assistance of the Master (see D&C 33–34). Just as the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda needed someone stronger than himself to be healed (see John 5:1–9), so we are dependent on the miracles of Christ’s atonement if our souls are to be made whole from grief, sorrow, and sin. If grieving parents and loved ones have faith in the Savior and his plan, death’s sting is softened as Jesus bears the believers’ grief and comforts them through the Holy Spirit. Through Christ, broken hearts are mended and peace replaces anxiety and sorrow. I received a letter from the boy’s parents telling me the peace they have found through their faith in Christ. They know that they will see their son again and be with him in the eternities.

“You have to start out by just being friends with them,” says Karen Freiley, 16. Karen should know. She was instrumental in helping her good friend Krissy O’Shea join the Church. Krissy, in turn, has brought a number of her friends to church, and many of them have taken the missionary discussions.

“I’d asked Karen a few questions about her church before,” Krissy says. “But what got me really interested was going to a youth conference. Karen’s invitation was no big deal—I wasn’t getting along with my mom, and Karen knew I needed to get out of the house for a while, so she asked me if I wanted to come to this thing they were having at her church. To me it sounded like a great way to get away for the weekend.

“The thing I noticed first was the closeness I felt. You don’t really go into the doctrine the second you put a foot in the door, but you can feel the Spirit. As the classes got into the doctrine part, I began to feel that it just made so much sense.”

That’s where Krissy’s conversion began, and along the way, Karen’s testimony was strengthened. “It felt so good to share the gospel with Krissy,” she says. “Especially when the missionaries would come to our house, and we’d sit together and hear the discussions. There were things that I learned from them, even though I’d been raised in the Church.”

Illustration by Allen Garns
On a Saturday afternoon, I was getting ready to go to the beach with my family. They had traveled from Amazonas to La Guaira to spend a few days with me. The sun was bright, the ocean breezes were perfect, and I was happy to see my sisters’ excitement.
Once we were on the road, I remembered that I was in charge of cleaning the church building that day. I now had a choice to make: Should I fulfill my responsibility or continue to the beach with my family? I decided to talk to my mom and sisters about it. They had never been inside an LDS church and enthusiastically offered to help me clean, as long as we headed right to the beach when we finished.
When we entered the church, I explained what needed to be done and how to do it. What we thought would be a quick cleaning job ended up taking four hours because they were so interested! I showed my family each room, the paintings, and the baptismal font. An immense joy filled my heart. I couldn’t believe my family was helping me with something that meant so much to me. While we were there, my teenage sisters, Thalia and Gineska, learned some hymns and asked me questions about the Church.
On Sunday my family attended church for the first time. They were well received in the ward. The young women quickly welcomed my sisters. The sister missionaries met them and set an appointment to meet with them the next day. We held family home evening, and I taught them how to pray. We prayed together often. We also listened to hymns and watched Church videos.
Before my family returned home, I took my sisters to Caracas to see the temple and its grounds. I bore my testimony of temple blessings and encouraged them to find the Church when they returned to Amazonas.
When they left for home, I contacted the missionaries in their area. The missionaries and members of the ward council visited my family and helped them on their way to conversion. My sisters prayed often for our father to give them permission to be baptized.
With great gratitude and joy, I traveled to Amazonas to baptize Thalia and Gineska. The glow in their eyes reflected their hope and their gratitude to Heavenly Father for leading them to the gospel. Through fulfilling an assignment to clean the church, my family came closer together and was strengthened. I will never forget this experience and I know my sisters will not either.

When I was a young boy, my family would gather around our piano, which is now more than a hundred years old. My mother had a beautiful soprano voice. At Christmas she played the piano as she led us in singing Christmas carols and hymns.
Even as a young boy, I felt joy in singing those songs. The music filled our small home with a spirit of peace. I could feel not only the love of my mother and father and two brothers, but of my Heavenly Father and the Savior Jesus Christ. Now when I see that piano, memories of love with my family and love from the Savior flood back over me.

Emma Orrilla Perry Merrill, a widow, had a child in the school at which she herself was the teacher. During a recess her son was playing with the other children in the newly-dug basement of Thatcher Church. One of the children led a donkey over the bank causing it to cave in. Her son was buried under the avalanche. Some of the children ran immediately to tell her, and she came running and screaming.

“When I reached the cave-in I started digging frantically with my bare hands. I dug my fingers into the quick but kept digging. Finally I found one of his hands and followed it to his head. I uncovered his head just in time, for when I got him out he was black and blue with suffocation.”7

This hardy sister, incidentally, lived to be ninety-two.

While we were still new members, we encountered a man who had left the Church. He gave us a lot of anti-Mormon literature, and I was shocked. It was my first encounter with opposition to the Church, and my testimony was still tender. While he was confronting us and attacking everything the missionaries had taught us, I was filled with fear. But when the missionaries were with us, they brought peace. Because of the missionaries, our family learned to tell the difference between faith and fear, and we chose faith.

Every little girl should have the thrill of a new doll on Christmas morning. The Young Women of the Hughson Ward, Modesto California Stake, wanted to make sure such dreams came true for children of needy families. As a service project they dressed dolls and donated them to the community-wide Christmas basket project. Ward members donated the dolls, and the girls outfitted them in clothes of their own design.

Have you ever wondered how it might feel to go through life deaf, blind, or confined to a wheelchair? The youth of the Pleasant Grove 19th Ward in Utah recently found out when they participated in a “Handicap Awareness Week.”
“I can’t even get through the door into the bathroom!” exclaimed one girl who tried a few turns in a wheelchair. Getting a drink of water from the fountain was also difficult.
The youth listened to speakers and voluntarily took on disabilities of their own while participating in different activities. Experiencing handicaps first-hand helped the youth develop a new-found compassion for their disabled brothers and sisters. But they were also consoled. “We were actually relieved to realize that one can have lots of fun even with a serious disability,” said one participant.

I had always considered myself to be a “good listener” until that night. Being raised in the middle of a large family had forced me to do my share of listening just to keep the decibel level to a low roar in my home. But I didn’t realize, until that night, that listening required more of me than just being quiet. I didn’t realize, until that night, how desperately someone could need to be listened to.
It had been a long day. In order for me to stay in school at Brigham Young University, I had to work part-time at night and go to school and study during the day. I was feeling tired and a little sorry for myself as I walked into the cafeteria late that night after a particularly hard day. The cafeteria was almost empty at that late hour.
I picked up my dinner tray and turned around to find a table. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a girl sitting alone at one of the tables. She was staring at her food with her head bowed. A large backpack, books, and papers were scattered all over the table where she was sitting. By all appearances, she obviously wanted to be left alone. There were plenty of empty tables and I started to walk toward one of them to sit down.
Suddenly I felt impressed to sit down next to the girl that I had noticed. Even though I was usually reserved, I found myself walking toward her table. I tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if I could sit next to her.
She silently and reluctantly agreed as she began to move her books and papers off the table. Her appearance and posture and manner all told me that she wanted to be left alone, and I wondered why I was being so intrusive.
Then we started to talk, slowly and cautiously at first. I felt strangely as if she were a lifetime friend of mine that I hadn’t seen for a long time, and I wanted to know all about her and what was happening to her. We both spoke freely, maybe even more freely than real friends because we had no images to maintain and no reputations to uphold.
The young girl told me about some extremely depressing things that were happening in her life at that time. We talked for hours. Then the tears came.
After several hours had gone by, she looked at me and said, “Tonight I was sitting here alone again, and I felt and really believed that I didn’t have a friend in this whole world. I couldn’t think of even one person that cared about me. I was sitting here thinking how I could do away with myself when you walked up and asked me if you could sit next to me. You’ll never know what you’ve done for me tonight. I’ve only known you for a few hours, but I know that you are my friend and that you care about me. There must still be a God that cares for me if you can care for me.”
Later we embraced and walked away in separate directions. I turned, suddenly remembering that I didn’t even know her name. But she had disappeared into the night.
As I walked toward home, I was feeling pretty good about myself knowing that I had heeded the impression to sit next to the girl. My problems seemed pretty small compared to hers.
Then suddenly it hit me like a brick. All the times I had been similarly impressed to speak to someone, to spend time with someone, to call someone, or to say an encouraging word to someone, flashed before my mind. I remembered the excuses of not wanting to be too forward, or being too tired or worried about my own problems, or all the millions of reasons I had used for not heeding the promptings that I often received.
I suddenly wondered how many of those people I had neglected had needs as desperate as those of the young girl that I had just talked to.
Never before had I realized that to truly be a “good listener” I had to first learn to listen to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. Alone, without the Spirit, I was unable to discern the real needs of the people around me. With the Spirit, I could listen with my heart as well as my mind.
I will probably never see that girl again, but I hope I will never again fail to listen to the impressions that the Spirit gives me.

Alex looked around the fabric store. There were tons of colors and cool patterns. He saw a few that would be perfect.
“Hey, Mom,” said Alex, pointing to some fabric with colorful geckos on it. “Do you like these geckos?”
“I like cute, fluffy bunnies better,” Mom said.
Alex laughed. “You know what I mean! Would this be good for the scarves?”
“I think your friends will like it.”
Alex was going to make scarves for his friends. He would use the soccer-ball print for Josh, the rocket-ship print for José, and the gecko print for Mike.
Soon they were heading home with the fabric. As they left the parking lot, Alex saw a man holding up a cardboard sign to ask for help. He knew the man probably didn’t have a job or a home. And he looked really cold! He only had a thin jacket. Alex had a thick winter coat, but he still got cold walking to school in the mornings.
When they got home, Alex’s mom showed him how to lay the fabric out straight and measure how much he needed to make one scarf. He carefully cut the fabric with his scissors. Then he cut slits along the ends to make a fringe. Before long, Alex had six brightly colored scarves. There was also a big pile of extra fabric.
“Can you think of anyone else you want to make presents for?” Mom asked.
“Not really,” Alex said. Then he thought of the man holding the sign. He had an idea.
That week for home evening, Alex taught his whole family how to make scarves. His mom measured them out. His dad cut the fabric. Alex and his sister made the fuzzy fringe. He liked making scarves with the gecko fabric. The geckos seemed to smile at him as he worked.
“Wow,” Alex said when they finished. “We made 14 scarves to share!”
“What do we do now?” his sister asked.
“I think we should put them in the car,” Alex said. “Then when we see someone who looks cold, we can give them one.”
“That’s a great idea,” Dad said.
Mom took a bag out of the closet, and they stacked the cozy scarves inside. “Maybe we can go on a family drive sometime to look for people who need scarves,” she said.
“Can we go right now?” Alex asked.
Mom looked out the window. “I don’t know. It’s kind of cold outside.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
His parents smiled. “I guess you’re right,” Mom said. “Just make sure to bundle up.”
Alex threw on his coat, but he hardly noticed the cold air. He knew his scarves might help someone, and that made him feel warm inside.

When Jonathan K., 17, was helping to plan an upcoming high adventure activity with his Scout troop, he couldn’t get one young man out of his mind: his friend Mitchell F., a young man with spina bifida.
The group had some incredible—but physically challenging—country in mind they wanted to explore. They were planning on hiking through canyons and other wilderness areas around southern Utah.
Jonathan knew the rugged terrain they planned to visit could make it difficult for his friend to participate. However, he and the rest of his troop wanted to do all they could to allow Mitchell to join the adventure. “We wanted him to experience everything too,” Jonathan says.
As a solution, Jonathan used his Eagle Scout project to build a carrying device—the “Mitch Mobile,” as it came to be called—that would allow the young men to literally carry Mitchell throughout the journey.
There was no shortage of volunteers to help with building the Mitch Mobile. Friends and business owners from around town donated supplies to build the carrier and harness. Many people worked long hours to make sure the entire construction was safe, strong, and portable.
Of course, it was only after the carrier was completed that the true service began. After a few short trial runs around town, it was time to take the Mitch Mobile out on its true maiden voyage.
Ultimately, the high adventure outing was a huge success from start to finish. Jonathan and friends were able to carry Mitchell over every stretch of landscape and rough terrain they’d planned to see and explore. All of the young men gladly took turns wearing the harness. “I love taking him with us,” Jonathan says. They have since been on trips to many other backcountry locations.
“We’ve taken him everywhere,” Jonathan says. They’ve traversed slot canyons, cliffs, rivers, sand dunes, and steep hills. “He’s basically like a brother to me.”
As for Mitchell, he’s enjoyed the camaraderie with his friends every step of the way. He’s also enjoyed the amazing terrain they’ve visited together. One of his favorite activities was rappelling. “I’ve loved it,” Mitchell says.

Benjamin pulled his quilt up to his chin as his mom kissed him good night. R-r-r-r-r-i-i-i-p!
“Oh my!” Mom exclaimed, examining the long, jagged tear. The old quilt had been patched and mended, and mended and patched over years of daily use by three different children. “Time for a new quilt,” she announced.
“You know what I need, Mom?” Benjamin grinned. “A quilt with houses and streets on it.”
Mom kissed him again. “I’ll give it some thought,” she said, turning out the light.
The next day, Mom got her fabric box from a shelf in the basement. There were fabric pieces of all kinds and colors. She pulled out a piece of green material and a piece of gray. Then she looked carefully through the smaller pieces, choosing white, blue, tan, red, brown, and some small printed scraps.
Benjamin watched her cut the green fabric into large squares. Then she asked, “Will this gray be OK for streets?” Ben nodded. So she cut the gray into long, narrow strips. Her scissors snip-snipped for an awfully long time as she cut out the other colors too. But finally there were shapes cut for all sorts of buildings with roofs and chimneys and doors and windows. There were even some trees and bushes here and there.
“Will it be done tonight?” Benjamin asked.
“Oh no—not tonight,” Mom chuckled. “It takes a lot of work to make a quilt.”
The next afternoon Mom appliquéd all the houses and buildings onto the green squares. The sewing machine hummed and buzzed. Benjamin watched for a long time. Then Mom stopped to fix dinner.
On the third day, when Benjamin came in from play, the quilt top had been sewn together. Mom spread it out on the floor so that he could look at it.
“That looks like our house!” his sisters agreed, pointing to a white house with brown trim.
The colored squares with the buildings were separated by gray strips. It looked like a tiny town. Everyone admired it.
“Can I use my quilt tonight?” Benjamin asked.
“Not yet. You see, this is just the top. I have to put a piece of fabric on the bottom and fluffy batting in between. Then I have to sew all the layers together.”
Saturday was a busy day, and there was no time for working on the new quilt. But Dad did buy the rest of the materials for it, and he borrowed the quilting frames from Grandma.
Sunday wasn’t a quilting day, either. It sure is hard to wait for a quilt, Benjamin thought.
On Monday Mom put all three layers of the quilt on the frames and started stitching the layers together. Benjamin’s sisters helped a little. When his best friend’s mom heard about the quilt, she came to help too. Benjamin lay on the floor under the quilt and watched the brown stitches slowly outline each building and landscape. The next day Grandma and Aunt Tess came to help finish the outlining.
“Is it done now?” Benjamin asked.
“Not yet.” Mom pulled him close. “See how the outside edge is open. I have to bind the edges so that the batting will stay in and the edges will look nice.”
“Can you do that tonight?”
“I’ll try, but I have to go to a meeting tonight.”
After dinner, Benjamin watched Mom sew strips of green fabric together for the binding. Then she pressed it in half. But that was all that she got done before her Church meeting. As she kissed Benjamin good night, she said, “Tomorrow night you can sleep with your new quilt, I promise.”
Sure enough, when Benjamin went to bed the next night, the quilt was spread out on it. Mom asked, “Was it worth waiting for?”
Benjamin climbed under the quilt and just grinned.

In the San Diego California North Stake, the stake Young Women president, Sheryl Arrington, had similar ideas for helping her young women make the modest choice.
When they heard about plans for a modest fashion show, many young women rose to the occasion. “Modesty is important to me because it is important to the Lord,” said Hyesuhn Lee, a Laurel. “I know that being modest will help me reach my goal of going to the temple.”
Several other Laurels like Hyesuhn were invited to participate in the show, and the enthusiasm spread to the Mia Maids and Beehives, who offered to help as well. The show was expanded to include casual clothes, modeled by the Beehives, and Sunday best, showcased by the Mia Maids. With so much participation, Laurel Paige Mange discovered that she was in good company. “The show reminded me that I am not the only one facing the challenge of staying modest.”
The show took as its theme “Be Thou an Example,” and the young women truly became examples by inviting the 11-year-old girls in the stake to come see modesty in action. Christie Richmond, a Laurel, remembered the show’s simple lesson: “We can wear beautiful gowns and clothes and look pretty and be modest at the same time. Modesty will help you feel good about yourself because you know you are doing the right thing.”
Laurel Kierston Knobloch agrees. “I feel confident and comfortable when I know I don’t have to tug and pull at my clothes.”
The girls’ confidence was increased by their participation in the show. Not only did they get to wear beautiful, modest clothes, they also learned poise and posture so they could walk confidently down the runway built for the event. Best of all, however, was the temple cutout that adorned the stage, reminding the young women about their goals to stay obedient, pure, and worthy in dress and action so they could move towards the temple. “Modesty makes me feel closer to our Heavenly Father,” reflects Laurel Bee Xiong.
Sister Arrington agrees that modesty is a way for a young woman to grow spiritually. For her girls in California, as well as for the young women in Utah and anywhere else, when it comes to modesty, “young women are always beautiful when they follow the Lord’s principles,” she says.

A lovely lady who has since passed away visited with me one day and unexpectedly recounted some regrets. She spoke of an incident which had taken place many years earlier and involved a neighboring farmer, once a good friend but with whom she and her husband had disagreed on multiple occasions. One day the farmer asked if he could take a shortcut across her property to reach his own acreage. At this point she paused in her narrative to me and, with a tremor in her voice, said, “Brother Monson, I didn’t let him cross our property then or ever but required him to take the long way around on foot to reach his property. I was wrong, and I regret it. He’s gone now, but oh, I wish I could say to him, ‘I’m so sorry.’ How I wish I had a second chance to be kind.”

When I was a teenager, my family moved to New Jersey. I stayed behind with my grandparents for the summer and helped them farm. One morning I was slow getting out of bed. When my grandfather came to get me, he found me kneeling by my bed, in the middle of my morning prayer. He quietly went out and waited for me. As soon as I finished, he came in and gave me a big hug and said how pleased he was to see me praying. He told me how much it meant to him to pray and how he always began the day by praying. There was no reprimand for being late. I’ve always felt that praying was more special because of the way he reacted.

David Oman McKay’s parents taught him at a very young age that he was a child of God and that his Heavenly Father loved him. They also taught him that he could always talk to his Heavenly Father.
In addition to having his own daily prayers, David knelt in daily prayer with his family.
One dark night there was a terrible thunderstorm. David was in bed, and he became very frightened. He knew that if he prayed, he would feel better, but he was afraid to get out of bed and kneel in prayer.
Finally, he gathered enough courage to kneel on the cold floor and pray for protection for himself and his family. As he was praying, David heard a voice say, “Don’t be afraid; nothing will hurt you.”
When he had finished praying, he was able to sleep because he knew that Heavenly Father would protect him and his family.
Many years later David O. McKay became the ninth President of the Church, and his strong testimony of the power of prayer was a good example for all the world.

As Gladys Monson lay in Salt Lake City’s St. Mark’s Hospital on Sunday, 21 August 1927 with her first son, her husband, G. Spencer Monson, told her a new bishop had been installed in the Sixth-Seventh Ward of the Pioneer Stake that day. The mother’s response, “I have a new bishop for you,” proved to be prophetic. On 7 May 1950 this son, Thomas Spencer Monson, was sustained as bishop of this ward. Not yet 23 years old, the son, named for his father and his maternal grandfather, Thomas Sharp Condie, was perhaps the youngest bishop in the Church. And the ward, numbering more than 1,000 members, including 85 widows, had the largest welfare responsibility in the Church.

My wife and I recently received a letter from one of our daughters that, in part, read, “I’ve become a nurse. Four of the six kids have the flu. I’m changing my ambitions from psychiatrist to nurse. Anyway, nobody in this family is sick in the head; we are just all sick.” Then in capital letters she wrote, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK!”
When we read the letter, we gave each other a knowing smile. But those last words, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK,” have stuck in my mind. My daughter’s situation was temporary and for a good cause, but I’ve been hearing more often about people who are filling their lives with meaningless and harmful things.
A cluttered life is a life that you do not have control of. It is a life in which the things you have surrounded yourself with, and allow to use up your time, are controlling you and negatively influencing your happiness and eternal progress.
Our lives can become cluttered by many things. Some are obvious, such as material things. We can surround ourselves with the material things to the extent that we have no time for the spiritual. Look around and you will see all the gadgets and toys and the nice and the fun things that cause us to squander and pay and to wander and play.
Other things that clutter our lives and use our time are not as obvious. They are more subtle and just seem to evolve, taking control of us.
Whenever I think of something subtle—something kind of hidden that we know is there if we stop to think about it but don’t suspect it of cluttering or negatively influencing our lives—I know Satan is busy at his work.
Nothing suits the devil better than to become a silent partner with us. He knows that we have agency and are at liberty to make choices for ourselves. He also knows that while in mortality we are subject to time. If by his subtle means he can become our silent partner, he can influence us to make wrong choices that use our time unwisely and prevent us from doing what we should.
I have learned that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to unclutter one’s life by starting at the top of the pile with the idea that the solution is to just get things sorted and better organized. It is nice to get better organized, but that is not enough. We must actually get rid of what we do not need.
To do this we need to develop a list of basics, a list of those things that are indispensable to our mortal welfare and happiness and our eternal salvation. This list must follow the gospel pattern and contain elements needed for our sanctification and perfection. It must be the product of inspiration and prayerful judgment. It should separate need from greed. It must be our best understanding of those things that are important as opposed to those things that are just interesting, between things we really need and things we just want.
We need to examine all the ways we use our time so we can better understand what we should really be spending our time doing. After all, we give our lives to that to which we give our time.
We must learn that none of the exciting and entertaining and fun things are worth it if they take us from the path that will lead us back home to our Heavenly Father.
We must remember that a person who is not living the basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not living them, no matter who or what has caused it. We must also remember that a family divided is a family divided, no matter who or what divides it.
We need to ask ourselves some serious and soul-searching questions. One of these would surely be, Do I have time for prayer? I don’t mean just an occasional, quick, repetitious prayer that is like giving a wave of the hand to your Father in Heaven as you pass Him on your way to something “important.” I mean sincere, honest, “from the depths of a contrite spirit and a broken heart” prayer; kneeling in humility, demonstrating to the Holy Father that you really love him; private prayer which involves you in the process of repentance and pleading for forgiveness and allows time for pondering and waiting for the answers to come.
The next question might be, Do I study the scriptures? If you do, you know that Lehi saw a rod of iron, which, interpreted, means the word of God (1 Ne. 11:1–23). Those who held to the rod, using it as a guide at all times, came safely through the mist of darkness and arrived at the tree of life and partook of its glorious fruit (1 Ne. 8:19, 30). I solemnly testify that the holy scriptures are the word of God. Constant study of them is the act of holding to the iron rod. They will guide you to the Tree of Life. If you are one who has said, “I want my life back,” I exhort you to go to the Tree of Life, where you will find the pure love of God.
God’s plan is a plan of simplicity. It involves being obedient to simple laws, laws that have within them an automatic blessing and happiness for obedience and an automatic punishment and unhappiness for their disobedience.
I urge you to clear away the clutter. Take your life back. Use your willpower. Learn to say no to those things that will rob you of your precious time and infringe upon your agency to choose to live in exactness to God’s plan of happiness and exaltation. Don’t let the subtle influences of Satan take away any part of your life. Keep it under your own control and operated by your own agency.
It is my humble prayer that by our choices we may preserve our individual agency from the subtleness of Satan and live our lives bright and clear and on the path that leads us back to the presence of our Heavenly Father.

Some years ago while I was serving as a mission president, my wife, Evelia, witnessed a touching scene of happiness when she saw a faithful family enter the chapel. This mother and her two small children had walked from their humble home under oppressive heat to church that day. They never imagined they would find Elder Cruz, the dedicated missionary who, the year before, had shared the message of the restored gospel with them. This wonderful surprise was key in their recognizing the great happiness the gospel had brought into their lives. The children ran to embrace him, and while tears of joy ran down the cheeks of Elder Cruz, the mother clasped his hands in hers and profoundly thanked him for all he had done to bless their family. Surely they found that happiness which is prepared and reserved for the Saints.

When President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) was a young man, he and his family lived on a farm during the summer. He had this experience there:
“There was a dead tree I wished to pull. I fastened one end of a chain to the tractor and the other end to the tree. As the tractor began to move, the tree shook a little, and then the chain broke.
“I looked at that broken link and wondered how it could have given way. I went to the hardware store and bought a repair link. I put it together again, but it was an awkward and ugly connection. The chain was never, never the same.”1
Think of yourself as part of a chain—a family chain. President Hinckley said we should never let ourselves be a weak link in our family chain.