Gospel Story Finder

On an airplane flight a few weeks ago, a friend of mine engaged a lady in conversation. He told her about his trip to Anderson, South Carolina, to visit a fourth cousin because he was seeking information concerning some of his ancestors. He asked this lady sitting next to him, “Would you like to know why I am interested in my ancestors who died long ago?”
“Yes, I would,” she replied.
“I was trying to find information about my forebears so I could perform certain work for them in the temple. Do you know where the Savior was during the three days His body lay in the tomb following the crucifixion?”
“No. Where?”
He continued, “Peter, the apostle, said Christ preached to the spirits in prison who were disobedient in the days of Noah.” And then he said, “Now, do you think the Savior of the world would spend three days preaching to such people if they could not do anything about it?”
“No, I don’t. I have never thought of that,” she said.
He proceeded to explain baptism for the dead and the resurrection. He quoted Paul: “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” (1 Cor. 15:29.)
“Do you remember the phrase ‘until death do you part’ being used when you were married? Your marriage contract ends when either of you dies.”
She replied, “I guess that’s right, but I had never thought of it that way.”
He continued, “My wife died the forepart of last month, but she is my wife eternally. We were married by one having the priesthood authority to bind in heaven that marriage performed here on earth. We belong to each other eternally; and furthermore, our children belong to us forever.”
Just before landing he said to her, “Do you know why we met? It is so you too can learn about the gospel and be sealed to your husband, your children, and your progenitors for eternity—to become an eternal family.”
Soon after this incident, he mailed a copy of Elder LeGrand Richards’s book A Marvelous Work and a Wonder to this lady and her family and tucked his name card inside. The name of this woman eventually found its way to some full-time lady missionaries laboring in her city in Pennsylvania. After the missionaries’ first contact with her, they wrote, “Mrs. Davis was extremely gracious. You should have seen the light in her eyes when she met us. Brother Cummings had planted a most fertile seed with his testimony and confidence that he and his loved ones would be together after this life. As missionaries we felt at peace. We were impressed that the Lord would attend our efforts because this family was prepared.”

On a pier in Copenhagen, Denmark, is a bronze statue of a young woman named Kristina. Kristina stands looking out to sea toward her goal to join the Saints in Zion. The wind is blowing against her fiercely, but she does not look back. She is steadfast as she presses forward doing a very hard thing, but one she knows to be right. I love that statue, for to me Kristina represents my own Danish great-great-grandmother who chose to join the Church amid great resistance. I am grateful for her courage and testimony. On her choice that day rested not only my eternal destiny but also the destiny of generations.

A young woman on a university volleyball team tells of the time when she and her friend Muki were playing together in a championship match:
““I remember it being a close game. … Gracie [on our opponents’ team] rounded her approach, jumped, and smacked the ball as hard as she could. … The line judges signaled out, and the head official raised his finger to show a point for [our team]. We began giving our usual high fives when we noticed that Muki was hand-motioning to the official that she touched the ball on her block. Muki was calling her own touch. The line judges … were … signaling out, [indicating] that there was no touch.
“The quiet, withdrawn Muki had showed an act of integrity and honesty like I had never seen before. Gracie Shute was so impressed that she talked with Muki after the match. … Muki later gave Gracie a Book of Mormon. I don’t know if Gracie has read the book … , but I do know that Gracie was touched by Muki’s example, as we all were.”

Last March, as you remember, devastating rock and mud slides engulfed six small towns in the mountains east of Lima, Peru. All of these towns were within the Lima Peru San Luis Stake. The slide left 25,000 people homeless. Eighteen LDS families lost their homes completely, and 198 other families were left in dire need of food, clothing, and medical supplies.
The day after the slides, one member of the stake presidency and two other Church members waded through waist-high mud and debris for five kilometers to assess the damage. They found that more than three hundred people, members and nonmembers, had taken refuge in the Chosica chapel.
The following day, the stake presidency called a meeting of their eleven bishops and branch presidents. They made many assignments to furnish needed supplies. They asked each ward and branch to furnish work teams to go to the homes of members and help them clean up.
The stake presidency resolved to handle the problem without seeking help from outside stakes. They soon found that they could not handle it all alone. They went to their Regional Representative and asked him to coordinate economic help from other stakes in the region. The Saints of Peru rallied together.
As an example, the Iquitos stake sent thirteen crates of clothing, each weighing thirty kilos (about sixty-six pounds). Other stakes and wards donated food, bedding, and mattresses.
Selling quilts and refreshments, young women raised more than three hundred dollars. One young priest, a senior at his high school in Lima, led a group of twenty-eight of his classmates, all nonmembers, to Chosica to help with the cleanup.
The stake Relief Society presidency visited the area frequently and instructed the sisters in classes on hygiene, sanitation, nutrition, and “how to organize family living in a tent.”
The stakes did not intend to seek assistance from the general welfare funds of the Church. Stake leaders called in all fast-offering reserves from their wards and branches. They asked stake members to participate in a special fast on 29 March 1987 to raise funds that would help cover the expenses.
Some bore tender testimonies. Let me share just two. Sister Guadalupe, a nonmember, lost everything. Then in the shelter of a little room in our chapel, she gave birth to a baby boy. She stated that the Lord had helped her escape. She learned that everything of the world is temporary and can be lost. She thanked the branch and the Church for opening its doors to her and for the assistance she received.
Sister Leonora de Contreras, a Relief Society president, said she knew the gospel was true. She expressed thanks for her husband, who holds the priesthood and is a pillar of strength. The catastrophe destroyed the fruits of their lifetime of labor in less than thirty minutes. She recalled the words of their son who is serving in the Peru Trujillo Mission. As he left home, he said to her, “Mami, whatever happens, if you need help, ask the Lord, and stay close to the Brethren.” She expressed appreciation to stake leaders for their assistance.

Our next stop was at the home of the American consul and his family, also our investigators. They were a wealthy family and lived in a large home in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city. We went to the front door and began to sing the same songs we had just sung to the poor people in the monastery.
We had barely started the second verse of our first song when the door opened. Dozens of people came outside and started to sing with us. They were all diplomatic representatives of several countries who had gathered there to commemorate Christmas. We soon saw in their faces the same tears and smiles we had seen in the faces of the poor people living in that abandoned monastery.
When we finished singing, the wife of the consul said, “We were gathered here with everything to make us happy; nevertheless, we felt that something was missing. It was then that you came, bringing the Christmas spirit of Jesus Christ. Now our Christmas is complete.”
Our group consisted of more than 20 missionaries from several parts of the world—Brazil, Portugal, Angola, the United States, Canada, Paraguay, and Colombia. When we were invited in, each missionary bore testimony to the diplomats from his country. As in the monastery, we invited them to hear the discussions and attend church.

One day a fisherman named Kupe, his friend Ngahue, and their families set out in large canoes from a land called Hawaiki. One legend says they were following a giant octopus that had been stealing their fishing bait. After sailing into unknown waters for many weeks, Kupe’s wife sighted what appeared to be a long, low white cloud. She called, “He ao! He ao!” (“A cloud! A cloud!”) Kupe called the land they were nearing Aotearoa, which means Land of the Long White Cloud.
This is the Maori legend of how the Polynesian people first discovered New Zealand about A.D. 900. Kupe and his companions did not remain in Aotearoa, but returned to Hawaiki to tell of their discovery.

My sister’s name is Buster.
There’s no need to adjust your glasses or blink your eyes. You read correctly. My sister’s name is Buster. Actually, her name is Anne Marie, but when she was five years old, she announced at dinner one night that she preferred to be called Buster because it was a good boy’s name.
“But you’re a girl!” my mother pointed out.
“That isn’t my fault,” retorted Anne Marie, now Buster.
“I rather like girls,” my father said.
“Sure, you can say that because you’re not a girl!” she pouted. “I want to be tough!”
“We are not calling you Buster and that’s that. Anne Marie is a perfectly lovely name. It was my great-grandmother’s name.” Mother thought the issue was closed.
It wasn’t.
My father gave in first. Frankly, he’s a sucker where daughters are concerned, and if Anne Marie wanted to be called Buster, he would call her Buster.
She wore me down next. She wouldn’t talk to me at all unless forced to: “Go ask Susan if she’s finished with the scissors,” mother would say to her. She would stare at me in the left ear and ask coldly if I had the scissors. I got tired of the snub. The day I began calling her Buster she beamed at me and said, “Thanks, kid.” I just about fell on my face laughing.
Mother was more determined. She thought the name Buster was a travesty. If Buster didn’t answer when mother called “Anne Marie,” mother would make her sit in her room for half an hour and then demand an apology. Buster apologized this way: “I’m sorry I disobeyed.”
“Next time will you come when I call?” mother would ask.
“Will you call me Buster?” Buster was brazen. I have seen my mother shake her fists at the air and in a strangled voice say, “What have I done to deserve this?”
After a long while, mother also succumbed and called her Buster. At first she hissed it to show her disapproval, but later she said it quite naturally as if she herself had chosen the name.
So it was that my mother, who grew up with ballet lessons and felt most at home with chintz draperies and delicate Queen Anne furnishings, had to raise Buster, who sat mostly in trees or on garage rooftops. Mother collected recipes. Buster collected bottlecaps and baseball cards. Mother wanted to own a hundred antique dolls. Buster said it would be nice to have eleventy Tonka trucks like Billy Weinberg.
One of the more unnerving events of the following few years was when Buster, unilaterally, cut off her two pigtails that had grown to her waist. I thought we’d have to give mother mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But mother learned patience and long-suffering and, like Job, waited for the right moment, hoping yet to instill in her daughter Buster some kind of feminine identity, however modest.
The “moment” came when Buster was 13. The bishop asked her to give a five-minute talk in sacrament meeting on one of her ancestors. Buster was disgusted.
“What a can of worms!” she exclaimed after telling my parents about the assignment. They were eating ice cream in the kitchen.
“Who are you going to talk about?” asked my father.
Buster shrugged and rolled her eyes back in her head as only she could do.
“Why don’t you talk about my Great-Grandfather Wheatley? He was a real pioneer and went on three missions for the Church. I don’t like looking at the whites of your eyes, Buster,” he said somewhat irritably.
“Sorry,” she returned laconically and clanked her spoon into her dish. “Everyone in the ward already knows about old Ezra Wheatly. You’ve talked about him before, and besides he’s a …”
Bore is, I believe, what she had in mind there but she evidently thought better of it and after a pause said, “He’s a pioneer. Everybody talks about his old pioneer ancestors. Don’t we have any ancestors who weren’t pioneering it all the time?”
I thought my father was going to roll his eyes back in his head, but he restrained himself.
Tactfully, my mother handed my father a plate of cookies and turning to Buster said, “Why don’t you tell them about your Great-Great-Grandmother Anne Marie McIlhenny. She wasn’t a pioneer.”
“She was a wrestler!” My father lost all cool.
“Was she? Was she really?” Buster was ecstatic.
“Not exactly,” corrected my mother, giving my father a try-not-to-help-me-look. “But she did set up an athletic program for the girls in her town. They competed in track events, arm wrestling,” she eyed my father, “and soccer.”
“Did she live around here?” Buster remained interested.
“No, in Nova Scotia, outside a city called Yarmouth.”
“Was she a professional athlete?”
“No, she taught school.”
Buster’s face fell.
“But she loved sports!” my mother continued anxiously. “She thought girls should be allowed to enjoy and participate in sports as much as boys. Wait a minute and I’ll get the book of remembrance. There’s a picture of her in there and a story of her life written by her daughter.” Mother left the room and returned shortly with a large black volume opened up to the picture of Anne Marie McIlhenny. She was a pretty woman wearing a lace dress.
“She doesn’t look like any athlete there!” complained Buster.
“Oh she was feminine, but she was strong.” My mother made a ridiculous looking fist. “Read her story,” she urged. “She did all kinds of amazing things, yet she remained feminine too!” Mother had to have her nickel’s worth of preaching. Her face reddened with excitement. Here, at last, was the opportunity to teach Buster that one could be feminine and enjoy tree climbing too. Maybe she would even drop the name Buster!
My father winked at me.
“You were named after her, you know,” my mother was saying to Buster. “Of course, we didn’t know you would be so much like her then—when you were a baby, I mean. See, you even look like her. If you had a lace collar like that, you’d look exactly like her!” There was a remarkable resemblance.
Buster was skeptical but took the book of remembrance to her bedroom.
On Saturday morning mother, armed with pen and pencil, went into Buster’s bedroom to help her with her talk. To her surprise, Buster didn’t want help.
“Are you sure?” mother asked.
“Positive,” Buster replied. “I know what I want to say. I can write it myself. Did you know,” she raised her eyebrows, “that Anne Marie McIlhenny finished building a barn with her own two hands after her husband broke both his legs?”
“Yes, I know.”
“She was sensational,” Buster muttered, forgetting mother was there. “Simply sensational.”
“She doesn’t want any help,” mother told father and me in the kitchen, “and she thinks Anne Marie McIlhenny was sensational!” She clapped her hands. “Maybe she’ll want us to call her Anne Marie again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
My father laughed and shook his head. “Don’t count on it,” he grinned.
Mother went downtown to celebrate Buster’s “growth into womanhood” as she dramatically put it. Her celebration took the form of buying Buster a new dress to wear for her talk. Buster hated dresses, especially new ones.
“Did you know,” Buster began as mother unwrapped the box, “that Anne Marie McIlhenny had her own horse and rode bareback whenever she could? And she loved the wind.”
“I’d forgotten that,” said my mother. “How do you like this dress?” She held it up. It was, every inch, white eyelet. I kid you not.
I thought of Anne Marie McIlhenny in her lace dress.
Buster stared at the dress for what seemed an hour and a half.
“It’s okay,” she said finally.
Mother knew good luck when it clobbered her on the head like that and quickly hung the dress in the closed before Buster changed her mind. She hummed steadily through dinner. She was victorious. Here was Buster giving a talk all by herself and about her own great-great-grandmother and not her usual favorite—Goliath. And she was going to wear white eyelet doing it. Mother was sure that any moment now Buster would demand that we call her Anne Marie!
That evening Buster did not want to rehearse her talk for us. She said she could do it herself. She sat on the garage roof and practiced. I could see her lips moving from the kitchen window.
“Do you think it’s safe to let Buster give a talk without our hearing it first?” my father asked.
“I think she can handle it.” murmured my mother. “After all, she’s Anne Marie McIlhenny’s great-great-granddaughter.”
On Sunday I sat with my parents in sacrament meeting. Buster sat on the stand dressed in white eyelet, as feminine as orange blossoms, and looking for all the world like our great-great-grandmother. I noticed my mother’s foot swing back and forth in nervous rhythm. My father’s face was deadpan, but he swallowed frequently. Finally, the bishop introduced Buster as one of the prettiest Scouts in the ward. My mother winced slightly.
Buster stood behind the pulpit without any notes and in a clear voice began to speak. “I would like to tell you about my great-great-grandmother, Buster McIlhenny!” Then she looked down at my mother’s stricken face and said to her alone, “A lady as strong and fine as Great-Great-Grandmother McIlhenny deserves a good name like Buster, and since she shared her name with me, I want to share my name with her. And one day,” she added softly, “maybe I’ll even be as neat a lady as she was.”

A few years ago, my friends had a beautiful baby named Brigham. After his birth, Brigham was diagnosed with a rare condition called Hunter syndrome, which sadly meant that Brigham would have a short life. One day while Brigham and his family were visiting the temple grounds, Brigham pronounced a particular phrase; twice he said, “One more day.” The very next day, Brigham passed away.
I have visited Brigham’s grave a few times, and every time I do, I contemplate the phrase “one more day.” I wonder what it would mean, what effect it would have in my life to know that I had only one more day to live. How would I treat my wife, my children, and others? How patient and polite would I be? How would I take care of my body? How fervently would I pray and search the scriptures? I think that, in one way or another, we all at some point will have a “one more day” realization—a realization that we must use wisely the time we have.

Our son-in-law Jeff recalls that through some of his teenage years, there were times he saw the commandments of God as restrictive, and he was like the kite that would cut its string at every opportunity. At that point in his life, obedience was a challenge. He would obey at times largely out of duty to his family or when motivated by fear of punishment. He says he didn't feel a love for the Savior--that he did not really know Him. Fortunately, through the influence of those around him, including his parents and a Young Men adviser, he was obedient enough that the Spirit could touch him with some understanding and desire to do good. Line upon line, he slowly progressed and became converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jeff remembers: "Looking back 30 years later, I can see that I have been caught up in a virtuous cycle of obeying and receiving light and knowledge, which causes me to want to obey more. I see in my own life the truth that President Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught: 'We come to see obedience not as a punishment but as a liberating path to our divine destiny. And gradually, the corruption, dust, and limitations of this earth begin to fall away. Eventually, the priceless, eternal spirit of the heavenly being within us is revealed, and a radiance of goodness becomes our nature.'"[18]

Excited by their newfound religion, Jaanus and his friend Urmas Raavk decided they must spread the gospel. They spoke with at least 50 people on the streets and knocked on 20 doors. They tried to talk like missionaries, explaining the story of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. The missionaries later asked Jaanus, “Why did you do that? Who gave you the authority to act as missionaries?”
“We know from reading in the Bible that everybody must be a missionary,” Jaanus answered. “I already have a strong desire to serve. It is hard to wait until I get a mission call.”
The elders smiled, “In opening this new mission, we need to be very careful and only work through referrals to members’ friends,” they explained. President Steven R. Mecham of the Finland Helsinki East Mission said that this proved to be important in getting the Church accepted. Proselyting needed to be handled carefully so as not to offend. From then on, Jaanus and Urmas worked with the missionaries.

I was with members of the Church in Latin America the last two weekends. There I met tithe payers, full-tithe payers, who struggle for economic survival. One great leader, a medical doctor, lost his employment for months. To feed his family, he turned to the manual work he had done to put himself through medical school. He had borrowed to get food. The loan was coming due, and he saw no way to pay it. And yet through it all, week by week, he paid tithing on his tiny earnings. He did not ask me for money but asked that I would pray for him. His only concern was that God would help him to keep his covenants.

Growing up, I didn’t believe there was a God. My life was full of turmoil, and in my darkest days I was depressed enough that I wanted to end my life. That was when the missionaries came knocking on my door. The gospel was exactly what I needed; I was drawn to it like a magnet.
My trials didn’t end after I joined the Church, but I was in a better position to resist the influence of the adversary. For the first time, I knew what happiness felt like.
However, depression didn’t loosen its grip easily. At one point I wanted to give up again. At that moment Sister Ting, the bishop’s wife, called. She told me she had a feeling she needed to call me. She asked how I was doing. I bore my soul to her. To me, she was an angel sent by God.
That incident empowered me. My faith was strengthened. I felt like I could conquer death. I felt delivered, like it says in Alma 36:2–3:
“They were in bondage, and none could deliver them except … God … .
“… Whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.”
I still have trials, but I will not be easily beaten again. God has supported me through all my trials and worries. He has saved me from spiritual prison and bondage, even death. He is my Savior.

I just started receiving the New Era in November 1990 and I love it. My favorite was the November Q&A on young men going on missions.
One morning during a sacrament meeting, the speakers were talking about missionary work. They were encouraging all the young men to go. I was watching the interpreter translating the speaker’s words into sign language and I started thinking about my own plans.
My heart swelled with hope and a desire to serve a mission. So I went to talk to my bishop and he encouraged me to go. I finally prayed and decided to go when I turn 19.
Michael RobbKalama, Washington

Tamton and Taake feel they have been richly blessed by the Lord. Several years ago, Tamton wanted to build a large fish trap to support his family. But to build one, he needed to take thousands of rocks out into the ocean. The task seemed impossible. He had only a small canoe and just his sons to help.
“I prayed hard about the problem,” he says. “The next day I saw a float [a tangle of debris] beached on my land. In the float were some large pieces of styrofoam. With them, I built a raft, and with the raft, my sons and I built our fish trap. In fact, we built two.” The traps have been valuable family assets. When the traps catch more fish than the family can use, they sell the extra.

Thinking back to my first ward road show, I distinctly remember the early-morning practices, the prayers, the talking to others as we waited to perform our parts, and the camaraderie we felt as we painted scenery, practiced, and learned together. These were the times when I watched how the gospel worked in the real lives of real people. I saw how my advisers handled problems, how leaders reacted under pressure, how spouses related to each other, and I made silent decisions about living the principles I was being taught on Sunday. I felt the Spirit as we prayed for miracles, such as remembering our parts or the health of one of the youth.
I don’t remember my lines from that road show, nor do I remember all the other particulars. But I do remember how I felt as we performed and as I looked into the faces of my ward members and saw their approval and felt their love.

Consider the experience of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. When he graduated as an ensign, he was given an old, decrepit destroyer as his first command. It was named the Decatur. It was all he could do to prepare the old destroyer for sailing and on one of its first voyages, Ensign Nimitz ran the ship aground. It resulted in an immediate court martial. Had Chester Nimitz not been the kind of man he was, that defeat could have ruined his career. But what did he do? He put that defeat behind him and went on to becoming the commanding admiral of the greatest sea force ever assembled in this world—the Pacific Fleet. He showed everyone that one defeat could not keep a good man down.

When I was almost 16 years old, my inspired bishop asked me to teach our youth Sunday School class about gaining a testimony of the gospel through prayer. As I grew up, I had taken the time to study the Book of Mormon and always felt that the Church was true. I had always believed in the Savior Jesus Christ, but I had never taken to heart Moroni’s promise, found in Moroni 10:4–5, and prayed about the truthfulness of the gospel. I remember feeling that if I was going to teach about how to gain a testimony through prayer, I should pray for a testimony myself. My soul hungered—perhaps in a different way from Enos, but I still felt a spiritual need.
As I prepared the lesson, I knelt and prayed with all my heart. When I asked the Lord if the gospel is true, there came to my heart a very sweet feeling—that still, small voice confirming to me that it was true and that I should continue doing what I was doing.
The feeling was so strong that I could never disregard that answer and say I didn’t know. I felt so happy! The following Sunday, I stood in front of my classmates and testified that Heavenly Father would answer their prayers if they had faith.
Elder Soares as a young man
This testimony has stayed with me. It has helped me make decisions, especially in challenging moments. It has allowed me to testify to people, with conviction, that they can get answers from Heavenly Father if they pray in faith. This has been true for me as a teacher in that youth Sunday School class, as a missionary, and even today as an Apostle.

Years after my family and I joined the Church, I received a call to serve in the Nigeria Port Harcourt Mission. On a sunny day shortly after I arrived in my first area, my companion and I set out for our usual proselyting and contacting.
As we passed through a populated street, we heard a faint voice calling to us from a low-fenced compound. We looked over the fence and saw a middle-aged man lying flat on his stomach by the gate.
He bade us come in, but there was no way we could enter the compound. The gate was locked and we thought that scaling over the fence would be unethical. I was prompted to check the padlock on the gate again. After a few minutes we managed to remove the padlock from the outside and open the gate. We could see that the man had been sick and unattended to. He explained that he had been ill and felt intense pain that prevented him from standing up.
After talking with him, we followed him as he crept back into his house. He asked that we pray for him, and we offered to give him a blessing. When we laid our hands upon his head, I felt a lump in my throat and couldn’t utter a word. Fear came over me, I began to shake and sweat, and tears flowed down my cheeks. I struggled to pray aloud, so I began to pray in my heart that Heavenly Father would loosen my tongue according to His will.
Suddenly, my tongue gained utterance. I knew I was speaking, but I wasn’t in control of the words. I just heard my own voice asking Heavenly Father to heal this suffering man. Before we said amen, the man had fallen asleep. We left him and went to our other appointments but planned to come back on our way to our apartment to check on him.
We returned and to my great astonishment, the man came running toward us, shouting, “It worked! It worked!” We were so overwhelmed with joy I couldn’t hold back my tears.
In sacrament meeting the following Sunday, the bishop suddenly paused at the pulpit and looked straight at the chapel door. We looked back and saw the man we had blessed. The bishop knew him and was surprised at his entering a church. From then on, the man attended sacrament meetings and other classes regularly. I was eventually transferred out of the area.
It is amazing to me how God provided a miracle that day, and I am humbled that Heavenly Father found me worthy. I know we were instruments in God’s hands. The blessing of healing belonged to that man, but the blessing of testimony and joy belonged to me.

There are many examples that can help us develop the strength to make righteous choices. Mohandas K. Gandhi is one such example:
His mother taught him that to eat meat was wrong, inasmuch as it necessitated the destruction of life, so Gandhi pledged to his mother that he would remain a strict vegetarian throughout his life. . . .
Then Gandhi was taken very ill and his life was despaired of. His physicians tried to persuade him that if he would drink a little beef broth, his life might be saved, but Gandhi said, “Even for life itself we may not do certain things. There is only one course open to me—to die, but never to break my pledge.”
. . . As a result of this trait of integrity, Gandhi’s followers renamed him the Mahatma, or the Great Soul. [Sterling W. Sill, The Laws of Success (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1975), pp. 186–87]

You will recall the account related by Parley P. Pratt about an incident in the makeshift jail at Richmond, Missouri, in November of 1838. The guards, according to Brother Pratt, were

the most noisy, foul-mouthed, vulgar, disgraceful rabble that ever defiled the earth. . . .

In one of those tedious nights we had lain as if in sleep till the hour of midnight had passed, and our ears and hearts had been pained, while we had listened for hours to the obscene jests, the horrid oaths, the dreadful blasphemies and filthy language of our guards. . . .

I had listened till I became so disgusted, shocked, horrified, and so filled with the spirit of indignant justice that I could scarcely refrain from rising upon my feet and rebuking the guards; but had said nothing to Joseph, or any one else, although I lay next to him and knew he was awake. On a sudden he arose to his feet, and spoke in a voice of thunder, or as the roaring lion, uttering, as near as I can recollect, the following words:

“SILENCE, ye fiends of the infernal pit. In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you, and command you to be still; I will not live another minute and hear such language. Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS INSTANT!”

He ceased to speak. He stood erect in terrible majesty. Chained, and without a weapon; calm, unruffled and dignified as an angel, he looked upon the quailing guards, whose weapons were lowered or dropped to the ground; whose knees smote together, and who, shrinking into a corner, or crouching at his feet, begged his pardon, and remained quiet till a change of guards.