Gospel Story Finder

I would like to say to the young men who are listening in tonight (I wish I could talk to every young man who holds the priesthood, if it could be effective), we never need to be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we should always be humbly proud of the priesthood that we hold.

I was talking to a young man who is going to be baptized next month, the only member of his family to be baptized, and I said, “What caused you to be interested in the Church?”
And he replied, “The young man I was associating with in school was a member of your church, and the way he lived interested me. He was different from the rest of the boys. He was happy, and he invited me to his home; and when I saw the love in that home and how that family lived, I was more interested. He took me to church, and then I joined the ball team, and I found in that church a different feeling than I had found any other place. Then that ball team, those fine fellows all keeping the Word of Wisdom and living good clean lives, impressed me, and I determined that I would join the Church.”
He went on to say: “I came with that friend out to Brigham Young University to attend one semester. I wanted to get acquainted with the people out here. I found most of those young people down there living the way they should, but if I hadn’t determined to be a member of this church before I met some of the others, I don’t know what effect it would have had on me.”
I think, young men, wherever you are, you must keep this in mind. Your actions may be keeping people out of the Church, and I am sure you wouldn’t be happy about that.

Going to a wedding reception alone isn’t always comfortable. But when an old friend invited me to his wedding dinner, I knew I couldn’t miss the opportunity to celebrate with him and his new bride.
The day of the wedding, I arrived just before dinner started. I spotted an empty seat and asked one of the women at the table if it were taken.
“Are you supposed to be here?” she questioned, eyeing me suspiciously.
I had no idea what prompted the question—or the manner in which she asked it. There wasn’t someone checking a guest list. The seating wasn’t prearranged. I was on time and dressed appropriately. What could be the problem?
I smiled nervously. “I’m a friend of the groom,” I assured her. She nodded, so I sat down and tried to strike up friendly conversation with the six couples at the table. Whatever discomfort I had felt before was magnified given the “welcome” I’d received. I desperately scanned the room for someone—anyone—I knew, but aside from the groom, there wasn’t a familiar face anywhere.
But then it happened. My friend, seated next to his bride at the front of the crowded hall, stood. As he did so, he saw me on the opposite side of the room. He paused, smiled, and placed his hand over his heart as if to say, “Thank you for coming. I know you sacrificed to be here. It means so much that you’re with us.”
A feeling of relief and happiness washed over me. Whatever anyone else thought, in the groom’s estimation, I belonged. I smiled as I mirrored his gesture. I hoped my friend knew how much I wanted to celebrate and share in his and his wife’s joy. Whatever social awkwardness I had felt was gone in that 10-second exchange, and I spent the rest of the evening infused with confidence.
Days later, in preparing to teach a Relief Society lesson, I studied Matthew 22 and read of a king preparing a marriage feast for his son, who represents the Savior. About these verses of scripture, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught: “Those who keep the commandments of the Lord and walk in His statutes to the end, are the only individuals permitted to sit at this glorious feast. … Those who have kept the faith will be crowned with a crown of righteousness; be clothed in white raiment; be admitted to the marriage feast; be free from every affliction, and reign with Christ on the earth.”1 That promise is powerful anytime, but it was especially so because of my experience earlier that week.
As I taught the lesson, I realized that obedience is the only requirement for accepting an invitation from Jesus Christ to rejoice with Him, to have a place at His feast. And that feast is one at which guests need never feel insecure because they do belong. Although I am as yet far from perfect in my obedience, I hope one day to qualify to meet the Bridegroom and with hand over heart—a heart submitted to His will—say, “I’m so happy to be here.”

After the session, it was time to return to Argentina. But since the bus had developed a mechanical problem, we had to stay Saturday night in Santiago while it was being repaired. However, even this difficulty turned to our advantage. Again we held a home evening as an entire group—rejoicing in hymns, prayers, and testimony. All of us were as one.
On Sunday our bus, reverberating with the hymns of Zion, finally started for home. Eventually some of us slept, while others remained awake, letting pass through our minds the thoughts of those past few days. We arrived at our own meetinghouse at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon and held our sacrament meeting according to the commandment of the Lord.
How many things we had to tell our brothers and sisters! How we wished that someday they might feel what we had felt!
Brother Ávila’s dream had been fulfilled.

As in so many other circumstances, the undeniable prompting of the Holy Spirit had its special influence when 17-year-old Tom, unlike the forty-one other recruits with whom he joined the armed services that day, chose the naval reserve (for the duration of the war plus six months) over the regular navy (for four years with a fixed promise of discharge). It was a decision he had made a matter of urgent prayer.
Within just a few weeks of his joining, there was an armistice in Europe and only a few months later came peace in the Pacific. Less than a year after he began his active duty, Ensign Thomas S. Monson returned home to graduate with honors from the University of Utah, just one quarter behind those members of his class who had not given military service. The impressions of the Spirit had spared him three needless years of post-war military duty. Little did he know that even then he was being fitted with “the whole armour of God” (Eph. 6:11) for quite a different kind of battle and a much longer tour of duty. He was “on the Lord’s errand” and his time was very important.

“Our Area Presidency has challenged us to read the Book of Mormon before stake conference. Will you try?” my dad asked me. “I’ll try,” I said reluctantly. I was reluctant because I had recently been in a bicycle accident and had received a serious concussion. I remember the exact date of my accident—27 July 1993—because it was my younger brother Brent’s 12th birthday.
The morning of Brent’s birthday, I did not have a present for him, so I decided to ride my bicycle to a store to find something. The store was not far away, but getting there required riding along a busy state highway. Thinking I would be safer, I rode on a seldom-used sidewalk that ran by some condominiums not far from my home. Toward the bottom of a hill, the sidewalk became uneven and was covered with sand, dirt, and plants. The sidewalk was not easily seen from either the highway or the condos. I headed down the hill, picking up speed as I went, but my trip didn’t take me where I had planned to go. I ended up in the hospital instead.
I have no memory of what happened. All I remember is the pain. I later learned that two teenage boys found me. They contacted a neighbor, who called my mom and the paramedics.
Five days later, I was still delirious. I had more than 40 stitches over one eye and on my chin, and bandages covered other cuts and scrapes. While I was in the hospital and at home, many loving people in our ward visited me and brought me gifts—although I can’t remember most of it.
Later, when I was feeling better, my parents had a speech pathologist test me. The tests showed moderate to severe impairment of my ability to retrieve general information, organize thoughts, and speak intelligently. My mental age had dropped. Although I was nearly 15 years old, I was performing at a 12-year-old level.
One of the most frustrating consequences of the accident was not being able to read. I could see the words, but my mind couldn’t process them. It was almost as if I had forgotten how to read. So my dad’s request that I read the Book of Mormon within a two-month period would be an immense challenge.
That night, I knelt by my bed to pray to Heavenly Father. During my prayer, I felt strongly that if Heavenly Father wanted me to read the Book of Mormon, He would help me. After the prayer, I got up, sat in bed, and opened the Book of Mormon to the first page. I slowly looked at the words in front of me and began: “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents …” I was reading! I could actually understand the words! Part of me was totally amazed and excited. Yet part of me wasn’t surprised at all. Somehow I had a complete assurance that I would be able to read the Book of Mormon if it was the Lord’s will and if He was helping me.
After only one month, I finished reading that great book of scripture. The Lord and the Book of Mormon had taught me how to read again. More important, my faith in Heavenly Father increased, as did my testimony of prayer and the scriptures. That faith and testimony sustained me years later as I served as a full-time missionary in the Korea Seoul West Mission.
I’m grateful my dad challenged me to read the Book of Mormon. Because of that challenge, I was able to understand that Heavenly Father can bless us in our trials. I’m also grateful for miracles—not only for the miraculous coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the miraculous Restoration of the gospel, but also for miracles that happen today to people like me.

In 1996 my wife and I had two sons, ages four and seven. We were a typical busy young family. Late one night my wife made time to write a letter to my nephew, Glen, who was then serving a mission in Finland.
For some reason, she felt she needed to write a long letter—one filled with details about what each family member was doing, where they were spiritually, what was happening in my Church calling and in her Church calling, the story of her conversion, her feelings about missionary work, and her testimony of the gospel.
It was a great letter, but I wondered if my nephew really needed that much information. Later she wrote him again.
Six years later, while I was serving as bishop and our boys were 10 and 13, my world suddenly changed. On January 2, 2002, my wife, only 42 years old, died of a heart attack.
At home I tried to continue following the principles in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.”1 I found that I could preside and provide, but I fell short in giving my sons the nurturing they needed. Nevertheless, we moved on as best we could.
In June 2012 my younger son, Sam, then serving a full-time mission in the Colorado Denver South Mission, sent me an email. “Something really cool happened this week,” he wrote. “I got two letters from Mom.”
He explained that he had received a package from his cousin Glen that included the letters she had written to him while he was in Finland.
“He told me that these two letters Mom sent him on his mission were really written for me while on my mission,” Sam wrote. “So he sent them to me, and they were incredible!”
Learning of his mother’s conversion, testimony, and feelings toward missionary work was “a great moral support at this time,” Sam wrote. He said he planned to photocopy the letters and send the originals home.
“I had no idea that you had ever served as an elders quorum president or as the ward mission leader,” Sam wrote. He learned that when he was four years old, he “would jump on the bed after prayers and shout ‘I want to be a missionary.’”
Then he added something he had learned about his mother: “Mom must have known that I would become a wrestler because she said that I could charm the socks off a pro wrestler. :)”
I was moved to tears by Sam’s reaction to the letters. A few weeks later he mailed them home. They were powerful, personal, and poignant when written in 1996, but given the events of subsequent years, they had become even more so.
My wife’s letters had strengthened my nephew, but like “casting bread upon the water” (see Ecclesiastes 11:1), they returned years later to bless her missionary son and widowed husband.

Illustration by Bradley Clark
Because of old plumbing and an unsound foundation, my childhood home flooded whenever a storm produced enough rain. Because storms in Virginia, USA, can last for hours, water invaded frequently.
We lived in that home during most of my growing-up years, so I thought flooding was normal.
After several storms, we improved our flood-fighting tactics and learned to work together. Storms often hit in the middle of the night, and my parents would wake us all up to work at our posts as the water encroached through the basement like slow-moving lava. My brother and father would bucket out the stairwell while my sister and I quickly sopped up water with towels to save the carpet.
We giggled as we jumped and danced on those towels, feeling the squishy wetness between our toes and through our pajama legs. Mom hurriedly wrung out the drenched towels, hurled them into the dryer, and brought new ones fresh for stomping. When we were satisfied the house was safe, we went to the kitchen to dry off and enjoy hot cocoa and cookies for our labors. Then, if it wasn’t yet time for school, we would try to go back to sleep.
Whenever my childhood home would flood, my brother and father would bucket out the stairwell while my sister and I quickly sopped up water with towels.
These floods must have given my parents great anxiety, but I remember them as some of the happiest moments of my childhood, even with the booming thunder and the flashing lightning. In fact, the smell of wet carpet still makes me nostalgic for family time.
My parents could have fought the flooding alone, but I’m so glad they employed all of us in defense of our home. Fighting the water was a joyous event because we were together and we each played a part.
Now that I am grown, I think about those days and wonder how I can create the same joy of working together in my own children. Though grateful that my home does not flood, I know that something unwanted will inevitably encroach upon our family.
No matter what trouble my family may deal with in the future, I hope we stay together and work together in defending our values, our faith, and each other. Then perhaps, even in adversity, we can laugh, smile, and feel happy as we labor side by side.

After President Wilford Woodruff joined the Church he desired to serve a mission.
“I was but a Teacher,” he wrote, “and it is not a Teacher’s office to go abroad and preach. I dared not tell any of the authorities of the Church that I wanted to preach, lest they might think I was seeking for an office” (Leaves from My Journal, Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882, p. 8).
He prayed to the Lord, and without disclosing his desire to any others, he was ordained a priest and sent on a mission. They went to the Arkansas Territory.
He and his companion struggled through a hundred miles of alligator-infested swamps, wet, muddy, and tired. Brother Woodruff developed a sharp pain in his knee and could go no further. His companion left him sitting on a log and went home. Brother Woodruff knelt down in the mud and prayed for help. He was healed and continued his mission alone.
Three days later he arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, weary, hungry, and very muddy. He went to the largest inn and asked for something to eat and for a place to sleep, although he had no money to pay for either.
When the innkeeper found he was a preacher, he laughed and decided to have some fun with him. He offered Brother Woodruff a meal if he would preach to his friends.
A large audience of the rich and fashionable people of Memphis gathered and were quite amused by this mud-stained missionary.
None would sing or pray, so Brother Woodruff did both. He knelt before them and begged the Lord to give him His Spirit and to show him the hearts of the people. And the Spirit came! Brother Woodruff preached with great power. He was able to reveal the secret deeds of those who came to ridicule him.
When he was finished, no one laughed at this humble holder of the Aaronic Priesthood. Thereafter he was treated with kindness (see Leaves from My Journal, pp. 16–18).
He was under the guiding, protecting power of his Aaronic Priesthood. The same power can be with you as well.

Most Latter-day Saints who achieve any amount of fame or success will say that in spite of their dedication to their chosen field, the Church comes first. But the girls on Kirtland, New Mexico’s record-shattering basketball team won’t tell you that.
It would be impossible for them to separate the Church from any one facet of their lives, because the gospel is the dominating force in everything they do. To rank it in one place, leave it there, then go on to others would be absolutely ridiculous to them.
Take basketball, for example. That’s what they spend most of their time doing, and the gospel is always a part of it. There were five LDS girls on the team that won a record-breaking eight straight state championships, and the coach was the first counselor in the bishopric. With that kind of a roster, you can bet the gospel was never far from their minds.
“The Church is the whole backbone of everything in life,” says Paige Manning, a perky five-foot, two-inch guard who resembles a pixie more than a basketball player. But Paige will surprise you. She’s a skilled starter with some deadly shots that have earned her high-point honors in more than one game. “We pray about everything, and we know we represent the Church wherever we go, whatever we do,” she says.
And the players on the Kirtland Central High girls’ basketball team get to do a lot of representing. Since they set their record, they’ve appeared on radio and television stations nationwide, including ESPN, and have been noted in many newspapers, including a featured article in USA Today. One player, Collette Hatch, has even had her picture printed on the side of milk cartons all over the state as part of an antidrug campaign. And that kind of recognition isn’t common in Kirtland.
You see, Kirtland is an unlikely place to produce a team that rolls over the most powerful schools in the state. Kirtland is hardly even a speck on the map in the northwest corner of the state. But the town, like its LDS residents, is permeated by the gospel. It originated in the late 1800s as a little offshoot community of nearby Fruitland, which was mostly settled by Saints sent out from Salt Lake City. Yes, it is named after the famous Mormon settlement in Ohio. Today most of the town’s residents are non-LDS, but there are still descendants of the original settlers. You’ll find LDS family names like Cluff, Foutz, Ashcroft, Biggs, Farnsworth, and Hatch wherever you go.
Kirtland never was exactly what you’d call a boomtown, either. The population hit about 3,000, and has stayed close to that mark ever since. It’s mostly flat, rocky desert land, although the red-brown scenery is dotted by a Navajo willow every now and then. There are a few stores in Kirtland, a post office, a couple of churches, and a ball diamond or two.
And there are schools there. Schools that feature superlative female basketball players. The winning tradition has become a legacy that many of the little girls in town dream of joining. “I’ve always wanted to be on the team,” says Gaylene “Gidget” Gallagher, an energetic guard. “I’ve been trying to learn how to play since I was little. When the coaches finally started us in a program, I spent all my time in the gym.”
It was the same for Collette. “When I was just little I remember my dad saying, ‘Here—take this basketball and go dribble it around the house—and don’t use both hands!’”
Once Collette got to high school, basketball seemed to dominate just about everything else. “You just go to practice, come home, study, and go to bed,” she says. “You have no social life. Except after the games you might go get pizza or something, but that’s about it. All during the summer, you just practice.”
All that work seems to have paid off for Collette, who fits most people’s description of the all-American girl. In the summer of 1987, she was selected to be on a high school superstar team that traveled to Israel. She has managed to be active in seminary, Mutual, and student council, and she is rated second in her class academically, so you can tell she finds time for some other interests.
During the season, practices last at least three hours a day. And in the summertime, some of the players have been known to practice up to 12 hours a day. Coach Cluff, a loving, fatherly man who knows how to take charge, uses basketball as an opportunity to help his players learn the gospel.
“I’m simple enough to believe that everything is spiritual with Heavenly Father,” he says. “Whether it’s basketball, math, science, or whatever.” He always makes sure that there’s a prayer both before and after a game. “Kids can learn a lot about their Heavenly Father through basketball, if they use prayer, and hopefully those lessons will stick with them for the rest of their lives.”
What are some of the lessons they’ve learned? They’ve learned to stick to their standards, for one. “The community knows we’re not the partying type,” says Collette. In fact, the town residents know just about everything about the players on their championship team, from their grade point averages to the color of dress they wore to the prom. “The community knows that we’re probably the straightest people in the whole town. We can’t give in to temptation, even just a little bit, or everything will go down. Not just our reputation, but our abilities and our potential.”
“And it’s not always easy to set a strong example,” adds Paige. “It’s hard in a small town. You don’t have much to do that’s exciting. Everything gets real old real fast, so a lot of kids just turn to things like alcohol and drugs, and they think that makes them happy. I’ve seen them go through a lot of pain, and I’ve been able to avoid all that by following the Word of Wisdom and keeping my standards where they should be.”
They’ve learned that the missionary work they do through example is invaluable. Over the years, several team members have joined the Church thanks to the examples set by their LDS counterparts. And most of the LDS players today bring friends to Church activities and seminary. You might think there would be a certain breach between the LDS and non-LDS players, but they go out of their way to be unified.
“There’s never a division between the LDS girls and the others,” says Moni Ahlcrimn, a raven-haired forward with a sparkle in her blue eyes. “But they do watch us, and many times they kind of follow along with what we’re doing.”
Gidget thinks that that cohesiveness is the main reason for Kirtland’s success on the courts. “You have to be truly dedicated to teamwork to win,” she says. “We work so much together as a team. One of the reasons the other teams lose is because there’s conflict from within. But we really help each other. I think the main reason we do so well is that we’re like one big family.”
But even on a winning team, there are lessons to be learned about defeat. Angie Harris, the team center, hyperextended her knee during the second quarter of the first game of the record-breaking season, and was sidelined for the rest of the year. At least two surgeries have been necessary to get her back on her feet, and she’ll probably never play school ball again. Many players might be bitter over this, but not Angie. She reads the scriptures faithfully every day, and from them she’s learned that “the Lord isn’t going to give you challenges that you can’t handle. This injury wasn’t that bad. I played on the state championship team last year. This keeps it from going to my head.”
Oh, and of course there are the basic lessons to be learned about taking care of the temple which is your body. These girls are so into fitness that in the few seconds of spare time they have left over, they do things like coach little girls’ softball, work as a lifeguard at the community pool, play church volleyball and softball, compete on the school track team, and run just for the fun of it. That’s the main reason Moni is involved in basketball at all. She’s only been playing about three years, but she says, “The running is what I like best. I play to stay in shape.”
And they’ve learned to play, to eat, to drink and sleep—to live under pressure. Many people think the girls’ basketball program is the best thing that ever happened to Kirtland. “Now that we’ve got a streak going, nobody wants to be on the first team to lose,” says Coach Cluff. “The girls work real hard, under intense pressure from the community and from themselves and their teammates, to continue the winning tradition.”
With that kind of pressure, you can see why most of the girls are a bit relieved come graduation day when they hang up their tennies and go on to college. A few of them continue playing basketball—BYU’s star Karina Zapata is a product of Kirtland, and Collette hopes to play for a four-year university. Most of the players from the Kirtland basketball legacy, however, will give up ball in favor of books.
But they will never regret, and they will never forget, the things they learned from their magical years on the basketball team. Sure, their hook shots may fade, and they might not recall how they ever managed to pull down so many rebounds, but because they took their coach’s advice to “consider all things spiritual,” they’ll never forget the eternal principles they learned on a high school basketball court.

Emily sat on the top of the park bleachers, her arms folded across her thin chest. “Dumb old cousins,” she muttered to herself. “Who cares about them, anyway?” She blinked her eyes and tried to ignore the burning in her throat that meant she was about to cry. She stood up and trudged down the bleachers and across the grass to where her mom was talking to Aunt Betty.
“Mom,” Emily whined, flopping down on the picnic table bench. “I don’t like this family reunion. It’s boring, and none of the other kids will let me play with them.”
“Of course they will,” said Aunt Betty in amazement.
“No they won’t,” replied Emily glumly. “They won’t even talk to me.”
“Then talk to someone else,” suggested Mom.
“Like who? Everyone else here is old. They aren’t any fun.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” said Aunt Betty.
“Oh,” Emily admitted, “you’re different. You tell neat stories.” She put her head in her hands.
“Betty,” Mom said, “do you remember some of the stories that Dad used to tell us when we were little?”
Aunt Betty smiled. “Of course I remember. Hey! That’s what you can do, Emily,” she said. “I bet if you asked the right people, you’d hear some great old stories.”
“Oh, no one would tell me anything,” Emily grumped, but she was starting to smile a tiny bit.
“True,” said Mom, “they might not. But I bet there are a lot of good stories hidden out there just waiting to be told.”
Suddenly, Emily sat up very straight. “Yeah—I could be like a detective searching for lost treasure,” she said, scrambling off the picnic bench. “I’ll start with Grandpa Charles because I already know he tells good stories!”
After a few minutes of searching through the chatting groups of relatives, Emily found Grandpa Charles sitting on the grass with his arm around Grandma A’Dell. “Hi!” said Emily. “I’m a detective. Would you help me?”
“I’ll try,” said Grandpa. “What are you looking for?”
“Stories,” Emily said, “about when you were little.”
Now Emily was laughing too. “Thanks!” she said. “Now I’m going to find some other stories.” She saw Aunt Ruth and ran across the lawn to her.
Emily the story detective kept searching. She heard stories about her mom, who was born in a house instead of a hospital, and about Tony the pony that Uncle Josh used to ride—when he could stay on! Tony liked to scrape Josh off by running under a tree branch. She found out about the time when Great-Grandad Ernest went to the store to get fresh brown bread. The baker wrapped the bread in paper so that Grandad could carry it home. On the way, he got so hungry that he poked a little hole in the crust and ate the soft insides. “Mother was sure surprised to have hollow bread,” Grandad said, chuckling.
Emily was having so much fun that she forgot about the other kids. Then, while Uncle Al was telling her about getting his truck stuck in the mud, Brian and three other cousins came over to listen. They were just in time to hear the end of the story: “So I left the truck, walked home, got my sister and our other truck and went back,” said Uncle Al. “And wouldn’t you know, I got the second truck stuck too! My dad finally had to come with the tractor to pull them both out.”
When the story was over, Brian looked at Emily and asked, “Why is everyone telling you stories?”
“Because I’m a story detective,” she said.
“Can we play?” Rachel asked wistfully.
Emily wanted to say no because they wouldn’t play with her before. But she felt too happy to be mean.
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s go see Uncle Andy next.”

Raphael Queiroz eyes the volleyball net, tosses his ball high, then runs a few steps forward and leaps. For a moment he hovers above the floor, seeming to defy gravity. A split second later he meets the volleyball and drives his hand into it. The ball flashes over the net at a terrifying speed.
Anyone watching might wonder how an opponent could return the missiles Raphael launches. “Wow!” is the only response one stunned observer can make.
Raphael just shrugs—but with a hint of satisfaction in his serve. “Actually,” the unassuming Brazilian says, “I prefer soccer. But since I’m not agile enough to play the game well, I play volleyball.”
Perhaps it’s his size. At 6 feet 5 inches (196 cm) and 205 pounds (94 kg), he may not be as quick as smaller, lighter players. But he certainly has the height and weight to put a volleyball only fractions of an inch over a net with such power that only the brave would want to intercept it.
Soccer may be Raphael’s sport of choice, but volleyball is most definitely his game. And he is really good at it. He is so good, in fact, that he played in the final game of the high school volleyball nationals. “That,” Raphael says, “was one of the three happiest days of my life.”
And the other two? “The day I was baptized a member of the Church and the day I received my patriarchal blessing.”
At 19, Raphael de Morais Queiroz of the Jardim Massangana Ward, Recife Brazil Boa Viagem Stake, has learned a couple of important lessons some people never learn. He knows that when you place the Lord first in your life, good things happen. He also knows that sometimes you have to adjust your dreams to take advantage of the talents and opportunities the Lord gives you.
Raphael’s parents joined the Church before he was born, so he grew up in a gospel-oriented home.
“Growing up in the Church, you’re taught from a very young age the principles of the gospel and the importance of keeping the commandments,” he says. “But you still need to get your own testimony.”
Raphael remembers one day in seminary when the class was watching a video about the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith. “I started crying. ‘Why?’ I asked myself. As I concentrated on what I was feeling, the answer came: I was receiving a witness from the Holy Ghost that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Church is true.”
He smiles at the memory. “Good things happen in seminary,” he says.
Good things happen at church, too. During one priests quorum lesson, he felt impressed to get a patriarchal blessing. “In preparing for it, I did some studying, then went to the bishop, and he sent me to the patriarch. I was overwhelmed by what I heard. The Lord entrusted me with a lot. I love my blessing.”
Since those experiences, he has found his testimony strengthened in other ways. Scripture study is one of them. He especially likes the Book of Mormon. “I admire Nephi,” Raphael says.
Like Nephi, Raphael was born of goodly parents. Family is important to him. He feels particularly close to his only sibling, 18-year-old Gabriela.
“To me, Gabriela is an example of righteousness,” Raphael says. “She always follows Church standards.” He points out that she attends seminary twice a day—once early in the morning and again in the evening.
When asked why, she says, “I love learning the gospel. I get a different perspective in the different classes. Then, too, I have friends in the evening class I like being with. Mostly, though, I love feeling the Spirit. I feel it often in seminary.”
For Raphael, his sister illustrates how placing the gospel first in your life can give you strength to resist worldly pressures. “Having a gospel perspective helps us meet our challenges,” he says. “It teaches us to stay away from temptations. Although I’m not free from temptations, I always try to avoid them. Youth need to learn how to avoid temptations by deciding ahead of time how they will handle them.”
He knows well the temptations athletes face. “As an athlete, I always do what athletes do, but not the bad things—I don’t break the Word of Wisdom or do the other things young men sometimes do. I try to set an example as a Latter-day Saint.”
“At first,” he says, “my friends thought my choices were funny. But later they respected me for my standards.”
It was a friend who introduced Raphael to volleyball. In 2001 a teammate on his soccer team in Recife pointed out that some private high schools offer volleyball scholarships. At the time, Raphael was trying for a soccer scholarship but found his physical assets kept him from playing at the level the coaches wanted. But he seemed to have an unexplored talent for volleyball. “So I played volleyball until I got good at it,” he says. He became so good that he was able to secure a full scholarship to a private high school.
At school, he played in the Recife city championships, then in the regionals in northeast Brazil, one of the most important tournaments in the country. But his success didn’t end there. Not long afterward, he was asked to join the Pernambuco State team to prepare for the national high school tournament. His team won almost all its games, losing only in the final match. He has the medals to show for it.
“As a volleyball player,” he says, “I’ve learned to play as a member of a team. One person can’t win alone. You have to look out for one another and help one another.”
In the same way, the Church has taught him to play as a member of the Lord’s team. “The Church has taught me to teach and care for others, to always watch for when people need help. There’s no better place to learn to live the gospel than in the Church. The Lord wants all of us to practice the gospel. That’s why I’m going on a mission.”
Raphael will be giving up a college athletic scholarship to do so. Recruited by several schools, he was tempted to accept a scholarship from one of them. But at this point in his life, he would rather serve on a mission than serve on a volleyball court. He knows he is making the right choice.
“As much success as I have had in sports,” he says, “I want to do better as a missionary. I feel that no matter where I go, I can do well—if I let the Lord coach me.”

To cite another example, after our fifth child was born, my wife and I did not have any more children. After more than ten years, we concluded that our family would not be any larger, which grieved us. Then one day, while my wife was in the temple, the Spirit whispered to her that she would have another child. That prophetic revelation was fulfilled a year and a half later with the birth of our sixth child, for whom we had waited thirteen years.

It was just before dawn. Slowly the anxious moments ticked by for the American soldiers who waited in boats for the signal that would start their battle. They were trying to take one of the Japanese island bases in the Pacific during World War II. In one of the boats were two young Latter-day Saint marines.
At twenty minutes to six, the signal came to start firing. Suddenly it was as though the island base and all the boats waiting to attack exploded into flame and fire. Dive bombers dropped their loads, machine guns cut down the men who started wading toward shore, and the island base of Kwajalein seemed to heave and roll with the fury of the battle.
The two marines were hit in the first wave of gunfire and one was very badly wounded. The other, who was less seriously hurt, held the head of his comrade above water until help came. Finally, a United Press newspaperman and some medics found them both in the water. They tried to give first aid to the least injured boy, but he refused help until his buddy was checked. The rescuers thought the boy was too badly hurt to ever recover. A war correspondent wrote the rest of the story on February 8, 1944.
“Then it happened. This young man, the stronger of the two, bronzed by the tropical sun, clean as a shark’s tooth in the South Seas, slowly got to his knees. His own arm was nearly gone, but with the other, he lifted the head of his unconscious pal into his lap, placed his good hand on the other’s pale brow and uttered what to us seemed to be incredible words—words that to this moment are emblazoned in unforgettable letters across the doorway of my memory:
“In the name of Jesus Christ, and by virtue of the holy priesthood which I hold, I command you to remain alive until the necessary help can be obtained to secure the preservation of your life.’”
The two young marines were later taken to a hospital with the newspaper reporter who concluded his story in this way:
“The three of us are here in Honolulu and today we walked down the beach together. … He is the wonder of the medical unit, for—they say—he should be dead. Why he isn’t they don’t know—but we do—for we were there, off the shores of Kwajalein.”

I looked at the photograph of her in my mother’s scrapbook, pasted in next to Grandma’s certificate of blessing. She wore plaited hair wound in a crown above her oval face. Her eyes were fine and slanted.
“That’s your great-great-grandmother Totshauna.” My mother used to point her out to me when I was a child and the relatives first started saying I favored her. “She crossed the plains with the pioneers, pulling a handcart for more than a thousand miles.”
“Is a thousand miles farther away than Grandma’s house?” We lived in Salt Lake, and my grandmother Harris lived in Spanish Fork.
“Oh, lots farther, honey. A thousand miles is … is almost as far away as the moon.” Mom was proud of her pioneer heritage, and she wanted to be sure her children appreciated their ancestry sufficiently. I still remember at five years marveling over the woman with the funny hair who pulled a cart to Utah from as far away as the moon. Now I’m 20, and three nights ago when I looked at the photograph (faded, and taped in one corner), I remembered again, and marveled.
I was born in Salt Lake City, the city that she, and others like her, built more than a hundred years ago with adobe bricks and irrigation systems fed from the streams of the Wasatch. The call to gather to Zion brought tens of thousands of Saints from the East and converts from Europe, mostly England, to the Great Salt Lake Valley between 1846 and 1900. The Church in those days, struggling for its existence, desperately needed the strength found in unity, for a scattered church stood little chance of developing into the powerful organization that would be necessary to carry out the Lord’s latter-day work.
Twenty-three-year-old Totshauna Svenstrup, her husband, Christian, and their two small daughters were four of those who responded to the call. They came out of Denmark and, after sailing to the United States, joined one of two ill-fated handcart companies that headed westward to Zion. Totshauna’s daughter, Anna Karil, at that time only five, years later wrote briefly of the trek in her journal:
“Father died just outside of Florence [Nebraska] in a wagon accident. Mother pulled the cart, and she with child. We buried Gury in the snow by the Sweetwater [Wyoming]. She froze one night next to me and Mother in the tent. We reached the Salt Lake Valley in October. In December Mother delivered a son.”
In the old museum on Temple Square there used to be a statue of two pioneers, husband and wife, their cloaks windswept, standing together beside a small grave. My seminary class once took a tour of Temple Square. We stopped and looked at the statue, and one girl said, “Isn’t that so sad?” and the girl next to her solemnly agreed, “It’s awful. How did they ever stand it?” Then we continued on to the Assembly Hall to exclaim over how beautiful the stained glass windows are.
My seminary class saw the granite temple that day, too. Totshauna died three years before its completion. Every summer thousands of tourists park their heavily loaded automobiles in the spaces posted “Out-of-State Cars Only” that surround the temple block. They go inside and listen attentively to how the seagulls ate the crickets, then flick coins into the fountain. They file into the Tabernacle where once she, too, shifted her weight on the hard, narrow benches, and they lean a little forward in their seats to hear a pin drop. They snap photos of the spired temple and murmur with admiration: “Forty years to build. Imagine that!” Totshauna’s second husband, Samual Hoopes, was killed while quarrying granite for the temple up Little Cottonwood Canyon in June 1872.
Sometimes when I stand outside the temple, my fingers clutching the iron gate, my head thrown back as I stare at the golden words “Holiness to the Lord,” I remember a widow with eight children. Anna Karil, by that time married, wrote: “Mother embroiders linens for pay. Her fine Danish needlework is admired by many. The children work as they are able. Mother also takes in boarders and washing.”
The spires of the temple and Moroni sounding his trump no longer dominate the Salt Lake skyline. The modern Church Office Building across the street now holds that position of prominence. The office building, 28 stories high, took three years to build. The project was financed by the tithes and offerings of Church members. Totshauna, I think, would be proud to see the tall building. (I can picture her craning her neck toward the top: “Twenty-eight stories high. Imagine that!”) I am proud, too, but sometimes I think of the days when a temple cost 40 years, and even lives, to build. I will be careful not to forget.
After reaching the Salt Lake Valley, Totshauna settled in what is today known as Holladay. Not long after her arrival, she became the plural wife of Samual Hoopes. (I wonder if Samual was as enchanted as I am by her plain and lovely crown of plaits.) She had nine children by Samual; only seven lived past infancy. Her husband, at one time, was two and a half years absent from his family, which included three wives and numerous children, while serving a mission for the Church in the British Isles. Totshauna later sent three sons on missions after Samual’s death, with each son proving an added hardship, for her boys were among the eldest of her children and were depended upon to aid in the support of the entire family. Her own sketchy journal (now kept treasured in soft cloth in my grandmother’s bureau), which she kept for a brief period following Samual’s death, reads: “Hyrum left with elders Whitney and Williams in a wagon and went to take the rail to Canada. I packed him two beef tarts and two loaves bread with chokeberry jam, and Samual’s Book of Mormon, and an extra shirt and pair socks. He is seventeen.”
When my older brother, Jeff, left on his mission to Quebec, we stood in the airport terminal and watched the big jet take off. In his two large suitcases he carried a missionary Bible and leatherbound triple combination, three new suits, five white shirts, and a brand-new woolen coat that Mom saved for three months to buy. He had a notebook with the missionary discussions in it, and he’d already memorized them in French. I asked my mom if we could pack him beef tarts and bread with jam for his send-off, but she just smiled and said, “Oh, don’t be silly,” and baked him a shoebox full of tollhouse cookies instead.
As I reflect upon Totshauna’s life, I can’t help but contrast her harsh and simple life-style with my own. I attend Brigham Young University (named for the prophet-colonizer she followed and revered) where I study English and music and religion. Occasionally I may wash a pair of socks in the sink (she washed all her clothing with a scrub board and lye soap) or take a break from my daily routine by baking wheat bread, but these interruptions are rare. I often wonder while buzzing down the freeway in my Volkswagen or listening to the prophet at conference time on television or radio, what part of her remains in me.
Somewhere inside me I feel a bittersweet ache as I reflect upon those early days of Mormonism. There is in me a kind of wistful longing to return to the days of seagulls and crickets, days when temples took 40 years to build, days of missionaries who traveled on foot or by rail with neither purse or scrip, days of adobe bricks, and martyrs. Such days formed my roots and the roots of my church. They are a part of me in ways that I feel though do not fully understand.
Yet, despite my shadowy longings for past times and things, I am immersed in modern Mormonism—the organization she spent her life building a foundation for. That it is an exciting and marvelous age I live in I cannot deny. (Totshauna would thrill to hear about the 25,000 missionaries who now tract the earth. I thrill, too.) But as the modern church grows in strength and size, and I grow along with it—full of vast and varied possibilities for personal development and eager to discover what part in the growth and development of today’s church I might play—I will be careful to remember and strive to understand that part in me that is Totshauna, that part that is there because of her. I will go to Brigham Young University and exert my mind in the study of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Shakespeare. I’ll learn how to be a writer and maybe one day write for Church publications. I’ll practice my violin for at least one hour each day, and I’ll study the scriptures and struggle to comprehend, as well as live, the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in the mornings as I prepare to meet each day of work and study, I will plait my hair and sometimes even fashion it in a crown above my oval face.

Diligence and Commitment. At the beginning of Elder Richards’ first mission to Holland in 1905, he was assigned work in the mission office. He felt the urgent need to learn the language and often felt hampered because of his lack of proficiency. He pushed to get the office work current so he could study Dutch. Beyond that, the spirit of his mission “rested mightily upon him.” He wrote, “I was so anxious to preach the gospel that I found myself arising before 5:00 AM. to study Dutch and get my office work done so I could go out tracting in the afternoon.” Day after day ke recorded that he distributed 50, 92, 110 tracts a day. His return calls to gather them yielded many gospel conversations, halting and incomplete as they no doubt were at first on his part. The kind of effort he was expending as a “part-time” missionary is made clear by the fact that, in comparison, other missionaries were giving out an average of only 197 tracts per missionary, per month, at the same time.

From Idaho comes the story of Jonathan, who went to school in the cold weather wearing his warm hat. When he got to school, he noticed that another boy’s ears were frostbitten because he had had to wait so long in the cold for the school bus to pick him up. On his own, Jonathan went to the telephone, called his mother, and asked if it would be all right to give the younger boy his hat because he needed it more. When we bear one another’s burdens, as Jonathan and Christina did, we are fulfilling the covenant we made at baptism.

While in Canada recently, I was happy to meet a young man serving as a missionary whom I had interviewed some years before. He had wanted so much to serve a mission, but his parents were against his doing so. He felt torn, knowing the prophet’s counsel that every worthy young man should serve a mission, yet also knowing the Lord’s commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” He wanted to do what was right, and he wanted me to tell him what to do. I counseled him to go home and live worthily for a mission call and to honor his parents by abiding by their wishes. And that is what he did. I didn’t hear any more from this young man until I saw him on my visit to Canada. Now he was a missionary, serving with his parents’ approval and support. “Elder Pinegar is a prophet,” he said to the stake president. “He promised me my parents would some day consent to my coming on a mission if I would honor and obey them, and he was right.” Now I want to be quick to assure you that I make no claim of being a prophet; but I can promise you, as the prophets have promised, that the Lord’s words are true. His commandments are for our good. His promises are sure to those who love him and keep his commandments.

Throughout my school years I never lacked for friends; in fact, I spent a lot of time with my friends. But the one who was always my confidante and whom I could always go to with any concern or discussion was my mother. I realize this may seem a bit unusual, but at the early age of two, I lost my father as a result of a construction accident. So my mother and I grew very close together, not only in a parent-child relationship but as best friends.

But tonight we should not speak much of age. You are young, and life’s exciting challenges are yet before you. Sister Nelson and I reflect on times when we were young. We met during our university days. Dantzel was a campus queen when I fell in love with her. I proposed to her while we were picking peas in a pea patch. Then and there we made a resolution that temple marriage was a must for us.

By the time I entered medical school we had become very good friends. Often, after I had spent a morning in the anatomy lab with its pungent aroma of formaldehyde, we ate our sack lunches together on the campus lawn. She always preferred for me to sit downwind from her.

We were married when she was a senior and I had graduated, but I was being recycled—as a sophomore once again, this time in medical school. We were so young that my father even had to sign my marriage certificate. Early married life on the campus was wonderful. With our limited means, we could only afford to share a can of soup for lunch. We really worked hard. She received her baccalaureate degree at age twenty, and I became a doctor of medicine at twenty-two. I thought I knew so much. My parents thought I knew so little.

We traveled east for what we thought was to be one year of internship. That year expanded to many years of postdoctoral education, research, and military service. My academic appointments took us to major cities of the central and eastern sectors of the United States as President Taylor has mentioned. In all, more than twelve years elapsed from the time I received my doctor of medicine degree until I was finally able to enter private practice. By then we had six children. But never through that long period of study did Sister Nelson murmur about the lack of material possessions.

Oh yes, there was one exception. I remember a night in Boston when we were walking down Boylston street. She pressed her nose against the windowpane of a furniture store and asked, “Do you think we will ever be able to afford a lamp?”

Several years ago I was living in Flower Mound Texas. It was some time before I knew that there was actually a location called Flower Mound for which the town was named. The mound was just off one of the main roads in town. I had driven by it on many occasions. It was barely 50 feet high. Early one Saturday morning I climbed the mound. In doing so I found an interesting thing, when I stood on top of that mound I could see all the way to office buildings of downtown Dallas twenty miles away. I was so impressed how such a little elevation could improve the distance I could see. I found out later that the mound was used by the American Indians perhaps the Wichita or Comanche and later by cowboys and I could see why.
As I thought on the height of the Flower Mound I considered how similar that mound is to our spiritual perception. As we begin to follow the Spirit we begin to notice our vision of eternal things increasing.
A few years later we had moved to Utah. I was now a scoutmaster. I took my troop on a night hike to the top of Mount Timpanogos. The night was clear and beautiful. It was still dark when we made it to the saddle at the top. We could see lights from the Heber valley on one side and turn the other way and see the Provo valley and into the Salt Lake valley. We made our way to the summit at almost 12,000 feet. There we waited for the sunrise. It was spectacular. Now with light it seemed we could see forever.
As I prepared for this devotional, these two experiences dealing with mountains came to mind where height gave such an increase to my distance vision. And of course the comparison to following the Spirit and having a corresponding increase in vision of eternal things. Obtaining that view is critical to us arriving at our desired destination.