Gospel Story Finder

The fraternity of priesthood quorums can indeed be awesome. When I became a member of a Quorum of the Seventy, I assumed that I might be accepted by my brethren in the course of time if I were able to prove myself worthy of their association. I hoped someday to measure up and be approved. I was surprised to find myself immediately welcomed and from the outset treated as a brother, as an equal by men much more talented and accomplished than I. I have been supported and encouraged, loved and tutored in my quorum from my very first day of membership in it. Consequently, I feel a deep desire to contribute to the work of the quorum and to assist my brethren as much as I can.

I used to think my best friend, Chase, would do anything. When I dared him to jump off the top step of my porch, not only did he do it, but he even took a running start!
When I dared him to ride the upside-down roller coaster, he didn’t just ride it, but he actually sat in the front seat!
And when I told him there was no way he would say hi to Julia—the prettiest girl in the whole school—not only did he say hi, but he sat and talked to her for five minutes!
I thought Chase would do anything. Until today, that is.
Chase comes over to my house almost every day. We live super close to each other. There is only one house in between ours. But Chase doesn’t come over on Sunday or Monday. On Sundays he goes to church. On Mondays he has some kind of a family night. He invited me a couple of times. We ate brownies and played games. It was pretty fun.
Chase usually comes to my house to play after school. It’s nice to have him around because my mom and dad are still at work. Playing with Chase is fun. We love to make up jokes. Chase is friends with everybody. I never hear him talk bad about other people—even if everybody else does.
Today Chase and I played basketball. It was pretty hot, so I asked Chase if he wanted a drink.
“Sure,” Chase said, as he rolled the ball into the grass and ran to my front porch.
We walked inside and went to the kitchen. As I opened the fridge, the rush of the cool air made the hairs on our arms stand on end. When I first peeked into the fridge, I just saw juice and milk. Then, an open can in the corner caught my eye.
My dad had left a can of beer open. He would never know if we took a couple of sips. I pulled the can out.
“Want to try?” I asked.
“What is it?” Chase asked.
“It’s beer,” I said. “My dad drinks it all the time. He won’t know if we just take a sip.”
Chase looked at me. He raised his eyebrow and put his hands on his hips. Then he said something I never thought I’d hear him say.
“No way!” Chase said.
“Did you just say no?” I asked.
“Beer’s not good for you,” he said. “We shouldn’t drink it. It makes you do dumb things.”
“Not if you just take one little sip,” I said. “Watch, I’ll show you.”
I raised the can to my mouth, took a small sip, and smiled. It tasted gross, but I didn’t want to look uncool.
“See? Do I look any dumber to you?” I asked.
“I think I’m going to go home,” Chase said. “Don’t drink any more of that stuff. It’s not a good idea.”
As I watched Chase walk out the door and run down the sidewalk back to his house, I couldn’t help but wonder why he would do almost anything but not take even a small sip of beer.
I took another small sip after Chase left. “Blech! This stuff really is gross,” I thought as I put the can back in the corner of the fridge.
Maybe Chase was on to something after all.

I was having a blast at activity day. Sister MacDonald, our leader, was teaching us how to make our own soap at her house. We mixed lye and water and added scented oils. Then we poured the mixture into molds and added dye. I used my favorite colors—blue and yellow.
I added sparkles, and Nikki leaned over to me. “Josie was talking about you yesterday,” she whispered. Then she told me something mean Josie had said about my body. “I wouldn’t ever say something like that, though,” she added.
I could feel my face get hot. “Um, thanks,” I said. But I didn’t really feel grateful. I felt sick.
I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the floor. I picked at the braided rug and tried not to cry.
This wasn’t the first time one of my friends said something mean about me. And it usually happened like that: someone in our group of friends telling me something mean someone else had said. I wished they wouldn’t tell me. It hurt my feelings, and it made me embarrassed about the way I looked.
I wished Nikki hadn’t said anything. The whole afternoon had gone from fun to terrible.
I decided to say a prayer. “Heavenly Father,” I whispered. “Please help me to not cry, please help me to feel better, and please help me to know what to do about my friends.”
When I got home, I curled up on the couch with a book, but I couldn’t focus. Nikki’s words bounced around in my head with other mean things my friends had said about me. My mom walked in and saw my face.
“Something wrong?” she asked. She sat and looped her arm around me. I leaned my head on her shoulder and told her what Nikki had said. “I wish I looked different. Then maybe people would want to be my friend.” I swallowed, trying not to cry.
“There are a lot of reasons people want to be friends with someone,” Mom said. “But I think people stay friends with someone when that person treats them well.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what I look like, just if I’m nice.”
Mom turned so she was facing me. “It’s hard when people say unkind things about the way we look. But your body is beautiful because you are a child of God. And you deserve to be treated with respect.”
I bit my lip. “I guess that’s true.”
“Do you think Nikki and Josie are being kind to you?” Mom asked.
I looked down. “Not really.”
Mom hugged me. “Is there anyone else that you could be friends with?”
I thought about that. There was Meera, who played violin in the orchestra with me. And there was Sarah, a girl in my math class. I hadn’t ever hung out with them outside of school. But Meera and I liked to play duets together, and Sarah always helped me with word problems. They were always nice to me, and I had fun with them. They never made fun of the way I looked.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Could I maybe invite them over sometime?”
Mom smiled. “I think that’s a great idea,” she said.
“And Mom?” I said. “Can we could get some dye? It would be fun to make soap with them.” I could still keep being kind to Nikki and Josie. But maybe I needed to make some better friends too.

It was a blessing for the nine members from our Vieux-Fort Branch to travel to the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo Temple in April. I’m grateful for the brother who assisted in financing the temple trip. I pray that I’ll be able to have the opportunity to send many more members to the temple that they may also experience the wonderful joy, peace, calm and love the temple holds. Our group had the opportunity to do their family history and saving ordinances for many of their deceased family members. My experience of baptizing my grandparents on both sides of my family was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Thank you a thousand times over for the March 1988 issue on service. About three months ago I was assigned a service project for a bi-stake youth conference, and I stewed and fretted over my assignment for days. Why me? What could I possibly do to make this a success and yet fun and rewarding for these 14–18-year-olds? And with so many youth, it just had to go over well.

Days later my son Cleon received his New Era, and I went through it as I always do. WOW!—an answer to my prayers. Our youth conference is over now, and I had to sit down and thank you and the New Haven Connecticut Stake that shared this idea.

Our service project was a big hit, and the youth learned a lesson also in missionary work, because they now realize that everyone doesn’t open their doors with welcoming smiles and eagerness to all that knock on them. Now I know why, evermore, I appreciate and enjoy getting the New Era each month.

Linda PeckWinston Ward Young Women PresidentRoseburg, Oregon Stake

In my school one day my class was talking about religion. My teacher asked me to read something about the Church that I knew wasn’t true. At that moment I remembered a verse in the scriptures: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 1:16).
My teacher again asked me to read. I replied that I wouldn’t because the passage spoke many lies. I then took advantage of the opportunity to explain and teach the truth about my beliefs.
After passing through that difficult situation, I felt a warm peace in my heart. Thanks to the scriptures, I learned to defend myself in the world.

It was on an overcast day years ago that my friend called and asked me to attend the Jordan River Utah Temple with her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go out, as that day the things of the world were weighing heavily upon my soul. I felt I had little self-worth, and among other things, I didn’t feel needed in my ward.
But after some hesitation, I accepted my friend’s invitation with a prayer in my heart that if I would go and do the Lord’s work, He would help me find peace of mind and an answer to my prayers.
At the temple I enjoyed the session but felt no particular answer to my plea for help. After I had prepared to leave and was waiting for my friend, a woman in a wheelchair bumped into me. As I bent down to rub the pain in my leg, I heard her say in a sweet voice, “Oh, I am so sorry. Please forgive me.” She gently touched my head. “Are you OK, dear sister?”
I looked up into an angelic face of pure love. She then looked me in the eye and, with a squeeze of the hand, said, “This Church needs you, and there are so many that need your love. Reach out to others, and they will reach out to you. You are needed, wanted, and loved in the Lord’s kingdom.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I cried for a few minutes as she held my head against her. When I regained control, I wiped away tears of joy and replied, “You have answered my prayer.”
I realized I was speaking to Camilla Eyring Kimball, whose husband, President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985), had said: “God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs” (“The Abundant Life,” Tambuli, June 1979, 3; Ensign, July 1978, 4).
I then found the strength to go home with joy and to give love from that day forward. I shall never forget how I was given peace and an answer to my prayer in an unexpected way on that glorious day in the house of the Lord.

The air was painfully cold and damp. The pungent odor of smoke from coal fires stung our nostrils as we breathed. The fog and the darkness of the evening made it difficult to see. It was a typical winter night in England.
I was a new missionary of two months. My companion and I were hurriedly riding our bicycles to a nearby town to meet the lady missionaries. On the telephone the sisters’ voices seemed anxious and concerned. A member in their area needed help.
Arriving as quickly as we could after the phone call, we accompanied the sisters to the member’s home. We knocked at the door and a woman answered, inviting us into a very small room with a fireplace at one end. In the dim light I could see the woman’s face. She had puffy cheeks and sad, tired, reddened eyes. Her eyelashes were wet and matted. More tears streaked her face as she pointed to a small crib near the fireplace. Sobbing, the mother said, “My baby is sick. She can’t breathe and the doctor says she will die.” Bronchitis and pneumonia kill many babies during the harsh British winters.
The mother asked us to administer to the tiny, three-week-old baby. Tenderly she lifted the baby from its crib and held it gently and protectively in her arms. Tears fell from her eyes onto the clean linen in which the baby was wrapped. There was hardly enough room on the tiny head for my two comparatively large hands. As I placed my hands on her soft little head, I could feel the delicate tufts of hair.
It was the first time in my life that I had administered to a sick person. Somehow I managed to say the correct words. “Sonja Holbert, in the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood …” At that moment I could feel a surge of power within me. It was something unique and unusual. I knew without a doubt that I was acting as an instrument in the hands of Almighty God himself to heal that little baby girl.
This experience merged into others as the time went by until the memory of it was dimmed. Almost two years later near the end of my mission, I was assigned to work in the town where the mother and the little girl lived. As we tracted down a street, one of our investigators told us that a member of our church lived around the corner. We found the house and knocked at the door. English row houses look much the same, and I was not immediately aware that this was the same house I had visited nearly two years before. The woman invited us in. As we entered the same small room, a pair of bright, blue eyes stared up at me. I sat down in a chair, and a beautiful little girl climbed up on my lap. As I patted the blond hair on her head, a flood of memories returned to me—the dreary night, the tearful mother, the infant gasping for every breath, and the unmistakable power of the priesthood. “Thank you, Heavenly Father,” I murmured silently, “for the privilege of using that power to help this little girl.”
I was strengthened by this experience. I knew then the reality of what it meant to say, “I know that the priesthood has been restored in this day, and I bear testimony that God lives and loves us. I know great blessings can come through righteous use of his priesthood.”

I was biking with my dad when I got sick. I felt awful. It was too far to ride home, so we sat down on the sidewalk and I asked Dad to say a prayer for me. Then we walked down the street and found a lady who gave me a chair in the shade and a glass of water. She let us call my mom on her phone, and Mom came and picked me up. Once I got home I rested for a while and felt fine. I am thankful that Heavenly Father answered our prayer and helped us.

When I joined the missionary preparation class, things didn’t go smoothly. I was battling personal conflicts and worried that I wouldn’t make a difference as a missionary. I felt more anxious every day.
I struggled with these feelings for a while and prayed to know if I really was good enough to serve.
One day, as I checked my email, I opened a message from ComeuntoChrist.org. There, in big, bold letters, were the words “You Are Enough!”
These words pierced my heart, and I felt comforted. My prayers had been answered! I realized that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are fully aware of our circumstances and can answer our prayers in the most personal ways.

Mary Fielding Smith remained faithful to the end of her life. She paid tithing, even in her poverty. When someone inappropriately suggested she not contribute a tenth of the potatoes she had grown that year, she responded, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Would you deny me a blessing? … I pay my tithing, not only because it is a law of God, but because I expect a blessing by doing it.”2 She established a farm in the Salt Lake Valley and taught her children the gospel. President Joseph F. Smith later said, “She taught me honor, and virtue, and truth, and integrity to the kingdom of God, and she taught me not only by precept but by example.”3

—“In high school, my older brother Jerry and I were real rivals,” explained Charisse Wolflick, 19, from Bend, Oregon. “He was always smarter than me. Then he took a drafting class and had trouble with it. So I took the same class just to show him I could do better.”
She did.
“At first I wasn’t sure that I liked it, but as the semester went on, I found I just loved it. I’d go in at noon and spend extra time on my drafting. Any time that I had, that’s what I wanted to do.”
A faculty adviser at Ricks steered her into design drafting and introduced her to the world of computers. Now she designs things like car parts and machines.
“We study natural forces, like the power of water and air,” Charisse said. “It ties in with the gospel because you think, The Lord made the whole earth, and we’re learning how it operates.”

Marci dropped her sleeping bag on the kitchen floor. “I was trapped!” she wailed to her mother. “Just trapped. What else could I do?”
“You really had no choice,” said Mother. “Anyway, I agree with Hoa and her parents. If you had Hoa spend the night with you, then you should be willing to spend a night with her.”
“But, Mom,” groaned Marci. “That’s different. They live in a one-bedroom apartment. Hoa, her little sister, and I will be sleeping in the front room. And that’s part of the kitchen!”
Marci didn’t expect an answer. She could hear the car in the driveway and knew Dad was waiting. Sighing, she picked up her sleeping bag. “Well, I guess I have to go. Hoa would be very hurt if I didn’t.”
As Marci entered the apartment where her friend Hoa lived, Hoa’s mother turned from the stove. “We are most glad you came, Marci. We thank you.”
Marci smiled and put her sleeping bag under the kitchen table. Hoa was pouring rice into a pot. “What are you doing,” Marci asked.
“I always fix the rice for dinner,” answered Hoa. A small face peeked from behind her legs. “This is my little sister, Truc.”
Marci knelt down and touched the little girl on the arm. “Hello, Truc,” she said. “I’ve wanted to meet you.”
Truc waved a few fingers at Marci, and Marci reached for her hand.
“She’s cute,” said Marci. “I would baby-sit her any day.”
Hoa’s mother turned around and asked, “What is ‘baby-sit?’”
“I would watch Truc for you,” answered Marci.
The mother smiled. “No need,” she said. “Where I go, Truc goes or Hoa watches her.”
“Vietnamese do not use baby-sitters,” explained Hoa. She winked at Marci. “But you baby-sit me. I always have to ask you what to do.”
Marci laughed. That was true. She had been explaining different things to her new friend for six months now, ever since Hoa had come to her school.
When the father came home, they sat down for dinner. Marci thought it was very quiet, not like dinner at her house. Everyone spoke softly, and Marci could feel her voice become quieter.
“Does your name have a meaning, Marci?” asked Hoa’s father.
“I don’t understand,” said Marci.
“Vietnamese names have another meaning,” explained Hoa. “Mine means flower. Truc means bamboo.”
Marci studied Hoa. She does look like a flower. Marci looked at Truc. She wasn’t sure she resembled bamboo. “I wish my name did have another meaning, but I don’t think the names of many people in the United States do.”
After dinner, Hoa’s mother began cooking again.
“What are you making, Mother?” asked Hoa.
“For Marci I would like to make pho,” she replied. “We will eat it in the morning.”
“Oh, good!” Hoa smiled and turned to Marci. “Pho is like a soup. It is made with beef and egg noodles. You will like it.”
Marci nodded. She was sitting on the floor and Truc was on her lap. Marci looked around the room. There were no toys. A small television set was perched on a low table, but no one seemed interested in turning it on.
“Truc, have you ever heard the story of Peter Rabbit?” asked Marci.
Truc shook her head, and Marci began the story. Then she told her the story of Cinderella. After that, she related some tales about Daniel Boone and Paul Revere. Hoa and her parents listened too. They had never heard the stories either. When Truc fell asleep, Marci looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock! Hoa’s mother took Truc away to get her ready for bed.
Hoa’s father stood up and bowed. “You are most welcome, Marci. We liked the stories. I hope you have a good time here. Goodnight.”
Marci stood up and made a slight bow back to Hoa’s father. “This is one of the best times I have ever had,” she said.
Hoa yawned and brought out a mat to spread on the floor. Marci pulled her sleeping bag from under the table and put it next to Hoa’s mat. After the girls were ready for bed, Marci crawled into her sleeping bag and looked at Hoa. The warm smell of pho filled the room. “Thank you for asking me,” she whispered. “I’m really glad I came.”

Troy Swartzle, a priest in the New Bern Ward, Kinston North Carolina Stake, was selected to attend Governor’s School of North Carolina. Troy was selected because of his outstanding abilities in instrumental music. He plays french horn.
Troy was one of two from his high school and five from the county school system selected to go to the school. During his stay, he met Church members from throughout the state and was able to invite some interested friends to accompany him to Church activities. He was also able to correct misconceptions about the Church during his philosophy class.

Nikki and Breck Fullmer quarreled constantly. Most of their fights were about Nikki borrowing her brother’s T-shirts, and Breck playing music at home that his sister didn’t like. Nikki and Breck were both looking for a way out of their conflicts when they decided to participate in their stake’s “Time Alone” experiment.
Nikki knew her brother liked to drink soda pop, so she invited him to go get one with her. He thought it was a fine arrangement, since she was buying. After the soda they talked and drove around for an hour. After just one rendezvous, Nikki said, “He’s at a stage where he’ll do just about anything to be cool. And now he thinks it’s cool to be with me.”

Vitaly: In Russia, as in many places, it is the norm for people to live together before marrying. After I proposed to Katya, some of my friends asked me how I could possibly marry her without knowing beforehand if we were personally compatible. They reasoned, as many also did with Katya, that the only way to really know whether she was right for me was to live with her for an extended period of time.
I told them that there is no need to live with a person to get to know him or her. I also tried to explain to my friends in a way that they could understand that I had prayed and received an answer that I should marry Katya. Having prayed about my decision, I had no fears about married life. I was excited and felt like a whole new life was unfolding before me. No one ever opposed or criticized me for taking this stand. In fact, they supported me in my decision.
Katya: When Vitaly proposed, my parents tried to talk me out of getting married. They thought it was too soon for us to be engaged and that I needed to know Vitaly better than I did. My boss at work told me the same thing and added, “You need to live together before you make a choice like that.”
I’m sad that people feel that way about marriage and family. I don’t think they understand how happy couples can be when they are married and sealed in the temple. The great love and happiness Vitaly and I felt at our marriage were made even stronger by the knowledge that we are sealed for eternity.

Chandradas “Roshan” and Sheron Antony of Colombo, Sri Lanka, decided to be sealed in the temple. Their friends Ann and Anton Kumarasamy were so excited for them. But they knew that getting to the Manila Philippines Temple wasn’t easy or cheap.
Roshan and Sheron had saved their money and booked flights months in advance to get a flight they could afford. Finally, the day came. However, during their layover in Malaysia, they discovered that to continue on to the Philippines, they either needed a visa or needed to fly on a different airline. It wasn’t possible to get a visa, and they couldn’t afford to buy tickets on another airline. But they couldn’t bear the thought of returning home without being sealed.
Unsure what else to do, Roshan called Anton. Anton and Ann desperately wanted to help. They were one of the few couples in Sri Lanka who had been sealed in the temple, and they knew what a blessing it was. But they had recently used their savings to help a family member in need, and they didn’t have enough money to help Roshan and Sheron buy tickets for a new flight.
In Sri Lanka it is customary for the groom to buy the bride a gold necklace so that she will have some money if her husband dies. Ann decided to sell her necklace to help buy the new tickets. Her generous gift made it possible for Roshan and Sheron to make their temple appointment in Manila.
“I know the value of a temple sealing,” Ann said. “I knew Sheron and Roshan would be a great strength to the branch. I didn’t want them to miss this opportunity.”3

There are those of us who have laid away our little ones in the grave, and we had that responsibility. A little daughter was born to us over in Holland while I was president of the mission there, and we kept her until she was three and a half years old. My wife has said time and time again that she knew the angels brought that spirit to her because she felt their presence, and yet we laid her away in the grave. If we had to feel that that was the end, we would have given anything in this world to have her back again. And then we come to this great knowledge that we have in the restoration of the gospel, that she will be ours in the eternal world and we will have the joy of seeing her grow up without sin, unto salvation. Sometimes I have thought that probably some of these choice spirits did not need the experience here in mortality like other children, and that is why the Lord has seen fit to call them home.

It was 40 years ago I made the decision to serve a mission with my wife in my retirement, and now, 40 years later, we are embarking upon a mission to Lusaka, Zambia. In March 1984 I returned from my first mission as a young man. A wise mission president exhorted me to set worthy, lifetime goals. Serving another mission one day, but this time with my wife, was on that list and has never left it for 40 years!
I’d like to testify of the power of INTENT, but to effectively do so I need to take you back to a time before this first mission.
I left school at the age of 18 with poor A-level results. If I had to sum up my life it would be football, music, best mates and girlfriends. I managed to pass an aptitude test with British Gas and committed myself to a commercial traineeship for the next 3 years. I was to get paid for studying. A ‘win-win’ if ever I had encountered one!
However, this was a time in my young life when my years growing up in the Church clashed with “the world” and after a few years of living one face to my parents and church friends, and another to my work colleagues and teammates, I felt unsettled. I was not at ease with myself.
Fortunately, I had retained some private, religious behaviours. I prayed from time to time, usually when I needed something; I attended church just to meet with my friends; I did like to read the scriptures, bingeing from time to time when I needed a ‘pick me up’. It was whilst on one of these binges that I came across a scripture that hit me. It was in James 1:8, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” These words rang true and caused me to think very deeply about myself and how I was living. I had got to the point where I needed to know the truth; one way or another I needed to know!
It came to a head when I went on a 2-week training course to Nottingham. I was in my twenty-second year now. The lads on the course kept pestering me to ‘go out on the town’ … and I knew what that meant! But, after giving them some feeble, embarrassing excuses as to why I couldn’t, I determined instead to go on a long walk and ask God for the truth. As I walked, I prayed, and my prayer was demanding: “Lord, if you want me to live this gospel, with all its inconvenient commandments, for the rest of my life, then I need to know if this church is true!” I walked and prayed and prayed and walked for a few hours, repeating that same prayer. When I got back to my bedroom late at night, I got into this big double bed and asked the Lord one more time and implored that I did not want to sleep without this being resolved.
Then someone spoke to me. I say “someone” because I was alarmed by the voice. I looked around the room fully expecting someone to be there. There was no one to be seen, but I heard a voice that was external to me; it wasn’t my normal voice of conscience. I’d never heard it before nor have I since but, oh, was it powerful, penetrating, firm, loving and fatherly, all at the same time. Four words were said: “Martin, serve a mission!” This to say the least surprised me and in a split second I responded, “But, but, Lord, I never asked you if I should serve a mission, I only asked if the church was true!” I had gotten more than I had bargained for.
I love the Book of Mormon because, in contrast with the bible, it has some very personal accounts of people who have followed Moroni’s recipe for receiving revelation: “if ye will ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ; He will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost.” Alma when he sought forgiveness and relief from his torment and Nephi when he wanted to know the truth of his father’s dream, to name but a few. But, it was the experience of Enos which struck me more profoundly recently when I read of his very personal account as part of my ‘Come, Follow Me’ study.
I knew of the similarity of my experience, his having been brought up by a father who was a “just man” and how he “knelt down before his Maker, and cried unto Him in mighty prayer and supplication for his soul” and that he had prayed “all the day long” and into the night time he “did still raise his voice high that it reached the heavens”. But I was struck on reading it this time, for I had read it many times before and somehow missed this part of Enos’s account. Enos testifies: “And there came a voice unto me”. That describes perfectly and simply what happened to me. Oh, how I felt at one with Enos! Some of these amazing revelations we read of in the scriptures can happen to us.
The voice said to Enos: “thy sins are forgiven thee”. To me I can infer it said thy sins are forgiven thee, but I had an additional charge …. now get yourself on a mission!
As you can imagine, this experience changed my life! I now had direction, I now had the truth! Did I serve with all my “heart, might, mind and strength” on that mission to London when I was a ‘youngish’ man? Absolutely! Can you see why I would have set a goal, and it was my intention, to serve again with my wonderful wife as my companion one day? Can you see why it was an easy decision for me to serve again, because the decision had been made 40 years ago.
For those who may have put Moroni’s promise to the test and don’t feel they’ve had an answer to their prayers, I would refer you to Elder Dushku’s general conference talk. After relating Joseph Smith’s experience in the grove, he explained: “Rather than sending us a pillar of light, the Lord sends us a ray of light, and then another, and another … these rays are continuously poured down upon God’s children.” It’s my belief that those rays combined can be as strong as, if not stronger, than a pillar of light experience. I have discussed this with my wife and that is the way her testimony has been forged and believe me, her testimony and faith is inspirationally stronger than mine. She is going to be the best companion ever!
My intention in writing this article is that it might inspire someone, whether young or old, to set worthy lifetime goals and to live intentionally. I bear testimony of the power of doing so.

“My story is very short. I settled on Mrs. Canfield. She’s an old friend of our family. She baby-sat us when we were little, and now she’s teaching me embroidery. She’s so warm and happy! I’d love to have her join the Church.
“It was tough deciding how to approach her. She’s very old and wise, and I didn’t want to sound like a smart-aleck.
“I stewed and fretted and finally just came right out and asked her. ‘Mrs. Canfield,’ I said, ‘would you like to learn about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?’
“She smiled kindly. ‘No, Michaelene. Churches—any church—aren’t important to me. But thank you for asking.’
“And that was that.”
“We can’t force the gospel on people,” Sister Searle said. “But you’ve given her the opportunity to choose.”
“She knows where I am, if she changes her mind,” Michaelene mused.