Gospel Story Finder

Ten-year-olds are pretty smart. We like to figure things out on our own.
My dad always tells me to liken the scriptures to myself. Liken means that you try to use what you learn from the scriptures in your life. So, when we’re reading together as a family, I sometimes blurt out something before Dad can explain it to us. Like, “I know, Dad, we’re supposed to fast and pray, like it says in the scriptures.”
He smiles because I always get the right message.
But one time, I found out that the scriptures really can be a lot like my life! It all happened when we went on a family reunion backpack trip.
I carried my own big backpack and sleeping bag, and I didn’t complain. After all, it was only supposed to be four miles (6.5 km) to the lake. I could make it, no problem.
The hike wasn’t too hard, but I was glad to stop for a rest after two miles (3 km). Then we saw the first trailhead sign. It said that the lake was still six miles (9.5 km) away. My dad didn’t have to tell me that the trail was really twice as long as we first thought. I already figured that out. He did need to remind us to make our water last longer.
My dad’s advice was important but hard to follow. The afternoon sun felt hot, and we hardly had any shade on the trail. It seemed like we were never going to reach the lake.
The grown-ups stayed in the back with the youngest kids, and the older cousins went on ahead. I stayed with three cousins my age, and we ended up somewhere in between.
When we couldn’t see anyone ahead or behind us anymore, we started to get nervous. Our backpacks felt heavy, and our water bottles were empty. How much farther did we have to go?
Finally, we got so worried and tired that we decided to stop and pray.
After the prayer, we picked up our backpacks and trudged on.
Just a little while later we heard hoofbeats coming up the trail. We waited and saw a man on a horse riding toward us.
He stopped and gave us some water. He explained that our older cousins had hurried to the lake with a water filter to start pumping water to bring back to us. The man heard about how we needed water and had agreed to help. “Do any of you need help with your backpacks?” he asked.
I looked at my cousins, and they smiled back at me. We actually felt pretty good!
“You better go on and help the others,” we said to the man. “We’re fine.”
And it was true! The rest of the way to the lake it felt like angels were lifting our packs and pushing us along. When I told my parents about it later, Dad beamed and Mom got tears in her eyes.
A week later my family read Mosiah 24. My eyes opened wide when we read these words: “And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs” (verse 14).
“That’s what happened on the trail,” I blurted out. I didn’t have to think about how to use this scripture in my life—this scripture already described my life! It was amazing! I could hardly wait to find other scriptures that were like my life.
And that’s how I learned I could liken the scriptures to me, and I could also liken me to the scriptures!

It’s a little different growing up in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia there’s not a big Young Women program, because the foreign families who make up the branch often send their high-school-age girls off to boarding schools in Europe or the U.S.
But thanks to a special project, the girls will never forget that they are to “stand for truth and righteousness.” Before each girl leaves, she receives a quilt. Each square has been made by one of her classmates and has something to do with the Young Women values. Mothers and daughters worked together for hours to piece and sew the quilts together.
“Our prayers and encouragement have gone off with these quilts and girls,” says Debby Gibson, a YW adviser. They’ve got the girls covered.

Orson returned to America in 1838, moved his family to Far West, Missouri, and witnessed the evil, treacherous conflict between his people and the mobocrats. During the summer Orson became very ill with a fever, and at this time, he fled Far West and joined with Thomas B. Marsh, a member of the Twelve, in “denouncing the Church.” This was the blackest and most dreadful period in Orson’s life, and he lamented:
“Few men pass through life without leaving some traces which they would gladly obliterate. Happy is he whose life is free from stain and blemish. In the month of October, 1838, with me it was a day of affliction and darkness. I sinned against God and my brethren; I acted foolishly. I will not allude to any causes for so doing save one, which was, that I did not possess the light of the Holy Ghost. I lost not my standing in the Church, however; yet, not because I was worthy to retain it, but because God and his servants were merciful. … Brothers Hyrum Smith and H. C. Kimball, men of noted kindness of heart, spake to me words of encouragement and comfort in the hour of my greatest sorrow.
“I located with the Saints in Commerce. At the April Conference in 1840, I was appointed, in company with Elder John E. Page, to go on a mission to Jerusalem.”4
The members of the Church were forced to flee to Illinois, where Orson joined with them after an absence of eight months. He stood before the assembled body of the Church at a general conference in Commerce and humbly asked their forgiveness. His petition was granted, and it was voted that he was “to stand in his former office as an Apostle.”

“Looking back, I can see the hand of the Lord in my life, moving me from one place to the next and from one calling to the other in order to serve Him better,” says Elder Gavarret.
While serving as a bishop in Paraguay, he joined a pharmaceutical company that moved him to Bolivia to start a new branch. There he was called as president of a new stake, then as a regional representative. When the company moved the family to Peru to open another new branch, he was called as an Area Authority. The company moved them again, this time to Brazil, where he served as an Area Seventy. He later served as mission president.
“Callings are not about holding positions,“ Elder Gavarret says. “Callings help us draw nearer to Christ. They are means to an end, not the end. In them we must seek inspiration, learn to pray, and focus on others rather than ourselves.”
At the time of his call, he was the general manager of a pharmaceutical company in Lima, Peru. He and his wife have three children.
“When Christ is the center of our lives, everything else falls into its place,” Elder Gavarret says. “All is in His control.”

“Dad,” Ashley said to her father as she snuggled up to him on the couch and watched her favorite cartoon show, “Adam says you don’t like cartoons.”
“I like watching cartoons when I’m with you,” Dad told her.
“Then you do like cartoons?” the six-year-old girl asked.
“No, not really,” he confessed. “But sometimes you do things you don’t really like, because it makes someone you love happy.”
Ashley was happy with Dad’s explanation. She snuggled up closer, and they continued to watch cartoons.
Early the next morning, Ashley said to Adam, “Do you know why Dad watches cartoons even though he doesn’t like them? Because he loves me.”
“So does Chester!” joked Adam, holding his pet gerbil in front of Ashley’s face. “Here—give him a kiss!”
Ashley screamed, running to her mother’s arms.
“Stop teasing your sister,” Mom scolded Adam. “You know that she’s afraid of Chester.”
“Aw, he won’t hurt her,” Adam griped. “He’s as tame as a pussycat.”
“Speaking of pussycats,” Mom warned, “you had better watch out that Scratchy doesn’t get him. You left Chester’s cage door open—again.”
“Aw, that old cat couldn’t catch a cold.”
“Just remember to put Chester back into his cage—and make sure the door is closed.”
“OK.”
Later in the day, Adam burst into the living room as Ashley helped Mom dust the furniture.
“Guess what, Ashley? Dad loves me, too. He’s taking me to a soccer game. And he loves soccer, so we’ll really have a great time!”
Ashley kissed her father good-bye and frowned at her brother as they hooted and hollered out the front door on their way to the soccer game.
“That’s enough dusting,” Mom said. “I’m going to the basement to do the laundry. Why don’t you go to your room and play?”
Ashley slowly crept past Adam’s room, hoping she wouldn’t run into Chester on the loose. Her brother was becoming forgetful again. Three times last week he’d left Chester’s cage door open. And three times he had had to rescue his gerbil from Scratchy.
As she peeked into Adam’s room, she saw Scratchy pawing behind Chester’s cage. The old cat’s back was all hunched up. His hair was standing on end.
“What’s the matter, Scratchy?” Ashley asked. But the cat ignored her.
Ashley peeked behind the gerbil’s cage, then jumped back and screamed. It was Chester. He was out of his cage again. She shouted for her mother. But with the washer running, her mother couldn’t hear her cries.
Scratchy’s sharp claws were getting closer and closer to Chester. Chester was shaking and squeaking. Ashley didn’t know what to do.
“Shoo, shoo,” she said, chasing Scratchy out of her brother’s room.
Now she was alone with the gerbil in Adam’s room. Ashley leaned over the cage to look again. Chester was still there. Still shaking. Still squeaking.
Ashley was frightened. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes tightly, and reached behind the cage.
“I can’t do this!” she cried, pulling her hand back. “I just can’t stand the thought of touching Chester.”
Then she remembered her father’s words: “Sometimes you do things you don’t really like, because it makes someone you love happy.”
Adam would be happy if Chester were inside his cage, Ashley thought, and not inside Scratchy.
Once again she took a long, deep breath, closed her eyes tightly, and reached behind the cage. She felt Chester’s warm, soft body. But instead of pulling her hand back, she grasped the frightened gerbil and gently put him into his cage, slamming the door shut behind him.
Shaking a little, she lay on her brother’s bed and gave a big sigh of relief.
Moments, later, she heard her father and brother quarreling. That was a fast soccer game, she thought.
“Why are you in my room?” Adam demanded as he charged into his room.
Without waiting for an answer, Adam turned to Chester’s cage and turned to Dad, who was standing in the doorway. “See, Dad, we missed the soccer game for nothing. I didn’t forget to close the door to Chester’s cage.”
“Yes, you did!” Ashley exclaimed. “I put Chester back in his cage, and I closed the door!”
“But I thought you were afraid of Chester. I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I am afraid of him. And I don’t like him. But”—she looked her brother in the eye and smiled—“I do love you, Adam.”

In 1816 the French physician René Laënnec was convinced that if he could listen carefully to the sounds made by his patients’ lungs and hearts, he would hear many clues to their conditions. But he found it difficult to isolate the swish of the lungs or the lub-dub of the beating heart. Many of his patients were so fat that the sounds coming from their chests were lost.
One day Dr. Laënnec was watching children play on a pile of timber. He saw one boy put his ear to the end of a long beam while another tapped on the opposite end. The sound traveled along the wood. At once Laënnec saw the answer to his problem. He hurried back to his hospital, took a paper-covered book, and rolled it tightly into a tube. To everyone’s astonishment, he then put one end of the tube to a patient’s chest and applied his ear to the other. As he expected, he heard the heart sounds clearly. Then he made little wooden “listening trumpets” on a lathe, and the stethoscope was invented.

A second source of spiritual strength was Elder Scott’s wife, Jeanene. When they were dating they began to talk about the future. Jeanene, who had grown up in a strong missionary home, expressed her desire to marry a returned missionary in the temple. Elder Scott, who hadn’t thought much about serving a mission before, was strongly impacted. “I went home, and I could think of nothing else. I was awake all night long. … After many prayers I made the decision to meet with my bishop and begin my missionary application.”8 Although Jeanene gave him the guidance and prompting he needed, Elder Scott said, “Jeanene never asked me to serve a mission for her. She loved me enough to share her conviction and then gave me the opportunity to work out the direction of my own life. We both served missions and later were sealed in the temple. Jeanene’s courage and commitment to her faith have made all the difference in our lives together. I am certain we would not have found the happiness we enjoy without her strong faith in the principle of serving the Lord first. She is a wonderful, righteous example!”9
It was the spiritual influence of these women in his life that helped just one young man—Elder Scott—make some of the most important decisions in his life: to be baptized, to serve a mission, and to marry in the temple.

Emma K. came from Midvale, Utah, to interview Sister Cheryl C. Lant, Primary general president. Emma and Sister Lant talked about the purpose of Primary while they toured the Relief Society Building. The Relief Society Building is where the offices of the general presidencies of the Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society are. It has beautiful displays about the purpose and history of these organizations.
Emma: “What good things are the children of the Church doing?”
Sister Lant: “One of the best things they are doing is learning from their scriptures. Every Sunday, we see children bring their scriptures to Primary. They open them, they read them, and they’re learning directly from the words of the Lord about what He wants them to do.”
Emma: “What do you hope they can learn to do more often?”
Sister Lant: “We need to be more kind to our brothers and sisters, to our parents, to our friends, and to everybody around the world.”
Sister Lant had a question for Emma. She showed Emma a painting of Jesus with children. “Can you think why that’s my favorite thing to look at every day when I come into my office?”
Emma: “Maybe because it shows the love Jesus has for children.”
Sister Lant: “That’s right. In Primary, the most important thing that we want to teach the children is that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love them. All the children in this picture come from different places, so they represent all the children around the world. Heavenly Father and Jesus love all of us, no matter where we live. We’re all His children.”

I received just the other day a letter from a dear friend. Her name is Helen, and her husband’s name is Charlie. She writes as follows, among other things:
“Today Charlie and I spoke at our sacrament meeting. In my talk I related the advice you gave me when I graduated from Idaho Falls High School and had made plans to attend Ricks College. You told me that I should attend the Church College of Hawaii, where I would have a better chance to meet and marry a young man of Chinese ancestry.
“I took your advice and went to CCH, where I met Charlie and married him. We have been married 37 years and have five children. All of our five children have served missions. … Three of our children married in the Hawaiian temple. We have two single children, and we hope they will find worthy individuals to take to the temple soon. We have six adorable grandchildren and two more on the way.
“I have been blessed to have a faithful husband who honors his priesthood and has been worthy to serve the Lord as bishop, stake president, and mission president. It has been my privilege to support him in all his Church assignments. I have served as stake Relief Society president for almost five years.
“Today, as I count my many blessings, I could not help but think of what a great influence you have been in my life. I just want you to know that I followed your counsel, and because of that my life has been blessed abundantly. I thank you for taking the time to follow my progress when I left Hong Kong to come to America.”

Think about this next story.
In Thailand in 1955, a nearly 10-foot sculpture of a Buddha was being moved to a new building. Made of plaster and very heavy, it didn’t appear all that remarkable.
But as the statue was being lifted from its pedestal, the ropes broke and the sculpture fell to the ground. The anxious movers quickly checked the statue for damage, and to their dismay they discovered cracks in the plaster. Then a glint of color caught their attention.
Where the plaster was removed, they discovered that the sculpture was really made of gold!
Buddha statue: 9.8 feet tall, weighs 6.1 tons, worth $250 million.
Photograph from Getty Images
Apparently, hundreds of years earlier, the golden statue had been covered in plaster, perhaps to protect it from thieves, and over time the secret was forgotten until the fall revealed its true inner beauty. Today the gold alone is valued at $250 million, and the statue is housed in a building of honor as a beautiful, historic, religious work of art.2
The temple of Wat Traimit, Bangkok, Thailand.
Photograph from Getty Images

I had a similar problem at school where one certain girl seemed to really hate me. Finally, through prayerful study of the scriptures, I decided I would show some act of kindness to her every day, no matter how much I hated the thought of being nice to someone so undeserving. I prayed daily that the Lord would help me see this girl as a child of God and help me love her as He loves her. My goal was to smile at her every time I saw her. It sure was hard. Even though sometimes my smile was very slight, I kept my promise. Whenever she made a rude or unkind comment, I thought to myself, She is a child of God. By the semester’s end, I felt as if my smiles were sincere. I even found myself standing up for her when others had mean things to say about her. This year we are even friends. I think this same approach might work for you.
Jennifer Dobberfuhl, 16Barron, Wisconsin

During the summer, I did odd jobs to earn money. That summer I was working as a service station attendant. A man who worked there was a member of the Church, and he invited me to attend MIA (Mutual). At first I hesitated, but he was persistent, and I finally gave in. The warmth and friendliness of the members and missionaries impressed me, but again the music influenced me most. Their hymns sounded different from any I had ever heard.

When I first started reading the Book of Mormon, it seemed strange to me. The only name in the book that was familiar to me was the name of one of Nephi’s brothers—Sam! But there was a force that drew me to the Book of Mormon. I felt that if I were to become a member of the Church, my life would become much more meaningful.

When I told my older brother that I would like to be baptized, he said, “That would be fine. But if you become a member, you must be a lifetime member. You must commit yourself and be loyal.” I was baptized when I was sixteen.

After high school, I was in the military, and I had the opportunity to have an interview with Elder Harold B. Lee, who was then an Apostle and who later became President of the Church. It was a very precious time for me. For an hour he counseled me to go on a mission, to go to the House of the Lord, and to sustain the leaders of the Church. This same advice applies to every member of the Church.

I never forgot Elder Lee’s advice. I came to Salt Lake City, Utah, on furlough and went to the Salt Lake Temple. After I left the military and went to college, I saved money for a mission. During my mission, I was able to open the Okinawa area, where my father was from, for missionary work. Later, serving as president of the Tokyo Temple, I had the wonderful blessing of seeing many of the Japanese Saints receive their temple endowments. Seeing the joy in the faces of those being sealed was a great blessing.

Boys and girls, prepare yourselves to go to the house of the Lord. Going to the temple will be the greatest thing you can accomplish in your mortal life. In the temple, you can feel the Lord’s presence and know that He is there. You can kneel at the altar and make sacred covenants. The Lord will always keep His part of these covenants. When you keep your part of them, you will receive the greatest gifts, eternal life and exaltation.

You can begin now to prepare yourself spiritually, mentally, and physically by keeping the commandments, by being clean in mind and body, and by being faithful and loyal to our Heavenly Father. If you will do these things, you will be led toward the sacred covenants of the temple. Then you will have peace and be happy, no matter what trials and tribulations you meet.

You can also learn to search your family history so that your ancestors can have the same temple blessings. We will meet them some day and know them as our relatives. All the people of the world will some day have the same privilege. The Lord has many wonderful blessings awaiting us if we just take advantage of them.

Band class was ending. Miss Strand, my teacher, said, “Remember that chair tests are tomorrow.”
Miss Strand used chair tests to decide which order we sat in. Each band member played for the whole class, and the one who played each instrument the best sat “first chair” for that instrument.
But I wasn’t too worried. I had been first chair in the clarinets ever since I started playing last year. I had a perfect record.
“Are you nervous?” my friend Jason asked me. Jason had started learning the clarinet at the same time I had. He had always been second chair.
“Not really,” I answered.
“I’m going to go home and practice,” he said. “I’m not ready for the test yet.”
I don’t need to practice, I thought as we packed up our instruments. I’ve been first chair all year.
After school I did my homework and played with my friends. I didn’t even think about the test.
Before I knew it, I was in class the next day and Miss Strand was saying, “Let’s start the chair tests with the clarinets.”
I was a little nervous as I played—I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was. But when I finished, I was sure that I would be first chair again.
When all of the clarinet players had finished, Miss Strand announced the test results.
“First chair: Jason. Second chair: Darcie …” Miss Strand continued, but I had stopped listening. I was second chair! I looked up at her in shock, and I realized she was waiting for me to move.
Slowly I switched chairs with Jason. I felt my face turning red, and I blinked hard to keep my tears back. My perfect record was gone!
“You did a good job,” Jason said. I just nodded. If I spoke, I was afraid I would burst into tears.
When I got home from school, I ran straight to my room and cried.
Mom came in and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Jason got first chair today,” I sobbed. “How am I supposed to be the best clarinet player now?”
Mom hugged me. “Did you practice last night?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
Mom looked at me and asked, “Do you think you would have played better if you had practiced?”
I nodded. Mom was right. I hadn’t practiced, but Jason had. He had been more prepared for the test.
Mom continued, “Even if you had practiced hard and still gotten second chair, that would be OK. Being in band is not about being the best; it’s about doing your best. You shouldn’t worry if you’re doing the best you can do.”
The next day Miss Strand started class by saying, “I want you all to know that I’m proud of you. You are all working hard so that our band can play beautiful music. Our band sounds great when everyone works hard together.”
Miss Strand’s words made me feel a little better about sitting second chair. I should want all the band members to do their best so the band can keep getting better and better, I thought.
I smiled at Jason. He looked happy to be first chair. I realized that I really wanted him to play well too.
It was OK if I was a not-so-perfect clarinetist. It didn’t matter where I sat as long as I was doing my best.

At 8:00 A.M. on my 18th birthday, my mother and stepfather asked me to leave their home, and I joined the Church one week later. I moved in with the Bulleigh family and used the $9,000 I had saved by working between the ages of 16 and 18 to support myself until I graduated from high school seven months later. I read the entire Book of Mormon after being baptized and learned of a prophet named Alma who had also persecuted the Church of God. He spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel to amend for his past transgressions. I decided also to serve a mission.

Imagine you are a right-handed person and in a blink of an eye you were to start afresh using your left hand. How would that feel? Difficult, right? but not entirely impossible.
That is exactly how I felt when I was to switch from the physical institute class to the online institute class, especially during this period of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was funny at first, participating in the opening formalities via chats and voice notes but with time, the class seemed normal, except for being physically present. We prayed, discussed, and felt the Spirit as we all shared our thoughts and experiences.

When the bottle quilt was completed, Lynda began working on a quilt featuring family stories. Other quilts have followed, including a memory quilt for each of her children. The tradition began when Lynda’s oldest child, Janelle, was seven years old. Lynda and Janelle collected Janelle’s best childhood drawings, special notes, and even a math problem and transferred them to blocks of white fabric. Lynda then assembled the blocks and quilted them on her kitchen table. By the time Janelle was baptized, her childhood was preserved in a quilt. Six other quilts, each unique and reflective of the child who helped create it, have followed. Lynda and her youngest daughter, Jesse, are now assembling the artwork for the eighth quilt.

One morning Samantha asked her mother if she could go over to Brother Brown’s house to help pull weeds in his garden.
“Of course you may,” Samantha’s mother replied. “Just be home before noon. I’m sure that Brother Brown will like your help.”
Samantha found Brother Brown in his garden. “Hi, Brother Brown,” Samantha said. “I came to help you.”
“I’m glad to see you, Samantha,” Brother Brown said. “There are lots of weeds to pull.”
Samantha pulled weeds in the carrots. She pulled weeds in the beets. Then she pulled weeds in the corn.
“You’re a wonderful helper,” said Brother Brown. “Come into the garage, and I’ll show you some other helpers.”
Samantha went into Brother Brown’s garage. “See that box,” said Brother Brown. “My other helpers are inside it. They help me get rid of little bugs that would ruin my garden.”
Samantha wondered what was in the box. She picked it up—it felt empty! Surprised, she took the lid off the box. Ten thousand ladybugs were crawling all over each other. Some of them flew out of the box. There were ladybugs on the car. There were ladybugs on the windows. There were ladybugs on the workbench and the walls and the rafters. There were ladybugs everywhere.
“Oh—oh,” said Brother Brown. “I forgot to tell you not to take the lid off the box until we took it outside.”
Brother Brown and Samantha carried the ladybugs that hadn’t already escaped out to the garden. Then they left the garage door open to let the rest of the tiny creatures out into the yard. And before noon most of the ladybugs were out in the garden, eating the little bugs that were eating the vegetables.
Brother Brown was very happy as he and Samantha looked over the garden. “I have the best helpers in the world,” said Brother Brown. “A wonderful young lady and ten thousand ladybugs can’t be beat!”

A family of four was initially contacted by sister missionaries, and from the very beginning the mother and her children often read in the Book of Mormon, prayed daily, and wanted to attend church. The father, however, resisted—unlike his wife, he was not of a Christian faith, and he did not yet feel prepared to reevaluate his beliefs.
The sister missionaries were inspired to focus their teachings on Jesus Christ. In their words:
“We taught about Joseph Smith, of his faith on Christ, what we learn about Christ from the First Vision, and the Prophet’s testimony of our Savior. Everything we ever read together or challenged them to read as a family out of the Book of Mormon was teaching them more about our Redeemer. That is when we started seeing the progress. They displayed a framed picture of Christ proudly in their family room—it was one we had given them as a gift.”
The father’s change of heart occurred when his wife announced that she wanted to be baptized and his sons decided to pray to know whether they should also be baptized. From that moment on, he read regularly in the Book of Mormon and prayed about baptism. His sincere desire to know whether the Church was true changed him, and he became a spiritual leader in his home. Just before he and his family were baptized, the father asked for a tithing slip and an envelope. He did not want to delay keeping the commandments for even one second.

For Prince Henry Omondi’s family, learning to keep the Word of Wisdom did not only mean learning to live without tea, coffee, alcohol and tobacco. It also meant an extra monthly expense for the family’s already tight budget.

“We really suffered temporally after my mother’s death,” says Prince. His father had to support nine children, ranging between 16 years and two months of age, on one income. During these tough times, “I had questions in my mind and I sometimes would doubt if God loved me,” he says. But when his family met the missionaries, the teachings they shared went “deep into my heart.

“As the missionaries taught us, I felt God’s love for me and felt God had a purpose for me,” he says.

Many of his family members felt the same. Except for two of Prince’s older brothers, the entire family was baptized.

Prince says that one way to know his purpose was to keep the commandments with exactness.

“One of the commandments which was new to me was the Word of Wisdom,” he said.

“Not taking alcohol, tobacco or any harmful drugs was not an issue, but tea and coffee was a challenge. I remember my father telling the missionaries that drinking chocolate was too expensive, and we could not afford it. But the missionaries encouraged us, and my dad had the faith and courage to squeeze money to be able to buy drinking chocolate instead of tea or coffee.”

For a number of years he pursued his goal of working for President Heber J. Grant, whom he had known and admired as a boy in the Salt Lake business community. It was not an easy pursuit. President Grant was a “rapid-fire speaker,” and few secretaries had been able to record his sermons in shorthand. Undaunted, Joseph sat in the audience during a Sunday talk in the Tabernacle to take down the President’s remarks. A little later he recorded another of President Grant’s talks given in the Assembly Hall, at the request of the President who had been impressed by Joseph’s minutes of the earlier talk. “He surely gave me the drilling of my life. He was a fast speaker.” Illustrations, stories, poetry, quotations went by “like a threshing machine.” Afterwards, Joseph felt a little dejected, but his wife encouraged him to go to the library and copy some of the President’s references and quotations.

On 1 February 1922, Joseph Anderson became private secretary to President Grant, beginning an intimate association that would last twenty-three years. The firm, monumental figure beloved by the Church became Joseph’s personal friend. “Generosity,” replies Elder Anderson when asked which of President Grant’s qualities he remembers most. “I kept his accounts. I know of the many times he helped those in need, even paying off mortgages of widowed friends from his own pocket.”

President Grant was always ready to give. After an energetic conference talk in San Diego, the President invited Joseph to play golf with him. “I had never played golf, … but I couldn’t very well turn him down,” Elder Anderson reminisced. The President arranged for a lesson and a pail of golf balls to practice with, and then they played a number of holes. The next day in Los Angeles President Grant suffered a debilitating heart attack. On the way to the hospital, he whispered, “‘Joseph, you made some very good strokes yesterday.’ I said, ‘Yes, President, I’m afraid you’ve converted me. I will have to get some clubs and get busy.’ ‘Don’t you worry about the clubs,’ he said, ‘I’ll take care of that. I’ll buy them.’”

Fortunately, the President recovered to live five more years, although his life was very much endangered. From his sickbed, he insisted that every well-wishing card and gift of flowers be acknowledged, and, though barely able to move his hand, signed his name to every response. “He was the kindest of men,” says Elder Anderson. A day or two before his death at 88, President Grant met with his faithful secretary for the last time. “Joseph, have I ever been unkind to you?” he asked. His secretary was happy to be able to say, “You have never said an unkind word to me.”