Gospel Story Finder

When the recess bell rang, Grace hurried toward the slide with Samantha.
Chloe came running behind them. “Grace, let’s play zookeeper on the jungle gym.”
“We’re playing on the slide,” Grace said. “Want to come? We can all play together.”
“No, we can’t,” Chloe said. “You have to pick Samantha or me.”
Grace frowned. “But I already told Samantha …”
“Fine!” Chloe said, and she stomped away.
Grace walked with Samantha toward the slide. They heard Chloe’s voice behind them. She was talking to the teacher on recess duty, Mrs. Haskins.
“Grace says she doesn’t want to play with me,” Chloe said.
Grace whirled around. “That’s not what I—”
“Let’s be nice, girls,” Mrs. Haskins said.
So Grace played with Chloe, and Samantha played with someone else.
Grace thought back to the beginning of the year when she met Chloe. They played together almost every day at recess. Now Grace was getting to know the other children in her class. But Chloe got upset when Grace played with someone else. Maybe Grace could hide from Chloe at recess or tell her she didn’t want to be friends anymore. But that wouldn’t be kind.
As Mom drove home from school, Grace sighed.
“That sounds like a sad sigh,” Mom said. “What’s wrong?”
Grace told Mom about Chloe. “Friends shouldn’t be annoying, should they?”
“Do you think Chloe is trying to be annoying?” Mom asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Grace said.
“Do you think you should tell Chloe she’s annoying?” Mom asked.
Grace pictured herself telling Chloe. She imagined that Chloe’s face would look very sad.
“No,” Grace said. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“Maybe you’ll need to work on not feeling annoyed with Chloe,” Mom said. “That’s a hard thing to do. Maybe you can think of some ideas and we can talk about it again at bedtime.”
That afternoon, Grace sat thinking. She needed some ideas for being patient with Chloe.
Then Grace remembered something. Her teacher, Mrs. Rosario, had shown the class a fun way to think of ideas. Mrs. Rosario called it an idea web.
Grace grabbed a piece of paper and wrote Chloe’s name in the center. Then she circled it and drew four lines coming out of the circle. At the end of each line, Grace wrote one thing she liked about Chloe.
Good imagination
Fun to play with
Loves animals
Fast runner
Grace decided that when she felt annoyed with Chloe, she could think of the reasons she liked Chloe.
At bedtime, Grace showed Mom the paper.
“What a great idea,” Mom said.
“I just thought of something else,” Grace said. “I could give this paper to Chloe at school tomorrow.”
“Another great idea,” Mom said. “I knew you’d think of something.”
At recess the next day, Grace headed outside.
“Chloe!” Grace called. “I have something for you!” Grace handed the paper to Chloe.
“It’s an idea web, isn’t it?” Chloe said.
“Yes,” Grace said. “Those are things I like about you.”
“Thanks,” Chloe said with a smile. “This is so cool.”
Even though the wind was chilly, Grace felt warm and happy as she played with Chloe. When the bell rang, Chloe looked at the paper again.
“I’m going to make an idea web for you,” she said to Grace. “And maybe tomorrow we could show Samantha how to play zookeeper.”
Grace smiled. Tomorrow would be another great day.

It was midnight when the wagon journey from Nauvoo ended. Joseph and his brethren entered Carthage, and his fate was sealed. His enemies had awaited their coming with great anxiety. The governor, who was present, persuaded the mob to disperse that night by promising them that they should have full satisfaction.

The next day, after a hearing, Joseph was released on bail, but re-arrested on a trumped-up charge of treason. Bail was refused and Joseph and Hyrum were placed in Carthage Jail.

The last night of Joseph’s life on earth he bore a powerful testimony, to the guards and others who assembled at the door of the jail, of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, also declaring that the gospel had been restored and the kingdom of God established on the earth. It was for this reason that he was incarcerated in prison, not for violating any law of God or man.

It was late at night when they tried to get some rest. At first Joseph and Hyrum occupied the only bed in the jail room, but a gunshot during the night and a disturbance led Joseph’s friends to insist that he take a place between two of them on the floor. They would protect him with their own bodies. Joseph asked Elder Markham to use his arm for a pillow while they conversed, then he turned to Elder Dan Jones, on the other side, and whispered, “Are you afraid to die?” And this staunch friend answered, “Has that time come, think you? Engaged in such a cause, I do not think death would have many terrors.”

Joseph replied, “You will yet see Wales, and fulfill the mission appointed you before you die” (HC 6:601).

A few years ago, I arrived at the Bountiful Utah Temple to fulfill a late-night cleaning assignment. The turnout for the assignment was impressive, and I wondered for a moment if some would be sent home. I was more than ready to volunteer to leave early. Then I cynically thought to myself, “Of course they won’t let us go early. They will find menial jobs for all of us, thinking it is their duty to keep us here the entire two hours.” I remembered a previous assignment during which I had dusted for more than an hour, only to return a cloth that looked as clean as it had been when it was given to me. I prepared myself to spend two hours cleaning things that didn’t appear to need cleaning. Obviously, I had come to the temple that night out of a sense of duty more than from a desire to serve.
Our group was led to a small chapel for a devotional. The custodian who conducted the devotional said something that will forever change the way I look at temple cleaning assignments. After welcoming us, he proceeded to explain that we were not there to clean things that didn’t need cleaning but to keep the Lord’s house from ever becoming dirty. As stewards of one of the most sacred places on earth, we had a responsibility to keep it spotless.
His message penetrated my heart, and I proceeded to my assigned area with a new enthusiasm to protect the Lord’s house. I spent time with a soft-bristled paintbrush, dusting the tiny grooves in door frames, baseboards, and the legs of tables and chairs. Had I been given this assignment on an earlier visit, I might have thought it ridiculous and carelessly brushed over the areas in an effort to appear busy. But this time, I made sure the bristles reached into the tiniest of crevices.
Because this job was neither physically nor mentally taxing, I was blessed with time to ponder while I worked. I first realized that I never paid attention to such minute details in my own home but cleaned those areas that others would see first, neglecting those known only to members of my family and me.
I next realized that there were times when I had lived the gospel in a similar fashion—living those principles and fulfilling those assignments that were most obvious to those around me while ignoring things that seemed known only to my immediate family or me. I attended church, held callings, fulfilled assignments, went visiting teaching—all in full view of members of our ward—but neglected to attend the temple regularly, have personal and family scripture study and prayer, and hold family home evening. I taught lessons and spoke in church but sometimes lacked true charity in my heart when it came to interactions with others.
That night in the temple, I studied the paintbrush in my hand and asked myself, “What are the little crevices in my life that need more attention?” I resolved that rather than plan to repeatedly clean the areas of my life that needed attention, I would try harder never to let them become dirty.
I remember my temple-cleaning lesson each time we are reminded to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27).

Perhaps a personal story will help illustrate these opposing concepts of hope and despair. I was not a serious student in high school. I did the minimum amount of effort to get pretty good grades, mostly getting by on my good looks and charm. I was accepted to BYU in Provo and had hope that I’d be an amazingly successful student. My first test of my first college semester was an Economics 110 exam. I had taken economics in high school and knew the basics of supply and demand curves. So, I didn’t really study—how hard could it be?

Well, the exam was hard. Really hard. When I looked at the first question, I had no idea what it was even talking about. I knew I was sunk. I thought about praying for help, and then realized it wouldn’t do any good. Why would God bless me when I hadn’t done a thing to prepare? I did the best I could—mostly by choosing C as every answer, and I turned in the test. I had no hope. And indeed, I shouldn’t have. I got a 22% on my first college exam.

But now here is the sad part. The despair lingered. I figured there was no hope—a 22% on the first test was a hole I thought I could never dig out of. What’s more, my pride was wounded. I had never done that badly on a test before. So, I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time: I just quit going to that class. I didn’t even drop the class—I just quit going.

Here’s a friendly tip to you students: that’s a really bad idea. I could have buckled down and studied harder. I could have gone and talked to the professor. I could have done many things to make the situation better, but since I had no hope, I gave up. And of course, I failed the class.

Francesca’s daughter has a severe milk allergy. While her daughter was in Primary, one of her teachers loved to bring homemade cupcakes to class for birthdays. Francesca offered to bring safe cupcakes whenever there was a birthday. The teacher declined the offer and instead sent the six-year-old girl to sit in the hallway when birthday treats were shared.

“This was so hurtful on many levels,” Francesca recalls. “I wish the teacher would have taken the opportunity to teach the children to ‘be like Jesus’ and care enough to include everyone.”

Brent Jones started it, but it was his little brother Scott who got the rest of us involved. Brent and his friends were graduating from Viewmont High School in Centerville, Utah, and soon they’d all be leaving on missions. They wanted to do one last thing together as a group. So Brent asked his dad Clarence, an avid backpacker, to take them to the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. That was two years ago.
Brent’s younger brother Scott tagged along on that outing and made his father promise that he and his friends could have a similar trip the next year.
Then Scott’s friends added something new. They invited all of their dads, too. I’m one of those fathers. And by the time all the invitations were extended, there were 20 of us going to the mountains—five dads, eight sons, one son-in-law, and six friends.
Backpacking is nothing new to the Joneses. In that family the boys start hiking when they turn eight. But taking a group of 20 into the Wind Rivers would mean a lot of preparation. Such a trip isn’t just a holiday; it’s also a matter of survival.
“Great,” Scott Jones’s friends joked. “It’ll make our dads tougher.”
They soon found out it would make the boys tougher, too, not just in terms of physical endurance, but in terms of long-range planning and organization.
“I made up a menu,” Clarence said. “But I wanted the boys to have the experience of putting the trip together, so I told them they had to collect the money and buy the supplies.”
Each person’s pack would weigh 40 pounds, including tent, sleeping bag, fishing gear, and other essentials—like food!
Based on a budget of $20 per person (which included gas money for transportation as well), the Jones boys and their friends organized menus, assigned cooking groups, and packed the food in plastic bags marked with the day each meal would be eaten.
Before they left, the backpackers studied their route. Brother Jones, familiar with the trails in the Wind Rivers, only promised this: “It’ll be a character builder!”
The first day’s hike was tough, rising 2,000 feet in 10 miles. The trail was good, but mostly uphill. Blisters, sore feet, and aching muscles were common.
But the payoff was getting to the 10,500-foot plateau where the wilderness landscape is magnificent. Stately pine trees, distant rugged peaks, grassy meadows, rivers, streams, cliffs, and huge boulders formed the panorama.
“The beauty there is something you don’t find on the freeways,” said Dean Layton. “We had to earn it. We were just climbing a trail until we got the first ten miles behind us. Then we saw the real beauty.”
“It’s so untouched,” Dave Hill said, “so close to what I imagine creation looked like after the sixth day. You almost feel you shouldn’t talk, so you won’t destroy the sacredness of the environment.”
“You know it didn’t happen accidentally,” Joseph Nelson said.
Brother Jones kept us moving from one adventure to another—another stream to fish in; another lake to camp by; another panoramic vista; and at different times, storms rolling across mountain ridges, their lightning silhouetting black trees against a black sky.
But it wasn’t just the beauty of the place that made our trip delightful. It was the shared experience between fathers and sons. When you have the opportunity to be together and depend on each other for days at a time, there’s no bluffing, no phoniness. You see each other as you really are.
For example, this was the first time Ryan and Merrill Layton had been together, one-on-one, on an extended trip.
“I’m not sure how well I knew Ryan until we went on this trip,” Merrill, the father, said. “My son really is as ‘laid back’ as everyone says he is. He doesn’t take little things too seriously or let things bother him too much. It’s a great attribute, and I’m glad I got to see him in that light.”
“We learned that we can count on each other,” Rich Layton said of his trip with his father. “We’re close, but this was just one more experience to bond our relationship together.”
My own sons, Joseph, Jonathan, and Joshua, told me they learned more about me just by sharing a tent and talking. They told me about experiences they’ve had growing up; I told them about mine. We weren’t only tentmates and trail partners, we became closer as father and sons.
I think the Joneses knew these kinds of things would happen when they invited us. Like I said, they’ve been backpacking for years. In fact, the Jones boys have written letters about it.
Brent, now serving a mission in California, recalled his first trip—to Yellowstone—when he was eight years old:
“We missed our camping spot so we had to hike on. We ended up hiking 18 miles, and when we finally set up camp, we needed water. You told me I was the only one left with enough strength to go half a mile to get the water. You don’t know how important you made me feel.”
And Scott gave his father a letter at Christmas last year, thanking him for the “expeditions” over the years.
“I can’t think of anything better to do than to spend a week with you in the wilderness,” he wrote. “Every time I go I learn something new about you and myself.”
And Paul Jones told his father that “these trips are part of the cement that bonds us so closely together. They put us in an environment where a father and son feel close to each other and to Heavenly Father, too.”
The Jones boys feel that backpacking with their father, though not an official activity, is one of the best “Church” activities in which they can be involved. There’s no award given at the end of the trail. But the rewards are memories, the kind of memories that help build relationships; and closeness, the kind of closeness you experience when someone cares enough to spend time with you.
That being true, a lot of us think keeping up with the Joneses is an ideal thing to do.

The next year, Christmas was not so happy. We sat around solemn-faced after opening our presents. Finally Ron said, “Let’s go get wood.”
Nothing more needed to be said. We all got our coats, hats, and gloves and headed out the door. Again we were getting wood for a widow. But this time it was our mother. It wasn’t that we needed the wood; it meant something deeper. Two weeks before Christmas my dad had died. He left seven children to be raised by my mother.
I suppose because of one act of kindness and the lessons my dad taught his boys, he assured that his wife would never go without wood. We not only got wood for our mother, but often we would get it for other widows. On many Christmases, after we opened our presents, my brothers and I would go out and cut wood for one of the widows. Though it was never spoken openly between us, we were all doing it in memory of our father.

1 I was living in Germany, and World War II had just ended. We had little food and few clothes, especially shoes. My mother felt that it would be safer and less lonely if she, my sister, and I moved to my grandparents’ home in Tubingen.
2 Our first winter there was very cold. We didn’t have enough coats and shoes for everyone, so family members took turns going out for wood and food.
One winter morning new snow had fallen. The sun was shining, and everything looked downy soft. I wanted to go outside and play, but I knew that I couldn’t because I had no shoes.
3 Whenever I had wanted to go outside before, Grandpa had carried me on his back. Once, Aunt Bertha had wrapped me in blankets and taken me on a short sleigh ride. But I wanted to go out in the snow all by myself and play.
4 I could hear other children playing outside. I pressed my face against the frost-covered window and dreamed of being with them. Softly I said, “Oh, please let me have a pair of shoes.” I heard the door behind me close, and I wondered who else had been in the room.
5 That night I prayed very hard for a pair of shoes, and I dreamed about shoes all night.
6 When I woke up the next morning, a heavy brown package was on the foot of my bed. I carefully opened it. Inside was a beautiful pair of wooden shoes just my size! No one in my family seemed to know who had left them there.
7 I begged to go outside right away. Mother put a heavy pair of socks on my feet, then the new shoes, and out I went.
Grandfather stood on the porch, watching me play in the snow. He had a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. His secret present had been made with a great deal of love.

Things didn’t turn around all at once. The coaches considered it a building year because the team was so young, with Colin and his cocaptain as the only seniors. The “building year” was evident early in the season, when a rivalry meet was a disaster. Afterward, Colin told his team, “I’m not angry at our loss. You don’t have to win everything; you just have to give it your best.”
From then on, the team worked together toward the same goal, and everything changed. They started building success. As he worked with and instructed others, Colin’s own wrestling improved. “The greatest way to learn is to teach,” he said. At the end of the season, the team won their league and sent seven wrestlers to postseason tournaments.

Of course, everyone makes mistakes. But let me tell you about a lovely young lady who visited in my office. She was discouraged, almost depressed. She enjoyed her profession of teaching yet felt that her life was not going anywhere. To complicate the problem she was feeling, her testimony had waned, and she was lacking the spark that all who had known her acknowledged was part of her vibrant personality.
“I am going to ask you a question,” I said, “but I do not want details. Are you living the commandments?”
She whispered, “No.”
We talked about her going to her bishop. We also talked about testimony and about how when one lives the commandments, that individual is endowed with blessings of the Spirit that can come in no other way.
She left, seemingly as discouraged as she had entered my office. But in a while, perhaps a month later, my telephone rang. She reported that all was well.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I went to my bishop. I am living the commandments now, and, yes, I know the gospel is true. I did it on my own,” she reported.
“No one else could have done it for you,” I replied.

I have always struggled to fit in. One night this particular struggle was hitting me really hard. It pushed me to the point of tears. When it came time for bed, I was feeling really drained and didn’t want to think about this struggle anymore. I decided I wouldn’t pray about it. I would just say my regular prayers and then go to sleep.
But as soon as I started praying, the Holy Ghost began to work on me, telling me that my Savior loved me, that He wanted to help me, and that I wasn’t alone. I was actually having a conversation with my Heavenly Father through the Holy Ghost. I was able to express how much I hurt, and He listened.
The Spirit was so strong that I knew in that moment that Heavenly Father and my Savior would never really leave me alone. They would always be there for me. I felt strengthened and uplifted and knew that I would be able to get through this trial. I know that Heavenly and Jesus Christ love me. Never again will I forget that. They are waiting to help us. All we have to do is reach out.
David M., Idaho, USA

Not only did Joseph Smith have that temperament, but he found it difficult to abide opposite attitudes, especially when they arose from false traditions. On one occasion ministers came to him intent on tying him up in scriptural analysis, as they had bragged they would do. They kept trying to push him into a corner, but each time he not only had answers but also questions for them that they couldn’t handle. Finally they became convinced it would be better if they left. As they went to the door, the Prophet preceded them. He went out, made a mark on the ground, and jumped. “Now gentlemen,” he said, “you haven’t bested me at the scriptures. See if you can best me at that.” They went away much incensed.31

But there was a time of darkness, a time when her light was in danger of being extinguished. Sasha had trained from an early age to become a professional dancer. Several months after her baptism, she was accepted in a modern-dance company. Most of the other dancers were adults. None were LDS and none lived Church standards.
The company started preparing for a tour in Switzerland. “Every day I danced for about eight hours,” she says. It was the chance of a lifetime, but her devotion to dancing was taking her dangerously far from her mother, her schoolwork, and the Church.
Fortunately, the mother of an LDS friend said, “Sasha, stop! Do you think you can remain clean in that environment? Those people don’t keep the Word of Wisdom or the law of chastity. Do you think the Holy Ghost can remain with you?”
“I suddenly realized I was surrounded by a spiritual darkness,” Sasha says. She and her friend fell to their knees. “After our prayer, there seemed to be a light around us. I knew I must leave the dance group.”
And she did, even though it was hard.
Today, Sasha is 20 years old, a member of the Kupchino Branch. She has served in Young Women and been a branch Relief Society president. She has brought many people into the Church. But she still remembers her choice between darkness and light, and the joy she felt when she turned to the gospel.

Among the many wonderful things I would like to remind you about, I love and will conclude with a brief statement from a great book written long ago. It is about a slave who lived in Christ’s time and watched him on a certain special Sunday in the midst of a multitude.

Suddenly, for no reason at all that Demetrius could observe, there was a wave of excitement. It swept down over the sluggish swollen stream of zealots like a sharp breeze. Men all about him were breaking loose from their families, tossing their packs into the arms of their overburdened children, and racing forward toward some urgent attraction. Far up ahead the shouts were increasing in volume, spontaneously organizing into a concerted reiterated cry; a single, magic word that drove the multitude into a frenzy.

“Do you know what is going on?” said Demetrius. [He was talking to another slave.]

“They’re yelling something about a king. That’s all I can make of it.”

“You think they’ve got somebody up front who wants to be their king? Is that it?”

“Looks like it. They keep howling another word that I don’t know—Messiah. The man’s name, maybe.”

Standing on tiptoe for an instant in the swaying crowd, Demetrius caught a fleeting glimpse of the obvious center of interest, a brown-haired, bareheaded, well-favored Jew. A tight little circle had been left open for the slow advance of the shaggy white donkey on which he rode. . . . There had been no effort to bedeck the pretender with any royal regalia. He was clad in a simple brown mantle with no decorations of any kind, and the handful of men—his intimate friends, no doubt—who tried to shield him from the pressure of the throng, wore the commonest sort of country garb.

It was quite clear now to Demetrius that the incident was accidental. . . . Whoever had started this wild pandemonium, it was apparent that it lacked the hero’s approbation.

The face of the enigmatic Jew seemed weighted with an almost insupportable burden of anxiety. The eyes, narrowed as if in resigned acceptance of some inevitable catastrophe, stared straight ahead toward Jerusalem.

Gradually the brooding eyes moved over the crowd until they came to rest on the strained, bewildered face of Demetrius. Perhaps, he wondered, the man’s gaze halted there because he alone—in all this welter of hysteria—refrained from shouting. His silence singled him out. The eyes calmly appraised Demetrius. They neither widened nor smiled; but, in some indefinable manner, they held Demetrius in a grip so firm it was almost a physical compulsion. The message they communicated was something other than sympathy, something more vital than friendly concern; a sort of stabilizing power that swept away all such negations as slavery, poverty, or any other afflicting circumstance. Demetrius was suffused with the glow of this curious kinship. Blind with sudden tears, he elbowed through the throng and reached the roadside. The uncouth Athenian, bursting with curiosity, inopportunely accosted him.

“See him—close up?” he asked.

Demetrius nodded.

“Crazy?” persisted the Athenian.

“No.”

“King?”

“No,” muttered Demetrius, soberly—“not a king.”

“What is he, then?” demanded the Athenian.

“I don’t know,” mumbled Demetrius, in a puzzled voice, “but—he is something more important than a king.” [Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe, chapter 4]

Let me conclude with this. About a year ago my mother went to the hospital. When I was thirteen my mother and father were divorced, and it was a rough life. I saw her put on heavy men’s work boots and go to Garfield’s Smelter at eleven o’clock at night and work until seven in the morning so she could be there when the seven children were home. When she came home, she would get us up and send us off to school. When we came home for lunch, she would be up washing, baking bread, or something. When we came home after school, she would be up. I don’t know when the poor woman slept.

One time at school the teacher pulled us into a room, and the nurse was there. The nurse methodically went through each person’s hair in the family. We were naive and didn’t know what she was doing and went home and told mother about it. She knew. She put on I think the only dress she had in this world and marched down to Hawthorne School. She went into the principal’s office and said, “We may be poor, but we’re not dirty, and don’t you ever search my children for lice again.”

I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was when I learned that was what the nurse was doing. Over the years I have watched this great mom work those kinds of hours. She had a heart condition, and we thought she ought to go and have an examination to see if open-heart surgery ought to take place. They were just wheeling her out of the room when as calm and peacefully as she ought to go, she passed away just that quick. The doctor said it was one in ten thousand times that something like that would happen.

Well, that was on Thursday night. On Friday I was supposed to go to Lakeland, Florida. I didn’t tell the Brethren about my mother’s passing. I’m sure they would have excused me from the assignment, but I felt I had better go. We were planning the funeral service, and as I got ready to leave, I was hoping the family would invite me to speak. I didn’t dare volunteer, but I wanted to say some things about my mom. Just before I left my older brother asked if I would feel all right about being the final speaker at the funeral. I said that I would love to.

Then I got on the plane and flew to Lakeland. I didn’t tell anyone at the conference that my mother had passed away. I was a little tender anyway, and I didn’t want them to know. I made it through the first day, and that night after the meetings the mission president came to me and said, “We’ve got a real problem. We have a missionary that you have to decide whether he stays in the mission field or goes home.”

I interviewed him very thoroughly. He had been involved in some really serious problems, almost breaking up a marriage. He had not committed fornication, but he was far more seriously involved than any missionary ought to be. But he didn’t have a repentant attitude. I wanted him to stay in the mission field so badly I couldn’t stand it. But I thought he had to have at least a little spirit of repentance. I pled inwardly that he would show me that he wanted to stay. He did want to stay and he would say he wouldn’t do it anymore, but he never once said he was sorry.

Well, I felt really bad about it, and finally, at the end of the interview, I thought I had better send him home. Then I was impressed and said, “Tell me about your dad.”

He said, “Oh, my dad is inactive in the Church. My dad couldn’t care less if I’m out in the mission field. In fact, he would like me to come home and would be grateful if I would come home.”

I said, “Tell me about your mom.”

Then he got a little tender and said, “She is the president of the stake Young Women.”

I said to him, “I’m going to let you stay. You don’t really deserve to stay, but I couldn’t do that to your mother. I couldn’t have that happen to this woman who takes your letters around and reads them to the young women in the stake. Maybe you’re the only great thing in her life. She probably shares your letters from one ward to the next and is so proud of you. I couldn’t have her stand at the bottom of the stairs of the plane and watch you walk off dishonorably discharged from your mission. I’m going to let you stay.”

He said, “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Then he walked out.

The next day, during the last ten minutes of conference, I said, “I apologize if I have been just a little bit tender this morning, last night, and yesterday. My mother passed away and the funeral is tomorrow. She raised seven boys and girls alone without any alimony or child support.” I explained a little bit about her life and bore my testimony.

After the meeting was over this young man came up to the stand. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he ran up to me, put his arms around me, and said, “President Featherstone, now I know why you are letting me stay. It isn’t only because of my mom. It is because of your mom.” I answered that I guessed it was.

I have beautiful golden-brown hair. I was watching the news one morning and saw that a little girl was donating her hair to an organization that makes wigs for young cancer patients. One day I was shopping with my mom and sisters when we noticed a salon that took hair donations. We went in and asked the hair cutter how long my hair had to be to donate it. It was long enough! So I sat down in the big chair, and she put my hair in a ponytail and cut it right above the tail. I felt happy and excited because I knew that I had done something to help little kids who were sick.

While participating in a youth conference in California, Bradley (Brad) R. Wilcox met a young man who didn’t want to be there. He joined the teenager under a shady tree, and soon they were discussing the youth’s favorite topic—skateboarding.
Brother Wilcox asked the teen to show him some skateboarding moves. Impressed, he invited the youth to do a skateboarding demonstration at Especially for Youth that summer. The young man resisted but eventually agreed. At EFY, he had a life-changing experience and found his testimony of the gospel.
“He got to EFY on a skateboard, but he left as a missionary,” Brother Wilcox said.

For example, a young woman describes how she stays on the covenant path: “I once had a classmate ask me for help. I didn’t think much of it, just gave her the help she needed. But afterward, the Spirit reminded me that by helping bear her burdens, I was keeping the covenants I made when I was baptized (see Mosiah 18:8–10). I am grateful for the opportunities Heavenly Father gives me every day to choose to walk the covenant path.”

I first met Sally Pilobello in the Philippines in 1972 when I was sent there as a health missionary. I learned that she and her husband had lost their first baby when the baby was five months old. Sally had other children, but she now was pregnant with another and asked me, “What can I do to have a healthy Mormon baby?” I thought of her courage and faith as she responded to truth and adopted some new habits and traditions. Soon people in the neighborhood were sharing the news: “Mormon baby is coming!”

On 20 January 1973, Sarah Pilobello was born—a healthy, beautiful “Mormon baby.” Her mother’s pioneer spirit had enabled her to do things she had not done before—to add more truth to what she already knew. Sally used to smile at me and say, “Sister, you can never teach an old dog new tricks.” Then she’d pause and add: “But Sister, I am not a dog!”

In 1984 I received a letter from eleven-year-old Sarah—“Little Melon” to her family and friends: “I’m sorry that I have not written for a long time because every time I’m going to start my letter my playmates are insisting me to play with them. Now I firmly decided to write to you. We are glad that Mommy is doing what the family preparedness program of the welfare missionaries taught them. We now purify our water and have a balanced diet. That is why we grow faster than the other children. The temple is now being made and I hope I’ll see you there. I love you. Little Melon.”

I also received a letter from her mother, my dear friend Sally: “I want to express my gratitude for the things I have learned which are making such a difference in my family. I realize now that some of the things my mother taught me—things her mother taught her—were not correct. But the truths I’m learning will now be taught to my children, and to their children, and to the generations to come. We will not be damned any longer by ignorance. ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!’ As they say, it is never too late to learn and change. God must love us dearly to allow us to have so much truth.”

Courtney McGregor moved to Salt Lake City after the sudden death of his wife. To get involved, he went the extra mile. “There are always service opportunities without being called to any particular assignment,” he says. “I volunteered to help with the sacrament. That got me talking to people I otherwise might not have met so soon. I also volunteered to help clean the temple. My experience, married or single, has been the same: friends are there to be made.”