Gospel Story Finder

This past March, our second daughter, Emma, like many missionaries in the Church, went into mandatory isolation. Many missionaries came home. Many missionaries awaited reassignment. Many did not receive their temple blessings before departing to a field of labor. Thank you, elders and sisters. We love you.
Emma and her companion in the Netherlands were stretched in those first several weeks—stretched to tears in many instances. With only brief opportunities for in-person interaction and limited outdoor exposure, Emma’s reliance on God increased. We prayed with her online and asked how we could help. She asked us to connect with friends she was teaching online!
Our family began to connect online, one by one, with Emma’s friends in the Netherlands. We invited them to join our weekly, online, extended-family Come, Follow Me study. Floor, Laura, Renske, Freek, Benjamin, Stal, and Muhammad all have become our friends. Some of our friends from the Netherlands have entered “in at the strait gate” (3 Nephi 14:13). Others are being shown “the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter” (2 Nephi 31:9). They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Each week we “count it all joy” as we work together in our progress on the covenant path.

Many suffering Saints have shared with me how they felt God’s love during their trials. I vividly recall my own experience at one point in my cancer battle when the doctors had not yet diagnosed the cause of some severe pain. I sat with my wife, intending to offer a routine blessing on our lunch. Instead, all I could do was simply weep, “Heavenly Father, please help me. I am so sick.” For the next 20 to 30 seconds, I was encircled in His love. I was given no reason for my illness, no indication of the ultimate outcome, and no relief from the pain. I just felt of His pure love, and that was and is enough.

Illustrations by Sal Velluto and Eugenio Mattozzi
It was a stormy winter night. At the airport in Chicago, Illinois, many people were stranded due to delayed or canceled flights. A young pregnant woman stood in the long check-in line, nudging her two-year-old daughter forward with her foot.
Many people made disapproving comments, but no one offered to help.
Man: Why doesn’t she pick up that screaming child?
Woman: What a terrible mother.
With a kind smile, Elder Kimball walked up to the woman.
Elder Kimball: Can I help you?
Mother: Thank you.I’ve had four previous miscarriages. My doctor told me I can’t lift anything—not even my own child.
Elder Kimball picked up the crying child, rubbed her back, and gave her a piece of candy. When the girl was comforted, he informed the other passengers and the airport workers of the woman’s condition.
Airport worker: We’ll have you on the next available flight.
Supervisor: Come and sit and rest until your departure.
The woman’s stress was lessened. Later, she saw a picture of Elder Spencer W. Kimball of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Mother: That’s him! That’s the man who helped me.
A few months after that, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
Twenty-one years later, President Kimball received a letter. It was from the son of that young mother.
Student: I served a faithful mission and am now a student at Brigham Young University. Thank you for helping my mother that terrible night!
President Kimball was happy that his small act of service had resulted in so much good.

While I was president of the Southern States Mission, a schoolteacher loaned a book to one of our Mormon children; and when the book came back, in it was an Articles of Faith card, and that schoolteacher read it. She went to her minister and said, “Why can’t our church have something like this?” The minister could not give her any satisfactory explanation, and so she wrote a letter to the Bureau of Information here in Salt Lake City. They sent her literature, they sent us her name, the missionaries called on her, and she joined the Church.

One morning my telephone rang very early and, as I picked it up, I recognized the soft voice of President Kimball on the other end of the line. After saying hello, I heard him in his faint voice say, “Marvin, I have something I want to talk to you about. Do you mind if I come up to your office and we visit?” I said, “President Kimball, if you’d like to talk to me, I “ll be right down to your office. Would you like me to come?” And he gently said, “Would you be good enough to do that?”

Courteous, friendly, and willing to be the servant of all, it was his leadership style to never demand or use the influence of his mighty calling to take the lead in what people would do or how they would respond to him. I would have you know that on this occasion he could have said, “Marvin, this is President Kimball. Come down to my office right away.” Certainly he had the power, authority, and right to ask me to meet with him under any and all circumstances, but I still have ringing in my ears what he said when I volunteered to come to his office: “Would you be good enough to do that?” He had the kind of approach, humility, mildness, and love that would inspire all of us to sustain and support him and love him under all conditions.

Recently, our grandson, Adam, was traveling with Sister Stone and me on a trip to California. About noontime we stopped for lunch. When the waitress brought the bill I didn’t pay very close attention and after she gave me my change, I realized that she had charged me for only two sandwiches instead of three.
I knew that the girl would be short at the end of the day, and there suddenly flashed into my mind the thought of how my father had taught me to be honest. I felt this was a good time to talk to Adam about honesty, and so we sat down and I explained what had happened. I told him we had a problem.
I said we could leave now and keep the extra change and no one would ever know the difference, or we could tell the girl that we still owed her for a sandwich. Our decision wasn’t at all difficult to make when we decided that if we kept money that did not belong to us that we would be breaking the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” We agreed that our Heavenly Father would be displeased with us and we would be unhappy too because we would know in our hearts that we had not been honest.
Adam and I approached the girl at the counter, and I explained to her that she had undercharged us and that we owed almost a dollar more. Her face flushed in embarrassment for a moment, and then she thanked us for telling her of the mistake. We continued on our way with a good feeling, and I am sure our Heavenly Father approved of what we had done.

One of the biggest adjustments to life as a missionary is having a companion with you all the time. He or she may come from a different country, speak a different language, or have a different perspective on doing missionary work together. Missionaries have to learn to be comfortable spending so much time with someone else. And they have to learn how to teach together. Elder Juilfs recalls, “We had one lesson that was really rough. We had different ideas and were going against each other. But we learned how important it is to teach as a companionship and let ideas flow.”

Work opportunities later took the young couple to Hanover, Germany, where Sister Held received a powerful impression that their lives were about to change.
“I told Mathias I had a feeling that we would get a message from heaven,” she said. That heavenly message arrived on a rainy afternoon in 1987 with a knock at the front door. Standing outside were Mormon missionaries speaking German with American accents.
For the next 10 months, the Helds studied with the missionaries and made friends in the local LDS congregation. After much prayer, they received spiritual confirmation of the gospel’s truthfulness and were baptized in 1988.

“Nothing in this world, not even a T-bone steak, could taste as good as it will feel to wear a missionary name badge. Nothing tastes that good.”
That thought gave Neil Bridenstine constant motivation to stick to a demanding weight-loss program. He had one goal in mind: serving a mission.
Just before his 19th birthday, Neil, then weighing about 400 pounds, learned he’d have to lose more than 120 pounds to drop to the recommended maximum weight for a missionary his height. The weight requirement from the Missionary Department helps ensure that young men and women will be able to live the physically challenging lifestyle of a missionary.
At first Neil felt the weight requirement would be impossible for him to meet. After all, his previous attempts to lose weight had been unsuccessful.
“I was a little discouraged when they said I needed to lose 120 pounds. I was feeling pretty down, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m not going on a mission then.’”
After a month of feeling discouraged, Neil came to an important realization. His current weight was unhealthy, and he did need to make a drastic change.
“Being 400 pounds, I was at the end of the rope. I needed to lose the weight anyway.”
To lose weight, Neil enrolled for six months at a full-time weight-loss center in St. George, Utah. Once he got there, he began to realize that his goal of a mission might not be impossible after all. “I went there with the wrong frame of mind, that I was going just to lose some weight, but then I turned around and said: ‘I’m going to do this so I can go on a mission.’”
Because Neil needed to lose so much weight in a short period of time, he needed to be monitored and advised by professionals during the entire process. Neil, along with his parents and doctor, decided that a health center was the safest option. There he was supervised and learned the basics of healthy living so that he could maintain his weight when he returned home and while on his mission.
The center’s weight loss regimen put Neil on a 1,200-calorie-per-day diet. His meals were carefully balanced to make sure he got all the nutrients he needed. “My diet was straight out of the Word of Wisdom—whole foods, whole grains, fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat, but very sparingly.”
On weekdays, Neil’s day began at 6:30 a.m. with a three-hour hike. “We would hike between four and six miles, depending on our hiking ability. My first hike I went about two miles in three hours. That was as far as I could go.”
But during his stay Neil built up his physical endurance. He spent part of each day in the gym doing strength training, aerobics, stretching, and cardiovascular exercises. In the evening, he attended lectures on how to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. Over the course of six months, Neil hiked a total of 600 miles and lost an average of five pounds a week.
As Neil’s body slowly began to change, he underwent a rapid change of heart. “Being there tested my faith because if I didn’t go to church on Sunday, my parents weren’t there to baby me, and my roommates didn’t care. I very quickly felt tested to see if I was there for the right reasons. It really made me understand that I did want to go on a mission and that I would deeply regret it if I didn’t.”
Several counselors at the health center who are members of the Church befriended Neil. He attended a young single adult ward with them, and through their example, his testimony grew. He also used the free time between workouts and lectures to study the gospel. He read Preach My Gospel, other Church books, and the Book of Mormon, with the goal of sharing his testimony with others.
“That’s what I was really trying to do—to really know the Book of Mormon, more than just reading the words to say I read it.”
Neil’s gospel study, coupled with his intense weight-loss program, paid off. “I was losing weight physically, but I was gaining so much spiritually—spiritual knowledge through the Book of Mormon and Preach My Gospel.”
The spiritual strength he was gaining carried him through difficult periods in his training. “Some nights there were times when I would cry myself to sleep because I dreaded waking up and going on a six-mile hike, or I dreaded having to eat another piece of tofu. But I said my prayers every night. Some mornings I would go on a hike, and it would feel like someone was pushing me. I was amazed that I was able to do what I did.”
Not only was Neil preparing physically and spiritually for his mission; he was also getting a lot of practice in missionary work. Most of the guests at the health center were not members of the Church, so Neil found opportunities to introduce them to the gospel and share his testimony.
“I gave out 12 copies of the Book of Mormon, told the Joseph Smith story a handful of times, and bore my testimony literally hundreds of times. When I was hiking I would try to pick a guest for that week and bear my testimony about the Church. It was the best missionary preparation ever because I got to do real missionary work.”
Now Neil has the opportunity to put all that practice to the test as a missionary in the Armenia Yerevan Mission. Almost six months to the day after Neil began his weight-loss program, he weighed in on the doctor’s scales at 280 pounds.
“It was a lot of work, and it was difficult, but it paid off. To get the doctor to sign off, to get the missionary papers in, and to get my mission call—the whole thing, every minute of misery I thought I was in, was well worth it.”
Neil says he is grateful for the weight requirement because of everything the experience taught him. But he gives the credit to Heavenly Father for helping him accomplish his goal.
“I can honestly say that I’ve been very blessed, spiritually and physically, to be able to do what I’ve done. The physical results are out of this world. Those came from heavenly help, and I can take very little credit for that. I know that there’s a reason I was supposed to go on a mission.”
Elder Bridenstine is now discovering what that reason is. And his weight loss not only got him there, it also taught him an important lesson he now uses as a missionary.
“Anything is possible with the Lord on your side. If you’re doing what you’re asked and living righteously, the Lord will bless you.”
Whether those blessings come in pounds lost or in souls found.

“This really happened here?” Sharon murmured. The bronze statue showed Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery kneeling before John the Baptist to receive the Aaronic Priesthood.
“We don’t know exactly where the event happened,” Dad said, “but we know that Joseph and Oliver were praying somewhere near the river when John the Baptist appeared. The Melchizedek Priesthood was restored later by Peter, James, and John.”
Sharon listened to the Susquehanna River gurgling behind the trees and felt warm sunlight shining on her face. A peaceful, happy feeling swelled inside her. She felt that way a lot lately.
She and her family were traveling with a group visiting some Church history sites. She had felt the Spirit in the Sacred Grove, at the Hill Cumorah, and now here in what was once called Harmony, Pennsylvania.
“I believe what happened here,” she thought, “but I have a hard time imagining it.” The word priesthood reminded her of her brother passing the sacrament or Dad giving her a blessing, not angels appearing.
As she climbed back into the car, she took one last glance toward the peaceful river and tried to picture the glorious event that had occurred. But it seemed like too much for her mind to grasp.
A week later, the tour group stayed at a campground with a fun playground. Sharon enjoyed running around after a long day in the car, and she hardly noticed when fireflies started coming out.
“It’s getting dark. We should probably go in soon,” her friend Emily said. “Come push me on the swing one more time.”
Sharon agreed. As Emily gained momentum, Sharon pushed harder. “Faster!” Emily giggled.
Suddenly, Emily’s little sister Darcy darted through the darkness—right into Emily’s path. Emily’s feet rammed into Darcy, and she crumpled to the ground.
Emily leaped from the swing and fell beside her motionless sister. “Darcy! Darcy! Are you OK?”
Darcy didn’t respond. She looked like a limp potato sack lying on the ground.
Sharon’s heart pumped wildly as she tried not to panic. “Stay here!” she told Emily. “I’ll go get help.”
Sharon found Emily’s dad, and they ran back to the swings. Sharon breathed with relief as Darcy opened her eyes and whimpered. Then Darcy clutched her arm and screamed in pain.
“Emily, please go tell Uncle Steve that we need to give Darcy a blessing,” Emily’s dad said. He scooped Darcy into his arms and hurried toward their campsite.
Emily grabbed Sharon’s arm. “Come with me!”
Sharon swallowed the lump in her throat as they explained to Emily’s uncle what had happened. It scared her to see adults acting so worried. The three hurried back to Emily’s campsite, Sharon silently praying that Darcy would be OK.
When they stepped inside the dimly lit trailer, Sharon saw Darcy lying calmly on the bed. A familiar, peaceful feeling came over her as Emily’s dad whispered in Darcy’s ear, “Uncle Steve and I are going to give you a blessing.”
Sharon folded her arms and closed her eyes while the men placed their hands on Darcy’s head. As she listened to the reverent words, a warm feeling grew stronger and stronger until she was tempted to open her eyes and peek. It felt as though warm sunlight were filling the room.
She remembered standing on the banks of the Susquehanna River the week before, sunlight shining through the trees. She remembered the bronze statue of John the Baptist, Joseph, and Oliver, and suddenly she understood what had happened there. Though she couldn’t see angels, she felt heaven’s power streaming into the room.
Her heart burst with joy as tears trickled down her cheeks. The priesthood wasn’t just something her brother used in church to pass the sacrament. It wasn’t just something that helped her dad say comforting words whenever he gave her a blessing. It was Heavenly Father’s glorious power to lead, bless, serve, and perform miracles—all restored through a humble latter-day prophet.
The sacred places Sharon had visited flashed through her mind, including Carthage Jail, where the Prophet Joseph had been martyred. She cried harder as she realized that Joseph Smith had sacrificed everything so that heaven’s power could be on earth today.
Emily’s dad said, “Amen,” and Sharon opened her eyes. She smiled to see she wasn’t the only one wiping away tears. Everyone else had felt the power, too.
The next day as Sharon and her family ate breakfast at the picnic table, Emily walked over to their campsite.
“Good morning, Emily,” Sharon’s mom greeted her.
“How’s Darcy?” Sharon’s dad asked. Sharon had told her parents all about what had happened.
Emily’s eyes danced. “My parents took her to the hospital to make sure she was OK, and do you know what the doctor said?”
Sharon shook her head.
“He looked at her arm and said that it was broken, but the X-rays proved him wrong. He said he’d never seen bruising like that without a broken bone, and he couldn’t understand why hers wasn’t broken.” Emily smiled knowingly.
Sharon grinned back, grateful that she understood why. It all went back to a miraculous event that had happened on the banks of the Susquehanna River—the day the priesthood was restored.

At the end of World War II, I was seated in my office in Salt Lake and received a telephone call from a man in New York, a multimillionaire who had made 30 million dollars by the time he was 30 years of age. He had a son in a military camp just outside Salt Lake City. This boy had expected to be shipped overseas, as many others had been. Then the war ended and so they were crowded into that camp, like sardines in a can. This boy was discouraged, and his father was worried about him. So he called and said, "Would you please call him on the telephone and see if you can cheer him up a bit?" I said, "Of course, I’d be happy to." And I called him and said, "Would you like to come into the office for a little visit?" And he said, "I sure would." He was a bit delayed in coming, and I was just ready to leave for home when he arrived.
I said, "Would you like to go out to the house with me and eat with the family? My wife doesn’t know you’re coming, but you’ll be welcome." So he said, "I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do tonight than that." So we went out, and we had our dinner, and we had our prayer. We gathered around the piano afterwards and enjoyed ourselves with some singing. Then after we visited for awhile, I drove him down to his bus. In a few days I got a letter from his father, and you know, you’d have thought I’d saved that boy’s life. The father quoted a letter from his son in which the son had said, "Father, I didn’t know there were any people in this world who lived like that." Yes, we take it all for granted. Here was a man worth millions of dollars—could buy his son anything that dollars could buy and never miss the money—and yet this simple thing of prayer and devotion in the home had passed him by.

Military basic training was tough, especially spiritually. I was surrounded by foul language and bad influences. Prayer and priesthood blessings gave me power to endure, but I longed to have more than personal prayers. Having served a mission, I knew the power and unity that can come from praying with a companion. Unity was one thing our group of about 56 airmen definitely lacked.
Three weeks into basic training, we were still struggling to get along and work as a team. Approaching the junior officers, I requested permission to hold a nightly prayer meeting for anyone who desired to come. Surprisingly, they not only agreed but also supported the idea.
Six airmen came to the first meeting. After taps and lights out, we used a flashlight to read a few verses from the New Testament that related to the challenges we were facing. We then said a prayer, asking that we could have the Spirit of God with us and that we could be grateful for the things we had.
Gradually, more airmen began attending our meeting. Soon our numbers had increased to 15. Sometimes we read Bible verses; other times we read from the Book of Mormon. Each evening anyone who wanted to pray was given the opportunity.
As I had hoped, our prayer meetings had brought unity to our group. But they did more than that: they strengthened us as individuals and helped us turn to our Heavenly Father.

Twenty-three year old Tom Monson, a relatively new bishop, before leaving home that night, had received a telephone call informing him that an older member of his ward was ill and had been admitted to the hospital for care. Could the bishop, the caller wondered, find a moment to go by the hospital sometime and give a blessing? The busy young leader explained that he was just on his way to a stake meeting but that he certainly would be pleased to go by the hospital as soon as the meeting was concluded.

Now the prompting was stronger than ever: “Leave the meeting and proceed to the hospital at once.” But the stake president himself was speaking at the pulpit! It would be most discourteous to stand in the middle of the presiding officer’s message, make one’s way over an entire row of brethren, and then exit the building altogether. Painfully he waited out the final moments of the stake president’s message, then bolted for the door even before the benediction had been pronounced.

Running the full length of the corridor on the fourth floor of the hospital, the young bishop saw a flurry of activity outside the designated room. A nurse stopped him and said, “Are you Bishop Monson?”

“Yes,” was the anxious reply.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The patient was calling your name just before he passed away.”

He vowed then and there that he would never again fail to act upon a prompting from the Lord. He would acknowledge the impressions of the Spirit when they came, and he would follow wherever they led him, ever to be “on the Lord’s errand.”

War clouds covered America. South Carolina threatened to secede from the republic. The crisis deeply troubled Joseph Smith. He said that on Christmas Day 1832 he “was praying earnestly on the subject.” In answer, a voice revealed to him a “Revelation on Prophecy and War” (D&C 87), which begins: “Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls.” Warfare and bloodshed, it added, then would become common throughout the world.
The Prophet wrote the revelation down. He told Church members about it. But it was not printed. Saints wanting copies had to hand copy from Joseph’s copy. Orson Pratt, the energetic young missionary, obtained a handwritten copy, which he frequently pulled out and read to people during his travels. In February 1832 he started, on foot, on a 4,000-mile mission that would continue for several years, preaching in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and Canada, during which he converted 104 people. Every year for the next five years he walked east and filled missions. Of those preaching days he later recalled:
“When I was a boy, I traveled extensively in the United States and the Canadas, preaching this restored Gospel. I had a manuscript copy of this revelation (on civil war), which I carried in my pocket, and I was in the habit of reading it to the people among whom I traveled and preached.”
How did his listeners respond? Did they say, “Well, it takes no prophet to see war will start in South Carolina”? No. Said Orson: “As a general thing the people regarded it as the height of nonsense, saying the Union was too strong to be broken; and I they said, was led away, the victim of an impostor.”
When South Carolina’s secession threats cooled down after 1832, did Orson begin to doubt the prophecy? No, because “I knew the prophecy was true, for the Lord had spoken to me and had given me revelation.” But year after year passed away without war, and now and then “some of the acquaintances I had formerly made would say, ‘Well, what is going to become of that prediction? It’s never going to be fulfilled.’” Orson replied, “Wait, the Lord has his set time.”
Perhaps doubters chided Joseph Smith too that the prophecy had “failed.” For just before his death the Prophet restated it:
“I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina. It may probably arise through the slave question. This a voice declared to me while I was praying earnestly on the subject, December 25th, 1832.”
Then, more years of unfulfillment passed. But Elder Pratt, an Apostle since 1835, still felt such confidence in the prophecy that he helped arrange for its publication in England in 1851. This was the first time the prophecy appeared in print.
Orson had to wait only a decade more. In December 1860 South Carolina voted itself out of the United States. Other southern states soon did the same. On April 12, 1861, secessionists’ cannons opened fire on the United States’ fort, Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, and South Carolina thereby started a bloody war that would last four years and claim 600,000 lives.
After the Civil War, Elder Pratt said, “This is another testimony that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of the Most High God.”

Years ago my expectant wife, April, and I eagerly attended an ultrasound appointment to discover whether we were having a boy or a girl. We were overjoyed to learn we were having our third son. We also learned there were severe physical complications afflicting his body. Our son was missing sizable portions of his brain, his skull was not properly shaped, and the doctors were unsure if he would survive until delivery.
During the ensuing weeks, every time we received more information, it was distressing news. I distinctly remember when my wife called to tell me the latest update: our son did not have a right eye.
To pray more specifically for our unborn son, we decided on his name early. We chose to call him Caleb, after the Old Testament Israelite who was known for his fearlessness in the face of overwhelming odds.
Miraculously, Caleb survived his birth, though it was clear he would remain like a newborn throughout his life. He would never walk, talk, or be able to feed himself.
When we asked how long he might live, the doctor candidly replied, “Take him home and love him, but don’t bring him back to the hospital. There’s nothing more we can do for him. He has a few weeks to a few months left—at most a year or possibly two.”
I was anxious as we left the hospital with our little boy to take him home. The amount of medical equipment needed to sustain his life was daunting. I would regularly sit in his room watching the little green light on his heart monitor. I was nervous about leaving, worried the light would stop blinking and Caleb would die alone.
Simply feeding him took extraordinary effort because he needed to eat every three hours. The process to eat through a feeding pump took one hour to complete. This involved waking up throughout the night: start the pump, sleep for an hour, stop the pump, sleep for two hours, start the pump again, sleep for an hour, and so on. We constantly feared losing him and doubted how we could keep ourselves alive, let alone our fragile son.
Thankfully, the Lord blessed us with many miracles in our seemingly hopeless situation. Earthly angels rallied around us. We had a competent and compassionate nurse and a doctor who made house calls. Ward members, family, and friends provided meals and offered fervent prayers in our behalf. We felt heaven’s sustaining hand upon us and that angels walked our hallways and sat in Caleb’s room. Our three-year-old son said he sometimes saw the Savior watching over us.
The Lord blessed us with many miracles as we loved and cared for our son.
In Caleb’s baby blessing, I assured him he had completed his mortal task by being born and that he would have a brief time to rest as part of our family before returning to his heavenly home.
Yet Caleb and his mother had different plans. They wanted to spend more time together and do a greater work. God had perfectly matched Caleb’s courage with April’s love and daring optimism. April purposefully chose hope and trust in the Lord. With God’s help, she turned what was a sorrowful circumstance into a sacred setting.
April celebrated everything about Caleb. She made him a birthday cake after his first week, cupcakes for his second week, and cookies for his third week. Every day was a once-in-a-lifetime event for our boy sent home from the hospital without hope. Caring for Caleb became a privilege for us.
Though Caleb’s body was misshapen and broken, his spirit was whole, noble, and great (see Abraham 3:22). Even his missing eye became a blessing, making it seem as if he was continually winking. His wink became his distinctive feature. People were drawn to him, especially children. They would often ask, “Where is his eye? What happened to him?” I would jokingly say he was a pirate. But April would explain that in our family, a wink meant “I love you.”
Caleb never spoke the words, but his wink communicated love. His perpetual wink felt like a heavenly message, bringing God’s love and Christ’s light into our lives.
In our family, a wink means “I love you.”
One night our family read in the scriptures about the “man which was blind from his birth.” The disciples asked Jesus, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Our sons saw the similarity and asked why Caleb was born blind. The Savior’s response provided our answer: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Then Jesus healed the man so he could see. (See John 9:1–7.)
Our boys asked if I could heal Caleb. I replied I did not feel it was the Lord’s will for Caleb to be healed. I added that God often orchestrated the healings recorded in the scriptures to bless the lives of those involved and to increase the faith of future readers.
However, not every miracle leads to immediate healing or deliverance. Sometimes miracles appear to be withheld for God’s greater designs to develop. Yet this delay does not suggest God’s indifference or lack of involvement. Heavenly Father cares deeply for His children and relentlessly performs His exalting work. In God’s eyes, Caleb did not need physical healing to fulfill his purpose.
There were times when I thought Caleb would live a long time. He had so often successfully battled sicknesses and surgeries with resilience. He went to the hospital many times but always came back to us. We loved having him in our home. Being in his presence was healing and heavenly.
At age seven, Caleb slipped peacefully away in April’s arms, surrounded by his family. He had spent a courageous day fighting a vicious infection brought on by pneumonia. His body was simply worn out.
My wife whispered in his ear, “I love you, Caleb. I am so proud of you. If your body is too tired, it’s OK. You can go back. You can return to Heavenly Father.”
In the very moment when it was needed, April’s heart changed so she could let him go. April trusted Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ because she knew They personally understood her suffering and would provide comfort and strength (see Alma 7:11–12). And through the Atonement of His Son, God can do miracles. He saves souls. He heals heartache. He inspires hope.
For those seven years, April’s love and God’s will allowed Caleb to be a significant part of our earthly experience. Having Caleb in our family blessed us immensely. He had flooded our home with a regal presence that seemed irreplaceable.
Even when life is hard, God provides the plan, and we contribute faith and courage. We trust in His timing and in His ways to achieve His purposes, especially when such purposes may be unclear from our point of view.
At a stake conference before Caleb’s passing, I spoke with a General Authority about our experience with Caleb. After he acknowledged the exhausting effort needed to care for Caleb, I thought he would encourage me to faithfully persevere in the service and sacrifice I was providing. Instead, his next four words transformed my relationship with Caleb forever.
He simply said, “You are being exalted.”
The Lord taught a similar principle when Joseph Smith, while incarcerated in Liberty Jail, prayed for relief from the great suffering he and the Saints were experiencing. The Lord responded with a comforting promise:
“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;
“And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:7–8).
Similarly, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles testified: “Adversity is not evidence of the Lord’s disfavor, nor a withdrawal of His blessings. Opposition is part of God’s plan to refine us and prepare us for an eternal, celestial destiny (see 2 Nephi 2:11).”
All this time I thought we were taking care of Caleb. In reality, God, through Caleb, had been taking care of us. The Lord was performing a miracle on me, on my wife and children, and on all those who met Caleb.
Caleb could have quickly returned to heaven, but instead he brought heaven to us for seven remarkable years. In our toughest times, God never abandoned us. With faith, courage, and hope, we learned that His blessings often shine brightest during our trials. Caleb’s constant wink was a tender reminder of God’s profound love for us all.
The author lives in Utah.

Tandy loved to frisk and frolic. Then he would wag his tail with happiness. But for over a week now he had hardly wagged his tail at all. Something was different in the Phillips’ house where he lived. Everyone was too busy to play with him.
One of the things Tandy liked to do best was to roll over on his back, put his feet in the air, and play dead. Before all the busyness, his playing dead trick always brought him a playful tickle on his tummy or a soft tug on his ear from Paul. Sometimes, Paul’s younger sister, Wendy, or Mother or Daddy would stop and play Tandy’s make-believe game with him. When they tussled him “awake,” Tandy would open his eyes, jump up on his four feet, and dance around the room, fanning the air with his tail.
But since Daddy had brought a tree into the house and the family had covered it with shiny balls and bright lights, no one had time to play with Tandy. The little dog was curious about the tree and sniffed at it suspiciously, wondering what it was all about.
Lately, right after supper, Mother would go to the back bedroom and close the door. Soon Tandy could hear the humming of a sewing machine. When Daddy excused himself from the table, instead of going into the living room to relax and read the newspaper, he went out to the garage and shut the door. It wasn’t long until Tandy could hear a tap-tap-tap of a hammer and the whirrrrrr of an electric drill.
And as quickly as Paul and Wendy finished washing the dishes, they disappeared into their own rooms. When Tandy pattered up to their doors, they were closed, and he could hear that they were busy.
One day Paul didn’t shut his bedroom door tightly, and Tandy trotted in. Next to playing dead, Tandy liked best going into the closet and getting hold of Paul’s old leather slipper to chew on. But the closet door was closed. Of course Tandy had Roscoe, a rubber frog, to play with, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as the slipper.
Although Tandy was given food and water every day, no one stopped to play with him. That’s why his tail had stopped wagging—he, was lonely and unhappy.
One night after supper Tandy could feel a kind of excitement in the air. Soon he saw Mother and Daddy and Paul and Wendy putting packages under the tree. When the doorbell rang, Paul ran to open it. “Hi! Grandpa,” he called, “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas to you,” said Grandpa, bending down to give Paul a squeeze. When the doorbell rang again, Wendy answered it. In came aunts and uncles and little cousins. Everyone was smiling and saying, “Merry Christmas!” to each other. When they came over to put their packages by the tree, Tandy had to run behind the couch to get out of the way of all the feet.
Then Paul and Wendy’s mother played the piano and everyone sang happy carols. Tandy came out from behind the couch to sit by Paul and listen. And when Paul rubbed his ears, Tandy’s tail started to wiggle just a little bit.
Tandy felt his loneliness slipping away. He scampered through the bedrooms, happy that the closet doors were open. But when he rooted around for his favorite slipper, it was gone.
Trotting back into the living room, Tandy saw that the tree made the only light in the room. Daddy was calling out names and everybody was smiling as packages were handed to them. When Daddy said, “Here’s one for Tandy,” the little dog’s ears pricked up. He tugged at the wrapping until something fell right between his paws. Tandy’s tail began to wiggle when he found Paul’s old slipper inside!
Tandy was content just chewing on the slipper, but when Paul called, “Here Tandy, play dead for the cousins,” he quickly dropped it and did his trick. And when it was finished, Tandy jumped up and frisked about, his tail wagging so fast it was only a blur.

“When I was small and our leaders spoke to us of marriage, all the stories were happy ones,” says Ruth Silva. She realizes that “happily ever after” takes work, “but I feel that those stories were true. The largest blessing of being married in the temple is the happiness I feel in knowing that we are united as an eternal family.”
Her example helped her father enter the waters of baptism in 2008 and then take his family to the temple, where they were sealed a year later.

I understood this principle a little bit more after watching a session of general conference. I’d just gotten into a fight with my sister, and I was fuming in my room. At first, I didn’t really feel bad for what I’d done. I felt like she’d earned my anger and definitely did not deserve an apology. The conference messages touched me, though, and I felt the Spirit soften my heart. I realized that I needed to apologize. As I thought through my apology, I felt sick to my stomach. I started to doubt that my words would fix anything. I reasoned that she would still be hurt and she wouldn’t understand that I really was sorry. I felt hopeless knowing that I could’t completely heal the wound that I’d created. At a loss about what to do, I decided to get on my knees and pray. I prayed and asked Heavenly Father for forgiveness. I asked Him to bless me with the ability to let my sister know that I was truly sorry.
After my prayer, I asked my sister if I could talk to her for a minute. I told her I was sorry. She played with her hair and wouldn’t meet my eyes and then mumbled her own apology. “No,” I responded, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” I felt my heart soften even more and tears filled my eyes. I gave her a hug and apologized for all the times I’d been mean to her and for not being a good big sister. My relationship with my sister was different after that day. It still is far from perfect, but a new understanding and love has grown between us.

What do you do when you’re not quite 16, but you desperately want to attend a dance at your school? Several girls from the Bountiful, Utah, area came up with a solution that worked well—they invited their dads.
Anissa Johnson, Shauna Howard, Cindee Olsen, Jill Stauffer, and Shari Salmon all found unique ways to invite their fathers and planned a dinner together before the dance. In accordance with the dance’s tradition, the fathers and daughters all wore matching shirts.
“It was a little strange when we first got to the dance and there were all our friends,” said Shari. “But the strange feeling only lasted a few minutes, and I didn’t think about it anymore; I was having too much fun!”
Cindee summed up one of the reasons she and her friends had such a great time with their fathers. “I didn’t have to impress him,” she said. “I already knew he liked me.”

This story happened in Nigeria.
“Welcome to Primary!” Sister Agbor, Gift’s Primary leader, stood at the front of the room. “Today we will learn the song ‘Love One Another.’”1
The music started, and the younger children got ready to sing. But Gift already knew this song. She had sung it a hundred times! She didn’t really feel like singing it today.
Gift was tired of Primary. She was older, taller, and bigger than all the other kids. Her friends at church were all in Young Women now. She still had almost a whole year before she could go with them to Young Women classes and activities.
While everyone else sang, Gift was quiet. She mumbled some of the words to the songs, but she was busy thinking.
Then she had an idea. Maybe if she talked to the bishop, he would let her go to Young Women early so she could be with her friends.
Gift found Bishop Achombi after church. “Hi, Bishop,” she said. “I don’t really feel like I belong in Primary anymore. I’m bigger and older than all the other kids. Can I start going to Young Women instead?”
Bishop Achombi smiled. “I know moving to Young Women is exciting,” he said. “But you can only start going the year you turn 12. I’m sorry.”
Gift looked down at her shoes. “OK.”
“The Primary is lucky to have you,” the bishop said. “I think the younger children admire you a lot. You can make a big difference to them.”
For the rest of the day, Gift felt sad. A year was a long time to feel lonely in Primary.
But then Gift thought more about what Bishop Achombi said. Did the other children really admire her? She had never noticed that before.
The next week, Gift waved goodbye to her friends as they walked to the Young Women room. She sighed and walked to the Primary classroom.
“Gift,” Sister Agbor said, “would you be willing to help me teach this week’s song?”
“Um, sure,” Gift said. “What song are we learning?”
“‘I Am a Child of God,’”2 said Sister Agbor. “Thank you for your help! I think the kids will have fun learning from you.”
When singing time started, Gift stood in front of the room. “Today I’m going to teach you one of my favorite songs,” she said. She helped the children learn the words. Then she sang the song with them. As they sang, Gift felt warm and happy inside. She knew she was feeling the Holy Ghost.
Before long, Primary class was almost over! After the closing prayer, Gift started to walk to the hall. She wanted to find her friends after their Young Women class and say hi.
But one of the little girls stopped her. “Thank you for singing with us!” She gave Gift a hug. “I want to be like you when I get big.”
Gift smiled. She still couldn’t wait to go to Young Women, and she hoped the next year would go by fast. But she knew she could still learn and do good things in Primary.
And maybe Bishop Achombi was right. She could make a difference.
Illustrations by Simini Blocker