Gospel Story Finder

When Brigham Reneer (6) of Provo, Utah, sings with the Primary, “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission,”* he already knows, because of his special circumstances, what being called to serve is like. On February 4, 2001, he was called to be a stake youth missionary in the Provo Utah Oak Hills Stake. Even though most young men are called to serve full-time missions when they are nineteen years old, Brigham is already serving as a stake missionary.
His family lives near the Missionary Training Center in Provo, and every time they drive past it, he is fascinated by the groups of missionaries gathered outside. “I want to go on a mission,” he repeatedly told his parents, Julie and Randy Reneer. But they knew that his health would never allow him to serve a full-time mission.
The opportunity for him to serve came when Brother Wayne Arballo, the Reneers’ home teacher, was called to be a stake missionary. Brother Arballo said, “I was passing Brigham in the hall at church. I knelt down by him, and he tried to take my missionary tag. I let him take it, but it made me wonder if there was something more I could do for him.” Brother Arballo wanted to help Brigham fulfill his dreams of becoming a missionary. He talked to the stake mission presidency, and they spoke with the stake president. The result was that Brigham was called as a stake youth missionary.
Brigham received his call in a letter, much like the letters full-time missionaries receive. His grandfather bought him a black suit, his aunts and uncles gave him a set of scriptures, and the stake mission presidency ordered a missionary tag with his name on it. His missionary plaque hangs in the display case at the Oak Hills Second Ward. It includes his favorite scripture, Isaiah 11:6—“And a little child shall lead them”—and his favorite Primary song, “I’m Trying to Be like Jesus.”† He could not be set apart because he is not yet baptized, but he received a blessing from the first counselor in the stake presidency, Stephen Clark, to help him in his calling.
Being a stake missionary is a dream come true for Brigham. He and Brother Arballo, now his companion, visit Primaries and other organizations in the stake to share a message about Jesus Christ. After Brother Arballo bears his testimony, Brigham tells the story of the Savior’s life while his companion displays pictures. Brigham loves to bear his testimony that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. Even though Jesus’ crucifixion makes Brigham sad, he knows that the Savior lives and will return to earth. “Jesus helps people get better,” Brigham testifies. He knows that because of Jesus, we have nothing to fear.

I started skiing when I was five years old, and I have always loved the sport. For many years I thought, Wouldn’t it be wonderful to ski for the United States Olympic team! Finally, when I was old enough to go on a mission, I was given the chance to be an alternate for the United States team.
The Olympics! It was something I had worked for and dreamed about for years. Fortunately, I had a very wise bishop, who happened to be my father. When I asked him, “Would the family be just as proud of me if I skied for the United States Olympics team instead of serving a mission?” his answer was, “That’s not for the family to decide; it’s your choice.” He urged me to fast and pray about it. I took his advice, and then I knew which choice was right: I should serve a mission.
I was called to the Western Canadian Mission. For as long as I can remember, I have known that the Church is true, but my mission helped strengthen my testimony even more and helped me appreciate what a testimony really is. My mission changed my life, and I have never regretted making the decision to serve. This experience taught me the importance of always choosing the right, just as you children are taught in Primary today.

Perhaps one of the reasons I feel this way is that my beautiful wife, Mary, is as wonderful and righteous as ever. Let me reminisce a little about her; it will lead into the message I want to leave with you.

I first saw Mary when we were in 7th grade at Logan Junior High School. She sang on a talent assembly. When she walked on the stage, she had a big smile, blonde, almost white hair, and bright blue eyes. She looked like she would have a soprano voice. Our entire class was surprised by her rich, mature, alto voice, and her incredible rendition of a favorite popular song. The title was On the Sunny Side of the Street. That is the title of my message today.

Our entire class loved her performance, and we learned that Mary did try to live on the sunny side of the street. She was warm, kind, friendly, and righteous; we all deeply admired her. It was many years before I had a first date with her. But as I observed her in those pre-date years, I came to realize that the song in a sense described her life. The words, “If I never have a cent,” reflected to a certain extent, her family. They had very little temporal substance in their lives. Through her youth they rented various homes and moved often. Her father, though capable and a good man in many respects, had an alcohol problem for many years that adversely affected her parents’ relationship. Her parents were separated for two years during Mary’s grade school years. During that period, she, her mother, and siblings lived with her grandmother. I noticed in high school that she wore clean, pressed, and modest clothing, but could not afford expensive stylish clothes. It became evident that she was as friendly with those who were poor and down-trodden as with the most popular girls.

It would be fair to say, like the words of the song she sang, that she did not have a cent, but she tried to live on the sunny side of the street. She modeled her life, then and now, on the righteous principles taught in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through those years I considered her a good friend. She was always happy and optimistic. She was a diligent student and excelled in many activities. While I was still on my mission in England, Mary graduated from Utah State University as valedictorian of her college and scholar of the year. I admired her before I fell in love with her. We were married soon after I returned from my mission. She is the love of my life. I am pleased to report that many years after we were married, her father had resolved his issues and had become active in the Church. Mary and a beloved sister joyfully joined their parents to be sealed together as an eternal family in the Logan Temple.

When I was called as first counselor in the bishopric, sacrament meeting attendance in our ward had dwindled. As a bishopric, we decided to fast fervently and pray to Heavenly Father to give us the wisdom to know how to strengthen the members.
The Lord inspired us to emphasize the sacrament meeting as a spiritual feast, so we came up with a way to invite the members, their friends, and their neighbors to come to sacrament meeting and experience a spiritual feast. We made invitations that said, “Come and hear, see, and feel the presence of the Lord in a spiritual feast” and gave them to each of the members, including the young men and young women.
We also prepared a small ward choir of eight voices. We prayerfully selected spiritual hymns and speakers and invited members to help with the reverence of the occasion.
Everything was ready for the spiritual feast! Attendance that Sunday included 42 investigators and less-active members. At the second spiritual feast, there were 64 investigators and less-active members. Three months later we could no longer fit in the chapel, and six months later our ward had grown so much that we were preparing for it to be divided into two wards.
We learned that treating sacrament meeting as more than just a Sunday meeting but as a sacred experience gave us a marvelous opportunity to invite our loved ones to come unto Christ through a sacred spiritual feast.
Our preparation to improve the quality of the spirit and reverence of sacrament meeting helped improve the attendance of the people who had never imagined feeling joy by coming to see, feel, and find it in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I think of the sincere efforts of an aunt whose acts were never celebrated in the media or recognized in any special way. One of her neighbors was a reclusive woman who had lost her husband. She often engaged in peculiar behavior, which provided us children with opportunities to make fun of her. But seeing that she had neither friends nor family, my aunt visited her frequently, taking her food, talking with her, comforting her. When this neighbor died, only three people attended her funeral: my mother, my uncle, and my aunt.
In this as in many other instances, my aunt gave her best in personal and sincere ways. For my aunt, “Mankind was [her] business” (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, in Works of Charles Dickens [1982], 543).

Standing on the bow of the 32-foot sailboat Polaris, Richard Andes is keeping an eye out for buoys, boats, and anything else in the harbor. Basically, it’s his job to make sure Polaris doesn’t hit anything. It’s a big responsibility, because the helmsman steering the boat is in back and can’t always tell what’s coming. Suddenly, Richard notices something right in front of him, just below the surface.
“Hard to port!” he yells, and the helmsman, 15-year-old Tony Portera, obediently yanks the wooden tiller far to the side. Tony can’t see the obstacle, a large mass of floating kelp, but he performs without hesitation and the boat passes safely on the left.
“You don’t know what’s out there, so you really have to trust,” says Richard, also 15. “If they say it’s there, you have to believe it’s there, and if you don’t move you’re going to hit it.” Obviously, trust and cooperation are vital on a sailboat.

It was a summer day. My mother died in the early afternoon. My father, my brother, and I had gone from the hospital to our family home, just the three of us. We fixed ourselves a snack; then we talked with visitors. It grew late, dusk fell, and I remember we still had not turned on the lights.
Dad answered the doorbell. It was Aunt Catherine and Uncle Bill. I could see that Uncle Bill was holding a bottle of cherries. I can still see the deep red, almost purple, cherries and the shiny gold cap on the jar. He said, “You might enjoy these. You probably haven’t had dessert.”
We hadn’t. The three of us sat around the kitchen table, put some cherries in bowls, and ate them as Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine cleared some dishes.
As nearly as I can tell, the giving and receiving of a great gift always has three parts. Here they are, illustrated by that gift of cherries.
First, I knew that Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine had felt what I was feeling. They must have felt we’d be too tired to fix much food. They must have felt that a bowl of home-canned cherries would make us feel, for a moment, like a family again. I can’t remember the taste of the cherries, but I remember that someone knew my heart and cared.
Second, I felt that the gift was free. I knew that Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine had chosen freely to bring a gift. The gift seemed to provide them joy in the giving.
And third, there was sacrifice. I knew that Aunt Catherine had canned those cherries for her family. They must have liked cherries. But she took that possible pleasure from them and gave it to me. That’s sacrifice. But I have realized since then this marvelous fact: it must have seemed to Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine that they would have more pleasure if I had the cherries than if they did.
Great gift giving involves three things: you feel what the other feels, you give freely, and you count the sacrifice a bargain.

In his ward Dale met a young woman named Ruth. She was the daughter of a member of the stake presidency, Merlin R. Lybbert, who later served in the Seventy. Dale’s recollection is that he mustered the courage to ask Ruth out on a date, but she said no. When he tried again a few months later, she said yes. Ruth’s version is a little different. She remembers that when he spoke in sacrament meeting about his mission, she was impressed. They got better acquainted, and she was thrilled when he asked her to go on a date, but she was hosting a party that required her to decline. She was pleased to accept when he asked again.

The woodland was under a heavy shroud of cloud cover that weekend. Rain filtered through the air, and the cameramen waited patiently to expose their film. It rained, and they prayed. And it rained some more. If the filmmakers were unable to complete filming in that one week during the spring of 1975, the project would have to wait a year until the surroundings were right again. The season would soon change, and to add to the problems, the lead actor had to leave the following Friday. On Monday morning the crew awoke before dawn and and began to set up all their equipment, thinking somehow they could compensate for the weather. But suddenly it stopped raining. When the sun came up, they beheld the loveliest mist they had ever seen. The tall, wet grasses sparkled, and the birds burst forth in song, and they knew they had been blessed with a beauty they could never have produced themselves.
That morning the Brigham Young University Department of Film Production began filming scenes for the First Vision. Stewart Petersen, who played the Prophet Joseph, walked through those tall grasses with thoughts of that other “beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty” (JS—H 1:14) when Joseph Smith humbly prayed for an answer to his question, “Which of all the churches should I join?”
The First Vision is a historical film commissioned by the Church for release as a teaching aid and missionary tool. The script follows Joseph Smith’s own account of the spring of 1820 in Palmyra, New York, when, after reading and pondering James 1:5, he decided to ask of God which church was true.
The singular beauty of that first morning was followed by a week of busy filming. By Thursday renewed bad weather set in—more clouds and more rain. By the end of the day there was still one important scene that needed to be put on film—and that scene had to be filmed in bright sunlight. It was the scene where Joseph runs toward his home on a bright sunny day. So Friday morning they set up an 18-foot scaffold for their cameras in the center of the field that lay between the grove and Joseph’s home. They offered another special prayer and waited. After what seemed like hours the clouds parted. The cameras rolled. Just before the scene ended, the clouds closed in again, and darkness prevailed. “That’s all we got,” said David Jacobs, producer-director, “but that was all we needed—it’s the scene that opens the film.”
In Joseph’s own account of the First Vision he tells of entering the grove and kneeling to supplicate the Lord. Suddenly he felt a literal darkness—“some power which entirely overcame me … the power of some actual being from the unseen world.” (JS—H 1:15–16.) How to handle the feeling of such an evil influence was hard to conceptualize and then transfer onto the film. On the plane to New York the week before, David Jacobs had been studying some research material on a recently discovered account of the vision written by Joseph.
A couple of sentences jumped out at him as he read: Joseph said, “I heard a noise behind me like someone walking toward me. I strove again to pray, but could not; the noise of walking seemed to draw nearer. I sprang upon my feet and looked around, but saw no person or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking.” (As quoted in Dean Jesse, “Early Accounts of the First Vision,” BYU Studies, Spring 1969, p. 284.) “I knew instantly,” Dave said, “that this was how I wanted to get into the darkness scene. It was dramatic. It was true.”

Recently I was hospitalized to have open-heart surgery. I shared a room with a young lady who was blind due to diabetes and was to have surgery to renew her eyesight. I spoke briefly to her parents who told me that her last surgery had not been successful. They were praying very hard for her, and they promised to pray for me that night as well. I thought it was beautiful of them to even care. That evening the girl’s family came from many different states to visit her before her surgery the next morning. I couldn’t believe it—seven brothers and a great set of parents! It was such a beautiful picture. To this day I don’t know how they made it past the nurses’ station. We were only allowed two visitors at a time. After they left, Rhena asked me to pray with her, and I did. The next morning we both were frightened, but as we talked, she said to me, “Mrs. McDonald, we don’t need to be frightened because Heavenly Father is watching over us.” We prayed again, and as we prayed I felt the Spirit. Then the anesthesiologist came in and gave Rhena her medication for surgery.
I didn’t see her afterwards because she was in intensive care for about a week. During that week her folks visited me, introduced me to the missionaries, and left me a copy of the Book of Mormon. I began to read it and prayed to know of its truthfulness. I was to leave the hospital that Saturday, and Brother DeVito offered me his home, and he and his wife took care of me until I was able to return home to California. That following Saturday their daughter was released from the hospital, and thanks to everyone’s prayers, that beautiful young girl can see. I was really impressed with them as a family and just love them for showing me the gospel. Recently I found a March 1979 issue of the New Era and read an article called “A Blind Man Helped Me See.” I can relate very well to that because I have joined the Church and so have 23 members of my family.
Joyce McDonaldSan Diego, California

The great wonder of writing and reading is indicated by the experience of an early-day explorer in the dark continent of Africa. He desired to send a message to a friend many miles away, and it was arranged for a trusted native to be his messenger. The native watched as with his pen the explorer made some marks on a piece of paper, which had no significance to him. Then the explorer gave the native the letter for delivery.
After traversing the many miles of wilderness, the native put the message in the hands of the one for whom it was intended. The native discovered that as soon as the recipient had studied the paper, he immediately knew exactly where the explorer was and what his problems were. He knew all about his health and as much about the needs that prompted him to send the letter as though the explorer had come in person.
The miracle involved in this mysterious communication so impressed the native that he fell down on his face and worshiped the paper.

I saw it in New Mexico as a young man. For generations the prophets have told us that we must help the missionaries find and teach the honest in heart and then love those who come into the kingdom.

I have seen for myself what faithful priesthood leaders and members can do. In 1955 I became an officer in the United States Air Force. My bishop at home gave me a blessing just before I left for my first station, which was in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In his blessing he said that my time in the air force would be missionary service. I arrived in church on my first Sunday at the Albuquerque First Branch. A man walked up to me, introduced himself as the district president, and told me that he was going to call me to serve as a district missionary.

I told him that I would be there for training for only a few weeks and then I would be assigned somewhere else in the world. He said, “I don’t know about that, but we are to call you to serve.” In the middle of my military training, by what appeared to be chance, I was chosen from hundreds of officers being trained to take the place in headquarters of an officer who had died suddenly.

So, for the two years I was there, I worked in my office. On most evenings and every weekend, I taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to people the members brought to us.

My companions and I averaged more than 40 hours a month in our missionary service without once having to knock on doors to find someone to teach. The members filled our plates so full that we often taught two families in an evening. I saw for myself the power and the blessing in the repeated call of prophets for every member to be a missionary.

On the last Sunday before I left Albuquerque, the first stake was organized in that city. There is now a sacred temple there, a house of the Lord, in a city where we once met in a single chapel with Saints who brought friends to us to be taught and to feel the witness of the Spirit. Those friends felt a welcoming home in the Lord’s true Church.

The pale yellow light from the lantern Christian Monson carried threw dark, dancing shadows against the gray stone walls of the Fredrikstad (Norway) Prison. Christian hesitated at the heavy oak door that led from the prison office to the cells below. His heart was racing. He knew that if his plan to release the two prisoners was discovered, he would also be made a prisoner here.
Christian felt the cold smoothness of the jailer’s keys, and he felt the weight of irrevocable decision. He drew a long, deep breath, inserted the key in the lock, and turned it; there was the clicking sound of metal. With his free hand he pulled the door open. The air from the cells was dank and fetid—the stench of unwashed men and stale cellar air.
Quietly Christian walked down the stone steps to the long rows of cells that the warden of the prison had placed in his care as a night guard. At the bottom of the steps he stopped and hung the lantern on the hook that protruded from the wall. The light fell bright on his face. It revealed a tall, 14-year-old Norwegian boy with bright, sky-blue eyes and straight, tawny-colored hair. His face was smooth and fair and normally full of laughter and mischief, but in the flickering lantern light it was firm and serious.
Christian walked across the floor to the cell on the far left, inserted the key into the lock, and opened the door.
“Elders!” His voice was soft.
Light fell on two villainous-looking men who were standing near the door and waiting. Both wore shaggy beards and long hair, dark with grease and dirt. Their faces were sallow and pocked with small red sores. Their clothes were filthy and tattered, rotting in the damp air.
In the year he had worked in the prison Christian had seen many men who looked like these two—filthy, rotting men with cold, empty eyes that followed him with hate. But these two were different. Their clothes, their hair, and their skin looked the same as any of the men who had spent several months in the prison. It was in the eyes where Christian had noticed a difference; the eyes of these two were warm and alive and strong.
Elder Hanson smiled and grasped Christian’s shoulder with a powerful hand.
“Father in heaven is pleased with your courage, Christian,” he said.
“We had better hurry,” the other man, Elder Nelson, said, stepping out of his cell. “But let’s pray first.”
Minutes later Christian and the two Mormon elders walked out of the prison. Elder Hanson, a tall barrel-chested man, stopped, stretched out his arms, and in a long, slow breath drank in the cold, clean-tasting night air.
They spoke in whispers as they walked. Then they began walking down the narrow streets toward a rocky point in the fjord.
“Brother Monson, what will your parents do?” Elder Nelson asked.
“I don’t know, Elder Nelson. I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I tried to tell my mother, but she wouldn’t listen. And my father—he’s a proud man, proud of Norway, proud of the Lutheran Church, proud of his own beliefs. My mother might understand, but I’m afraid my father will not even try.”
Christian stopped and faced Elder Nelson, his breath making a white plume in the darkness.
“There’s pain in this truth of yours, Elder Nelson.” He turned and began walking again.
Elder Nelson nodded and pulled his coat tighter against the cold. He well understood the problem. He and Elder Hanson had been put into prison because of that same intolerance.
Christian broke the silence again.
“Many years ago, I was very young at the time, my grandfather told me that there are steps in life that can change my future and the future of entire generations. He told me I should take those steps, carefully, in the direction I believe to be right, no matter how difficult they appear to be. I know this is right.”
They reached the shoreline and walked along it until they came to a small cove. The shoreline was rocky and smelled of the ocean and seaweed.
The three of them walked out into the water. The water felt warm compared to the night air. There was the sound of waves washing gently against the rocks on the shore, soft and rhythmic.
Christian thought back over the past two months, about the long hours he had searched and compared the catechism of his church with the Bible and the teachings of the two elders.
He remembered the warmth deep inside when he found the answers for which he had searched and prayed. With the memory a peaceful feeling washed over his mind, over the pain he felt in the weight of decision.
In the moonlight Elder Hanson raised his arm to the square. In his mind’s eyes Christian could see John the Baptist and Christ in the Jordan River and he could hear Paul speaking on being buried and raised again with Christ. He heard Elder Hanson’s voice and the baptismal prayer. He felt the power of the prayer and a sudden rush of water.
Before the first reds and golds of morning streaked the horizon, the two elders were back in their cell and Christian was at the desk, in the front office of the prison, waiting for the day guard to relieve him. In the quiet stillness of morning he wondered where this step he had taken would lead him, and he wondered how he would tell his parents.

Audrey liked to be awake. She liked to play with her friends Karen and Sue. Her mother and her grandmother were fun to be with too. Audrey liked to run and jump and chase her shadow. Some days she even liked helping with chores around the house.
The one thing Audrey didn’t like, though, was taking naps. Every afternoon when Mother suggested that Audrey lie down for a little while, Audrey would pout and say, “Do I have to?” Audrey was afraid she might miss doing something she enjoyed while she slept.
“Audrey, it’s time for your nap,” Mother announced shortly after lunch one day.
“Oh, Mother, could I skip my nap just this one time?” Audrey pleaded.
“But if you do, you’ll feel cranky and tired later on,” Mother warned.
“No, I won’t. I promise, Mother. Just let me skip my nap for today,” Audrey persisted.
“Well, OK, just this once,” Mother agreed, but Audrey noticed she didn’t look very pleased.
As Audrey raced over to Karen’s house, she felt very grown up.
“Where’s Karen?” she asked Karen’s mother.
“Karen is napping,” her friend’s mother answered.
Audrey felt disappointed as she walked next door to Sue’s house. She knocked on the back door and asked if Sue could play with her.
“I’m sorry, Audrey,” Sue’s mother said, “but she’s in her room taking a nap. Perhaps later.”
Unhappily, Audrey started home. Maybe Mother or Grandmother will play with me, she thought, rubbing her eyes.
When she was home again, Audrey looked up at Mother, who was busy sewing.
“Mother, will you play a game with me?” Audrey asked.
“Honey, I can’t now,” Mother told Audrey, glancing at the clock. “I’ve promised to hem this dress for your grandmother. She needs to wear it tonight.”
“Where’s Grandmother?” asked Audrey.
“She’s taking a nap,” Mother explained.
“But Grandmother is too old to take naps,” Audrey said in surprise.
“Audrey, people don’t take naps because of their age. They take naps because they’re tired and need to rest,” Mother explained, smiling.
Audrey knew what Mother said made sense, for already she was beginning to feel tired. She let out a yawn and then said, “Mother?”
“What, Audrey?” Mother asked.
“I don’t think I want to skip my nap after all. I think I’ll go lay down for a while like Grandmother. I’m sort of tired too.”
Then Audrey kissed her mother and hurried off to her room.

I learned this lesson by two experiences. First, at Junior College. After high school, my father would not let me go on a mission until I had earned an A.A. degree from a college. I was disappointed as my friends left for their missions, but, I knew I needed to obey my father. So I took some “SELF” to college with me. I took a full-load each semester and worked 30+ hours per week. I did what I had to in order to get by. I ended up with 62 credits with a 2.65 GPA. My motive was to “get through those two years” to get on my mission, earn money to pay for my mission and to get two years of college behind me.

I became more educated about discipleship in the mission field, learning that my chief goal in life was to please Heavenly Father first, and to labor to know that the course of life I was pursuing was pleasing to Him.

I learned my second lesson when I returned from my mission. Sister Cole and I married and I started at BYU (Provo) in the fall. I decided that I wanted to become the best servant of the Lord I could be; and then also do something for my career that would be sufficient to sustain my wife and future family. I found that by trying to please Heavenly Father, that I became accountable to Him for how diligently I approached my studies. I also recognized that that accountability to God caused my planning, the scheduling of my time, and my attitude to change, so I could no longer feel good about “just getting by” as I had done previously. As I kept working to make Heavenly Father a full partner in my education, I found I had new vision. For instance, I had never planned to go to graduate school, and yet, in my senior year, I began to have a desire to go to graduate school and applied to three schools. Can you imagine how shocked my parents were when we told them I won a full-ride scholarship for a master’s degree at University of Hawaii’s East-West Center?

As a young man just 19 years old, Joseph F. Smith (who later became the sixth President of the Church) was traveling from California to Utah with a small group of Latter-day Saints. As they set up camp one evening, a group of drunken men rode into their camp on horseback. The men had guns, and they threatened to kill any Mormons who came across their path. Some of the Latter-day Saints hid in the bushes by the creek. Joseph F. Smith, who had been gathering wood, boldly approached the fire. One of the drunken men, pointing his pistol at Joseph, said that it was his duty to kill every Mormon he met. He then demanded, “Are you a ‘Mormon’?”
Joseph F. Smith looked the ruffian in the eye and answered, “Yes, siree; dyed in the wool; true blue, through and through.” The man was so surprised by Joseph’s honest answer that he grabbed Joseph’s hand and said, “Well, you are the … pleasantest man I ever met! Shake, young fellow. I am glad to see a man that stands up for his convictions.” The drunken men then rode off and did not bother the Saints again (Joseph Fielding Smith, Life of Joseph F. Smith, 188–89).

Photograph by Cristy Powell
Before my mission, I moved out of my parents’ home and attended college for a few months. There, I experienced severe anxiety. I wanted to serve a mission but worried about my mental health challenges.
After working hard in therapy for several months, I was ready to serve and received my mission call. I was called to be a service missionary.
My father recalls: “He poured his heart into preparing for his mission. When his call finally came, it was even harder for us when we saw his disappointment in not getting called to the kind of mission he had hoped to serve.”
That is when I took this teaching from President Russell M. Nelson to heart: “Through a lifetime of service in this Church, I have learned that it really doesn’t matter where one serves. What the Lord cares about is how one serves.”
My mother said, “We had to trust that this call was directly from God and that he was needed as a service missionary.”
Looking back, I can truly say that I am happy with the progress I have made, the growth I have experienced, and the many lives I have touched, including members of my family, fellow missionaries, and those I have served.
As part of my service, I write for the Friend magazine, serve in the Mount Timpanogos Utah Temple, and help two teenage boys who have special needs. I have found so much joy helping others come unto Christ through my service.

In our infantry battalion of some 500 men, there were three of us who were Latter-day Saints. Sundays in Vietnam usually found us somewhere in the jungle. But we would find a few moments to get together. We would take some canned bread from our C-rations and a cup of warm water from a canteen; one of us would bless these humble emblems and pass them to the rest of us. We would share our testimonies and have a prayer. Then, we would pick up our rifles and return to our duties. My dear brothers and sisters, I testify to you that never in any of our beautiful chapels have I felt the Spirit of the Lord more profoundly than I did in those simple jungle sacrament services. Those words: “[T]that they may always have his Spirit to be with them” took on a literal meaning that they have never lost.

Sleep seemed beyond reach that night. I could find no way to turn off the procession of disturbing thoughts that troubled my mind. Seeking peace, I prayed, asking the Lord about my concern: How could I fulfill my commitment to be a good wife and a good mother amid the iniquity of the world? I was especially worried about helping my one-year-old daughter grow up uncontaminated by the immorality we so often see or hear in movies, music, television, or other media, even when we are careful in our selection.
As I prayed, suddenly I remembered a bit of counsel from Mormon. He had written to his son Moroni after reviewing the horrors of war and wickedness among the unrepentant Nephites: “Be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written”—(and I thought at this point, or the things which you have seen, or read, or heard)—“grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may … the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever” (Moro. 9:25).
It was exactly the counsel I needed during that sleepless night. The Book of Mormon had come to my rescue again!

Ten-year-old Jesse Brewster of Lakeview, Oregon, made a step toward keeping his baptismal covenants by following the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” (See Mosiah 13:22; Ex. 20:15.) While Jesse was at the store with his mother, he saw a candy bar he really wanted but did not have any money to buy it with. He knew that his brother had some money saved in his room, and when he got home, he took some of that money, went back to the store, and nearly bought the candy. He realized at the last minute how wrong that would be. He put the candy bar back and bravely confessed to his brother.

By being honest, Jesse showed that he was willing to live by the covenants that he had made when he was baptized. He learned from this experience that “following what I know is right is always better than a candy bar.”