Gospel Story Finder

An item posted on a local Peterborough Facebook page caught the eye of BBC Radio host Dotty McLeod, who wondered why two young men would offer to provide gardening and household service for free.
At her request, Elder Nathan Kidd and Elder Jarom Beale, of the England Leeds Mission, answered questions live on her breakfast show of 5 October 2020.
Elder Kidd, from the USA, and Elder Beale, from England, serve as missionaries for the Church in Peterborough, their purpose being to share messages of hope that come through faith in Jesus Christ.
Inherent in that faith is serving others as Christ would. The elders shared stories of serving in the community as well as relating how people responded to their offer, which led to delivering food and clothing to those in need, gardening, painting, and lifting heavy items.

We stopped by the man’s house the next day. His name was Favio. A month before, he told us, his friend had loaned him a copy of the Book of Mormon.
“I have always been interested in Jesus Christ, but I had never heard of another testament of His life,” Favio said. “I knew only about the Bible and Christ’s ministry in the East. No one ever told me that Christ came to America! I was excited to learn more.”
A few weeks later Favio had to return the book. “I didn’t know where I would get another copy,” he said. “I wanted more than anything to know if the book was true. I got down on my knees and asked for Heavenly Father’s help. I said, ‘Father, if the Book of Mormon is true, please let another copy fall into my hands so I can continue to study it.’ ”
One day Favio was at a train station. Out of the corner of his eye he saw what looked like a blue book lying on the sidewalk. As he approached it he recognized the golden letters. It was Heavenly Father’s answer.

We found a house across the street from one Protestant church and a block from another, but we lived 45 minutes from the nearest LDS meetinghouse. Every Sunday, as well as a couple of times during the week, we made the trek to our meetinghouse. During those seven years, my husband served in the bishopric, and I served as Primary president and then as Young Women president.
We knew that the social life and heartbeat of small towns exist in the local churches. To be accepted, we knew we had to get involved. Our three young children soon bonded with other ward children, but we also wanted them to feel a sense of belonging to our neighborhood. We encouraged them to become involved during the week in local church activities, including family suppers on Wednesday nights at one church.
We put our son and our girls in local youth programs. Our children also attended Vacation Bible School at both nearby churches. Our girls sang in a local church youth choir; one daughter even became a soloist in the choir. Our son attended a local church youth group.
Often a visiting revival minister preached against the “Mormons,” but our neighbors knew we were nothing like the people the preachers warned them about.
Every summer the regional churches of one Protestant sect sponsored a youth camp on St. Simons Island, Georgia. After one such camp, the minister said from the pulpit, “The only youth to go to camp this summer was our good little Mormon girl, Kelly Grant.”
Our Protestant neighbors embraced us because we had embraced them. We never had to compromise our standards or principles.

Soon after my husband was called to preside over the Paraguay Asunción Mission in 1992, we attended a branch conference in an isolated community in the Paraguayan Chaco.10 We traveled four hours on a paved road and then seven more hours on a primitive road. The perils and discomfort of the long trip were soon forgotten when we greeted the happy and welcoming members of Mistolar.

Julio Yegros was the young branch president, and he and his wife, Margarita, were one of the few families who had been sealed in the temple. I asked them to share their experience of their trip to the temple.

At the time, the closest temple was the Buenos Aires Temple in Argentina. The trip from Mistolar required 27 hours one way to reach the temple, and they had gone with their two small children. It was in the middle of a very cold winter, but with much sacrifice they made it to the temple and were sealed together as an eternal family. On the way back, the two babies got very sick and died. They buried them along the way and returned home empty-handed. They were sad and lonely but amazingly felt comforted and peaceful. They said of the experience: “Our children were sealed to us in the house of the Lord. We know we will have them back with us for all eternity. This knowledge has given us peace and comfort. We have to remain worthy and faithful to the covenants we made in the temple, and then we will be reunited with them.”

Some years ago such a precious seed was planted in fertile soil in Germany.
Robert Frederick Lippolt, his wife, and daughters lived in a small city in Central Germany. Robert, a house painter, provided a moderate living for his family. One Sunday, while on her way to the Protestant church, Robert’s wife was approached by Mormon missionaries, who invited her to attend sacrament meeting. She attended and was impressed.
After subsequent visits by the missionaries, she was baptized and became active in the Church. From the moment of his wife’s baptism, her husband grew in animosity and bitterness toward the Church. Their daughters were also baptized, resulting in more bitterness.
Robert could bear the Mormons no longer; he moved his family from Germany to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and then on to Porto Alegre, Brazil. As soon as they were settled, Robert’s wife continued to spread the news of the gospel. She was causing excitement in Brazil, for the doctrine that she preached was completely new.
Bitterness filled Robert. He hated the Mormons. He prevented his children from going to public school, for fear they would learn to read and would thus be further indoctrinated with Mormon literature.
Finally, in desperation, he took his family away from civilization to the interior of Brazil. They settled in the remote, peaceful valley of Ipomeia, in the state of Santa Catarina.
Filled with a burning testimony and a desire to share the “good news,” Robert’s faithful wife wrote to the mission president in Germany, who in turn referred her to the Argentine Mission president. She asked that he visit Brazil. President Reinhold Stoof visited Brazil in 1927 and reported that much success could be realized among the German-speaking people of Brazil.
From the tiny seeds sown by missionaries in Germany and carried across the Atlantic, the First Presidency established a mission in Brazil in February 1935. The work now flourishes. Hundreds, then thousands heard the good news. Now there are four missions in Brazil and four stakes of Zion.
Even Robert Frederick, the once bitter husband and father, was eventually touched by the seed of truth, for at the age of 83 he was carried in his wooden rocking chair to the nearby River Rio de Peixe and baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How could one ever describe the deep abiding love of Robert’s faithful wife for the gospel and for her family?

Will Strickland flipped switches, turned dials, and moved levers on the lighted control panel; the metal robot sitting at the far end of the living room stood up and walked ponderously toward him. Will’s fingers moved rapidly among the controls as he piloted the robot in a slow circle about the room.
At last!
He finally had the robot perfected to the point where it could walk more than six steps without falling on its chrome steel skull. …

“My two younger brothers and I all had chores to do on the farm. My family raised cattle, milk cows, horses, chickens, and pigs, plus the grain and alfalfa to feed them. We children gathered eggs and helped with the feeding of the calves and the cows in the dairy herd. Each spring Dad would give us a calf to train and groom for the Franklin County Fair in the fall.
“I learned a lot about the willfulness of those animals. It seemed that every time I got my calf cleaned up, it would lie down and get dirty again, and I had to start over. Teaching an animal to lead on a rope halter took patience and consistency.
“One year I had a calf all ready for the fair to be held the next day. We put it in a stanchion in the barn and laid down fresh straw to keep the calf clean. In the morning we found that the calf had hanged itself in the stanchion. I learned a significant lesson: In spite of some failures and heartbreaks, I could rise above them. I have a happier memory of another year when I won second place overall for show and form for an animal that I had groomed.”

At a Young Women leadership meeting in Eugene, Oregon, I had the privilege of meeting and talking with Sister Cammy Wilberger. The story Sister Wilberger shared with me was a witness of the power and blessing of one young woman’s knowing, living, and loving the gospel.
Sister Wilberger’s 19-year-old daughter, Brooke, was tragically killed several years ago while on summer break after her first year at university. Sister Wilberger recalled, “It was a difficult and dark time for our family. However, Brooke had given us a great gift. We didn’t recognize this as she was growing up, but every single year and moment of her brief life, Brooke had given us the greatest gift a daughter could give her parents. Brooke was a righteous daughter of God. … Because of this gift and especially because of the enabling power of the Atonement, I have had strength, comfort, and the Savior’s promised peace. I have no question where Brooke is now and look forward to our loving reunion.”9

I know that my Heavenly Father answers our prayers. When I was taking a test, I could not remember one of the answers. I skipped the question and said a silent prayer. I asked Heavenly Father to help me remember what I had studied. When I went back to that question, I knew the answer. I know that Heavenly Father helped me on the test. I know that He will always be near, even when my parents aren’t.
McKay Frost, age 10Flagstaff, Arizona

I consider June 2, 1940, to be a very important day in the history of my family. On this day my father was baptized into this Church.
Writing to his father, Elder Jack McDonald, one of the missionaries who baptized my father, described the day with these words:
“Last Sunday was an especially beautiful day. We missionaries went out to a secluded spot on the river’s edge, out in the country, and there Elder Jones and I [Elder McDonald] made our first baptism. Antony Aidukaitis entered into the icy waters and became a member of the Church. … Everything was perfect. The sky so blue, the countryside so still, so green, so lovely that none of us could help feeling the presence of some great influence.
“[As we walked] with our new member, he said that he just couldn’t explain how wonderful this day had been for him, how he actually felt like a new man. … That was our first baptism—no credit to me or anybody. He converted himself.”
This event changed the history of my life. I am not sure my father was able to foresee the wisdom of his act, but I love him for what he did that day. He passed away more than 30 years ago, but I will honor and bless his name forever.
I admire the courage my father had to be baptized into the Church in spite of the circumstances he faced at the time. It was not easy for him. His wife did not get baptized with him. The vices of drinking alcohol and smoking were strong temptations for him. He was poor. His mother was against his joining the Church, and she told him that if he were baptized, she would no longer consider him her son. With fewer than 300 members in Brazil, the Church did not have a single chapel there. I am truly astonished by my father’s determination and courage.
How could he make such a decision in the face of so many unfavorable circumstances? The answer is simple: it was because my father read the Book of Mormon. When he read it, he came to know of the truthfulness of the message of the Restoration. The Book of Mormon is a proof that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. Preach My Gospel teaches that “the Book of Mormon, combined with the Spirit, is [the] most powerful resource in conversion” ([2004], 104).

It was the time of the Korean conflict. A recently returned missionary, I was serving with the Army Signal Corps in Georgia at Camp Gordon. Suffering through basic training with me were fifty other Latter-day Saints, including nine returned missionaries. We promptly requested permission to use the company dayroom for sacrament meeting services; and the captain, once he got over his initial astonishment, not only gave us permission but had the room cleaned and arranged and let us use cups and bread from the army cafeteria for the sacrament.
Between the sand fleas, lack of sleep, assisting with kitchen work, guard duty, and stream of orders, the hour of serenity and spirituality each Sunday was a real pleasure. One Sunday, though, that calm was disturbed a little by the presence of a gruff, non-member sergeant. He had marched a group of LDS recruits over from his barracks and sat down in a chair to wait till the end of the meeting. I can’t say that he paid much attention to the speakers, but he sat stoically through the meeting until he could gather his trainees again. The recruits came by themselves after that.
Soon most of us had forgotten the incident, as within a few weeks we were facing our “graduation” test—three days of field duty and war games. On the second day, the “enemy” attacked our company and captured some of the men. The sergeant who had attended our meeting was reported missing but not captured.
That night, as we were sitting around a small campfire eating our rations, a faint noise alerted us. We dropped the food, grabbed our rifles, and prepared to defend ourselves.
Suddenly a voice beyond the perimeter called, “Do any of you guys know who Joseph Smith was?” We all exchanged looks: the Latter-day Saints didn’t know whether it was a trick or not. The nonmembers didn’t even know what it was. Finally one courageous man yelled back, “we sure do. He was a prophet of God!”
The voice beyond the perimeter yelled exuberantly, “I’m home!” and the sergeant walked out of the darkness to rejoin his outfit.

This was not the only time Emma protected priceless scripture. On the couple’s journey to Pennsylvania, she helped hide the plates in a barrel of beans. During the translation process, Emma gave Joseph a linen cloth to cover the plates as they sat on a kitchen table during the day and bought a red leather box for the written paper manuscripts. She also asked her brother-in-law for a box, which she and Joseph kept under their bed and where the plates were locked each night.

We were excited when Sergio received his mission call to the Peru Chiclayo Mission. He began his service on November 20, 2013. He loved his mission. At first, it was easy to write to him. But as the months passed, I needed more time to think about his letters and respond to his spiritual growth.
We didn’t worry about Sergio. We thought that the mission field was the safest place he could be. His mission president called us on October 7, 2014.
The mission president told us that Sergio and his companion had been teaching investigators about the temple and eternal families. Afterward, as Sergio offered the closing prayer, he paused, suddenly lost consciousness, and fell to the floor. He received a blessing and was rushed to a medical center. Doctors determined that he had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. They tried in vain to revive him.
The news filled us with deep sorrow. Despite our grief, Liliana and I had to travel to Peru to retrieve Sergio’s body and personal belongings. We had difficulty thinking clearly, so we were grateful that someone from the Church—from the moment we left our home until we returned—was there to help us. We also received help from the Holy Ghost, who comforted us and helped us endure. We never felt alone.
It is difficult to find gratitude in tragedy, but I am grateful for the Lord’s tender mercies associated with Sergio’s death. When he died, I was serving as bishop, Liliana was teaching seminary, and our daughter Ximena was serving as ward Young Women president. We were busy serving and loving others, which grounded us in the gospel. If Sergio had to leave us, I will always be thankful that Heavenly Father took him while we were strong in the faith.
I am also grateful that Sergio departed this life while serving the Lord and while “in the service of [his] fellow beings” (Mosiah 2:17). The Lord has declared, “Those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them” (D&C 42:46).
The Holy Ghost gave me a small glimpse of what Heavenly Father must have endured when His Only Begotten died for us. I realized that I didn’t have any right to be angry with God. My Father in Heaven knew what I was going through. A peace came over me that allowed me to accept His will and the timing of Sergio’s death. Liliana experienced and felt the same.
Our family had been sealed in the temple in 2005, when Sergio and Ximena were small. Ruth was born in the covenant a short while later. Before he left on his mission, Sergio baptized her.
Three days after his death, Ruth had a dream about Sergio. It was the night of her ninth birthday. Ruth dreamt that the two of them walked hand in hand together throughout the day and that he spoke comforting words to her.
Ruth and Ximena were very close to Sergio, and they miss him deeply. Ruth still receives comfort from the memory of her dream.
One day as we were going through Sergio’s belongings, Liliana and I found his mission day planner. We noticed that on each page of each day, Sergio had written the phrase “Be a little better than yesterday.”
Those words have never left me. They remind me that we must continue to live the gospel. That’s how we can be together as a family after this life. That’s how Sergio can be ours again.
As we pass through difficult times, the Savior will succor us. I know that is true, just as I know that His promises are sure. So we hold onto the gospel, and we follow Sergio’s example. We try to be a little better each day.

How many lamingtons does it take to go to Europe? Seventeen-year-old Latter-day Saint Elizabeth Jeffery of Brisbane, Australia, found out it takes about 1,192.
As a violist for the Queensland Youth Orchestra, Elizabeth naturally wanted to accompany the group on its trip to the International Youth Orchestra Festival in Aberdeen, Scotland, especially since it was scheduled for precompetition concerts in Rome and Florence.
But each orchestra member had to raise $400 for the trip, and they decided to do it by selling raffle tickets. Since the Church discourages raffles, Elizabeth decided to earn her money by making and selling lamingtons. Lamingtons, as almost anybody “down under” could tell you, are square pieces of sponge cake dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut, and since Australians love them dearly, Elizabeth was soon in business.
The project soon became a family affair with everyone helping. Dad was especially helpful as he drove Elizabeth around to make the deliveries. One delivery consisted of a dozen lamingtons to Elizabeth’s viola teacher!
Those lamingtons may turn out to have been more than just yummy pastry. In addition to delighting the buyers and sending Elizabeth to Scotland, they will no doubt raise some questions about the Church among other young orchestra members.

My grandfather joined the Church in the 1800s in Kirkintilloch, Scotland. As a single, young man he immigrated to the United States with the intent of coming to Utah. When he arrived in New York there was a delay as he waited for a wagon train to be organized that would take him to the Salt Lake Valley. During this time he became discouraged. He evidently had a talent for acting and had appeared in one or two amateur productions in Scotland. However, before he left for the United States, his mother, for whatever reason, made him promise that he would not pursue a life on the stage. Yet, as he spent those discouraging days in New York, he saw an advertisement that an acting company was hiring actors. He decided he would try to join them. As he walked up the steps toward the front door of the theatrical company, the words of his mother came into his heart. He paused for a moment and then turned back. He had only gone a short distance when he met someone who had been looking for him. A wagon train was being organized, and it was going to the valley. My grandfather came to Utah in that train.
Had he not stopped and remembered what he was told by someone who loved him, had he not made the decision to turn back, it is clear that his life would have been totally different and the lives of his many descendants as well. It was all decided when he paused for a moment, thought about what he was doing, what it meant to himself and others, and then decided to turn back.

If you suffer from worry, from grief or shame or jealousy or disappointment or envy, from self-recrimination or self-justification, consider this lesson taught to me many years ago by a patriarch. He was as saintly a man as I have ever known. He was steady and serene, with a deep spiritual strength that many drew upon.
He knew just how to minister to others who were suffering. On a number of occasions I was present when he gave blessings to those who were sick or who were otherwise afflicted. His was a life of service, both to the Church and to his community.
He had presided over one of the missions of the Church and always looked forward to the missionary reunions. When he was older, he was not able to drive at night, and I offered to take him to the reunions. That modest gesture was repaid a thousandfold.
On one occasion, when the Spirit was right, he gave me a lesson for my life from an experience in his own. Although I thought I had known him, he told me things about his life I would not have supposed.
He grew up in a little community with a desire to make something of himself. He struggled to get an education.
He married his sweetheart, and presently everything was just right. He was well employed, with a bright future. They were deeply in love, and she was expecting their first child.
The night the baby was to be born, there were complications. The only doctor was somewhere in the countryside tending to the sick.
After many hours of labor, the condition of the mother-to-be became desperate.
Finally the doctor was located. In the emergency, he acted quickly and soon had things in order. The baby was born and the crisis, it appeared, was over.
Some days later, the young mother died from the very infection that the doctor had been treating at another home that night.
John’s world was shattered. Everything was not right now; everything was all wrong. He had lost his wife. He had no way to tend both the baby and his work.
As the weeks wore on, his grief festered. “That doctor should not be allowed to practice,” he would say. “He brought that infection to my wife. If he had been careful, she would be alive today.”
He thought of little else, and in his bitterness, he became threatening. Today, no doubt, he would have been pressed by many others to file a malpractice suit. And there are lawyers who would see in his pitiable condition only one ingredient—money!
But that was another day, and one night a knock came at his door. A little girl said simply, “Daddy wants you to come over. He wants to talk to you.”
“Daddy” was the stake president. A grieving, heartbroken young man went to see his spiritual leader.
This spiritual shepherd had been watching his flock and had something to say to him.
The counsel from that wise servant was simply, “John, leave it alone. Nothing you do about it will bring her back. Anything you do will make it worse. John, leave it alone.”
My friend told me then that this had been his trial—his Gethsemane. How could he leave it alone? Right was right! A terrible wrong had been committed and somebody must pay for it. It was a clear case.
But he struggled in agony to get hold of himself. And finally, he determined that whatever else the issues were, he should be obedient.
Obedience is powerful spiritual medicine. It comes close to being a cure-all.
He determined to follow the counsel of that wise spiritual leader. He would leave it alone.
Then he told me, “I was an old man before I understood! It was not until I was an old man that I could finally see a poor country doctor—overworked, underpaid, run ragged from patient to patient, with little medicine, no hospital, few instruments, struggling to save lives, and succeeding for the most part.
“He had come in a moment of crisis, when two lives hung in the balance, and had acted without delay.
“I was an old man,” he repeated, “before I finally understood! I would have ruined my life,” he said, “and the lives of others.”
Many times he had thanked the Lord on his knees for a wise spiritual leader who counseled simply, “John, leave it alone.”

We shouldn’t have a problem with masturbation. I know one fine father who interviewed his 11-year-old son and he said, “Son, if you never masturbate, the time will come in your life when you will be able to sit in front of your bishop at age 19, and say to him, ‘I have never done that in my life,’ and then you can go to the stake president when you are interviewed for your mission and tell him, ‘I have never done that in my life.’ And you would be quite a rare young man.”

The father again interviewed the young man, who is now 18 years old, and he asked the son about masturbation. The son said, “I have never done that in my life. You told me, Dad, that if I didn’t do that, I would be able to sit in front of the bishop and stake president and tell them I had never done it, and I would be a rare young man, and I am going to be able to do it.”

Just as parents often teach their children to swim, so does the sea otter’s mother prepare her baby for life in the water.
A mother sea otter teaches her baby, called a pup, everything. She must teach him how to swim, because even though he is born in the kelp beds surrounded by water, the sea otter is not a natural swimmer. Sometimes he can float quite well, but swimming is another matter. A mother puts her pup’s face down in the water, then swims a short distance away from him. He tries to follow her but cannot go forward even an inch, so he begins to make a crying sound.
She always returns to her baby, swims around him, then draws away. In a gentle voice she urges him to follow her. He tries, fails, and cries. Over and over again, for days and days, she helps him until at last he can haltingly swim after her. But he cannot dive, so this is another thing he must be taught.
A pup cannot seem to get the idea that when he dives he should stay down and forage for food around the kelp roots at the bottom of the ocean. When he dives he immediately pops up to the surface again. But as he grows stronger, and with much patience, he finally can swim and dive too. Then he follows his mother everywhere, searching for food and playing.

Sister Portlock sent a copy of the book with Bruce’s testimony to her granddaughter Sherry Siekert in Wisconsin. And a little while later, Sister Portlock got a call from Sherry asking Brother Portlock to come out and baptize her.
“I had been brought up hearing about the Mormons but not knowing anything about them,” said Sherry. “When I got the book, I started to read it—I’ve no idea what made me open the book. I just did. Two elders had come by before and left a pamphlet in the house, and I read it. Maybe that’s one reason I started to read the book.
“After I talked to the missionaries a while, I called my father in Chicago and said, ‘It all sounds so good to me. It’s like everything I’ve always wanted to know all my life.’ My father’s interested in the Church now, too.”
The gospel has had a great impact in Sherry’s life. “I don’t feel like I have to go out and do a lot of wild things to have fun. Fun is being with good friends and family now. I appreciate them more, and I’m not afraid of death anymore. I work in a nursing home, and when I see people dying, I feel like they’re going to something better. I’ve also found that if you stand by your standards and don’t let your peers pressure you into things you know are wrong, they’ll respect you more than if you’d just gone along. This last year since I’ve been baptized has been great.”

When I arrived in my third area in the Philippines Bacolod Mission, the rainy season had already started. I was assigned to a small, lovely city surrounded by farms in northwest Negros, an island in the south.
In December 2014, Typhoon Ruby hit the province. The devastation was not so severe in our area, but the dirt roads became muddy and slippery. Despite the unfavorable weather conditions, we continued to work.
One of our most promising areas was a little community in the outskirts of the city. All of those we taught and the recent converts there were farmers. Because they worked in sugarcane fields during the day, we taught in the afternoon and evening.
To get to the community, we had to walk through muddy fields, wary of dogs, frogs, snakes, and mosquitoes. We always brought flashlights and umbrellas. Church members accompanied us home after dark.
At times, I felt like giving up. I wasn’t sure if I could walk through muddy sugarcane fields every day, so I prayed for help. The answer came: “Buy rain boots!”
My companion and I each bought a pair. I was thrilled to have boots, but my excitement soon faded because they were so heavy and uncomfortable. They made my feet sweat and prevented me from walking fast.
After our lessons one evening, we went home and changed into our regular proselyting shoes. Then we set out for another appointment in the city. As I was walking, I felt light. I was happy to wear my plastic shoes again. I wondered why I suddenly felt grateful for shoes I had worn my whole mission.
The answer came as a thought: “The rain boots made the difference.” Until then, I hadn’t realized how much comfort my plastic shoes had given me.
Suddenly, my mission hardships and challenges flashed through my mind. My plastic shoes had been an everyday, unappreciated friend. While trying to understand my mixed emotions, I felt a voice saying, “You go through trials and difficulties in life so that you can learn how to recognize blessings and be grateful for them.”
I realized that I had to experience hardships so I could appreciate Heavenly Father’s blessings. Through my trials, I recognized my blessings and became grateful for them.