Gospel Story Finder

Atsede Demissie Arega had dreams 20 years ago that brought her to the Church. Before joining, she used to regularly ask herself, “where is God?”
She found God in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said that before April 2024, she used to only be able to see general conference sessions weeks later at her branch meetinghouse, now she can watch general conference live in her home. “I am so grateful,” she said, “I feel that God is looking after Ethiopia.”
She invited the full-time missionaries in her branch to come to her home to watch general conference. She also invited all her neighbors to come and watch or to watch it in their own homes.
“I feel that God is looking after Ethiopia,” remarked Atsede Demissie Arega, when talking about the historic broadcast of general conference in Ethiopia.

They might look like ordinary girls, but today they’re actually chefs in training. About once a month, these activity day girls from the Whittier Ward in the Salt Lake Wells Stake try out a recipe from the Friend. “Cooking is much more fun if you do it together!” said Annika C., age 11.
Today the girls went bananas making banana chocolate-chip bread and funny banana faces. You can see their bread recipe on the page to the right.

The “blood of Israel” image became still more personal when Bert and Amanda invited his parents to visit them in Bogota. It was a new beginning.
“My dad was a good man,” reflects Bert, “but we couldn’t convince him to join the Church—even though whenever he visited us, he would comment about the happiness we had in our family, and how he wished the other children could have it.”
Late one night during his parents’ visit, Bert was awakened. “I was prompted,” he recalls, “to go and challenge my dad—again—to be baptized, even though he had refused many times before. I woke Amanda (I always have to confer with her, because she’s got the Spirit!), told her my feeling, and she said, ‘Well, I guess you’d better go do it.’ So I went into his room … it was like Daniel going into the lions’ den.”
Bert woke his father, bore testimony, issued the challenge. The response? “My dad put his arms around me and hugged me and cried. He had been shot, stabbed, and injured many times during his life as a police officer, and he had never before shed a tear as far as I knew.”
Within weeks, Brother DuPont had fully embraced the gospel. “The missionaries from the U.S. could not teach him in English,” Bert explains, “because they only knew their discussions in Spanish. So I interpreted for them. My parents came to church with us every Sunday even though they couldn’t understand what was going on because everything was spoken in Spanish. But evidently my father could feel something—and I believe it was the spirit of the people. There was standing room only the day he was baptized.”

Residents of Louisville, Kentucky, got an insight into the spirit of LDS missionaries after a tornado hit their city. The storm had no sooner ripped and twisted its way through town than elders from the Kentucky Louisville Mission traded their tracts, white shirts, and ties for work clothes, axes, hatchets, and muscle power and started helping to clean up. Theirs was only a small part of the immense cleanup operation, but no one worked harder at it. Of course, that was no big thing to them. Missionaries have always been among the hardest working people in the world.

Photograph by Raul Sandoval
It’s 4:00 a.m. in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, and Teddy Reyes is already up and working. He has a lot to do today to maintain his booming business. He begins slicing tomatoes and bread. Then he makes his special sauce.
By 6:00 a.m., two employees arrive to help him, and preparations speed up. By 8:00 a.m., they have made 300 sandwiches, wrapped individually in plastic wrap and loaded in bags. Six more employees show up, and the whole crew goes out to sell.
By 9:00 a.m., all but a few sandwiches—three or four that Teddy saved to feed his team—have been sold.
Business is good for Teddy. But things haven’t always been easy. In fact, for the past five years, he hasn’t been able to find steady work in his chosen profession as a lawyer.
So how did Teddy make the switch from counseling clients to selling sandwiches? It took a lot of hard work, of course, but it also took a careful application of principles he learned in classes offered through the Church’s Self-Reliance Services initiative.
Five years ago, life for Teddy looked amazing. He had a good job as a lawyer, he had recently gotten married, and he had baptized his wife. “But we had some challenges,” he says, “and I lost my job.”
For the next four years Teddy struggled to find work. “There was a lot of work I could do, but no one wanted to pay me. I tried starting different jobs on my own, but that didn’t work.”
His wife, Stephany, had a good job, but her salary alone couldn’t cover the bills. Soon the couple had a child. They were elated, but their finances grew tighter. They lost their house, had to sell their car, and used up all their savings. Eventually they had to move into a small house owned by Stephany’s mother.
But Teddy didn’t give up. Soon an unexpected opportunity presented itself.
After years of struggling, Teddy knew it was time for a change.
“I decided to take the Church’s self-reliance courses,” he says. “I had heard about them but always thought they weren’t for me. I thought they were just about doing things on your own. The classes were marvelous.”
First, Teddy joined a Personal Finances group. Then he joined a Starting and Growing My Business group. Group classes helped Teddy with his business knowledge but also helped him develop spiritually.
“I decided to do everything they taught,” he says, “and my finances changed immediately. I started paying a full tithe, praying daily, studying the scriptures, and exercising faith. And things changed—I started to save money and to keep the Sabbath day holy. Every principle blessed me.”
In his Starting and Growing My Business group, Teddy learned how to identify a potential product that might benefit customers where he lives. As he evaluated what people were looking for, the inspiration started to flow. In his area, people liked fresh sandwiches, but they also liked to have them made to order—and delivered.
“Many restaurants have a special sauce that makes their food stand out,” Teddy says. “So I developed my own sandwich special sauce!”
On the day he launched his business, Teddy made 30 sandwiches.
“Thirty minutes later, I was back home,” he says. “My wife became concerned when she found me on the couch. She asked me what I was doing home already—wasn’t I supposed to be selling sandwiches? I had already sold all of them!”
Over the next few weeks, Teddy contacted local businesses and schools. Many were eager to buy his sandwiches, and his business began growing. He learned quickly how to take care of fresh vegetables so that they last. He also knows exactly how long his special sauce will keep. He orders and picks up bread each evening. He buys discounted vegetables on Saturdays, which cost less but will still be good on Monday.
Soon he was receiving orders for specific types of sandwiches and even large numbers for special occasions. He needed help, so he began hiring employees.
By creating positive relationships with local schools and businesses, Teddy created an active, consistent clientele. Within four months, he had eight employees and was selling 300 sandwiches a day, five days a week. His sales team was so efficient that they sold every sandwich even during the summer when the schools were closed. Now Teddy is ready to expand again.
Because he took the self-reliance classes, he was inspired to come up with the idea of the sandwich business. “Because of this guidance from the Church and the blessings I have received,” he says, “I have a very strong testimony of the Church and Jesus Christ.”

Lanny and I never talked about religion. He was a Catholic, but his family only went to church at Christmas and Easter. He knew I was a Mormon, but for the last few years I’d been less and less excited about it. And Lanny knew better than to bring it up.
But one Saturday, the winter when we were 16, almost 17, something changed all that.
I was walking back from the store. My little brother, Tom, was behind me. He was tired and was kicking snowballs the plow had left along the middle of the road.
“Move it,” I told him.
“I um,” Tom whined deeply, his nose full. He looked up at me and gave me a pathetic smile. I rolled my eyes but bent down, and he ran and jumped onto my back. When we turned down our road, I began to jog. Behind me, my brother laughed and covered my eyes with his wet gloves.
“Hey!”
We spun and landed in a yaffle [a jumble] in the slushy snow in front of Lanny’s house.
“Huh, huh … huh, huh, huh,” Tom laughed.
That’s when I noticed them—a couple of bikes leaning up against the side of the O‘Briens’ house. It was strange. Who would ride bikes in one of our rare snowstorms? Then I noticed two figures in the O‘Briens’ window. Two guys in dark suits. Familiar faces.
Then it hit me. The missionaries were in Lanny’s living room, standing in front of the fire to warm themselves like they belonged.
“Cum onnnn,” said Tom. He was standing a couple of yards away, flapping his arms up and down.
“Yeah, yeah.”
I pulled myself away from the window, and we trudged the last few meters home.
On Saturday nights, Lanny usually stopped at my house and we’d wander down to the town building where they’d play a movie or have a dance. That night he knocked about seven o’clock and I grabbed my coat. We dug our hands in our pockets and walked outside. Since it was too early to be seen at the dance, we headed down toward the harbor.
The wind had been blowing in snow from the island all day, and it was dumped in little drifts in front of every one of the blue and yellow houses. But as we crunched along, the wind began to die and the beginnings of a fog started moving in from the ocean.
Lanny began whistling between his teeth. He couldn’t whistle very well, and he only did it when he was nervous.
“You ever get sick? I mean really sick?” he asked me.
That’s how Lanny McDonald O‘Brien started out most conversations—with a question about something he’d been thinking up all day. He was always thinking, always wondering about something.
“You ever see me go to the hospital?” I asked him back.
“I guess not.”
“Then you know the answer.”
We walked a little more before he said, “I was just thinking I could be a doctor one day.”
“I guess. I could see you cutting people up, taking out stuff, charging them lots of money.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I could do that.”
We walked a bit more, thinking about Dr. Lanny McDonald O‘Brien, until he said, “Those Mormon guys came over today.”
“Hmph.”
Lanny took a glance at me, to size up my mood, then added, “Said your parents sent them.”
That ticked me off and he noticed my face redden. “My parents sent ’em?”
“What they said.”
“I’m gonna … Gosh, I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care. Didn’t bug me.”
We rounded the fence at the bottom of Main and jumped the ballycater [an icy fringe] at the edge of the dock. Under our feet, the snow hadn’t settled on the rough boards, and we took two to a step. Farther along we walked into the cold ocean fog that hung like a veil. We were alone. No one came out on the dock on a winter night.
“They want to come back again,” said Lanny.
“Who?”
“The missionary guys.”
“They always do,” I said. “That’s their job: to come back and back until you join.”
“Join what?”
“The Church. The Mormon church.”
“Nah, they didn’t say that,” said Lanny. “They were just visiting.”
I laughed. “One of those guys is from the States. You think he came to Wolf Point to talk Maple Leafs hockey with your dad?”
Lanny shrugged.
“What part of the States?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They give you a lesson?”
“I guess. They talked a lot.”
“They teach you how to pray?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the first discussion. They want you to join,” I said.
“Hmmmm.”
We reached the end of the pier and leaned on the rail—the same rail that one winter Lanny had licked to see if his tongue would really stick to frozen metal. It did. And for a month Lanny had talked with a lisp.
We stared out at the icy water, but it was too dark and the fog was too thick to see much.
“Okay, I got a question,” said Lanny, nodding his head.
“Always.”
“The Mormon guys said the Book of Mormon is like the Bible. I know that’s not right ’cause it says at the end of the Bible that there isn’t supposed to be anything added to the Bible.”
We had talked about that in Sunday School once, but I couldn’t remember the answer. “Well … um …”
“And they told us about the guy who said he saw God and started the Mormons.”
“Joseph Smith.”
“Yeah, I thought it was Brigham Young. Anyway, how does anybody know he didn’t just write the book himself?”
“Well, there were a bunch of witnesses who saw the plates he wrote it from,” I said.
“Yeah, they were probably Mormons too. Do you guys pray to him?”
Lanny kept asking questions, most of which I couldn’t answer. My first instinct was to defend the Church. But he was my friend. I should tell him how I really felt: that I wasn’t even sure if I believed anymore, that I was kind of embarrassed to be a Mormon.
I drew in a breath, ready to tell him everything … but I couldn’t. From somewhere inside I felt the need to do something I hadn’t done in a long time—say a prayer.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I didn’t have the words.
Okay, I thought, I’ll pray.
So as Lanny talked I silently told Heavenly Father that I didn’t know if the Church was true or not, and I didn’t really know what to say.
I waited a few seconds. No answer.
I opened my eyes. Lanny had stopped talking and was looking out to the harbor. He was squinting, trying to focus on the dim lights of a trawler that was bobbing in and out of view in the fog.
I don’t know why, but I guess that was the moment when everything started making sense.
Lanny needed the gospel, just like I did. We were young. Our lives were confusing. The gospel would answer questions we both had about where to go, who to become.
This time, as I opened my mouth, I felt a peace that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid. “At church once, some old guy told a story,” I began. “It’s about a kid who’s 18 and goes to work on a fishing boat out of St. John’s. And sometime in the summer of his first year on the boat it hits a sandbar and sinks. Most of the crew climbs aboard the lifeboat, but this guy and the captain get caught by a current and pulled away.
“They don’t have life jackets or anything, and for a long time they just tread water—hoping for someone to find ’em.”
“Wow,” from Lanny, who had been on enough fishing boats to know how big the ocean was, and how impossible it would be to find anyone swimming in it.
“Anyway, finally the captain realizes that the water’s too cold for them to last much longer, so he swims over to the kid and says ‘We’re not gonna make it.’ And he asks the kid if he’s religious. Well, the kid is just like me. He’s a Mormon, but he’s been kind of goofing off and it’s been a while since he’s been active. But he says he’ll say a prayer for ’em.”
“And what happened?”
“He and the captain close their eyes, and the kid says a prayer out loud … And when they open their eyes they see the light of a buoy. They swim over and hang on, and a few hours later they are found.”
Lanny smiled. “And the guy telling the story turns out to be the 18-year-old kid, right?”
“Uh, no. The guy telling the story was the captain. He joined the Church.”
“Hmmm.”
I pulled my hands out of my pockets and stuffed them back in again, not sure what to say next. I was feeling guilty for my years of goofing off, for not being able to answer Lanny’s questions. But somehow I knew it wasn’t too late.
“You said the missionaries told you how to pray. Did they say a prayer too?” I asked.
“Yeah, but no one was drowning.”
“Wise guy. How did it make you feel?”
“I don’t know, didn’t think about it.” He looked out to the ocean and breathed out. “Okay, maybe I thought about it.”
I turned to him, my eyes wide. “And?”
“Before I left tonight I prayed by myself.”
That night, instead of climbing in bed, I opened my desk drawer and pulled out my copy of the Book of Mormon. I flipped through the pages. They were filled with red and yellow highlighter, but I realized it had been a long time since I’d studied what was in there.
It was a story. It was a light in the darkness.
I began to read.

Karli sat at her desk with a fluttery feeling in her stomach. She looked around her new classroom. It looked like many third-grade classrooms, with books on the shelves, a plant in the corner, and bright posters on the walls. It also had rows of desks filled with children. Karli didn’t know any of them.
Karli and her family had moved a few weeks earlier. Now, on her first day at her new school, Karli missed her old house, her old school, and her old friends.
A tear fell onto Karli’s math paper as she looked down at her shirt. Before Karli moved away, she and her best friend had picked matching T-shirts, painted hearts on them, and signed their names in pink and purple sparkle paints. Karli had decided to wear her shirt to school for good luck. Now she wished she hadn’t. It reminded her of all her friends going to school without her.
Karli hurried home after school and went straight to the room she shared with her sister. Moving boxes still cluttered its corners. They reminded her of a new school she didn’t like and a new house that didn’t feel like home.
Soon Karli’s mom came in and sat on the bed. “How was school today?” she asked.
Karli looked down at the floor. “Fine,” she whispered. Then tears started to well up in her eyes.
Mom wrapped her arms around Karli. “Tell me about it,” she said.
“I didn’t know anyone,” Karli sniffed. “I don’t have any friends here.”
“First days in a new school are hard, aren’t they?” Mom said. “But you know what? You do have friends here.”
“What friends do I have?” Karli asked. “I don’t know anyone.”
Mom smiled. “You have your sisters,” she said. “Dad and I were sealed in the temple as an eternal family, so you will always have your sisters, no matter where you go. Your sisters can be your best friends forever.”
Karli thought about that. She loved playing with her older sister, Andrea, and her younger sister, Laura. But Andrea was in fourth grade, and Laura still went to kindergarten, so Karli couldn’t see them during the day. She explained that to Mom.
“Mom, in our old neighborhood I had my sisters and my other friends too,” she said. “I liked that better.”
“Well, here you and your sisters will become better friends than before. You can help each other through this,” Mom said.
After dinner, Karli went to her room to do her homework. She didn’t know how to work a few of her math problems, so she asked Andrea for help. Andrea knew exactly how to solve them. Then together they unpacked another moving box before bedtime.
The next day in class, Karli answered all her math problems correctly. At recess, she sat on a swing by herself. She watched a group of girls talking and giggling as they played on the monkey bars. Then she saw a familiar person walking toward her. It was Andrea! Karli hopped off the swing and ran over to her sister.
“We have the same recess,” Andrea said. “So we can play together.”
As the weeks passed, Karli, Andrea, and Laura made friends with some girls in their neighborhood. Soon they made new friends in their classes too. By the end of the school year, Karli and Andrea played together at recess with a group of new friends.
But Karli still remembered what Mom had told her. No matter how many friends she made at school, or how many special shirts hung in her closet, her sisters would always be her best friends.

When I was a child, my parents took me to church only occasionally. I was baptized and ordained a deacon, but attending church was not a big part of our lives. By the time I was 14, I wasn’t attending church at all. I was in the middle of yet another custody battle between my parents. When I moved in with my mom, I had no motivation to study, because I saw no purpose in my life. A lot of people stayed away from me in my new school because I wore black clothing and combat boots. My grades were terrible. That was the year I entered ninth grade.
One day I was visiting my grandma when she told me that if I would graduate from seminary, she would give me $100. For me that was a lot of money. I said I’d think about it.
When I went to my new school to register, the school counselor signed me up for three shop classes because other classes were full. I didn’t want to take shop, and then I remembered Grandma’s offer. Suddenly the idea of getting out of shop and getting $100 sounded pretty good. I signed up for released-time seminary. I went to class, but I sat in the back and participated as little as possible.
One day I got to seminary class late, and the only seat available was on the front row. I sat down and heard our teacher, Brother Peck, say, “I don’t know why, but I feel like we need to watch this today.”
We watched How Rare a Possession, a movie about how the Book of Mormon affected the lives of different people. As the movie ended and we got up to leave, something unexpected happened: I realized that I felt peaceful. It was such a foreign feeling that I wondered what it could mean. An impression came: I was feeling the Spirit. At that moment I knew the Book of Mormon was an inspired book.
I started going to church with some friends in our neighborhood. But then we moved and I stopped going.
In my new school I signed up for seminary. I began reading the scriptures daily. One night it hit me just how much my life needed changing. I had been learning about the gospel, but I hadn’t been living it. I was still hanging out with people who made it difficult to live righteously. I knew I had to get serious about changing my life. The next day I went and talked to Brother Porter, my seminary teacher. He told me when and where my ward met.
The next Sunday I went to church but sat down in the back of the chapel. It took a while to make friends because of my reputation, but I kept going each week because I knew that was where I was supposed to be. For my 15th birthday, my other grandma gave me a gift certificate for a haircut and some new clothes. A few days later I was ordained a teacher.
When general conference came, Brother Porter gave us an assignment to watch at least one session. I put off the assignment until Sunday morning. When the session started, I rolled over in my bed and turned on the TV. As I watched President Thomas S. Monson, then the Second Counselor in the First Presidency, talk about the history of the Church in the German Democratic Republic, I felt that same feeling of peace. I recognized it as the Spirit testifying that I was listening to prophets. That afternoon my mom and brothers went grocery shopping. I stayed home to watch another session.
By that point I had made two very important decisions: I would live the gospel, and I wanted to get married in the temple. But I wasn’t going to spend two years on a mission. Then our seminary teacher gave some lessons on missionary work. By the end of the week, I knew that going on a mission was the right thing to do.
I went to the bishop to get a recommend for my patriarchal blessing. Through that experience, I learned that God had a plan for my life. That knowledge helped me form my own plans for the future. My grades improved, and I started getting involved in clubs and activities at school. I was assigned to be a home teacher with a neighbor, who taught me about service and how a priesthood holder should live.
Despite the changes I made, my life wasn’t easy. In some ways it became more difficult. Going to church meant more conflicts with my family over the kinds of activities we engaged in on Sunday and the kinds of movies we watched. Most of the time I went to church by myself. I missed out on dinners, movies, and visits to amusement parks. But that was more than made up for by the Spirit I felt. The Holy Ghost comforted me in difficult times and taught me as I read the scriptures.
When I graduated from high school and seminary, my grandma gave me the promised check for $100. I thanked her and told her I didn’t want it, but she insisted. The testimony I had gained of a loving Heavenly Father, the Savior, the Holy Ghost, the restored Church, and prophets who lead us today was worth far more than any amount of money.

One of my favorite stories was the cadet who did not want to admit that he had done anything wrong, in spite of wiping out his own and three other aircraft. His accident report stated: “The aircraft’s speed was too high on final approach. … The aircraft hit the runway first with one wheel and then with the other wheel. … It did a few kangaroos down the runway. … The aircraft swerved off the runway and across the grass. … It crossed the taxiway. … across more grass. … The right wing hit a truck parked in the wrong place, … and then I lost control and we cartwheeled into the three parked planes!”

Obviously the aircraft was out of control from the beginning. The cadet must have had his head “down and locked” hiding inside the cockpit while all sorts of things were going wrong. He had long since lost control of such essentials as airspeed, direction, and perception. He could have shut down the engine, used the brakes, or collapsed his own gear instead of running into things with the engine still pulling the aircraft along at 1,500 RPM. No one was in control at all!

Youth and leaders witnessed an awesome spectacle in the morning sky of Arizona last February. Two high-powered, nine-foot-tall, fiberglass rockets launched into the sky with spectacular results.
Three months of design and construction culminated in a friendly competition between the young men and young women of the Pleasant Second Ward in Chandler, Arizona. Guided by Mia Maid Mara Egolf and her father—both members of the Arizona High Power Rocketry Association—the youth spent several Saturday mornings learning about rocket construction.
The youth each wrote down goals to help them arise and shine forth in the coming year. The young men put their goals in their red-and-gold “Sons of Helaman” rocket, and the young women put theirs in their purple-and-white “Integrity” rocket. Then both rockets were launched into the heavens.
As for the competition, there is some controversy over which rocket won. In a flight faithful to the name she bears, “Integrity” functioned flawlessly, and according to onboard readings reached an altitude of 11,619 feet before parachuting gracefully back to earth.
There’s a saying in model rocketry, Brother Egolf told the youth, “When things go according to plan, it’s cool. When things go bad, it’s way cool.” “Sons of Helaman” arced at just under 12,000 feet before a malfunction caused the rocket, traveling at nearly the speed of sound, to crash into the desert floor. At the impact crater the young men were able to salvage only two tail fins and a piece of the nosecone.

When he was President of the Church, he visited Nauvoo in 1906 and reflected on a memory he had when he was just five years old. He said: “This is the exact spot where I stood when [Joseph, my uncle, and my father, Hyrum] came riding up on their way to Carthage. Without getting off his horse father leaned over in his saddle and picked me up off the ground. He kissed me good-bye and put me down again and I saw him ride away.”2
The next time Joseph F. saw them, his mother, Mary Fielding Smith, lifted him up to see the martyrs lying side by side after being brutally murdered in Carthage Jail on June 27, 1844.

In 1862, six-year-old Clara Leonard lived in the town of Farmington, Utah, where more than 150 pioneer families had settled. There were log homes, rock homes, and adobe homes. They had a schoolhouse, a courthouse, and a mill for grinding wheat. But they did not have a church house. They needed a place to sing and pray.
Sometimes they held church meetings in one of the homes, but there wasn’t enough room for everyone.
Sometimes they held church meetings in the schoolhouse, but it wasn’t big enough, either.
Sometimes they held church meetings in the upper room of the adobe courthouse, but the county officials decided it could no longer be used for religious meetings.
They needed a place to sing and pray.
A lovely place, right on Main Street, was chosen as the site to build their chapel. It was next to Brother Haight’s house and hotel and across the street from Brother Penrose’s house. It would be a wonderful place for a chapel. But the church members had no money to buy building materials.
Everyone in town donated all they could to the building fund. Clara and her family worked hard to earn some extra money to give to Bishop Hess. But after all the money was counted, the building fund had only twelve dollars. They needed much more to build a beautiful place to sing and pray.
The people held a prayer meeting. They knelt and asked the Lord what to do. They had done all they could, and now they needed His help. They had faith that the Lord would know what was best.
A few days later there was a huge storm. It rained and rained. There was mud everywhere. The wind blew very hard, and some trees fell down. Clara had to stay inside all day long.
The next morning, when the storm was over, the men from the town found a rockslide about three blocks from the church lot. Tons of large rocks had slid down from the mountain. Not far from the rockslide was a place where lots of sand and gravel had washed down from the mountain, too.
There was enough rock to build a chapel! The sand and gravel could be used to make the mortar to hold the rocks together. They knew the Lord had heard their prayers and blessed them. They soon would have a place to sing and pray!
Everyone in town helped build the chapel. Some of the men hauled the rocks with ox teams. Some of the men laid the rocks to make the walls. Others worked as carpenters on the inside of the chapel, while still others made benches and tables. Even the children helped by carrying drinking water or serving food prepared by the Relief Society sisters. The chapel was 40 feet wide and 60 feet long. The stone walls were three feet thick.
As they worked, they were able to raise the rest of the money needed to complete their chapel. After two years of construction, the building was finally finished. On 9 January 1864, President Brigham Young and Elder Wilford Woodruff of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came to Farmington to dedicate the building. Even though there was a thick blanket of snow on the ground, it was a day of jubilee and rejoicing. After the dedication, the town’s brass band played, and everyone celebrated.
At last they had a place to meet. Clara loved to go to church. She felt a sweet spirit of reverence there and found joy in hearing her leaders teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. The sacrament was passed—the bread on silver trays and the water in a tall silver cup with handles on both sides. A piano was donated, and later they got an organ. It was a wonderful place to sing and pray!

Marnie Weintz, 17, of the Copper Hills 12th Ward in West Jordan, Utah, decided to build on a 12-year friendship with Sister Rebecca Mackey, an elderly woman her mom befriended in the temple. When it came time for Marnie to pick her Choice and Accountability project for Personal Progress, she thought to reach out to Sister Mackey in a different way by sending her a thoughtful card each week. She says that sending the cards “takes discipline to be dedicated in doing it every week.”
Marnie and her family aren’t able to visit Sister Mackey too often, but they maintain their relationship through phone calls. Marnie thought that by sending cards, she could show Sister Mackey in another way that she cares. Marnie has learned that even the smallest service can make a big impact. “I’m just surprised that it’s meant so much to her. I didn’t even know if she would really want me to send them to her every week or if she would save the cards at all.”
Sister Mackey looks forward to and cherishes those weekly cards, and for Marnie, her Choice and Accountability project turned out to be more lasting than she ever thought.

When I was 10 years old, my mother died, leaving five children. I grieved over her death, but it was even more painful to watch as my brothers and sisters and I were split up. No one wanted to take all five of us, so each set of grandparents took two children, and my father’s sister took my youngest brother, Orlando. Because of my rebelliousness, I was eventually sent to a school for orphans, where I grew up sad, alone, and bitter.

When I turned 16 I began looking for my brothers and sisters. I found only three of them because Orlando had moved with my aunt to the United States. Then, not long after I had located him, Raúl was electrocuted while learning to work as an electrician.
Shaken by the loss, I confided to my grandmother my memory of Raúl’s sickness. My grandmother asked, “What are you talking about? Raúl was not ill. That was you. One night you became so sick the doctor gave you up for dead. We were in despair and wept over your bed. We never knew why your heart started beating again.”
I was so shocked I didn’t ask my grandmother for more information, but questions about the meaning of life began to torment me: Why had my life been preserved? What was I to do? What did it all mean?
Ten years later, I moved to the United States. There I found my brother Orlando. But I had yet to find the answers to my questions. I began seeking answers in various churches. But though each contributed bits and pieces, none of them had all the answers I needed. I prayed that God would help me come to know the truth.
Then one day in the spring of 1986, Latter-day Saint missionaries came to my house. They answered every question I had. And when I studied the Book of Mormon, I was moved to tears by the testimony I gained of its truthfulness. I was baptized in July. A little more than a year later, I arranged for Raúl’s vicarious baptism in the temple. Then he and I were sealed to our parents forever.
Finding the gospel has changed my life. Surrounded by my brothers and sisters in the gospel, I have never felt lonely since. I understand that my life has a purpose and that, as long as we rely on the Lord, pain can teach and strengthen us.

I find joy in the expectation that members of my family are waiting for me beyond the veil of mortality. I know that someday my spirit will leave my body again. But I know that because of Jesus Christ my spirit and my body will one day be forever reunited, and I can live with Him and with my family eternally.

Brose just can’t seem to please his pa. When Pa expected to find him weeding the garden, Brose was tending only the pumpkin patch. Granny had given him pumpkin seeds, and Brose forgot about all the other vegetables. Pa had given up teaching him to play the fiddle—Brose had ten thumbs, Pa’d said. And when he offered to let Brose drive the wagon home, Brose had paid more attention to listening to a bird than to hitching the horses to the wagon. When he’d yelled, “Giddap,” the horses had moved but the wagon hadn’t! Now Brose couldn’t even do a girl’s work right. He’d put the wool he was supposed to card too near the fireplace!
Brose jerked the wool away from the heat, but part of it was already scorched. Ma had told him before that scorch marks would not wash out. Now the whole family would have a streak in their socks to remind them that, even at carding wool, Brose was no good.
Brose was unusually quiet the rest of the evening and the following day, but no one seemed to notice. He went to do chores with Pa and Jeremy, but this time he didn’t even ask if he could try to milk one of the cows. He remembered too well what had happened only a few days earlier.
Pa had been in a hurry, needing all the help he could get. “Seems like you ought to be able to milk Old Brin, Brose,” Pa’d said. “She never kicks. She’ll stand right still for you.”
The cow had stood still, and Brose had done his best, but when he’d finished, Brose knew he hadn’t gotten as much milk as he should have. Pa had taken one look at Old Brin and said, “She doesn’t look dry to me, Jeremy. She hasn’t let Brose have her milk. Better strip her out.”
And Brose had suffered as he watched Jeremy’s smooth, regular milking finish filling the bucket. “I tried,” Brose had said. “I tried to milk her dry.”
Jeremy had poured the milk through the white sack they used as a strainer on the neck of the milk can. “Oh, you’ll get the hang of it, Brose,” he’d replied as he picked up his wooden milk stool and went on to the next cow. “All it takes is practice. Right now, though, come over here and hold Whitey’s tail for me.”
Hold Whitey’s tail! That’s the kind of job I always get, thought Brose. A two-year-old could hold a cow’s tail! Or Jere could just tie it around the cow’s leg, the way he usually does. I won’t do it! But he did. He held it tightly. Whitey tried to swish her tail back and forth, but Brose held on. Not once did he let go of it, and not once did it hit Jeremy in the face.
After the milking was done, Brose walked over to the pumpkin patch. There they were, big and orange and beautiful in the autumn dusk. And they were his. He had raised them all by himself.
He remembered Granny saying, “When pumpkin pie time comes this fall, your pumpkins might be just what we need.” Now he wondered what she’d meant. He had plenty of pumpkins all right, but Granny ought to know as well as anyone how scarce sugar was. They could roast pieces of pumpkin on a bed of coals in the fireplace—Brose’s mouth watered at the thought of a big piece, hot, steaming, and with a big blob of Ma’s fresh-churned butter melting and running down the side—but without sugar, how could Ma make pies?
Brose decided to cut one of the pumpkins right then and clean out the seeds and take it to the house. The evening had turned chilly, and Brose shivered a little as he took out his pocketknife. He glanced up at the sky. It felt cold enough to snow, but the sky was cloudless.
His knife blade was small and a little dull. It took a while for Brose to hack through the tough stem of the pumpkin vine. Then he worked the knife into the top of the pumpkin and began cutting out a piece from the top. He had just finished scraping out the seeds when he heard Pa call.
He had forgotten again! It was time to feed the calf, and here he was in the pumpkin patch! Leaving the pumpkin on the ground, he ran as fast as he could. But he was too late to get the calf bucket ready. Jeremy already had the milk in it. Brose grabbed the bucket and went to feed the calf. That was when he made another mistake!
Later he remembered that when Pa had first given him the job of feeding the calf, he’d told Brose to always hold the bucket tightly while the calf was drinking so that none of the milk would spill out.
“That’s why we feed him on the bucket, Brose,” Pa had explained. “It saves milk. This little feller doesn’t need all the milk Whitey gives. We can feed him enough to grow on and have the rest of her milk for us. But be careful. Every person—and animal, too—in this valley knows what it is to be hungry. We mustn’t waste a thing.”
When Brose set the pail down in front of the calf, he noticed several burrs on its back. While the calf was drinking, Brose pulled a few out, but there were some so far back that he couldn’t quite reach them and hold on to the bucket at the same time. Brose only let go for a moment.
But, of course, it was that same moment when the calf gave an extra hard bunt with his nose! Brose grabbed for the bucket, but he was too late. He could only stand there and watch the milk seep into the ground.
What should he do? Just take the bucket back to the barn and not say anything to Pa? Even as he thought it, Brose knew he couldn’t do that. After all, it wasn’t the calf’s fault. That’s just the way calves are, bunting and pushing. It wouldn’t be fair to make the calf go hungry because of my carelessness, he decided. I’ll have to tell Pa.
Brose went to bed early that night, and it wasn’t until the next morning that he thought of the pumpkin. He hurried out to the patch and found it right where he had left it. It didn’t look spoiled or anything, but there was some water inside.
That’s strange, Brose thought. How come? It didn’t rain last night.
He learned over to take a closer look. There were drops of moisture oozing from the inside of the pumpkin. When he tipped the pumpkin, some of the liquid spilled onto his hand. Brose put the pumpkin down and looked for something to wipe off his hand. Not seeing anything handy, he tried licking it off his fingers. To his amazement it tasted sweet! He took another taste. Yes, it was sweet! Brose grabbed the pumpkin and ran to Granny Dodd’s cabin.
“Granny!” he cried. “Granny!”
He found her at her woodpile, gathering chips in her apron.
“Granny! Look at this! Taste it! Taste it, Granny! It came right out of the sides of the pumpkin! It’s sweet, Granny!”
Granny stood up, letting the chips fall to the ground. She looked at Brose, then carefully dipped a finger into the liquid and tasted it.
“I do declare, Brose! It’s sweet, all right, just like the sap from a sugar maple back home.” Granny had that same sort of smile that Brose had seen when she gave him the seeds. “Now what do you suppose a body might use it for?”
“Pie, Granny! Pumpkin pie with whipped cream!” Brose tasted it again, just to be sure. “It must have been the cold night that did it, Granny. Here. You keep this one. I’m going to cut open about half a dozen and leave them out in the frosty night air.”
The following evening Brose ate his dinner in a hurry, feeling he would burst with excitement if Granny didn’t come pretty soon. Finally he saw her coming across the field that separated the two cabins.
“Pie!” cried Jeremy. The sound in his voice was all Brose had hoped for. His brother’s eyes were about as round as the pie was when Granny held it out piled high with whipped cream. “Is it really pumpkin pie?”
Pa just sat and stared as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“The sugar,” said Ma quietly. “Where did you get it?”
“Brose got it,” said Granny, cutting the first piece and handing it to him. “He raised this sugar right in his pumpkin patch. It’s pumpkin sugar.”
Brose turned to see Pa looking at him, and there it was—that very look of approval and pride he had been striving so hard for—all over Pa’s face. Brose was in no hurry. He could wait for his pie, just like Pa and Jere. He handed the plate across the table. “Here, Ma,” he said. “You have the first piece.”

One day when Tuhk was modeling shorts, his mother noticed some terrible bruises on his legs, and they wouldn’t heal. A doctor’s checkup revealed the worst—he had leukemia. It would take a bone marrow transplant and over $100,000 to save his life.
Now the Potters were performing, without Tuhk, to earn money to help their little brother live. What they made didn’t go far, but the publicity they received did. Their ward, stake, and community rallied around them. Soon an offer came from the City of Hope, a medical facility in California, to donate Tuhk’s transplant and treatment.
The family sped south. All the Potter kids tested positive to be bone marrow donors, but Tarrish was selected. They went through weeks of fasting and prayer while their brother went through surgery and chemotherapy, part of it in strict isolation. That was especially hard on Tuhk.
The Potter family was elated when they found that Tuhk’s leukemia had finally gone into remission. When you meet him now, telling funny riddles or playing with Ninja Turtles, you’d never guess he’d once come so close to death.

Because of the difficulties we faced, my mom wanted a better life for her children and often prayed for help.
Our circumstances didn’t change until a miracle took place in our lives. I was only a young boy when the missionaries came to our village, but I remember everything. My mom, dad, brother, and I were eating lunch in our field. I can still remember the smell of the tortillas on the fire as two white men with light hair made their way through the field. My eyes opened wide in surprise, and I held onto my mom, ready to kick the men if it became necessary to defend ourselves. However, when the men asked, “Would it be OK if we warmed up our tortillas in your fire?” peace came over me. Curiosity filled my head. Why was their accent so funny? Why did they wear white shirts and neckties? Why were they so big?
“Sure, you can warm up your tortillas in our fire,” my dad replied. I don’t know how it happened, but the next thing I knew, the missionaries were showing us illustrations of the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. My mom was shocked! She had always believed that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were beings we could talk to and ask questions of, but she had never heard anyone teach that. While listening to the story of the First Vision, my mom received confirmation from the Holy Ghost that it was true. The visit of these two missionaries was the answer to her prayers. My mom invited them to drop by our house any day.
Later when the missionaries visited us and taught us about the Word of Wisdom, my mom was the happiest I have ever seen her. My dad is a slightly different story. I remember that he was trying to smile, but his eyes were watery, his forehead was white, and the rest of his face was red.
In our tribe, you stick with the traditions—no matter what. Changing religions is viewed as an act of desertion. Friends leave you and relatives look down on you, especially if you are the first one to change.
My mom was surprised that the missionaries took so long to ask, “Will you be baptized into the Church?” She was ready. My dad felt in his heart that the message brought by the missionaries was true, but he was concerned about the consequences that would come to our family if we went against the traditions of our tribe. He needed more time to make up his mind.
In the end, my dad went against everything he had known and chose the gospel. His friends left him. Our relatives told him he was crazy and asked how much money the missionaries paid him to get baptized. No one invited us to parties anymore. My family’s social life was gone for a while. These changes were some of the hardest my family ever had to make.
The gospel of Jesus Christ brought a mighty change into my family, for which I am grateful. My dad dedicated more time to our family. My mom cooked better meals. My parents now spent our income wisely. We even had the chance to attend elementary school. My dad said something to us that I will never forget: “From this point on, you will never quit until you get a degree from school.”
We were a different family. Family home evening became a time when we set personal and family goals. My dad prepared gospel lessons and shared his life experiences with us, something he had never done before. We children knew our parents loved us. Alcohol was no longer in our home. The fights between my mom and dad turned into discussions in which they tried to understand each other. Somehow we seemed to be materially rich, although we were actually poor. We were a happy family, and eventually my dad was respected for his new way of life. People trusted him because he did not drink anymore. His friends began to come to him for advice, and somehow whoever associated with my dad started to prosper. Gospel living was contagious. My dad even organized a group of farmers to learn new and better methods of farming.
As a child, I started my religious reading with the Bible, but the Old Testament was too hard for me to read and understand at that young age. My next attempt was the Book of Mormon. After reading a couple of pages, I could not put the book away. Nephi became my new hero. Each day, after some hours of school and many hours of work on the farm, I went back to reading the Book of Mormon. As I read, I felt a special connection between the people of the Book of Mormon and my tribe. I felt the Book of Mormon explained where our Cakchiquel tribe came from and who our ancestors were.
In my reading of the Book of Mormon and learning about the true gospel of Jesus Christ, I felt that I was part of the fulfillment of the promises God made to Lehi, Nephi, and other Book of Mormon prophets about their children being preserved. I’m eternally grateful to those faithful people in the Book of Mormon and to the missionaries who introduced us to the book that changed the course of our lives.
My family eventually moved to Guatemala City. My parents have served in our ward there for many years. My two brothers and two sisters and I are all faithful Latter-day Saints. My brothers and I served full-time missions. My brother, sister, and I are studying at a university.
My family’s conversion story reflects God’s love and mercy for His children. I am thankful for the love He has for His children wherever they are—even deep in the mountains of Guatemala.

“A very long time ago,” Mom began, “long before even Grandma and Grandpa were born, there was a young family. They lived on a farm. It wasn’t an easy life. They had to work very hard. One year their daddy had to go away and find work so they’d have money to buy food. He left his wife and three daughters all by themselves.”
“My great-grandma was one of the daughters, wasn’t she?” asked Robbin.
Mom nodded. “That’s right.”
Mom went on with the story. “Well, Thanksgiving came and there was hardly anything to eat. Your great-great-grandmother felt sorry for her sweet little girls. But she had an idea. She took—”
“Flour,” said Dad.
“And salt,” said Robbin.
“And shortening,” said Mom with a nod. “She made pie crust. Then she cut it into long strips. And then she took some cream from their cows and whipped it up. On Thanksgiving morning she and the girls used the pie crust and cream to make small log cabins.”
Dad came over and leaned on the counter. “And we make our log cabins every year to remind us of the many blessings Heavenly Father has given us.”
“And because it’s fun!” said Robbin.
Mom and Dad laughed. “Yes, it is.”
Dad checked the pie crust. The white strips he’d put in the oven had turned a beautiful golden color. “Done!” He slid the piecrust “logs” onto a rack to cool.
Robbin sniffed the freshly baked pie-crust logs. They smelled warm and delicious.
Later that day Robbin’s cousins came over. Mom brought out a large plate piled high with logs ready to use. She put the plate next to a bowl of whipped cream. All the children hurried to the table.
Know what’s fun? Starting a new family tradition! Like starting Thanksgiving in October with our friends in Canada!
“Wait!” said Mom. “Before you begin, who can remember the story of the log cabins?”
Robbin felt happy inside as one of her cousins started telling the story. They had a house and plenty of food. She was glad they had a special way to celebrate all the blessings Heavenly Father had given them.

“C’mon, Benjy, cut me a slice,” my little brother, Jake, whispered to me as we hid in the bushes and looked down at Mom’s peach pie.
I looked over at my friend Jared who was kneeling next to Jake. His eyes were locked onto the peach pie. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, took out my pocketknife, and pushed the blade into the flaky crust sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Slowly I carved a jagged line across the pie.
“You don’t think we’ll get caught, do you?” Jared whispered as I handed him a piece of pie dripping with yellow peach filling.
I shook my head, not a bit sure; but I didn’t want Jared and Jake to know that. “No,” I rasped. “No one will ever know. Mom made five pies that she asked us to deliver. She probably won’t remember that we were supposed to give a pie to Brother Piper.
In no time at all we were licking the last of the stickiness from our fingers.
“I think my stomach’s going to bust,” Jake moaned. “I’ve never eaten so much pie in my life.”
“I wish we hadn’t eaten it so fast,” Jared complained. “It doesn’t taste as good when you have to eat a huge piece of pie in three bites.”
“Yeah,” Jake moaned again, rubbing his stomach. “I feel kind of sick.”
I nodded, feeling sick, too, but it wasn’t just because we had eaten a whole pie. Deep inside I knew that the main reason that I felt sick was that we had eaten a stolen pie. As I looked at the empty pie pan, I wished that we had taken the pie to Brother Piper.
We all stumbled from the bushes and headed for home, with the pie plate hidden under my shirt.
Mom was in the family room when we slipped into the house and tiptoed to the kitchen. We washed the pan and slipped it into the cupboard. Then we dashed for the door.
“Oh, Benjy,” Mom called out just as we reached the front door, “Did you deliver the pies?”
I gulped and caught my breath. “Everybody was happy to get your pies, Mom.”
“And what did Brother Piper say?” she asked excitedly. “It’s his birthday today. I’ve been promising him a peach pie for weeks. He didn’t think I’d remember.”
“You promised Brother Piper a peach pie?” Jake asked.
Mom nodded and smiled. “I’ll have to call him later this afternoon and wish him a happy birthday.”
“I thought you said she’d never know!” Jake accused me as we tromped down the front steps.
“Yeah,” Jared whined, “we’ll be caught for sure. Now what are we going to do?”
“How was I supposed to know it was Brother Piper’s birthday?” I snapped. “Besides, it was your idea too.”
“We have to get another pie,” Jake said.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, “and before Mom calls Brother Piper.”
“I know!” Jared spoke up. “My mom’s at a Primary meeting. Let’s go to my place and make a pie.”
‘We don’t know anything about making pies,” Jake said.
“Well, we’ll have to learn!” I spouted.
“What do we do first?” Jake asked as we crowded around Jared’s kitchen table.
“I’ve watched Mom a few times. All we have to do is make the crust, fill it full of fruit, and throw it in the oven.”
“But how do we make the crust?” Jake asked.
“Get me a bowl and some flour and shortening,” I growled. “Do I have to do everything? We just mix it up, roll it out, and slap it into a pie pan.”
While Jared poured in the flour and Jake scraped in gobs of shortening, I took a wooden spoon and tried to mix the two ingredients together. It was a lot harder than I had thought.
“It doesn’t mix too well, does it?” Jake commented.
“Maybe it needs some water. Pour in some water,” I ordered.
“It looks better than when we started,” Jared said a few minutes later, “but it still doesn’t look much like piecrust.”
“It’s not piecrust,” I snapped. “Not yet. It’s just dough. Maybe if we roll it out, it’ll look better. It’s when Mom rolls hers out that it really looks like a piecrust.”
The dough kept falling apart and lumping into gobs, but we kept at it, pounding it with our fists, poking it with our spoons, and squeezing it with our fingers. When we finally got it into the pie pan, there were still a few bumpy spots, and the edges were kind of ragged.
“Now what do we do for the insides?” Jake asked.
“Do you have some peaches?”
Jared slapped the flour from his hands and looked in the pantry. He came back with a big can of peach halves. “Will these do?” he asked.
I nodded. “They’ll have to do.”
We spooned the peach halves onto the crust, then drank all the juice. We couldn’t make one big piece of dough for the top crust, so we put on a lot of little pieces and pinched them together.
“It doesn’t look much like one of Mom’s pies,” Jake mumbled.
Jared nodded. “It needs something.”
“Cinnamon and sugar!” I proclaimed, grinning. “Mom always puts cinnamon and sugar on top.”
Jake grabbed the sugar, and Jared grabbed the cinnamon, and they both began to sprinkle.
“Is that enough?” Jared asked.
I shook my head. “This pie needs lots of cinnamon and sugar to cover up the bad places.”
It was late in the afternoon when we finally pulled the pie from the oven.
“It doesn’t look exactly like the one Mom made,” Jake said.
“It doesn’t look like anything anyone would want to eat, either,” Jared said.
“Maybe Brother Piper doesn’t know a good pie from a bad one,” Jake said.
“He probably doesn’t,” I commented hopefully. “He likes brussels sprouts. Anybody that can eat brussels sprouts can eat this pie.”
“Maybe we’d better cover it with a napkin,” Jared said. “We can hand it to him and leave before he sees it. He’ll just think that your mom had a bad day. Anybody can make a lousy pie once in a while.”
The pie was still warm when we dragged our feet up Brother Piper’s walk. I swallowed hard as I rang the bell. Jared and Jake crowded behind me.
“Well, hello, boys.”
“We brought you a pie,” I burst out, pushing the pie into his hands. “Mom wanted us to bring you a pie.”
“Well, how nice of her, Benjy. She said that she was going to make me one, but I thought that she’d forget. You don’t know how much I love your mom’s pies.”
We started to go.
“Don’t leave, boys. Come in and have a piece of pie with me.”
“Well, we really”—I was getting a sickening twitch in my stomach—“We … uh … don’t want to eat your pie.”
“Oh, of course you do. Everybody wants some of your mom’s pie.”
Before we knew it, we were sitting at Brother Piper’s table. After he pulled the napkin off the pie, he just stared at it. Then he looked at us and back at the pie.
“Everybody has a bad day,” Jake said. “You can’t make a perfect pie every time. Not even Mom.”
Brother Piper shrugged and took a knife to the pie. The whole top of it crumbled into a hundred pieces as soon as the knife touched it. Brother Piper glanced over at us, but we didn’t look up. We kept staring at the pie. The peaches were all shriveled and brown, and the crust was too doughy in some places and too floury in others.
We all tried to eat some of it, but it was no use. Looking at it was bad enough—eating it was impossible. Even Brother Piper put down his fork and took a big drink of water. “Did your mother really make this pie?” he finally asked, poking at the stuff on his plate.
I knew that I couldn’t lie about it. I didn’t even want to. “Mom made you one, but we ate it. When we found out afterward that it was your birthday and that Mom was going to call you, we made you this one. Are you going to tell her?”
Brother Piper laughed. “You did bring me a pie. Was the first pie pretty good?”
We nodded glumly as I added, “But it was no fun eating a stolen pie. It just made us sick.”
“Well, I’ll just tell your mom that she made a great pie. After all, she did, didn’t she?”
I nodded and looked down. “We’re sorry, Brother Piper. It won’t happen again, honest.” Jared and Jake nodded their heads in agreement.
A few minutes later we shuffled into my kitchen. Mom smiled when we walked in. “I saved you something,” she announced. “You know how you’ve always wanted your very own pie?”
We nodded.
She walked over to the counter and picked up a big, beautiful peach pie. “I made this one just for you,” she said.
I could feel my stomach do flip-flops. The last thing that I wanted was another piece of pie. I looked at Jared and Jake, and they looked back at me. Their faces seemed a little green.
“Mom,” I said, holding my stomach, “I don’t think we’ll eat it, if it’s all right with you. But,” I added quickly, “Brother Piper would love one of your pies.”
“But he’s already had one of my pies. I thought that you liked my pies,” she said, looking a little hurt.
“We do like your pies, Mom. In fact, we ate Brother Piper’s pie.”
“But it didn’t taste very good,” Jake chimed in. “It wasn’t your fault,” he added quickly. “It’s just that stolen pies don’t taste very good.”
“Yeah,” I said, “so we’d better take this one to Brother Piper. The one we made for him was awful.”
“You made Brother Piper a pie?”
Jared shook his head. “I’m not sure you’d call it a pie. It looked more like a bad disease.”
“But we learned a lot,” I spoke up. “From now on, when you ask us to take a pie to someone, you can be sure we’ll do it. And that’s a promise.”

I invited a friend from school to go to church with me. We went to sacrament meeting and to class, and we learned about the plan of salvation. In Primary we learned a new song. My friend ended up knowing it very well.
A few weeks later, my friends had a party. Someone asked for a 10-minute description of everyone’s church. Mine turned into 20 minutes. I talked about the Word of Wisdom and the Book of Mormon, and then I started to talk about the plan of salvation. The friend I took to church was there, and she jumped right in. Her parents do not believe in Jesus Christ, so I thought it was very important that she know about Him.