Gospel Story Finder

There’s a place in Taiwan where a piece of the moon dropped in the ocean. Or so it seems. Standing on a barren, wind-carved rock at Yehliu (yeh-leo) Park, surrounded by solemn gray, cratered stone, the small group of LDS Scouts looked more like refugees on an alien world than teenagers ready to practice semaphore signaling.
But they broke out their flags anyway. Two of the young men in the group scampered up outcroppings, unfurled the semaphores, and with rapid arm swinging began spelling out messages to each other. Even on rainy days, Yehliu is crowded with sightseers, and the Scouts soon had an audience cheering them on. The Scouts flashed the red-and-white flags over their heads, down by their feet, out to their sides. Hours and hours of practice paid off as the sentences made sense and the signaling drill was completed.
Business taken care of, the Scouts were now ready for some fun. Like Scouts anywhere, this group from the Taipei Stake loves songs with hand gestures. They sang several of their favorites as they walked along the rock cliffs that dip down to form the Pacific shore. Then, as they rested, they spoke about Scouting and about the Church.
“I’ve been in Scouts for about six months,” said 18-year-old Hsieh Mi-ch’un. “I have been able to make quite a few good friends, and I’ve also learned a lot. I have been taught how to tie knots and do first aid, for example, and I know how to set up a tent. These things are fun to learn for someone who has grown up in a large, crowded city like Taipei.”
Liu Tao-chih said, “I’m only 13, but I’m the second oldest Scout in our group. I joined the Scout program because I want to serve people, to do a good turn daily. The core of our Scout group consists of the young male members of the Church. We train ourselves and some of our nonmember friends to explore outdoor life, to appreciate nature, to learn about things we never had access to before. Especially in our group, we emphasize training our Aaronic Priesthood members so that they will grow strong in the Church and be strengthened for their lives.”
Once a month, the Boy Scouts join with the stake’s Young Women for some sort of outing, like a recent talent show held in the stake center. But on this particular Saturday, anyone interested in learning about semaphore signaling was invited on the trip to Yehliu. Scoutmaster Wan Chin Li and Young Women leader Chou Yu-Ch’ung came along to supervise and to teach the group about using flags to send messages.
“Our activities are separate for the most part,” Tao-Chih explained, “as they are for Scouts and Young Women in the United States. But every once in a while we share an activity where there is mutual interest. We hope the young sisters can become more active in the Church and learn the many skills to help our country and our society.”
Li Chiu-hsiueh, 17, said, “The Church makes me very happy. And I’m glad to learn the things I learn by associating with the Scouts. We learn manners and mottoes that remind us to do good for others.
“One of the wonderful things about being a young woman is to be able to live happily,” she added. “The gospel teaches us how to be happy, how to find joy each day in serving others.”
The members, from the Hsin Tien and Taipei Third wards and the San Ch’ung Branch, spent a fantastic day at the beach. They saw rock formations that looked like church bells, a beached turtle, an elephant, and a queen wearing a crown. They visited the vendor’s stalls along the sidewalk leading to the park and wondered over the dozens of varieties of shells for sale. They even talked to one of the ladies about the Church when she asked who sponsored their Scout troop. They told her how the Church has promoted Scouting in Taiwan and how proud they are to be a part of the program.
Finally the light rain that had drizzled all day long turned into a downpour. With their semaphore flags tucked under their arms, the Scouts and Young Women raced to the bus. They knew the ride home would be short. And they knew there would soon be other fun activities, thanks to Scouting and thanks to the Church.
(The relationship between Scouting and the Young Men and Young Women programs varies from one country to another.)

Tobogganing was a great sport in my younger days, and the foothills above our house offered unlimited slopes for our favorite sport. Our only trouble was that we didn’t have a toboggan large enough to hold more than one person.
One day when I was about ten years old, two of my friends asked me if I would go with them to an abandoned shack high on the hill. Its sides were made of corrugated iron, but they just hung loose, flapping in the breeze. With one end turned up, what a perfect toboggan a piece of that shack would make!
I hurried home after school to get a hammer. The only one I could find belonged to my father’s dental laboratory equipment. Father was not at home, so I took the hammer and off I ran.
The snow was quite deep that winter and the daylight was short. We stayed longer than we had planned, and it began to get dark before we finished making our toboggan.
Finally we decided we’d better hurry home before it was too dark to see. There was no trail on the hill, and the snow came up above our knees. We started down on the run, jumping through the deep snow.
My hands were cold and half numb. All of a sudden I felt Father’s hammer slip through my fingers and fly into the snow behind me. I called to my friends to wait. They stopped to see what the trouble was, but soon they became impatient and insisted on going on.
I went back in my tracks to try and find the hammer, but it hadn’t even left a mark in the snow. I looked around frantically.
It was really getting dark now, and I was alone up on the hill in the deep snow. I knew I shouldn’t have taken my father’s hammer without his permission, for he needed the tool in his work. Now it was lost and I couldn’t find it!
As I sat in the snow, I was so sad and cold and lonely that I felt just like crying. Then I remembered how I had been taught that when I needed help, I could pray to our Heavenly Father—no matter where I was. I needed help, so I put my face in my hands and prayed with all my heart.
As I opened my eyes and rolled sideways to get up, my hand went down deep in the snow and touched something hard. I took hold of it and pulled it up through the snow. It was Father’s hammer!
I thanked our Heavenly Father for answering my prayer. Then I jumped up and hurried as fast as I could to catch up with the other boys who were way ahead of me.
As I caught up with them, I realized I had learned something of special importance that day—that we are never alone and that our prayers are heard and answered.

This story happened in Nicaragua.
Vanessa waved goodbye to Mami and walked into the church building. Some of her friends were already here! She loved Primary activities.
Sister Fonseca was setting up a craft table. There were ribbons, colored strings, and stickers. Vanessa couldn’t wait to find out what they would be making!
After the prayer, Sister Fonseca gave some instructions. “Today we will make gift bags. You can give them to someone you love.” She handed a brown paper bag to each child.
Vanessa was excited to start decorating. She chose a yellow heart sticker and put it on the front of the bag.
Next, Vanessa folded a paper to make a card. “You are a child of God,” she wrote. She drew lots of stars and hearts on it.
Sister Lopez passed out some cookies and cupcakes to put inside their bags. Vanessa put the card inside too. Perfect!
Soon Mami came to pick her up. “Look!” Vanessa held her bag up for Mami to see. “It’s to give to someone special.”
“Beautiful!” Mami said. “Who will you give it to?”
“I don’t know,” Vanessa said. “I want to give it to someone who needs love.” Then Vanessa had an idea. “Can we go for a walk to find someone to give it to?”
“Sure,” Mami said. “Let’s go!”
Vanessa held Mami’s hand and carried her bag of love in her other hand. They turned down a quiet street. Maybe someone here needs love, Vanessa thought.
But as they walked, Vanessa frowned. There was no one on the street!
“Let’s try going this way.” Mami led Vanessa down another road. But again, no one was outside.
Vanessa sighed. “What should we do?” she asked.
“Why don’t you say a prayer in your mind?” Mami said. “Ask Heavenly Father to guide you to someone you can help.”
They turned down one more street, and Vanessa said a silent prayer. Heavenly Father, please help me find someone who needs some love.
A few minutes later, Vanessa saw a little boy walking on the sidewalk.
Vanessa’s face lit up with a smile. “Hi,” she said to him. “I want to give this to you.” She held out the bag.
At first, the boy looked confused.
“It’s OK. You can take it,” Mami said gently.
Slowly, the boy reached out and took the bag. A big smile spread across his face.
“I made it for you with a lot of love,” Vanessa said.
Vanessa felt happy as she watched the boy run back to his house. She knew he was special to Heavenly Father.
How did Vanessa share Heavenly Father’s love?
Illustrations by Vicky Scott

In 1982, Elder Hugo E. Martinez and his wife, Sister Nuria Alvarez de Martinez, were both in their medical residency training in Mississippi, USA, when an unexpected knock came at their front door.
There stood two Mormon missionaries.
“We opened our home to them, but we knew nothing about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We didn’t even know about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,” Elder Martinez says, smiling.
Still, the gospel lessons shared by the elders immediately resonated with the young couple. They soon accepted the missionaries’ invitation to be baptized.
“And we have not looked back ever since.”

Illustrations by Julissa Mora
Do we really have to go on a hike with the young women?
Yep. I’m going because of my calling. And I need you to come with me.
But it’s raining! And the rain here isn’t warm like where I used to live.
I bet something good will happen. After all, obeying our parents brings us blessings.
Why should I obey her? She’s not even my birth mom.
The trail will be too slippery.
What if we hike around the neighborhood instead?
Good idea.
Ugh!
Hey, Marcel!
Noah? You’re going on the hike?
Yeah! I’m here with my mom too. Are you going?
Yeah!
Watch me jump in this puddle!
That was awesome! What about this?
Pretty good. I give you an 8 out of 10.
OK! Your turn.
That splash was tiny! 2 out of 10.
It looked like you had fun on our walk. How was it?
You were right about obeying, Mom. Something good did happen!

While attending a sacrament meeting during the summer months, I was fortunate to hear messages from three students who were home from school for the summer. One of the talks especially interested me.
She had been working during the summer recess in a restaurant frequented by truck drivers. One driver who had a regular run stopped at the restaurant on the same day each week to eat. The regularity of the stop created an opportunity for short visits. He asked the young lady where she lived. She reported that she was home for the summer to earn money to return to school in the fall. His next question was, “Where do you attend school?” Her answer with pride: “BYU–Idaho.” He wanted to know more about the school, which led to a gospel discussion. Her first approach was to teach him about the Word of Wisdom. She was successful. She convinced him to give up smoking.
Then her shift was changed, and she no longer had the opportunity to serve him, so she wrote him a note and enclosed a Church missionary tract about the plan of salvation. After several days she received a note from the driver. It simply stated, “You’ve created a monster.” Thanks to this young woman he had found information which caused him to think about the changes he must make in his life. I do not know the full outcome of this little encounter between a waitress and a truck driver, but clearly his life was affected.

Every Sunday Jonah wanted to be reverent in church, but sometimes it was hard to remember.
One Sunday, Sister Milner was leading sharing time. “Jonah, you can choose one picture to put on the board,” she said.
Jonah ran to the front before he remembered that he should walk in the church building.
Another Sunday, Stella had trouble remembering her scripture. “As I have loved you … ,” she said.
“Love one another!” Jonah called out before she could finish.
Sometimes Sam and Miguel would start acting silly with Jonah. Sister Fox would take Jonah to sit with Mom in Relief Society.
Jonah wanted to be in Primary. He liked his friends, the stories, and his teachers. But sometimes he still forgot to be reverent.
One day after church Mom said, “Jonah, it’s important for you to be reverent at church. What do you think you could do to remember?”
Jonah shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to remember.”
“I know it can be hard,” Mom said. “Why don’t you think about it?”
That week Mom brought home a new church shirt for Jonah. “You’re growing up so fast,” she said. “Your old shirt is already too small.”
Jonah tried on the new shirt and buttoned all the buttons. He looked in the mirror. “Dad wears shirts like this,” he thought. “And Dad is always reverent in church.” Jonah smiled. “Maybe this can help me remember to be reverent,” he thought.
On Sunday, Jonah put on his new shirt. He buttoned the buttons and tucked the tails in neatly.
“You look like a missionary,” Dad said.
“The missionaries are reverent in church,” Jonah thought.
While he waited for Primary to start, Jonah sat quietly. He looked down at the buttoned cuffs of his new reverent shirt.
“That’s a nice shirt, Jonah,” Sister Milner whispered.
“It’s my reverent shirt,” Jonah whispered back.
Jonah sang the opening song in a strong, good way. He listened while Kim tried to give her first talk, even when she didn’t say anything for a long time. Sister Fox smiled at Jonah, and Jonah smiled back.
During sharing time, Miguel said something silly. Jonah stayed reverent. Then Sam poked Jonah. Jonah poked Sam and Sam poked back, but then Jonah felt his reverent shirt and remembered to sit quietly.
Pretty soon Jonah’s friends stayed reverent too. Jonah felt good, and Sister Fox let them go to class first.
“How was Primary today?” Mom asked after class.
“Can you please wash and iron my new reverent shirt for next Sunday?” Jonah asked. “I had a great time in Primary, and everyone else did too.”

One day, Wilford was feeding pumpkins to his father’s cattle in a pasture.
He noticed that one large bull was eating more than his fair share, so Wilford decided to take one of his pumpkins away.
Wilford: He ate one of that cow’s pumpkins! I’ll show him who’s boss.
The bull was so mad at Wilford that he started chasing him down the pasture hill.
Luckily, Wilford tripped and fell to the ground, and the pumpkin went flying out of his hands. The bull jumped right over Wilford and tore the pumpkin to pieces with his horns.
Wilford: If I hadn’t tripped, that would’ve been me getting torn to pieces!
Years later Wilford became the fourth President of the Church. He said he believed Heavenly Father had protected him during those childhood adventures.
President Woodruff: I ascribe my preservation on earth to the watch-care of a merciful Providence, whose hand has been stretched out to rescue me from death when I was in the presence of the most threatening dangers.

He was always tall. “By the time I was 13, I was already 182 cm (six feet). But my real growth spurt didn’t begin until my sophomore year in high school.” He reached his full height by his senior year, and, as with most tall kids, it was assumed he would play basketball. That was not to be.
“I never really liked basketball,” he noted. “The other kids and the coaches always kind of made fun of me, telling me I couldn’t jump.”
His mother urged him, instead, to try a local recreation league volleyball team. “I had never had so much fun in any sport before,” Chambers says. “I was hooked! Even though I wasn’t very good, I went home and told Mom that volleyball was the sport for me!”
Great club coaching helped him find his footing in the game, and because of his prodigious height, they made him a middle blocker. Finally, the burden of being tall began to pay-off. After a season of club volleyball, he was anxious to join his high school team and test his new skills. But disaster struck in his very first scrimmage.
“I jumped and extended myself to try and block a ball, and when I came down, I landed on the foot of the guy on the other side of the net and broke my ankle,” Chambers recounted. “I had to wear a boot everywhere after that and I didn’t get to play at all my freshman season.”
“It was frustrating to have made progress in this new sport I really liked, then lose that whole season.”

Another way of saying what Alma taught came from an experience one of the General Authorities shared. He related how he spoke with a sister he knows who years earlier went through a divorce. She approached him to thank him for the counsel he gave her during her darkest hours. She reminded him what he had told her: “Now sister, don’t lose your eternal perspective. Always keep an eternal perspective.” She said that truth became her pillar of strength.

They taught me how to be a worthy, covenant-keeping, servant of the Lord. Then, when I was still a priest, both my quorum adviser and my bishop unexpectedly passed away within a few months of each other. I was devastated. But as time passed, I realized I had gained confidence in the priesthood because they gave me opportunities to perform the ordinances and duties of the Aaronic Priesthood (see D&C 13:1; 20:46–60; 84:26–27).

Impressed with President Lee’s leadership and faced with economic desperation throughout the Church, the First Presidency asked him one morning in 1935 to lead a new welfare movement to, as he recalled, “help to put the Church in a position where it could take care of its own needy.”
He immediately turned to the Lord for direction. “After that morning I rode in my car … up to the head of City Creek Canyon into what was then called Rotary Park; and there, all by myself, I offered one of the most humble prayers of my life. …
“As I kneeled down, my petition was, ‘What kind of an organization should be set up in order to accomplish what the Presidency has assigned?’ And there came to me on that glorious morning one of the most heavenly realizations of the power of the priesthood of God. It was as though something were saying to me, ‘There is no new organization necessary to take care of the needs of this people. All that is necessary is to put the priesthood of God to work. There is nothing else that you need as a substitute.’”
Soon stake farms were established, factories and storehouses built, and needy Church members put to work under the direction of the priesthood—all a direct result of the understanding communicated through the Spirit to Harold B. Lee.

Sister Wallace is my new CTR teacher, and we are beginning to study a lot about preparing for baptism. One of the things that will help us, she says, is to share our testimonies with others.
One Sunday she told us, “Testimonies strengthen people. Bearing your testimony is a way to express to the Lord and others what the gospel means to you and why you believe in it. Now,” she said, “I challenge each of you to bear your testimony. Next Sunday is fast and testimony meeting. Who would like to do it then?”
Nobody raised his hand. Not even Lisa Wilkes, who is always trying to please Sister Wallace.
“I know that it can be a little scary,” Sister Wallace admitted, “but if you do it, you’ll receive something special.”
My best friend, Mark, was becoming interested. “You mean that all we have to do is to stand up and bear our testimonies, and we’ll get something special?” he asked.
“Yes—if you are sincere when you bear your testimony, I promise that you really will receive something special.”
After church I walked home with Mark. On the way he asked me, “Are you going to bear your testimony next Sunday?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“I don’t know. What do you think we’ll get if we do?”
“Beats me. Probably a treat or something.”
Mark’s eyes showed his anticipation. He said excitedly, “I bet I know what it is—one of those giant homemade candy bars that Sister Wallace is famous for.”
“Hey, yeah!” I exclaimed. “That has to be it.”
“I’d sure like to get one,” Mark said enthusiastically. “I’m going to stand up next week for sure.”
All day I thought about what Sister Wallace had said, and I thought about my conversation with Mark. Sister Wallace wasn’t the kind of teacher who rewarded us for every nice thing that we did. Mark had asked her if all we had to do was stand up and say a few words to get something special, and she’d said that we had to be sincere. I still wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so when Dad tucked me into bed that night, I asked him what it meant to be sincere.
“Sincere about what, Adam?”
“Oh,” I said, “you know, sincere about what you’re saying.”
“Well,” Dad said, “when you’re sincere about what you’re saying, you really mean it. Take last night for instance. When your mother asked you to do the dishes, you said that you’d be happy to. But you weren’t sincere, because you complained the whole time. You didn’t really mean what you had said. But when you told me that you loved me and then went straight to bed when I asked you to, I knew that you’d been sincere, because you showed me that you did love me.”
“Can you always tell is someone is being sincere?” I asked.
“No,” said Dad. “A lot of times you can’t tell. But you can always know within yourself if you really mean what you say.”
I thought about that all week long, and I wondered, How will Sister Wallace know if we’re sincere and should get something special?
Sunday morning I woke up early. I took a shower and put on my best tie. I wanted to look extra nice, just in case I decided to bear my testimony.
Mark’s family sat next to mine during fast and testimony meeting. Just before it started, Mark leaned over and said, “Well, this is it.”
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. Now that we were in the chapel, I was kind of scared.
Lisa Wilkes was the first person to bear her testimony after the bishop. As she sat down, she glanced over at Sister Wallace and smiled.
For a while nobody else in my class got up. Then about halfway through the meeting I saw Mark slowly edge out of his seat. Oh no, I thought. Now I’ll have to bear my testimony. I just couldn’t stand the thought of watching Mark eat his candy bar and listening to him tell me what a chicken I’d been.
Mark seemed nervous, but he took the microphone when it was handed to him, cleared his throat, and mumbled a few words so fast that before I knew it, he had finished and sat down.
After catching his breath, he looked over at me and grinned. “That wasn’t so tough,” he whispered. “I can hardly wait till we get to class.”
I tried to smile but couldn’t. Something was wrong. Mark’s testimony hadn’t seemed right. It didn’t seem as if he’d cared much about what he was saying, and I remembered what my dad had told me.
After a while Mark leaned over and whispered, “Aren’t you going to stand up? You want to get a candy bar, don’t you?”
I did want a candy bar, but I still hesitated. Suddenly Sister Wallace’s words came back to me. “Bearing your testimony is a way to express … what the gospel means to you and why you believe in it.” That was it! That’s what sincerely bearing your testimony really means. It isn’t a way to get chocolate bars or to please your Primary teacher or to be like your best friend. It’s a way to sincerely let others know why you are thankful for the gospel.
Suddenly I wanted to bear my testimony—because I had a lot of things to be thankful for. I thought over exactly what I wanted to say before I stood up. I loved my family and Heavenly Father and my teachers at church and all the Church leaders. And I knew that I wanted to go on a mission when I was older, so I decided to mention that too.
I was still nervous, but I felt really good as I stood up. When I got the microphone, I cleared my throat and said, “I want to bear my testimony …”
It wasn’t a very long testimony, but I meant every word of it. When I sat down, I had a special feeling come over me. I can’t describe it, but it was the greatest feeling in the whole world.
When we got to Primary class, Mark was licking his lips. I’m sure that he was still thinking about a giant candy bar. When Sister Wallace went over to the chalkboard and began hanging up some pictures, he couldn’t stand it any longer. “What about the treat that you said we’d get if we bore our testimonies?” he asked.
Sister Wallace turned around. “What treat?”
The excitement on Mark’s face instantly vanished. He looked around the room at each of the kids before he sheepishly said, “You said that we’d get something special if we bore our testimonies.”
Sister Wallace sat down in a chair, looked straight at Mark, and asked, “Didn’t you already get something special?”
Mark fidgeted for a minute. “No,” he said in a whisper. “I thought that you were going to give us something.”
Sister Wallace looked at Lisa and me. “Did either one of you receive something special?”
My stomach almost tied itself into a knot, but I knew that I had to answer. “I did,” I said.
Sister Wallace smiled. “Why don’t you tell us about it, Adam.”
“Well,” I began. “You said that we had to be sincere in order to get something special. I tried to think about what the gospel means to me before I bore my testimony. And then I tried to speak clearly so that everyone would know that I really meant it.”
Sister Wallace nodded. “You bore a beautiful testimony, Adam, and I could tell that you meant every word. But tell me, what special thing did you receive?”
“It was a special feeling,” I said. “I can’t exactly explain it, but it felt real good.”
“That’s exactly what I knew you’d receive,” said Sister Wallace. “That feeling was the Holy Ghost letting you know that what you were saying was true.” She turned to Mark and added, “Don’t worry, Mark. You’ll have many opportunities to bear your testimony. And when you do it sincerely, you’ll receive that special feeling too.”
All that day I carried that feeling with me. I was glad that Sister Wallace hadn’t given us any candy bars. That would have ruined it. When I said my prayers that night, I thanked Heavenly Father for giving me the courage to bear my testimony. But mostly I thanked Him for teaching me about being sincere so that I could feel the Spirit, the best gift of all.

“One cool summer evening when I was a freshman in college, I had a date with someone I really liked. I didn’t know him well, but I looked up to him a lot.
“When he came to pick me up for the movie, we walked to the theater, since he didn’t have a car. We had a great time getting to know each other better.
“Then the movie started. It was okay for the first ten minutes, but even though it had a PG rating, it started making me uncomfortable. The dialogue became more and more suggestive, and I started to sink lower and lower in my seat.
“And do you know what he did? Even though we’d only been there a short time, he turned to me and said, ‘I really don’t like this movie. Do you mind if we leave?’ He didn’t make a big deal over it, he just suggested we leave. I’ll always remember that date because of his integrity. That’s the kind of man I want to marry.”

No long ago, after 42 years as members of the Church, we finally tracked down one of those tenacious missionaries who brought us the gospel. Reed Harris was then serving as a mission president in Chile. We shared a very emotional phone call. We wept as we talked of our families and our lives in the gospel. We thanked him for what the gospel has given us—a healthy lifestyle, love from our Heavenly Father, and a life full of blessings.

Susan, baptized into the Church at age 28, had always lived the law of chastity. “My parents had integrity and expected me to have high moral standards, to be honest and chaste, so I just did it,” says Susan, who was raised in the midwestern United States. “Now I realize I was responding to the light of Christ. I never dated a Latter-day Saint until I met Tom. When I heard the gospel, I was glad I had never given in to sexual temptation. Later, Tom and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple. One year later our baby daughter died at birth. We were devastated but grateful we had been worthy to be sealed in the temple when we were first married. Knowing that our baby was born in the covenant brought us understanding and peace.”
Susan and Tom still live in the Midwest after 24 years of marriage and five children. “Several of our friends and cousins have divorced,” says Tom. “We have had our share of financial and family challenges, yet we both want to be true to our temple covenants, so we just work things out.”

Miguel’s entire family loves their country, and each year they do a special service project for their community. Last year they received permission to paint Miguel’s school classroom during a two-week break. First they painted the room all white. Then they painted the ocean on the walls with whales and sunken ships and all sorts of fish. The class was really excited when they saw it. Miguel’s teacher helps the students learn their colors, counting, and sizes using the colorful walls.

It was Gerald Brown who gave the challenge to his son to chop what seemed like way too much wood on that clear fall morning in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. Young Vic Brown would rather have been out on the Alberta prairies, running his horse through the crisp morning air, but he respected his father. He knew that he had been asked to chop more wood than a young man of his age should really be capable of chopping. But it was that special kind of father-to-son challenge—and challenge was something that Victor Lee Brown liked, something he faced head on. The wood was needed for cooking and heating in the Brown family home, and Vic knew that cutting the wood was not just a challenge, but one of those necessities for which he could share the burden of responsibility. With the smooth handle of the axe in his young hands, he began to chop. As he swung the axe, Vic could feel the warmth build inside as he worked. The thunk of the axe and the sweet smell of the newly split logs were partial payment, but the best came nearly five hours later as he split the last log and stacked it away. It was a warm and weary feeling, knowing that his task was well done. The appreciation from his father was just as warm and sincere, and it was tinged with just a bit of surprise because his young son had been able to accomplish a man-size task.
Victor L. Brown was serving as first counselor in his deacons quorum presidency at the time of the wood chopping incident, and he was a young man who accepted responsibility and loved the challenge of an unfinished task. The future would prove to hold many great challenges for the young deacon from Cardston.

As the sun set on another Sunday in 1948, I found myself walking by the Trent River in Nottingham, England. I was a 20-year-old missionary at the time. It had been a long, exhausting day, but I was happy and satisfied in the work.
As I walked along the river, I said a prayer in my heart. Hoping to feel some guidance from the Lord, I asked, “Am I doing what You want?”
An overwhelming feeling of peace and understanding suddenly came over me. At that precise moment, I came to know that Jesus Christ knew me and loved me. I didn’t see a vision or hear a voice, but I could not have known of Christ’s reality and divinity any more powerfully had He stood before me and called out my name.
From that day to today, every significant decision I have made has been influenced by my knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I love Him more deeply and powerfully than words can express. He is my Lord, my Savior, my Redeemer, and my friend.

Since that time, I have found that my testimony of the gospel has grown at the same rate as my conviction about the truth of the Book of Mormon. But the growth of my testimony has not come without its struggles.
When I told my family about my decision to be baptized, my father turned away in disgust. I was devastated! The man whom I loved and respected more than anyone else in the world was violently opposed to my decision about the most important matter of my life!
Later, a few months after I was baptized, I had my first encounter with anti-Mormon material. My parents had been given some tape recordings made by an individual known for his criticism of the Church, and they were really worried about what I had gotten myself into. When I listened to the tapes, I too was concerned.
Even though some of this negative information seemed plausible, my deep reaction was that it couldn’t be right. I had felt the Spirit too many times in studying the Church to deny its truthfulness, so I decided to investigate the anti-Mormon claims. I turned to the scriptures in prayerful study—especially the Book of Mormon. Knowledgeable Church members helped answer my questions. Afterward, I was more convinced than ever that I had made the right decision by joining the Church.
As a result, I made my own tape recording, personalizing it for my parents, and answered the major charges in the anti-Mormon material. I played the tape for my parents, and afterward my dad looked at me through his tears and said, “That was quite a sermon, son!” Then we hugged each other. This experience became the start of a new relationship between us.