Gospel Story Finder

David was born to Clara and Hector Haight on 2 September 1906 in Oakley, Idaho. As a child, David learned to play the violin and performed at school and family concerts. He played football. He enjoyed Scouting, and he was the first boy in his county to receive the First Class rank. One day, David heard that his town would be hosting a best-kept lawn competition. The award was a new Scout uniform, which David wanted very badly. He mowed, raked, and weeded his family’s lawn every day. When the judges saw all of his hard work, he won the uniform! Even when sad things happened to David—like when his father died when he was only nine years old—he tried hard to be happy and successful.

Within a few months I found myself dealing with a young man who was constantly pushing the boundaries in his behavior.
“This is the line,” I finally said regarding his actions. “Do not cross it.”
He crossed it, we had a bit of a verbal altercation, and he left.
Later, I had a chat with him to resolve our differences. I said, “David, I love you and you’re a good young man, but I don’t love some of the things you do. The other young men look to you as a leader, and if they see you getting away with something improper, they may try it as well.”
We patched things up, he felt accepted, and we leaders helped temper some of his personal challenges. When he turned 14, he asked me to ordain him a teacher. Today, years later, he gives me a big bear hug whenever he sees me, and he talks with admiration about his time in Young Men.

My grandparents’ dog was sick, and they took her to the vet. They found out she had cancer, so they put the dog to sleep. It made me really sad. Then I saw that the Friend had come. I opened it and saw at the bottom of the page Matt and Mandy saying, “Feeling sad? Go to page 24 for the ‘Feelings First-Aid Kit’” (Sept. 2018). I turned to it, and it really helped me. Thanks for making it!
Keilani B., age 9, Utah, USA

I have a valise which was owned by Robert Redford. (I don’t mean the movie star; I mean my grandfather.) When Grandfather Redford died, Mother and her brothers and sisters gathered together to distribute his personal belongings. Each family member was given a first-choice selection. Unknown to us, Mother prayed that she could have Grandfather’s temple clothes, which he carried in a black valise with the initials R.R. printed on it. Grandfather spent his last years as a temple worker in the Logan Temple.
Mother got her wish.
As a teenager, I thought it strange that Mother would prefer that little black bag to furniture or other items of worldly value. But then I thought of how my mother had taught me the sacredness of the temple long before I could fully understand its meaning. Her attitude about going to the temple and her handling of the temple clothing first caught my attention. Mother was always happy to visit the house of the Lord. What happened inside the temple wasn’t talked about specifically; but I heard parts of the temple vocabulary spoken with great respect, words like sacred, holy, spiritual, pure, celestial, endowments, sealing, the veil.
When I finally went to the temple as a missionary to receive my own endowments, Mother gave Grandfather’s temple clothing to me.
It would be difficult for me to describe my first experience in the temple. It was beyond anything earthly I had witnessed. I didn’t comprehend all that I was taught that night, but the deep feelings instilled in me were sublime. Clothed in the inheritance from my grandfather and accompanied by my mother, I began what was to be a continuum of incomparable spiritual visits to the holy temple. Based upon those experiences, I would like to share with you what I have learned about the temple and what it can mean in your own lives.

I would like to express my gratitude for the great uplift the New Era brings me. This past summer I had the opportunity of living in New York as a mother’s helper for a nonmember family. Naturally, there are no LDS books of any kind in the house. When I was about at the point of despair, my mother sent my five latest issues of the New Era that had arrived at my home. I was elated. I find myself rereading the stories many times over. I love to sit down at the piano and play the music in them. My spirits have been greatly uplifted. I can hear about our Church during the week instead of just when I get the chance to attend church here. Thank you very much.
Cindy SavageLong Island, New York

Jamie closed the shed door quietly and carried the heavy pail down the snow-covered trail to the deer feeding station. Carefully, he made three small piles of corn about six feet apart. Then, looking around, Jamie smiled and started up the trail to the warm cabin. He knew the deer had been watching him.
Jamie knocked the snow from his boots and, looking once more toward the white birch forest, slipped inside the cabin.
High in the loft where Jamie slept was a wide window close to the floor where he could watch the deer come to feed.
Jamie had named the doe and her fawns Mama, Flag, and Stomper. He had watched the fawns grow since spring when they were tiny, wobbly creatures no taller than the brush where they bedded down at night.
Ever since Jamie had named them, he had waited for the day when he would be able to feed them by hand and play with them and call them by name. But Jamie’s father had said it couldn’t be. “Animals in the wild must protect themselves from danger, and humans are a very great danger,” he explained. “If Flag and Stomper became your friends, they might not fear a hunter. We can feed the deer during the winter, but we must not make pets of them. They need to feel fear to survive.”
Jamie understood. He wanted his forest friends to survive. But he felt that somehow, someway, he could show the deer that he alone was their friend.
Later, as he watched from his window in the loft, the deer came out of the forest. First came Mama, slowly sniffing the wind and moving her ears to catch every sound. Then Flag bounced into the clearing and went straight to the corn. Stomper, Jamie knew, would wait out of sight in the brush. Then, when Flag and Mama were eating, he would appear at the far corn pile and stomp his feet—THUMP, THUMP, THUMP—while he ate.
All afternoon a fine snow fell, and by evening three more inches of it were added to the snow already on the ground.
After supper Jamie slipped on his heavy woolen jacket and his warm boots and stepped out into the cold winter night. The bright white light of the February moon cast long shadows as he walked down the wooded trail. He stopped and looked back at the cabin. The yellow orange light from the windows shone brightly on the white birches, on the snow-covered woodpile, and on the more distant snow-covered lake.
CRUNCH!
Jamie turned his head and listened. He pulled his hood back and listened again … THUMP, THUMP.
Jamie held his breath. Can it be? he wondered. It sounds like …
THUMP, THUMP. It was louder now, and Jamie’s heart beat faster as he tried to catch his breath. He knew what it was—who it was. Not moving a muscle, Jamie waited for it to come closer.
THUMP, THUMP.
“Stomper?” Jamie breathed quietly the name of his favorite deer. “Stomper?” He turned ever so slowly and waited, holding his breath. “Stomper?” he whispered again.
Then, as though he had been there all the while, as though he were a part of the frozen ground and snow-covered trees, Stomper appeared not ten feet away.
“Stomper,” Jamie whispered once more, letting his breath out slowly.
Stomper stood erect and tall, his eyes fixed on Jamie. The deer picked up his right leg, bent it, and—THUMP—stomped his foot hard on the frozen ground. Jamie dared not move, though he desperately wanted to touch the deer, just once.
Stomper moved one step toward Jamie! And then another! The deer stretched out its neck so close to Jamie that Jamie could hear him breathe. Jamie reached out slowly. Stomper didn’t move.
All of a sudden there was a terrific snort, a whistling snort, and Stomper wheeled about. “Mama!” Jamie gasped as the doe rushed toward Stomper, kicking her front feet and rearing up at the young deer.
“Jamie!” It was his father’s voice. “Come here, Son.” His father was crouched by the side of the trail.
Stomper and his mother bounded through the forest and stopped some distance away.
“Dad! You knew! And Stomper’s mother knew too!”
“Jamie,” his father said, “I guess both of us parents knew what would happen if you two had an encounter,” he said sympathetically. Putting his arm around Jamie’s shoulder, his father walked with him back to the cabin.
High up on the hill, the deer stood and watched the man and his son walking back to the lighted cabin. The doe licked the face of her little buck, and they turned and walked slowly into the winter forest.

“You’re too holy.”
Twelve-year-old Ian Caloobanan was astounded at his friend’s words. He didn’t consider himself holy.
His friend continued, “Ever since you joined the Mormons, you’ve become a killjoy. You don’t drink with us anymore. You don’t have fun with us on Sunday. You’re too holy.”
The words hurt, and yet … what else could he do? He had been baptized and now held the Aaronic Priesthood. He had changed, and as far as Ian was concerned, he had changed for the better. But holy? Well, maybe not yet.
Ian’s joy at finding the gospel is hard to contain. He has given one of his teachers a copy of the Book of Mormon and invited him to meet with the missionaries. Some of his schoolmates respect him for his new standards and have asked him questions about the gospel. Others ridicule him.
Ian just keeps on keeping the commandments the best he can.

On that occasion thousands of curious but earnest people stood in long lines to gain entry to the building. A policeman stationed to direct traffic observed that it was the first time he had ever seen the English eager to get into a church.
Those who inspected the building were asked to defer any questions until they had completed the tour. In the evenings I joined the missionaries in talking with those who had questions. As a young couple came down the front steps of the temple, I inquired whether I could help them in any way. The young woman spoke up and said, “Yes. What about this ‘marriage for eternity’ to which reference was made in one of the rooms?” We sat on a bench under the ancient oak that stood near the gate. The wedding band on her finger indicated that they were married, and the manner in which she gripped her husband’s hand evidenced their affection one for another.
“Now to your question,” I said. “I suppose you were married by the vicar.”
“Yes,” she responded, “just three months ago.”
“Did you realize that when the vicar pronounced your marriage he also decreed your separation?”
“What do you mean?” she quickly retorted.
“You believe that life is eternal, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied.
I continued, “Can you conceive of eternal life without eternal love? Can either of you envision eternal happiness without the companionship of one another?”
“Of course not,” came the ready response.
“But what did the vicar say when he pronounced your marriage? If I remember the language correctly, he said, among other things, ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, till death do ye part.’ He went as far as he felt his authority would permit him and that was till death separates you. In fact, I think that if you were to question him, he would emphatically deny the existence of marriage and family beyond the grave.
“But,” I continued, “the Father of us all, who loves His children and wants the best for them, has provided for a continuation, under proper circumstances, of this most sacred and ennobling of all human relationships, the relationships of marriage and family.
“In that great and moving conversation between the Savior and His Apostles, Peter declared, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and the Lord responded, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.’ The Lord then went on to say to Peter and his associates, ‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (see Matt. 16:13–19).
“In that marvelous bestowal of authority, the Lord gave to His Apostles the keys of the holy priesthood, whose power reaches beyond life and death into eternity. This same authority has been restored to the earth by those same Apostles who held it anciently, even Peter, James, and John.” I continued by saying that following the dedication of the temple on the following Sunday, those same keys of the holy priesthood would be exercised in behalf of the men and women who come into this sacred house to solemnize their marriage. They will be joined in a union which death cannot dissolve and time cannot destroy.
Such was my testimony to this young couple in England.

Hilary couldn’t wait. She slid off her bed and landed on Elise’s mattress—hard.
“Get up, Leesie,” she told her little sister, taking an extra bounce. “It’s a special day.”
Elise scrunched her nose, groaned, and rolled over. She didn’t even open her eyes.
Hilary skipped across the room to Baby John’s crib. “Hey, John B., guess what?” She poked her hand through the bars and stroked his little arm. “It’s general conference today.”
John stuck his tongue out and gurgled at her.
He’s too little to listen to conference, Hilary thought. Mom didn’t even buy him a new coloring book.
Hilary could hear the shower going. Probably Daddy. She horse-galloped down the hall and peeked into Mommy and Daddy’s room. Mommy was lying on her side with the covers pulled up to her chin. Hilary tiptoed up to her. “Mommy, it’s conference day,” she whispered into Mommy’s ear.
Mommy opened her eyes and smiled. “You’re right, darling.”
“That means Leesie and I get to use our new coloring books, right?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Mommy yawned.
“And our new markers?”
“Yes, dear.”
“And the new puzzle with the bunny on it?”
“That’s right.” Mommy rolled down the covers and sat up in bed. “Is Baby John awake yet?”
“Yep. But Leesie doesn’t want to get up.”
“Tell her I’m running your bathwater as soon as Daddy’s out of the shower. We need to hurry.”
“I’ll put the candy you got for us in your bag with the markers,” Hilary volunteered. She was planning to be very good during conference so she could get the most candy. I’m being really good so far, she told herself.
The family drove to the meetinghouse for the broadcast because it wasn’t on their local TV channels. Hilary and Elise spread their coloring books and markers on a table at the front of the Relief Society room. Mommy and Daddy liked to watch conference there so that the girls could color quietly and Baby John could sleep on his blanket. Hilary listened to the choir sing as she looked through all the pictures in her new book. She had a lot of coloring to do!
Then a man in a suit and tie appeared on the screen.
“That’s the prophet,” Mommy whispered. “He tells us what Heavenly Father and Jesus want us to do.”
Hilary sighed and flipped through the coloring book one more time. “Leesie, let’s do our puzzle now,” she said.
Elise looked up at her and shook her blond pigtails. “Not yet. We have to listen to the prophet.”
Hilary saw that Elise’s coloring book was closed. She was looking at the television screen and trying to understand what the man with the tie was saying.
Hilary tapped the toes of her shiny church shoes on the carpet and frowned. She wondered why they even got the new puzzle if they weren’t going to use it. Then she remembered the candy in Mommy’s bag. Quickly she folded her arms and stopped tapping her toes. She glanced to see if Mom was watching, then gazed up at the television.
The prophet was saying to be a little more kind to others. Mommy tells us that, too. Hilary also remembered Sister Johnson’s last lesson in Primary: “Jesus said, ‘Love everyone.’”
Hilary looked around at her family. Daddy was bent over his notepad, writing down with a blue pen what the prophet was saying. Elise still hadn’t opened her coloring book. Mom was holding Baby John, patting his back, and watching the screen. Mom caught Hilary’s eye and smiled.
Hilary felt happy and warm. I like listening to the prophet, she decided, looking up at the man with the tie. Her new puzzle and coloring book could wait.

As you reach out to them, please remember the experience of a friend of mine. He had never owned a horse in his life until he married a wonderful woman who loves horses. Wanting to impress his new bride, he announced one evening that he was going to the pasture to teach a colt how to be led. He weighed more than the colt. He knew more than the colt. He assumed all he would need to do was pull on the lead rope and sooner or later the colt would follow. He was confident that the process would be short and simple.
He attached the lead rope to the halter, got in front of the colt, and pulled. The colt resisted. My friend pulled harder, and the colt planted his legs more firmly. So he really pulled, and the colt fell over. The process was repeated several times until my friend made this assessment: in just four or five minutes he had successfully taught the colt to fall over. All he had to do was get in front of the colt, pick up the rope, and over it would go.
His wife, watching this process, finally suggested that instead of getting in front of the colt and pulling, he might try wrapping the rope around the colt and simply walking alongside. To my friend’s chagrin, it worked.

Carly W. from Rexburg, Idaho, USA, is a busy helper. At home Carly helps out by taking care of her family’s cats, dogs, and chickens. Because Carly is one of the best students in her class at school, she helps other children with math and reading. In Primary, Carly’s singing helps other children to feel the Spirit.
Because Carly has done such a good job helping others, some of her friends decided to help her too.
Carly was born with a disease called spina bifida. This disease makes it hard for Carly to use all of her muscles. Doing things like walking on uneven ground and climbing up stairs can be hard for her. At school, Carly wasn’t able to play on the playground because the playground equipment was hard for her to use. There were other children who also couldn’t play on the playground equipment.
“Sometimes I felt bad and frustrated at recess because I couldn’t play on the playground,” Carly says.
One of Carly’s friends, Halli Jo, and Halli Jo’s mom decided to earn money to build a playground that Carly and all the other students at the school could use.
Halli Jo, her mom, and a lot of other people worked to earn money for the new playground. It took a lot of work, but they were able to earn enough money to build a new playground that all the students could play on.
“It was a lot of hard work,” Halli Jo says. “But it never made me sad to do the work—it just made me love Carly more.”
Carly is happy to be able to play on the playground with her friends. She says, “I like walking up the ramps and going down the slides. Me and my friends have fun together.”

Not very long ago, my family and I had the opportunity to preside over the Australia Sydney Mission. I had come out of the Missionary Department, and I suppose my missionary views were very conservative. At any rate, as we began our work in the Australia Sydney Mission, we had some modest, but good, successes, and I felt comfortable about what we were doing—until President Kimball spoke to us. In his own manner and in his own way, he said, “Brother Dunn, Loren, we must all lengthen our stride.” And I got the message.
The message was that although we had made progress, yet before the Lord and before the prophet, it wasn’t enough. We went back, we redoubled our efforts; we found increased growth, but also we found increased strength and new stakes evolved because of those efforts. I don’t think the progress was so much because of us, but because of our desire to follow the prophet.

I was having a difficult time in school one year. I was shy and didn’t make friends easily. One evening, I decided to go for a walk to find some relief.
I found a secluded corner and spent some time pondering and praying about what I wanted. Feeling as if no one understood me, I desperately longed to have someone in my life who could see me for what I was inside, for what I could be. I wanted someone who knew all my faults yet still loved me. I wanted someone who realized that I was (and still am) trying so hard to be better. I didn’t want to feel so alone all the time.
I don’t know how long I was there, but I poured my heart and soul out to Heavenly Father. I cried until I didn’t think I could cry anymore. Then I stood up and started walking back home. As I was walking, I looked down at my shadow. Instead of the usual one shadow, I had two. It wasn’t a miracle or anything; it was just the effect of multiple streetlamps. But when I saw those two shadows, the thought came into my head: “You are never alone. You’ll never walk alone.” I know now that this thought came from the Holy Ghost and that this experience was a blessing to comfort me. That one simple thought reminded me that things would work out and that Heavenly Father knows me perfectly.
Since that day, there have been many more instances where those exact words have reminded me of what God has already told me. For example, once when I asked a priesthood holder to give me a blessing of comfort after the death of a friend, without knowing about my previous experience, he told me in the blessing, “You are never alone.” The exact same words! It was such a sweet and gentle reminder to trust Him and remember that everything will be all right.
Through prayer and the Holy Ghost, Heavenly Father can always be with me, so I always have someone I can rely on. Because of these wonderful experiences, I know of God’s great love for me.

I was in a certain part of the Church not so long ago, and I heard this story: A couple of boys went to the patriarch to receive their blessings. The patriarch knew one of the boys very well, and to the one he knew he said: “I have a wonderful blessing for you.” He blessed the other boy first. Then he laid his hands on the head of the boy for whom he had said he had a wonderful blessing, and he found he could not give him a blessing at all. The words just would not come. Finally he had to say, “You will have to come back some other time.”
The Lord let that patriarch know that no patriarch has a blessing for anybody. The blessings are from the Lord, and when men want to do honor to themselves, speak by their own power, by their own inspiration, they have nothing to give. It is the Lord who has the blessings to give and the patriarch is only the means through whom the Lord works to give His blessings.

When I was about 14 years old, the Church celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Sunday School. I was one of 500 Sunday School students invited to sing in a choir for the Sunday School conference, which was held in the Tabernacle as part of general conference in April 1949. President George Albert Smith, President of the Church during that conference, showed the congregation a time capsule dealing with the event and containing items related to the history of the Sunday School. It contained a form of phonograph record made in the 1940s.
During the meeting, it was announced that the box would be opened in 50 years. I remember, as a boy in the choir in that meeting, thinking how I would love to be in attendance when that box was opened fifty years later. In 1999, I was in Salt Lake City, Utah, for general conference. During the training for the General Authorities, we were invited to attend a meeting at which that box was to be opened for the first time after fifty years of being sealed! It was exciting as a boy and as a man to have been part of those two milestones in the history of the Sunday School.

The love of Jesus Christ was the answer I received when a close friend told me she was stepping away from the Church. Prior to this decision, she had shared her sincere questions with me, asking for my opinions and confiding in me about the hurt she was feeling. Her pain was real, her questions were heartfelt, and I felt honored to be a listening ear. However, the thoughts I shared often didn’t seem to reach her.
I would leave our conversations feeling unsure of how to support her. During one conversation in particular, she asked me a sincere question about something I had personally been feeling uncertain about and then called my bluff when I struggled to know how to respond. I remember her saying, “Em, you don’t really believe that. I know you don’t.”
She was right.
After that interaction, I felt myself drifting away from the friendship. I was uncomfortable discussing spiritual matters with her and felt frustrated by our differences in belief and my own lack of perfect answers. I felt hopeless. I slowly stopped asking her about her gospel questions out of fear of not having the answers. I started to think that we were too different to be friends.
It took a few months before I realized that in seeking answers to her (and my) questions, I had lost sight of the most important answer: God so loved the world—God so loves my friend.
In his October 2020 general conference address, President Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the First Presidency, reminded us, “The Savior’s teaching to love [one another] is based on the reality that all mortals are beloved children of God.” He ended his message with a reminder about the perspective that this knowledge provides: “Knowing that we are all children of God gives us a divine vision of the worth of all others.”1
Those words struck me. Of course, this teaching is a fundamental truth. However, I realized that in my response to my friend’s transition away from the Church, I had set this truth aside.
Knowing that my friend—regardless of our differences in belief—is a beloved child of God changed everything for me.
Months had gone by with me feeling very distant from my friend, but I immediately called her after my realization, and I shared God’s love with her. I was able to explain why I had distanced myself from her. I articulated why it hurt to feel like something so precious to me wasn’t treated with respect. Fortunately, she was understanding, and we both apologized. We talked about how important our friendship was and how our similarities were stronger than our differences. I told her that I wanted to meet her where she was while maintaining my standards and faith, and that I hoped we could continue supporting each other. I was so grateful when she agreed.

Boys were mean. By the time I was in fifth grade, I knew that for sure. One time some boys stole my favorite umbrella and smashed the handle. Another time they chased me across the playground with spiders. They even made fun of the way I kicked and threw a ball. I did not like boys.
One rainy day, my class had to stay inside for recess. So I found a board game for my friends and me to play. As we set up the game, a boy named David walked over to us.
“Can I play too?” he asked.
I narrowed my eyes. My friends stared at him. I didn’t remember David being mean to me before, but that didn’t matter. He was still a boy.
“Don’t talk to us,” I said. I glanced at my friends. They nodded. So I called David a mean name.
My friends laughed. “This is a girls-only game,” one of them said.
“OK,” David mumbled. He frowned and walked away.
My friends finished setting up the game, still laughing. I looked over my shoulder and saw David sitting alone, reading a book. He looked like he might cry.
I felt awful. I’d made David feel bad. For no reason. Just like those boys had made me feel with the umbrella and the spiders. Maybe boys weren’t the only ones who could be mean. And girls weren’t the only ones who got hurt.
“I don’t feel like playing anymore,” I told my friends.
I went back to my desk and put my head down. Why had I been so mean? Maybe I’d been afraid David would be like those boys who’d been mean to me before. But he wasn’t. And now I felt terrible. It would’ve been much better to be kind, like Jesus.
I closed my eyes and prayed. Heavenly Father, please forgive me. I don’t want to be mean like that again.
Over the next few days, I tried to remember that not all boys were mean. In fact, some of them were really nice. One boy in P.E. class even made sure the girls got as many turns with the soccer ball as the boys.
It took me a couple of days to get the courage to talk to David. I still felt so bad about everything! It wasn’t easy, but I finally talked to him during art time. I took a deep breath. “Nice drawing, David. I really like that horse.”
“Uh, thanks.” David barely looked up from his drawing. He probably thought I’d say something mean again.
So I smiled my nicest smile and kept talking as we worked. I hoped my friendliness showed I wasn’t really mean and that I was sorry for what I’d said before. By the end of art time, David was talking too. He even told some great jokes.
When I accidentally spilled paint on our table, he helped me clean it up. He didn’t get mad, even though some of it got on his paper.
When we mess up, we can repent. Go to “Family Fun Time” for an activity to learn more.
David could have gotten mad or said something mean, like I’d done. But he didn’t. Being nice really was better.

“FIRE! FIRE!”
This warning cry brought fear to the hearts of all those who heard it in the little community of Farmington, Utah, for the only way they had to fight fires was to form a line and pass buckets of water from the nearby creek to the burning building. As a result, almost any building that caught fire was destroyed, and few of the contents inside were ever saved.
Aurelia Spencer Rogers, who lived in Farmington most of her life, heard the cries of alarm, and ran toward the house from which smoke was billowing up into the hot August air. The home belonged to friends with whom she was staying, after she had rented her own house that summer of 1902 and moved into Salt Lake City, twenty miles to the south. However, she returned often to Farmington to take care of business there and to put up fruit for the winter.
Aurelia joined in the bucket brigade that quickly formed. Characteristically, she thought of the loss her friends would suffer before she thought of her own clothes and personal articles that were inside. Suddenly, she had a sick feeling. Her Primary record books were in an upstairs bedroom where she had been working on them at a table near a window! Silently she prayed that by some miracle they would be saved, but it seemed to her that everything in the building was going up in smoke.
“I mourned exceedingly,” Aurelia said later. “I would not have minded losing my clothes if the records could only have been saved.”
Aurelia helped her friends move into a vacant house to set up housekeeping again. She was heartsick as she returned to Salt Lake, for she thought that nothing in the fire swept home had been saved. Still haunted by the loss of the Primary record books, she returned to Farmington the next week to try to gather what information she could about the organization of the Primary so she could begin to write another history.
News of the miracle for which she had prayed awaited her when she called on her bishop. This is how she described it:
“Bishop Moroni Secrist felt prompted to climb onto the porch (during the fire) and go through the window to my room, thinking he might save some of the property; but when he went inside, the smoke was so dense he was nearly suffocated and had to be helped out by others … As he neared the window, he reached out his hand and felt the cover on the table and drew it toward him, gathering up the corners with the books … and passed them to those on the outside. Thus the records were saved through the providence of God.”
These records told the story of the first Primary ever held and how it came to be. They were used as the basis for Aurelia Spencer Rogers’ Life Sketches that she later wrote for children and dedicated to them with these words:
“Our children are our jewels; we have counted well the cost:
May their angels ever guard them, and not one child be lost.”

The air was stiflingly hot, and birds filled the blue Portuguese sky. Nearby, some of my nephews were playing in the river, plunging into the water to escape the heat.
I wished I could escape my troubles so easily. I had recently decided to become active again in the Church. Through the Holy Ghost, the Lord had confirmed my decision, but my family and friends didn’t understand. They had criticized and abandoned me, and I felt utterly alone. A request to watch my sister’s boys swim had offered some needed moments of peace in what seemed a constant battle against forces intent on keeping me from the truth.
I had brought my Book of Mormon with me, and while my nephews splashed in the river, I sat under a tree and read. Tears started to flow as I thought of those I loved who told me I was making a mistake. I was so sure I was doing the Father’s will.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I could no longer hear my nephews. I looked toward the river, but they weren’t there. Concern, bordering on panic, flooded my heart.
And then I heard a young voice calling out my name. I turned to see my nephews standing behind me, smiling, cheeks as radiant as the light of the sun. The youngest, about five years old, was hiding something behind his back—an arrangement of multicolored flowers he and his brothers had picked from the nearby field. He presented them to me in a voice that sounded like music to my ears.
Tears sprang again to my eyes. But this time they were tears of happiness. As I embraced my nephews, I lifted my face to the sky and saw rays of sunlight shining through a break in the clouds. A great peace filled my heart. Because of this small, simple gesture—made with love—I knew I was not alone. Even though they did not understand my decision, my nephews—and all my family members—still loved me. But more important, Heavenly Father knew of my trials and was there to sustain me with His infinite love and concern.

The next challenge was pitching our tents. Those who had brought their own tents were familiar with them and seemed to have no problems. But others, like our stake president, Craig Marshall, had borrowed tents. The owner of the tent had told President Marshall that it was a cinch to put up, but despite lots of head scratching and lightning suggestions from the great brains of the group, he had trouble getting the frame to fit together.
While President Marshall struggled, the rest of us put up the food tent (the most important camp item), collected firewood, constructed a rack for the canoes and paddles, and prepared cocoa and biscuits to eat around the fire in the true tradition of camp. Eventually even President Marshall got his tent erected, with some friendly help from the rest of the group.