Gospel Story Finder

At a young age, I had many responsibilities on our farm. When I was nine years old, one of my summer jobs was to keep a herd of 12 cows and 12 calves in the pasture. Unfortunately, they loved to push over our fence and gorge on the sweet alfalfa in an adjoining field. On one of their escapes, they got into an empty canal some four to five meters deep. I knew the canal would soon fill with water, drowning the trapped cattle.

I couldn’t move 24 cattle up the canal’s steep banks, and I didn’t know how else to save them, so I knelt and prayed for help. I was impressed to drive the cattle down the canal to another man’s property. I questioned the wisdom of this, because I didn’t know the property or its owner and I didn’t want to get stuck between even steeper banks. I obeyed the Spirit, however, and soon found a section of the canal where the cattle could climb out easily. And our neighbor didn’t mind. When I told my mother, she said I had been inspired by Heavenly Father.

“Saturday’s activity will be a daddy-daughter cooking class,” Sister Marshall announced.
A wave of excited murmurs rolled through our Primary group. I suppose every girl was imagining bubbling desserts, fun games, and two whole hours with her dad. Every girl but me, that is. I didn’t have a dad—not even a shared-visitation dad like the ones some girls at school talked about. Instead of excitement, an anxious knot twisted in my stomach. I felt my face flush hot with emotion, and I clenched my teeth, fighting to force back tears.
Sister Marshall must have noticed my reaction. Once the meeting was over, she gently placed her hand on my shoulder. “Feel free to bring your mom, Tess.” She meant well, but those simple words were enough to set my tears free. I dropped my head so she wouldn’t notice and turned away.
“It’s OK,” I told myself. “You don’t have to go to that silly activity anyway.” But I knew it was a lie. I would have given anything to be part of a family that didn’t need special instructions from Sister Marshall—a family like the others that I saw dotting the rows of the chapel every Sunday. But my dad had left my mom and me when I was just a baby. We hadn’t heard from him in years, and I knew there was no way he was going to magically reappear just in time for Saturday’s activity.
“Get over it!” I ordered myself for at least the hundredth time since our baptism three years before. Our family was so much stronger now that we had a testimony of Heavenly Father’s plan, and I was grateful for all the gospel had given us. Still, it hadn’t been easy stepping into a group of friends who had been together since they were little—sharing baptisms, Primary activities, ward socials. I was the new girl, and although the others really tried to make me feel included, I still felt that I was different. I sometimes felt like a puzzle with one center piece missing.
“How was class?” Mom asked cheerfully as we drove home. She was a different person since our baptism—happier and more confident.
“Great,” I fibbed. Probably better not to worry her about the cooking class. After all, there was nothing she could do about it.
The week passed quickly. Schoolwork, chores, and friends kept me busy and allowed me to forget about Saturday’s activity. That is, until the phone rang Friday night.
“It’s for you,” my sister said, holding out the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Tess. This is Brother Erickson.” Brother Erickson was our home teacher. He owned an ice-cream shop in town and sometimes brought containers of mint chip or cherry chocolate to our house. He often made me laugh with his twinkling eyes and quick smile. But I couldn’t imagine why he would be calling me.
His voice was cheerful and strong. “I was wondering if you’d let me join you at the cooking class tomorrow.”
I held my breath and peeked into the kitchen where my mom was washing the dinner dishes. I smiled at the mounds of bubbles clinging to her arms. “She couldn’t have told him,” I thought. “She didn’t even know.” I wondered if Sister Marshall had called him.
“I read about it in the bulletin last Sunday,” he continued. “It sounds like fun.”
“Oh yeah, the bulletin.”
“So? Think you can handle toting an old man like me around your party?”
“You don’t have to—” I started.
“I want to!” Then he was silent for a moment. “Please.”
“Well, OK.” To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure it would be OK. I mean, I didn’t know him that well. But my new excitement for going to the activity outweighed any doubt.
Saturday came, and when Mom dropped me off at the church, Brother Erickson was waiting for me in a bright red apron. His smile eased my worries as we joined the other fathers and daughters. We had a blast learning how to make cherry cobbler and homemade whipping cream in our crowded meetinghouse kitchen. He never once made me feel like he was doing me a favor or just fulfilling his calling.
When Mom came to pick me up, Brother Erickson gave me a big high five. “Thanks for letting me come. I had a great time!” I knew that he really meant it.
Years passed, and Brother Erickson remained our home teacher. In addition to his visits, he invited my family over for many game nights at his house. He joined me at more father-daughter activities and gave me my first real job at his ice-cream store when I turned 16.
After college when I was getting married in the Los Angeles California Temple, I asked Brother Erickson to serve as a witness. When I walked into the sealing room, I saw him sitting in the chair typically reserved for the father of the bride. He smiled his silly smile at me, and I knew that he was exactly where he should be. After all, he was no ordinary home teacher. He had become my very close friend.

When I became the President here in 1994, Elder Neal A. Maxwell reminded me that when he first became Commissioner of Education for the Church, one of the senior brethren approached him before a board meeting and said, "I am going to propose today that we close down the Church College of Hawaii, will you support me." Elder Maxwell pleaded with this member of the First Presidency not to make such a proposal but to give him a chance to get at the heart of the issues and to rescue this campus from the hardships it had fallen into. The end result of that effort and the efforts of people in this room was the renaming of this campus Brigham Young University-Hawaii and bringing it in to the main stream of Church education, this wonderful campus.

Usually our fears are only imagined. When I was a little boy growing up in Oakley, Idaho, we had a long line of poplar trees growing along the road leading to our home. When it was dark, I used to run as fast as I could past those poplar trees. I always imagined that there was something behind one of those trees waiting to jump out at me. Of course in the daylight, I knew it was all in my mind. That is how it is with our fears—99 percent of the things we worry about are not real.

As a father I was blessed to see great futures in God’s kingdom for my daughters as well as my sons. When I prayerfully sought guidance, I was shown a way to help my daughters recognize the trust God had placed in them as servants who could build His kingdom.

When my daughters were young, I saw that we could help others feel the love of those beyond the veil, throughout the generations. I knew that love comes from service and inspires hope of life eternal.

So we carved breadboards on which we placed a loaf of homemade bread and went together to deliver our offering to widows, widowers, and families. The legend I carved on each of those breadboards read, “J’aime et J’espere,” French for “I love and I hope.” The evidence of their unique spiritual gifts appeared not just on the boards I carved but more clearly as we distributed them to those who needed, in the midst of pain or loss, reassurance that the love of the Savior and His Atonement could produce a perfect brightness of hope. This is life eternal for my daughters and for each of us.

Now, you may be thinking, “Brother Eyring, are you saying that I have to learn how to carve?” The answer is no. I learned to carve only with the help of a kind and gifted mentor, then-Elder Boyd K. Packer. What little skill I achieved can be attributed to his great gift as a carver and his patience as a teacher. Only heaven can provide such a mentor as President Packer. But there are many ways you can shape children’s hearts without carving wooden boards or height boards for them.

For example, new communication technologies allow sharing messages of faith and hope across the miles that separate us, instantaneously and at little or no cost. My wife helps me do this. We begin by talking by telephone with grandchildren or children we can reach. We ask them to share stories of their personal successes and their service rendered. We also invite them to send photos of those activities. We use those photos to illustrate a few paragraphs of text. We add one or two verses from the Book of Mormon. Perhaps Nephi and Mormon wouldn’t be very impressed by the spiritual quality of our content or the limited effort required to create what we call “The Family Journal: The Small Plates.” But Sister Eyring and I are blessed by the effort. We feel inspired in selecting the passages of scripture and the brief messages of testimony we write. And we see evidence in their lives of their hearts being turned toward us and to the Savior and upward.

There are other ways to reach out; you are already engaged in many of them. Your habits of family prayer and scripture reading will create more lasting memories and greater changes of heart than you may realize now. Even apparently temporal activities, such as attending an athletic event or watching a movie, can shape a child’s heart. What matters is not the activity but the feelings that come as you do it. I have discovered a good test for identifying activities with the potential to make a great difference in a young person’s life. It is that they suggest the activity out of an interest they feel has come to them as a gift from God. I know that is possible from my own experience.

When I became a deacon at the age of 12, I lived in New Jersey, 50 miles (80 km) from New York City. I dreamed of being a great baseball player. My father agreed to take me to see a game played in the old and storied Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. I can still see the swing of the bat as Joe DiMaggio hit a home run into the center field stands with my father sitting beside me, the only time we ever went to a major league baseball game together.

But another day with my father shaped my life forever. He took me from New Jersey to the home of an ordained patriarch in Salt Lake City. I had never seen the man before. My father left me at the doorstep. The patriarch led me to a chair, placed his hands on my head, and pronounced a blessing as a gift from God that included a declaration of the great desire of my heart.

He said that I was one of those of whom it had been said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”6 I was so surprised that a perfect stranger could know my heart that I opened my eyes to see the room where such a miracle was happening. That blessing of my possibilities has shaped my life, my marriage, and my priesthood service.

From that experience and what has followed it, I can testify, “For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.”7

By the Lord revealing to me a gift, I have been able to recognize and prepare for opportunities to exercise it to the blessing of those I love and serve.

God knows our gifts. My challenge to you and to me is to pray to know the gifts we have been given, to know how to develop them, and to recognize the opportunities to serve others that God provides us. But most of all, I pray that you will be inspired to help others discover their special gifts from God to serve.

I promise you that if you ask, you will be blessed to help and lift others to their full potential in the service of those they lead and love. I testify to you that God lives, Jesus is the Christ, this is the priesthood of God, which we hold, and God has prepared us with special gifts to serve Him beyond our fondest hopes. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

A couple of years ago, as Sister Dickson and I arrived at the Missionary Training Center to speak with the missionaries, the MTC president asked if I would tie my tie for the missionaries to help them understand that they could handle the challenges that come with missionary service. I considered his request and adjusted my talk to cover some of what has been mentioned in this article. As I was about to conclude, I invited four missionaries in the front to come forward for a little race at tie-tying. One asked if they should just use their left hand, but I suggested they would need them both. As you can imagine, the missionaries were quite excited when I won.

This article, however, really has little to do with being the fastest tie-tier, the best quarterback, cheerleader, or hamburger-eating champion. It simply has to do with knowing who we are, that we truly matter to our Heavenly Father and that He loves us and wants us back. At the same time, He wants us to be clean and to learn and to grow from our experiences.

Over the years I have handled many challenges in my life, as you will in yours. During the time between those interesting adventures, life has been restful and easy, but any true personal growth has always come when I was working my way through one of life’s challenges. As challenges come, we must look at them as stepping-stones in our development rather than barriers to stop our progress. Come they will, and we must simply win and move on.

Even though I’ve known that I should always notice and recognize the hand of God in my life, there have been times when I have felt that things in my life were happening just because I was in the right place at the right time or because of other circumstances. At times I’ve felt like an imposter or a fraud in different situations when I haven’t felt that I was smart enough, intellectual enough, spiritual enough, or good enough.

During the first year of my master’s program in German literature at BYU—while my dad was serving as president of the Austria Vienna Mission—I eagerly accepted an invitation to be a graduate teaching assistant for the six-month Vienna study abroad program. Later I learned that the department chair had chosen me not because of my strong German proficiency or teaching skills but simply because my family was there and they assumed I’d be willing to go. However, recognizing God’s hand in this experience helped me see that regardless of their reasoning, He had orchestrated this incredible opportunity for me.

Another pivotal moment came when I was admitted to the interdisciplinary PhD program in second-language acquisition and teaching at the University of Arizona. I had been hired for a one-year position at Arizona State University to teach German and to oversee the TAs. During my first semester the dean expressed interest in keeping me on staff but explained that without a PhD, I would need to enroll in a doctoral program to continue teaching. Since ASU didn’t offer a German PhD program that interested me, I began exploring other options. Someone mentioned the PhD program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, so I met with the director—a professor from Germany—to learn more. The program sounded intriguing, so I applied.

While awaiting admission decisions, a French professor at ASU mentioned that the program only accepted about 5 percent of applicants, making my chances seem slim. Despite this, I was admitted. The first semester was challenging yet fulfilling, and I felt I had finally found my true academic path. Later I learned that one key factor in my acceptance was my faculty position at ASU. Since both the University of Arizona and ASU are state institutions, the hope was that if I completed the program, I could contribute to training my language colleagues at ASU.

Throughout my studies I often doubted my intellectual abilities and writing skills compared to those of my peers. However, over time I came to see this experience through a different lens—one that recognized God’s hand in guiding me and in opening doors I hadn’t even known existed. To this day I recognize that if I hadn’t been admitted to and completed this PhD program, I wouldn’t have met my husband, we wouldn’t have our two wonderful children, and we wouldn’t be at BYU today.

By reflecting on these experiences and by recognizing God’s hand in every aspect of my life, I have come to understand that my achievements and opportunities have been made possible through His guidance.

I stayed out of the race for popularity for the first half of high school—not because I wanted to, but because I knew I wasn’t cool enough to compete. I would watch from the sidelines and tell myself, “Oh, popularity is such a waste of time,” but deep down I wished the “cool kids” would see me.
As time went on, I got tired of having a small circle of friends. So I decided to change the way I looked and acted, hoping to catch the attention of the “cooler” kids I wanted to be friends with. I significantly moved up the social food chain, but it came at a price—I made a lot of bad decisions to finally get noticed.
For a little while, it felt good to be popular! But it honestly didn’t take long for me to see that popularity was an illusion—the people I was surrounding myself with didn’t actually care about me. They were all just trying to win the social race for themselves.
I felt lonely even among my “friends,” and when I finally took a break from this pointless race, I realized how thin my connection to God had become.
I’m not the first person to fall into the popularity trap, and I know popularity is not the only trap Satan sets to distract us from building and maintaining our relationship with God. Money, possessions, and worldly obsessions are all things I’ve seen Satan try to lure us with. His goal is to slowly lead us away until we’re so far that we feel unforgivable and undeserving of even being children of God (see 2 Nephi 28:21).
But even when we can’t see it ourselves, Jesus Christ sees who we truly are. He says to us, “Thou wast precious in my sight” (Isaiah 43:4) and “Thou art mine” (Isaiah 43:1).
Sister Amy A. Wright, First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency, says, “Often the scriptures give only a small portion of someone’s life, and based on that portion, we sometimes tend to exalt or condemn. No one’s life can be understood by one magnificent moment or one regrettable public disappointment. The purpose of these scriptural accounts is to help us see that Jesus Christ was the answer then, and He is the answer now. He knows our complete story and exactly what we suffer, as well as our capabilities and vulnerabilities.”1
This message was a huge reminder for me that although I’d made big mistakes and had wandered from the path, Jesus Christ saw me where I was, loved me still, and had a way back for me.
I believe Heavenly Father saw me heading in the wrong direction during high school and reached out to me by inspiring my parents. They noticed that I wasn’t myself anymore and that a lot of the light I used to have inside was missing. So, my mom asked if we could start having one-on-one scripture study together every night. I agreed, even though I hadn’t personally studied the scriptures for a while.
At first it felt like reading a chapter each night wasn’t making much of a difference; however, after a few months, I looked back and realized how far I’d come in strengthening my connection with God. I noticed an increase in my baseline level of happiness, and it became easier to let go of those friends who weren’t good influences.
Refamiliarizing myself with the scriptures has been a great blessing. I especially love the story of Alma the Younger and his incredible change of heart (see Alma 36:6–24). In my scripture journal I wrote this about his story: “God freely forgives anyone who repents. All we have to do is reach out. Those who leave the path are welcome back as soon as they make an effort to return.”
I know now that changing ourselves for the popular things of the world can be tempting but can also take us away from the path that leads to true happiness. The only changes that will give us the sense of belonging and fulfillment we seek are the ones that strengthen our connection to Heavenly Father. Like Brother Bradley R. Wilcox, Second Counselor in the Young Men General Presidency, recently taught, Heavenly Father wants us to change in righteous ways because “God loves us as we are, but He also loves us too much to leave us this way.”2 I still have a long way to go to be the person Heavenly Father wants me to be, but I’m choosing to change because I love Him.

One Sunday right in the middle of the branch sacrament meeting, a woman walked in the door off the street. She was a homeless woman who was wearing dirty, ragged clothes, coughing, choking, and blowing her nose into a filthy handkerchief. In a loud, hoarse voice she said, “I want to sing! I want to pray!” and walked right to the front row and sat down next to a member who was wearing a white blouse, leaned against her, and laid her head on her shoulder. The member immediately put her arms around this guest and held her in her arms throughout the remainder of the meeting. It happened that the speaker had been talking about the parable of the good Samaritan as the woman had come in. As this woman coughed and choked, the speaker continued telling of the parable. As he came to the end of his talk and was quoting a relevant scripture, suddenly, in a loud voice, this homeless woman finished giving the verse that the speaker had begun. In talking of this after sacrament meeting with the speaker, we thought it had probably been a long time since someone had affectionately put an arm around our visitor. We wondered what better illustration you could have of the parable of the good Samaritan than what we had just seen, and we were reminded of the Savior’s words that preceded His telling of that parable: “Thou shalt love … thy neighbour as thyself.”

In closing may I share with you an example of one who determined early in life what his goals would be. I speak of Brother Clayton M. Christensen, a member of the Church who is a professor of business administration in the business school at Harvard University.
When he was 16 years old, Brother Christensen decided, among other things, that he would not play sports on Sunday. Years later, when he attended Oxford University in England, he played center on the basketball team. That year they had an undefeated season and went through to the British equivalent of what in the United States would be the NCAA basketball tournament.
They won their games fairly easily in the tournament, making it to the final four. It was then that Brother Christensen looked at the schedule and, to his absolute horror, saw that the final basketball game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. He and the team had worked so hard to get where they were, and he was the starting center. He went to his coach with his dilemma. His coach was unsympathetic and told Brother Christensen he expected him to play in the game.
Prior to the final game, however, there was a semifinal game. Unfortunately, the backup center dislocated his shoulder, which increased the pressure on Brother Christensen to play in the final game. He went to his hotel room. He knelt down. He asked his Heavenly Father if it would be all right, just this once, if he played that game on Sunday. He said that before he had finished praying, he received the answer: “Clayton, what are you even asking me for? You know the answer.”
He went to his coach, telling him how sorry he was that he wouldn’t be playing in the final game. Then he went to the Sunday meetings in the local ward while his team played without him. He prayed mightily for their success. They did win.
That fateful, difficult decision was made more than 30 years ago. Brother Christensen has said that as time has passed, he considers it one of the most important decisions he ever made. It would have been very easy to have said, “You know, in general, keeping the Sabbath day holy is the right commandment, but in my particular extenuating circumstance, it’s okay, just this once, if I don’t do it.” However, he says his entire life has turned out to be an unending stream of extenuating circumstances, and had he crossed the line just that once, then the next time something came up that was so demanding and critical, it would have been so much easier to cross the line again. The lesson he learned is that it is easier to keep the commandments 100 percent of the time than it is 98 percent of the time.

SGS: Still, it was my dream and my blessing to be a mother, and in that I have never felt otherwise. I think we expected to have our other children come along in due course without too much further delay, but that was not to be. Finally, after more than five years and several surgeries, our second “cutest baby boy” was born. We were again thrilled and felt blessed but didn’t perceive the special circumstances that allowed for that pregnancy. We were told by our doctors that if we desired more children, we should not delay unduly because my condition could make further pregnancies unlikely over time.

We should add that our older son, now five, was disappointed, because while he had joined us in prayers for the new baby, his own prayer was for a baby brother and a baby sister. Now he only had the baby brother. We told him not to worry and that if there were a baby sister for him, she would eventually come. He was skeptical but seemed to be resolved.

COS: Since obstetrics was not my field in medicine, we were perhaps naïve in our understanding about the hand of heaven in our lives at that time. Just a few months later we learned that we were in the early stages of another pregnancy, and we were very happy. Then one evening Sharon began to experience severe and acute abdominal pain. Again—although not my expertise in medicine—we knew we were in trouble, and so we went to the emergency room at the hospital where I worked. She was examined and a couple of laboratory tests were performed. The attending physician was a very good man who was experienced in such matters but who did not know my wife well. He felt the situation was not serious and that perhaps Sharon was just having an anxiety attack. Now, those who know her well know that she does get very anxious at football, basketball, soccer, and volleyball games, but this wasn’t a game, and we knew our physician friend was in error.

SGS: As we left the emergency room, I was still very uncomfortable, and we were both quite unsettled. We were praying for guidance and comfort, and it became clear that we needed a second opinion. Consequently, we headed for another hospital in our community and finally were able to reach my personal obstetrician, who had been on a Church assignment earlier when we had first decided the problem was serious.

COS: At the second hospital we were quickly met by Sharon’s doctor, who knew her well. He determined her anxiety and pain were due to an acute surgical emergency. She was rushed to the operating room and was there found to be bleeding profusely internally. The cause of the problem was an ectopic or tubal pregnancy, which required immediate surgery to stop the bleeding. She had lost a great deal of blood, but her life was saved. Unfortunately, her doctor and we thought it meant that she would never be able to have another pregnancy because of this incident and the previous necessary surgery she had undergone. We did rejoice that her life was spared and that we already had two little boys in our family.

SGS: I healed rather quickly and soon returned home to the active life of a young mother with two lively children and a husband who had a major Church calling as well as a busy professional life teaching, researching, caring for patients, and fulfilling administrative duties. We didn’t really mourn but did feel rather constant disappointment that the large family we had expected and frankly took for granted was not to be.

As a young girl growing up, I had four younger brothers but no sisters. While I had girl cousins and girlfriends, I always wished for a younger sister. As I grew up, I knew that was not likely, but I looked forward to being the mother of daughters. Now that possibility seemed to have evaporated too.

COS: Few, if any, outside of immediate family knew of this small but significant grief Sharon carried in her heart. Our boys were healthy and our life was full. About four years quickly passed, and we felt ourselves resolved and settled. We built our home with the plan that it would accommodate the four of us well, and we really were grateful for our general good fortune and happy lives. Then, one weekend in early February 1977, our lives changed.

Freiberg Germany Temple
While visiting communist East Germany in 1968, President Thomas S. Monson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, promised the Saints, “If you will remain true and faithful to the commandments of God, every blessing any member of the Church enjoys in any other country will be yours.” At the time, the closest temple was in Switzerland, but East Germany was under strict government rule. Members of the Church were routinely denied visas to travel there.
President Spencer W. Kimball counseled Henry Burkhardt, president of the Church’s mission in Dresden, to befriend communist officials in the country. Though this was difficult, he acted on faith. Members fasted and prayed, and Henry developed friendships with many government officials and often asked for Church members to be allowed to travel to the temple. In 1978, when he asked again, one official said, “Why don’t you build a temple here?”
The long wait was over, and the Church built a temple in Freiberg, Germany, which was dedicated in 1985 by President Gordon B. Hinckley.

My seminary teacher used the article “Extra Strength” (Jan. ’02) in one of her lessons. That very day, a friend from school was asking me questions about the Church while we were in the weight room. I tried to answer him the best I could but didn’t feel my words were very influential. But I felt impressed to do as the young woman in the article did. The following day I gave my friend the new For the Strength of Youth and told him it contained the guidelines written for teenagers to follow. It felt good to have done this small missionary effort.
Marek de SavignyDunrobin, Ontario, Canada

Erin Woodward’s sixth great-grandfather walked across the plains. Erin, from Westminster, Colorado, thought of this grandfather and his family as she participated in the trek with her stake.

“Now I feel like the silliest girl in the whole world,” she said. “I mean, I have been so into my materialistic things. Seriously, I have a curling iron in my pocket. I even have makeup and everything. I feel horrible because the real pioneers didn’t live as well as I do. Before this I never really understood how blessed I am.”

When André Green of Folcroft, Pennsylvania, became a deacon, the bishop advised him to do good works beyond the usual duties of a deacon. André took the bishop seriously and at school asked his teacher and principal if he could use the New Testament as his next major reading assignment. At first, he was denied permission, but by proving that he was already doing other large reading projects, he was given permission to do an oral and written book report. Besides receiving an A+, the report was displayed before the entire school.

As I thought about Cindy’s question, I remembered that Dad had once said that the feeling of warning we get when we’re tempted is from the Holy Ghost as He tries to keep us from doing wrong. I should have had a lot more of that feeling the day I thought I had to have a piece of licorice. I’d helped myself to a dime from Mom’s purse without asking, and I’d hardly felt guilty at all when I handed it to the clerk at the store.
The very next day Mom said, “Little chickie, if you’ll run and post Dad’s letter, I’ll pop a peach cobbler into the oven for lunch.” Katie and Shauna had already gone to Aunt Shirley’s on an errand, so I was the only little chick left.
Then Mom looked in her purse and said, “Oh, oh. I was certain I had just the right change for a stamp, but there’s only a dime left.”
She took everything out of her purse and shook it. “Hmmmm,” she said, “it looks like I’ll have to write a check before I can mail Dad’s letter. We’ll have to forget about the cobbler, because while I’m out I might as well run my other errands.”
“Oh, Mom, you’ve already made me hungry for cobbler. Can’t the letter wait until tomorrow?”
“No. Daddy said we must get it in the mail this morning.”
“What’re we having for lunch?” I asked.
“Tuna sandwiches. Please stay close to the phone. Sister Heaton is going to call me. Tell her I’ll call her as soon as I get back.”
I felt awful as I watched her drive away.
That was last year. As I thought about it now that I was baptized, I knew it was important for me to tell Mom about it. I’d give her one of my birthday dimes, too, to help make things right.

One day Heber J. Grant was playing marbles with some friends when a bookkeeper from the bank walked by.
Friend 1: That man makes a lot of money.
Heber: How much?
Friend 1: As much as you would earn polishing 120 pairs of boots every single day.
Heber knew he wanted to be able to make a living when he was older.
Heber: Someday I’ll be a bookkeeper at the bank, too!
Friend 2: You’d better learn how to write. Your writing looks like lightning struck the ink bottle.
Friend 1: It’s worse than hen tracks!
Heber worked on his handwriting until it was beautiful.
To earn money, he wrote greeting cards, wedding cards, and legal documents. He was offered a large amount of money to be a professional penman in the state of California, but he didn’t take the job.
Eventually, Heber reached his goal of working at the bank. He also became a penmanship teacher at a university.

Sergio was a young man who wanted to go on a mission. He was studying at a university 300 kilometers from home. He would come home regularly and talk with his bishop and stake president. He did not feel worthy to go on a mission. He said his mind was not clean: he saw and heard too many things at the university that made him think of evil. He was challenged to read the Book of Mormon every morning before going to school. He did this, and in a few months he was able to control his thoughts and he and his leaders felt good about his going on a mission. He went and served very well.

Years ago, when I was a stake president in Paris, France, I was told that President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) was coming to Paris for a couple of days and that I was going to be his driver. I would pick him up at the airport and take him to his hotel so he could rest. The next day I would take him to do a number of visits. One visit he wanted to make was to a U.S. military cemetery, where his brother, who died of influenza during World War I, is buried.
But when I picked up President Hinckley, he didn’t look very tired. He held his cane up and said, “President Caussé! Let’s go to work!”
He wanted to go to the cemetery right away. Unfortunately, I had arranged with the director to go there the next day, so when we arrived, it was closed and nobody was there.
The next day, we were so busy that we didn’t have time to go back to the cemetery. That evening, President Hinckley handed me a $10 (U.S.) bill and said, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to go to the cemetery. I would be very grateful if you could buy flowers and put them on my brother’s grave.”
I bought flowers, but I didn’t use that bill. The following Sunday afternoon, I went with my family and put the flowers on the grave. We took a picture of our family in front of the grave with all the flowers and sent it to President Hinckley.
I still have that $10 bill. It’s in my scriptures. If I were to ask, “What is the value of this bill?” most people would say, “Ten dollars.” But for me, it’s worth far more. This bill was worth ten dollars, but for me, it’s priceless now. It’s a memory of a moment I had with a prophet of God.

Brother Desmurs ended his portion of the tape recording by saying that he wished there were some way to tell all missionaries how important their work is, and not to get discouraged. He said they had found a member who had a picture of me, hung it in their living room, and asked every new missionary who came to Versailles if they knew me.
Brother Desmurs assured me that I would always be dear to their family because I had helped to plant the gospel seed, even though his own “soil” had not been very fertile at the time and the nurturing and harvesting had come much later. The family members each spoke in turn, thanking me and praying for the Lord’s blessings upon me.
As I finished listening to the recording, deeply affected by the words I had heard, I opened the French Book of Mormon they had mailed along with the tape. Inside was a picture of the Desmurs family along with their written testimony—a witness they had shared in this way with many of their countrymen.
I smiled through my tears. My missionary labors had gone full cycle. It had all begun with my own testimony of the Book of Mormon; no one knows where it will end. Indeed, how little any of us realize the effect our actions can have on the lives of others.