Gospel Story Finder

Christian’s greatest happiness comes from “having a family that loves me.” His parents consider him a true gift from God. Before he was born, his mother, Luci, became ill and had to spend six months in bed to save Christian’s life. He was greatly loved even before his birth. Christian likewise feels great love for his parents and his two sisters, Itzel Lucia (8) and Mildred (4), of whom he is very protective.

I remember going to the Longfellow home, which was the beginning for me of learning something of our past. I also remember making the trip to the old North Church, with little Italian kids hanging on the fenders of the Model T and chanting the story of Paul Revere. I remember trudging the little dirt road to Lexington and Concord, and traveling to Plymouth with a family of RLDS people on their way to a conference. It was on the copy of the Mayflower Compact where I read the signature of a distant grandfather of mine. I’ll always be grateful for that time that gave me an interest in the history of this marvelous land, this land “choice above all others.”

The family’s next stop was Norway. The fjords along Norway’s jagged coast were magnificent. Milo learned that scientists believed the coastal valleys sank and were flooded by the ocean during the ice age more than one million years ago. The steep cliffs went straight down into the cold blue water. The inlets looked like long slim lakes even though one end opened into the sea.
The rocky islands called skerries interested Milo too. They jutted out of the sea along the shore, taking the brunt of the wind whipped up on stormy seas.
Milo read the old Viking tales about their ships, and he saw them come to life at the harbor in Trondheim.
One day Milo went skiing with his father, a sport that originated in the Telemark region of Norway.
“Come along, Milo,” said Father. “Let’s try the Norwegian ski slopes.”
Milo checked his gear, pushed off, and called, “See you later, Dad.”
It was clear and crisp as he went skiing down the mountain. What a great sport! “Hooray for Norway!” he sang out. “Hooray for Norway!”
Suddenly he saw two dark figures against the white snow on the trail ahead of him. But Milo tried to turn too sharply and found himself upended in the snow. A man and a boy came over to see if he was all right.
“I’m Chris,” said the boy, helping Milo up. “Why didn’t you call out?”
“Call out?” Milo said, rather puzzled. “What do you mean? Should I have said, get out of my way?”
“No,” said Chris, “but if you had called av vei (clear of the course) when you left the hill, the echo would have carried down here. We would have been prepared for you and could have made room for you to go by.”
“Is this a custom like calling ‘fore’ in golf?” asked Milo’s father, who had followed his son down the hill.
“Something like that,” the man answered.
“Well,” said Milo’s father on the way home. “You have learned something new today.”
“I have learned two new words,” said Milo.
“You’ve not only learned the words,” said his father, “but when to use them.”

July 1990: I had come home. I was back in Prague, in my native country of Czechoslovakia—a country I had left twenty-two years before. I left because I couldn’t tolerate the political climate of the time. Now, within a few months, an overwhelming change had been wrought in the country, and I was free to return.
I suppose I expected to feel the same as I had so many years before. But I felt like a tourist. Everything seemed smaller and shabbier, and I felt as though I had lost my family and childhood roots.
But a few days after I had arrived, as I was walking along a crowded street, I suddenly felt a kinship with the people around me. I was among my own people. A great feeling of love and belonging came over me, and I felt the joy of the freedoms that they had gained after forty-five years of strict control.

By now our children had joined with us in the discussions, and the two sisters who had originally knocked on our door had been replaced by another pair of lady missionaries. I would put the baby in his playpen, and then we’d start bombarding the missionaries with question after question. We found that the two sticks mentioned in prophecy were the Bible and the Book of Mormon. “Do we get to see the Book of Mormon? When? When can I read it? Next discussion?” This was going to be a long week—I could hardly wait.
The week was long. I kept thinking about the Book of Mormon and could hardly wait to get my hands on it. The day finally arrived, and I hoped in my heart they wouldn’t forget the Book of Mormon. I even thought they might finally have a cup of coffee with us.
As we discussed the Book of Mormon, they told me of a wonderful promise contained in it. Yes, we’d give it a try. We’d pray about it.
It took only a few pages of the Book of Mormon to convince me that it was true. It’s true! This is the word of God! And so, each morning at 6:00 I would take my cup of coffee out on the back steps of the house in the cool morning air and read until the children woke up. How forceful were the words! Who could ever deny, after reading this book, that it was the word of God? It is the word of God! What a feeling of excitement, of discovery, of awe, of warmth, of wonder.

Ellen was a young girl who really gained an understanding of repentance. While at the store, she took an item without paying for it. But when she got home, she felt miserable. She confided in her mother: “I’m so sorry I took it; will you take it back for me?”
Her mother said, “I can’t repent for you, Ellen. You must repent yourself. You will have to take it back and say you are sorry.”
It was hard, but she did it. “This is my first repentance,” Ellen said. “I’m glad I know how to make things right.”

Matti and Kirsti Salmi exemplify this combination of faith with Finnish resolve. They live in the west coast city of Kemi, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Bothnia, less than one hundred kilometers below the Arctic Circle. In 1988, the Salmis became the first Finnish couple to serve a mission in their own land.

Kirsti had joined the Church in 1973 in Kuopio, after the missionaries taught her the gospel that “sounded familiar and true, especially after reading the Book of Mormon.” Matti was forty-eight when, in 1978, the elders brought “an undeniably strong spirit with them.” And he too was baptized. The two met in the summer of 1981 at the Swiss Temple.

“How glad we were for our proselyting mission call,” says Matti. “Within the first week of our mission, we met and taught our first people to be converted. By the end of the month they were baptized; then came another and another.”

“Even when people weren’t baptized,” adds Kirsti, “we never felt we taught in vain. On the other side, when some things are clearer, many of those will accept.”

Their work brought three young converts in Savonlinna, the beautiful site of the nation’s annual opera festivals. The city’s setting is dramatic, on a large archipelago in the middle of the largest of Finland’s 180,000 lakes. “We so enjoyed our work in that lovely setting,” says Brother Salmi. “The members there are devoted to the gospel and freely helped us share it.”

According to the Salmis, “teaching eternal principles together and sharing love for others deepened and strengthened our marriage more than anything we could think of.”

At a young age, Sister Cristina B. Franco learned that if she had a question, she could turn to Heavenly Father in prayer for an answer.
“I remember going to my mom when I was 11 or so and asking her a doctrinal question,” she said. “She answered my question but told me, ‘You don’t have to take my word for it.’ So I prayed and asked my Heavenly Father if it was true.”
Her prayer was answered, and from then on she knew she had a Heavenly Father who loved her and would answer her prayers.

To Joseph Fielding Smith, “family is the most important organization in time or in eternity.”7 He was raised in a family governed by love, faith, high moral standards, and diligent work ethic, and he sought consistently to bring those same principles into his own family. (See chapters 4, 15, and 16 of Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Fielding Smith.)
He married Louie Emily Shurtliff in the Salt Lake Temple in 1898. One year later he was called on a mission to Great Britain for two years and was loyally supported by his wife. Upon his return, the two resumed their lives together and were blessed with the births of two daughters. Sadly, during a difficult third pregnancy Louie passed away.
In his sorrow Joseph prayed, “Help me, I pray Thee, to so live that I shall be worthy to meet her in eternal glory, to be united again with her, never again to be separated. … Help me to rear my precious babies that they shall remain pure and spotless throughout their lives.”8
At the urging of his father, the bereaved father of two prayerfully sought for a wife and a mother for his young children. His righteous desires were blessed in having Ethel Georgina Reynolds brought into his life. They were married in November 1908 in the Salt Lake Temple. This marvelous woman became the mother of Joseph’s first two daughters and later gave birth to nine additional children.

On one occasion her fervent prayer was actually interrupted because the answer came so quickly. She told of the time when, with four little children under four years of age, she was called to be the ward Relief Society president. It was a frightening experience for her. She felt inadequate. She was concerned about her relationship with the other sisters who were all older and more experienced. She was new in the ward. She told of the great expectations the bishop had when he called her and outlined some of the special challenges in that ward. She felt the tremendous responsibility but knew that if the Lord called her there would be a way provided for her to fulfill this assignment. The first meeting was to be held in her tiny, modest apartment, with makeshift furniture and four small children. Her husband was at school, and he wouldn’t be there to tend the children. She spoke of her desire to establish a trusting relationship during that first meeting and to share a spirit of love and harmony that would set a foundation for the future. She felt this just couldn’t be accomplished if she had to keep running to the bedroom to hush crying children.
She planned the entire day very carefully and had everything ready for this special meeting. “I had everything done,” she said. “Then I bathed the children, hoping they would go right to sleep. Well,” she continued with increased intensity in her voice, “they didn’t. After their baths they seemed to get new life and energy. There wasn’t a thing I could do to settle those children down. All four of them were in one bedroom, so they just kept each other fired up.” With only 15 minutes before the meeting was to begin, this young mother, full of faith and anxious to serve the Lord effectively, went into her bedroom, closed the door, and knelt down to pray. She told her Heavenly Father that she wanted the sisters to feel his Spirit and to feel her spirit. She explained how she really did want to serve him and to make the Relief Society one the sisters would enjoy. She told the Lord about the problem with her four small children.
“When I knelt down to pray, it was just like bedlam all over, but right in the middle of my prayer, all of a sudden, it became quiet. It shocked me so much, I don’t think I even finished my prayers. That’s how surprised I was.” She immediately hurried into the bedroom to find, to her surprise, each child in a deep sleep. “All four of them,” she emphasized. “It was amazing, and I just knew that my prayer had been answered right on the spot.” Sister Asay recalls with humble gratitude the spirit of the meeting that evening. She described it as a time when “the Lord was there to bless us. I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to a group of women than I was on that occasion.”

While serving in the Samoa Mission, Elders Brigham Smoot and Alva Butler were assigned to take the restored gospel to the islands of Tonga. Upon their arrival in 1891, they held an audience with King George Tupou I, who granted them permission to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. With encouraging prospects, more missionaries were called to the islands and were anxiously engaged in spreading the gospel. Unfortunately, the growth of the Church was not as fruitful in Tonga as in the other Polynesian islands of Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Samoa. In 1897 the missionaries were ordered to return to Samoa, and the few converts in Tonga were left without Church leadership for a time.
In 1891, Elders Brigham Smoot and Alva Butler met with King George Tupou I and received permission to preach the gospel among his people.
Meeting the king of Tonga by Clark Kelley Price © IRI
“Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, … remember those who are upon the isles of the sea?” (2 Nephi 29:7).
The Lord did not forget the Saints in the island kingdom of Tonga. In 1907, Elders Heber J. McKay and W. O. Facer arrived in Neiafu, Vava‘u, where they started a branch and a small school. Soon missionary work began to prosper, and several branches and Church schools were established throughout the islands over the next few years.
As in other parts of the world, the Church in Tonga had its share of opposition, but this time the gospel was here to stay. As missionary work flourished, Church leaders were called from among the local Tongan members so that when foreigners were evacuated, as during World War II, the Church could continue to thrive.
As the gospel spread throughout the islands, various Church schools were established. In 1947 the Church leased a large piece of land and began building a new school, Liahona College, now known as Liahona High School.
Dedicated in 1953 by Elder LeGrand Richards (1886–1983) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, it was to become a “guiding light” to all who would enter, and it was to prepare young people to become leaders and to influence others for good. Present also at the dedication was Queen Salote Tupou III, who endorsed the school as an instrument for building a “Christian civilization” that unites people of all walks of life. Since the school’s establishment, thousands of Liahona High School graduates have served as missionaries, Church leaders, and prominent community leaders.
Today there are two Church-sponsored high schools in Tonga: Liahona High School, on the main island of Tongatapu, and Saineha High School, on the island of Vava‘u. There are also five Church-sponsored middle schools: three in Tongatapu, one in ‘Eua, and one in Ha‘apai.
When President David O. McKay (1873–1970) and his wife, Emma Ray, visited Tonga in 1955, the Saints treated them like royalty. This was the first visit of a Church President to the islands. During their short visits to Tongatapu and Vava‘u, they held meetings with the members and felt of their love and devotion as Tongans performed music and dances and gave speeches and feasts. During President McKay’s visit to the Saints in Vava‘u, he was inspired to reveal that he had seen a vision of “a temple on one of these islands, where the members of the Church may go and receive the blessings of the temple of God.” One member recorded the Tongans’ response: “The entire congregation burst into tears.”1
Nearly 30 years later, in August 1983, the Nuku‘alofa Tonga Temple was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008), then a counselor in the First Presidency. I remember as a teenage girl how Latter-day Saints from the outer islands and Tongans from overseas came for the auspicious occasion. I was privileged to attend one of the dedicatory sessions and be part of the choir. I remember the warm feeling I felt when I heard President Hinckley speak, and I knew then that he was called of God. When we sang “Hosanna Anthem,” I understood too how much the Lord loves His children.
The Savior has always remembered the people on the isles of the sea, and on that day President McKay’s prophecy was fulfilled.
Because of the increasing Church growth in Tonga, the temple was closed for about two years for renovation. Among other work, rooms were enlarged, a sealing room was added, and Polynesian motifs were added to walls and ceilings.
At the beginning of 2007, my husband and I were called to produce a cultural celebration for the rededication of the temple. The event was to be held on November 3, a day before the rededication sessions.
Our aim was to involve as many youth as possible from the stakes in Tongatapu and to come up with a presentation that would spiritually prepare the Saints for the temple dedication the next day. The event would be broadcast and televised live to the outer islands as well as to Tongan stakes around the globe, so this was a mighty task.
The production was titled “The Treasure That Lasts.” It consisted of cultural dances from Tonga, Hawaii, Tahiti, New Zealand, Fiji, and Samoa. The story line was that of a couple who, having lost their young child, searched the many Polynesian islands for a treasure that would appease their loss. Although they found gifts at each island, none could soothe their pain. When they returned to Tonga, they were introduced to the gospel by missionaries and learned of “the treasure that lasts”—eternal families and the blessing of someday being reunited with their child who had passed away.
During the week of the rededication, it rained heavily. At our final rehearsal, on November 2, the skies were overcast. I asked the youth to return to their homes and pray for good weather so they would be able to perform for Tonga and for those who would be watching via satellite, especially the prophet. That night it rained hard, and the next morning the weather was still foreboding.
On Saturday evening, 3,000 young people gathered at Teufaiva Stadium to hear from Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who had been sent to rededicate the temple due to President Hinckley’s frail health. I will never forget the performance. Everything fell into place. The weather was perfect, the sound system that had malfunctioned earlier was excellent, and those young men and young women danced their hearts out.
We had witnessed a miracle. Heavenly Father heard the prayers of His children and kept the rain away. At the same time, we were able to set the tone for the temple dedication the next day, reminding members that eternal families are the treasure that lasts and that temples are built to bring such blessings to pass.
Today the Church continues to grow in Tonga, and leadership positions are held by native members. Chapels dot the islands, and the increase of missionaries is hastening the work. The Church schools are firmly established and continue to prepare valiant missionaries, future leaders, and worthy mothers and fathers.
The Saints are no longer required to make that long journey by boat to the main island for general conference. Instead, technology has enabled members to remain within their stakes to watch general conference and the area conferences broadcast from New Zealand.
Amid the turmoil of changes arriving on Tonga’s shores, the Saints continue their legacy of faith. They are a people who were committed to God 175 years ago. They are a people who today continue to dedicate their lives and all that they have to the Lord.

They never told us any of this in the Missionary Training Center,” was all I could think of as I followed my companion down a dismal Düsseldorf side street, shuffling my frozen feet through the dirty snow as I went.
Less than a week before, I had left the Missionary Training Center after two intense but glorious months filled with grammar and vocabulary, discussions and scriptures, and a growing recognition of the workings of the Spirit. Still ringing in my ears were countless stories from teachers and General Authorities of the immeasurable joy that awaited me in the mission field and of the way lives would change because of the message I carried.
As I tracted that day I felt betrayed. The only changed life I could see was my own: changed from the comfort of Arizona sunshine to the misery of a German winter and from the freedom of my pre-mission existence to a life-style of exhausting physical work and infinite restrictions.
I wondered where all the joy could be as we climbed endless staircases to talk to people who didn’t want to talk to us. I wondered too, how the truth could possibly make a difference in the lives of those who shut their doors before hearing a complete sentence. Most of all I wondered where the promised Spirit was: the Spirit that softened the hearts of men like Alma and Saul, that guided missionaries like Ammon and Aaron to proclaim the right words to the right people, and that gave messengers like Abinadi and Samuel the Lamanite the strength of conviction and love for the people to carry on despite all persecution and rejection.
I felt no love for the people, no joy in the work, and no Spirit to comfort or inspire me. All I felt was an unfamiliar bitterness, and an aloneness I never knew existed.
As I trudged along, fighting back tears, I turned my thoughts to home, hoping to ease my desperation for even a second. In that frustrated, confused moment, a single picture unfolded in my mind. I saw my parents kneeling at their bedside, heads bowed and brows furrowed in prayer. Their words were for me. “Dear Father, bless our daughter. Keep her from discouragement and lead her in thy paths.”
As that picture faded, a hundred others tumbled one after the other into its place—pictures of six brothers and a sister; of relatives, friends, and ward members all bowed in prayer for me. I glanced at my watch and realized that it was early morning at home and that those earnest prayers were being said right then. And I knew, with undeniable clarity, that they were being answered right then as a feeling of love and warmth dissolved every negative emotion from my soul. I sensed a powerful, glowing triangle, linking home and heaven and me.
I knew then, with a witness that comes only from the Spirit I had sought, that I was a part of a work not my own, but that of a wise and loving Father who sent his Son to show me the way. “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Snow still falls and doors still shut, but weekly letters bring a renewed assurance as I read “You are in our prayers,” for I know that each of those prayers ascends to the Source of all love and distills daily upon every servant in His vineyard.

It was midnight, December. Outside my parents’ bedroom window, snow fell lightly, softly, beautifully. The earth was covered with a layer of white like a shroud. I sat on a chair next to my mother’s bed watching the snow. The house was silent. The only sound was my mother’s breathing. Her breath came in such long intervals I wondered how anyone could live on so little air. I realized how close death was for her.
Early in the fall, after four years of chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and surgery my mother came home and said, “Enough, I won’t go back.”
In the following months she grew thinner and weaker and the pain she felt seemed to increase every hour. It was all so gradual, like watching summer turn to fall and fall turn to winter, but with a terrible twist. My mother had always taken care of herself, eating right and exercising, but by Thanksgiving she was too weak to take more than a few steps.
In the first week of December, when the powerful drugs my father gave her with an injection began to wear off, the pain would leave her screaming. Something in some untouchable secret part of me began to unravel.
A few weeks later she slipped mercifully into a coma, and then we took turns sitting with her day and night. We didn’t want her to be alone when she died. Somehow all of us felt she knew we were there.
Sitting with her in the night it seemed a darkness settled over me. How do I explain what I felt? I never realized anything could reach me so deeply.
What I felt sitting with mother was much more terrible and darker than what I felt under the ice. This thing cracked the very bones of who I am, and I knew I would never be the same again. It’s not death that hurt this way. Death is hard but I could accept it as a natural process, something which happens to all of us. What hurt and what challenged everything I thought and believed and felt was watching someone I love suffer incredible pain for months. It’s an age-old question, an ancient nightmare rune. How can God let this happen? At midnight, at one o’clock and two o’clock, with the weight of this question a darkness settled over me like snow covering the earth out the window, and I felt the faith and belief I had slipping through my hands like water.
A few weeks later, just before Christmas, my mother died. It was a good funeral, but there was no answer to the question burning inside me. For months I moved through life an awake somnambulist. Why? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why does God allow it to happen?

Illustrations by Maryn Roos
I’ve got your science test scores here. Our new student, Mandy, is the only one who scored 100 percent.
If you want to make a friend, be one.
Hi. Your name’s Audrey, isn’t it? Is something wrong?
I flunked the test. And my dad says if I don’t get my grades up, I can’t have tennis lessons.
Ouch! That’s rough. Umm, listen … would you like to study together sometime? Maybe I could help.
You’d do that for me?
Sure. Why not?
Maybe you can teach me to play tennis. It looks fun.
Yeah, I think you’d really like it.

World War II was a time of great spiritual turmoil for me. I had left my home in Brigham City, Utah, with only embers of a testimony, and I felt the need for something more. Virtually our whole senior class in a matter of weeks was on its way to the war zone. While stationed on the island of Ie Shima, just north of Okinawa, Japan, I struggled with doubt and uncertainty. I wanted a personal testimony of the gospel. I wanted to know!
During one sleepless night, I left my tent and entered a bunker which had been formed by lining up 50-gallon fuel drums filled with sand and placed one on top of the other to form an enclosure. There was no roof, and so I crawled in, looked up at the star-filled sky, and knelt to pray.
Almost mid-sentence it happened. I could not describe to you what happened if I were determined to do so. It is beyond my power of expression, but it is as clear today as it was that night more than 65 years ago. I knew it to be a very private, very individual manifestation. At last I knew for myself. I knew for a certainty, for it had been given to me. After some time, I crawled from that bunker and walked, or floated, back to my bed. I spent the rest of the night in a feeling of joy and awe.
Far from thinking I was someone special, I thought that if such a thing came to me, that it could come to anyone. I still believe that. In the years that have followed, I have come to understand that such an experience is at once a light to follow and a burden to carry.

I listened recently to a speaker in our ward sacrament meeting. For many years he had served as a bishop and in many other capacities. But he spoke of a wonderful assignment that he and his wife recently had to nurture a new convert who had come into the Church, a young mother with three children. They taught her regularly, once a week. They built her testimony. They taught her the gospel in all its various aspects. They encouraged her with the assignments she had in the ward. They were always there to answer her questions, to enlighten her, to bring understanding of some doctrine that was unclear. They had done this until she and her children had strength to move with security on their own. The young mother and her children have now moved to another area. But this woman, who became the beneficiary of their interest, continues to write to them with expressions of love and appreciation.

It took one year to build concrete steps down a volcanic cliffside to the swimming hole and the beautiful waterfall below. Four boys worked on this project. They had two picks, two crowbars, and one sledgehammer, and they worked every night after school and every Saturday for six months. Little by little, they chipped the rock away until they had a pathway wide enough to support some concrete clear to the bottom of the waterfall. It took them another six months of backbreaking labor to make the steps. They hauled sand from the beach in an old pickup truck. They added cement and took gravel from the river and mixed the concrete by hand in a shallow pocket hollowed out of a large stone. Then they shoveled the wet concrete into buckets and lowered them down the cliff with ropes attached to a long bamboo pole. One step at a time they worked until the trail was completed.

I have always admired my great-grandmother Mary Bommeli’s devotion to sharing the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Her family was taught by missionaries in Switzerland when she was 24.

After being baptized, Mary desired to join the Saints in America, so she made her way from Switzerland to Berlin and found work with a woman who employed her to weave cloth for the family’s clothing. Mary lived in a servant’s room and set up her loom in the home’s living area.

At that time, teaching the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was illegal in Berlin. But Mary found she could not keep from sharing the things she had learned. The woman of the house and her friends would gather around the loom to hear Mary teach. She spoke of the appearance of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to Joseph Smith, the visitation of angels, and the Book of Mormon. Remembering the accounts of Alma, she taught about the doctrine of the Resurrection. She testified that families can be reunited in the celestial kingdom.

Mary’s enthusiasm to share the doctrine of the restored gospel soon caused trouble. It was not long before the police took Mary off to jail. On the way, she asked the policeman for the name of the judge she was to appear before the next morning. She also asked about his family and if he was a good father and husband. The policeman described the judge as a man of the world.

In the jail, Mary requested a pencil and some paper. She spent the night writing a letter to the judge, bearing witness to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as described in the Book of Mormon, discussing the spirit world, and explaining repentance. She suggested that the judge would need time to reflect on his life before facing final judgment. She wrote that she knew he had much to repent of, much which would deeply sadden his family and bring him great sorrow. In the morning, when she had finished her letter, she gave it to the policeman and asked him to deliver it to the judge, and he agreed to do so.

Later, the policeman was summoned by the judge to his office. The letter Mary had written was irrefutable evidence that she was teaching the doctrine of the restored gospel and, by so doing, breaking the law. However, it wasn’t long before the policeman returned to Mary’s cell. He told her that all charges were dismissed and that she was free to go. Her teaching the doctrine of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ had caused her to be cast into jail. And her declaring the doctrine of repentance to the judge got her cast out of jail.

Mary Bommeli’s teaching did not end with her release. The record of her words passed true doctrine down through generations yet unborn. Her belief that even a new convert could teach the doctrine of Jesus Christ has ensured that her descendants will be strengthened in their own battles.

Then, one day, I was introduced to Myriam, a young woman who, at the time, I could only describe as “different” from others I knew. She radiated an inner beauty. We began to go out together and we became very good friends. I fell in love with her.
We had a very open communication and agreed about everything—except religion. One afternoon after discussing Joseph Smith (whom I could not accept as a prophet) and the Book of Mormon (about which I was very skeptical), she told me that she had been called to serve as a missionary in her stake.
Selfishly, I was angry that she had accepted the call and I told her that she must reconsider her decision or I would end our relationship. I was overwhelmed by her calm and self-assured response. She told me that if I really loved her I would try to understand and accept her decision and, most of all, support it. She also invited me to attend her church and try to determine for myself whether or not it was true.
As I pondered the consequences of losing the woman I loved, and as I saw how important Myriam’s religion was to her, I thought that the least I could do was to find out what motivated her decision—a decision I could not fully understand.
The light of truth in my life increased as I entered the chapel the following Sunday. I had my first surprise as soon as I walked through the door. A tall, blond man welcomed me very kindly, and introduced himself as the bishop of the ward. Not more than a few seconds later, several other members greeted me.
I was amazed that so many people could express such sincere love at our first contact. Then, as I sat through the meeting, I heard people talk about things of the spirit with a conviction and an eloquence that I had never heard before.
I had not been interested in investigating other religions because they had all seemed so mysterious. But as I continued to attend church with Myriam, the questions I had about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were all answered. The light grew and finally the path led me to baptism and to a temple marriage with the woman who first showed me the way.
As a youth, it seemed that there were so many paths in life to choose. Many of them could have led to unhappiness. I can never repay the Lord for the special woman he put in my life to show me which path led to the eternal light of truth.

Happy music played as Jaechan and Mom got up from their seats in the school gym. Bunches of bright balloons floated along the walls as the other kids and their parents talked excitedly.
Tomorrow was the first day of school, and in South Korea new students always went to a special program to celebrate the start of school. As he listened to the songs and speakers, Jaechan felt excited. He couldn’t wait to start learning!
After the program, Mom and Jaechan walked down the school halls. When they got to his classroom, Jaechan met his teacher. She seemed really nice.
Later Mom and Jaechan walked outside into the warm spring sunshine. Even the sun and the sky seemed happy for school to start.
The next morning, Mom walked Jaechan to the school gate. She hugged him tight. “I love you,” she said. “Have a good first day.”
“I will,” Jaechan said. “I love you too!” He waved goodbye and turned to walk to his classroom, just like they had practiced.
As Jaechan walked down the hall, he started to worry. Is this the right way? Jaechan stopped and looked around. He turned and walked down a different hall. Soon everything felt all mixed up.
Jaechan took a deep breath. He knew he had been in this hallway yesterday. He kept walking and went through a big set of doors.
But Jaechan didn’t see his classroom, with desks and friends and his nice teacher. He saw the gym. And now there were no people or balloons. It was just a big empty room.
Tears filled Jaechan’s eyes. He tried not to panic, but he was scared. He didn’t know how to find his classroom. He knelt to pray. “Heavenly Father, I’m lost. Please help Mom to come find me and help me get to my class.”
Jaechan stood up. He took a few more deep breaths. Then he waited.
A few minutes later, Mom came around the corner. “Jaechan!” She ran to him and held him close. “What happened?”
Jaechan burst into tears. He was so relieved to see Mom. “I couldn’t find my classroom,” he said. “So I prayed that you would come find me.”
Mom wiped the tears from his cheeks. “I’m glad you said a prayer,” she said. “I was on my way home. Then I had a feeling that I should turn around and make sure you found your classroom. When you weren’t there, I looked all over. Then I found you!”
Jaechan held Mom’s hand as they walked down the right hallway. Jaechan had stopped crying. He knew Heavenly Father had answered his prayer, and everything was OK. When they got to the classroom, he heard the other kids inside laughing and having fun.
“Jaechan! We are so happy to see you,” Jaechan’s teacher said as he walked in.
“Thanks,” Jaechan said with a small bow. He gave Mom one more hug. It was going to be a good first day of school after all.