Gospel Story Finder

“The bus is coming! Get your coat on!” Jacob’s mother called. Opening the closet, Jacob looked for his red, black, and blue coat. He had been given the coat for Christmas, and his mother had written his name on the inside of one of the sleeves with a marker.

“Hurry, Jake!” Mom called again.

“I can’t find my coat!” Jacob cried. “Where is it?”

Mom hurried to the closet. “Just put this jacket on,” she told him. “We’ll find your coat tomorrow. There’s no time now.”

Jacob wished the jacket would somehow magically turn into his coat as he slid his arms into the sleeves. He looked down at the blue jacket with disappointment. It wasn’t nearly as awesome as his Christmas coat.

“Don’t worry,” Mom said, as she smiled with encouragement. “We’ll find it later.”

Jacob tried to smile back, but he couldn’t. His heart felt tight and heavy. He hated to lose things that he really liked.

The next day, Jacob woke up earlier and went through the coat closet. He lifted the vacuum out, picked up the coats and jackets that had fallen on the floor, and checked every hanger, but couldn’t find the missing Christmas coat.

He frowned as he reached for the blue jacket again. Where could his coat be? He had looked everywhere. It was as if it had been swallowed by an invisible snow monster.

As Jacob walked to the bus with his head hanging, a thought occurred to him: What if it wasn’t lost? What if it was stolen? Had he left it at school and forgotten? He thought hard and decided that the possibility of his coat being stolen was very likely.

During the next few days, Jacob stopped looking for his coat and instead started looking for who the thief might be. Everyone became a suspect, and it wasn’t long before he found someone to blame. When Mom picked him up from school, he noticed a boy his age walking to the bus with his Christmas coat on!

“There’s my coat!” he cried, pointing an accusing finger at the boy heading for the bus. “Let’s go get it!” Jacob reached for the door.

“Wait a minute,” Mom said. “Maybe it’s just a coat that looks like yours.”

Jacob shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone wear a coat like mine until today. There’s no way it could be anyone else’s coat but mine.” He turned around and looked at the boy who was boarding the bus. “He’s the same size as me. I’ll take it and turn the sleeve inside out, and my name will be there. You’ll see.”

Mom shook her head. “I don’t know, Jake. I would hate to find out that it really isn’t yours. We better go home and check really thoroughly one more time.”

As the van pulled away, Jacob’s heart sank. He had looked everywhere thoroughly. He knew his Christmas coat wasn’t at home. His coat was on that boy!

When they arrived home, Mom went with him to the coat closet. Together, they systematically began removing everything inside—the vacuum, the coats on the floor, and boxes. At the back of the closet was a box that Jacob hadn’t seen since Christmas. It was filled with Christmas decorations and still smelled like cinnamon sticks and pinecones.

After Mom lifted the box out, she asked, “Jake, would you crawl in there and see if you can see anything else?”

Jacob crawled into the closet on his hands and knees. “My coat!” he cried. “I found my coat!” It had been well hidden by the box. As he emerged from the closet, he turned the sleeve inside out, just to be sure. His name was clearly printed on the inside. Jacob held it up for Mom to see.

She nodded her head. “I am so glad that you didn’t accuse that boy. Can you imagine how awful you would have felt, and how awful you would have made the other boy feel?”

Jacob’s smiling face changed to a quiet, thoughtful one. He hadn’t worried about what might happen if he accused someone falsely. His only worry had been finding the coat or the person who took it. As he looked at his mom, relief spread through his body. He was glad she had insisted that they check the closet one more time.

“Thanks, Mom,” Jacob said.

“I’m glad you found your coat, and I think you found something else too,” she replied.

“What?”

“You found that it’s best to be sure you’re right before accusing someone of doing wrong.”

Jacob nodded. “And that’s something worth finding!”

In 1857–58, President Young’s faith was put to a severe test as thousands of U.S. troops marched to Utah as an “escort” for Alfred Cumming, who was sent by the U.S. government to replace Brigham Young as governor. Some have argued that Governor Young should have immediately sought a political solution. Logically, compromise and accommodation seemed the only policy that might preserve peace.

President Young felt otherwise. The Saints’ experiences in Missouri had taught him what enemies can do when backed by military authority. Confident that if the Saints did all in their power, the Lord would prevent disaster, Governor Young declared martial law and mobilized the territorial militia to do everything short of bloodshed to slow down the advancing troops. Grasslands and supply wagons were burned, provisions and cattle confiscated, and the advance units harassed day and night. Still the troops came—until the timely arrival of heavy snows forced the army into winter camp near Fort Bridger, roughly a hundred miles from the Mormon settlement in the Salt Lake Valley. 21

That did not end the army’s advance, of course. By spring, soldiers wanted revenge for a miserable winter. Facing a renewed and perhaps even more dangerous threat, Brigham Young ordered his men to prepare to oppose the army but added the promise that “not a gun will be fired, not a man slain.” One of his commanders, a man who viewed President Young as the Lord’s mouthpiece, replied that “he knew it was true but he did not believe a word of it.” Given the circumstances, bloodshed seemed inevitable. 22

Even as troops advanced toward the city, Brigham Young and governor-designate Alfred Cumming, aided by Thomas L. Kane, the non-Mormon friend of the Saints who had risked his life to reach Utah in the winter, concluded a peaceful accord. Without incident, the army marched peacefully through a deserted Salt Lake City to an isolated encampment 30 miles away. U.S. Army Captain Jesse Gove summarized the toll of the Utah War: “killed, none; wounded, none; fooled, everybody” 23—everybody except Brigham Young, who, throughout, had an inner assurance that the encounter would not result in calamity.

As we raise a hand to sustain a person, we commit to work for whatever purpose of the Lord that person is called to accomplish. When our children were small, my wife was called to teach the little children in our ward. I not only raised my hand to sustain her, but I also prayed for her and then asked permission to help her. The lessons I received of appreciation for what women do and of the Lord’s love for children still bless my family and my life.

The priest flipped on a recently installed electric light, and as the uncovered bulb swung gently from its cord I looked around the shadowy room it illuminated. The floors were concrete, and except for two ancient and sagging cabinets against the wall, all the room contained was an unsteady wooden table and chairs. As the priest opened the shuttered windows for us, we saw a mixture of wild shrubs and flowers and could hear a donkey braying somewhere close by.
My husband, George, who had spent many hours here on previous trips, looked around with a smile of enormous satisfaction and went with the priest to an adjoining room to get the record books. I was left alone in the room, trying to get used to what I was seeing.
So—we had really made it after all! I thought of how impossible a trip to Spain to do genealogical research had seemed in the first place, how much planning it had taken to assemble a clientele, the weeks of agonizing over finances, the prayers and tears over leaving the children, and the lists and lists of things to do.
George was soon back with the records, and with excitement showed me the heavy volumes filled with page after page of thick parchment where priests had been noting marriages, baptisms, and deaths since the 1500s. They were impressive, and I settled down to help George search them, hoping that his enthusiasm would sustain me.
Unfortunately, as the hours and days wore on, I found that what came so naturally to George didn’t to me. He could spend hour after hour studying over the pages, totally oblivious to his physical surroundings. But I found that I noticed—and responded to—every detail. The wooden chair became unbearable to sit in after a couple of hours, the shadows from the light bulb made it hard to read, and it was so cold that my back ached at night from shivering.
My reactions were both embarrassing and frustrating to me. George had always found genealogical research stimulating, and I had prayed that the experience would be just as exciting for me. But the long, cold, stiff hours seemed endless.
Finally it came time to start a new line in a different parish. Since this was a new family line for us, George searched through the marriage book while I worked on baptisms and births. Although I was looking for the children of three different couples, I found myself particularly intrigued by one family in the records. I began to feel like I knew the mother as I found the record of each of her children’s births. The spacing of her children was similar to mine, and I reminisced about my own pregnancies and the reactions of our children to each new baby. I had been away from home for two weeks now, and the memories of a home full of children’s noises, soggy kisses, and exuberant hugs were sweet to me.
Then George suggested that I work on death records for a while. Since I was still in the same period, the names I found were familiar to me, and I noted the deaths of several of the older family members. But I was not expecting so many younger deaths, and tears of sympathy filled my eyes when I recognized the name of one of my “friend’s” children who had died at the age of three. When I turned the page and found, eight days later, the death record of her six-year-old, my heart lurched and the tears spilled.
I thought again of my own little ones, exactly the same age—the feel of their little bodies nestled in my lap, the sound of their laughter and voices in the house. The distance of an ocean gave me compassion, and I continued to cry and empathize as I turned the pages.
But when I found the death of her husband six months’ time later, I was so upset I had to stop writing, and even George noticed my sobs. “I just can’t understand why she had to go through this,” I told him. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
And then suddenly a true understanding of phrases I had been hearing and saying my entire life came to me, and feelings and thoughts rushed together. “Dear friend,” I thought, “that’s why I’m here. Your suffering wasn’t without purpose; there is something I can do for you. Thanks to a loving Savior and a temple of God, I can help give you back your husband and your children. They can be yours forever now, just as I have mine.”
The tears kept running down my cheeks, but they were tears of peace and joy, a humble gratitude for temples and families and a chance to do something to help.
Since returning from Spain, going to the temple is a deeper experience for me. As I check the name pinned to my sleeve, I feel a respect for this woman. She coped with physical deprivations and a closeness with death that I have never had to experience. And although I am not able to share with her my hot water or shampoo, or the medicine I so nonchalantly give my sick children, I can share that which means the most to me, the blessings of the gospel.

When I was a mission president in South Africa in 2005, I felt a very strong prompting by the Spirit to move our Norwegian missionary, Elder Joseph Henriksen, all the way across the mission—in between normal transfer dates—to replace a missionary who needed to have surgery. I had just interviewed Elder Henriksen in Queenstown, a two-hour flight plus a two-hour drive away from Cape Town, and on the flight home the Spirit kept telling me that he was the one who needed to move into the Strand Branch and replace the elder needing surgery.
As soon as we returned to the mission home, I called Elder Henriksen and asked him to pack his bags. . . . We picked him up [the next day] and talked to him about his new area, where they hadn’t had a baptism for 18 months. I explained to Elder Henriksen that he was the one the Lord had selected to be there and to make a difference in that branch. We introduced him to his new companion, who drove him another hour to Strand, a beautiful beach area on the Atlantic Ocean, about 50 miles south of Cape Town.
The first week in his new area, Elder Henriksen was thumbing through the area book and found a referral that hadn’t been contacted in the seaside town of Hermanus, another hour south of Strand, but in their assigned area. There was a small branch in Hermanus with about twenty active members, but he and his companion were the closest missionaries. Not wanting to waste time, but feeling prompted to contact the referral, he and his companion looked up the addresses of all the members in Hermanus so they could visit them as well as contacting the referral. Then they set aside a day to visit Hermanus.
When that day came, Elder Henriksen and his companion taught a first lesson in the home they were referred to, then began visiting the members. They knocked on the door of a member lady who expressed great surprise at seeing elders at her door. “I didn’t think we had missionaries in Hermanus anymore!” she exclaimed. Then she told them it was the greatest day of her life. She had just received in the mail a 300-year history of her ancestors. She was excited to be able to do temple work for hundreds of family members who had gone on before. Then she told them that her only problem was that she couldn’t understand any of it because it was written in Norwegian.
Elder Henriksen looked at her, smiled and said, “I’m Norwegian!” What a tender mercy for the Lord to inspire a mission president to suddenly transfer the only Norwegian missionary on the African continent to the area where this dear sister lived and needed a Norwegian translator. While he served there, he was able to visit her once a week and complete the translation. This experience strengthened the faith of everyone involved.

Whatever Ricardo does, he does with enthusiasm. This eight-year-old from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic plays baseball with the energy of a professional. He joins his friend and his brother to race toy trucks or stage an imaginary battle between dinosaurs. He gets excited when his mother invites him into the kitchen to cook tostones (fried plantains).
It takes time to make his favorite treat, tostones, but Ricardo thinks it is worth every minute. He and his mother carefully peel and slice the plantains, which look like bananas but are not sweet. They fry them in hot oil, let them cool, and carefully pat them dry. Then comes Ricardo’s favorite part. He places each slice in a wooden press and smashes it flat. Then each slice is fried again. He particularly likes to eat tostones with sausage.

For Camber Page, 17, of Macclenny, Florida, writing her testimony was a spiritual experience. She’s borne her testimony in church before, but, she says, “I get nervous, and I don’t get to say what I am really feeling.” But when she wrote her testimony, she says, “The Spirit was just coming out of me. I had time to think about it. I was able to write it down without getting up and crying and getting all emotional and shaking. I didn’t know I had believed in so much until I started writing it down. I thought, Gosh, my testimony’s stronger than I thought it was.”

On November 7, 1843, Joseph recorded that: “Mr. [Joseph M.] Cole moved the tables back into the hall, when [Willard] Richards and [William W.] Phelps called to report that the noise in the school disturbed them in the progress of writing the History. I gave orders that Cole must look out for another place, as the history must continue, and not be disturbed, as there were but few subjects that I have felt a greater anxiety about than my history, which has been a very difficult task, on account of the death of my best clerks, and the apostasy of others” (History of the Church, 6:66).

Sister Melbourne was grouchy. There was no other way to describe her. Just the other day I heard her telling the bishop that children took too much time in testimony meeting. I walked out of the chapel feeling very angry.
My anger didn’t last long, however. It was December, and Christmas was in the air. Excitement filled me right up to the top of my head. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. My family began singing Christmas carols on the way home from church, just to let some of the excitement out.
After dinner Mom and Dad called us together. We all knew what we were going to discuss. Every year, we choose a family in our ward, and we secretly take gifts and food to their house. It is one of our favorite traditions.
When we were all together, Dad said, “It’s time we decide on a family to help this year. Does anyone have a suggestion?”
When none of us said anything, Dad looked at Mom. “Maybe Mom has a suggestion. Sometimes she notices things the rest of us miss.”
Mom smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do know of someone who needs our help. We have always chosen a family with children, but this year I think we should help Sister Melbourne.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! “But, Mom,” I protested, “she’s not poor or sick, and she’s really grouchy. She doesn’t even like kids. I think we should choose someone else.”
“I agree with April,” said my older sister, Beth. “She really is grouchy. It wouldn’t be any fun doing something for her. She might even kick our gifts off her porch. Besides, she seems to have plenty of money.”
I looked at Beth gratefully. Peter spoke up. “She’s always telling me to ‘shush,’ even when I’m being quiet.”
Lynn and Josh didn’t say anything. They were too small to know Sister Melbourne.
“I know Sister Melbourne has enough money to take care of herself,” Mom said. “And I know she isn’t very pleasant to be around, but that’s exactly why I think she needs our help.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I listened as Mom continued, “Sister Melbourne has had an unhappy life. She was divorced before she moved here. She has three children who are married. They have children of their own, but they never come to see her or let her get to know her grandchildren. Perhaps she has done something to make them want to stay away. I don’t know about that, but I do know she is very lonely and unhappy. I think she needs someone to let her know she is loved. April, you weren’t quite right when you said she isn’t poor.”
“You mean she’s poor in love?” I asked.
“Yes, and sometimes it’s much more painful to be poor in love than it is to be poor in money.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes. Then Dad said, “Let’s take a vote. How many of you would like to share Christmas with Sister Melbourne this year?”
Slowly Beth’s hand went up. Lynn and Josh raised theirs. Then Peter raised his. Looking around at everyone, I reluctantly raised mine.
Mom said instead of buying gifts for Sister Melbourne from the store, we should make them. All the next week we cut out paper decorations, strung popcorn and cranberries, and made cookies and candy. We bought apples and oranges to go with the things we had made.
It was Dad’s job to get a box just the right size for our gifts and to decorate it. We carefully arranged everything inside the box and put on the lid. Dad added a huge bow on top.
We gathered around the kitchen table to have a prayer and make our final plans. In the prayer, Dad asked Heavenly Father to soften Sister Melbourne’s heart and help her receive our gift in the spirit of love with which we were giving it. I was comforted by those words, because I remembered that Beth had said Sister Melbourne might kick our gift off the porch. I had visions of cookies, candy, paper decorations, apples, oranges, and strings of popcorn and cranberries strewn all over the ground.
We put on our coats and piled into the car. Since the box was pretty big, we decided Dad would carry it to the porch. After he returned to the car, it would be my job to ring the doorbell and run before Sister Melbourne opened her door.
I could feel my heart pounding with excitement as Dad parked down the street from her house. “April and I will walk to Sister Melbourne’s house,” he said. “The rest of you must be very quiet so you don’t attract attention.” He lifted the box out of the car and motioned for me to follow him.
“Dad,” I said, “I’m afraid Sister Melbourne will catch me and get mad.”
“She’ll never catch you!” He grinned at me. “You’re the fastest runner in our family. But if you’re worried, I’ll wait for you behind those bushes on the far side of her yard. When she’s inside again, we’ll go back to the car together.”
“I’d like that,” I said, smiling gratefully.
Dad carefully set the box on the porch. I waited until he was hidden behind the bushes. Then I ran up the steps, rang the doorbell, and flew across the yard to the bushes, where I crouched down next to Dad. “Good work,” Dad whispered.
The door opened, sending a ray of light across the snow. Sister Melbourne didn’t see the box at first, but as she was about to close the door, she saw it and stopped. She stood there for a second. Then she bent down and read her name on the top. She lifted the lid, and once again she was very still. Finally she picked up the box and looked around the yard. She was smiling, but there were tears running down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she called out. “Thank you, whoever you are.”
Dad and I were quiet for a few moments after she went inside and closed the door. I whispered, “I think she really liked our present, don’t you?”
“Yes, I think she really did.”
The next Sunday as we were coming home from church, we began singing Christmas carols again. When we passed Sister Melbourne’s house, I saw our decorations in her front window, and the popcorn and cranberry strings were on a Christmas tree that hadn’t been there the week before. “I think Sister Melbourne’s getting richer,” I said.
Mom stopped singing long enough to give me a hug and say, “So are we.”

I recall a true story from our pioneer heritage that illustrates how we can choose our response to adversity. Over one hundred years ago a Swedish family who had joined the Church faced a long ocean voyage to America, a train trip from New York to Omaha, and then a trek by wagon train to Salt Lake City. During their train trip they rode in stock cars used to haul hogs. The cars were filthy and filled with hog lice. On their wagon trip across the plains, a healthy baby was born, but their three-year-old contracted cholera. During the night, the father went to a neighboring wagon to borrow a candle, but was told they couldn’t spare one. This angered him, and he fumed as he sat in the dark with his son’s limp, feverish body in his arms. The boy died that night.
The next morning the wagon master said they would hold a short funeral and bury the boy in a shallow grave. They were in Indian country and didn’t have time to do more. The father insisted on staying behind and digging a grave deep enough so the animals would not disturb the body. They experienced other hardships before they reached Salt Lake City.
Now, both the mother and the father experienced the same trials, but the father became withdrawn, cantankerous, and bitter. He stopped going to church, found fault with Church leaders. He became caught up in his own miseries, and the light of Christ grew dimmer and dimmer in his life.
On the other hand, the mother’s faith increased. Each new problem seemed to make her stronger. She became an angel of mercy—filled with empathy, compassion, and charity. She was a light to those around her. Her family gravitated toward her and looked to her as their leader. She was happy; he was miserable. (See Steve Dunn Hanson, Ensign, Feb. 1981, pp. 54–55.)

When Elder Maxwell learned in 1996 that he had leukemia, the diagnosis was discouraging. He had worked for years on making himself “willing to submit” (Mosiah 3:19) to the Lord’s will. If it was time to face death, he didn’t want to shrink from drinking his bitter cup.
But his wife, Colleen, thought he was too willing to yield. With loving directness, she said that Christ Himself earnestly pleaded first, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” Only then did He submit Himself, saying, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). Elder Maxwell saw his wife’s doctrinal insight and agreed. As a result, they pleaded together that his life might be spared. Motivated by their determination, Elder Maxwell’s doctor found a new medical treatment that prolonged his life for several years. Elder Maxwell was grateful that he was not the only theologian in their marriage.8

Every Sunday in a small town in Argentina, a group of people met under a tree to read the scriptures and learn about the gospel. Some of the people were members of the Church. But many of them hadn’t been baptized, and they really wanted to be!
They had a problem, though. They lived far away from other towns. No Church leaders had come to visit their town for some time.
Then they heard that some missionaries were in a town about four hours away. They all gave money so one man could buy a bus ticket to the town where the missionaries were. When he got there, he waited at the bus station. He thought that would be the best place to find the missionaries.
After a few hours, he saw two young men. They were the missionaries! He told them about the people in his town. So the missionaries and the mission president planned a trip to meet these people.
On the day that the mission president and the missionaries came, many people gathered together to meet them. Now those who hadn’t been baptized yet could get baptized. After teaching them the lessons, they were ready!
The closest river was very far away, so they pumped water from a well and filled up a portable swimming pool. It took three hours to fill the pool! In all, 27 women, men, and children got baptized that day. They were filled with joy!

1 I’m glad you asked for a blessing, sweetheart. Daddy’s calling Brother Simon to come help.
2 I hope you don’t mind my coming, too, Mei Lin. When I heard that one of my girls was sick, I just couldn’t stay away.
I’m glad you came.
4 Thank you, Brother Simon. Thanks, Dad. When you put your hands on my head, I could feel your love.
5 And Heavenly Father’s and Jesus’ love too. The priesthood is their power, not ours, and they’ve revealed that it must always be used with love.
6 My head feels a little better already, and I feel a lot better inside.
So do I, sweetheart.
And so do I.

In 1976, as president of the Papeete Tahiti Stake, I regularly inspected the stake’s meetinghouses. One day at noon I stopped at the chapel in Tipaerui. At the time, we had paid custodians, and there I found Mama Taamino, now in her late 60s, working as a custodian to help support her large family. She greeted me with her usual “Come and eat,” but I replied, “Mama Taamino, you are not young anymore, and for lunch all you are having is a small piece of bread, a tiny can of sardines, and a little bottle of juice? Aren’t you earning enough to have more food than this?”
She replied, “I’m saving to travel to the temple again.” My heart melted with admiration for her example of love and sacrifice. Mama Taamino traveled to the temple in New Zealand nearly 15 times—every year until the Papeete Tahiti Temple was dedicated in October 1983. At the dedication she radiated joy.

As a young college student, fifty years ago, my member friend was bold. She asked me directly the golden questions: “What do you know about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Would you like to know more?” As I learned, understood, and gained a testimony of the gospel, I wanted to share it with my family—even though I knew that many of them might not be receptive. And indeed, they were not! But my desire remains strong to be bold. I am constantly thinking of ways I can boldly but gently invite them to come unto Christ.

I remember how my father impressed the seriousness of unchastity upon my mind. He and I were standing in the railroad station in Rexburg, Idaho, in the early morning of November 12, 1920. We heard the train whistle and knew that in three minutes I would be on my way to Australia to fill a mission. In that short interval my father said to me, among other things, “My son, you are going a long way from home. But your mother and I, your brother and sisters, will be with you constantly in our thoughts and prayers, we shall rejoice with you in your successes, and we shall sorrow with you in your disappointments. When you are released and return, we shall be glad to greet you and welcome you back into the family circle. But remember this, my son, we would rather come to this station and take your body off the train in a casket than to have you come home unclean, having lost your virtue.”

I pondered that statement at the time. I did not then have the full understanding of it that my father had, but I have never forgotten it.

One day my backyard games turned into the real thing. I was digging a tar pit in the garden when my shovel clanked on something buried underground. I bent down to see what it was and I came up with a hard brown rock about the size of my fist.
I couldn’t wait to show somebody what I had, and I ran into the house calling, “A fossil! I found a fossil!”
“Take that dirty dog bone back outside,” Mom said.
So I did. I pulled some picnic benches together and set up my museum workshop. I knew just what to do because I had watched the scientists through the glass wall at the Page Museum. The equipment I needed was under the kitchen sink: a scrub brush, a towel, a container for water.
I went to work cleaning my discovery. With the brush and water I scrubbed off most of the garden soil. I dried it with a towel. It was smooth and dark brown with two bumps on one end. The other end looked like it had been broken.
It was a wonderful fossil. I played museum with it until dinnertime. This time when I took it into the house Mom didn’t say no. And the next morning she told me she had looked at my fossil while I was sleeping. “I’m sorry I called it a dog bone,” Mom said. “It really does look rather unusual.”
Then she called the page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. She described what I had found in the backyard, and the man asked her to bring it in for him to examine.
So the next Saturday our family drove to the museum. We met the man my mom had talked to on the phone. I showed him my fossil. He showed it to another man, and I thought he said, “Bison.” Then he looked at me and said, “I think you’ve found something, son.”
The man took us into a room on the other side of the glass wall. There were rows and rows of big gray drawers. He pulled open a drawer and brought out a fossil that matched mine and another one that was longer than my arm.
“You have found part of a rib bone of a Bison Antiquus,” he said. “This long one is what the entire bone looks like.”
He told me that the Bison Antiquus is an extinct relative of our American buffalo and that an ancient Indian tribe used to hunt the Bison Antiquus in what is now Southern California. I closed my eyes and tried to picture all this happening in my own backyard thousands of years ago.
“Before you leave, be sure to take a look at the skeleton of the entire Bison Antiquus in the exhibit area,” the man said.
My mom asked him what we should do with my fossil. And he said to take it home and save it, because someday I might be a paleontologist who studies fossils.
We said good-bye and he shook my hand. “Keep up the good work,” he told me.

Like most boys from Whitney, “T” had outstanding parents. His mother was noted for her sense of humor and sunny disposition. She had a unique gift for teaching a boy without criticizing him. One day on the way home from school, “T” took exception to the way his cousin George was treating Joe, “T’s” younger brother.

“I finally said, ‘If you do that once more, I’ll hit you.’ He went on teasing Joe, and as a result we got into a fight. We had quite a struggle in the dirt as well as on our feet, and I made George’s nose bleed.

“It finally ended, and George went home as we did. When I arrived home Mother noticed the blood on my hands and on my shirt and asked what had happened. Of course, I explained. She didn’t chastize me for defending my younger and smaller brother, but she did say, ‘T,’ I was going to bake some bread, but I’m right out of yeast. I want you to go over to Aunt Lulu’s (George’s mother) and get some.’ I said, ‘Mother, don’t ask me to do that after I’ve had this fight with George.’ She said, ‘That makes no difference. I need the yeast and I want you to go to your Aunt Lulu’s and get the start.’”

In having to go to his aunt’s home and face his cousin George, “T” learned more about settling disputes than a lecture could have taught him.

I thought about the summer we took Annabelle on vacation with us because we couldn’t find anyone to take care of her. It was the time we went to California to visit my Aunt Lee and Uncle Virgil. We drove through Utah on the way. It was night when we went through Salt Lake City, so we got a motel room to stay in. Mom and Jessica stayed there while Dad and I went to get us all something to eat. The man at the motel said we could let Annabelle stay in our room with us, but I wanted to take her with us in the car. She loved seeing the city lights, and I had fun watching her eyes get big and round when she got excited.
It was hot that night, so we rolled our car windows partway down. We were looking at all the lit-up places and stuff, when Dad had to jam on his brakes because the car right in front of us had stopped suddenly. Our car kind of jumped, and it scared Annabelle so much that she leaped out the window. We could see her run across the sidewalk and through the entrance to Temple Square. Dad pulled over near the curb so that I could get out and run after her. He said he’d hurry to find a parking place, then come help me find her.
The temple grounds were really pretty. Even the shadows were pretty because they were stuffed with flowers. I had to keep thinking about finding Annabelle, because my eyes kept wanting to look at other things, like the temple walls, which seemed as tall as the night. Then I glimpsed something that I just couldn’t keep from staring at. It was a big statue of the Savior, all lighted up in the night like a happy end to a sad story. I could see it through a huge window in the Visitors’ Center. I knew a little about Jesus from the Bible stories Mom and Dad read me. And there was something about that statue that made me want to know more. A feeling. A feeling about the whole place that felt as warm as the night.
I looked up through the trees at the statue as I walked closer and closer, and when I got as close as I could get, I heard a cat meow. I looked down. Annabelle was sitting right by my feet. Then Dad appeared, out of breath from running. “All’s well that ends well, huh, Caleb?” he said. I guess I didn’t say anything, because he knelt down in front of me and asked, “Is everything all right?” When I pointed up at the big statue, he gazed at it for a long time. “It’s … beautiful … , isn’t it, son?” he said in a way I hadn’t heard since the day he told me how much he loves Mom.
“Can we come back tomorrow?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Caleb. Aunt Lee is expecting us to—”
“I like the feeling here, Dad. I’d like Mom and Jessica to feel it too. Maybe we could look around in some of these buildings. And maybe we could look at the statue close up. It’s like Annabelle ran in here so that we’d come in here and … , well, …”
Dad petted Annabelle, whose eyes were big and bright in the temple ground light. Then he smiled. “I guess we are on vacation, aren’t we?”
The next morning we left Annabelle in our motel room and went to visit Temple Square. We stayed almost the whole day. Mom and Dad asked a lot of questions and told a man in the Visitors’ Center that they’d like to know more. Then, a little while after our vacation was over, two missionaries came to our home in Springfield. And a little while after that, we were all baptized into the Church.

When my mission president announced my transfer, I thought he must be punishing me. A native of France, I was serving in France and Switzerland. Now my new companion and I were called to be zone leaders in Avignon—a city where there had not been a convert baptism for many months.
My companion and I spent our first evening in Avignon discussing our situation and trying to find motivation and strength. One solution would be just wait for things to happen. But when we thought of how short our missions were, we knew that we would hate to waste precious months.
We remembered the scripture in Matthew 19:26: “With God all things are possible.” [Matt. 19:26] What if we were in this city and region for a reason? What if the people of this city were not as hopeless as we had been led to believe? What if their problems were only the missionaries’ attitudes toward them? What if the Lord would prepare a recompense commensurate with our faith, our effort, and our desire?
We decided not to pay attention to what others had said about Avignon. In our prayers, we asked the Lord to guide us to a choice soul—one whom we would be able to prepare for baptism the following month. And we promised the Lord that we would work with all our strength.
Two days later, we met and began teaching Haroun—and we baptized him exactly one month after we had made our commitment to the Lord. Haroun referred us to his neighbors who lived above his apartment, so we also began to teach the Langer family. They, too, accepted the gospel and were baptized. It is wonderful to watch the miracle of conversion in people you love.
Since the apartment building where Haroun and the Langer family lived had only two stories, with one apartment in each, we realized that their entire building was now converted to the Church! We had achieved 100 percent success there!
After four months of work, sacrifices, miracles, and blessings, the little branch in Avignon had practically doubled. The missionaries of our district had prepared fifteen people to come into the Church. Now all of the missionaries wanted to serve in that city. Its reputation had been restored. All of the bad ideas about it had changed.
A year after my mission, I attended the Swiss Temple and had the surprise and extreme joy of seeing Brother and Sister Langer and their three children there. I witnessed them kneel at the altar and be sealed as a family. Brother Eric Langer is now a high priest—and is president of the Avignon branch.
I thanked the Lord for his generosity to me. And I thanked him for enlightening my companion and me on that first evening in Avignon when we decided to work with all our strength. What would have been the result if we had just waited for things to happen?