Gospel Story Finder

Then, shortly before school was to begin, I was playing “see-who-can-leap-over-the-most-stairs” on the front porch with Polly and Philip, my ten-year-old brother. I took a wild jump and landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, my sparkly pink glasses shattered at my side.

But the real tragedy occurred when I went shopping for replacement glasses with my father and Philip. They had about as much fashion savvy as my mother in the second-hand store. And even if I’d had a little savvy of my own, it wouldn’t have made much difference because I couldn’t see without my glasses.

I only knew I was tired of sparkly pink frames. This year I would wear sophisticated black. The frames I selected had wings curving elegantly upward on both sides. Cocking my head to achieve an air of mystery, I glanced at my fuzzy reflection in the mirror.

“How do you like them, Daddy?”

“How much do they cost?”

“On sale this week,” the saleslady said.

“In that case, they look terrific.”

Two weeks later we returned to pick up my cosmopolitan frames. I was trembling with anticipation. But as my face appeared in sharp focus in the optician’s mirror, I stared in horror. The longer I stared, the sicker I felt. The curving black wings that had seemed so sophisticated in my hands looked garish on my thin face. They threatened to leave me and fly around the room. I wished they would.

Mom gave Dad a hard look when we got home but told me I looked nice. Nobody else said anything until Polly came flying down the stairs.

She stopped abruptly and gaped.

“You look like Catwoman on the Batman show!” (For the next two years, I was Catwoman.)

Finally, school started. I had dreamed about the new friends I would meet. But I spent the first few weeks of junior high curiously surveying the school and waiting for classmates to befriend me. The other seventh-grade girls seemed so much older and superior. They wore nylons, earrings, makeup. Some of the rowdy ones smoked and had boyfriends.

Weeks went by, then months. A few kids said hi and asked what it was like to live in Hawaii, but no one seemed interested in being my friend. I was puzzled. Was it my clothing or my personality? In Hawaii we had always been friendly to the new kids.

Still, life was such an adventure that I didn’t have time to feel sad. Each day after school I’d explore the house and the yard. On weekends, my parents packed all of us into our cream-colored station wagon and took us on journeys of discovery.

One weekend we visited the Ford plant and watched cars being assembled. Another weekend we discovered the Kellogg’s cereal factory in Battle Creek and saw them make Fruit Loops and Corn Flakes. Another time we had a picnic in Kalamazoo.

On Saturdays when we had to stay home, we thought up excuses to walk to Bolgos Drugstore a mile down the road, where we would squander our allowance on candy.

And of course there were other adventures all week long. With the heavier chills, our stately trees turned breathtaking crimson, yellow, and orange, just like they did in the books. It was a fascinating contrast to the perpetual green of the islands. No other home possessed such enthusiastic rakers. Naturally I tried jumping into the fresh piles, but all I did was hurt myself and get dead leaves stuck inside my clothes. The books had glamorized the experience.

And I woke up early to wander the brightly colored farmers’ market. Father could never get enough fresh produce. Bushels of Golden Delicious apples, orange pumpkins, and shiny gourds spilled from the booths. Bananas, coconuts, and guavas paled in the face of this display.

It was in the farmers’ market that I tasted my first pat of maple sugar. Wrapped in cellophane, the sugar was molded into fancy leaf and star shapes. I nibbled it slowly, reveling in its smooth texture and the way it melted in my mouth.

On some afternoons, we’d help my mother put up pears. The shimmering jars, pink from the tiny red cinnamon candies Mom dropped into each bottle, were beautiful.

Then one day it was cold enough to show off our winter clothing at school. The thrill was short-lived when I saw the other girls in their snappy, thigh-length coats and knee boots. Skinny, with the weirdest eyeglasses east of the Mississippi, I looked like somebody’s eccentric grandmother. Transparent galoshes and a bag lady coat didn’t enhance the image. Polly in her fuzzy red and I in our plaid were undoubtedly the misfits of Forsythe Junior High. We stared at each other in disgust, yet clung to each other for support.

Lunch period was the worst. Polly and I ate at different times, so we had to eat alone. It was also embarrassing to have to bring a sack lunch. Every day I sat by myself, reading a book so I didn’t have to look up.

One day a girl from one of the tough groups sauntered over on a dare from her friends. Her heavily made-up eyes jeered at me.

“Whatcha readin’?” she said.

I could hear the laughter of her friends. My heart pounded. Maybe if I kept reading she would just leave.

“Is it good?” she tried again, turning to look at her friends. Loud laughter. I kept reading.

“Man, are you dumb,” she said as she walked away.

I was too embarrassed to mention the incident to my parents. I don’t think they ever realized I had no friends at school. I don’t know if it was just the clothes we wore or that we didn’t know exactly what to say or do to be like everyone else, but we never did feel like we fit in.

I wrote in my journal, “I don’t know what to wear. White socks and shoes are out in the winter, and I have the wrong kind of coat and boots. Styles are so different here!”

Church and home were the only two places where I felt accepted. The kids at church didn’t seem to care about my eerie eyewear or my outdated clothing. I loved activity nights. An industrious seamstress, I modeled several of my creations in an MIA fashion show. Another time I participated in an impromptu speech contest and did terribly, but no one seemed to mind. Virginia Webb became a good friend, but she attended a different junior high.

I began to live for weekends and the hours after school spent playing with my brothers and sisters. In Hawaii we had had scores of friends and rarely played together. But here my brothers and sisters became my closest friends. They were there when that long-awaited snow finally fell. We frolicked in it like kittens in catnip. We held our mouths open as it fell. Each flake was a miracle, every snowball another excuse to giggle.

Eventually it dawned on us that we were the biggest kids on the sledding hill across from our home. In Michigan sledding was only for kids. But Alan didn’t care. At age 16, he was six feet, five inches tall, and he loved sledding. Every day after school, he went sledding alongside the grade schoolers. They gawked at him, but since he was so much bigger, no one ever said a word.

The rest of us, still trying to fit in, bought used ice skates. I’d been a good roller skater in Hawaii and ice skating came easy. With all the ponds and lakes in Michigan, we never had to settle for endless circling in a stale old rink. I loved the exhilaration of skating hard and fast across a frozen lake.

In the middle of the winter, a package arrived from my Grandmother Marsh in Los Angeles. I caught my breath when Polly and I tore off the brown wrapping. Inside were two outfits, breathtakingly in style. Mine had a pink flowered top with knee socks to match. Polly’s was identical, except that it was blue. This was our big chance to show the kids at Forsythe Junior High that we weren’t such misfits after all. Boy, would they be surprised!

I was a little nervous about the color because this was no ordinary pink. It was a sizzling, shocking pink. But the outfit was so definitely “in” that I squelched my fear. I slowly hung my oversized plaid coat in my locker and wondered what the kids would think of me appearing in such style.

A sea of eyes followed my dazzling pink presence from my locker to my homeroom. Then the whispering began—but not whispers of envy or admiration, as I had secretly hoped.

“Look what she’s wearing.”

“Didn’t we already have Halloween?”

All day the laughter continued. Resentment and frustration built within me. If only I had a friend to walk with, it would be so much easier. If only somebody who knew what was acceptable would give me some hints. Repeatedly I had tried to fit in and failed. And now even Grandma’s outfit had betrayed me. After that I stopped trying to live by other people’s standards. I warned Polly, and she never even wore her new clothes.

I wish I could say that there was some magic turning point, that we discovered a key that made us popular, that we found friends at our school, and that we became leaders and trendsetters ourselves. Of course we didn’t. In a year the sabbatical was over, and we returned to Hawaii, our scores of friends, our waves and mountain fruit, our mild weather and perpetually green foliage. Never was I happier than when we returned to our beloved island.

And yet now, 20 years later, when I think of Michigan, I smile. With fondness I recall Alan running barefoot in the snow. I grin at the memory of Philip and me raking autumn leaves. My heart soars when I remember skimming across a frozen lake with Polly or strolling through the farmer’s market with my father. Tears come to my eyes when I think about the whole family piling into our cream-colored station wagon, off for a picnic in Kalamazoo.

It isn’t easy to move when you’re in junior high school. It’s even tougher when you’re poor and you’re exchanging a provincial paradise for a bustling college town. There were times when I was sure I would never make it.

But now, given some time and distance, I know what the secret was. I leaned on my family. And because of them I survived.

Neither James nor Jessa knew how to speak or read English when they moved to the United States, so they didn’t say much. But their family claims that they talk nonstop now. Because they are still learning English, they are in an ESL (English as a Second Language) class at school. Jessa uses this class as an opportunity to serve others. “I help friends in the class who don’t know English as well.” She has many friends because of her openness and caring. One friend even wrote her a note that said, “You are my very best, best, best, best friend. Today I will buy you a candy and an ice cream.”

Jamie and Sara picked up rocks while Dan and Beth raked the new garden that Father had plowed for them. Then they marked the soil off in rows.
“The garden is ready!” they all shouted at once when they were finished.
Father held out a shoe box as everyone gathered around. “Since this is going to be your money-making project for the year, you must all plant your own seeds and tend your own part of the garden. You may choose two kinds of vegetables. Whatever you grow you can sell at our roadside stand down by the gate.”
Dan grabbed a packet of tomato seeds and one of pumpkin seeds out of the box. “I’m going to grow the best tomatoes and pumpkins in the whole county!” he declared.
Beth chose green beans and cucumbers. “I’ll make lots of money growing these. Everybody likes them.”
Sara reached for carrots and yellow summer squash. “These are easy to grow,” she said. “I’ll have lots of vegetables to sell.”
Jamie looked at the rest of the seed packets in the box for a long time. She wished that there were more seeds to choose from.
“Why don’t you grow beets and green onions,” Beth suggested.
Jamie shook her head. “I don’t like beets and green onions,” she protested. “And I want something that grows tall.”
“Hurry up and decide so that we can get our seeds planted,” Dan said impatiently.
“You like lettuce, Jamie,” Mother suggested.
“Lettuce is good,” Jamie agreed as she picked up the packet of lettuce seeds, “but it’s not tall.” Then she discovered a fat white packet that had been folded over at the top. Jamie picked it up and shook it. “What kind of seeds are these?”
“Sweet peas,” Mother answered. “I didn’t have room for them in my garden.”
“I like peas,” said Jamie. “Do they grow tall?”
“Yes, very tall,” Mother said, “but—“
Jamie grinned. “Then I’ll plant them.”
Beth laughed. “You can’t eat sweet peas,” she said. “They’re flowers, not vegetables.”
“But I want to grow them,” Jamie insisted.
Father shook his head and smiled. “Let Jamie plant them,” he said. “She can grow whatever she wants in her garden. But, Jamie, you’d better plant the seeds next to the wire fence so that they’ll have something to climb on as they grow.”
Dan and Beth and Sara rushed into the garden to plant their seeds. Jamie got down on her hands and knees by the fence and poked her finger into the soft dirt to make little round holes like Dad had shown her. Then she dropped a sweet pea seed into each hole. After she planted the lettuce seeds, she watered her whole plot. She could hardly wait for the seeds to sprout!
Just a few days later Jamie noticed slender green shoots poking up through the soil by the fence. She watered the little plants every day. The round green leaves began to unfold on her lettuce plants.
One day while Jamie was pulling up weeds, Dan stopped and looked at Jamie’s garden. “You’d better thin your lettuce plants,” he said, “or you won’t have big round heads of lettuce.” He squatted down beside Jamie to show her how. “Leave the biggest, strongest plant, and pull out all of the little lettuce plants around it,” he explained, clearing a space around two nice-looking lettuce plants. Then he stood up and went back to his own garden.
Jamie looked at the little plants Dan had pulled out. She couldn’t bear to pull up any more. They would all die. So she left the lettuce row and went to look at her sweet peas. They didn’t need thinning. They had already put out little green tendrils that curled around the wire fence.
As the weeks went by, everyone worked hard, weeding and watering their gardens. Beans hung like long green fingers from Beth’s plants. Shiny green cucumbers peeked from among the broad leaves of her cucumber vines. Sara’s carrot tops were tall and lacy. There were crooked yellow squash all along her row. Juicy red tomatoes began to appear among the green ones on Dan’s plants, and fat green pumpkins dotted his pumpkin patch. Jamie looked at her own garden. There were only two round heads of lettuce. The rest of the row was filled with tall scraggly plants. The sweet peas had grown to the top of the fence and were covered with flowers in a rainbow of colors. They were pretty, but there were no peas.
One morning at breakfast Dan announced, “Some of our vegetables are ready to pick. May we open the roadside stand today?”
“Yes,” Father said, “but don’t pick more than you can sell in a couple of hours. You can always pick more, and your vegetables will stay fresh that way. I’ll put up the sign for you.”
“But my peas aren’t ready to pick yet,” Jamie protested.
“Those flowers aren’t going to turn into peas,” Beth said and rushed out the door after Dan and Sara.
Tears welled up in Jamie’s eyes. “My garden is no good,” she said. “It’s only flowers, not food.”
“Flowers are like food in a way,” Mother said, “food for the soul. When we see and smell them, they make us happy. I think that that’s why Heavenly Father made flowers so beautiful.”
Jamie sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Then can I take some of my flowers down to the roadside stand too?” she asked.
“Of course,” Mother said. “Take these garden shears and cut the stems long enough to put the flowers in water to keep them fresh.”
Jamie hurried to the garden and filled a small bucket with the colorful flowers. Then she carried them to the roadside stand. “Have you sold lots of vegetables yet?” she asked as she divided the sweet peas into bunches and put them into jars with water in them.
Dan shook his head. “Lots of cars go by, but nobody stops.”
Jamie had just finished setting her flowers on the counter when a car pulled up and a lady got out.
“What lovely sweet peas!” she cried. She chose a bunch and held them to her nose. “My, those vegetables look nice and fresh too.” She bought something from everyone before she drove away.
More cars began to stop. Soon Dan and Beth and Sara had all gone back to the garden for more vegetables. There was only one bunch of sweet peas left when Beth came back with more beans.
“I’m glad that people like your flowers so much, Jamie,” Beth said. “Everybody who stops to buy them buys vegetables too. Better hurry and cut some more.”
Jamie grinned and ran back to the garden for more sweet peas.

Kind words not only lift our spirits in the moment they are given, but they can linger with us over the years. One day, when I was in college, a man seven years my senior congratulated me on my performance in a football game. He not only praised how well I had done in the game, but he had noticed that I had showed good sportsmanship. Even though this conversation happened more than 60 years ago, and even though it’s highly unlikely the person who complimented me has any recollection of this conversation, I still remember the kind words spoken to me that day by Gordon B. Hinckley, who would later become President of the Church.

I recall a particularly important crossroad—the decision to go on a full-time mission. I stood on that crossroad for a very, very long time. As I struggled to decide which road to take, my family, friends, and priesthood leaders came forward to take my hand. They encouraged and challenged me and offered countless prayers on my behalf. My full-time missionary sister wrote to me regularly and never gave up.

Even today, I am still carried on the shoulders of good men and women. I suspect that we all are. To some degree we all depend on each other to be able to make it back to our heavenly home.

President Hinckley described what happens to the heart of every missionary who commits his or her life and work to the Lord when he talked about his own missionary experiences. It was early in his mission, and he was discouraged. The work was hard, and the people were not receptive. However, there came a time when discouragement turned to commitment. For him, the beginning was a letter from his father in which he read: “Dear Gordon, I have your letter. … I have only one suggestion: Forget yourself and go to work.” In describing what happened next, he said: “I got on my knees in that little bedroom … and made a pledge that I would try to give myself unto the Lord.

“The whole world changed. The fog lifted. The sun began to shine in my life. I had a new interest. I saw the beauty of this land. I saw the greatness of the people. … Everything that has happened to me since that’s been good I can trace to that decision made in that little house” (in Mike Cannon, “Missionary Theme Was Pervasive during Visit of President Hinckley,” Church News, Sept. 9, 1995, 4).
President Hinckley continued by saying: “You want to be happy? Forget yourself and get lost in this great cause, and bend your efforts to helping people” (in Church News, Sept. 9, 1995, 4).

I would like to share with you the story of one professor who left an indelible impression on me—one that lingers with me today years after my college days. This professor’s name was Christen Jensen. He was the son of Danish immigrants who had struggled to give their son an education. As a history major I had the privilege of taking a constitutional history class from this man. Nearing the end of a long and service-filled career, he was a legend on campus. He had been acting president of the university twice and dean of two colleges, one of which was the graduate school. He served faithfully in the Church. He was a kind husband and father.

Dr. Jensen would come to class and sit down at the head of the table in the dean’s conference room in the old Joseph Smith Building. As students in the class, we were expected to be prepared and to participate. He would talk, ask questions, discuss, and develop thought processes for an hour without benefit of book or notes. His face radiated a joy in teaching and sharing that was easily apparent. Time in that class passed so quickly that it was hard to realize the class time was over.

One faculty member said of Dr. Jensen, “I think we have never had a more loyal and devoted supporter of great music and important lectures than the beloved Christen Jensen.” His obituary in the Deseret News said, “The natural kindness of Christen Jensen, his love for young people, his ready sympathy and devotion to learning are characteristics for which this good man will long be remembered” (“Dr. Christen Jensen,” Deseret News, 18 August 1961, 18A). Does this description bring to mind the Savior’s admonition to love one another and to serve each other?

Dr. Jensen gave me a love of learning for which I will be eternally grateful. To this day I hope I thanked him appropriately, and I acknowledge today by my words all of those men and women who opened my mind and soul to the joys of learning, including those with whom I have worked and do work.

When I was 13, I was so cool. My shoes were always untied, and my pants could have fit twice as many legs as I had. The more average I appeared, the more popular I became. It seemed the most impressive thing I could do was nothing. At times I felt like doing something, but I rarely gave in, for I was cool.
In my life, I had a number of activities and abilities that I felt were anti-cool. Some of my “faults” were my ability to play the piano and get good grades. Perhaps my greatest hitch was my involvement in Scouting, seen by some kids at school as less than cool. After all, Scouts advocate doing a good turn daily. If someone asked about Scouting, I would quickly change the subject.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy camping and other activities. I just didn’t want my peers to know that I enjoyed such things. If that knowledge ever spread, I knew that my cool friends would begin drifting away.
As winter arrived, my troop helped with the Scouting for Food drive. The Scouts advertised the food drive and collected the food by going around neighborhoods, usually dressed in their Scout uniforms. I felt I could not possibly participate. Someone might see me, delivering a fatal blow to my popularity. My parents, however, decided I needed to go.
As I walked out the door that day, I made every effort to keep a negative attitude. I eventually concluded that I would simply stay low in the cab of the truck and pass the time looking over my shoulder to make sure we weren’t spotted by anyone of importance.
The other guys passed the time in between houses throwing snowballs, telling jokes, and goofing around. That’s how it started. A little crack in my armor began. Jokes that started out seeming juvenile and annoying began to give me the chuckles, and I returned snowballs with snowballs instead of cold glares. By the end of our route, I was laughing while riding in the truck and racing to pick up the most food. Fortunately, I completely forgot that such simple pleasures were “beneath me.”
When I got dropped off in front of my house, I said good-bye and jaunted cheerfully into the kitchen, completely forgetting about my earlier lack of enthusiasm. My mom asked me how it had been, and I replied, “I had a great time.”
Just after these words slipped out of my mouth, I realized what I had done. How could I have told my mother this, of all things? I quickly tried to cover my mistake, coming back with, “Well, it was okay,” hoping that perhaps she would somehow not remember my initial response.
Looking back on this experience, I gained a few things from it. My search for peer approval was ridiculous. I decided that acting cool all the time really wasn’t cool. It didn’t benefit anyone, and it wasn’t any fun. When I acted disinterested, life was unexciting. Enjoyment, as it turned out, was independent of popularity. Who would have thought that? I gave this theory a test during the next week of school by making an effort to enjoy life rather than ignore it. This test was a great success. I had fun.
My Scouting experience taught me that I controlled whether or not I enjoyed myself in any situation—or in life. Attitude really is everything.

During the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I attended a leadership camp along with a number of other high school students across the state. After a day of classes and workshops, the next activity was to go to the town’s new wave pool. It was a hot day, so the pool was crowded.
I had taken swimming lessons for a number of years and was a pretty strong swimmer, so when the waves stopped, I decided to swim down in the deep end of the pool to check out where the waves originated. Everything was fine until the buzzer sounded, indicating that the waves were going to start. I pushed off from the side to start swimming back toward the more shallow water when I suddenly felt myself being pulled under. I realized quickly that the waves were made as water was pulled from the bottom of the pool and then pushed out at the top. As the machine pulled water in, I got pulled under the surface. Then, as the machine pushed the water out, I would be pushed to the surface, where I could get a little breath and start to call out for help. Then I would again get pulled under.
After this happened a few times, I felt myself getting weaker from not getting enough air. No matter how hard I tried, I was not strong enough to get out of this cycle. Then, as a wave pushed me back up, I felt an arm go around me, and a big man pulled me over to safety. I was so weak I could hardly pull myself out of the pool. I was gasping for breath. The man who saved me asked if I was all right, and then he swam away and has probably never thought of the incident since. I don’t know this man’s name, but he literally saved my life. He did for me what I could not do for myself.
I have reflected on this incident often and have learned many lessons from it.

There is actually one step beyond becoming independent, and that is becoming interdependent - where two or more independent people who can pretty much take care of themselves decide to work together to achieve more like partnering on a research project or business venture, or becoming a part of a well functioning team. I learned something about interdependence when I decided to ask someone to marry me. After dating for a year, I finally determined to ask young woman that I was courting if she would be my wife. I took the answer to the Lord in prayer. The answer was clear: "It will be good for you to ask her." I was overjoyed at first. Then I realized something was missing. The Lord didn't say that I was to marry her. In fact the Lord didn't even say whether she would or should say yes. I learned that marriage requires mutual consent of two independent people - a very valuable lesson for being a peacemaker in the home (and, yes, that was Sister Lucero).

“Hey, Sofía! Wanna go to the Valentine’s Day dance with me?”
Sofía felt her cheeks turn red. She didn’t know what to say. Kyle Thornton was one of the cutest and nicest boys in the seventh grade, and here he was asking Sofía to the dance! Sofía knew she shouldn’t date until she was 16, but part of her really wanted to go. It would be so much fun! And besides, the dance was at school, so meeting Kyle there wouldn’t exactly be a real date. …
But Sofía didn’t feel super comfortable with the idea.
“Um … can I tell you tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure, no problem.” Kyle smiled and walked to class.
After school, Sofía’s best friend, Ashley, ran up to her. “I heard Kyle asked you to the dance!” she said. “That’s so great!”
Sofía shrugged.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Ashley asked.
“Well, my family is going to make cookies and take them to a care center that day,” Sofía said. “I’m probably going to go with them.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Ashley said. “You can do something with your family any day. This is important, especially since Kyle asked you!”
Sofía knew lots of girls liked Kyle. What would they think if she said no? But how could she tell Ashley she couldn’t date yet?
“I gotta go,” Sofía said. “Mom needs me home right away to watch the twins.”
“OK,” said Ashley. “Let me know what you decide.”
When Sofía got home, Mom gave her a quick hug before hurrying out the door to go visiting teaching. Sofía and her eight-year-old twin brothers, Mateo and Leo, spent the time building block towers and cities.
As she played with her brothers, Sofía thought about the dance. All of her friends were going. She thought about Kyle and smiled. It would be fun being at a dance with him. But she knew what the prophets had said—kids shouldn’t date before turning 16. She wanted to be obedient. As fun as the dance might be, Sofía knew what she had to do.
At school the next day, Sofía saw Kyle in the hallway. She took a deep breath and walked up to him. She had practiced what to say all morning.
“Thank you for asking me to go to the dance with you,” she said. “But I can’t go.”
“Why not?” Kyle asked, his smile fading.
“I’m not going to date until I’m 16,” Sofía said. “But we can still be friends.”
Kyle’s shoulders slumped. “OK. I guess I understand.”
They said goodbye, and Sofía walked to class. She hated seeing Kyle so sad. But she also felt OK about her decision.
On Friday after school, instead of picking out an outfit and doing her hair for the dance, Sofía frosted heart-shaped cookies with Mom and Dad and her brothers. Instead of going to the school gym, Sofía went to a care center to pass out the cookies.
In the main room at the center, Sofía noticed a piano in the corner. She knew several Primary songs by heart, so she asked her family to sing along while she played. People sitting nearby clapped at the end of each song. When she and her family finished singing “A Child’s Prayer,” Sofía saw that several people had tears in their eyes.
“Thank you!” one lady said. “That was even better than the cookies! Will you come back?”
Sofía smiled. “Of course!” Maybe she could even invite her friends and Kyle next time.

Bill Hoagland watched through the window as the supply plane approached the tiny island that would be his home for 12 months. Just a dot in the water, he thought, lost in mile after mile of waves. He knew the navigation station was vital to the U.S. Coast Guard, and he knew his job as hospital corpsman on the island would be important too. “Maybe I can get so involved in my work that time will pass quickly,” he thought again. “But look at the island. It’s so small … and what about my wife and the baby?”
Tires screeched on packed coral and sand, grabbing for a hold on the runway. Then there was a whirr as the sound of the motor caught up with the braking plane. Soon Bill was talking to new acquaintances, discovering what men do on Tern Island, one of the French Frigate Shoals 500 miles northwest of Hawaii. Mostly they tried to make time pass more quickly. Of course, there were movies, swimming, and hobbies like collecting glass balls that break from fishing fleet nets and drift ashore. There were weekly steak fries and Ping-Pong tournaments, but nothing to remind anyone about home, except letters that arrived once a week on the supply plane.
Bill went to the barracks to unpack. He shook a book out of his seabag, and fresh memories crowded in on his mind. Before leaving San Diego, California, he and his wife had heard a broadcast from one of the wards of the local Mormon church. Both had been impressed, not just by the speakers and their well-delivered talks, but by something else. Bill and his wife had been searching together for a nameless something that would give meaning to their lives. On their way back to Indiana, where she was to stay with relatives, they had visited Salt Lake City and picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon along with some pamphlets. Now the book lay before him.
The desire to go swimming and fishing tempted Bill for the next few days, but he resolved to study and to use his year alone to advantage. Soon he was absorbed in the story and testimonies of Lehi, Nephi, Mosiah, and King Benjamin. He was also deeply impressed with the testimony of Joseph Smith. Intense reading and long hours of study eventually led Bill to Moroni’s promise. He pondered it, then knelt and prayed. He got up with knowledge in his heart that the book from his seabag did indeed contain the truth. Sleep was sweet that night.
In the morning he wrote a letter to President George W. Poulsen, Jr., of the Hawaiian Mission, and asked how he could be baptized. He knew this would be a problem because he could not leave the island and the only contact with the rest of the world was the weekly plane flight and an occasional visit from a ship carrying heavy equipment.
President Poulsen sent Bill a copy of A Marvelous Work and a Wonder and encouraged him to study it while he tried to make arrangements to get two elders out to the island somehow. Bill read the book and then sent it to his wife, as he had done with other books and pamphlets as he finished them. And he waited, studied, and prayed.
Bishop Hal K. Hess of the Kaneohe First Ward smiled as he chatted with President Poulsen on the phone. He had seen enough in his years of Church work to know that sometimes chance meetings are more than coincidental. He hadn’t been unduly surprised to run into an old LDS friend in the Hawaii Temple a few weeks before. After all, Lieutenant Gerald Foster traveled quite a bit in his work for the Coast Guard. But to think that Brother Foster was now assigned as a pilot at Barber’s Point Air Station, the field where the supply flights to Tern Island originated!
“I’d be glad to help,” Brother Foster said, noting that he could probably arrange to make the flight. But he warned that getting permission to fly two missionaries out to the island would have to come from Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and that would mean red tape galore. Wait a minute! There was another LDS pilot at the same base, a friend Brother Foster had introduced to the Church, Lieutenant Anthony Beardsley. Brother Beardsley normally flew to Guam, but perhaps the commanding officer would do them a favor. It was worth a try.
Brother Foster still recalls with amazement: “The Coast Guard is not a large service, and there were certainly not many Mormons in it in 1964. It was fortunate indeed that two pilots, both elders, were stationed at Barber’s Point at that time.”
“Brother Foster and I were classmates at the Coast Guard Academy,” Brother Beardsley remembers. “He helped my wife and me join the Church two years before, and throughout our military careers, we managed to follow each other from one duty station to another. I feel that in Hawaii we were placed in a position to answer someone’s prayer.”
The commander, after hearing the unusual circumstances, granted permission for the pilots to fly together. With instructions and authority from the mission president to interview William Hoagland and, if they found him worthy, to baptize him, the two lieutenants took off on June 4, 1964.
Bill had already been pacing up and down the runway long before the speck appeared in the sky and drew nearer. The plane was only scheduled for a two-hour stop, and there was a lot to accomplish in that short time period. Finally the Grumman Albatross circled in and taxied to a halt.
Brother Foster interviewed Bill in the base’s small library, then the three men went to the sick bay (which was also Bill’s room) and changed into white clothing. They went outside and waded about 20 yards off shore. Fifty yards away, across a narrow lagoon, a reef smothered the fury of 20-foot Pacific waves. Inside, the water pooled, calm, clear, and warm, with gentle breakers lapping at the shore. Sunlight dazzled its reflections across the surface as terns and bosun birds swooped overhead. Everything was silent.
Lieutenant Foster performed the baptism. Bill felt warm inside as the water rushed over him. “I knew it was the greatest day of my life,” Brother Hoagland says. “We were dripping with water and shaking hands as we hurried back to prepare for the confirmation.” Soon Elder Beardsley was inviting Bill to receive the Holy Ghost.
The men had just enough time for lunch, and then the plane flew away. “My new-found brothers were gone,” Brother Hoagland recalls, “but I was not lonely. I had their love and good wishes and the Holy Ghost to comfort me. I felt part of something great and good.” In his two months remaining on the island, he studied a religious correspondence course from BYU and bore his testimony to his wife Kay in his letters. One month after her husband’s baptism, she was baptized in Fort Wayne, Indiana, after receiving the missionary discussions.
Editor’s Note
Brother Hoagland didn’t forget the lessons he learned on Tern Island. That August he visited his pilot friends in Hawaii and attended his first official Church meetings. His new duty assignment placed him in New York, and he quickly became a deacon, then a teacher, priest, and elder in the Brooklyn Branch. Shortly after becoming an elder, he was called to be a counselor in the then new Staten Island Branch presidency. Then he returned to Hawaii, where he and his family were sealed in the temple. Since then he has been a bishop in New Orleans, Louisiana, and a branch president in Salem, Illinois. He is currently serving in the U.S. Navy at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he was recently unanimously elected mayor of the U.S. community and serves as branch mission leader for the Church.

An event some years ago changed my attitude toward modesty. As I got ready to go to a Mutual activity, I put on some short shorts; it never occurred to me that they were inappropriate. The activities planned for that Tuesday included having the missionaries give us some practical advice about missionary work. One of the last empty seats was next to me. For a brief moment the elders began to argue, as discreetly as they could, over who had to sit next to me. Though they never said so specifically, I understood they were uneasy because of the way I was dressed.
At that moment, notwithstanding my embarrassment, I began to understand what it meant to be modest. I realized that I was making virtuous young men feel uncomfortable—and that I could also be making unvirtuous men feel too comfortable. I began to better understand what type of person I wanted to be with and, more important, what type of person I wanted to be. From that moment on, I was not only prepared for the changes I was about to make, but I looked forward to making them.
Chelsea Anderson, Ohio, USA

Prior to my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I associated for many years with another Christian denomination. There, the notion of prophets and apostles was a thing of the past. Discussion about topics such as modern revelation or living prophets and apostles were prohibited.
In 1995, I was still working on my understanding of this doctrine when President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) visited London. We were invited to a special meeting at Wandsworth Stake center. There, something indescribable happened which strengthened my testimony of a living prophet. As the company started entering the chapel, my attention was immediately drawn to President Hinckley, and I had an overwhelming feeling as if a voice spoke to me saying “This is the living prophet on the earth today. He is the mouthpiece of the Savior”. I am grateful for that personal experience. This became an anchor to my understanding of the need for a living prophet and the importance of following his counsel.

Just this past month, a mammoth 747 jetliner, while flying over the Pacific, sustained a gigantic tear in its side, ejecting nine passengers to their deaths and threatening the lives of all. When the pilot, Captain David Cronin, was interviewed, having brought the craft back safely to Honolulu, he was asked, “What did you do when the plane ripped open? How did you cope?”

Captain Cronin replied, “I prayed, then went to work.”

As part of their Young Women celebration, the girls of the New York Manhattan Stake participated in a family history open house. The people of the metropolitan area were invited to learn more about family history and the resources of the Church. The Young Women participated by putting up displays about their own projects. During refreshment breaks, those attending the open house were able to talk with the girls about some of the treasured items of their families as well as photos and written histories.
For the display, Alaira Fleming, 13, brought a figurine that was precious to her mother and grandmother. The porcelain figurine was one that Alaira’s mother had given as a Mother’s Day gift to her mother. After her grandmother’s death, Alaira was given the figurine to cherish as a representation of the love between mothers and daughters in their family.
Alaira was also taught and encouraged by her mother to keep a journal. “It makes me feel good that someday my children can read it and know what my life was like and the troubles I went through and the happiness that I’ve enjoyed.”

Grandpa rolled down the window of the car and called, “Take good care of Casper for us while we’re gone, Chadwick.”
“I will,” Chadwick promised.
He waved as Grandpa and Grandma drove away. He scratched Casper’s neck. “See you later, boy. I’ve got to go to school now.”
Chadwick shut the gate and hurried off to school. When he reached home that afternoon, Chadwick went next door to his grandparents’ house to feed Casper. After the dog finished eating they played “chase the stick” until they were both panting.
“Chadwick,” Mom called. “Suppertime.”
Chadwick ruffled Casper’s fur. “I’ll come back to say goodnight,” he promised.
He ran up the steps and into the kitchen. “Casper and I have been having a lot of fun together! He likes me.”
Mom smiled. “Hurry and wash for supper,” she said. “We’re waiting for you.”
After supper Chadwick watched his favorite TV program. When it ended, he jumped up quickly. “I better check on Casper,” he declared.
“You played with him a long time,” Mom said. “It’s almost bedtime.”
“I promised Casper I’d see him before I went to bed,” Chadwick insisted.
Mom sighed. “All right, but be back in ten minutes,” she said firmly.
Chadwick raced down the sidewalk and into Grandma’s yard. Casper wagged his tail happily.
Chadwick checked the water dish. Then they both flopped down beside the doghouse. They were too tired to play and it was awfully dark by now.
Chadwick put his arm around Casper’s neck and gazed into the darkness at his grandparents’ house. “I better go,” Chadwick told the dog. “I’ll be over with your breakfast in the morning.”
After carefully shutting the gate behind him, Chadwick glanced up at the house. He gasped! Then he bounded toward home, opened the back door, and ran through the kitchen.
“What in the world’s the matter?” Mom asked in alarm.
“Grandma has a ghost,” he choked.
Mom stared. “Did you hear someone?”
He shook his head. “It didn’t make any noise but it was watching me from the window.”
Dad came into the kitchen carrying the evening paper. “What’s this about a ghost?”
“I saw it, honest.” Chadwick gulped. His throat was so dry he could hardly talk.
Dad looked puzzled. “Couldn’t be a prowler. Casper would alarm the whole town if a stranger tried to go in there. But maybe I’d better check anyway.”
“It’s not a man, Dad, at least not a real one,” Chadwick insisted.
Dad just smiled and went out the door.
Soon he was back. “Nothing seems to be disturbed. The doors are all locked and the windows are closed,” he said.
“You think I only imagined it,” Chadwick muttered.
Dad patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Grandma and Grandpa have never mentioned a ghost. Maybe it stays out of the way when they’re home. It could be a caretaker-type ghost when they go away.”
Chadwick knew Dad was teasing him. Chadwick smiled at Mom and Dad. He didn’t feel quite so scared now. Maybe he had let his imagination play tricks on him.
The next morning he felt foolish when Dad asked, “Want me to take Casper his breakfast?”
Chadwick shook his head. “Ghosts don’t come out in the daytime, do they?” he asked.
“Well, none that I’ve ever known,” Dad answered. “But then, I haven’t known many ghosts.”
Chadwick looked up at the window before he opened the gate, but he saw nothing there. He gave Casper fresh water and food. The dog was too busy eating when Chadwick left to even look up.
That afternoon whenever Chadwick went to see Casper, he looked at the window half expecting to see something there. But each time the window was empty.
Just before bedtime that night, he walked slowly toward the door. “I have to say goodnight to Casper,” he explained.
“I’m sure the dog is all right,” Mom said kindly. “You don’t have to go unless you really want to.”
Chadwick shook his head. “I promised to take good care of him. It’s my responsibility.”
“If you hurry you can probably catch up with Dad. He went to check the house just a minute ago.”
Chadwick ran down the sidewalk, but Dad was out of sight. He walked slowly around the house. When he reached the gate he peeked up at the window. There was something there! Just then Dad turned on the light in the kitchen. The ghost began to twitch and wiggle.
Chadwick screamed and ran toward the back door. “Dad, Dad,” he shouted.
Dad opened the door wide. “Chadwick! What’s wrong?”
“I saw it again, Dad. The ghost was going right toward you,” Chadwick cried frantically.
Dad sighed. “Let’s turn on every light in the house. Maybe we can find this ghost of yours.”
Chadwick trembled in fear. He followed closely behind his father. They went through the house, turning on the lights as they went.
Chadwick jingled the windchimes hanging from a curtain rod. “Funny place for Grandma to put her windchimes,” he said.
Dad glanced at them. “They could probably be broken on the porch if the wind started blowing very hard. I suppose she thought of them as she went out the door.”
They turned off the lights and went back outside. Dad locked the door. Chadwick checked Casper’s water dish. Then they turned toward home.
Chadwick glanced back over his shoulder. He clutched his father’s arm tightly. “There it is again!” he whispered. Then he began to laugh. “The windchimes! It’s nothing but those crazy windchimes with the streetlights shining on them.”
Dad chuckled. “And so another ghost is laid to rest.”
“You knew all the time that there wasn’t any ghost, didn’t you, Dad?” Chadwick asked.
Dad put his arm around Chadwick’s shoulders. “Well, let’s just say I had some mighty strong doubts. But everyone should meet a ghost at least once in his lifetime!”

When Sister Burton and I were first married, we lived in the southeast part of the Salt Lake Valley. On occasion, as we purchased groceries from a small neighborhood store, we observed President and Sister Joseph Fielding Smith in the same store making their purchases. After several such observations, I finally mustered the courage to inquire of President Smith why it was he traveled all the way from downtown, past a dozen grocery stores, to shop at this particular store. Looking over the tops of his glasses he emphatically said: “Son! [He had my immediate attention.] Sister Smith and I patronize establishments that keep the Sabbath day holy.”

The children of the Calderón family started a great transition for their family. Jared, age 15, was the first to join the Church, followed a year later by his sister, Angie, 13. Their parents joined the Church three years after Angie’s baptism.
At first this family from Costa Rica had no idea how much the gospel of Jesus Christ would change their lives. They were introduced to the Church by a family member in 2002, and for many months afterward the Calderóns regularly invited the missionaries to their home so they could learn more. As they did so, the family experienced a transformation—a true conversion.
Before the family joined the Church, the Calderóns were concerned that Jared and Angie were having a hard time getting a moral and spiritual education in a world that downplays religion.
The gospel, the Calderóns found, had answers to the problems they were facing. “When we came to understand the gospel and started applying its teachings, that knowledge changed the way we lived,” says Brother Calderón. “We learned who we are and how we can return to our Heavenly Father. Because of what we found, we have lived a richer spiritual life.”
It wasn’t always easy to accept readily what they were learning from the missionaries, but as they tested gospel principles, they gained a testimony of them. “As we learned about gospel standards,” says Sister Calderón, “we tried to stay within the boundaries of worthiness. I gave up drinking coffee. (And I drank plenty of coffee before then!) We made goals as a family to not swear, to speak kindly to each other, and to keep other good principles.
“The main sacrifice we made was our pride,” she continues. “We had to learn to be humble, but as we’ve tried to learn and live with humility, we’ve received many blessings and experienced great progress as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.”

Rob: You usually don’t realize you have a problem until you are in so deep you can no longer see the light. That’s what happened with me. I was curious and justified my involvement with pornography by reminding myself that guys at school were involved with it too, and it didn’t seem like a big problem for them.

Rob: Curiosity turned to interest, and interest developed into a strong habit. Soon I was addicted. I would get home from school, go straight to the computer, and be there for hours. My social life suffered. So did my schoolwork, family ties, and—most important—my spirituality.
At the very time I most needed the promptings of the Spirit in my life, I was less and less able to feel anything. Life became a constant struggle against depression.
My soul hungered, but the only thing I fed it offered no nourishment. I would get down on myself, so I would delve into pornography to feel better. But the pornography would upset me even more.

Rob: Through all those years I attended church, but I was mentally inactive. I kept going to church so I wouldn’t upset my parents. But I knew the lifestyle I was caught up in was wrong. I noticed a change in my own countenance day by day, year by year. I became calloused and hardened. I found myself lying to my parents, my bishop, everyone around me. Inside I was going through personal turmoil and spiritual torment.

Rob: I humbly bowed before the Lord in tears and pled for strength beyond my own. Night after night I prayed, and finally I knew I had to talk to my bishop about it. That was the hardest part—admitting to someone else that I had a problem. I kept thinking I could handle it myself and no one would ever have to know. I wanted it to be something just between God and me. But I finally matured to the point that I realized that was impossible. I approached my bishop and began a long and difficult repentance process.

It took a lot of time and sincere effort to break bad habits. Eventually I was judged by my priesthood leader as worthy to serve a mission. The best feeling in the world was to go through the temple and know I am clean. The Spirit I wanted to feel during all those teenage years came flooding into my heart and life. I am so thankful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
The adversary still works on me, trying to get me to backslide. But I have learned to put on the armor of God every day. I know Jesus Christ loves me, and I love Him.