Gospel Story Finder

A few months ago, my mama read a story to me from the Friend. It was about a little boy who wanted to know if Heavenly Father was real (“Micah’s Miracle,” October 2002, 4–6). One night he had a terrible nightmare. When he woke up, he prayed for help to feel safe. At the same moment, his dad woke up and decided that he should check on his son. When his dad came, the little boy knew that his prayer had been answered and that Heavenly Father really was there and loved him.

President David O. McKay tells of a singular event that happened to him. After falling asleep, he said he “beheld in vision something infinitely sublime. “He saw a beautiful city, a great concourse of people dressed in white, and the Savior.

“The city, I understood, was his. It was the City Eternal; and the people following him were to abide there in peace and eternal happiness.

“But who were they?

“As if the Savior read my thoughts, he answered by pointing to a semicircle that then appeared above them, and on which were written in gold the words: ‘These Are They Who Have Overcome the World—Who Have Truly Been Born Again!’

“When I awoke, it was breaking day” (Cherished Experiences From the Writings of President David O. McKay, compiled by Clare Middlemiss, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976, pages 59–60).

A few years ago my back started hurting. I was kind of worried, so I went to see our family chiropractor. He took some X-rays, saw something weird going on, and recommended me to a specialist.
I was right. There was something wrong. The specialist told me I have a condition called ankylosing spondylitis. It’s a form of arthritis where your spinal joints get inflamed and your spine tries to fuse itself together.
My prescription was to exercise and stretch four or five days a week for about 20 to 30 minutes. If I don’t, my back starts to hurt again. Ankylosing spondylitis can also lead to other serious health problems.
Someday I may have to treat my condition with drugs, but for now, I stretch every day. I also go to the gym several times a week. Recently, I went for a checkup. The doctor told me that because I was diligent with stretching, my spine is in a lot better shape than many people my age.
I’m thankful for my body despite its limitations. I try not to focus on my health problems and just use my body the best I can. A few months ago, I found out that the lead singer of one of my favorite rock bands also has ankylosing spondylitis. Rather than complain, he said a lot of the great things in his life have come from struggling.
I try to remember the fact that Jesus Christ suffered every pain for us. He knows the mental and physical pain of any condition, including ankylosing spondylitis. He is the most equipped to help us, and He has helped me be grateful for my body and its abilities.
Samuel M., 21, Utah, USA

On 26 October 1964 the city of Kingston, Jamaica, officially recorded the birth of twins. This was the beginning for me. I never knew my parents. I was raised by my grandmother. The first home I knew was a one-room wooden shack in the ghetto.
While growing up in the severe poverty of the ghetto, I realized how hard my grandmother worked for us. She would rise at five o’clock every morning from the tattered old bed she shared with five other family members. After waking us kids, she would take us to search for bricks. With the bricks we collected, Grandma built an oven to bake bread that would be sold to neighbors. Grandma struggled every day, yet she always had a smile on her face and seemed happy.
We didn’t have running water in our shack that combined with many others to form a compound. There was one main pipe. Everyone caught their water there in buckets. We had to take the water on our heads to our homes. The water pipe was surrounded by a green, muddy area; the children used it for a playground. Ghetto children didn’t always wear clothes. Usually they were just covered with mud and dirt. The toilets and bath places were placed in the center of the compound so everyone could use them.
Low self-esteem and lack of money in the neighborhood caused many there to turn to immorality as an escape. This led to higher population and congestion in the ghetto. Most people didn’t work; they depended on the government for food. To obtain nice clothes and other material possessions they would often steal.
My best friend was born outside in the streets. Her mother was only fourteen years old at the time. Following in her mother’s footsteps, my friend had her first child at the age of thirteen, making her mother a grandmother at age twenty-seven. She had her third child by the age of nineteen. After leaving her third boyfriend, she moved in with her mother, adding her three children to her mother’s six. My friend had the responsibility for nine children under the age of seven before she reached her twentieth birthday. As I looked at my friend’s life, I realized that I wanted something better for myself. I wanted a home and a family. I knew I had to leave the ghetto.
My grandma had taught me to pray at night before going to bed. But to whom was I praying? What was he like? Where did he come from? These were questions that couldn’t be answered. I felt as if I were in a dark and dreary world with no hope of light.
Determined to understand more about this mystery, I started attending the church to which we then belonged, because Grandma said God could be found there. But it didn’t do much good. It confused me more. They taught me about Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, who, I was told, belonged to and were one with God.
I visited many other churches. When we studied the Bible and the life of Christ, I felt a very different feeling.
I discovered that this feeling had something to do with Christ, the Bible, the Holy Ghost, and God, but I was still confused. I started to pray and have trust in the Lord. Still, there was something missing. Although I could have the good feeling while reading the Bible, I couldn’t have that feeling with me all the time.
One teacher told me a way to retain this feeling was by being baptized, so I was baptized. But nothing changed. All churches seemed the same, so I decided to stay home and study on my own. I found myself praying more intensely for the Lord to help me find the true path that led to him. He heard my prayers.
I met a young man, and we became friends. For the next ten months we shared our ideas and thoughts about many things, but never religion. One day I found that my friend traveled with a Bible, so I asked him if he went to church and what the name of his church was. It was some long name—The Church of Jesus Christ of something something Saints. I wasn’t the least bit interested—it sounded like just another church to me.
My friend later told me he was going to serve the Lord for two years in another country. I figured he was going to be a pastor. When he left, I began to wonder what his church was like, and I began to search for their meeting place.
I found it a few months later, but I also found something more. As I walked through the doors of the meetinghouse, I felt a feeling impossible to describe; it was joy, peace, comfort, certainty, and happiness all in one. It was like coming home. My questions had now been answered.
The members of the church welcomed me with open arms. At first, I was reluctant to accept these welcomes because it was a little too much. I wasn’t used to so many people. They welcomed me whether they knew me or not. At the end of the meeting, a calm feeling came over me, and I heard these words in my mind: “Debbie, this is the place, and these are the people you have been searching for.”
Looking back, I see that my life in the ghetto was difficult and that a person could make it harder by making wrong choices. There was little opportunity for progression. But I wanted something worth living for. When the opportunity came to leave the ghetto with part of my family, I decided this was my chance.
Many of the girls I grew up with never left the ghetto. I could not have made it without following the desires of my heart and trusting in my Father above to lead me. I was blessed with the chance to leave the ghetto, be baptized a member of this church, gain an education, and fulfill a mission. I know Heavenly Father loves us all and is mindful of our circumstances, no matter where we are. He desires above all things that we find true happiness.

I thought I had life pretty much figured out. I had lots of friends, and my week was jam-packed with seminary, school, Church activities, and cheerleading. So when the weekend came, I was ready to kick back with my friends and have some time just for me.
Then one day my parents put a giant cramp in my 10th-grade style. I could continue to have Friday nights for myself, but Saturday was to be their official date night. And guess who was to be their official babysitter for my 11-year-old brother? You guessed it: me. I protested that I was being forced to miss out on everything my friends were doing on Saturday nights, but to no avail. I just knew this was the beginning of something terrible.
The first Saturday babysitting night came around, and my brother picked out movies for us to watch. He excitedly began the first one as I pouted that this was going to be boring. When the movie began, I scanned the buffet of irresistible foods my parents had so strategically spread out on the table. The movies my brother had chosen were surprisingly not lame, and by the time all was said and done, we’d made quite a dent in the refreshments.
Another week passed and Saturday rolled around once more. This time we were going to make chocolate chip cookies together. They didn’t turn out exactly like our mom’s, but we didn’t struggle to choke them down. In fact, we started up a little contest to see who could eat the most chocolate chip cookies without drinking any milk. When I gave up and chugged my glass of ice-cold goodness, my brother smiled from ear to ear.
Over the next two years, my Saturdays were filled with trips to the mall, games at the bowling alley, late-night swims, eating out at just about every fast-food place imaginable, seeing movies, reading books, building forts, telling scary stories, and so much more. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my Saturday babysitting episodes were not the beginning of something terrible after all. They were the beginning of something wonderful.
Saturday nights together with my brother helped me learn one of the most important lessons of my life. I was not stuck at home with my brother while all of my friends were out having fun. That wasn’t even possible. I was no longer babysitting my brother; I was babysitting a friend.
I realize that we don’t get to choose who will be our brother or our sister, but we do get to choose who will be our friend. I’m grateful for all of our Saturday nights together that have allowed us the chance to choose each other.

While I was growing up, our family lived across the street from the ninth green of a public golf course. We spent hours sitting on the slope of our front lawn watching golfers complete their rounds. Once in a while a golfer would hit a poorly directed shot, and the ball would find its way into our yard. I would immediately try to find the errant ball and, if successful, carefully cross the busy street and stand at the golf course fence ready to return it for a small fee, usually a nickel and on occasion a whole dime. With my newfound wealth, I was then off to the corner grocery store to invest in the confectionery rage of the day, Double Bubble bubble gum. The comics, which were part of the gum’s wrapping, were the best.
By the time of my baptism I wanted to hit and putt golf balls rather than find them for others. The Scottish-born golf professional at the course was kind enough to allow some of us to play a few holes late in the evening after the paying customers stopped coming. In exchange for the privilege, we were expected to perform some chore like picking up papers around the clubhouse, bagging tees, or pulling a few weeds from the flower garden. Many times we played until it was so dark we could not see where we had hit our balls.
Over the next few years, golf became one of the great passions of my young life. I well remember the day my uncle gave me my first matched set of clubs. It didn’t matter that the shafts of each club bore the inscription “Property of the United States Government.” My uncle had purchased the clubs while he was in the military during World War II. I endured a lot of good-natured kidding about my military clubs, but I really appreciated the wonderful gift.

It was Christmas Eve. Alone in his car, Dan Lytle had driven four and a half hours through the thick California fog. For the same four and a half hours he had followed the same white car with the same green and white license plates through the same unending fog.
Dan hadn’t been this tired since his mission. But he had a diamond ring in his pocket, and there was a girl in San Leandro waiting up for him. Dan reckoned there would be at least another three hours of driving before he could put the ring on Callie’s finger.
Looks like a long night, he said to himself as he and a thousand other drivers rushed through the fog.
Dan turned the car’s radio dial, looking for Christmas music to help pass the hours. Isn’t it unusual, he thought, how sometimes at night the car radio can bring in radio stations from across the country—and how at other times the same radio brings in only static. He turned the radio off.
For perhaps another hour Dan passed through a foggy world where literally all he could see was the back end of a white car with green and white license plates. It was tense, tedious driving, requiring full attention. And then into his mind came a still, small, prompting thought: “Dan, pull over into the far right lane and slow down.”
Slow down? Why? Weren’t all the other cars and trucks doing just fine hurtling through the thick mist as if there were no such thing as three-meter visibility? Besides—it was late. Even if he kept to his present speed, Dan couldn’t hope to open the ring box until well after this foggy Christmas Eve had turned into a foggy Christmas day.
Dan wondered. Had the Spirit really warned him? Or had it been just the normal workings of a cautious mind? Couldn’t he just continue at the same speed as everyone else? Was it really important that he pull over to the right and slow down?
Again came the prompting: “Dan, if there were a wreck on the freeway, there is no way you could stop in time: You’d slam right into the wreckage. You really should pull over to the right and slow down.”
Dan Lytle had been taught that he should never ignore the promptings of the Spirit. Reluctantly, he signaled, then pulled his car over and cut his speed. The white car with the green and white license plates sped on, and instantly was swallowed up in the impenetrable fog.
Better late than not at all, I guess, he thought ruefully. He calculated that at his new speed, he likely would be on the road for quite some time.
Dan Lytle peered intently through the fog.
And then, suddenly, out of the fog came the red glare of tail lights. Flares appeared on the roadway, along with police cars with flashing lights. A policeman, walking between lanes of now halted cars, passed the word: “Terrible accident up ahead—lots of cars and trucks in a big accident. Be patient, folks—we’re trying to clear out one lane so you can get by.”
It took a long time for the four lanes of northbound cars to merge into one lane. Dan’s concern for the accident victims grew to disbelief and then near nausea as he was waved past the massive crash.
He saw crumpled cars, jack-knifed trucks, ambulances, patrol cars, paramedics—and motionless human forms under blankets at the side of the road.
As his car crept past the wreckage, Dan counted the demolished vehicles—10 … 20 … 30. How many more people on Christmas Eve, delayed at best, dead on the highway at worst?
And there: number 41. A horrified Dan Lytle recognized what had been a white car with green and white license plates—now jammed between the wreckage of number 40 and number 42.
For hours and hours I followed that car, thought Dan. For hours and hours—until the Spirit told me to move over and slow down.
What if I hadn’t been in tune to receive the warning? Or, what if I had received the warning and then had ignored it? He shuddered at the thought. Dan understood now as never before the principle his bishop had learned those many years ago.
With the massive accident scene finally behind him, Dan resumed his previous slow speed. He turned on the car radio, and from a station many kilometers away came Christmas music, clear and sweet and reassuring.
There was not the slightest trace of static.

If having a variety of skills and work experience on a résumé is a good thing—and it is—then 16-year-old Sarah K. is off to an awesome start. She has worked at babysitting, house cleaning, and doing yard work. She’s done photography shoots at weddings and receptions. And for the past nine months, Sarah has been working part-time at a restaurant as a hostess and a busser.
“I believe in a strong work ethic,” Sarah says. She believes firmly that every job she’s had has taught her something useful.
Sarah got started in her work-for-hire jobs the same way many Latter-day Saint youth do: by checking first with people in her ward. “The Church members started hiring me, and they would tell their friends,” she says.
It’s also been a family effort with her siblings. Sarah is the second-oldest of nine children. Her younger brothers know how to network and find yard-work jobs. “Whenever they had a gig, I would tag along,” she explains.
Her work plans are only getting started. “My goal is to be a cosmetologist and to have a business degree so I can build on that skill,” Sarah says.

Some years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley told “something of a parable” about “a one room school house in the mountains of Virginia where the boys were so rough no teacher had been able to handle them.
“Then one day an inexperienced young teacher applied. He was told that every teacher had received an awful beating, but the teacher accepted the risk. The first day of school the teacher asked the boys to establish their own rules and the penalty for breaking the rules. The class came up with 10 rules, which were written on the blackboard. Then the teacher asked, ‘What shall we do with one who breaks the rules?’
“‘Beat him across the back ten times without his coat on,’ came the response.
“A day or so later, … the lunch of a big student, named Tom, was stolen. ‘The thief was located—a little hungry fellow, about ten years old.’
“As Little Jim came up to take his licking, he pleaded to keep his coat on. ‘Take your coat off,’ the teacher said. ‘You helped make the rules!’
“The boy took off the coat. He had no shirt and revealed a bony little crippled body. As the teacher hesitated with the rod, Big Tom jumped to his feet and volunteered to take the boy’s licking.
“‘Very well, there is a certain law that one can become a substitute for another. Are you all agreed?’ the teacher asked.
“After five strokes across Tom’s back, the rod broke. The class was sobbing. ‘Little Jim had reached up and caught Tom with both arms around his neck. “Tom, I’m sorry that I stole your lunch, but I was awful hungry. Tom, I will love you till I die for taking my licking for me! Yes, I will love you forever!”’”

My Grandma Annabelle came to live with us for 19 months until her death. She could no longer live on her own or take care of herself. My grandma was not a member of our church. She didn’t belong to any church. My mother and I decided to read stories to my grandma from the Friend magazine. Grandma would listen, and I would ask her what she learned. Then she would give me a few short responses. My grandma loved it when I read stories to her. She always wanted me to read more.
Since my grandma liked the stories so much, we thought she would like doing the hidden pictures too. We worked with her and helped her find the objects. This helped her mind stay strong. The Friend magazine is great for everyone, young and old!
Sharing the stories was also a good missionary opportunity for us. Sometimes Grandma would listen to scriptures with our family. During those 19 months, she offered to say two prayers, and they were beautiful. We all felt the Spirit.
Even though my grandma didn’t remember who we were most of the time, she loved it when I read stories to her. I think it made her feel good inside. Since I am 12 years old now and it has been a year since my grandma died, I am looking forward to being baptized for her in the temple.

“My mother opened a little country store to help keep our family financially afloat. I worked with her in the store quite a bit. She taught me about respecting and serving people. Once, when I was fourteen, my mom and dad went to Salt Lake City for a conference and left me to mind the store. The Hutterites in our area wouldn’t go to the bank to cash their huge grain checks, so Mom was a bonded payor, and we would sometimes have thousands of dollars in the store safe. I knew the combination to the safe, and I knew that my parents trusted me, so I opened and closed the store on time and took care of customers.”

Shortly before my marriage, I was talking to my father-in-law to be. He asked me about how I developed my testimony of the gospel. I related to him the story about the article “Tell Him,” and he said, “Do you know what, James? I think my cousin wrote that article.”
It turns out that his cousin, Ken Barker, was the author. Wow! This is one of the most amazing things that has ever happened in my life. This whole experience has shown me how much Heavenly Father is watching over me and all of his children. I also developed a deeper understanding of what the Lord meant when he said, “And out of small things proceedeth that which is great” (D&C 64:33).

I was having a hard time feeling like I fit in. My family had recently moved clear across the country. The ward we moved into had a large youth group, but this was the first time I would be the “new guy.” The worst part was that I had to go to a new school, and the thought immediately flashed through my mind, “Who am I going to sit with at lunch?” Maybe I would see someone from church, but I didn’t want to barge in on someone else’s lunch table, especially since I didn’t know if they would even want me there!
The first day at school seemed to drag on forever. Finally the lunch bell rang. As I slowly entered the lunchroom, I prayed to Heavenly Father to help me find someone I knew. I glanced around to see if I could recognize anyone. No one. So I made my way to a table on the far side of the lunchroom and ate my lunch.
Later that day during math class, I recognized a familiar face. I had seen David at seminary that morning. He asked to see my schedule and discovered that we both had the same lunch period. “Hey, where were you at lunch today?” he said.
“I ate on the far side of the room,” I responded.
“Well, tomorrow come and sit with me at lunch,” he said.
I’m grateful for a loving Heavenly Father, who knows each of our needs and who answers each of our prayers. I’m also grateful for someone who was willing to extend a hand of friendship. Something as simple as an invitation can make all the difference.

The bond of trust that grew between my father and me was so strong that when my father asked me what I would think if he remarried, I was able to answer truthfully, “Do what you think is right.” Some of my older brothers and sisters didn’t agree with me, but I trusted him to do the right thing.
As the time grew closer, I grew excited to meet the woman my father loved and wanted to marry. But as I walked into the room, I saw a tall, slim, dark-haired woman who wasn’t my mother kissing my father. For a split second a door within me burst open, spilling all the hurt, jealousy, and anger that I felt for this woman. Then just as quickly, it closed without ever changing the smile on my face. That door was destroyed then, never to be opened again.
Many of our relatives and friends loved my mother and wouldn’t accept anyone else. They kept telling my father that he was wrong and was making a big mistake. But he wouldn’t listen, and neither would I. All I knew was that I had to trust my father. When I saw my two youngest sisters cuddled up to this woman while she sang them little songs she made up, I knew it was right. She was to be our new mother, and we all needed her, especially those two. As we grew to know her, we all eventually grew to love her.
My new mother left behind a big, beautiful house when she packed up her four children and moved into our little green house, a home in which she knew she wasn’t totally accepted. I admired how strong she was to be able to make a move like that, but I knew Heavenly Father, and maybe even my mother, helped her.
From then on it was more a matter of time. Slowly, with all of us pulling, we became closer, a family again. Together my father and new mother brought two more spirits into the world and into our family, making a grand total of 12 children. If nothing else made us a family, it was those two little spirits. Their presence created an unbreakable bond between two families that needed each other.
We were a family by our own special definition.

Jeff Holt doesn’t believe in going against the grain. The 17-year-old Indio, California, priest was recently honored for his statewide, first-place woodwork project—a pool table. Jeff was a guest of the California Department of Education in Sacramento where he toured government buildings, watched the legislature in session, and was guest at a banquet.
The pool table, weighing well over a thousand pounds, was completely hand-fashioned and valued at $1,000. Surprisingly, it was Jeff’s first real woodworking project.
“As I got into it, the work went very slowly at first,” he recalls. “It turned out to be a lot more work than I thought—not only the design and planning and woodwork, but the sewing and upholstery and felt work involved.”
The four-month endeavor also became a family project as Jeff, his parents, and his three sisters embarked on all-day trips to Los Angeles for specially selected materials. The 24-hour marathon completion involved lots of sandwich-making by family members, as well as Jeff’s final perfectionist touches to the felt and the polished Philippine mahogany.
The ten men it took to lift the table and the thousands who saw it in California aren’t about to forget Jeff’s effort.
Back home there’s not a room large enough in the Holts’ home for the table, so Jeff has to be content with keeping it in the garage. With the table finished, he’s also had a chance to work on a few new projects, including a stereo console and a dinette set. He’s also taken a junior college class in upholstery while finishing high school.
Jeff holds down a part-time job to save money for a mission. After his mission he plans on studying to become an industrial education teacher or furniture maker.

“The day after I was born, my father wrote me a letter,” Elder Pingree said. “He saved that letter, and later, when I left to serve a full-time mission, he mailed it to me. The letter contained several pages of his testimony and lessons he wanted me to learn during my life. As I read it, the Spirit bore witness to me that what I had been taught about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ by my parents was truth.”

I was down in a husbands-and-wives meeting in Provo years ago when a lovely sister bore her testimony as to the joy that had come into her home since her husband had become active in the Church. She told about going through the temple with her husband. She told how he had been inactive, how he had smoked and hadn’t been advanced in the priesthood, and how someone took hold of him and finally helped him to become worthy and ready to receive the priesthood; and the bishop had finally given him a recommend to go to the temple. After she had described that wonderful evening, she said, “Here, five little girls came in to be sealed to their father and mother. This man of God pronounced us a family for the eternities.” And as she finished this story and bore her testimony, she looked over the pulpit and down in front of her where her husband was seated. She seemed to forget for that moment that there was anybody there but just the two of them, and she said to him, “Daddy, I can’t tell you how happy the girls now are and how grateful we are for what you have done for us, because, you see, Daddy, except for you who holds the priesthood, neither the children nor I could be together as a family in the hereafter. Thank God for our daddy who holds the key and unlocks the door to an eternal family home.”

I recall a testimony given by a young cadet attending the United States Air Force Academy.
He was experiencing great difficulty in passing his courses and was very discouraged. At this point, he met a Mormon cadet, and from him he learned that there were a number of Mormon boys attending the academy and that they met together at five o’clock each weekday morning in a religious study class. The cadet was invited to attend one of these classes.
He did so and was deeply impressed by the wonderful spirit. He continued attending, met the missionaries, was given the discussions, and, through study, prayer, and attending church, received a testimony and was baptized.
He bore witness that upon receiving the Holy Ghost he felt its influence quicken his mind and understanding and refresh his memory, and that thereafter he had no trouble in getting satisfactory grades. His feelings of discouragement left him, and a spirit of peace and comfort came over him. This was a most inspiring and impressive testimony of the great value of the Holy Ghost.

As I walked out of school and got on my bus, I wished it was Friday, but not for the same reasons other people did. I never went to movies with friends on Friday nights, I didn’t hang out at the mall on Saturdays, and my Saturday nights were spent at home watching television instead of at parties. I looked forward to weekends because on Sunday I saw my friends.
I was the only Mormon at my school and things had not been going well. I didn’t have many friends there, and I walked to all of my classes alone. I watched all the other people in their groups and pairs and wished I belonged. As the year went along, I became even more depressed. I prayed every night that I could find some way to be happy.
Then one Sunday after an especially bad week, help came in my Beehive class. The lesson was about life’s everyday afflictions. My teacher had made a small paper kite for each of us. Written on it was a scripture: “Peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes” (D&C 121:7–8).
There, on that little paper kite, was the answer to my prayers. After all, the problems I had at school were only temporary. If I concentrated on my goal of eternal life, I could endure all my troubles.
Years later, I still remember the little yellow kite that lifted me out of my emotional slump and let my spirit soar.

Of all the illustrations of faith in the Lord, few stories are more powerful than that told of the pioneer who years later stood to defend the decision of the Martin Handcart Company to start for the Salt Lake Valley late in the year of 1856. He had been one of the nearly 3,000 Saints who walked from Iowa and Nebraska to Utah between 1856 and 1860 in one of 10 companies pushing and pulling handcarts loaded with their belongings.
In a Sunday School class, there was sharp criticism of the ill-fated Martin and Willie Handcart Companies, which met with tragedy because of their late start on the trek to the Salt Lake Valley.
An elderly man arose and said: “I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts … give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. Mistake to send the Handcart Company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife … too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but … we became acquainted with [God] in our extrem[i]ties.
“I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and I have said, I can go that far and there I must give up, for I cannot pull the load through it. … I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. I knew then that the angels of God were there.
“Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart? No. Neither then nor any minute of my life since. The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company” (as quoted in David O. McKay, “Pioneer Women,” The Relief Society Magazine, January 1948, 8).