Gospel Story Finder

As mayor of Palo Alto, he brought about a number of civic developments and projects that serve Palo Alto’s needs today. But his warmth and goodness also helped him win friends for the Church. They grew to understand and respect the standards he lived by. Still, few of his non-member acquaintances realized the depth of Mayor Haight’s commitment to his church—until one night in 1963.
At the end of a city council meeting, Mayor Haight told city officials, citizens, and reporters that there was one additional item of business not listed on the agenda. “I want to announce,” he said, “that as of tonight I am resigning as the mayor of Palo Alto and as a member of the city council, as Mrs. Haight and I have been asked to go to Scotland for the Mormon Church. The meeting is now adjourned.”
Non-member friends on the city council tried to persuade him not to go, but he explained that the call to service had come from President David O. McKay, a man he regarded as a prophet. David Haight felt the only matter to be resolved was when he would be needed in Scotland.
“The Savior talked about putting your hands to the plow and not looking back, and I’ve thought of that many, many times,” Elder Haight says now. “You don’t look back with regrets, with a sense of wishing for what you had been involved in.”
That day, twenty-four years ago, he put his hand to the plow and has never looked back with regret.

Friday, August 20. Voices mix and mingle with the smoke as it drifts slowly across the camp, filtering the first rays of the early morning sun. The pace is brisk in the camp as families prepare the morning meal.
An unknown musician lends a feeling of peacefulness to the camp’s early activities as he breathes inspiring hymns into a well-trained harmonica.
Knowing that we have reached and set up our permanent base camp is reason enough for rejoicing as I reflect back on the toils and exertions ofthe past two days of pushing and pulling handcarts a total of 20 miles over the mountains.
An excerpt from a newly discovered pioneer journal? A fictional account by someone who has never gone near a handcart?
Actually it is neither. This is from my journal, and the handcarts were very real to myself and the 64 young people who had left the comforts of civilization to come on this five-day trek over Boulder Mountain in southern Utah.
It has been over 120 years since the first hardy troop of migrating Saints made their way across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. It took that group nearly four months to make the trip from Iowa City. Now, a five-day trip had been organized under the cooperative efforts of the Brigham Young University Special Courses and Conferences and the Department of Youth Leadership to give jet-age youth a taste of the hardships—and the joys—encountered by those early Saints.
True to Mormon tradition, our group was first organized into “families” of 15 each, complete with fathers, mothers, and children. Handmade cotton dresses replaced slacks and cool summer tops, and rugged wool pants with suspenders were donned to simulate clothing that might have been worn by the forebears we hoped to emulate during this brief but arduous experience.
Thursday morning, armed with sunbonnets, hiking boots, and cod-liver oil, we started up the mountain road, leaving civilization behind us. There was no lunch or supper that day as our long caravan of travelers made their way through the wilderness. The crossing of each stream called for rejoicing as they provided the only means of nourishment with which we could feed our tired and aching bodies. I developed sore muscles in places I never even knew I had muscles.
We pushed on, and as night came we had only the stars to light our way. Those of us who could, drew on our extra strength to help those who were weaker.
Only the sounds of shuffling feet and the creaking of wheels broke the silence of the night. But soon the weary silence was broken by happy shouts as we pulled into camp, and many of our number collapsed into lifeless bundles of slumber on the grass-covered meadow floor.
Those of us who were able to stay awake were rewarded with two sourdough biscuits and a piece of beef jerky each.
I awoke the next morning with crumbs on my chest and a half-eaten biscuit in my hand. I had fallen asleep before I could finish my meal.
Saturday was a day for feasting. We caught enough wild turkeys for every group to have at least one. It was truly a sight to behold! Turkey feathers were flying as hungry “pioneers” chased down those plump birds and caught them with their bare hands. By the time the chase was over, the participants needed first aid more than the birds.
While the wounded veterans were being bandaged, the turkeys were roasted in a rock-lined pit. The meal was a delicious change from the cornmeal mush and sourdough biscuits of the previous two days.
The day’s activities concluded with a square dance. It’s amazing how much better pioneers can sing and dance on a full stomach. I can’t say it did all that much for our tune-carrying ability, but it definitely strengthened our vocal cords!
Sunday brought a more serious and contemplative mood to the camp as meetings were held and we reflected on our experiences, Moist eyes and wet cheeks glistened in the clear mountain air as testimonies were borne in that evening’s five-hour testimony meeting. Never have I felt the Spirit of the Lord as strongly as I did then. All of us realized this was to be our last gathering, for in the morning our journey would be at an end and we would return to the 20th century.
How grateful I am for the knowledge that God lives, and for those true pioneers who gave all they had—even their lives—for the building up of the the kingdom of God! Because of this experience I now have a better understanding and deeper appreciation of their sacrifices.

Preparing to migrate west with the Saints in 1848, Mary Fielding Smith faced many hardships. During her stay at Winter Quarters, some of her oxen had been stolen, and many of her cattle and horses had died in the severe winter. Strong oxen were necessary to making the trip west in safety.

Mary’s son Joseph, then nine years old, was given the job of driving one of the ox teams. Because they didn’t have enough oxen to pull their wagons, they tied two wagons together and used their few oxen to pull both wagons at once. Though this slowed their progress, they managed to make it the twenty-seven miles from Winter Quarters to the Elk Horn River, where their company was forming and where they hoped to obtain more oxen or horses.

The man who supervised the cattle in the company urged Mary to stay behind, saying, “If you start out in this manner, you will be a burden on the company the whole way, and I will have to carry you along or leave you on the way.”

Undaunted, Sister Smith told him, “I will beat you to the valley and will ask no help from you either.”

After the blessing, the ox got up and was soon ready to pull the wagon again. Two more times other oxen became ill, and twice more Mary asked the brethren to bless them. Each time, they were healed instantly. Despite all difficulties, Mary and her family arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on September 23, 1848, a full day before the rest of the company.

Dear Libby,
I guess you don’t know me, but I’m Kevin’s brother. I don’t know if he ever mentioned me or not. Did he? My name is Rick. I’m 15.
I don’t know if you know anything about me, but I know plenty about you. Are you worried? (That’s a joke.)
Kevin wrote a lot of neat things about you. I kept all his letters. I was reading them this morning. I like to go to his room and wrap his sleeping bag around me and read his letters.
In one of his letters he said your real name is Elizabeth, but you like Libby better. I do too. Except it reminds me of canned green beans. He said you were the first Mormon he’d ever met.
I’m 15 now. I was 13 when Kevin joined the Marines, and 14 when he was killed guarding the American Embassy in Rome.
Kevin and I were really close. Even my parents said so.
You probably didn’t know it, but he told me a lot of things about you. He told me things he didn’t even tell my parents. For instance, once he wrote and said that your hair is the same color as our dog. Now before you get mad, you should know we have an Irish setter named Lady, and the color of her hair is my favorite color. So if what Kevin said about your hair is true, then I think that when you get a little older you could be Miss America or even that lady on TV’s “Wheel of Fortune.” I like her because she doesn’t talk much. Mainly she points at the prizes and smiles.
Kevin told me a lot of things about you. Are you worried? I know you’re a dental assistant, and that’s how he met you, when you were cleaning his teeth.
Personally if I were a dental assistant I’d never fall in love with one of my patients. In the first place, how can you stand to put your fingers in a stranger’s mouth? And second, how can you respect somebody after you’ve scraped away all that crud from their teeth? I mean, it’s like you know the absolute worst thing about them.
He said he looked up at you, and that you had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen in his life. Do many guys fall in love with you when you’re scraping gunk off their teeth? I never would. No way. Of course Kevin always was a little different.
He also told me that on your first date you went jogging together. That sounds like Kevin. He was always looking for ways to save money. And that you didn’t drink or smoke, but you were a lot of fun anyway. He said that made him curious about you. I guess that’s why he agreed to go to your house and let those ministers from your church talk to him about God and stuff like that.
You must really be something to get him to change religions, because I thought he was pretty good the way he was. And I guess it’s no secret that it set my parents off. Mom said she thought you probably sweet-talked him into it. She says things like sweet-talk all the time because she’s from Georgia. She has all these strange sayings that none of the rest of us have ever heard before.
But about you sweet-talking him into becoming a Mormon—I don’t think so, because Kevin could be pretty stubborn sometimes, and if it’s true what Kevin said about you not kissing him for a long time after he started dating you, then I don’t think anybody can say you sweet-talked him into anything.
I didn’t mind Kevin joining your church if that’s what he wanted to do.
By now you’re probably wondering why I’m writing this letter. Actually it’s mainly because Dr. Nelson asked me to do it. He’s the psychologist assigned to my case. I told him about you, and he told me to write you a letter. He gave me a week to do it, and the week’s up tomorrow, and I have to go back to him then, so I’m sitting here in Kevin’s room, with his sleeping bag wrapped around me, writing you. It’s very early in the morning. Actually it’s three-thirty. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night.
I was 14 when he was killed. I wonder sometimes what was so valuable in that embassy. A bunch of old men. Was any of it worth Kevin’s life?
He sent me pictures of Italy. I’ve got one of him standing by an old boat. He’s smiling in the picture, and there’s this beautiful blue water behind him. The picture was taken just a month before he died.
It makes me wonder if at the same time the picture was taken, somebody was meeting in some little room, maybe in one of those houses in the background of that picture, working out a plan to bomb the American Embassy.
Besides being my brother, Kevin was my best friend. Some people said they’d never seen two brothers so close. Even when he was away from home, he wrote to me about things that were happening to him.
He liked to kid around even in his letters. In one letter he’d give me a puzzle, and in the next letter he’d answer it. It used to drive me crazy sometimes. But he was like that. Always fun.
I saved all his letters. I read them every night.
If a guy could have any kind of brother, he’d be the one to choose. To me he was the kind of guy who can do anything. He made me a kite once after I’d broken mine. He just made it out of newspaper and some branches from a tree. Did you know he got freckles on his face in the summer? He was never ashamed to tell people I was his younger brother. Once he even took me along on one of his dates. We went to a carnival, and he let me ride with him and his girl friend on the Ferris wheel, in the same car. It was a little crowded, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Once he took me camping, just the two of us. During the night there was this heavy thunder storm. It didn’t last long, but my sleeping bag got wet. His was dry because he’d remembered to put down a ground cloth. He told me to do it too when we set up camp, but I said it was too much bother. The reason I said that was because the sky was clear then.
Well, after the storm, and my sleeping bag was wet, he didn’t get mad and tell me it was my fault anyway for not putting down a ground cloth. Instead he got out of his sleeping bag and asked me to get in it instead. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said he thought he’d go build a fire and think.
I let him do it because I was too young to realize that it was only two thirty in the morning and nobody in their right mind goes out and sits by a fire for four hours in the middle of the night to think.
He did things like that for me all the time.
All the girls loved him. They really did. In high school for sure, because I was around and saw what was happening around our house. I wish I had a dime for every girl who came over to our house with a batch of cookies for Kevin. It was good for me too, because he’d always share with me.
Did you love him? A lot? I hope you did.
I asked him once why girls liked him so much, and he said it was because he treated them right. I asked him what he meant, and he said you’ve got to remember one thing about girls and that is that they’re people too. And I said well of course they are. Everybody knows that. So he named this really foxy movie star, and asked me if I thought anybody knew what her favorite color was. And I said no. And he said, that’s because people don’t treat her like she is a person. What do they treat her like, I asked, and he said they treat her like she’s a toy.
You can’t do that, he said. You’ve got to find out interesting things about them, like if they ever had measles, or when’s the last time they used crayons to draw a picture, or if they’ve ever baked a pecan pie, or if they play the piano, or if they know how to change the oil in a car.
This is really getting to be a long letter, isn’t it? Well, I’m almost through.
I have a question I want to ask you. I read all his letters this morning. And mostly I understand them all, except the last one, the one he wrote just before he was killed.
And that’s the main reason why I wanted to write you. I’ll copy down part of his last letter for you. I’ll skip the parts you wouldn’t be interested in.
I heard yesterday that an embassy in Germany was bombed. I hope they stay away from ours. Sometimes I get scared.
Rick, here’s a puzzle for you. Ready?
When things get bad and I’m afraid, I turn to another brother of ours. He’s faced it all before. When I get to a place in my life where I need help with a certain thing, then I read his words and they help me.
You and I are real close, and I’ve never really preached to you much, but I wanted to tell you about this older brother of ours. He’s someone I can go to for advice, and he will be there for you too. Because he’s been here on earth before us, and he knows the best way for us to live. And he loves us, even more than I love you.
In my next letter I’ll tell you who this brother is. And where you can find the things to read he wants to tell you.
Love, Kevin
That’s what he wrote. And it’s the thing I can’t understand.
Here I am, after he’s dead, reading his letters over and over again, trying to understand more about him. And then to think that he was doing the same thing about a brother of his.
But the thing that doesn’t make sense is that there is no other brother. There’s just the two of us in our family. So what did he mean? When the army sent all his belongings back to us, I went through everything, hoping to find what he said he had from this other brother that he talked about. But there weren’t any other letters except the ones from me and my parents and you—just that, and an old beat-up copy of the Bible and the book of the Mormons.
What I want to know is—who is this other brother he talked about? And where are the letters from this other brother to Kevin that he said he read all the time? I need to know because I really need help now too, at least that’s what my parents and Dr. Nelson think.
My mother just came in and told me it was late and I should go to bed. I told her I was writing a letter to you. She told me that you came to the funeral. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet you then. I’m sorry I ran away and caused my parents more worry. But I’m all right now.
If you have any ideas on my question, please write to me. And would it be all right if we wrote to each other once in a while? Kevin loved you, so you must feel bad too. Maybe we can help each other for a while, and then I won’t have to keep going back to Dr. Nelson.
Your new friend (I hope),Rick

I have always learned in Primary and at home that we should be honest. We should not keep what does not belong to us. We should return change when we receive too much at a store, and we should always tell the truth, even though we may be punished.
When I was nine, I was waiting at the school for my mother when I saw a wallet on a bench. The wallet had money in it.
I thought about what I should do. My mother works very hard to care for my two sisters and me, but things weren’t going very well at home. I thought about what I could buy.
Then I started to worry about the person who had lost the wallet. I sat down and waited, knowing that she would come to look for it. After a while, a very upset woman came by. She asked me if I had found a wallet.
I answered, “Is this it?”
Her joy was so great that she hugged me. She thanked me again and again.
At the time, I did not even think about why I had decided to be honest. But when I told my mother about it later, she said that the Holy Ghost had whispered to me and that I had listened to the still, small voice.
I am grateful for having learned to be honest.
Rudinei Antonio Fernandes Filho, age 11São Paulo, Brazil

Mildred Coloma Rivera was born on April 17, 1941, and grew up in rural San Manuel, Tarlac. She came from a large family, with her parents engaged in tedious farm work. “We were a poor family,” she recalls, “and we struggled economically, so I looked for opportunities to earn.”
In 1961, Mildred started working for an American family at Clark Air Base in Pampanga. The Apel family were Latter- day Saints and Mildred was intrigued by the family’s faith. She told the family head, Charles Apel, that she wanted to come to Church with them on Sunday, to which Brother Apel replied positively.
Mildred liked what she saw and felt. “I knew right away the Church was true,” she affirms, “and I was interested in the Church because of the friendliness of the Apel family and also the members.” She was taught gospel principles by members of the small Church unit in Clark, as there were no missionaries available in that area.
Mildred soon gained a testimony. “I want to be baptized,” she excitedly told the Apels. The Church was so new in the Philippines that the pioneering missionaries—who had been given authority to baptize converts—were too far away in Manila to know about Mildred and her request. Thus, unit leaders in Clark had to get special permission from Church headquarters in Salt Lake City to baptize her.
Mildred waited patiently and prayed for a positive response. Her prayers were answered when permission was granted to hold a baptismal service, which took place on August 5, 1961. On that day, Mildred Coloma Rivera was baptized by Brother Paul Sharp, becoming one of the very first members of the Church in the Philippines.
“I felt so elated that I kept thanking God for being baptized,” Mildred joyfully remembers. Sister Rivera became one of the pioneer members of the Angeles Branch and grew in her testimony of the restored gospel as she prayed, read the scriptures, and attended Church services.

Many years ago I took our only son on his first camping-fishing trip. He was just a boy. The canyon was steep, and the descent was difficult. But the fishing was good. Every time I hooked a fish, I would give the pole to the eager boy, and with shouts of joy he would reel in a beautiful trout. In the shadows and coolness of the late afternoon, we began our climb back up to the rim high above us. He scrambled rapidly up the mountain ahead of me with a challenging, “Come on, Dad. I’ll bet I can beat you to the top.” The challenge was heard but wisely ignored. His small frame seemed literally to fly over, under, and around every obstacle, and when every step that I took seemed ridiculously like my last, he had reached the top and stood cheering me on. After supper we knelt in prayer. His small voice rose sweetly heavenward in benediction to our day. Then we climbed into our large double sleeping bag, and after a bit of pushing and pulling I felt his little body snuggle and settle tightly against mine for warmth and security against the night. As I looked at my son beside me, suddenly I felt a surge of love pass through my body with such force that it pushed tears to my eyes. And, at that precise moment, he put his little arms around me and said, “Dad?”
“Yes, son.”
“Are you awake?”
“Yes, my son, I am awake.”
“Dad, I love you a million, trillion times!”
And immediately he was asleep. But I was awake far into the night, expressing my great thanks for such wonderful blessings clothed with a little boy’s body.
Now my son is a man with a son of his own. Once in a while the three of us go fishing. I look at my little redheaded grandson beside his father, and I see in my mind’s eye the image of that wonderful moment long ago. The question so innocently asked, “Dad, are you awake?” still rings in my heart.

I wish to speak about opening the windows of heaven. As a boy I learned a great lesson of faith and sacrifice as I worked on my grandfather’s farm during the terrible economic depression of the 1930s. The taxes on the farm were delinquent, and Grandfather, like so many, had no money. There was a drought in the land, and some cows and horses were dying for lack of grass and hay. One day when we were harvesting what little hay there was in the field, Grandfather told us to take the wagon to the corner of the field where the best stand of hay stood and fill the wagon as full as we could and take it to the tithing yard as payment of his tithing in kind.
I wondered how Grandfather could use the hay to pay tithing when some of the cows that we were depending upon to sustain us might starve. I even questioned if the Lord expected that much sacrifice from him. Ultimately, I marveled at his great faith that somehow the Lord would provide. The legacy of faith he passed on to his posterity was far greater than money, because he established in the minds of his children and grandchildren that above all he loved the Lord and His holy work over other earthly things. He never became wealthy, but he died at peace with the Lord and with himself.

For the year-end program at my school, we were putting on a musical. I was so excited, especially when I got a part. I went to all the rehearsals even though no one could drive me there. But when my teacher showed us the costume we were to wear, I was disappointed. It was immodest.
I told my teacher that I would not wear the costume, and she was upset with me. She told me that none of the other girls had a problem with the costume and if I didn’t want to wear it, I couldn’t perform. She even tried to get my mom to pressure me to wear it. But I knew I had to keep the commandments, so I said I wouldn’t perform.
Then, just a few days before the program, the teacher got new costumes that were modest. I’m happy that I didn’t think that “just this one time” it would be OK to be immodest.

The Young Women of Eight Mile Plains Ward, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, decided to share their love for Valentine’s Day. After spending a Saturday preparing paper hearts with messages of love and friendship, the girls sneaked into the yards of their “victims,” leaving their messages behind, attached to sticks in the ground, and taped to doorknobs and doorbells.
The girls did the entire project in secret but were found out by some people who loved the idea so much that they did the same thing to their neighbors the following day. The Eight Mile Plains girls have decided to make it a yearly tradition.

Temples are where many of these sacred ordinances occur and are also a source of peaceful refuge from the world. Those who visit temple grounds or participate in temple open houses also feel this peace. One experience preeminent in my mind is the Suva Fiji Temple open house and dedication. There had been political upheaval resulting in rebels burning and looting downtown Suva, occupying the houses of Parliament and holding legislators hostage. The country was under martial law. The Fiji military gave the Church limited permission to assemble people for the open house and a very small group for the dedication. The members as a whole were uninvited due to concerns for their safety. It was the only temple dedication since the original Nauvoo Temple that was held under very difficult circumstances.
One person invited to the open house was a lovely Hindu woman of Indian descent, a member of Parliament who was initially held hostage but was released because she was female.
In the celestial room, free from the turmoil of the world, she dissolved in tears as she expressed feelings of peace that overwhelmed her. She felt the Holy Ghost comforting and bearing witness of the sacred nature of the temple.

In a recent news report we learned of the release of the grandson of one of the world’s wealthiest men by his drug trafficking captors for the incredible amount of nearly $3,000,000. The ransom money was paid by the boy’s mother, who had a love for her son that far exceeded any monetary consideration. As the mother was reunited with her son, she hugged and kissed him repeatedly. She was quoted as saying, “Only now I’m beginning to live again.”

The Aaronic Priesthood is a very real power. One young man wrote this of his experience in exercising this power:
“At one time I attended a ward which had almost no Melchizedek Priesthood holders in it. But it was not in any way dulled in spirituality. On the contrary, many of its members witnessed the greatest display of priesthood power they had ever known.
“The power was centered in the priests. For the first time in their lives they were called upon to perform all the duties of the priests and administer to the needs of their fellow ward members. They were seriously called to home teach—not just to be a yawning appendage to an elder making a social call but to bless their brothers and sisters.
“Previous to this time I had been with four of these priests in a different situation. … They drove away every seminary teacher after two or three months. They spread havoc over the countryside on Scouting trips. But when they were needed—when they were trusted with a vital mission—they were among those who shone the most brilliantly in priesthood service.
“The secret was that the bishop called upon his Aaronic Priesthood to rise to the stature of men to whom angels might well appear; and they rose to that stature, administering relief to those who might be in want and strengthening those who needed strengthening. Not only were the other ward members built up but so were the members of the quorum themselves. A great unity spread throughout the ward and every member began to have a taste of what it is for a people to be of one mind and one heart. There was nothing inexplicable in all of this; it was just the proper exercise of the Aaronic Priesthood.”

The fraternity of priesthood quorums can indeed be awesome. When I became a member of a Quorum of the Seventy, I assumed that I might be accepted by my brethren in the course of time if I were able to prove myself worthy of their association. I hoped someday to measure up and be approved. I was surprised to find myself immediately welcomed and from the outset treated as a brother, as an equal by men much more talented and accomplished than I. I have been supported and encouraged, loved and tutored in my quorum from my very first day of membership in it. Consequently, I feel a deep desire to contribute to the work of the quorum and to assist my brethren as much as I can.

Early in the morning today I went to the municipality offices in Dombo Tombo, and while we were in line a woman dropped a $20 note on the ground. I saw it fall and told her about it. She picked it up and said, “Thank you.”
Many of the other people in line said to me, “You are stupid. You are foolish. Why didn’t you take the money and buy your own things?”
But I said, “No, I shall never do that because I am a child of God.”
When the others calmed down, an older man who was standing behind me said quietly, “Do you go to church? It seems as if you are a good girl.”
And I said, “Yes, I go to church.”
And he said, “What is the name of your church?”
I said, “It is called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you want to, you can come to the Dombo Tombo Hall on Tuesday nights at 5:30 P.M. or on Sunday at half past ten and I will meet you there.”
And the man said, “Oh, yes! I will come!”
So I am very happy about what I did today.

Dot Todman, 18, knows that’s true.
“I grew up with a good friend named Kelly,” Dot explains. “I always knew she was a Mormon, but I didn’t know what Mormons were or anything about them. Kelly moved away, but we kept in contact. Then this year I was on a school choir trip, and we arranged to meet again.
“We were just talking, catching up on our lives, and then somehow religion got brought up. I told her I didn’t feel the church I was attending was right for me. It was kind of like a spiritual kindergarten.
“She said, ‘In our religion, you’d be surprised. It goes all the way up to university level.’ That intrigued me. I asked her to write to me, to tell me about it in her own words.
“I waited for her letter. I waited and waited. In the meantime, another LDS friend of mine tried to get me in touch with the missionaries. But I didn’t want to talk to them until I’d heard from Kelly.
“Finally I called her. She said, ‘Are you still interested?’ She sent me a letter and bore her testimony, and that opened the door.”
Dot found the light she’d searched for, and it grew brighter and brighter. She joined the Church and is now a member of the Barrie Ward, sharing the gospel herself. But Kelly made a discovery, too. She discovered that others were searching for the light she already had.

“My parents were both musical, though untrained. While we had no musical instruments at home except my father’s ukulele, the family enjoyed singing together. I was in my teens when my parents first acquired a record player. And I remember what a great experience that was and how much we all enjoyed it. When I was older, the family did acquire a piano, and some of the younger children took lessons. My wife was a music major, and that was one of the things I enjoyed about her when .we were dating. I loved to sit and listen to her play the Bach Inventions.
“The name Poelman is a Dutch name,” Elder Poelman explained. “My paternal grandfather was born in Holland, and as a young man in his teens, he left Holland and went to South Africa. There he married my grandmother, a Scottish girl. She was working at the time as a governess for an English family living in South Africa. My grandparents had one child born in South Africa, then they went back to the British Isles. Another child was born in England, and they moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where my father was born. It was to their home in Scotland that the missionaries came tracting, and my grandmother answered the door. They were on the third floor of an apartment house with only cold running water in the working-class section, and a man named A. Z. Richards was one of the missionaries. He stayed close to our family until he died, and I have always been very fond of him.
“Subsequently, I was called to serve as a missionary in Holland, as did all three of my younger brothers. My father also served a mission in Holland. That missionary experience was a valuable one for me, because I had an opportunity to meet some of my grandfather’s brothers and sisters, and I was able to learn the language.”
I asked Elder Poelman what message he wanted to share with the children of the world, and he replied, “Your Father in heaven knows who you are and loves you unconditionally. Even when you do things that are bad, He loves you. It makes Him sad, of course, but it doesn’t mean that He stops loving you. I would encourage you to pray to our Heavenly Father often, knowing that no matter what you’ve done or how you feel about yourself, Heavenly Father will listen to you.
“Sometimes we may think that the Lord loves us only if we keep His commandments and that if we disobey His commandments, He loves us less. That isn’t true! This is something Satan would like us to believe because then we feel estranged from our Father in heaven. Remember, He loves you all the time wherever you are and whatever you are doing.”

When I returned to the University of Utah after my mission, I began to date Kathy Kipp. Her father was a good man but not a member of the Church, and her parents were divorced. Kathy and her sister faithfully attended Primary together as young girls. Sometimes Kathy’s father wanted the family to do things on Sunday that were not appropriate on the Sabbath Day. Kathy knew that she needed to obey her father, but she went to church when she could.

When we began dating, I learned how strongly Kathy felt about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Because of her devotion, our family has always tried hard to make Sunday a special day. We don’t watch TV on Sunday or go to sporting events. We listen to sacred music, write letters, and spend lots of time talking together. Our younger children liked to read stories from the Friend and from scripture readers. As a result, we have enjoyed a spirit of peace in our home on the Sabbath.

Heavenly Father loves all children and wants them to be happy. He designed the gospel to make us happy. One of my pioneer ancestors, William Clayton, wrote the hymn “Come, Come, Ye Saints” (Hymns, no. 30). He wrote it when the Saints had been driven out of their beautiful city of Nauvoo and were looking for safety. The chorus of that song reminds us that when we do what is right, “all is well.” That does not mean we will not have any problems. But when we follow our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness, all will eventually be well.

Elder Marcus B. Nash shared with me the story of a dear 84-year-old woman who, during her baptismal interview, “acknowledged an abortion [many years before].” With heartfelt emotion, she said: “I have carried the burden of having aborted a child every day of my life for forty-six years. … Nothing I did would take the pain and guilt away. I was hopeless until I was taught the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I learned how to repent … and suddenly I was filled with hope. I finally came to know that I could be forgiven if I truly repented of my sins.”

On a warm July evening, 2,500 young Latter-day Saints from Southern California congregate next to the football stadium at the University of Redlands. It’s 20 minutes before showtime on opening night, and the youth dressed in colorful dance costumes are excited to perform their dance festival show after two years of planning and months of dance practices.
One group of youth begins to clap and chant “It’s dance time” as they cheer. All around them other participants are practicing their parts alone or with partners.
Soon they all line up to go into the stadium, and after the prayer and opening number, all 2,500 of them flow onto the field. The California Dreamin’ dance festival has just begun.
During the next two hours the youth move across the field performing dances like the waltz, cha-cha, and swing to live music performed by other youth and adults. When it’s over, the crowd cheers and the dancers hold their heads high, grateful for the opportunity to participate in this great event.
With more than 2,500 youth dancing on the field, making friends, and strengthening testimonies, the California Dreamin’ dance festival turned out to be just that: something great.