Gospel Story Finder

Have you ever made a mistake? Have you ever felt sorry about something that you have done? Here is a true story of a responsible boy named Travis. He learned that being accountable for his actions by repenting made him feel good about himself.
1. Travis was having fun playing with Matt’s toys. He wished that they were his own.
2. I’ll borrow them, he thought, putting several toys into his pocket without asking Matt.
3. When Travis played with the toys in his bedroom at home, it wasn’t much fun.
4. His mother asked him why he was unhappy.
5. Travis told his mother that he had borrowed Matt’s toys without asking and that now he felt awful about it.
6. “It is wrong to take something that belongs to someone else,” said Travis’s mother. “What will make it right?”
7. “I’ll feel better if Matt has his toys back,” said Travis. “Will you take them to him for me?”
8. “No, I can’t repent for you,” Mother replied. “You are sorry, and you need to take the toys back yourself.”
9. “I’m afraid to tell Matt the truth. Maybe he’ll be mad at me.”
10. “Maybe he will,” said Mother, “but taking the toys back and telling Matt that you are sorry will take away the bad feeling that you have for your mistake.”
11. “Matt, here are your toys. I’m sorry that I took them without asking,” said Travis. “I won’t do it again.”
12. “I’m glad that you brought them back,” said Matt. “You really are a good friend.”
13. “I’m glad that I told the truth and made things right,” Travis said with a smile.

Church was great, wasn’t it?
Now what should we do?
We could write letters to Grandpa or visit Sister Gomez. Or is there someone else we could help?
On the way to church, I saw people who looked like they didn’t have homes.
Can we give something to them?
Good idea!
I’ll find a list of donations the homeless shelter suggests. Let’s see what we have at home.
Can we make some muffins to give to them too?
You bet.
A little while later …
Hi! We wanted to give you these.
They have lots of good stuff in them—even muffins!
Thank you!
God bless you.
I’m glad we helped people today.
Me too!
Thanks to Cayden and Ammon G. for sharing their story with us. And sharing their great example!

On another afternoon, near Paris, my father and I visited the great cathedral at Chartres. Malcolm Miller, a world expert on the cathedral, pointed out three sets of Chartres stained-glass windows. He said they tell a story.
The first windows show Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden.
The second recount the parable of the good Samaritan.
The third depict the Lord’s Second Coming.
Taken together, these stained-glass windows can describe our eternal journey. They invite us to welcome all with room in His inn.

While accompanying President Dieter F. Uchtdorf to Eastern Europe last year, I marveled at the faith and courage of the Saints. One priesthood leader in Ukraine told us of being called to the branch presidency in the spring of 1994, only six months after his baptism. This would require becoming public with his faith and helping to register the Church in the city of Dnipropetrovs’k. It was at a time of uncertainty in Ukraine, and openly showing faith in Christ and in the restored gospel could mean difficulty, including the possibility of losing his job as a pilot.

The priesthood leader told us, “I prayed and prayed. I had a testimony, and I had made a covenant. I knew what the Lord wanted me to do.” Courageously, he and his wife went forward with faith, unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This story happened in Canada.
“Mamá, guess what?” Ana’s older sister, Mila, said. She held up her report card from school. “I have As in all my classes!”
Ana rolled her eyes. Why did Mila always have to be so perfect?
“That’s great,” Mamá said. “I’m proud of you.” She turned to Ana. “And how are your grades?”
Ana handed Mamá her report card. “They’re fine,” Ana said, looking down. Ana tried hard in school. But she didn’t have perfect grades like Mila did.
“I’m proud of you too,” Mamá said. She gave Ana a hug.
She’s just saying that to make me feel better, Ana thought. Mila had always been smarter than her.
But Mila wasn’t just better at school than Ana. She was better at everything. She had more friends. She had prettier hair. She was better at sports. Everyone loved Mila.
Ana’s parents tried to help.
“You are so important, Ana,” Papi would say.
“You are beautiful and smart,” Mamá would say.
But Ana didn’t feel important or beautiful or smart. Not compared to Mila.
One day Ana and Mila were playing a board game. “Looks like you won again,” Ana groaned.
“Want to play something else?” Mila asked. “We could go outside. I bet you’ll beat me at soccer!”
“No!” Ana snapped. “I’m tired of losing, and I’m tired of you always being better than me.” She felt like there was hot water boiling inside her.
Mila’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry—”
Ana turned and ran to her room before Mila could finish. “I’ll never be perfect like you!” she said, and slammed the door.
Ana lay on her bed with her face in her pillow. She felt so angry!
She huffed some deep breaths. When she was calm, Ana knelt to say a prayer. “Dear Heavenly Father,” she said, “please help me. I’m always jealous of Mila.” Her voice got quiet. “I feel like I’ll never be good enough. Do You really love me?”
A warm feeling spread from Ana’s head down to her toes. Then she had a thought. Heavenly Father loved people because they were His children. Not because they were the best. Maybe Ana didn’t have to be better than anyone else to be loved. She was loved right now.
Ana stayed on her knees. She didn’t want the good feeling to go away. Heavenly Father did love her—a lot.
Then there was a gentle knock at the door. It was Mamá. She sat on the bed next to Ana. “I heard you were upset.”
Ana nodded. “Yeah. I feel better now though. I know I shouldn’t be angry at Mila for getting good grades or winning. And I said a prayer, which helped a lot.”
Mamá put her arm around Ana. “How did you feel when you prayed?”
“Good,” Ana said. “I felt like I was really important to Heavenly Father.”
Mamá pulled Ana close. “You’ve always been really important—to Heavenly Father and to us. But I’m glad that you know that now.”
“Me too. I’m going to tell Mila I’m sorry for yelling at her.” Ana smiled. “And ask if she wants to play soccer!”
Illustrations by Marina Martin

This was the second time I had entered this town, and I remembered the first time 17 years before when I was seven years old. It had been a little cooler, a little later; the streets had been darkening, street lights shining, but the sounds, the noises, had been the same.
Only the feeling was different because then it was all new and I was frightened. Instead of my very own, hard-earned, bought-and-paid-for sports car, I had been sitting, small and still, in Grandpa’s black and white sedan with the worn, creaky seats, the dusty dashboard, and the smell of Grandpa emanating from every corner, every fiber, circling around me, descending on me, yet all culminating on the person of that tall, broad figure sitting beside me. The car seemed to live and breathe as if it were a part of the man who had driven it year after year, smelling always of the same shaving lotion, the hot chocolate he drank for breakfast every morning, the solution he soaked his teeth in every night, the mints he sucked on after every meal. Clean smells, sweet smells, Grandpa smells that had been woven through his clothes, grown into his scratchy face, and soaked into the ends of his fingertips.
I didn’t know him. We had lived far away. Every year my mother and father had talked about going to see Grandpa and Grandma, but money was short, and we needed a new bathroom. The next year I broke my arm. The next year … well that was the year I had come, without my parents, who lay, to my bewilderment, in pretty boxes called caskets under the ground. The car and the night had claimed them. I didn’t understand.
Grandpa had waited at a red light, perhaps the same one I was waiting at now, and looked down at me. I must have looked very tiny to such a man, my skinny legs sticking out from my little skirt, my thin hands clutching my eyeless teddy bear, my pale face turned toward him, round, red eyes waiting.
Then he smiled that smile, that special smile. Not a broad one, not a hearty one. Such a slight upturn of lips, a simple rounding of cheeks, a curving of heavy eyebrows. But it was mostly his eyes that, dark as they were, shone deep into mine, sparkling dark like black diamonds. I sat startled, my mouth dropped, and for just a moment I felt certain that he was this Heavenly Father that my mother had told me about so often. He put his big hand on my neatly parted hair, touched the side of my face, then lifted one long blonde braid with his fingers. His words were simple, like the rest of him.
“Move closer, Blondie.” He put his arm around me, pulling me close. “Grandpa’s gonna take care of you now. Don’t be afraid, little Blondie Boo.” The light turned green and he drove on.
The warmth of his body helped me forget how cold my mama and daddy were in those boxes, and the tears that fell were no longer frightened but relieved. With my wet face against his side I slept.

A businessman who was in the process of closing down his business suddenly conceived a way to improve his product. He immediately began to work on it, soon went into full production, and reported a sales volume higher than ever before.

President Thomas S. Monson, First Counselor in the First Presidency: “As our youngest son, Clark, was approaching his 12th birthday, he and I were leaving the Church Administration Building when President Harold B. Lee approached and greeted us. I mentioned that Clark would soon be 12, whereupon President Lee turned to him and asked, ‘What happens to you when you turn 12?’

“… Clark, without hesitation, said to President Lee, ‘I will be ordained a deacon!’

“The answer was the one President Lee had sought. He then counseled our son, ‘Remember, it is a great blessing to hold the priesthood.’”

My grandmother Isabel Blanco was born in Potosí, Nicaragua. In my memories, she is a loving, hardworking, and faithful woman. As I was growing up, she planted in my young heart the seed of faith as I saw her pray to God with fervor and as she took me to mass every Sunday to worship Jesus. However, she did not have an easy life. Among many other things that she did, when she was young, she worked as a maid for an affluent family. As was sadly common, her employer got her pregnant and when she could no longer hide her pregnancy, she was dismissed.

My father, Noel, was born from that pregnancy, and although Potosí was a small town and everyone, including Noel, knew who his father was, Noel never had any direct contact or relationship with him.

Isabel never married, and she had two other children out of wedlock. After some time, she and her three children moved to the country’s capital, Managua, looking for better employment and educational opportunities.

At some point, we also performed the temple work for my grandmother, Isabel, except for the sealing to spouse ordinance because she was not married in her life. Just think about this, a woman like Isabel, who was not treated with respect by men and who dealt with many struggles in her life, can be given the opportunity on the other side of the veil to exercise her agency and make a sacred covenant with God through a vicarious ordinance in the temple. She, like all of us, is in need of increased faith, in need of repentance, in need of love, in need of sanctification—in short, in need of healing.

Elder Christofferson talked about the metaphor of the watchman, a person who blows a warning trumpet when he sees approaching armies (see Ezekiel 33:3–4). Imagine that a particular watchman, Larry, is keeping watch, but not just for armies—also for tornadoes, locusts, and stampedes. But to make it even harder, he’s guarding four cities (they decided that would save money). The hardest part? Instead of just a trumpet, he has four different instruments.

Over the past few days, all four above disasters have happened, and each time Larry had to warn the right city with the right instrument. See if you can figure out what he did.
When the army approached, Larry played the viola.
Either Utopia or Funland experienced the tornado.
Utopia isn’t the city that heard the trumpet.
The city of Funland heard a snare drum.
Awesometown didn’t experience the locusts.
Neither Coolsville nor Utopia heard the clarinet.
Hint: You’ll probably want to draw a chart. Here’s one possible layout:

Coolsville—locusts, trumpet; Awesometown—stampedes, clarinet; Utopia—army, viola; Funland—tornadoes, snare drum

When there were fires in my country, I was eager to fast for rain and for help when our Church leaders asked us to. I wrote messages to the firefighters to tell them thank you. I felt the Holy Ghost.
Lana W., age 9, Tasmania, Australia

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! A busy yellow bee landed on a flower by Andrea. She jumped up and hurried away. Andrea didn’t like bees. She moved to a different part of the garden to pull weeds by a leafy tomato plant.
The sun was warm on Andrea’s back. She could hear Mom close by in the rows of corn. Suddenly Andrea heard more buzzing. Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! She ran to find Mom.
“There are too many bees, Mommy!” she said. “I want to work in the garden without the bees.”
“We need the bees to make our garden grow,” Mom said. “Jesus created bees to pollinate the plants so we can have our favorite foods.”
“Without the bees we wouldn’t have our garden?” Andrea asked. She thought about all of her favorite plants. She liked pretty flowers. She liked to eat strawberries and tomatoes. She would be sad to live in a world without them.
“I’m glad Jesus made the plants,” Andrea said. “And I’m glad He made the bees too!”

The friendship with Quitovac didn’t end with just two visits. As this story was being prepared for publication, we learned that the youth from the Rincon Stake had been to the Alberque School again.
They brought quilts they had made, one for each child at the school. An LDS dentist came along to check the children’s teeth. And they also brought a foot-powered sewing machine, with the promise that a Relief Society sister would soon be along to teach villagers how to sew.
“When we arrived, the children lined up on the left and right of the road, clapped their hands, and saluted us,” Brother Rehm said. “We played the same games, had the same fun, left with the same feelings.”
And, he noticed, the school was cleaner. The students all had shoes and proper clothing. And even though there were still some broken windows in need of repair, it seemed like there was a brighter, happier feeling in this place in the sun.

As a young man many years ago, I was drafted—or as we called it, “conscripted”—into the South African military. I was assigned to a squad of soldiers who were good men but had the roughness of speech and behavior that is sometimes manifested by men serving in the military.

Surrounded by such influences, I discovered that it wasn’t always easy to live gospel standards. But from the beginning of my military service, I was pleased to stand up for my beliefs. I made it clear that I would not engage in conduct that I knew was wrong. I am grateful that the men in my squad—some grudgingly at first—grew to respect my standards.

On one occasion, during a military training camp, a group of us were standing around a campfire on a beautiful, dark, cloudless, star-filled night. Some of the fellows in my squad were drinking beer while I sipped a soft drink. The discussion was pleasant, with no improper talk.

During our visiting, a few men from another unit wandered over to our happy band. One of these men turned to me and, noticing the soft drink in my hand, mocked me for not joining the men in drinking beer. Before I could respond, one of my friends surprised me by rebuking the man.

“We suggest that you leave now, sir,” he said. “We will not have anyone speak to Chris like that! In fact, he is the only man amongst us who lives his life like a true Christian.”

With that, the rebuked man quietly skulked away into the dark night. At that moment, although a little embarrassed by the unexpected compliment, I remembered Paul’s counsel to be “an example of the believers” (1 Timothy 4:12).

“I began my career by chasing my sons,” she quips. And it’s literally true. Her two younger sons, she has six children, had taken up running and, concerned at age thirty-seven about her own fitness, she began jogging with them. In 1963 “the Big Walk became the rage in the Transvaal,” and Mavis found herself becoming “one of the top lady walkers in the country.” She liked it—the competition, the continually increasing endurance and discipline, and the self-discovery.

Mavis had never thought of herself as athletic. Her father, George Vaughn, was a runner and rugby player in Kimberly, site of “the biggest manmade hole on earth,” where he worked for a diamond-mining company. Yet Mavis, a nervous child, suffered from chorea (St. Vitus’s dance) in her early teens that left her bedridden for three months on three separate occasions. Running was an unexpected development in the life of Mrs. Ernest Hutchison of Johannesburg, the mother of six children, and now the grandmother of seven.

From walking, she branched out into cross-country running and worked hard to get the Republic of South Africa to recognize women’s cross-country as a legitimate sport. She was rewarded in the usual way by getting more work to do; she was appointed to manage the first women’s team to represent South Africa abroad, touring the United Kingdom in 1969.

By then she was working seriously on her running and signed up for “one of the most gruelling marathons in the world,” the Comrades’ Marathon which starts 760 meters above sea level at Pietermaritzburg and runs through “87 kilometers of breath-taking scenery to the coastal city of Durban.” This is “the down run.” The “up run,” held in alternate years, begins at Durban and climbs breathlessly to Pietermaritzburg.

The day after his baptism, he wanted “to have an experience like Joseph Smith in the grove of trees, so I walked into a very deep thick forest”.
Initially he was scared, but he summoned the courage to kneel and pray. But he didn’t see anything. “I wasn’t sad, but I really wanted to know how to explain everything to my parents”, he said.
When he came home that evening, something happened that he would never forget.
“I was sleeping with four of my siblings and around 2 a.m. I had a dream. In that dream, the Savior visited with me, and he opened His arms to me. In the dream, I stood up and tried to embrace the Savior, but then I woke up and I was standing and trying to hug someone who wasn’t there.” He was so touched by this experience that he decided to share it with his parents.

It was Christmas break and I was just relaxing by our fireplace, ready to take a nap. I closed my eyes and seconds later, a bright cheery voice yelled right in my ear, “Look what I made!”
I opened my eyes, and in my face was my little sister and her creation—and it sure was impressive. It was a bright rainbow lump of clay, but not really rainbow anymore, since the colors were all blended together.
“It’s a house for Jesus!” she announced. Sure enough, she took the top of the mound off and inside lay a few clay figures that formed what could be a Nativity scene.
She said, “I made it all myself!”
The sculpture made about as much sense as any clay figure made by a five-year-old, so I gave up trying to understand it. I said to her, “Yep, you sure did.”
We moved on to the next items in the art show, and she had me guess what each statue was—which was honestly very difficult, since they were all as abstract as the first one.
But I looked back at the clay Nativity and had the overwhelming feeling that Jesus would love it—that if presented with it, He would shower her with praises and put it in a place of honor.
As I sat with her and looked at the rest of her art pieces, I realized that the love we show others, and the time we sacrifice to show love for others, is the true meaning of Christmas.
Brennan T., Utah, USA

Years ago, our early morning gospel class memorized Bible verses. Naturally I was drawn to short passages. This included John 11:35—the shortest verse in scripture, only two words—“Jesus wept.”
For me now, that Jesus weeps in sorrow and joy testifies of the miraculous reality: the divine Son of God came into physical mortality and learned according to the flesh how always to be with and bless us.

Jenny’s tears brought back a flood of memories for me. I remembered trying to make it all the way through the first verse of “Love at Home.” But every time we hit “Time doth softly, sweetly glide,” my voice would crack—along with my composure. At my house, time rarely glided. It lurched from one emotional blowup to the next. In between, my brother and sisters and I walked on tiptoe, our nerves tightly strung. I guess we thought that if we were careful enough, maybe we could avoid setting off the next explosion. We could never be careful enough. And always the brief sunshine was followed by a terrifying storm of rage that threatened to swallow us up.
I remember going to church without Dad during the years when he was in and out of Church activity. When he came, I hoped no one would detect the smell of smoke on his breath. When he didn’t, well-meaning friends would sometimes ask me where he was, shattering my hope that no one had noticed.
Then there was the week he didn’t come for our family’s speaking assignment in sacrament meeting. I couldn’t stop the tears as I waited for my turn to speak. At moments like this, the unthinkable fear came to the surface: maybe we would never be an eternal family.
Always there was that fear, which over the years grew into a terrifying certainty. My clearest, most cherished childhood memory—of being sealed to my parents shortly after we had joined the Church—would ultimately mean nothing.
When my parents were divorced, I was in my twenties. But still I felt like a frightened child. All the happy parts of my past life with my family seemed suddenly canceled out—invalidated—no longer relevant. What joy could the present hold for me or for those I loved? And eternity? I felt eternally orphaned.
Now that I’m in my thirties, understanding and peace are healing some of the wounds in my soul. And one of my greatest desires is to offer some of the peace I’ve found to those of you who are living in turbulent, unhappy families.

It was already a bustling, growing city when the Spencer family arrived. Thousands of people lived there, and more were coming every day. There were hundreds of log cabins and many brick homes. People were building, buying and selling, planting, working everywhere! Aurelia had never seen so many people—and most of them were Latter-day Saints.
Her family had rented a room until Papa could build a house for them. He had chosen a lot on a hill above the town, a little northeast of where the temple was being built.
Their lot, like most in Nauvoo, was big enough to plant a large garden and some fruit trees. Ellen and Aurelia had helped Papa plant the trees that first spring—peach and apple trees, Papa said, although they looked like twigs to Aurelia. She had asked Papa why he planted the tiny trees so far apart.
“They are small now,” he had said, “but if we want them to grow large and give fruit, they will need space to grow.” Aurelia had watched them grow until last year they had finally blossomed and borne fruit!
All of Nauvoo blossomed in the spring. The mud in the streets was deep enough to suck the boots right off your feet, but flowers and fruit trees bloomed in every yard. Aurelia wished she could see spring come to Nauvoo again. But the Prophet Joseph was dead, and soon his beautiful city would be deserted.