Gospel Story Finder

A clean life, my young fiends, puts us in a condition to pray and ask our Father for his sustaining protection and power throughout life. A little boy was dressed up in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes by his mother and told to sit out on the porch and not get dirty. He sat there in his Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes. (This was many years ago. You youngsters, even these folks on the stand, don’t know anything about Lord Fauntleroy clothes, but as a little fellow, I wore them; and I could describe them, but I shan’t.) He sat there on the porch, and he was amusing himself until the butcher boy came down the street. He saw this boy dressed in his go-to-meeting clothes and yelled out, “Hello there, you sissy.”

Well, that’s more than any red-blooded American boy can take. He ran off that porch and into the street, punched the butcher boy in the face, and knocked him down. But the butcher boy soon got up and shoved this boy in his clean Sunday clothes into a mud puddle, then he ran down the street laughing. The boy got up and tried to brush the mud and water off of him, and, crying, he ran toward the house. As he reached the porch, he heard the ice cream man coming down the street ringing his bell and calling out, “Ice cream cones, five cents.” He forgot all about his disobedience to his mother and his dirty clothes. He ran through the door and said, “Mother, give me a nickel so I can buy an ice cream cone.”

His mother scrutinized him from head to foot and said, “Look at yourself. You’re in no fit condition to ask for anything.”

Several years ago, my wife, Shelly, and I were called to preside over the Washington DC North Mission. Shortly after we began our service in June 2019, local Church members Brent and Meg Pratt invited us and our five children over for dinner at their home in Potomac, Maryland. Brent and I happen to be distant cousins. Before we sat down to eat, Brent showed us a painting that he had commissioned from the talented Latter-day Saint artist Julie Rogers. The painting features our shared great-great-grandparents, William and Rachel Atkin, pulling a handcart with all their worldly belongings and two infant children across the fast-moving Green River in Wyoming.

This is how William Atkin later remembered that moment from August 1859:
We again labored in pulling our cart, and when we came to Green River, we found the [handcart] train had crossed and gone; and we were alone on its banks. We looked at the river, and I said to my wife, “We cannot cross this river alone.” She said, “No, but the Lord will help us over.” At these words, my heart seemed to leap for joy, and I said, “Yes, He surely will.” . . . [We] then knelt down on the ground, in all humbleness, and in the sincerity of our souls we told our Heavenly Father that we were doing all in our power to keep His commandments to gather to the land of Zion and now we had come to this river, and we could not cross it alone, and we knew that all power was in His hand, and we relied on Him to assist us over.

After pleading for help, William and Rachel then experienced a miracle:
We started into the stream, and as we did so we could see the deep water just ahead of us, and the next step we expected to step into the deep water, but when we took that step, the deep water was still ahead, and thus it was all the way across, and to our surprise we had not wet the axletree of our cart, and we were truly thankful to our Heavenly Father that we landed on the other bank in safety.

My great-great-grandparents’ difficult choices to accept the gospel in England, cross the Atlantic by ship, pull a handcart a thousand miles over rocky terrain, and remain faithful to their covenants in a new home profoundly changed generations of people. The decision by the Atkins to consecrate and gather with the Latter-day Saints, even if it meant crossing the Green River at their loneliest moment, made it possible for me, as their great-great-grandson, to be here today enjoying the blessings of the gospel.

I often asked my parents what it means to “feel the Holy Ghost.” I had heard them talk about it, but I was not sure what the feeling was like. Mom told me it was a very good feeling, but I still wasn’t sure what that meant.
One morning my one-year-old brother was running around and accidentally hit his head on a heater. He had a big cut on his head. He cried, and he was bleeding. I was very scared and worried. My mom took care of the cut and put a bandage on it. Then she took me to school.
At school I was still scared and worried about my brother. Then I remembered that I could pray. I went into the bathroom and sincerely prayed to Heavenly Father and asked Him to bless my brother. After the prayer I was no longer scared. I felt a very peaceful feeling, and I went back to my classroom.
On the way home that day, I told my mother what had happened. She joyfully told me that the warm, peaceful feeling I had was the Holy Ghost comforting me. She said that usually the Holy Ghost does not talk to us like other people talk to us. Instead He gives us a peaceful feeling.

One beautiful morning my family and I passed our bishop’s home. We noticed two enormous trees had been chopped down and the wood was in a huge pile. We have a fire pit at home, and we were almost out of wood. So we asked our bishop if we could have it. He told us, “You can have all of the wood you want.”
I was so excited. We would finally have more wood! When the day arrived to get the wood, we got right to work.
After a long day, our trailers were overflowing with wood. Then our bishop came outside and told us that a less-active family in our ward heated their home with a fireplace and they were out of wood. Mom and Dad decided to give the wood to them. That made me very upset. We had worked hard without any breaks.
I wasn’t quite sure if I should complain and ask if we could keep the wood. If I help give it away, all the work we did would be for nothing. We wouldn’t have the wood, I thought. What should I do?
It took us over an hour to unload all our precious wood. When we finally finished, we went home. We were very exhausted. When we got home, I went to check how much wood we had left. Guess what I saw? No wood at all. I thought we were giving some wood away, not all of it. I started pacing back and forth, thinking about how much work we did for nothing!
Then I remembered how the family heated their home with a fireplace. We just liked to have fires. It would have been really, really nice to have a surplus of wood. But the other family absolutely needed it. We just wanted it to do things like cook hot dogs and s’mores.
Giving the wood to the other family was hard, but I knew it was the right thing to do. After all, what would the Savior do?

Superior Branch of the Missoula Montana Stake put on its very first road show. With only five active members in the Mutual, the youth recruited members of the branch presidency and a couple of Primary children to participate with them. With the help and confidence building of their leaders, they wrote their own script, made their costumes, and found help with providing live music. Those participating were Vince Price; Shaleen, Lane, and Deana Morgan; Rick, Buffy, and Grant Seemann.

Many years ago when I received my call to serve a mission, I had an interesting experience. I knew that I needed to serve a mission, but I couldn’t get a type of confirmation. I was still wondering why. It was in the fall months, with about a month before I left on my mission. I was out hiking in the mountains in central Utah. My friends were back in college or on missions. I decided to kneel down and pray about my concerns. I think that I thought that I would have a Joseph Smith experience. I didn’t. In fact, it was about six months later when I was in Brazil that I received an answer. We were teaching a second discussion – it was on the Book of Mormon. My turn came to share my testimony. As I bore my testimony, another feeling or prompting came to me. It was the answer to the prayer. You are here to share with these people the same blessings that you have had in your life. That blessing is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Kim and Neil Davis were getting nervous.
You see, they come from a very goal-oriented family with six children, and they always help each other accomplish the things they set out to do. When they set a goal as a family, there’s almost no stopping them.
That’s why they were getting anxious now. Time was growing short. They’d set a goal to introduce a new family to the gospel every six months, and here it was, the last week of that time period, and not one interested family had materialized.
They’d fulfilled this goal many times in the past. When the Davises had lived in Boston and Washington, D.C., they could introduce lots of families to the gospel. “Not only would we have them over for the missionary discussions,” says Kim, 16, the oldest daughter, “but we’d invite them to family home evenings, pumpkin carvings, have Easter egg coloring parties, and special Christmas programs.”
But now the family was back in Utah, and it wasn’t as easy finding non-LDS families to share the gospel with. The end of their six-month time frame was looming near, and they hadn’t found anyone. The Davises knew theirs was a righteous desire, so they had family prayers and fasted. The six children each asked for help in their individual prayers.
And then, on the last day of the sixth month, their prayers were answered.
“My dad is used to receiving foreign mail from doctors asking for copies of articles,” explains Kim. Her father, Dr. Kim Davis, has done research and been published in a number of medical journals. “So when he picked up the letter from Hungary, he didn’t think much of it, until he opened it and read what was inside.”
“We were so excited!” says Neil, age 13. The letter was from a family in Hungary. They had seen a television documentary about Utah on Hungarian national television, and it had mentioned the Mormons and some of their beliefs. What had impressed this family most was the idea that families could be together forever. They wanted to know more about a church which taught that, so the father, being a doctor, and the son, being a medical resident, pored over back medical journals until they found an address in Utah. It happened to be Dr. Davis’s. The Hungarian family asked if their letter could be forwarded to some information center.
There was no need for that. The Davises went immediately down to the distribution center and collected all the Church information they could find in Hungarian. They put it in a box, and shipped it to their newfound investigator family.
Then they went home and wrote their testimonies of the gospel. They put those in an envelope, along with pictures of their family, and sent them to the Keresztis as well.
The Keresztis were amazed when they received a big box so soon from the United States and eagerly began reading the material. They were even more amazed when they received the letter and found that such a large family could be so close and have such strong testimonies of the gospel. Though the Keresztis had only one child, which is quite common in Hungary, they felt just as strong about family unity and were ecstatic to find something to help them.
Soon the Davises and the Keresztis were exchanging letters and pictures frequently. “We grew very close,” says Kim. “When we got a letter from them, our whole family would pass it around, and we’d read it at family home evening. We were so excited to see how they were accepting the gospel in Hungary, and we couldn’t believe it was happening to us.”
In the meantime, the Davises contacted the mission president in Vienna, Austria. Through him, the Keresztis were able to have missionary discussions about once a month.
“When we got the letter saying they were going to be baptized in Vienna, Austria, it was really neat,” says Neil. “And when we got pictures taken after their baptism, that was great!”

About a month after I joined the Church, I met my wife, Magareth, and one year later we got married. While we were dating, I told her that because I knew Joseph Smith was a prophet, I desired to build our family upon the words and teachings of the prophets. For example, President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) was the prophet at that time, and he counseled Church members to stay out of debt. In close to 29 years of marriage, my wife and I have never paid one penny of interest. Never.

This question came into focus for me almost exactly one year ago when my son Jeremy and I were traveling from Avignon in the south of France to Rome, and we made the mistake of taking a night train. When we arrived in Rome we realized that an American gentleman with whom we had been sharing a train compartment had stolen several hundred dollars from Jeremy during the night.

And so as we walked around the Eternal City, viewing the marvels of classical and Renaissance Rome, this issue occupied our thoughts and conversation a bit. For a few days Jeremy strongly suspected that the world and the people in it were essentially evil and that his earlier experiences with good people and good things had just been exceptions that prove the rule. (Of course I don’t want to trivialize the problem of evil. After our visits to Mauthausen, the Reichstag in Berlin, and seeing the aftermath of Communism in East Germany, we know there is plenty of real evil in the world, not just petty thievery.)

Gradually, however, as we encountered more and more wonderful people and more and more evidence of the existence of wonderful people in earlier generations, Jeremy decided—I hope permanently—that the world is essentially good but that there’s a whopping amount of evil in it and you have to be just a little bit careful about where you leave your valuables!

I learned this formula in my own life. I started working for a big oil company shortly after I was baptized. These truths about work came into my life and led to my progress in the company.
One manager in particular at the company had a lot of power. He requested that each department send two people to help him do an inventory. And he said the only requirement was that the people knew something about accounting.
I had studied at a trade school, and I had a certificate from my accounting classes. My department boss said, “Go tell him that you are going to help with the inventory and that you are an accountant.” He wanted to see the reaction of the other man because I was so young.
When I arrived, the manager asked what I wanted. I answered, “I’m going to help you do the inventory.” I did as I was instructed by my boss and told him I was an accountant. He laughed.
Then he said, “Well, Mr. Accountant, come to my chair. Take this adding machine, and add everything in every column as fast as you can.”
I started with one finger, very slowly. He pushed me out of the chair and said, “You don’t know anything; you are going to be punished. You are going to sit there in a chair in front of me for two weeks, watching how I do the work.”
I moved to another chair. He said, “Watch me.” He started adding so fast, not even looking at his hands. I was amazed. I thought he was joking about having me watch him work for two weeks, but he wasn’t.
That first day I sat there for six or seven hours. That evening I stayed after work and waited for everyone to leave the building. Then I went to his office and changed the roll of paper in the adding machine and started practicing adding the same columns he did. For hours I worked and got faster and faster and faster. When I felt I was doing it as fast or faster than he did, I went to sleep for an hour or two.
The next morning I just washed my face and went out the front doors when they opened early, then walked in again after the manager arrived. I knocked on his door. He said, “OK, you sit there and watch what I’m doing.”
When he started on the adding machine, he seemed slow to me. I had practiced for seven hours straight. I gently pushed him aside and asked him to sit in my chair. I started adding so fast. He was surprised.
He said, “What did you do?” He forced me to tell him. He said, “From now on, because you learned this, you will work with me, and I’m going to teach you everything I know.”
I switched departments. After a few years he resigned, and I was able to take his place because of his recommendation. I used effort and concentration, and I was happy in what I was doing. I was not angry because he punished me at first.
You can do any good thing. You just need to put forth the effort, the concentration, and be happy.

Recently I listened to a lovely young lady just leaving her teens as she spoke in a stake conference, her first address ever. She had never known a true family of her own. She had experienced many temporary homes, made many mistakes, had much heartache and hopelessness. Then an older Church couple found her, and loved her, and taught her. Her prepared talk was witty and interesting, but when she laid it down and bore witness through tears, it became magic:

“No one ever helped me to understand that I was worth anything,” she said, “that I was special in any way. And then the missionaries taught me about Jesus Christ and his love and the God who sent him. They taught me that Jesus died for me—for me. I am valuable! I am valuable! He died for me.”

A few weeks ago, just before 6:00 a.m., my wife and I boarded a taxi to begin the last lap of our trip to Salt Lake City from Australia. Our driver, who had been on duty since 3:00 a.m., was anxious to talk with us, his first passengers of the day. We learned his parents were born just outside of Mexico City. They moved to Chicago, where he was born, and then moved to New Mexico. Twenty years earlier our friend had come for a short visit to San Francisco and had never left. During our trip to the airport, this man related a few incidents from which some great truths were reemphasized.
His parents, he told us, had remained in New Mexico, but liked to visit him and his brother whenever they could afford it because they loved being with their children and grandchildren. In New Mexico his mother’s health was rather poor, but whenever she was in San Francisco, she seemed to feel much better. This discerning son had said to his brother, “I know just exactly what mother needs.”
He said, “I found a large truck. My brother and I drove to New Mexico, loaded our parents and all their possessions into the truck, and brought them to live near those who loved them most. Mother’s health improved noticeably.” Then he added, “You know, love is very important if it is done right.”

When I was a little girl just two years of age, my father died in a tragic accident. I had a sister who was seven and a brother who was six. Life became very hard for my mother, who had to face life alone with her three little children. For some reason she decided to tell me that my daddy had gone away on a trip. Maybe she was so sad that she didn’t have the courage to tell me the truth.
So I kept waiting to see him and hear his sweet voice and be wrapped in his arms. My birthday would come, and I would wait. Christmas would come, and I would wait.
Then one day I learned the truth from a neighbor girl who was my age. It was devastating; I cried so hard. I started noticing other children with their fathers even more than before. It seemed so cruel.
The years went by, and I was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I married a good man who wasn’t a member of the Church. But he gained a testimony and decided to be baptized.
Through our membership in the Church, a most wonderful blessing came into our lives. We learned that families can be forever, that a link in our family chain that had been left hanging by itself could be joined to the rest of the family. Through temple ordinances, my father could be baptized by proxy and sealed to his parents and I could eventually be sealed to him.
My husband was baptized for my father, and we had all the necessary temple ordinances performed. The Spirit of the Lord brought great joy to us. The anguish I had gone through as a child didn’t seem to matter when I compared it with this great joy and blessing. Knowing that families can be eternal was better than all the Christmases or birthdays my father and I could have spent together.
Today my father is sealed to his parents, and they, in turn, are sealed to their parents. As a result of the happiness I have experienced, I dedicate a great part of my time to doing family history so I can help families be joined together. Temple work brings the most wonderful blessings into our lives.

I did not want to be at Young Women camp last year. Three weeks earlier my grandpa had passed away, and I just wanted to be alone and away from everyone. By the time we got there, I felt like I shouldn’t have come.
However, on the first day, our ward had a devotional that I’ll never forget. One of the older young women spoke about finding joy. At first I rolled my eyes. How could I find joy if there was none?
But then she said something I had never thought about: When it feels like we can’t find joy anywhere else, we can find it in the Savior. Sometimes our mortal lives are filled with grief, depression, anger, trials, and constant uphill battles. Sometimes it is hard to find joy except in Him.
Although my girl’s camp experience was not perfect, I did find joy. I found it by turning to the Savior—in the scriptures, in nature, and in quiet moments where I could pray to Heavenly Father. This principle has gotten me through many trials since. I’m so grateful for the knowledge that the perfect love of the Savior can reach us even when we feel there is no joy.
Elise B., Missouri, USA

President Dallin H. Oaks shared how the commandments of God guide and steady our lives. He said: “Our experiences in mortality are like the little boy and his father flying a kite on a windy day. As the kite rose higher, the winds caused it to tug on the connecting string in the little boy’s hand. Inexperienced with the force of mortal winds, he proposed to cut the string so the kite could rise higher. His wise father counseled no, explaining that the string is what holds the kite in place against mortal winds. If we lose our hold on the string, the kite will not rise higher. It will be carried about by these winds and inevitably crash to the earth.”

“Hurry up! I want to see the lions,” Billy said, tugging on his sister’s sleeve.
“I’m coming,” Helen said. She jumped off the bench and grabbed Billy’s hand. They trotted off to see the lions.
When they reached the lions’ cage, they saw a man holding a camera and a little notebook. Children were gathered around him. A lady introduced the man. “Children, this is Mr. Maier,” she said. “He is an author visiting from New Jersey.”
An author! Helen liked meeting new people, especially famous people from far away.
“I travel from place to place and write about what I see,” Mr. Maier told the children. “Do any of you have a question for me?”
Helen raised her hand high in the air. Mr. Maier asked her to come to the front of the crowd. Helen scooted through the crowd until she stood near Mr. Maier.
“What are you writing about today?” Helen asked.
“Today I’m writing about Utah,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
Helen felt her heart start to beat faster. What could she think of to tell a famous author?
“Well, I’m 10 years old,” Helen said. Then she paused. Surely she could think of something more important. “And I’m a Mormon,” she added.
“A Mormon?” he asked. “Tell me more.”
“Well, my great-great-grandfather was Brigham Young, one of the prophets of our Church,” Helen replied. “And this Church is the true faith.”
“Is it really?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “What is your religion?”
“I don’t have a religion,” Mr. Maier said.
Helen was surprised. “Why not?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But maybe you can pray for me so I can be blessed too.”
“I can do that,” Helen said.
Then Helen got an idea. “Why don’t you get baptized in the true faith?”
Mr. Maier smiled. “That’s kind of you,” he said. “I think I would like to learn more about this faith first.”
When Mr. Maier returned home to New Jersey, he wrote a newspaper article about Helen. He called her a “zealous little Mormon girl.” He meant that she was enthusiastic and devoted to her faith. Mr. Maier was so impressed with Helen that he wrote to her and sent her copies of his books.
A few years later, Mr. Maier passed away. When Helen was older, she received permission from Mr. Maier’s family to have his temple work done. Thanks to Helen, a young man was baptized in the temple for Mr. Maier in the “true faith.”

When I was the president of Ricks College years ago, I remember having a man who was my priesthood leader come to my house each month to interview me about my home teaching. He brought with him a gray notebook in which he wrote notes. He recorded not only my report as a home teacher, but my observations about the gospel and life as well.

I remember at first being very flattered. Then one Sunday he and I were visiting what was then called junior Sunday School. He was a few rows in front of me. The speaker was a little girl, no more than six or seven, probably not yet old enough to have the gift of the Holy Ghost. I glanced over at the man and noticed with surprise that he had that same gray notebook open. As the little girl spoke, he was writing with as much speed and intensity as he had in the study of my home. I learned a lesson from him that I haven’t forgotten. He had faith that God could speak to him as clearly through a child as through the president of a college.

I watched that man in later months and years deal with great difficulties and with important assignments. I saw miracles—at least to me they seemed to be miracles—in his wisdom and in his ability to lead and to direct. Those miracles came, I believe in large part, because he could hear the voice of God confirmed by the Holy Spirit in words of the weak and the simple.

Let me share with you a pointed letter which came from a resident of Minnesota. It was addressed to Brigham Young University:
“Gentlemen:
“Beginning December 22, I made a bus trip from southern Minnesota to Florida via Des Moines and Chicago and points south.
“There was a large group of young men and women traveling the approximately same route from Des Moines. These fine young people were students from Brigham Young [University] going home for the holidays.
“They were all very polite, well-behaved, articulate young men and women. It was a pleasure to travel with them—to know them—and it gave me a new hope for the future.
“I realized that the university cannot do this. Young men and women of their caliber are the product of fine homes. The credit is due the parents. I cannot reach the parents, so my appreciation must go to the school.”

I would like to share an experience or two with you. When I was growing up, Heber J. Grant was the President of the Church. My father always prayed for President Grant. And he had great personal feeling for him because President Grant at one time was president of the Tooele Stake, and my father at that time was president of the Tooele Stake. President Grant became ill and passed away, and I can remember after the funeral kneeling in family prayer as a young boy and hearing my father praying with the same love and devotion and feeling for the next prophet, the next President of the Church, George Albert Smith.
As a youth, I was surprised because I had never heard anybody pray for any prophet other than Heber J. Grant. And I felt almost cheated—like my father was turning away from a good friend. But as the time went on, through that experience and other experiences, he taught me a very valuable lesson—you see, he had great love and appreciation for President Grant, and that would never change, but in his heart I realized that he had saved his greatest love and his greatest loyalty for his God, and whomever God would send he would sustain and uphold and pray for and embrace.

My mum’s relationship with me skyrocketed when I said, “I want to spend more time with you, but I don’t know what to do or when to do it.” Playing board games happens to be our favorite pastime. So we set aside a time together to play, laugh, and make memories. When you are open with your parents, eventually they become your best companions. You will be able to talk to them about anything, and you will be sure of an honest answer. That is the sign of a mature relationship.
Ephraim S., 15, New South Wales, Australia