Gospel Story Finder

One woman, Kelly, was so touched by the opportunity to buy items for teens and children that she told her member friend, “This idea is so unbelievably awesome! Everyone needs to know about these machines!” Kelly posted about the experience on her Facebook page. She became an incredible advocate for the Giving Machine initiative, prompting five families in her neighborhood to visit a Giving Machine kiosk, as well as family members in three different cities to visit their local Giving Machine kiosks.

I recently learned of a particular young adult sister who decided to serve a full-time mission. She had developed a capacity to connect with and relate to people from almost every belief system, political persuasion, and nationality, and she worried that wearing a missionary name tag all day, every day, might become an identifier that could impede her exceptional ability to establish relationships. Just a few weeks into her mission, she wrote home about a simple but meaningful experience:
“Sister Lee and I rubbed salve into an old lady’s arthritic hands—one of us on either side—while we sat in her living room. She didn’t want to listen to any spoken messages, but let us sing, loved us to sing. Thank you, black missionary name tag, for giving me license to have intimate experiences with complete strangers.”

When spring came, my deep depression lifted, and I no longer needed medication. We moved to a sunny city. I thought all was well and that I would leave my mental illness behind. But I was not completely healed. Feelings of guilt arose for my previous thoughts, feelings, and urges. I disliked that my teenagers had figured out that I had been suicidal. I felt like I had wasted more than a year of my life.
Also, I was scared—especially when the shorter days in September arrived again. I experienced intense daily flashbacks and feared I would suffer acute depression again. But I could see the Lord’s hand in my life as I was led to a wonderful doctor and started therapy. I learned that I also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With my doctor’s guidance, I dealt with PTSD.
And then I experienced a miracle. After mighty prayer and seeking to apply the Savior’s Atonement in my life, the Lord removed my feelings of guilt rapidly, distinctly, and tangibly. His voice explained that I didn’t have to carry guilt because my depression wasn’t my fault. Jesus Christ carries that burden for me through the power of His Atonement. I was filled with light and felt hopeful again.
I don’t know all the reasons why I had to face the challenges of life-threatening illness. Although I still carry all the memories, the mental and physical pains are gone. Every day I am grateful for my family, my doctor, and my time here on earth. Because of my illness, I gained empathy and love for others. I grew emotionally and spiritually and gained knowledge that I would not have learned otherwise. I experienced precious spiritual moments with my Heavenly Father and my Savior. My experiences have encouraged me to embrace life.

Some would think that losing an arm would be a terrible burden, but it has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. I learned that it is very important to have challenges and to face up to them.
Before I had bone cancer, I was quite impatient. When I came home from the hospital, I suddenly needed a lot of patience. I had been right-handed, and now I had to learn to do everything left-handed.
One Sunday morning when I was in my bedroom with my tie in my hand, I thought, How am I going to tie this? I thought about getting a clip-on tie. I thought about asking Mom to help me. But I couldn’t take her with me on my mission just to tie my ties. So I decided I had to learn how to do it myself. I finally figured it out by using my teeth. I still do it that way, even after having tied it thousands of times. I have learned that with a positive attitude and the Lord’s help, I can do what I have to do.

On William’s 21st birthday, May 1, 1858, he and the crew received shore leave in Honolulu, Hawaii. William heard prior to leaving Britain that President Brigham Young had sent missionaries to the Pacific islands, so the young convert tried to locate some Saints “but could find no record of them.” Unknown to him the Church had called home its Pacific missionaries to help defend Zion, if necessary, against a United States army then marching towards Utah. Ironically, the last elders working in Hawaii left the islands the same day that William landed in Honolulu.
The seaman, an isolated Mormon cut off from contact with the Church, continued to nourish his faith by himself. He read and reread the “works of the Church” that he had brought along. A priest in the Aaronic Priesthood, he was “informed about the authority of the priest to administer the sacrament,” so he felt justified in holding his own private sacrament service in his “beef house” aboard ship. “I prayed often, to the Lord,” he said, “and asked Him to acknowledge me in the administration.” On Sundays, after the ship’s religions service, William returned to his room where “I would place the hardtack (ship’s bread) and water upon a table and then offer prayer, after which I would ask the blessing upon the bread and water and partake of it. In this way I received much spiritual strength.”

My husband, Cyrus, and I were married in the temple on May 23, 2006. Before we were married, his work in a laboratory required Cyrus to work on Sundays. He had a shifting schedule, but he usually worked from midnight to 8:00 a.m. After work he would go home to change from his uniform to Sunday dress and then go straight to church, which started at 9:00 a.m. He continued this schedule after we were married.
Sometimes I went to church alone because he was delayed at work. We always wished he didn’t have to work on the Sabbath. On the first Sunday of June 2006, we had our first fast as a married couple. We prayed in faith that Cyrus would be blessed with a job that would not require him to work on Sundays.
A few days later at about 10:00 a.m., I wondered where Cyrus was because he usually came home between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. Suddenly a thought came to me: “He might be promoted.” Cyrus finally arrived around 11:00 a.m. As he entered our home, he said he had good news and bad news.
I told him to tell me the bad news first. He said we would soon leave Iligan, Philippines, and move to Panay, Philippines. I did not like the news at first because we loved the people in our stake. They were kind to us and treated us as their own, knowing that Cyrus and I had no family nearby.
When I asked him why we needed to move to Panay, he said it was because of the good news. His boss had interviewed him for another job located in Panay. I immediately asked him not about his salary but whether the job would require him to work on Sundays. When he answered, “No!” I was very happy. I hugged him and told him that his new job was the answer to our prayers and fasting. Two months later, Cyrus started his work in Panay.
Heavenly Father is mindful of us, and He blesses us when we exercise faith and obey His commandments. I am grateful for the principles of prayer and fasting. My husband’s job is a blessing to us. Now he has time to magnify his calling in our ward, and the only work he does on Sunday is the Lord’s work.

The realities of war are sobering to a person of any age, but to a young man just off a mission they were especially so. “I had some interesting experiences in the war, and one of them really impressed me. I was in Hollandia, New Guinea, at the time. We had Hollandia itself secured, but the Japanese were in the jungle all around our perimeter. I got such a despondent feeling wondering if I’d ever get home again. I felt hopeless. Then one day I went up into a stand of mahogany trees within the perimeter all by myself, and I knelt down and poured out my heart and asked the Lord to give me some understanding of my situation. I didn’t see any vision, but such a peace and calmness came over me that when I came down from that hill, I was a different man. I knew that everything was going to be all right, that I’d get home safe and sound. And though I experienced some ticklish situations during the war, that feeling never left me.”

The first is illustrated by an experience when a stake president and I took the opportunity to visit a young woman in her home near Atlanta, Georgia. She was young; her husband had been killed in a car accident; she was living in an apartment with her two young children. I suppose we expected to find her upset and discouraged at having received a “bump” not of her own making. On the contrary, she was cheerful, calm, and very gracious. She thanked us for coming and said, as nearly as I can recall: “Brethren, I want you to know that I believe in the plan of redemption. I am grateful to my Savior for the promise of a glorious resurrection with my husband. I am grateful for his redeeming sacrifice.” Then, putting her arms around her two children, she said, “Our faith in Jesus Christ will see us through.”
We came expecting to comfort and strengthen, and we left humbled, buoyed, and blessed by her wonderful expression of faith.

A few years ago Morgan High School played Millard High for the state football championship. From his wheelchair, to which Morgan coach Jan Smith was confined, he said to his team: “This is the most important game of your lives. You lose, and you will regret it forever. You win, and you will remember it forever. Make every play as though it were all-important.”
Behind the door, his wife, whom he tenderly referred to as his chief assistant, overheard her husband say, “I love you guys. I don’t care about the ball game. I love you and want the game victory for you.” Underdog Morgan High won the football game and the state championship.

Eighteen-year-old Liane Pearce and Tony Morgan, 21, a recently returned missionary, have joined the brigade of traffic wardens, or “yellow peril” (referring to the stripes on their uniforms) as they are more commonly called, assigned to traffic control on London’s busy streets.
It’s hard work—long hours trudging the streets in all kinds of weather—and they are the targets for abuse, both verbal and physical, from angry motorists. But they both say they love their unusual job.
Because they are the only members of the Church in their brigade, they have plenty of opportunities for missionary work. As far as rough language of fellow workers is concerned, Liane says, “Tony and I turn a deaf ear. People know we are members of the Church and, strangely enough, seem to be respectful to us.
“People imagine all we do is hand out parking tickets,” she continues, “but that’s only a small part of it. We consider we are doing a public service by directing the traffic, keeping the roads clear for other motorists, and working school crossing patrols.”

Michael knew that Christmas would not be the same this year. Although everything else would be the same—the manger scene that was always set up on top of the piano, the Christmas tree he and his father would go up in the mountains to cut, the Christmas cookies his mother and younger brothers and sisters would make—it would not be the same this year, because Michael was not the same.
He didn’t know what to do about it.
He had messed up.
He was not as good as everyone thought he was.
He tried not to think about it because it was embarrassing and painful. It made him feel guilty. Nobody else knew about it. And nobody would ever find out.
It had happened on fast Sunday in December. It was during church. His mother asked him to take his two-year-old brother, Zach, out because he was acting up. Out in the hall Zach started playing around where coats were hung up. Zach liked to get down on his hands and knees and crawl through the maze of coats. Somehow in the process Zach pulled a purse off the coatrack and knocked it to the floor. Everything spilled out.
Michael knelt down and started putting things back in the purse. Zach quickly ran away, thinking he was in big trouble. Michael decided to look in the billfold to find out who it belonged to. As he opened the billfold, he saw a stack of five-dollar bills.
Michael looked around, grabbed one of the five-dollar bills and slipped it into his pocket, put everything back in the purse, and put the purse back up on the coat rack.
He got Zach, picked him up, and took him back to sacrament meeting.
And that was it.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d taken the money. He didn’t need it for anything. Of course he liked to play video games at the mall after school, and that’s where the money eventually went, but it wasn’t like an obsession with him or anything.
He wondered if he would ever get caught, and if he were caught, and someone asked him why he’d taken the money, what he would say. He wasn’t sure. There didn’t seem to be any reason. He remembered he’d been upset with his mother because of something she’d said before they left for church, something about his always making them late for church. He tried to imagine telling a policeman, I stole the money because my mother got mad at me for making us late for church.
And now here it was, a Monday night, two weeks before Christmas. Their family had a large manger scene they set out on top of the piano every Christmas Eve. It had been in the family for as long as he could remember. His grandfather, who had died two years earlier, had carved it when his mother was a child. When Michael was a little boy he had been fascinated by the mules and straw and the cow and Mary and Joseph and the little baby Jesus in the wooden manger.
That night his mother asked him to take charge of unpacking the manger. He would unpack each figure and give it to one of his brothers or sisters for them to place on top of the piano. Each figure was wrapped in tissue paper.
Michael used to like this family tradition, but this year for some reason he didn’t feel the same about it. He just wanted to get it over with and get back to his video game.
The box was empty. “Okay, that’s it. Can I go now?” he asked.
“Where’s baby Jesus?” his mother asked. “We haven’t put him out yet.”
He looked through the box, but all he found was tissue paper. “It’s not here,” he said.
“It has to be there. Where else could it be?”
He dumped the contents of the box onto the floor. “I’m telling you it’s not here.”
“How can we have the manger scene without baby Jesus?” his mother asked.
“Look, I don’t know, but I did what you told me to do. I’m finished. I just want to go back to the TV room.”
“Michael, we’ve got to have the baby Jesus for our manger scene, or it won’t mean anything. You’re good with your hands just like your grandfather was. Will you carve us another one?”
“Why can’t we just buy one?”
“It wouldn’t be the right size. Besides your grandfather carved this. He’s not here with us anymore, but you’re good at things like that. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it will mean so much more if someone in our family does it.”
“Oh, all right,” he grumbled.
The next day Michael’s father brought him a carving knife, several blades, and a small piece of fine wood. He laid it on Michael’s bed when he came home from work. Michael pushed it aside and said he was too busy and that he’d wait for school to be out before he began.
Finally at three in the afternoon on Christmas Eve he had run out of excuses and his mother had run out of patience. He decided to start. It doesn’t have to be much, he thought. Just get it done.
He spread old newspapers on the kitchen table and started to rough out the general shape.
An hour later his mother came in to see how he was doing. She put her hand on his shoulder and watched him carve. “You’ve got a gift, Michael, just like your grandfather. You’re so much like him.”
“I’m not anything like him,” Michael said, sounding almost bitter.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. You’ve seemed kind of grumpy lately.”
“I’m just getting tired of the same old thing every Christmas. Why do we have to have a manger scene anyway?”
“That’s what Christmas is all about.”
“A baby was born in a stable and shepherds came. So what?”
“We don’t celebrate Christmas because a baby was born in a stable and shepherds came. We celebrate Christmas because that baby is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.”
“The world still seems messed up to me.”
“He saves the world one person at a time. He gives us hope. He helps us understand that it’s never too late to begin again. If we’ve made mistakes, if we truly repent we can be forgiven. When that happens, our burden of guilt is lifted. That’s why we celebrate Christmas.”
She knows, he thought.
He quit carving. “Something is wrong with me,” he said.
“Tell me what it is.”
He wiped the beads of sweat from off his forehead.
“Michael, whatever it is, tell me. We can work it out.”
He took a deep breath and said, “I took five dollars from a purse three weeks ago at church.”
“You did?”
“Yes. You knew about it, didn’t you?”
“No, not really. I knew something was wrong though. I just wasn’t sure what. You weren’t acting the same—but I didn’t know what it was.”
“Why did you talk about making mistakes then?”
“Because I make mistakes too. We never outgrow the need for the Savior in our lives.” She paused. “What do you think you should do?”
“I was thinking of waiting until after Christmas and then going to tell the bishop what I did.”
“Is waiting a good idea? It will gnaw at you until you do something.”
“But it’s Christmas Eve. The bishop will be home with his family.”
“Why don’t you see what he says? You’ll enjoy Christmas a lot more if you’ve started resolving this. It’s still early. I don’t think he’d mind if you stopped by.”
“I don’t want Jessica to know what I’ve done.”
“He won’t tell anyone in his family, not his wife, not Jessica, and not his other children. Why not call and see if he’s there?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell him you have a private matter you need to discuss with him.”
Fifteen minutes later Michael walked up to the door. He rang the doorbell. The one thing he dreaded was that Jessica would answer the door and he would have to tell her he needed to talk to her father and she would guess that something was wrong.
But the bishop opened the door, shook his hand, and led him downstairs to an office. Michael could hear family noises from upstairs. They were singing Christmas carols. He could hear Jessica’s voice. She had a beautiful singing voice. He had sung with her in a quartet once for church. He wondered if she would ever talk to him again.
“Three weeks ago I stole five dollars from a purse at church,” he blurted out.
Michael was surprised at the bishop’s reaction. He didn’t say, “How could you do that?” He didn’t order him out of his house. He didn’t call the police and have him thrown in jail. He didn’t tell him he was the worst person in the world. He didn’t tell him never to talk to his daughter Jessica again.
What he did was loan Michael five dollars. And then the two of them drove to the home of the woman who reported that someone had gone through her purse and taken five dollars. She was a widow and the money in her purse was her tithing.
When she opened the door, she smiled and invited them in.
“Are you my new home teachers?” she asked.
“No, not exactly.”
“Would you like some Christmas cookies? My grandchildren sent them.”
“Not right now,” the bishop said. “Michael has something he needs to tell you.”
“I’m the one who took five dollars from your purse,” Michael said quickly.
“Oh, Michael, not you! I never would have thought you would do something like that.”
“I’m really sorry.” He handed her the five-dollar bill the bishop had loaned him. “I came to give you five dollars.”
“Do you need the money, because if you do …”
“No, I don’t need it. I don’t know why I took it.”
“It takes a big man to admit when he’s done wrong.”
“That’s right,” the bishop said. “But it’s only part of repenting. You need to make sure you’ve done all you can and that you’re right with the Lord.”
It was silent for a moment. “Would you like a Christmas cookie now?” the widow asked.
Michael turned away so she wouldn’t see his eyes.
There could be no leaving until they had a Christmas cookie. To Michael the cookie tasted like sawdust. Finally, mercifully, the bishop said all the right things to get them out of there.
The bishop gave him a ride home. “You owe me five dollars,” he said as they pulled into Michael’s driveway.
“I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
“What did you use the money for?” the bishop asked.
“Video games.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t play video games until you get this taken care of.”
“All right.”
“You and I will need to have a long talk next week about the process of repentance,” the bishop said. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. But relax, you’ve done the most difficult part today. I’m glad you had the courage to admit you’d done wrong. That’s never easy.” The bishop leaned over and shook his hand. “Merry Christmas, Michael.”
Instead of playing video games or watching TV, Michael spent the rest of Christmas Eve finishing the carving of baby Jesus. He finished at eleven o’clock that night. Everyone else in the family had gone to bed. All the lights were off except a reading light near the piano. Michael gently set the carved figure in the manger and placed a tiny blanket over it. It wasn’t as good as the one his grandfather had made, but to Michael it meant much more.
Two months later they found the original baby Jesus in another box in the basement. But even so, from then on, they always put out the one Michael had carved the year he discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Mom looked at her phone. “Oh no! Aunt Alyssa is in the hospital.”
Millie felt like her stomach dropped. She knew the hospital was a place where people went when they were very sick. But this was the first time one of her family members had to stay there.
“What can we do to help her?” Millie asked.
“Let’s find out.” Mom called Aunt Alyssa. Millie got to say hello, which made her happy. Aunt Alyssa told them that she had been sick for a week. She hoped she would be able to come home from the hospital in a few days.
“I think I know how we can help her,” Mom said after the phone call. “We need some supplies.”
A few hours later, Millie and Mom walked up the stairs to Aunt Alyssa’s apartment. They carried a bucket full of rags, soap, and scrub brushes. They were on a cleaning mission!
First Millie helped Mom wash the dishes. Then she helped fold some laundry. She wiped off the kitchen table and swept the floor too.
While she worked, Millie thought about how much she loved Aunt Alyssa. Whenever Mom and Dad had to work at the same time, Aunt Alyssa came to stay with her. Sometimes they went to the park together. They liked to watch people walk their dogs by the river.
After lots of hard work, Mom said they were almost done. Millie helped her put clean sheets on Aunt Alyssa’s bed.
“I have an idea,” Mom said. “Let’s not tell Aunt Alyssa what we did yet. That way, it will be a surprise when she gets home from the hospital!”
Millie giggled as she thought of what her aunt’s face would look like when she opened the door.
“Let’s leave her a note too!” Millie said.
Mom folded a piece of paper and wrote a note inside. Millie wrote, “Get better soon!” on the front and drew lots of hearts on it. They left it on Aunt Alyssa’s pillow.
“Thanks for going on a cleaning mission with me today,” Mom said on the way home. “Aunt Alyssa will be so happy and surprised.”
Millie grinned. She was still sad that Aunt Alyssa was sick. But helping had made Millie feel a little bit better. She hoped her aunt would feel better soon too!
This story took place in the USA.

When my ward was split, I went from being in a ward where all my best friends were with me to a ward where the other young men seemed completely different from me. I didn’t get along with them very well, but I didn’t want this to change the way I viewed the Church or to affect my Mutual attendance. So I stuck it out and tried to talk with the new guys. We didn’t agree on much, but we did find common ground—camping. I used this one common interest in our conversations and gradually improved our relationships by building on our similarities.
Sometimes we base our desire to go to Mutual or Sunday meetings on who else is going and whether we like them. But I learned that if you open up and try to make friends with others, you can make it fun, no matter who you’re with. It’s all about your attitude.

I was 57, newly divorced, with little work experience outside the home, and desperately in need of a job. I had raised four children, and here I was alone after 32 years of marriage with a bit of college behind me and great trepidation in front of me to have to find a job at my age.
I sat waiting to interview for a position as a scheduling and productions specialist with the county library district, all the while thinking I must be out of my mind to believe I was qualified for such a position. I had just convinced myself to get up and leave when the secretary suddenly said they were ready for me in the conference room. I felt sick but straightened up, said a silent prayer, and stepped forward.
Two articulate and professional people told me that experience in certain areas was vital for this position and began to ask me about my experience. This job required a person who could make arrangements for large conferences, including announcements, invitations, catering, and cleanup. Did I have the experience needed? I was thinking I didn’t when my mind suddenly captured an image of a stake Relief Society conference. I had been a counselor in the stake Relief Society presidency. From that experience I had learned how to organize large gatherings and shop for bulk food for large groups. I could honestly say I had experience doing exactly what was required.
The interviewers continued: “Are you proficient on the computer? You will be corresponding with patrons and will be required to keep a schedule of conference room use.” All I could think of was how grateful I was to all the people who had taught me to use the computer so I could create the ward bulletin and calendar and write the stake newsletter. Yes, I was proficient on the computer.
“You will be expected to develop programs and provide classes for the public. Would you be able to teach classes to children and adults?” they asked. All those homemaking and Cub Scout crafts I had done sprang to mind. I explained that I had taught classes to children and adults my entire adult life. I knew I was creative and artistic and felt sure I could come up with interesting programs for children and adults.
I was thrilled when I got the position. I loved the work and tried to do as I would in a Church calling: magnify my work, go the extra mile, and not whine about overtime. I developed computer classes in English and recruited a young student to teach the classes in Spanish. I taught arts and crafts classes and hosted numerous authors and prominent speakers. I decorated the library for every holiday and displayed related books.
One day someone called me at work, claiming to be from the governor’s office and wanting to know if I would be interested in a position as the governor’s assistant. I laughingly asked, “Who is this?” He explained that the call was legitimate and invited me to come the next day for an interview. I went with a sinking feeling that it could be a joke. It wasn’t. The interview went well, and I was hired on the spot.
In my new job I used the skills I had gained from years of speaking in church. The governor could not attend all the events to which he was invited; therefore, his staff members were expected to speak in his place. All those talks in church and from serving in leadership positions had given me the experience I needed to speak in public alongside senators, local and national dignitaries, and celebrities. I served as the governor’s assistant for seven years until we both retired.
Where would I have been without the wide range of experience I had received while serving in Church callings? All that I have learned as a servant of the Lord in His Church has given me a life rich with blessings. Not only was I helping others while serving, but I was also growing by leaps and bounds. I am deeply grateful for the gospel and have a solid testimony of the value of service in the Church.

Comer further highlights how constant haste is a form of violence against our inner selves, drawing from the idea of eliminating hurry from our lives to find healing and union with God. In his book, he tells a story.

The story goes like this: It’s the height of British colonialism. An English traveler lands in Africa, intent on a rapid journey into the jungle. He charters some local porters to carry his supplies. After an exhausting day of travel, all on foot, and a fitful night’s sleep, he gets up to continue the journey. But the porters refuse. Exasperated, he begins to cajole, bribe, plead, but nothing works. They will not move an inch. Naturally, he asks why.

Answer? They are waiting “for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

The last half kilometer to Steve Davis’s house was really rough road. It was a private lane that left the main road and ran through a swamp. And when it rained, which was often, the road became part of the swamp. If you wanted to get to the end of that lane you parked your car and walked, as Steve and his dad always did. It was a pretty enough place, with lots of sunlight filtering through the tall pine trees, but no prettier than a lot of places you could visit more easily. It was a half kilometer you walked only if you had a good reason.
Steve and his father were inactive members of the Church. They lived about 48 kilometers from the chapel where they were supposed to attend. Forty-eight kilometers and a half kilometer of bad road.
Steve Davis and his father were members of the Brooksville Ward, Tampa Bay Florida Stake. And although 17-year-old Steve hadn’t been coming to church for a while, he still had some good friends in the priests quorum. He had enjoyed a lot of wonderful times with them. They hunted rabbits in the woods and netted fish in the bay. Once they had netted a small shark. They also played softball and basketball together.
When it was starting to look like Steve might just stay inactive, a call came from the stake leadership. Each Aaronic Priesthood quorum in the stake was to choose someone to reactivate. Steve’s quorum, which consisted of Joe Beggs, Billy Mantooth, and Dennis Hunter, had no trouble choosing. They wanted their good friend back with them on Sundays. They had also been missing him on their basketball and softball teams.
The stake suggested that quorums visit the person they had chosen at least once a week. Fine, but there were the 48 kilometers—and the half kilometer of bad road. That didn’t seem like much of a problem to these young men. So every week they traveled the 48 kilometers to his lane and then the half a kilometer of mud to his house. Usually they walked down the lane. Occasionally they took a chance driving that half kilometer—but only when the ground was dry.
Steve had been wanting to come back for some time, but after being away for a while it isn’t always easy. Still, each time his friends showed up it started seeming more and more possible.
It wasn’t always easy for the visitors either. Billy Mantooth would remember afterward, “It really seemed like the devil was working against us. Things would always come up so we’d feel we couldn’t go to his house, but we’d end up going anyway. Sometimes we wouldn’t get there until ten o’clock at night, but we’d go.”
Once there they expressed their love for Steve but didn’t exert any pressure on him to attend his meetings. “They told me everyone missed me, but they didn’t try to force me to come,” Steve remembers.
It was obvious that these young men really cared. Just how much they cared became evident one night when they decided they could drive up the lane even though it had been raining and the surface was very muddy. They were half right. They drove to the house okay, but on the way out their vehicle slid off the road into the deep mud. Steve and his dad came to help them. Finally, about 3 A.M., they got the vehicle out. By then they all looked like lumpy mud statues. The visitors were so dirty, in fact, that they had to take off their muddy clothes before they climbed back in the vehicle. But if their faces were covered with mud, it just made their smiles stand out more. The four young men who rode home in their underwear that night were very tired but very happy. They could tell they were making a difference with Steve. And the next week they were back again. They were not young men to be conquered by a mere half kilometer.
Steve was happy too. One Sunday not long after that memorable night, he showed up at church, and his father was with him. Their attendance was a little irregular at first, but the friends kept visiting them until old habits of attendance were reestablished.
Steve says, “I love them all. I’ll always be grateful to them. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably still be inactive. My whole life will be different because of what they did.”
A half-kilometer lane is not very long, especially compared to a 48-kilometer drive. But often it’s the half kilometer added at the end that keeps us from going the 48 kilometers. It’s just the sort of thing that makes most of us decide to do the job tomorrow, or next week, or sometime when it doesn’t look like rain. But Steve and his dad will always be grateful for friends who made that extra effort—one half a kilometer long.

It is a good thing I did, for a similar event occurred in my life with our youngest son, Clark.
Clark has always liked animals, birds, reptiles—anything that is alive. Sometimes that resulted in a little chaos in our home. One day in his boyhood he came home from Provo Canyon with a water snake, which he named Herman.
Right off the bat Herman got lost. Sister Monson found him in the silverware drawer. Water snakes have a way of being where you least expect them. Well, Clark moved Herman to the bathtub, put a plug in the drain, put a little water in, and had a sign taped to the back of the tub which read, “Don’t use this tub. It belongs to Herman.” So we had to use the other bathroom while Herman occupied that sequestered place.
But then one day, to our amazement, Herman disappeared. His name should have been Houdini. He was gone! So the next day Sister Monson cleaned up the tub and prepared it for normal use. Several days went by.
One evening I decided it was time to take a leisurely bath; so I filled the tub with a lot of warm water, and then I peacefully lay down in the tub for a few moments of relaxation. I was lying there just pondering, when the soapy water reached the level of the overflow drain and began to flow through it. Can you imagine my surprise when, with my eyes focused on that drain, Herman came swimming out, right for my face? I yelled out to my wife, “Frances! Here comes Herman!”
Well, Herman was captured again, put in a foolproof box, and we made a little excursion to Vivian Park in Provo Canyon and there released Herman into the beautiful waters of the South Fork Creek. Herman was never again to be seen by us.

The “prison temple” involved a time of obscurity, adversity, irony, and testimony. W. W. Phelps had briefly faltered, being part of the betrayals that had placed Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail. Joseph was, at the time, indignant over Brother Phelps’ failures. Yet later on, Joseph was generous. The next year, 1840, when W. W. Phelps pled for readmission into the Church, Joseph Smith, who pledged from jail to act later “in the spirit of generosity,” wrote a powerful and redemptive letter, the closing lines of which were, “Come on, dear brother, since the war is past, For friends at first, are friends again at last” (HC 4:164; see also pp. 162–63).

No wonder a grateful Brother Phelps, soon after Joseph’s June 1844 martyrdom, wrote the text “Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah” (Hymns, 1985, no. 27).

While serving as bishop a number of years ago, I became alarmed by the number of young people who came to me, frightened and confused, thinking their parents were not in love and were even heading for divorce because of family disagreements. Because I knew the parents well and knew they were deeply in love, I explained to their children that while this was unpleasant, it was sometimes a part of marriage and did not mean the family was about to disintegrate.

Four “full-time missionaries” joined efforts during the Highland High School seminary’s second annual “missionary week” last fall in Salt Lake City. All four offered pleasant smiles, outstretched hands, and copies of the Book of Mormon, but only two could answer questions. The other two were seven-foot-tall statues with papier-mâché heads, hair of yarn, and bodies made of wood and chicken wire. They were designed and built by publicity chairmen Greg Goates and Heidi Nelson and were dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and striped ties.
The “giant missionaries” served as attention-getters during the special missionary week, which included proselyting; mini-classes for members and nonmembers on such subjects as temple marriage, the plan of salvation, the Second Coming, present-day prophets, and prayer; and a Sunday evening fireside with guest speaker Elder Hugh Pinnock, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. In addition, the students wrote their testimonies in 460 copies of the Book of Mormon, which they gave to the missionaries for use in the Utah Salt Lake City Mission.
Several students became interested in finding out more about the Church as a result of the missionary week efforts. According to Jeff Swanson, seminary instructor, “Missionary week has developed into a great tradition at Highland seminary. We hope that we can continue to follow President Kimball’s instructions to lengthen our stride by sharing the gospel.”