Gospel Story Finder

In still another case, a young woman from Hamburg, Germany, was struggling to find spiritual meaning to her life. She began to pray and ask God what she should do. One morning, after three days of some fasting and much prayer, she walked from her home to the bus stop. As she arrived, she realized she had left some keys at home that she needed that day. She returned home, picked up the keys, and walked again to the bus stop. She was quite distraught as she realized she had missed the bus she would have normally taken.
Meanwhile, two missionaries were traveling on a bus near the city of Hamburg. As they were traveling, they suddenly had an impression that they should talk to the first person they met after exiting the bus. The two elders got out of the bus and instantly saw this young woman. They spoke to her briefly about the Church and set up an appointment to teach her. She had an immediate feeling that somehow the elders were sent to her as an answer to her prayers. The good members of the Church joined with the missionaries in teaching her and helping her feel a special part of their ward. She accepted the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and was baptized. Now she is working in the ward Young Women program.

I love to sing. My favorite songs are Primary songs that help me share my testimony and my love for the Savior. I sang “I Am a Child of God” in sacrament meeting when I was three years old. By sharing my talent, I feel good and help others feel the Spirit. I was able to share my talent with more than 400 people recently when I was asked to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a picnic for the governor of Maryland. I was not even nervous because I knew that Heavenly Father would help me do my very best.

Compared with prices in the 1980s, food and merchandise were very inexpensive. Beef sold for 3¢ a pound; butter, 8¢ a pound; eggs, 6¢ a dozen; sugar, 10¢ a pound. Shoes sold for $1.00 to $1.75; boots, $4.50 a pair. Riding whips were $1.50; spades, $1.25; calico sold for 12 1/2¢ a yard; and shirt collars for 28¢ each. These low prices were a blessing to the Saints, yet there were a significant number who lacked even pennies to purchase their needs. Hundreds fleeing from Missouri had lost all of their possessions, and many new converts came from backgrounds of poverty. Such people were often touched by the Prophet’s kindness and generosity, as he drew upon the resources of the store in their behalf. For example, Jane Elizabeth Manning, a freeborn black convert from Wilton, Connecticut, came to Nauvoo in the late fall of 1843 with her mother, Eliza, four brothers and sisters, a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and Jane’s small son, Sylvester. They had walked nearly 800 miles: “We lay in bushes, and in barns and outdoors, and traveled until there was a frost just like a snow, and we had to walk on that frost. … I wanted to go to Brother Joseph.”
When the family arrived in Nauvoo, the Prophet and his wife Emma hosted them in the Mansion House until they could find homes in which to live.
“When I [came to Nauvoo] I only had two things on me, no shoes nor stockings, wore them all out on the road. I had a trunk full of beautiful clothes, which I had sent around by water, and I was thinking of having them when I got to Nauvoo, and they stole them at St. Louis, and I did not have a rag of them. … One morning, before [Joseph] came in, I had been up to the landing and found all my clothes were gone. Well, I sat there crying. He came in and looked around. … To Sister Emma, he said, ‘go and clothe her up, go down to the store and clothe her up.’ Sister Emma did. She got me clothes by the bolt. I had everything (“Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” Young Woman’s Journal, Dec. 1905, pp. 551–52).

Walter and Ann settled down in the small town of Payson, Utah. Lots of other Church members lived there, and Walter and Ann were excited to raise their family there. They built a home and started a shop to build machines and furniture.
Walter took care of the shop. Ann took care of their home and a flock of ducks. She was very proud of her ducks. One day, when she went out to hang some clothes out to dry, she saw something very shocking. Her ducks were all lying still on the ground.
The poor ducks! Ann was so sad that her precious ducks had died. She sat down to think about what to do. Then she went to find a large flour sack. She knew that the ducks’ feathers would be good for making beds, pillows, and quilts. Ann sadly plucked the feathers off the ducks. Then she took the big bag of feathers inside, leaving the ducks lying peacefully on the ground.
That evening Walter came home from his shop. He looked confused. “What happened to the ducks?” he asked. “Why are they running around without their feathers?”
Ann rushed outside. She was so surprised to see her featherless ducks running about in confusion. Looking around, Ann noticed a large patch of brightly colored wildflowers nearby. The ducks had eaten the flowers, and the flowers had made the ducks go to sleep. They had slept peacefully while Ann had plucked out their feathers.
Ann didn’t want her ducks to get cold. So she went right to work knitting a sweater for each one of them. The ducks’ sweaters kept them warm until their feathers grew back. But until then, they were finest and best-dressed ducks in town!

May I share with you a personal experience? We had spent nearly four years in South America and returned just in time for our eldest son to enter Brigham Young University. Several months after school had begun we received a call—I think it was a collect call—and the conversation proceeded something like this:
“Hello, Dad?”
“Yes.”
“This is David.”
“Yes, what do you want now?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing! Well, why did you call then?”
“Oh, I just wanted to tell you about school. I love it. It’s great. I am glad to be here. I like the place where I live. I like my roommate. I like my professors and I like the spirit here.”
And I said, “Yes, but what do you need?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Well, why did you call?”
“I just called to say ‘Thank you.’ I am grateful for your helping me to be here.”
Well, there was considerable silence on our end of the line and we muttered something about, “We’re glad you’re happy.” Later that night as his mother and I prayed, we thanked the Lord for a thankful son. The lesson, of course, came clear to me. I appreciate a son who says, “Thank you” for things that parents have done, as all parents do. But I am a son also. I have a Father in heaven, who, like me, appreciates a son or a daughter who frequently says, “Thank you.”

We found a place to stay in Ogden with a family named Ferrin. Mother got better and cooked for this household of grown men in return for our board and room. I fell in love with one of the Ferrin brothers, Jacob Samuel. We were married in the Endowment House, and we moved to Provo with my brother Heber.
Later my husband and I moved to Arizona, where we were once again pioneers in an unknown territory.

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

When I was a junior in college, I married my high school sweetheart, Clea. After three years of serving in the Navy as an officer on a destroyer and attending graduate school, I moved with my wife to Detroit, Michigan. I worked there for many years for Ford Motor Company, and that’s where we raised our four children. Once I had to travel to Asia for my work. There was a cholera epidemic in Asia at the time. Before I left, I got a shot to protect me from getting cholera, but the doctor forgot to record on my passport that I’d had the shot.
When it was time for me to return home, I gave my passport to the government official. He noticed that it did not show that I had had a cholera shot, which was required. He said that I could not go home until two weeks after I had the shot. I told him that I had already had one. He said that if I gave the emigration officials fifty dollars, they would let me leave without having the shot. I knew that it is dishonest to bribe officials, so I went to the United States ambassador and asked him to call the doctor who had given me the shot. With his help, I was allowed to leave.
Someone I know once said, “Wrong is wrong, even though everyone is doing it. Right is right, even though no one is doing it.” This is a concept you need to use all your life. You don’t have to lie. Don’t get into the habit of telling fibs. Honesty is a good habit.

Some years ago in Eastern Europe, I listened as a young elder stood before his fellow missionaries in zone conference to share an experience that shaped his life. He and his companion had found and taught a middle-aged man named Ivan (name has been changed) in a distant city. Their investigator came from a difficult background, as was reflected in his well-used clothing, ragged beard, and hesitant demeanor. Life had been harsh and unkind to him.
Without any prior religious training, Ivan had much to overcome. Practices not in harmony with the restored gospel had to be set aside. New principles needed to be accepted and then incorporated. Ivan wanted to learn, and he prepared himself diligently for his baptism and confirmation. His clothing remained threadbare and his beard ragged, but he had taken the first steps. Shortly after Ivan’s baptism, the missionary was transferred. He hoped that he might again cross paths with Ivan.
Six months later the mission president reassigned the young elder to his former branch. Surprised but eager to return, the elder, with a new companion, came early to sacrament meeting his first Sunday back in the branch. The members were pleased to see the missionary in their midst again. They rushed forward with broad smiles and warm greetings.
The elder recognized nearly everyone in the small congregation. However, he searched in vain among the faces for the man he and his companion had taught and baptized six months earlier. There arose within the elder a sense of disappointment and sadness. Had Ivan returned to his harmful habits? Had he failed to honor his covenant of baptism? Had he lost the blessings promised by his repentance?
The elder’s fears and reflections were interrupted by the approach of an unfamiliar man who was rushing forward to embrace the missionary. The clean-shaven man had a confident smile and an obvious goodness radiating from his countenance. Wearing a white shirt and a carefully knotted tie, he was on his way to prepare the sacrament for the small gathering that Sabbath morning. Only when the man began to speak did the elder recognize him. It was the new Ivan, not the former Ivan they had taught and baptized! The elder saw embodied in his friend the miracle of faith, repentance, and forgiveness; he saw the reality of the Atonement.
The missionary told his peers attending the zone conference that Ivan had changed and grown by every measure during the months the elder had been away from the branch. Ivan had embraced the gospel, and it radiated from him. He had experienced a “change of heart” (Alma 5:26) sufficient both to be baptized and to press forward in the continuing process of conversion. He was preparing for the higher priesthood and the ordinances of the temple. Ivan had indeed been “born again” (Alma 7:14).
As the missionary concluded his remarks, he asked himself aloud, “How much of a ‘change of heart’ have I experienced in the past six months?” He continued his self-examination, asking aloud, “Have I been ‘born again’?” These are two profound questions that each of us should privately pose on a continuing basis.

I could almost feel the jar of the wagon wheels as they crunched the rocks and churned the dust in the deeply rutted trail. It was an evening like many others during my teenage years in Paris, but on this particular night I was absorbed in a French television documentary about the Mormon pioneers. I had never seen anything like it before, and I marveled at the similarities between the Mormon trek and the exodus of ancient Israel from Egypt. The courage and suffering of the Mormon pioneers touched something deep within me.
I had never heard of the Mormons before, and I became interested in learning about them. But I soon became distracted by my busy life as a student and forgot the soft stirrings within me. Besides, I was only intellectually curious, or so I told myself. Little did I know then how the turning of those pioneer wagon wheels would change my life.
My mother worked in a fashion boutique in Paris and liked the Americans she met there. She grew to love the English language and encouraged me to study English even as a young child. During the summers, she sent me to England or Scotland to stay with English-speaking families. One year she encouraged me to get involved in an American summer camp exchange program. Through this program I became a camp counselor in Sharon, Vermont—the birthplace of Joseph Smith. Perhaps the Lord, even then, was trying to turn the wheels once more. Unfortunately, I heard nothing of Joseph Smith or the Mormons while I was there.
Several years later, however, the wheels turned again, with great power. I was studying English, with a specific focus on American culture, at Paris’s Sorbonne University. As I began thinking about a master’s thesis topic, I remembered the documentary about the Mormon pioneers. I asked my adviser if I could do something on them. No one at the Sorbonne had written a thesis about the Mormons, and so my adviser thought the subject might prove interesting. But he insisted that I pick an aspect of Mormonism that was unique.
After doing some preliminary research, I discovered that there was not enough information about the Mormons in the university library. I concluded I would have to talk to them. By then I had learned that the official name of the Mormon Church was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With that information, I located the headquarters of the Paris Mission and boldly knocked on the front door. I asked the missionary who answered, “Is there someone here who can tell me about the Mormons?”
The surprised young man managed to stutter, “Yes, yes, come in!”
As my research at the mission home progressed, I learned that Latter-day Saints believe in ordinances performed for dead ancestors. The more I read about temple work for the dead, the more I wanted to use that topic. The title I finally chose for my thesis was enough to make even long-time members of the Church pause: “Genealogy and the Mormon Church.” That’s how I became known in the Paris Mission as the “Genealogy Girl.”

A few years back a youth sacrament meeting speaker invited those who weren’t sure they felt God’s love to pray and ask whether Heavenly Father loves them.
I took that invitation to heart. Unbeknownst to me, my older sister also decided to do it. We each prayed individually that night. Months later we shared our experiences with one another. I told her how some time after praying, I’d allowed my mind to wander, eventually recalling a poem I had read about the Savior’s love. I had been overwhelmed by the Spirit, and I had felt of the joy of both my Heavenly Father’s and Savior’s love for me. Tears of joy had crept to my eyes, and I had again folded my arms, this time in a prayer of gratitude.
My sister, however, recollected to me that she felt as if she hadn’t received an answer like I had—no enlightening moment or warmth from the Spirit. At first she was disappointed. But in time, she came to realize that she didn’t need an answer like mine: she already knew. And that was her answer.
Do not be discouraged if an answer to a prayer is not what you want or are expecting. Everyone is different, and Heavenly Father can answer the question in different ways, but He does answer prayers.
Because I have pondered Heavenly Father’s love, I know that if we “ask God … with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ,” that “he will manifest the truth of it unto [us], by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost [we] may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:4–5).

May I add my testimony of this by illustrating an example I witnessed in Albania of this great principle? At each of our zone conferences it was our practice to have the district leaders stand a report on his districts’ service projects for the previous weeks. At one particular zone conference, a district leader came forward and then for his report he asked his entire district to stand, face the missionaries, and then show them their hands. As they did, we all quickly saw that they were all covered with blisters. Then he reported that their service project for the past month had been to dig a well for one of the poor member families in Elbasan who had no running water in their home. He then told of how the senior missionary couple there had seen their dilemma and found that they were hauling water each day from a neighbor a hundred yards or so away who had a well. After doing some investigation, he found out how deep the well was and he concluded that if they could dig down that far, they could dig a well for this family–and so they had begun.

When the district leader reported that day, they were down about 12 feet. Initially, when they had started digging the 6' feet in diameter well the digging was relatively easy. Two elders dug for a while and then traded off with two others. As the hole got deeper, they soon couldn’t throw the dirt up and over the edge. Then they devised a system to fill buckets tied to a rope that was thrown over a log. When the bucket was filled, they would hoist it up where the two elders on top would take it and haul the dirt away to dump. It was quite a project.

You know, when you get down 15' or so, that is a deep hole. At 16' they hit solid rock. That’s pretty discouraging when you have dug that long. How great is your faith at a time like this? The senior missionary was discouraged, but not dismayed. After some searching, he found the one man in the little city who had a jack hammer. However, after the man broke two bits while drilling, he refused to go any further. How does this affect your faith? With a home made sledge hammer they continued on chipping away using the sledge and old railroad spikes.

Brothers and Sisters, How is your faith when you get to 20' & you’re still in rock with no water? How about 25'? It was at about 26' when they came out one morning and found the rock in the bottom of the well was wet. They broke through the rock that day, went down another foot, and the next day at 27 feet, they came out to find a foot of water in their well.

Brothers and Sisters, true disciples of Christ must have faith to step into the darkness knowing the light will follow. They must be willing to dig down 27' knowing they’ll find water even when digging in solid rock. This Rock came from the depths of that well. It is my constant reminder of the well and the faith it took to dig it.

I was told recently of two missionary companions—one had many outward talents, the other didn’t. They had received a letter from a man and his family to whom they had taught several discussions. The letter told the elders to come by and pick up the Book of Mormon because the family had decided they were not interested in continuing the discussions.
The more outwardly talented elder felt confident that by using all his social skills and all his learning he would be able to change the man’s mind. During the meeting he used every persuasive skill he could think of. The other elder listened. Finally the man agreed to continue the discussions.
Later, at the family’s baptism, the talented elder remembered the night with some degree of pride. After the baptism the man told him, “The night I changed my mind and continued to have you teach me was the most important night of my life. As you talked to me, my mind was so determined to not listen that there was nothing you could have said that would have caused me to continue. But then I looked at your companion. His eyes were focused on me. I saw in his face more love than I had ever known before. My heart felt a spirit that made it so I could not resist his silent message. I decided then that if this church could cause someone to love like that, then I wanted to be part of it.”

Members of the church in Ladysmith, South Africa donated almost 200 handmade curtains to the Môrester Children’s Home.

Môrester Children’s Home cares for children that were removed from their families by a court order because of unsafe and unhealthy circumstances in their homes. The home houses 157 children in 11 houses in Ladysmith and surrounding areas.

“During our visit to the care centre we found the curtains to be old and washed out and often two different curtains hung at the same window. We felt that curtains are associated with light, and this would fit in well with our campaign,” Sister Susan De Klerk, the communications director in Ladysmith District, said.

Hours of sewing the curtains, and more hours of altering the curtains to Môrester’s specifications yielded 198 curtains.

The group further donated a volleyball net and two volleyballs as well as boxes of biscuits.

With tears in her eyes, Nobambo Nzinya, a social worker at the Môrester Children’s Home expressed her gratitude for the efforts of the volunteers.

“The children kept asking when the centre is going to buy them cookies for Christmas. And I honestly didn’t know what to tell them as I knew that there was no funds available to buy cookies for Christmas,” Nobambo Nzinya said.

“We as the centre are so grateful. Your service proves that you work in collaboration with the Holy Spirit.”

Claire and Sandra Hoey of Craigavon are members of the Portadown Ward. They talk about the walls that missionaries helped tumble for their family.
“The missionaries had been coming to our parents for a long time,” Sandra says. “But I never paid any attention. Then one night I was upstairs and I started listening. I got more interested in what they were saying. I decided it was time to see what it was all about.”
The discussions became more and more serious. The parents were baptized. An older brother was baptized. Then Sandra, then Claire.
After the baptisms, a friend “noticed that since I’ve joined the Church I’ve been happier,” Claire says. “She wanted to find out what it was that was making me happy.” Now the friend is taking the discussions in the Hoeys’ home. “I can remember asking the same questions, praying to resolve the same doubts,” Claire says. “It helps when I can tell her I’ve been through the same thing, and gained my own testimony.”

These words represent Elder Pratt’s declaration of the miraculous coming forth of a remarkable book. How he came in contact with the book is an interesting story.
In August 1830, as a lay preacher, Parley Parker Pratt was traveling from Ohio to eastern New York. At Newark, he met a Baptist deacon by the name of Hamlin, who told him “of a book, a strange book, a VERY STRANGE BOOK! … This book, he said, was supposed to have been originally written on plates either of gold or brass, by a branch of the tribes of Israel; and to have been discovered and translated by a young man near Palmyra, in the State of New York, by the aid of visions, or the ministry of angels. I asked him how or where the book was to be obtained. He promised to let me see it, at his house the next day. … Next morning I called at his house, where, for the first time, I saw the ‘BOOK OF MORMON’—that book of books … which was the principal means, in the hands of God, of directing the entire course of my future life.
“I opened it with eagerness, and read its title page. I then read the testimony of several witnesses in relation to the manner of its being found and translated. … I read all day; eating was a burden, I had no desire for food; sleep was a burden when the night came, for I preferred reading to sleep.
“As I read, the spirit of the Lord was upon me, and I knew and comprehended that the book was true, as plainly and manifestly as a man comprehends and knows that he exists.” (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, third edition, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938, pages 36–37.)
Parley Pratt was then twenty-three years old. Reading the Book of Mormon affected him so profoundly that he was soon baptized into the Church and became one of its most effective and powerful advocates. In the course of his ministry he traveled from coast to coast across what is now the United States, into Canada, and to England; he opened the work in the isles of the Pacific and was the first Mormon elder to set foot on the soil of South America. In 1857, while serving a mission in Arkansas, he was killed by an assailant. He was buried in a rural area near the community of Alma, and today in that quiet place a large block of polished granite marks the site of his grave. Engraved in its surface are the words of another of his great and prophetic hymns, setting forth his vision of the work in which he was engaged:
The morning breaks; the shadows flee;
Lo, Zion’s standard is unfurled! …
The dawning of a brighter day
Majestic rises on the world.
The clouds of error disappear
Before the rays of truth divine; …
The glory bursting from afar
Wide o’er the nations soon will shine.
(Hymns, 269.)

When he finally returned home, Elder Poulter felt discouraged and embarrassed about the meagre results of his three years in the mission field. In time, his perspective changed and some 40 years later, he was inspired to share this experience in a Sunday School class.
“I bore my testimony that our part in the Lord’s plan is not always apparent. I never learned what had become of the Hu family, [but] I don’t have to; doing the Lord’s work is its own reward.”
Three days later, Elder Poulter received a letter that had been forwarded to him via a missionary in Taipei. It was from a Mr. Hu Wei Yi. In the letter, Brother Hu, now in his 80s, recounted his family’s baptism and reported that he had been a patriarch, a temple sealer and was even set apart by President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) to be a translator.
The list of titles Mr. Hu translated included all the books Elder Poulter had given him, plus many more, “and then I read, The Book of Mormon. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Elder Poulter writes. Yes, the Book of Mormon, the revealed word of God was translated into the second most spoken language in the world, by a humble man who had been prepared by the Lord to meet a pair of faithful missionaries.

Many years ago in Cuzco, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, Elder A. Theodore Tuttle and I held a sacrament meeting in a long, narrow room with a door that opened onto the street. It was night and it was very cold.

While Elder Tuttle spoke, a little boy, perhaps six years old, appeared in the doorway. He was naked except for a ragged shirt that went about to his knees.

On our left was a small table with a plate of bread for the sacrament. This ragged street orphan saw the bread and inched slowly along the wall toward it. He was almost to the table when a woman on the aisle saw him. With a stern toss of her head, she banished him out into the night. I groaned within myself.

Later the boy returned. He crept along the wall, glancing from the bread to me. He was near the point where the woman would see him again. I held out my arms, and he came running to me. I held him on my lap.

Then, as something symbolic, I set him in Elder Tuttle’s chair. After the closing prayer, much to my sorrow, he darted out into the night.

When I returned home, I told President Spencer W. Kimball about him. He was deeply moved and spoke of it in a conference talk. He told others of it and said to me more than once, “That experience has far greater meaning than you have yet come to know.”

I have never forgotten that little street orphan. Many times in South America I have looked for him in the faces of the people. When he comes back into my mind, others come with him.

Over the years, I have wondered what President Kimball meant when he reminded me of that street orphan in Cuzco and repeated, “That experience has far greater meaning than you have yet come to know.” One day he added, “You held a nation on your lap.”

Now in my 78th year, I understand what President Kimball was seeing; I know what he meant. That boy in Cuzco and the one in Japan and the other children about the world profoundly influence what I think and how I feel and what I pray for most earnestly. I constantly think of little children and their parents who struggle to raise them in ever more perilous times.

On a personal note, I think in my own life of what a challenge my wife and I had when we were first married and went for nearly five years without having children, even though we fasted, prayed, and had numerous priesthood blessings concerning that challenge. We suffered much. However, in time, after adopting our first son, seven others came naturally, and we now stand as the parents of those eight children, plus 21 grandchildren.

Does the Lord fulfill His promises? He does. Be patient. Wait upon the Lord. He does love us.

The most effective missionaries, member and full-time, always act out of love. I learned this lesson as a young man. I was assigned to visit a less-active member, a successful professional many years older than I. Looking back on my actions, I realize that I had very little loving concern for the man I visited. I acted out of duty, with a desire to report 100 percent on my home teaching. One evening, close to the end of a month, I phoned to ask if my companion and I could come right over and visit him. His chastening reply taught me an unforgettable lesson.

“No, I don’t believe I want you to come over this evening,” he said. “I’m tired. I’ve already dressed for bed. I am reading, and I am just not willing to be interrupted so that you can report 100 percent on your home teaching this month.” That reply still stings me because I knew he had sensed my selfish motivation.

I hope no person we approach with an invitation to hear the message of the restored gospel feels that we are acting out of any reason other than a genuine love for them and an unselfish desire to share something we know to be precious.

If we lack this love for others, we should pray for it. The prophet Mormon’s writings about “the pure love of Christ” teach us to “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moro. 7:47–48).