Gospel Story Finder

Seminary students in the Palo Verde and Santa Rita areas of Tucson, Arizona, used an unusual method of tracking their progress in seminary. Instead of the usual charts or contests to gauge progress, they created a mosaic of the First Vision; every time someone bore their testimony of the First Vision, they added another tiny piece to the over 2,000 pieces that made the final project.
“I never thought this would look like anything,” says seminary student Amanda Gomez, “but we did it; we came together and we did it.”
The project was so large that some students doubted it would ever get done. Although it took an entire school year to complete the mosaic, the students agreed the final project was worth the time it took.
“This is beautiful,” said Melanie Raehl, another student in the group.

I had that demonstrated to me while welding in a shipyard one winter. One day one of the crew came up to me and with the most friendly smile started to call me all kinds of bad names. I quietly said to him, “Bent, you just don’t call me those names.” He was hurt. He said, “Dan, let me show you something. Come with me.” So I followed him across the deck of the aircraft carrier and over on the other side to a catwalk where another member of the crew was welding. He had raised his hood and was watching us approach when Bent started calling him every name he had called me. The other fellow just grinned and called him back the same names with a few innovations and improvements. Then Bent turned to me and said, “See, I didn’t mean any harm by it.” And he didn’t! He had managed to almost entirely divorce sound from sense in his speech.

I am happy to tell you there is hope for those who are not yet the responsible individual you aspire to become. I'm prepared to admit that when I first went to college I was not the responsible person who stands before you today. I had never balanced a checkbook and thought as long as I had checks I could keep writing them. It only made sense that if I had checks I would still have money left. Not so!

Coming from Las Vegas, I assumed if it snowed that classes would be canceled that day. I couldn't imagine anyone going out in a storm. If it was a snowy morning, I'd roll over in bed and go back to sleep. Let me assure you there is no "Snow Day" policy at BYU-Idaho. I also assumed if you didn't like or need a class, you just stopped attending it. That's how a professor would know that you'd dropped it. When I received my first semester grades and saw that I had failed a class I was honestly shocked! How could my professor fail me? He certainly had to realize that since I had obviously stopped attending class I had obviously dropped it. Obviously not! But I learned, changed my ways, and did eventually graduate with a decent GPA.

I discovered the joy of seeing the extraordinary ordinary during a time when Heaven seemed distant. During a morning workout, the weights felt light compared to the heavy question on my mind of why God felt far away. While driving home from the gym, I had the thought to notice what surrounded me. And when I did, I saw God. He was in the sunrise, grass, and birds. He was in my family and friends. He was in the complexities of my physical body: the heart, eyes, and hands that all functioned without conscious thought. He was in the Book of Mormon, Bible, and words of living prophets. These ordinary things became extraordinary as I more clearly saw God in them.

Many years ago I stood by the bedside of a young man, the father of two children, as he hovered between life and the great beyond. He took my hand in his, looked into my eyes, and pleadingly asked, “Bishop, I know I am about to die. Tell me what happens to my spirit when I die.”
I prayed for heavenly guidance. My attention was directed to the Book of Mormon on the table beside his bed. I began to read aloud:
“Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—… the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, … are taken home to that God who gave them life.
“… The spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow” (Alma 40:11–12).
My young friend closed his eyes, expressed a sincere thank you, and silently slipped away to that paradise about which we had spoken.

The Primary children in the Willow Creek First Ward, Sandy Utah Willow Creek Stake, learned about the pioneers when they performed in a play for their ward. They acted out scenes from the building of the Kirtland, Nauvoo, and Salt Lake Temples, and some things that happened in between. It took them all summer to plan and to learn their parts, but on the night of the big pageant, they were ready.
Before the curtain opened, two children dressed as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young stood onstage and talked about building the Kirtland Temple. “The Lord has made it perfectly clear,” Joseph said to the audience. “He has commanded us to build a temple here in Kirtland.”
These early Church members donated their time, talents, and money to follow the Lord’s commandments. “I think they had to sacrifice a lot to build the temple,” says Kyle Esplin, 9, one of the narrators. “I’m paying my tithing now to help build up the Church.” When Kyle pays his tithing, he tries to remember the sacrifices the pioneers made.
The Latter-day Saints lived in Kirtland, Ohio, for eight years before they were forced to leave. They moved soon after they completed and dedicated the Kirtland Temple. When they arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois, they started to build another house of the Lord. Nauvoo became a large, prosperous city, and the people were happy there for some time. But soon they began to be persecuted, so the Nauvoo leaders formed a band of young men called the “whistling and whittling brigade.” The young men in the brigade looked for any suspicious-looking strangers and followed them, whittling sticks and whistling.
Jesse Fackrell, 10, one of the narrators, enjoyed watching the brigade on stage. “I thought it was neat that the boys went around and watched for troublemakers and protected the people,” he says.
Another sacrifice the early Church members in Nauvoo made was donating pennies to the temple fund. “I think they really felt good about giving something up for something else really important. It might have only been a little, but they felt thankful to be able to give their money,” says Mary Garbett, 10. One of Mary’s parts was being a harvester in the fields. In her role, she sold the vegetables she gathered so she could have money to donate to the temple.
Mary and other children in the ward also went to their stake center for the dedication of the new Nauvoo Temple in June 2002. Seeing the dedication helped the children better understand the sacrifices made by the pioneers for the original Nauvoo Temple.
After working hard to build the Nauvoo Temple, the people had to leave it behind after the Prophet Joseph was killed. Mobs forced many of them out of Nauvoo in the dead of winter. Brigham Young led them to a new home in the West.
Though life was very hard for the pioneers, and they really did walk and walk, they also managed to dance and sing during their trek west. The children in the play performed a quilt dance and had a hoedown with real fiddlers to show the audience that the journey was joyful at times. Many of the pioneer children had great adventures on their way to the Salt Lake Valley. They saw buffalo and mountains, and they preferred to walk a lot of the time because riding in the wagon was so bumpy.
Jeffrey Yee, 11, and his younger brother Ryan, 6, performed the parts of James and Joseph Kirkwood. James was one of the young heroes of the pioneer trek. He, his mother, and his three brothers had come from Scotland, and they set out together to cross the plains with their handcart. James took care of his four-year-old brother, Joseph. When Joseph was too tired to walk any farther on Rocky Ridge, James carried him. When they finally got to the camp, James set his little brother down safely by the campfire. James died beside the fire from the cold and exhaustion.
“I think that he was very responsible and brave. His little brother must have been grateful for a brother to look up to,” Jeff says about his character. “Because he was kind to his little brother, he helps me know it’s not nice to make fun of my little brother. He usually needs help because he is so young, so I try to help him.”
Though getting there was difficult, the Saints finally made it to the Salt Lake Valley, where Brigham Young dug his cane into the soil and said, “Here we will build the temple of our God.”
Davis Esplin, 11, learned a lot from performing the part of Brother Brigham. “I have a new respect for Brigham Young because I didn’t know how hard it was to build the temple.”
After dedicating the cornerstone, it took 40 years to complete the Salt Lake Temple. By that time, Wilford Woodruff had become President of the Church. He dedicated the temple on 6 April 1893. There was even a special dedication session for children under eight so that more Primary children could attend.
The Saints spent years building each of the three temples, suffering setbacks along the way. But they never gave up. Why did they do it? Zach Fackrell, 12, says it was because “they had faith and they knew it was important to get it done so they could do what the Lord wanted them to do.” Zach’s brother Jed, 10, says the temple is really important to him because “that’s where you can do baptisms for the dead, and that’s where you can get married so you can live with Heavenly Father again.”
Some children long ago had the right idea. After the Salt Lake Temple was completed, two boys brought their younger brothers to the temple so they could touch the walls. “We want them to know how great the temple is,” one of the older brothers says in the play.
“Yes,” the other boy says, “so they’ll want to go inside when they get big!”
Those children knew the importance of building temples, even though it required so much. They knew that just as they could touch the temple, the Spirit inside the temple could touch them, too. That was why they walked, and walked, and walked. …

I remember two friends from my high school and university years. He was a boy from a country town, plain in appearance, without money or apparent promise. He had grown up on a farm, and if he had any quality that was attractive it was the capacity to work. He carried sandwiches in a brown paper bag for his lunch and swept the school floors to pay for his education. But with all of his country appearance, he had a smile and a personality that seemed to sing of goodness. She was a city girl who had come out of a comfortable home. She would not have won a beauty contest. But she was wholesome in her decency and integrity and attractive in her good manners and dress.
Something wonderful took place between them. They fell in love. Some people whispered that there were far more promising boys for her, and a gossip or two noted that perhaps other girls might have interested him. But these two laughed and danced and studied together through their school years. They married when people wondered how they could ever earn enough to stay alive. He struggled through his professional school and came out well in his class. She saved and worked and prayed. She encouraged and sustained, and when things were really tough, she said quietly, “Somehow we can make it.” Buoyed by her faith in him, he kept going through these difficult years. Children came, and together they loved them and nourished them and gave them the security that came of their own love for and loyalty to one another. Now many years have passed. Their children are grown, a lasting credit to them, to the Church, and to the communities in which they live.
I remember seeing them on an airplane, as I returned from a Church assignment. I walked down the aisle in the semi-darkness of the aircraft cabin and saw a woman, white-haired, her head on her husband’s shoulder as she dozed. His hand was clasped warmly about hers. He was awake and recognized me. She awakened, and we talked. They were returning from a convention where he had delivered a paper before a learned society. He said little about it, but she proudly spoke of the honors accorded him.
I wish that I might have caught with a camera the look on her face as she talked of him. Forty-five years earlier people without understanding had asked what they saw in each other. I thought of that as I returned to my seat on the airplane. Their friends of those days saw only a farm boy from the country and a smiling girl with freckles on her nose. But these two found in each other love and loyalty, peace and faith in the future.
There was a flowering in them of something divine, planted there by that Father who is our God. In their school days they had lived worthy of that flowering of love. They had lived with virtue and faith, with appreciation and respect for self and one another. In the years of their difficult professional and economic struggles, they had found their greatest earthly strength in their companionship. Now in mature age, they were finding peace and quiet satisfaction together. Beyond all this, they were assured of an eternity of joyful association through priesthood covenants long since made and promises long since given in the House of the Lord.

My mother and I received our patriarchal blessings together. I was 20, and Mother was 49. I will never forget that day—how the patriarch placed his hands on Mother’s head and told her how often her life had been spared through bouts of rheumatic fever, heart disease, and many other illnesses. He recounted her life, enumerating the times she had blessed others. He told her of things the Lord had in store for her and offered guidance as to what she needed to do. I knew my mother’s life, and I listened as this patriarch, who was not acquainted with her, described her life. This experience was a witness to me that God lives, that He loves us, and that He knows us individually. I felt the Lord’s love for my mother—and for me—on that memorable day.

I’d like to share a bit of my story with you.

In a way, it began in my college days at Brigham Young University in Provo. Like many of you, I struggled with choosing a major. My dilemma, if one can call this a dilemma, was that I loved too many subjects – Math, English, History, Biology, Home Economics, Accounting, even Horticulture. Everything was fun and fascinating to me. So narrowing it down to a single major – that was tough. Like many of you, I changed my mind, more than once! After much prayer and careful thought, I eventually chose to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography with an emphasis in Travel and Tourism.

Did the Lord guide me in my decision? I believe so. The world of travel was an exotic choice of major for this small town girl. I come from a family of educators – parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. Most of them teachers. I thought I too would be a teacher. So you may all chuckle, but back then for me, choosing a degree in Travel and Tourism was going out on a limb! However, as it turned out, the Lord guided me to choose a degree which would eventually help supplement my family’s income in a place where tourism was the number one industry – Hawaii.

The Lord continued to guide me in a way that would lead me here to Brigham Young University–-Hawaii. On September 11, 2001, the tragic bombing of the twin towers in New York City had a drastic effect on the tourism industry. Air travel almost ground to a stop for a time. Within a month of that tragedy, the agency for which I worked made the decision to shut its doors.

Now a year previous to this event, my husband’s employment seemed shaky for a time and so I sought out another part-time job and interviewed for the position of an academic advisor here on this campus. However, my husband’s job stabilized and I was prompted by the Spirit to withdraw my application. Months later, when I was facing unemployment in the travel industry, I admit that I questioned that earlier prompting I had received to withdraw that application! Why had the Lord told me to let that opportunity pass by? My ability to help sustain our young family was now uncertain.

I should not have questioned. The Lord was still mindful of me and helped me immediately secure part-time employment at a local elementary school. I say immediately because this new job opportunity came the week before my last day of employment at the travel agency. Upon the kind recommendation of a friend, I applied for an opening at the elementary school and was hired. The Lord does work in mysterious ways because the principal later told me that he had seen me working with his grandchildren in the Primary organization and that was one of the things which prompted him to hire me. So this is a testimony to everyone here that all experience is to our benefit. Every calling you receive from the Lord will add to your skills and help you develop into the person the Lord knows you can be.

So right now you are all thinking, “Wait, that can’t be the end of the story because Sister Ching is not yet here at BYU–Hawaii!” Almost a year passed when I once again saw an opening for the same position for an academic advisor that I had interviewed for 18 months previously. I immediately felt a confirmation of “now is the time” and fortunately, was offered the position when I applied. I knew that I was where the Lord wanted me to be. Part of my testimony that confirms this to me comes from my patriarchal blessing. I’ll share just a small part of it in which the Lord tells me that men and women will come to me for counsel and advice in the activities of their lives. To the shy, young girl who received this blessing, this sentence from my patriarchal blessing was almost unimaginable at the time. Now, this sentence of my blessing is clearer to me.

I haven’t shared this experience widely with a lot of people previously because it is very personal and sacred to me. Perhaps to others, my story may seem insignificant when you look at the big plan. It’s true, my story is a miniscule piece of the Lord’s larger plan. But to me, this is further testimony that He truly cares for each one of us individually and will guide our path if we allow Him to.

I was shopping at the mall with my mom. I saw a little boy trying to get candy from a special kind of vending machine, one where you grab pieces of candy with a “claw.” He could not get any candy because he did not know how to move the claw over to the candy. His sister tried, but she could not make it work either. So they walked away with big frowns and no candy.
I walked over to the machine, moved the claw, and picked up two pieces of candy. The little boy was watching me from behind a toy machine. At first I thought about keeping the candy, but I knew it was really the boy’s candy because he had paid for it. So I walked over to him, knelt down, and offered him the candy. He took it and went away with a big smile.
I was glad that I could help him, and I felt really good because I knew that I had done the right thing.

They have also performed for special events such as inaugurations and funerals. On September 11, 2001, the choir was scheduled to perform in the Tabernacle on Temple Square for a visiting group of conventioneers. Because of the terrorist attacks on the United States earlier that day, the performance was changed to a memorial concert. As a show of respect, President Gordon B. Hinckley asked the audience to refrain from applauding.

“Midway through the concert we sang ‘America the Beautiful,’” says choir member Stephen Stoker. “Unable to applaud, the audience stood as we began to sing. When we got to the third verse, where we sing, ‘Oh, beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years, thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears,’ we were all crying. … It was a powerful experience for all of us.”

At nineteen, I was keeping books and acting a policy clerk for Mr. Henry Wadsworth, the agent of Wells, Fargo and Company. My time was not fully employed. I was not working for the company but for the agent personally. I did the same as I had done in Mr. White’s bank—volunteered to file a lot of bank letters, etc., and to keep a set of books of the Sandy Smelting Company, which Mr. Wadsworth was doing personally.

To emphasize the truth of the above quotation from 1 Chronicles, I will remark that my action so pleased Mr. Wadsworth that he employed me to do the collecting for Wells, Fargo and Company, and paid me twenty dollars a month for this work in addition to my regular compensation of seventy-five dollars from the insurance business. Thus I was in the employ of Wells, Fargo and Company, and one of my day dreams had become a reality.

Some years ago I received a letter in reference to recognition being given to a man in a community where I had once lived. The man and his wife were leaving the community where they had spent most of their lives. Local citizens were organizing a special event to honor him for the service he had given and the influence he had had in so many of the lives of the people. My life was one that he had touched. Receiving the announcement reminded me of the many ways in which I had been benefitted, encouraged, and guided by this man’s concern and kindness for me.
The community in which the man had lived was a small one. He had never accumulated much in the way of worldly goods. The little business he had operated could have been profitable enough, but he was too interested in people to be much concerned with building up his standard of living. He was always available to people, but he never demanded anything of them. Most of us had learned to take him very much for granted. It is unlikely he would ever have been given any public recognition until his funeral service, had not his unexpected move from the community prompted this effort to honor him.
On the evening of the special event, I was intrigued by the arrangements that had been made. All who entered the gathering place were asked to sign their names on slips of paper that were then folded and dropped into a box. When the large crowd was seated, and the honored guest had taken his place on the stand, the chairman announced the proceedings. No speakers had been assigned for the evening, he said, but names would be drawn from the box. Those who were chosen would be asked to represent all in offering expressions of appreciation and love for our friend.
One by one the names were drawn. As the hour passed, a procession of unrehearsed speakers revealed the story of selfless service that our friend had given to members of the community.
As the meeting drew to a close, the name of a local physician was drawn from the box. For many years the good doctor had lived as a neighbor to our honored friend. He had recently returned to his home following treatment in another state for what had proved to be a near-fatal illness. As he spoke, he explained that for many years he had contemplated how his own life and that of our friend had been devoted to serving others. He told of leaving his home to make professional visits at hours both early and late, and of frequently encountering our friend departing on what appeared to be responses to the call for help from someone with a problem. At these times, the doctor said, he felt particularly close to his neighbor in the fellowship of service they shared.
At this point in his remarks, the doctor paused, and his voice became touched with emotion. Making reference to his recent illness, he related how he had left this same community several months before, not knowing whether he would ever recover and return. No farewell testimonial had been held in his honor. He confessed that he had been upset by the obvious difference in the feelings of the community toward himself and our friend, especially considering the service that both of them had given. Tonight, he said, he had learned why this was so.
With all of the apparent parallels between his life and that of his friend, there was one very important difference that had set them apart from each other in the eyes of the people in the community. For all of his services, the doctor pointed out, he had collected a fee. That was the difference. He had not realized until tonight how much his fees had cost him.
All of us who knew the good doctor and had benefitted from his kindly ministrations realized that he was being too critical of his own compassion and charity. But he succeeded, in those dramatic circumstances, in teaching all of us a lesson that we would not soon forget.

I had the privilege of being involved with a young man and a father recently. The young man and a friend were up hiking in the lower foothills near Cody, Wyoming. The friend jumped across a high-power line that was down, but the young man got tangled in it and was electrocuted. The friend turned and ran all the way back down to where the father lived—and it was no short distance—and told him that his son had been electrocuted and was dead. The father, who was not a young man, ran all the way back up, taking about fifteen minutes. When he got where the boy was lying across the wires, he in some way removed the boy from the wires with a board or large stick. Then he picked his son up in his arms and held him, saying, “In the name of Jesus Christ and by the power and authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, I command you to live.” The dead boy in his father’s arms opened his eyes. He was taken to the University of Utah Medical Center for treatment and a blessing. I believe that it is this kind of experience that we have as we walk through this life with Him.

Heredia, Costa Rica: Drunk, he broke his back in a car accident. He begged the Lord for another chance at life.
When he left his friend’s wedding, Carlos Barrera was drunk. But he drove anyway—and ended up wrecking his car and breaking his spinal column in three places. “My whole life passed before me,” he says. “‘Give me another chance,’ I begged the Lord.” Now he knows that his petition was answered.
Carlos had been baptized when he was seventeen, but unlike his Latter-day Saint friends, he didn’t go on a mission. While they were gone, he made new friends—people with bad habits. “I began to smoke and drink. I’d been active until then—was even an elder—and my conscience got to me. From then on, my life was awful.”
He married Haydee, a nonmember. “We were always missing something in our lives,” he says. Then he lost his job. Problems mounted. “I started going around with an even worse crowd, people who took drugs, whose lives were filled with things of the world.”
“Instead of becoming more united during that time of trial,” says Haydee, “we became separated emotionally.”
Missionaries and Church members frequently came to encourage him, and he even went back to church once. “But I couldn’t stand being there because of my conscience,” he says.
Finally he got a good job as a radio operator for the police department. But he still hadn’t found peace. “I attended my wife’s church with her and the girls, looking for what I was missing, but I never found it. I talked with the priests there, begging with tears for help, but they didn’t know how.” Haydee listened to the missionary discussions but didn’t want to be baptized.
Then, in November 1986, came that accident in which Carlos broke his back. Luckily, his operations were successful: he wasn’t paralyzed. “I saw that I could walk again, that Heavenly Father had listened to my prayer, even though I had been drunk. How was that possible? I knew my life had some purpose; I prayed that he would help me.” From that moment, he never drank alcohol again.
In February two sister missionaries came to meet this less-active family they had on their list. “Their timing was perfect!” says Carlos. “If they’d come before or after that moment, my heart might not have been ready, and I might have missed the opportunity again. I put on a tough front, telling them I didn’t think I would come back to Church. But inside I was crying for help.”
The sisters kept coming, and they taught Carlos and Haydee all of the discussions again. Haydee gained a testimony and was baptized in March—just four months after Carlos’s accident. Carlos stopped smoking and began attending church with Haydee and their two daughters. Now he teaches the elders quorum and she teaches Primary.
“It’s been a complete, total change,” says Haydee. “Now, thanks to our Father in Heaven, here we are as a family in the Church! If we weren’t in the Church, perhaps we wouldn’t be together. Who knows what would have happened to us!” (See “They Didn’t Go by Accident.”)

A boy in my class at school lost his home in a fire. His family was left with nothing and had to live in a hotel room. I felt terrible when I heard about it, so I gathered some of my books and dolls to give to the boy’s four-year-old sister. My mom bought crayons, paper, stickers, and other things for the children. When they saw the gifts, they were very happy, and I never felt happier myself than I did right then. I am so glad to be able to help others as Jesus did, because making others happy makes me even happier.

I am not a Mormon yet, but I sometimes read the New Era. I want to say thanks for the beautiful pictures in the August New Era, especially the ones by Kris Rasmussen, because I know her. She introduced me to the Church. The first time I saw Kris she was in complete traction (her arms, head, pelvis, and legs). I was on volunteer nurse’s aid duty, and I could hear her laughing clear down the hall. At first I thought her pain pills made her laugh, but the registered nurse said that Kris refused to take pain pills. She was singing Mormon songs with four too many people in her room. She said, “Hi, Becky.” (I had my name tag on, but I didn’t understand how she could read it clear across the room.) “Come in and join us. We need another alto.” (How did she know I sing alto?) That cracked me up, so I went in, and we sang pioneer songs.
That was my favorite wing at the hospital from then on. She was there for many weeks, and we all hated to see her go. She told everybody about Joseph Smith, and if she wasn’t talking, she was listening to the Book of Mormon on cassette tapes. She always asked if it was too loud, but you could tell she wanted everyone to be able to hear it. Sometimes she would get very excited about a part of it, and then she would turn off the tape recorder and tell us about it. She liked the part about the little submarines the Jaredites made and how God made lights for them with his finger. I liked it when she told me about Christ coming to America. She took time to listen to my problems and even introduced me to a cute Mormon guy. I wrote on her body cast too.
Kris believes that God wants her to go on a mission for the Church, and I know that she will in spite of everything. She never said how much it hurt her when she was in the hospital. You could tell it did, but she’d never cry in front of anybody.
Becky FreeportLarkspur, California

Another friend of mine is a prominent corporation lawyer. For years he’s had trouble sleeping at night. An ardent fisherman, he decided one restless night that he would try making the flies that fishermen use. The next day he bought some inexpensive equipment. He went completely overboard on flytying. He enjoyed it even more than fishing. In the space of a few years he must have tied half a million of those things, and he was proud of every single one of them. He became an expert.

I remember that there were buckets and kegs of nails—rusty, crooked nails. When I was just a small boy, Dad put me to work straightening those nails with a hammer. Years later, at Dad’s funeral, I reflected on that experience. I realized that he had been teaching me not only how to work but also a basic principle of the gospel.

We have become a throwaway society. No one thinks about straightening nails these days. We throw away anything that is damaged, including human souls. I learned from those hours of straightening rusty nails that even things terribly bent can be saved for a good and wholesome purpose.

Perhaps that discovery was the beginning of my great desire to recover every human soul. I know that they can be recovered, and that lives can be improved, corrected, and renewed to fulfill the full measure of their creation. My father instilled that faith in me.

Would you like to hear about a missionary who was prompted to make a wise choice? He was new in the work and was assigned to labor in the city of Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, with a veteran missionary as a companion. They called at the home of a family by the name of Pollard. They knocked, and Mr. Pollard let them in. He invited them to present their material. After he had heard their message, and after he had prayed with them, it seemed as though the spirit of the adversary came over him, and he became angry with the elders and told them to leave and never come back again. As he showed them to the door, he said, “You can’t tell me that you really believe Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, anyway.” The door slammed shut. The two dejected missionaries walked away.

This young missionary turned to his senior companion and said, “We didn’t answer Mr. Pollard’s question.”

The senior companion explained the futility of attempting to return. But the young elder said, “I’m going back. I won’t feel right until I do.”

They returned to Mr. Pollard’s door and knocked on it. He opened the door and said, “I thought I told you fellows to leave.”

The next decision took all the strength of character and all the fortitude that this young man could muster, for his senior companion did not give him much help. I heard Mr. Pollard himself describe the experience. He said, “That missionary looked me in the eye. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘Mr. Pollard, as we left your home, you made a statement that we really didn’t believe Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Mr. Pollard, I want you to know that I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and that this work is true.’”

After this declaration, the missionaries departed. Mr. Pollard later told me that all the rest of the day and that evening he kept hearing those words echoing through his ears: “I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I know it. I know it. I know it.”

The next morning he telephoned the missionaries and asked them to come back. They returned to his home and taught him the gospel. They taught his wife the gospel. They taught his children the gospel. All became members of the Church. If you could have accompanied me to the district conference I attended a few years back and heard this man stand on his feet and thank his Heavenly Father for the choice that a young missionary made to return and to bear his witness, you, my brothers and sisters, would be forever anxious to “choose the right when a choice is placed before you.”