Gospel Story Finder

“One day I was in school when a huge airplane was hit, and we saw the soldiers jumping out, their parachutes opening. The airplane crashed close to the school and flattened two or three houses. After class, some of us went to the crash site and sat down and watched the fire. What I remember most, however, was my grandmother coming up to me and grasping me by the back of the neck. I was three hours late coming home, and my mother had everyone searching for me. After that, I always kept my promise to come straight home from school.”

Shortly after our training in the Missionary Training Centre as a senior missionary couple, we reported to the mission office to meet with our mission leader, President Mutariswa, for assignments which included supporting the implementation of Gathering Place and Children and Youth Development (CYD) initiatives mission wide.
To carry out these assignments effectively, we needed to travel extensively to minister personally to the congregations and offer trainings for which it was our privilege.
On one of such scheduled visits to Makurdi District, CYD training was to take place Sunday afternoon. Immediately after the church service, it was so amazing to observe a little primary child named Stephanie, daughter of the branch president where training was to take place, start cleaning the chapel with all the tools she needed. She disposed refuse properly and returned all tools appropriately to designated room.
We were touched that a primary child of three years old could lead the way in keeping the chapel clean. After obtaining consent from her father, we reviewed our training slides to incorporate pictures of Stephanie’s worthy example as a demonstration of how a child could grow in wisdom and stature.
Further interaction with the family showed that parents in the Makurdi District use the CYD children’s guidebooks to train their children and Stephanie’s example becomes a sure proof of the efficacy of the Children Youth Development initiative.
We can’t describe in words the happiness we feel knowing that this initiative is a simple but powerful divinely appointed tool in hands of parents and leaders in helping the rising generation remain on the covenant path as they develop along the four (spiritual, physical, intellectual and social) aspects of life. How grateful we are to serve as a full-time missionary couple at this time when the prophet of God has asked we get enlisted in supporting the rising generation.
And Stephanie grows in wisdom and stature!

Why Paint?
I asked,
Until I saw
The well-loved scene
With captur’d mood.
A feeling rare, hard to
Explain. Just to
Allude,
I’d have to paint.

Her desire to influence others is one of the reasons Marissa started a glee club at her school. “I had really been longing for years to create a club where people who loved music and loved singing and dancing could get together and put together something really great,” she says.
So she got all the approvals and went through the process of creating the club.
“Now, our glee club has done several performances,” Marissa says. “We love to explore music of all genres. Usually the kids get to select songs and submit them, and the whole club votes on them. We do country, pop, rock, oldies, and mainstream hits. It’s a lot of fun.”

I am an avid reader of the New Era, and I have been reading it since November of 1985 when my friends gave me a gift subscription. How wonderful it is to have friends like them. If it had not been for them, I still might not know about the New Era. As I read the New Era I get a happy feeling inside of me. I have come to realize how hard it really is to become as perfect as I want to be, but I will keep trying. I want to express my thanks to Brother and Sister Cullimore for giving me all the wonderful stories and poems that come to me as a result of their gift subscription.
Marites BautistaPhilippines

When all the Saints were gone, mobs took over the temple and ruined its holiness by drinking and gambling in it and by vandalizing it in other ways. Two years later, the temple caught fire, and everything burned but the stone walls. Those walls were hit by a tornado in 1850.

I learned a lesson about honesty when I was quite young. Mother had put some money for a dozen eggs on the kitchen table. I took the money and told a friend that I had found it. We went to the store and bought candy. When Mother asked if I had taken the money, I lied. She believed me, but I had an awful feeling. I didn’t ever want that feeling again, so that experience has made it easier for me to be honest ever since.

Karl Maeser is regarded as the founder of Brigham Young University. He was a man of great honour, a man of integrity. He is quoted as saying: “I have been asked what I mean by ‘word of honor.’ I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No, never! I’d die first” (quoted in Emerson West, Vital Quotations, 1968, 167).

Such a thought would be laughable to most nowadays, but not to disciples of Christ. We are charged to be men, women, and children of honour and integrity, for that is what our Saviour expects.

Best of all, I remember sitting on my mother’s lap, hearing her tell me the story of the boy prophet Joseph Smith, who went into the woods to pray. Near our apartment were many churches. I heard their bells and saw their domes and steeples when we took walks together. So when Mother told me of Joseph’s concern over which church he should join, I was able to understand his confusion before the First Vision.

“I find that when kids use mean words it’s often because they don’t know what they should say instead. We practice acting out scenarios about what they should say in different situations. Then, when a conflict arises, I help them rephrase what they are trying to say with the kind words we practiced.” —Corrinn M.

But Lucy Mack was no carbon-copy Christian. Although knowing God through scriptures and prayerful communion, she doubted the religions that claimed to speak for him. Early in marriage she showed double qualities of devotion and independence. A severe respiratory infection brought a high fever, and Lucy’s life hung in the balance. Weakened and semi-conscious, she was informed by her shaken husband that the doctors expected her to die. But that night powerful prayers stirred within her weakened frame. She sought life in order to “bring up my children, and be a comfort to my husband.” Making her “solemn covenant” with God, she heard a voice assuring her (in scriptural language), “seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Her solid recovery began from that hour, as she vigorously assured her watching mother that “the Lord will let me live.”7

Joseph was deeply saddened by the death of another of his brothers, Don Carlos, in 1841. In speaking later at the funeral of Ephraim Marks, Joseph expressed his heartfelt loss: “It is a very solemn and awful time; I never felt more solemn. It calls to mind the deaths of my oldest brother, Alvin, who died in New York, and my youngest brother, Don Carlos Smith, who died in Nauvoo. It has been hard for me to live on earth and see these young men, upon whom we have leaned for support and comfort, taken from us in the midst of their youth” (History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, page 333).

In a typical Samoan family, a young man does the family cooking in a umu (fire pit oven). His little brothers are usually right there to watch and help him. One of the first things this young cook does is to slash off a few palm fronds with his big bush knife. Then he slits them in half down the thick middle of the stem, fastening the rib into a loop and quickly weaving the leaf fringes into sturdy workbaskets.
Later, the older brother gets into his pao pao (dugout canoe) and goes to the plantation for taro (an edible root). By the time he returns with his baskets full of taro, his little brothers have a pile of wood ready for the fire.
When the fire is hot, the special rocks layered on top begin to glow red. The young cook slashes the leaf fringes off a small coconut tree branch, trims the green rib, and bends it in the middle to make fire tongs to arrange the hot stones in the cleared-out fire pit. Over them he spreads layers of banana leaves, taro, breadfruit, green bananas, a leaf-wrapped fish or chicken, more leaves, more hot rocks, and then leaves and earth. In a few hours the family’s food is cooked for the weekend.

But the progress Melissa has made in the past six years is inspired. And it’s a change that more and more young women are making happen all around the world thanks to Personal Progress.

“I always thought the worst of myself,” says Melissa, 17, who is about to complete the Young Women program in the Cincuentenario Ward, Panama City Panama Stake. “But the Personal Progress program has helped me realize that I am worth something.”

According to Melissa: “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, these experiences can help you become a better person. This program is inspired for us. The world changes, temptations and challenges change, and this program is for our time to help us progress to meet today’s challenges.”

Sunbeams spray upon
dusty crimson cliffs,
climbing towards the Master.
At the humble feet of nature,
beneath the sparse shade
of penitent oaks,
a young boy skins knees
bent against rugged stone.
Though not a forest grove
of the youthful Joseph,
a question cuts his heart.
Peace strikes his mind,
without visionary glories,
but with the faith of
a youth’s earnest prayer.

During many summer vacations as a child, my family drove the long distance from our home in northern California to visit relatives in Utah. As a true city boy looking for adventure, I especially enjoyed our trips to my grandmother’s farm in southern Utah.
On the farm, my brothers, sisters, cousins, and I climbed to the tops of towering haystacks and then jumped off, flying down to a soft cushion of hay below. Next, we took turns on our uncle’s old tractors, grabbing the steering wheel and pretending we were racing across the field. After that, we balanced like tightrope walkers and made our way across the top of the rickety old fence rails that kept the cows corralled. The best fun, though, was riding old Blaze.
Blaze was a gentle, old, brown horse that loved kids to ride on her. When I was younger, I rode double with one of my older brothers or sisters. However, the summer I was about nine years old, I announced to everyone that I was old enough to ride Blaze all by myself. My parents agreed, so with a boost onto her back and some last-minute instructions from my uncle, I was riding Blaze all on my own like a real cowboy.
As I slowly guided Blaze into a partly fenced-in field, my family could see that I was handling Blaze as well as any professional cowboy. They left me to my fun and went inside Grandma’s old farmhouse. Holding the reins loosely in my hands as I sat atop the gentle horse, I felt like I was king of the world.
However, only a few minutes had passed when Blaze suddenly broke into a mad gallop. I pulled gently on the reins to slow her down, but she kept up her fast pace. I pulled harder on the reins and yelled, “Whoa!” But Blaze seemed to just go faster and faster. I kept tugging at the reins but didn’t dare pull too hard for fear that she would rear on her hind legs and buck me off.
I pulled again and again on the reins, but Blaze just kept on galloping out of control. My cries for her to stop turned into screams of panic as she raced from the safety of the field and away from the farmhouse while I bounced and jerked wildly in the saddle.
At a terrifying speed, she headed straight for an old tractor, swerving just in time to miss it. Racing like lightning, she headed next toward a wooden, railed fence. I thought for sure that we’d crash right into it, but Blaze swerved away again just in time.
No matter what I tried, I couldn’t control her at all. Eventually she galloped off the farm property onto the rarely used country road. With tears streaming from my eyes, I realized my situation had just grown considerably worse. I couldn’t stop her on my own, and it might be hours before anyone who could help me might venture this way. I could end up lost, miles away from my grandma’s farmhouse, before Blaze ever came to a stop or threw me off her back.
At that moment, I realized that there was only one thing left for me to do. I prayed with all my heart. I prayed in my mind, and I prayed out loud. I knew that Heavenly Father would hear my prayers and that He could help me.
It wasn’t long after my prayers that an old truck came barreling down the road. The man driving it saw right away that I needed help. Driving alongside the galloping horse and me, the man yelled from his truck window, “Pull on the reins!”
I pulled, but Blaze kept running. The man yelled for me to pull harder. Even though I was still afraid that Blaze might rear back, I pulled back even harder on the reins than I had tried before. Blaze kept on racing.
“Pull harder!” yelled the man.
I was afraid to pull any harder, but I realized that the man knew more about horses than I did. So, gathering all my strength, I pulled as hard as I could on the reins. Blaze didn’t stop at first, but with the man’s continual urging, the horse finally slowed to a complete stop.
The man in the truck pulled off to the side of the road and hopped out. My whole body shook as he helped me down off the horse. When I told him that Blaze was usually a mild-mannered horse, he explained that even the gentlest horse might break into a run if its rider holds the reins too loosely.
After thanking the man for his help and assuring him that I was OK, I started the long way back to the farmhouse, leading Blaze by the reins. As I walked, I realized that some people might say that the man coming by when he did was just a coincidence. But I knew differently. It was a direct answer to my prayers. Heavenly Father knew ahead of time that I would need help when I did. He inspired a man who knew a lot more about horses than I did to drive his truck down a lonely county road. I know with all my heart, that Heavenly Father answered the prayers of a terrified young boy who couldn’t stop a galloping horse on his own.

I missed seeing the first British Pageant as we live five hours from Chorley, and my husband isn’t keen on musicals. Although drama is my passion, I didn’t push him as I didn’t really know what the pageant was about. Our daughter signed up to be in the 2017 pageant, so I insisted that we went to support her as a family. It was so amazing. The size of the theatre, the expanse of the stage, and the number in the audience was breathtaking. Once the production began, I was captivated. The whole evening was inspiring, emotional, and so incredibly well presented that I went every night to see the pageant that week. We have since found early pioneers on both sides of our family and realise that the pageant stories are about our ancestors. This production touched our hearts so much and made us so grateful for the struggles of early pioneers so that we could have the gospel today, that it made us want to give something back. This year my husband and I, along with our three grandchildren, will all be appearing in the pageant family cast.

Brandon recalled a touching moment during the technical rehearsal. “The night before the concert, during the FSY Medley, all the lights suddenly went out. But the music and mics kept working, so we kept singing. The audience turned on their phone lights and waved them to the music. It was breathtaking. I teared up as I saw the crowd singing with us. It reminded us that in times of darkness, trust the Lord—He will lead you to the light.” The lights came back on just as they sang the final line: “We will trust in the Lord.”

When President Toronto died in 1968, William South and his wife were asked to help sustain the faith of the Czech members. President South’s wife was Jane Brodil South—Františka’s daughter. When President South’s health began to fail in 1977, Calvin McOmber and his wife, Frances Brodil McOmber—Františka’s other daughter—were asked to assume the same responsibility. They continued in this post until 1980, when President McOmber died.4

For Mitchell Garcia, the motivation to serve didn’t come immediately. At first, he felt uncomfortable at special-needs Mutual. But when he became more acquainted with Sean, his fears were put to rest. “He’s always happy to see me,” Mitchell says. “He’s a good friend of mine, and he has a heart full of love.”