Gospel Story Finder

After retiring, Brother and Sister Patterson went back to school to learn new skills: gunsmithing and woodworking.
Photograph courtesy of the Pattersons
After 40 years as a medical doctor and military officer, Kerry Patterson was injured while on a routine mission in Afghanistan. Forced to take a military disability retirement, he searched for things to do. Not content simply to spend his days fishing, he and his wife, Linda, went back to school at a local community college.
“I took a shop class in high school but had no other vocational training since then,” he explains. “Nonetheless, I decided to learn gunsmithing. I liked fixing people as a doctor and thought that learning how to fix things that required precision machining would keep me mentally active. It was a lot harder than I thought to go into something so new and different.” But now at age 71, after completing all required courses and getting necessary licenses, he has more business than he can handle. He has even hired an apprentice to share the workload and learn the trade.
Photograph courtesy of the Pattersons
Linda took other classes at the community college at the same time as her husband. With their six children grown, she now had time to pursue her interest in woodworking and furniture design. “I was the only woman and far and away the oldest class member, but I didn’t let that deter me,” she says. “Some projects took longer for me to complete than other students, but I kept at it.” Following two years of training, she now builds custom cabinets for family members and others. “Now I’m able to help children remodel their kitchens and help community members who simply need a little help with their own home remodeling projects.”

It was a sunny spring afternoon, a week after my eighth birthday—a perfect day for a bike ride. My sister Marla, our friend Lisa, and I headed out on a backcountry road that was part of my family’s cattle ranch in British Columbia, Canada. The mountaintops glowed as the sun reflected off their snowcapped peaks. Excitement filled my chest as I pedaled.
I had been riding a two-wheeler for only about a week, so I was still a little shaky. The first part of the road was smooth dirt, flattened by regular tractor and hay-wagon trips. As the road wound past the thick green alfalfa fields, we began to pedal faster. I felt strong and free, coasting through the fresh mountain breeze.
Then we came to a division in the road. We could keep going straight along the edge of the field, or we could turn and take the road that went along the creek at the base of the mountain. We decided to take the more adventurous route.
Marla and I had been on this road several times before with our family, but this was my first time riding a bike here. I was a little nervous as my bike jiggled across a cattle guard, a ditch covered with evenly spaced bars to keep cows from crossing. I pedaled hard to stay with Marla and Lisa. The sunlight pierced through the majestic pine trees, creating a cheerful, bright pattern on the bumpy path.
As the road became rockier, I became more nervous. I was having a hard time keeping my balance. I wondered if the rocks would puncture my tires.
“I think maybe we should go back,” I said.
“Why?” Marla asked. “Are you scared?”
I would never admit to my older sister that I was afraid. “No. I just don’t want to get a flat tire.”
“Well, you can go back if you want, but we are going to keep going,” she said.
“Bye,” I called as I turned my bike around.
“We’ll see you at home,” Marla said. “We probably won’t go too much farther.”
I started toward home, all alone. The patterns on the road did not seem so cheerful now. I was suddenly aware of the strange sounds coming from the dark forest. But knowing that the comfort of home was near, I pedaled on. I was almost to the cattle guard when I sensed someone behind me. “Marla and Lisa must have decided to come home too,” I realized with relief. “Now I won’t have to ride home alone.” Swinging my leg over my bike, I stopped and turned around to see where they were. Marla and Lisa were nowhere in sight, but walking straight toward me was a black bear!
I froze. My bike clanked to the ground. All the advice I had ever heard about bears rushed through my mind. Don’t run or it will chase you. You can never outrun a bear. I started to walk slowly backwards.
Make noise to scare the bear away. Yell and bang two rocks together. I scanned the ground near my feet—no rocks, just dirt. I clapped my hands as hard as I could. But I could not yell. My throat felt tight. The bear kept walking toward me.
Pray. Throughout my life I had been taught to pray. My Sunday School teacher had even asked us what we should do if we saw a bear, and she had emphasized prayer. I had been taught to pray with my head bowed and eyes closed, but that was impossible now. I kept my eyes on the bear and silently prayed: “Heavenly Father, please help me! Please save me from this bear! Please help me know what to do.”
Praying and clapping, I walked slowly backward toward the cattle guard. Maybe if a cow couldn’t cross it, a bear would have trouble too. Maybe it would trip, giving me a chance to run home! I stepped carefully across the widely spaced beams.
The bear snorted and drooled. I watched as it followed me easily across the cattle guard. It rose onto its hind legs. I stood horrified as the grunting bear came toward me with outstretched paws. It towered over me, and I could see its sharp, wet teeth. Suddenly, the bear swiped for my head! I screamed as its large, curled claws got tangled in my hair and jerked me to the ground. I jumped back up. The bear, on all fours again, bit my inner thigh and pulled me down. It started dragging me across the road.
By then, Marla and Lisa had found me. Marla tried to distract the bear, but nothing worked. In seconds, the bear had dragged me across the dirt road to the base of the mountain. It surely would have pulled me into the thick bushes, but suddenly my pants ripped. They tore into two pieces, from front to back, even through the elastic waistband. Miraculously, its teeth had not punctured my skin. I leaped up. “Run!” a voice said to my mind.
I ran toward Marla and Lisa, leaving the bear with my pant leg in its mouth. Pantless and wearing only one shoe, I ran as fast as an Olympic track star. I overtook Marla and Lisa, who were also running. We lunged into the bushes and raced toward the creek. The thorny brambles scratched my legs, but I didn’t slow down.
Without pausing or looking back, I crossed a barbed-wire fence and sloshed into the creek. I lost my other shoe when it got wedged under a log. Almost home, I plunged through the water and ran across the wet cow corral. I squeezed through a fence and sprinted up the porch steps and through the front door.
My parents bombarded me with questions when they saw me without shoes or pants and covered with scratches.
“What happened?” Mom cried.
“Where are your pants?” Dad asked. “How did you get all those scratches?”
Still afraid, I couldn’t catch my breath. Stuttering, gasping, and crying, I finally managed, “I … ah … buh … buh … bear!”
Marla and Lisa ran onto the porch, and Marla told Mom and Dad what she had seen. Trying to calm me, Mom helped me into a warm bath.
Later that evening, clean and safe, we discussed the terrifying event. My palms were blue with bruises from clapping so hard, and my legs were covered in scratches from the bushes, but I had no marks from the bear. Its claws had brushed my head, and its teeth had gripped my leg, but my skin had not been broken. If the bear’s claws had been any closer to my head or if its teeth had bitten into my thigh, I could have been seriously hurt and would not have been able to run away.
I know Heavenly Father heard my prayers that day, and I know I heard the voice of the Holy Ghost telling me to run. Heavenly Father blessed me with a miracle.

When I was 12, the missionaries began to teach my siblings and me. At first my father didn’t participate. He would just sit in a back room behind a curtain and listen. But then he read a Church pamphlet that described how a man and a woman married with the right authority could live together forever. This got his attention because even though his wife had passed away, he could be with her again. Once he learned this, he decided to be baptized. And we were all baptized as a family.

“Mother was an accomplished musician. She was a noted singer when my father met her while on assignment as a reporter for the Deseret News. He was covering a Tabernacle Choir concert in which my mother was a guest soloist. He was immediately impressed with her, and theirs was a storybook romance. While my parents may have had differences of opinion, as children we were never aware of any. They always supported each other, and we learned early that we couldn’t play one against the other.”

Cody Carr knew when he was only four that he wanted to be an astronaut. He had a little bank shaped like a spaceship that he put his tithing money in, and each time he dropped in a penny, a light would go on as if the rockets were firing. As he grew older, his school friends kidded him about being a spaceman, but Cody was serious. Those were the days of the birth of the manned space program, and he listened to every minute of every flight.

Naturally, his twin interest was astronomy. He received a telescope for Christmas and began getting up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to look at the stars. “The night sky always fascinated me,” he said. “The whole universe is God’s creation, but we don’t know very much about it. I have often thought that if there were another frontier left, I’d be out exploring it. But the only one left is outer space, and there’s only one way to get there—by becoming an astronaut.”

In school, Cody took all the science and electronics classes he could. “I didn’t think electronics had much to do with space exploration, but dad suggested it, and I loved it!” He became a finalist in a statewide electronics competition.

Part of Cody’s goal to become an astronaut included a goal to become an Air Force Academy cadet. As he progressed through high school, he counseled with his father and mother and prayed about each step along the way. He had three great goals in life.

The first was to keep all the commandments of his Father in Heaven. The second was to serve a full-time mission. “All my life we have talked about a mission and the things pertaining to a mission. It was never ‘if you go on a mission’ but always ‘when you go.’” The third great goal was temple marriage.

“Every night before we went to sleep, mom or dad would come around to our beds and ask each of us in turn, ‘What do you want out of life? What do you want to do? What do you want to be?’ Those goal-setting sessions really helped me keep my head on straight. Every night I said those three things and sometimes others—like the astronaut plans—but always those three. We would talk about what I needed to do to achieve those goals, and then we would talk about any problems or questions I had.”

But two of Cody’s goals conflicted with each other. In order to go on a mission, he would have to resign from the academy after his first year—there was no such thing as a leave of absence for a mission. If he left, he was probably out of the program. To get back in, he would have to be renominated, and the mere fact of his resignation might work against him. What were the odds?

The preparations continued. Cody ran four or five miles each night to condition himself. As a junior, he spent one whole day taking college entrance exams, including the ACT (American College Test), SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), an Air Force engineering aptitude examination, and a physical fitness test. He was also interviewed and appraised for leadership potential.

The first year at the academy wasn’t spent just waiting for a mission call. “It was hard,” he remembers. “After the first four months I started asking, ‘Is this what I want to do in life?’ But then I would think back to the confirmations I had received through the Holy Ghost. I knew I was doing things, as President Kimball says, in their proper season and order, and I prayed, and the plan was reconfirmed. I knew I was right where I should be, and that really helped me.”

As the first year drew to a close, Cody had to reaffirm in his own mind his decision to go on a mission. To survive the toughest year in the academy and then give it all up took a lot of courage. And it might also mean abandoning his lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. “But I had already made the decision to resign eight years earlier. I had no doubt what I was going to do even though I agonized over it.”

In March, during spring break, Cody had his mission interviews with his bishop and stake president. At the end of the summer, following SERE training (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape), he resigned. As with any cadet who asks to leave the academy, he was sent to interviews with several different counselors and officers.

“All of them would grill me at first,” Cody said, “but as soon as I told them my reasons for resigning, their attitude changed. They all expressed their respect for the LDS people they knew, and when I told them I was going to try to come back, which was something of a shock in itself, they said fine.” His written statement included a full explanation of what a mission is and why he wanted to serve.

The officer who had to sign the paper as a witness commented, “I’ve never read anything like that before in my life. Is that really what you believe?”

“I sure do,” Cody replied.

“A lot of them didn’t understand,” Cody explains, “but they accepted. They were feeling something they’d rarely felt before.”

In May Cody received his call to the Switzerland Zurich Mission. He entered the MTC in August. Concentrating on studies was second nature, and obedience was ingrained. “I wanted to use my time wisely because I knew I was paying a price for my mission,” he said.

At first the thought of not being readmitted hung over him, but the time finally came when he stopped worrying and left it in the hands of the Lord. Besides, missionary work presented its own challenges. “For the first six or seven months, I found myself going through the motions. I knew the Church was true and that the work was important, but I didn’t love it as I should. My academy experience came to my aid. I was used to doing difficult things. I worked hard and prayed every day that the work would become a joy instead of a burden. In the course of about a week, the whole thing turned around. Suddenly I was happier; I was working out of desire, not just duty. I knew my mission would be worth it even if I never got accepted back into the academy.”

Then a letter from home told Cody that Ted Parsons, another cadet who had resigned from the academy to serve a mission, had been readmitted! Maybe there was a chance after all!

Cody took the necessary exams at a U.S. military installation. “My mission president gave me a blessing. He told me I had served an honorable mission and that the Lord would help me accomplish what I needed to.”

Shortly after the blessing, Cody had a head-on bicycle collision, shattering his nose on the handlebar. “Qualifications at the academy are stringent. With an impact like that you would normally lose pilot qualification. If I had hit my eye or forehead or even my teeth, it would probably have disqualified me.” Cody is convinced he was protected.

When the test results arrived, they showed a score higher than the first time Cody applied for admission, which was advantageous because the competition was tougher.

“I had done everything I could. I made sure my end of things was in order. I wasn’t expecting the Lord to meet me more than halfway. Then I left it up to him,” Cody said.

Cody was renominated by his senator. His faith had paid off. Two weeks after returning from Switzerland and two years after leaving Colorado Springs, Cody Carr entered the academy once more. His dream of being an astronaut was fully intact, along with his other goals of keeping the commandments, marrying in the temple, and being a lifelong missionary.

“Li-sa Lar-son!”
The double L rings out again as the announcer names the scoring player. Lisa, a 17-year-old senior from New Trier High School in Chicago, Illinois, has just scored two more points. Her long ponytail whips from side to side as she runs down the court, stops, and darts back and forth in front of one of the opposing players.
Then suddenly Lisa lunges at the ball, steals it, and a few seconds later, the loudspeaker booms again—“Li-sa Lar-son!” By the time the game is over, Lisa has scored 23 points.
When Lisa plays basketball, she explodes with energy. But it isn’t only on the basketball court that she demonstrates such enthusiasm.
“Lisa’s first word was more,” says her mother, Maya. “I guess that was a promise of things to come.”
Lisa lives in Northfield, Illinois, close to Lake Michigan, and belongs to the North Shore First Ward, Wilmette Illinois Stake. But if you met Lisa at church, you might not recognize her as the same girl who can dominate the basketball court. She is quiet and a little reserved. She attends early-morning seminary. You can often find her deep in thought.
“Time passes faster now than it did when I was younger,” Lisa says. “That worries me. I don’t want life to go by too fast. The gospel helps me put more value on time, and I want to do as much as I can with the time I have.”
When Lisa isn’t on the basketball court or at a Church activity, there’s another place you may find her. She loves animals; horses are her favorites.
“Some neighbors needed someone to watch their stable last summer, so I volunteered, just so I could be around the horses. Horses have a peaceful spirit, and I like to be with them.”
“The horses can tell she cares about them, and they really respond to her,” says her grandfather, James Larson.
Lisa is also interested in piano, tennis, dance, water ballet, and community service. “I want to learn as much as I can,” she says.
The Trevians’ girls’ basketball team is one of Illinois’s strongest. Lisa is cocaptain and the only Mormon—which presents interesting opportunities.
“Once we were playing a tough game, and I was standing at the foul line next to a big girl from the other team. She turned and asked, ‘Why don’t you ever swear?’”
Lisa smiles as she tells the story. Then she gets more serious. “I know that because I’m LDS, the other girls are watching everything I do. I want them to know that being a Mormon can make you work harder, not just in sports but in everything. I think they’re starting to understand that my standards give me more physical drive and help me think clearer when things are moving fast. The gospel makes me stronger in everything I do.”
This priority on gospel standards influences Lisa’s non-LDS friends. They come to her for advice, knowing they can trust her. “During a junior prom, I was able to talk a couple of my friends out of doing something that could have been real trouble for them. My friends are amazed that I can enjoy life without drinking or drugs.”
There are only about 20 LDS students at New Trier, but in spite of their small number, Lisa says, “when we talk about religion, almost everyone listens. They want to know what we have to say, and why we believe the way we do. They keep us busy answering questions about the Church, especially when there’s nothing else to do during bus rides to field trips.”
Last year, Lisa dislocated her shoulder and missed a chance to go to the Blue Star Basketball Camp to be seen by college recruiters. She was disappointed, but she didn’t give up. “I knew that I’d kept my body clean and strong and that it would heal fast.” She came back playing even stronger.
Lisa’s coach, John Schneiter, says, “In my 35 years of coaching, I’ve never seen a harder working athlete.”
Lisa comes by a lot of that determination through her family. The Larsons are like many active LDS families throughout the world. They echo gospel ideals in many of their activities. Their conversations are sprinkled with LDS catchwords. And they relate well with their non-LDS neighbors and friends. The Larsons also have an unusual number of family traditions which seem to bind them together. Visit them in December, for example, and you’ll probably see their family enactment of “The Night before Christmas”—with all of the lines changed for comic effect.
Lisa has two brothers and one sister. Josh, 15, is the oldest brother, just younger than Lisa and also an up-and-coming basketball player; then come Brigham, 12, and Brittany, 9.
Lisa relates well to her father’s athletic background as a college football player. “He’s been a great influence on me,” she says. “He loves sports and is a real fighter. He helps me stick with it when I get discouraged.”
What’s in Lisa’s future? “I’ll always be interested in sports,” she says. “But there’s more. I want to go to college—to BYU and major in dance. And join a dance troupe later on. And then teach.”
She pauses again.
“I’d like to go on a mission somewhere in the middle of all that. And of course get married and raise a family.” And more, and more, and more, and more.
In many ways, Lisa is just a good LDS girl, whose life is continually influenced by her membership in the Church. But because she’s always trying to do the best she can, for her more isn’t just a word; it’s a lifelong challenge.
Editor’s note: Since this story was written, Lisa has graduated from high school and is attending BYU.

These young men continue to influence our family. Two months ago our ward had a missionary activity on a Saturday evening, inviting everyone, including part-member families. Our youngest son, Sun-Yoon, had just come back from a youth camp in the afternoon of that same day. He said he was not going to the missionary activity because he was not a member of a part-member family and he was so tired. He didn’t come to the activity. My wife called him on the phone to explain that everyone was invited to the activity. He said, “I know, but I am not coming today,” and hung up.
Right after the meeting started that evening, Sun-Yoon came in and sat by his mother very quietly. He whispered to her, saying, “Right after I hung up the phone, I remembered asking Dad what made the Hanaro Quartet so successful in their lives. He told me that they obeyed the words of the Church leaders and that they regularly attended the meetings of the Church. That was the key that changed their lives and made them so successful.” My son continued, “All of a sudden, the words of my father came into my mind, and I decided to follow them because I want to have a happy family like theirs and to be successful in my life.”

I am here in answer to a call from the prophet and to fulfill a lifelong dream and commitment. As a young girl, I planned and prepared to serve a full-time mission. However, my life plan was “reordered” when I went to a Young Adult activity. There I met a recently returned missionary who offered to teach me to waterski. Over the next year became good friends and grew in love. We embarked on one type of full-time mission, one without a release date: marriage and family. We were sealed in the Provo temple almost 44 years ago. Between then and now, Elder Rasmussen and I have enjoyed a life journey with all the ups and downs of raising seven children, having a career and serving in the church. I am grateful for my experiences as a “mommy missionary.” Our children, their spouses, and our 28 grandchildren are truly a blessing to us.

Last year, we received our call to serve as full-time missionaries here at BYUH. The pandemic made the process of coming complicated and interesting; you know what I mean! We began our BYUH experience remotely, like so many of you. But eventually, we made it to Hawaii. (To you students who are still remote: be patient and have hope. Keep working to get your visas and travel documents. You will get here. We need you here.) My husband teaches in the Religion department. I get to work with him. I also practice speaking conversational English with international students. We serve in the Laie Married Student Ward. It is a joy to serve here, to meet you, virtually and in person. I am grateful that of all the places in the world that we could have been called to serve a mission, we are called to this campus. I love being a missionary with my dearest friend, the companion of my choosing!

During the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967, a midnight patrol of Israeli soldiers along the shore of the Sinai Peninsula spotted a faint green light hovering in the waters of the Red Sea just beyond a coral reef. Thinking that they had surprised a team of enemy frogmen, they fired explosive shells into the glowing area. The result, however, was not a spoiled enemy mission, but a beach strewn with the bodies of many small dark fish, from whose heads shone pairs of strange green lights.
What had fooled the Israeli soldiers was a school of flashlight fish, little known inhabitants of dark underwater caves and crevices that come to the surface of the sea on dark, moonless nights to forage for small organisms on the reef’s edge. Their sources of light are packets of a very unusual type of bacteria, billions of them in each packet, that give off a steady green glow. Located just under their eyes, they are used quite effectively by the fish as “headlights.” In fact, the fish can even turn them on and off by either blinking to cover them with an “eyelid” or by rotating them into protective pockets like the headlights of some automobiles.

Our Relief Society class was discussing the three degrees of glory when one sister shared some information about the telestial kingdom. Immediately I raised my hand for attention. I indicated that the information the sister had shared was questionable. I explained that during another class I had attended, the instructor had taught that, since he had never seen that particular information in print, it probably was just a myth.
Even as I spoke, reproach stung my heart—not because of the words that had come out of my mouth, but because my approach had been rude and abrupt, without consideration of the other sister’s feelings. I had been too anxious to correct the information.
I found myself standing near the sister after Relief Society. The admonition to apologize kept pounding in my ears, but I wanted to share my feelings fully and in private. Throughout the remainder of the day, I contemplated possible ways to approach her.
Finally, on Monday morning when most of the family had departed for work and school, I determined to call the sister and try to apologize. But before I could, my telephone rang. On the other end was the sister I had planned to call, thanking me for the wonderful day that she had enjoyed yesterday. I was astonished at her statement; why would she thank me for embarrassing her in Relief Society? But she explained that she had spent the day studying the principle. She shared her newfound knowledge and taught me much as well.
Even though I had not meant to hurt her, my sister could easily have taken offense when I corrected her. But she chose to grow from the experience, then to take the time to teach me.
My heart rejoiced as I turned to the scriptures and read: “And if thy brother of sister offend thee, thou shalt take him or her between him or her and thee alone; and if he or she confess thou shalt be reconciled” (D&C 42:88) and “Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin” (D&C 64:9).
I’ll never forget the lesson my sister—my example—taught me that day.

To start out, I would like to relate an experience I had several years ago. When I first moved to Rexburg about 6 years ago, I was called to be the 2nd counselor to a new Bishop here in Rexburg. This new bishop, even though he was young, he was very wise. Well it just so happened that we had a member of the quorum of the seventy in our ward at the time of our call. And this young Bishop, he being wise, asked this member of the seventy to give some personalized training to us in the bishopric. So this Elder graciously agreed. As part of this training, the Elder talked directly to the other counselor and me for a while. He talked about the need of counselors to support the Bishop and how we could lighten his load. It was really good counsel. After speaking with us, he turned to the Bishop to give him his council. And to the best of my recollection, this is what he said. "Now Bishop, your job is really easy." And then he paused and then continued "Bishop, your job is to be perfect." And I remember sitting there thinking, oh yea, I knew I did not want to be Bishop.

Age 16. From Alberta, Canada. Likes laughing, learning, and cooking the perfect hamburger.
Growing up, my parents were very active in the Church. I often felt like I was dragged to service projects without a choice. As I’ve grown older and continued to participate in service, I’ve found that it has changed me for the better. As I focus less on myself, I’m happier.
Once, I had an opportunity to go to the inner city with a few other youth to help the homeless. One man from El Salvador told me about how he had to leave his home country due to violence and ended up on the streets in Canada. I also met a man who reminded me to stay in school and not to take my opportunities for granted.
Hearing their stories and seeing their perseverance and humility had a profound effect on me. It’s easy to ignore the homeless and assume that they brought their situation on themselves. But Isaiah talks about how Jesus Christ bore our sorrows and was rejected of men (see Isaiah 53:3). I believe that as disciples of Jesus Christ, we shouldn’t ignore those who are rejected like He was.
While I may not be able to solve all their problems, I know that even the smallest acts of service can make a big difference in someone’s life.
“Even the smallest acts of service can make a big difference.”

I learned this for myself when my oldest son received his first cell phone. With great excitement, he began entering the names of his family and friends into his contacts. One day I noticed his mom was calling. On the screen appeared the name “Mother.” That was a sensible and dignified choice—and, I’ll admit, a sign of respect for the better parent in our home. Naturally, I got curious. What name had he given me?
I scrolled through his contacts, assuming that if Wendi was “Mother,” I must be “Father.” Not there. I searched for “Dad.” Still nothing. My curiosity turned into mild concern. “Does he call me ‘Corey’?” No. In a last-ditch effort, I thought, “We’re soccer players—maybe he calls me ‘Pelé.’” Wishful thinking. Finally, I called his number myself, and two words popped up on his screen: “Not Mother”!

Consider this experience: Once, in an elevator, I encountered a young woman who was pursuing a master’s degree. She hadn’t taken any of my classes, but I had seen her in the building and knew her to be a promising mentee of one of my colleagues. I asked her how she was doing.

Her response to me, a virtual stranger, was this: “I’m struggling today because my family thinks I have been led astray by the devil to pursue my education.”

I asked her if she herself was concerned that she was on the wrong path, as her family had suggested.

Between the first floor of my building and the seventh, this young woman bore testimony—and the Holy Ghost confirmed it to me—that the Spirit had guided her to pursue her studies and that she would continue to do what God asked of her.

At the time, there were only two Aaronic Priesthood bearers in the Immokalee Branch: Junior and another young man named Jorge Caceres. Jorge was born in the Church but had become discouraged because for a long time he had been the only Aaronic Priesthood bearer in the branch. So Junior, a convert, was the only one who went to stake firesides.
Today there are 26 active young men in the branch—and one of them is Jorge Caceres, the one who had previously been discouraged about having no other young men with whom to associate.
“I became friends with Junior, too,” Jorge says, “Then when he started inviting his friends to church, I became friends with them. Every week new people kept coming.”
And Jorge noticed something. “Once they started getting to know the Church, they changed.” The gospel was changing them; getting to know Christ was changing them. “When I saw that, I started to take church more seriously. I worked on my own testimony, and now I know the Church is true.”

While at the hospital where they took my daughter Natalie (who had already passed), I was in a state of shock. I was completely numb, physically and mentally. Things were happening around me that I could see but not feel: police asking questions, friends crying, medical staff informing. It’s all a blur yet perfectly clear.
My former bishop and his wife were there. A colleague of mine had called them. My daughter, Natalie, and I had moved from their ward only a few months prior. My bishop and his wife were beloved friends of ours.
The bishop’s wife, also named Natalie, said I would be staying with them. The next thing I knew, I was in their vehicle riding back to my old neighborhood. I had no comprehension of time passing, yet I was aware it was dawn of the next day when I received a priesthood blessing from the bishop and a friend.
I was kept in the loop with all of the funeral arrangements, yet I was unaware of all the details. I would get dressed when I was told to get dressed. I would get in the car when I was told we had somewhere to go. I was a robot following simple commands. That was all I was capable of doing. Surprisingly, I had not yet shed a tear.
My daughter’s funeral was beautiful. There was a lot of laughter mixed with tears, and the Spirit was very much present. My oldest daughter, Victoria, traveled back to Utah from another state. She wrote a song and performed it at the funeral.
I was never approached about the funeral costs except to be informed it was being handled. Within a few weeks the funeral had been paid in full by donations from Church members.
At the time, I was still staying with my former bishop’s family. Members from my previous ward were looking for a new place for me to live. A cute little basement apartment became available, and the next thing I knew, I was signing a lease. This did not happen by my own doing. It was the actions of a network of Church members, including my dear friend Natalie, the bishop’s wife.
Ward members helped move my personal effects and got me and Victoria settled in. The first two months’ rent had been paid in advance—again, by Church member donations. I still had no perception of time, and I was still emotionally numb to a certain degree, yet I was starting to get feeling back.
A few weeks after my daughter’s death, the realization and magnitude of what had happened started to creep in. It was like heavy, thick black smoke seeping in at first, followed by all-consuming billows until I was surrounded by complete darkness. Grief in its rawest has its own dimension of blackness.
Natalie had died on Thanksgiving Day. It was now Christmas. The holidays only magnified my loss. The agony lingered throughout the day and tormented me throughout the night. It was relentless. The tears poured endlessly for days. Minutes passed like hours. Hours passed like days. Days passed like years.
As a divorced woman, I did not have a husband who could go out and earn a living. If I could have, I would have curled up in a ball, locked myself in a closet, and remained there forever. But I didn’t have that luxury. I had to somehow gather the strength to function. I had to find a job. I was working when Thanksgiving Day happened, but somehow in all the chaos, I had forgotten about my job. I could have gone back to it, but my Natalie loved to hang out there, and the thought of going back without her was unbearable.
By the first week of January, I had gotten a low-paying job. I tried to act like I was normal. My body kept going, but I felt like my soul had died. No one knew I was a hollow shell of a being just going through the motions. It was only during the drive to and from work that I was able to break down emotionally. This was my new normal.
I started going to my new ward a little at a time. I just knew if someone asked me how I was doing, I would fall to pieces. I desperately wanted to go to church, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone, much less make eye contact. I wished with all my heart that I could be invisible. More than anything, I just wanted to rip this all-consuming pain out of my chest!
I have no idea what the sisters in Relief Society thought of me, and at the time I didn’t much care. I was too busy just trying to breathe! I’m sure I gave off the impression that I wanted to be left alone, for none of them bothered me. They did, however, occasionally give me a warm smile that I found a little comforting—just the exact small dose to keep me from running out the nearest exit, which was a constant thought.
Time is a healer. It doesn’t erase events, but it allows gaping wounds to slowly close.
That fateful Thanksgiving Day was in 2011, and it took me a few years to realize just how much I was helped by my brothers and sisters in the Church. I felt like I was carried off the battlefield after having been critically wounded. I was nursed back to health and cared for until I could stand on my own.
Countless blessings have come my way, in a variety of ways. My testimony has grown to near full maturity. I know now what it feels like to be held in the loving arms of our Savior.
So to answer my friend’s question, “How did the Church help you through this ordeal?” I say, “They didn’t help me. They saved me.”

When we grew older, I had another test of being a pioneer. I had many friends, and a lot of them didn’t know Jenny. Although they were never rude, I always felt torn between Jenny and my other friends. It was hard and definitely a conscious effort, but I decided to help them get to know her. In time my other friends felt more comfortable with Jenny.
To this day, I am still friends with Jenny. She goes to my same high school, and I see her almost every day. I truly feel proud to walk around the halls with her.

Illustration by Violet Lemay
Sundays were always the same since I came to my new adoptive family when I was younger. Mom did my hair, and I got to wear a pretty dress. Then Mom made sure everyone was ready for church. I loved going to church! My teachers were nice, and the kids in my class were friendly. I loved to learn about Heavenly Father and Jesus. Most of all, I loved the music. Singing songs always made me feel happy.
But one Sunday we sang a song I hadn’t heard before. As the other children sang, “I am a child of God, and He has sent me here, has given me an earthly home with parents kind and dear,” I felt sad. My first parents hurt me and my sisters. I started to think that maybe I wasn’t a child of God.
After church I ran to Mom and asked, “Mom, am I a child of God?”
Mom pulled me into her arms and told me that I’ve always been a child of God and that He loves me very much.
With tears running down my face, I asked, “Then why wasn’t I born to parents kind and dear?” Mom said she didn’t know why, but that she and Dad loved me and were glad I was in their family. That made me feel warm and happy inside. I knew what Mom said was true.
Now I love to sing “I Am a Child of God.” I am grateful for my new parents who are kind and dear, and I know that everyone is a child of God.

The heart of an 11-year-old boy was turned to his fathers during a family home evening when the children assembled personal books of remembrance. Young Jeff wanted to accompany his mother to the National Archives. She was afraid he might disturb the other researchers there. But he persisted, and she relented and took him with her. Four hours into their research, he exclaimed, “Mama, I’ve found Grandpa!” Indeed, he had found his great-great-great-grandfather. However, it doesn’t always work that way. In a letter to the Family History Department, someone wrote: “We lost our grandmother. Will you please send us a copy?”

Let me share with you a personal experience that may be of some help to those who feel insignificant, forgotten, or alone.
Many years ago I attended pilot training in the United States Air Force. I was far away from my home, a young West German soldier, born in Czechoslovakia, who had grown up in East Germany and spoke English only with great difficulty. I clearly remember my journey to our training base in Texas. I was on a plane, sitting next to a passenger who spoke with a heavy Southern accent. I could scarcely understand a word he said. I actually wondered if I had been taught the wrong language all along. I was terrified by the thought that I had to compete for the coveted top spots in pilot training against students who were native English speakers.
When I arrived on the air base in the small town of Big Spring, Texas, I looked for and found the Latter-day Saint branch, which consisted of a handful of wonderful members who were meeting in rented rooms on the air base itself. The members were in the process of building a small meetinghouse that would serve as a permanent place for the Church. Back in those days members provided much of the labor on new buildings.
Day after day I attended my pilot training and studied as hard as I could and then spent most of my spare time working on the new meetinghouse. There I learned that a two-by-four is not a dance step but a piece of wood. I also learned the important survival skill of missing my thumb when pounding a nail.
I spent so much time working on the meetinghouse that the branch president—who also happened to be one of our flight instructors—expressed concern that I perhaps should spend more time studying.
My friends and fellow student pilots engaged themselves in free-time activities as well, although I think it’s safe to say that some of those activities would not have been in alignment with today’s For the Strength of Youth pamphlet. For my part, I enjoyed being an active part of this tiny west Texas branch, practicing my newly acquired carpentry skills, and improving my English as I fulfilled my callings to teach in the elders quorum and in Sunday School.
At the time, Big Spring, despite its name, was a small, insignificant, and unknown place. And I often felt exactly the same way about myself—insignificant, unknown, and quite alone. Even so, I never once wondered if the Lord had forgotten me or if He would ever be able to find me there. I knew that it didn’t matter to Heavenly Father where I was, where I ranked with others in my pilot training class, or what my calling in the Church was. What mattered to Him was that I was doing the best I could, that my heart was inclined toward Him, and that I was willing to help those around me. I knew if I did the best I could, all would be well.
And all was well.