Gospel Story Finder

“My mum fell seriously ill one morning, and I was home alone with her. Her condition got worse. My dear mother was suffering. Her tears and screams were too much for me to bear.
“Our neighbors came rushing into our house. They suggested that I should take her to the hospital, but none of them could help me. My stake president and bishop were not at home. I was completely confused.
“Deep within me I pondered in my heart what to do. I asked my Heavenly Father to deliver me out of this situation. Just then my mum called me and asked, ‘Have you been ordained to the higher priesthood?’
“I answered, ‘Yes.’
“‘Then bless me,’ she said.
“I was very surprised, because when the missionaries taught her about the priesthood, she didn’t believe it was true. Now I was the only one around commissioned of Jesus Christ to act on behalf of God. I examined myself and found myself worthy to perform such a great task. I excused myself for a while and offered a short prayer to my Heavenly Father to heal my mother.
“After my prayer I felt something within me. Immediately I knew that it was the power of God. I returned and gently helped my mother sit up. I laid my hands on her head and blessed her. Soon after the ordinance she fell asleep. She slept about eight hours. I never heard any screams or moans from her again.
“How great was my joy when my mum woke up. I inquired of her condition. She replied, ‘I am very well, my son. I thought the priesthood was not real, but when I was suffering and prayed for help, I suddenly realized that the priesthood was true. So I asked for a blessing, and I was able to sleep.’”—Amos Kwame Tofah, Ghana

Five years ago, I started a journey towards finishing my post-graduate studies in agriculture, specialising in plant breeding. I was offered a bursary from a prominent research institute in South Africa. Despite the challenge of raising a family, I embraced this dream. From a young age I have always been drawn to outdoor activities that had to do with touching soil and planting greens. Growing up in Mozambique, I used to love working with my grandmother on her small plot on the outskirts of Beira where she planted, amongst other things, sweet potato and rice. I cherish those memories and hold them very close to my heart.
When I embarked on the journey to become a plant breeder, I was on track to finish my studies and graduate in the winter of 2020. I had endless dreams of how perfect life was going to be. Looking at the demand for such scarce skills in the industry in previous years, I was really excited for the new possibilities that were unfolding before me. I had been a freelance language and media consultant for most of my working career. I was looking forward to finally being able to work in research and applying the skills that I had been acquiring in my studies.
With the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, it became clear that although I had submitted my thesis at the end of 2019, I was not going to make it for the winter graduation as I had hoped. The most important thing for me was not the graduation ceremony, but to be able to complete the degree and to get a good job. I knew that it would take time to find the kind of job that I was looking for—I sent out one job application, then two—and eventually there were so many sent that I lost count.
This experience taught me some valuable lessons: some of our plans in life do not unfold exactly how we wish them to. Here, a year later, I am still searching for that dream job. This is not just for me, but my immediate family and society in general also have high expectations for someone with an academic degree like mine.
Upon meeting a friend, she asked how things were going in my life and if I had been able to find a job. I replied that I had not yet found one. We talked about several things. As I drove home, I was reflecting upon my lifestyle and my state of mind during the pandemic. I then realized how the hands of the Lord had blessed me. When thinking back I was able to pick up on the many skills that I had gained and the amount of time I had been able to spend with my family. There were simply too many small miracles to count. I had been able to afford my basic needs. I took my budget before COVID-19 and readjusted it. With more time on my hands, I was drawn to my passion of working the land. I planted a vegetable garden, the kids and I learned how to mow the lawn and to trim trees—the list is endless. Today our vegetable garden feeds us most of our greens, such as spinach, lettuce and rocket. We find meaningful time to play and work as a family. We enjoy going on short night walks in our neighbourhood.
As I reflect upon my experiences in the past nine months—despite not having the things that I dreamed of—I have been generally content. I see more good around me than bad. I have gained a deeper understanding of trusting in the Lord’s timing. He knows what is best and has better plans for me and for my family. As I count my blessings, I have come to realise that the Lord is in control of many aspects of my life. He knows me individually and I matter to Him. He cares for our righteous desires. He wants us to trust Him and to be happy. I have come to know that with all my heart.

Many individuals and families in countries around the world were prepared to receive the message of the Restoration. These included the Prophet’s parents, Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith, two deeply spiritual individuals who were raised in a culture that taught them to love Jesus Christ and study the Bible.

For years, Joseph and Lucy had experienced financial, health, and other setbacks in New England, in the northeast corner of the United States. By 1816, when they lost their crops because of the worldwide climate change caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, Joseph and Lucy had little choice but to give up on New England and make a courageous decision to leave the safety net of family, friends, and community.

As volume 1 of the new history of the Church states: “Joseph Sr. loved his wife and children dearly, but he had not been able to provide them much stability in life. Bad luck and unsuccessful investments had kept the family poor and rootless. Maybe New York would be different.”16

In many ways, the Smith family’s failures in New England pushed them to western New York, where religious excitement increased and inspired Joseph Smith Jr. to seek the Lord in his quest for forgiveness and direction. It was also where the gold plates lay hidden, waiting for him to locate, translate, and publish them.

A young woman I know felt saddened and frustrated because a friend had made unkind, untrue remarks about her. It distressed her that those who heard the false accusations would believe them. She wanted others to know the truth, and she wanted her friend to realize how much hurt her words had caused. The young woman thought of ways to confront her friend in an effort to have the truth known. The situation weighed heavily upon her until finally she thought, “What would Jesus do?” She decided that Jesus would show love toward her friend. And that is just what this young woman did.

Once she let the teachings of Jesus influence her decision and guide her actions, that which bothered her seemed not to matter. She didn’t have to worry about it anymore. She said that she felt a big burden was lifted from her. What had been hard to endure became easier to resolve when a Christian attitude of forgiveness was taken.

Now, lest some of you think all of this giving up of things and this rearranging of your habits is more painful than it really is, I should repeat a statement by Lady Astor.
She had dreaded old age. When it finally came, she commented philosophically, “I always dreaded growing old, because then you can’t do all of the things you want to. But it isn’t so bad—you don’t want to!”

Maria Jasmine Juan, living in Manila, Philippines, away from her family, is among those who choose to come to Relief Society. “I was very lonely and missed my mother,” she says. “I knew that if I would go to Relief Society, I would be all right. As the sisters welcomed me to enrichment meeting, I realized there was a whole room full of ‘mothers.’”

Years ago I had the opportunity to preside over a stake whose roots reach back a great while. When the first ward was formed in that area, the local people, out of their own meager resources, bought the land and constructed the building without any help from the general funds of the Church. When that building became too small, they constructed a larger one entirely from their own resources.

By the time I came into the presidency of that stake the Church policy provided for matching funds, the Church to put up one dollar for each dollar provided by the local members. Under that formula, we in that area built six new chapels, in addition to providing funds for their maintenance and all of the activity programs carried on in the various wards.

There may have been a few murmurings, but the faith of the people overrode all of these. They gave generously, notwithstanding the stresses of their own circumstances, and the Lord blessed them in a remarkable way. I know of none who went hungry or without shelter. And I know something of the fruit of those homes which have produced a generation and almost a second generation who walk in faith and who have gone across the world and become men and women recognized for their various skills and integrity, as well as for their activity in the Church.

Desiree’s lower lip quivered as she watched her mother carry her dresses into the dry cleaner. She knew they wouldn’t be clean in time for church on Sunday. Mom had explained that to her, and Desiree had said that she understood, but now she wasn’t sure. When Mom came back, Desiree bit her lip to make it stop quivering. She didn’t want Mom to know she was upset.
“I want a new dress,” Desiree said when Mom got into the car. “It will be my first day in Sunbeams.”
“Sweetheart,” Mom answered, “you don’t need a new dress. Your dresses will be just fine when the smoky smell is gone.”
“But what will I wear on Sunday?” Desiree frowned.
“I don’t know yet,” Mom replied. “We’ll find something.” When Desiree sighed unhappily, Mom added, “Just be glad that no one was hurt in the fire.”
“What if I pray for a new dress?” Desiree asked.
Mom sighed. “I think it would be better to pray that some other little girl could get a new dress.”
“Why?”
“Well, it might be a good idea to focus on being thankful that we didn’t lose very much in the fire instead of worrying so much about things we want,” Mom explained. “We should pray for others to have the things they need.”
“We don’t have everything we need,” Desiree said.
“Yes, we do,” Mom said. “We might just have to wait a little while to get it all back.”
Desiree drew pictures in the frost-covered car window with her finger the rest of the way home. As she thought about what Mom had said about praying for others, she decided it would be a good idea. She knew of children her age who needed shoes, clothes, and even enough food to eat. The more she thought about them, the more sorry she felt for acting selfish. Her mother was right; she did have everything she needed.
“Hey, there are your cousins,” Mom said as they pulled into the driveway. Desiree’s cousins were standing on the front doorstep with a big plastic bag on the ground beside them.
After Mom parked the car, she let Desiree’s two cousins inside. They were both older than Desiree.
“Look what we have!” the girls exclaimed.
“What is it?” Desiree asked.
“When we heard about the fire, our mom helped us go through some of our things,” Angela, the oldest cousin, explained. “Here, you can have these.”
Desiree took the big plastic bag and eagerly opened it. Inside she found some toys, stuffed animals, and clothes. At the very bottom was a pretty Sunday dress. Desiree squealed with delight as she pulled the dress from the bag. “Look!”
Mom clapped her hands in surprise. “Oh my goodness! How did you girls know she needed a dress for her first Sunbeam class?”
Angela shook her head. “We didn’t.”
“Thank you!” Desiree cried happily.
“Remember to thank Heavenly Father, too,” Mom said. “He’s the one who inspired your aunt to send us the dress.”
“But how did He know? I didn’t pray for one—honest!” Desiree said.
Mom hugged Desiree and smiled through happy tears. “He knows what we need even before we ask Him, just like He knew we needed to get out of the house before we started smelling smoke. Remember?”
“Wow!” Desiree smiled. “He really does know everything.”
Carrying her new dress up the stairs, Desiree went into her room to pray in thanks.

Far more important are apparently more casual differences. For example, the word quite. When an American woman said to her British hostess at the end of an evening party, “Thank you so much: it was quite interesting,” the British hostess froze in the sense that she had been insulted by a casual remark. She interpreted quite to mean “not as interesting as it should have been.” In the same way we may speak of someone, devastatingly, as “quite nice”: whereas if we say that someone is “quite beautiful,” we mean almost more than very. The trouble is that these shades of meaning aren’t always easy to formulate simply; there may be no general rule where something of this kind depends so much on the context, the tone, or the intonation. “It’s been quite a day” is enthusiastic both in British and American English; and yet it could be ironical.

Mary’s boy Joseph was born at a time when her husband was snatched away by the mob militia then terrorizing Far West. Hyrum and the Prophet Joseph were taken to Liberty, Missouri, where they were imprisoned. Under the compulsion of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’s extermination order, she left Missouri with the stepchildren for whom she had taken responsibility, as well as her own son. Her sister Mercy placed Mary, who was seriously ill, on a bed in a wagon box with her infant boy cradled at her side.

In February 1839, when winter was still upon the land, they traveled east across the state and then across the Mississippi to Quincy, Illinois, bumping along in a springless wagon where every jolt brought pain.

When her husband and the Prophet escaped from Liberty Jail and came to Quincy, life again improved. The Saints moved to what became Nauvoo and established their beautiful city on the Mississippi.

“I remember the bombings, and I remember soldiers occupying our country,” Elder Didier recalled. “But I especially remember the scarcity of food. We grew up without many of the basic foods that most children have today. During five long years, only once did I have an orange to eat. It was a Christmas present at school. I took it home, and my mother peeled it carefully so that we could all have a piece.”

I wasn’t very good at studying the scriptures when I was young. I wish I had been! Not until I was living in Seattle, Washington, did a friend and I realize we were hungering to know what spiritual women in our ward knew. We wanted righteous children, “taught by their mothers” to be believing (Alma 56:47). And like a good dinner, the gospel becomes more exciting sharing it with a friend. I had Louise Nelson. We feasted together.

On a Friday morning, I volunteer at the cherry orchard community garden. The garden grows and sells vegetables, to benefit the local community. I do weeding, planting, harvesting, watering, sweeping, raking, plucking tomatoes from the tomato plants, and anything else they need me to do.
I also help to take care of the garden outside the civic centre.

You know from studying Church history that we have tried to live as one in a variety of settings. A story from one of those tries, in Orderville, Utah, gives us a clue as to why it is so hard.
Orderville was founded in 1870 and 1871 by people who wanted to live the united order; in 1875 they began the order. They built housing units in a square, with a common dining hall. They built a storehouse, shoe shop, bakery, blacksmith shop, tannery, schoolhouse, sheep shed, and woolen factory. They grew and made nearly everything they needed, from soap to trousers. They had carpenters, midwives, teachers, artists, and musicians. They produced enough surplus that they could sell it in neighboring towns for cash: with that they built up a capital fund to buy more land and equipment.
The population rose to seven hundred people. One hundred and fifty of them gave Orderville a special advantage: they had come to Orderville from the mission on the Muddy River, where they had nearly starved. When those who had been called to the Muddy were released, they were in near destitution. Twenty-four of those families went to Long Valley, founded Orderville, and pledged all they had to the Lord. They didn’t have much, but their poverty may have been their greatest contribution. Their having almost nothing provided a basis for future comparison that might have guaranteed gratitude: any food or clothing or housing that came to them in Orderville would be treasure compared to their privation on the Muddy mission.
But time passed, the railroad came, and a mining boom put cash in the hands of people in the neighboring towns. They could buy imported clothes, and they did. The people in Orderville were living better than they had in years, but the memory of poverty on the Muddy had faded. They now focused on what was in the next town. And so they felt old-fashioned and deprived.
One ingenious boy acted on the discontent he felt when he was denied a new pair of pants from the Orderville factory because his were not worn out yet. He secretly gathered the docked lambs’ tails from the spring crop. He sheared the wool from them and stored it in sacks. Then, when he was sent with a load of wool to sell in Nephi, he took his sacks along and exchanged them for a pair of store pants. He created a sensation when he wore the new-style pants to the next dance.
The president of the order asked him what he had done. The boy gave an honest answer. So they called him into a meeting and told him to bring the pants. They commended him for his initiative, pointed out that the pants really belonged to the order, and took them. But they told him this: the pants would be taken apart, used as a pattern, and henceforth Orderville pants would have the new store-bought style. And he would get the first pair.
That did not quite end the pants rebellion. Orders for new pants soon swamped the tailoring department. When the orders were denied because pants weren’t yet worn out, boys began slipping into the shed where the grinding wheel was housed. Soon, pants began to wear out quickly. The elders gave in, sent a load of wool out to trade for cloth, and the new-style pants were produced for everyone.
You know that isn’t a happy ending. There were many challenges Orderville faced in the ten years they lived the order there. One of them they never really conquered. It was the problem of not remembering. That is a problem we must solve, too.

I stood and watched my sleeping son. His sleep was heavy from the sedatives the doctor had given him. My heart felt just as heavy; indeed, my whole being felt heavy, as if a great burden had been laid on my chest.
What effects would the terrible events of this day have upon my son? I wondered. He was only 20 and had watched his oldest brother and one of our best friends fall down a snow-encrusted Icelandic mountain and die. Both were young men with their whole lives ahead of them. One was our branch president. He left behind a young wife and two children, the youngest only six weeks old.
The three friends had left my home that January morning to hike up a nearby mountain. I had begged them not to go; I knew there would be ice on the mountain, and the weather report forecast poor conditions. But they had not listened. I could still see their smiling faces as they waved and drove away. I would never see two of them alive again. The sorrow was so great that I closed my eyes. Pain pierced my heart like a sharp knife.
How could the Lord allow this to happen? These young men had been almost all we had of priesthood leadership in our very small branch. I could not understand. I felt the Lord had let us down.
I undressed and as usual knelt by my bed to thank my Heavenly Father for the day that had passed. But I could not utter a word. How could I thank Him for this terrible day? What was there to thank Him for? There must be something, I remember thinking. And then I remembered my sleeping son and felt shame flood my heart. How could I have forgotten him? He had been in the same danger as the other two, but he had come back alive. I thanked my Heavenly Father for protecting him and bringing him back to me. I asked Him to help my son get through this ordeal.
And then I thanked my Father in Heaven for those two young men who had died—my oldest son and our friend, our branch president. I thanked Him that I had known them and loved them and enjoyed their friendship. I thanked Him that they had both been converted, that both had believed in Him and in His Son, our Savior, and that both had changed their lives before they died. They had both died in the Lord—oh, how grateful I was for that!
And then I thanked my Heavenly Father for my four other children who were alive and healthy, for my good children-in-law, and for my grandchildren. And I kept on. There was so much to thank the Father for; there seemed to be no end to it.
With each word of thanks, the burden on my chest lightened, and a warm, life-giving feeling started flowing through my body. My mind was filled with peace, and my heart with joy.
How could that be? I thought. How could I feel joy after what had happened? But I did, and I knew it was right. The sorrow was there still, deep and painful, but there was also joy. I had learned that even in deepest sorrow our Father in Heaven can bless us with peace and joy. The key is faith in our Lord and Savior, complete trust in him, and gratitude—gratitude to our Heavenly Father for all that we have and all that we have had.
I finished my prayer and lay down in my bed. I still didn’t know why the deaths had to happen, but it didn’t matter. I had felt my Heavenly Father’s love. We were in His hands, and everything would be all right.

Shawn and Mark Conrad, brothers in the Kalispell Third Ward, Kalispell Montana Stake, wield a mighty baseball bat. Both brothers were chosen to play on the Babe Ruth All-Star teams for their age divisions. Shawn, 13, played first base for the Kalispell All-Stars Team, helping to earn them the title of State Babe Ruth Champions. The team then advanced to the regional competition in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Mark, 15, played third base and shortstop for the Kalispell Rangers Team, which won the Montana State Babe Ruth Championship, advancing them to the Pacific Northwest Regional Tournament in Lewistown, Idaho.

Part of the family celebration this year was a little black treasure box with gold writing on it. It was empty at first. Each of the family members drew the name of another person in the family. “We would try to do a lot of nice things for that person, like give them a few treats, make their bed, clean their room, things like that. Then each time we did that, we’d secretly put a coin in the treasure box and try to fill it up with good deeds,” says Ian. On Christmas Day it was filled with golden shekels.

The article “Perilous Rescue” in the July 1982 issue is about our ward Scout group. My son Daren was the last of the boys to be rescued, and we feel so blessed that his life was spared. It was very hard on him to lose two of his best friends in that tragedy. He is presently serving a mission in the Ohio Cleveland Mission. This article brings many thoughts and tears, and I know how blessed we are to have Daren.
Mrs. Max DaytonSt. Anthony, Idaho

This summer I was in a 4-H club. At the county fair I showed my lamb, Queenie. I won two trophies for showmanship and was invited to a round robin competition for a big trophy. When the judge told me that the competition was going to be on Sunday, I felt a weird feeling inside, as if my heart had stopped pumping blood. I told him that I couldn’t go. I was disappointed, but the Holy Ghost let me know that I was doing the right thing. It was hard, but now I know that I can make hard decisions. This will help me the next time I have a hard decision to make.

An example of this is Brad Hall. It seemed that he had everything going for him to be happy and successful. He was an outstanding missionary and was in the last few weeks of his time in Argentina. One night he and his companion heard a noise in their apartment complex. They got up and found an armed burglar. In the course of events, a shot was fired and Elder Hall was struck. In an instant, he became a paraplegic—paralyzed from the waist down, and has since been confined to a wheelchair. He came back to Ricks the next year and made the difficult adjustment to life on campus during the winter, in a wheelchair.

In the spring, when awards where made, Elder Hall was among the top scholars. He proved that you can overcome many difficulties and learn to cope with those you can’t change.