Gospel Story Finder

Elder Patricio M. Giuffra was four years old when his father died of cancer. As a child, he grew up questioning God and wondering why life was so unfair.
“My father was a good husband, father, and provider,” Elder Giuffra recalled thinking. “Why did he have to die?”
Answers and understanding came about a decade later when Patricio and his mother met the full-time missionaries and accepted the gospel.
The plan of salvation gave him hope because it helped him understand his family’s loss. “My father prepared the way for us to join the Church,” he said.
From the time he was baptized, the gospel of Jesus Christ has anchored Elder Giuffra’s life. “The Church has been my life,” he said. “I feel like I’ve always belonged to the Church.”

When my grandpa became sick, I travelled to Antsirabe to be with him. The missionaries visited his home several times. Grandpa and I were not members of the Church, but he liked visiting with the missionaries. One night, they gave grandpa a blessing, and after a family home evening, they handed us the Book of Mormon.
“Please read this book and ask God if it is true,” they said.
When I returned to Sarodroa, I didn’t want to read the Book of Mormon because I thought it was not true. Then, one day I became so sick that I was stuck in my house for several days. As I looked for something to do, I found the Book of Mormon and started to read.
Later, I returned to Antsirabe and met the missionaries. They taught me more about the Book of Mormon and about the Prophet Joseph Smith. I told them that we didn’t need prophets and that there was no prophet today. The missionaries asked me to pray to God and ask if there is a prophet now. They promised that God would answer me. I prayed and felt that what the missionaries said was true.
I wanted to attend church, but I had no money for the bus. I talked to my friend, Razafindravaonasolo, and she said we could ride my bike. We rode two hours one way from Sarodroa to Antsirabe every Sunday. When I would get tired of pedaling, I would ride on the back and she would start pedaling. Then when she got tired, we would switch places again.
Eventually, Razafindravaonasolo’s family and I joined the Church. We attended church in Antsirabe until a branch opened in Sarodroa. We were so happy when we could attend church in our own village!
Razafindravaonasolo’s father was called as the branch president. One day he met with me and encouraged me to prepare for a mission. I didn’t think I could serve, but he reassured me that I could. I accepted the call to serve in the Madagascar Antananarivo Mission. I am married now and I have two kids. I am grateful for my family, and I have had more experiences than I can share that have helped me know that this Church is true.

SUSAN: I had friends whose parents drank. I was 12 years old. I didn’t really want to get into it. I was just curious. We’d go downstairs to their bar and we’d smell the different kinds of liquor, and we’d do a little bit of tasting.

SUSAN: After that I started drinking occasionally. I didn’t feel guilty. (Actually, I did deep down, but I blocked it out.) I don’t ever remember right after doing it saying, Oh no, what did I do? I was surrounded by friends and was not thinking about religion right then. I felt some guilt when I was sitting in church the next Sunday, but Sunday only came once a week. Sunday was for religion, and the rest of the week was for “real” life.

SUSAN: Sometime after ninth grade I started smoking marijuana, just every now and then, and into my sophomore year it was the same. This summer there were more parties, so I was doing it a lot more often, and drinking the whole time too. You get to the point where your values are totally shot. You’ll lie to anybody; you’ll say anything. I would get into arguments with my family and just pack up and move out. My grades started to go down, and I would sluff a lot.

SUSAN: I would say to myself, “I’ll just party through high school because it’s the thing to do, but when I get into college I’ll straighten up. I’m going to start working, I’ll get back into the Church and be married in the temple, and everything’s going to be hunky dory. But that simply does not happen when you’re an addict. You don’t understand that you need help and that it’s going to be a problem for the rest of your life.

SUSAN: Even when I was using, I always believed there was a god, but I’d try to push the thought out of my mind. When I wanted to pray and ask for something I’d think, I can’t ask. I don’t deserve any help.

Now I talk to God all the time. I know that he is my friend. I don’t even open it up with “Our dear Heavenly Father.” I just talk as if I were talking to someone in the room. And I get answers. Some times they come through somebody else, and sometimes they just come into my own mind. It’s I because I’m being open to it. I’m listening.

Illustrated by Shauna Mooney Kawasaki
1. Matt: Let’s play pioneers.
Mandy: OK. The tree house can be our covered wagon.
2. Mandy: There’s a herd of buffalo!
Matt: I’ll drive the oxen around them.
Mandy: We’d better pray for help too.
3. Mandy: There’s a river ahead!
Matt: We’ll cross it.
Mandy: It looks deep. Let’s say a prayer first.
4. Mandy: There’s a band of Indians!
Matt: We’ll make friends with them.
Mandy: Let’s pray that they’ll trust us.
5. Mandy: It’s time to make camp.
Matt: I’ll gather firewood, and you can fetch water.
Mandy: First, let’s thank Heavenly Father for a safe journey.
6. Matt: Boy, pioneers must have prayed a lot.
Mandy: Pioneers were smart people.

Mindy Bradley of Farmington, Utah, likes to dance.
Mindy’s spirits were high as she looked forward to her first regional youth dance. She and her friends spent time carefully getting ready and approached the dance anticipating the possibility of meeting new people, making new friends, and having a great time. She didn’t let the fact that she is confined to a wheelchair dampen her enthusiasm.
“Sometimes people don’t realize that, just because I’m in a wheelchair it doesn’t mean I can’t do these things,” she says. “Usually people just stand in front of me and we hold hands and sort of sway back and forth.”
Still, Mindy’s wheelchair can make it difficult for her to mingle with other people, especially ones she doesn’t know. Several people at the dance realized that and decided they would approach her instead of waiting for her to talk with them.
“Just as we finished a fun line dance, I noticed a group of kids on the other side of the room walking up to me.
I was sitting there thinking it was a little odd, but before I could do much, there they were, placing their chairs in a semicircle in front of me.”
The group of guys and girls asked her where she was from, what school she attended, and what she liked to do for fun. After several minutes of conversation, one of the boys asked her to dance.
“It was really fun, and it sort of got the ball rolling,” says Mindy. “After that, a bunch of other people asked me to dance. Before, I don’t think they knew I could.”
Being a friend can sometimes be difficult, requiring lots of time and energy. Sometimes, though, being a friend can be as simple as saying, “Would you like to dance?”

One of our graduate students in sociology related to me her experience in applying to our PhD program, a story that I share with her permission. Jules said that she was at a point in her life when she was prayerfully considering various options about what to do next. One day, as she was walking across campus, she received the inspiration that she should apply to the sociology PhD program. She was surprised by this because her training and work experience had been in social work, and she had no background in sociology. Despite her doubts, she applied to the program and was accepted; however, she continued to question her ability to succeed.

During her first year in the graduate program, she sought and received three priesthood blessings regarding her decision. Each time the priesthood mouthpiece confirmed to her that indeed she was doing what the Lord wanted her to do, but she continued to question her ability to succeed in her classes. Finally, after the third blessing, her roommate gave her some wise counsel. Jules said:

I told her that I was having a hard time with statistics again, and expected her to console me, as she had done in the past. I told her about the blessing Ihad received from the bishop a few weeks before.
My roommate said, “Don’t you trust God?”
I replied, “Of course I do.”
“No, you don’t,” my roommate responded calmly.
“You don’t understand,” I explained to her, “I trust God; I just don’t trust myself.”
“Then you don’t trust God,” she responded. “If you trusted God, you would believe him when he says you can do statistics, or anything else in this program.”
I knew she was right, but now I was faced with a real dilemma. In order to succeed at statistics I had to stop panicking, stop telling myself I couldn’t do it, and believe God, who said I could do it. I had to trust in God when I didn’t even trust myself. . . . Finally I decided that if God was omnipotent, then he knew everything there was to know about statistics, so what better tutor could I have for this subject than God? That was a turning point. [Jules Law, personal journal, March 1997]

Jules received the comfort and guidance she needed to complete her course work and successfully finish the semester. She continues to work hard in the program, but now with less anxiety. She knows that through hard work she can succeed, because she is doing what the Lord wants her to do and she has faith in him.

One woman affirmed this idea. She wrote:
One evening I was frustrated with my husband and wanted to let him know how I felt. . . I began writing down my feelings in a letter to him in the hope that he would . . . begin working on his shortcomings.
I wrote and wrote and wrote. Putting my thoughts on paper made me feel better, so I closed my epistle with, ‘You really have many fine attributes that I value, but I kept this letter focused on what concerns me tonight.’ At that moment, the thought came to me, Why don’t you write him a letter listing only his good qualities that you love so much?
I found myself thinking, That’s a good idea. So I temporarily set aside the first letter and began writing again. . . . After I wrote many pages, my appreciation for him grew, and I was filled with love. So I threw away my first letter and gave him only the second, positive one.
What a blessing that letter has been for us both. My husband appreciated having his good points recognized, and his interest was kindled in doing even more things better. And I have been motivated to be less critical of him and more mindful of correcting my own shortcomings. I am forever grateful for the inspiration that taught me how to see a loving alternative rather than to vent my frustration in a nonconstructive way.[8]

The faithful widowed mother who raised us had no confusion about the eternal nature of the family. She always honored the position of our deceased father. She made him a presence in our home. She spoke of the eternal duration of their temple marriage. She often reminded us of what our father would like us to do so we could realize the Savior’s promise that we could be a family forever.
I recall an experience that shows the effect of her teachings. Just before Christmas one year, our bishop asked me, as a deacon, to help him deliver Christmas baskets to the widows of the ward. I carried a basket to each door with his greetings. When he drove me home, there was one basket remaining. He handed it to me and said it was for my mother. As he drove away, I stood in the falling snow wondering why there was a basket for my mother. She never referred to herself as a widow, and it had never occurred to me that she was. To a 12-year-old boy, she wasn’t a widow. She had a husband, and we had a father. He was just away for a while.
I anticipate that glorious future day when the separated will be reunited and all of us will be made complete as the Lord has promised. I testify of Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of the Eternal Father, whose priesthood authority and whose Atonement and Resurrection make it all possible, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I had a really bad day yesterday. When I got up, Lisa, my gerbil looked awfully sick. I was afraid she’d die while I was at school.
Then, at breakfast, I was just reaching for my juice glass and somehow my elbow knocked my bowl of cereal all over the table. To top it off, I missed my bus. Mom wasn’t exactly thrilled about driving me to school. And all of that happened before school.
After I got there, things went steadily downhill. I failed my spelling test, and I struck out at softball during morning recess. Then I found out that Alicia, the class brain, was furious at me for getting a higher score than she did on the last science test—for the first and last time ever.
At lunch we had my least favorite meal: macaroni and white stuff (I don’t dare call it cheese) with lima beans!
In the afternoon our seat assignments were changed. That’s something I usually look forward to, but the way things were going, I should have figured what would happen. You guessed it—my new seat was right next to Alicia! She just sat there glaring at me.
At afternoon recess I finally got a hit in softball but was called out at first base, even though I thought I was safe. I trudged back to the sidelines, mad and crabby. There stood Alicia with a big grin on her face. She handed me her pocket calculator. “This might help you get a math grade half as good as mine. But,” she added with a smirk, “you don’t need it to figure your batting average—not when it’s zero!”
I pushed the calculator away. How was I to know that she would drop it or that “Moose” Williams would walk by just then and step on it?
Alicia started wailing like an off-key fire siren. It was just my luck that Mrs. Harmon, the strictest teacher at school, was on playground duty. The calculator wasn’t even broken, but she hovered over Alicia like she was a poor, injured bird and sent me in for the rest of recess.
If it hadn’t been for my teacher, Miss Sweeney, I don’t think I would have made it. When I came into the room, she asked me what was wrong. When I told her everything that had happened, she put her arm around my shoulders. “I know how you feel, Bradley,” she said. “We all have bad days. But tomorrow when the sun comes up, it will be a brand-new day, and things will probably go a lot better.”
After she said that, I started feeling better. She let me feed our class’s rabbit, too—my favorite thing to do.
Well, when I woke up this morning, I found that Miss Sweeney was right. It was a better day. When I checked on Lisa, I discovered that she hadn’t been sick—she’d given birth to Alfie, Gretta, Susie, and Robert! I didn’t spill anything at breakfast, and I was five minutes early for the bus.
When I entered Miss Sweeney’s room, I was almost knocked over as Mrs. Harmon came stomping out. She slowed just long enough to scowl at me, then went quickly down the hallway.
I gave Miss Sweeney a smile and a cheery “Good Morning.” She greeted me, but her smile wasn’t as bright as it usually was. I think Mrs. Harmon must have complained to her about our class.
I felt sorry for Miss Sweeney, but when the bell rang, I had other things on my mind—how to survive another day sitting next to Alicia. But when I sat down, Alicia didn’t even notice me! She was staring dreamily at her latest math paper with “100%” written at the top. What luck! Things were certainly going much better for me today.
At the end of morning recess, we had more excitement in our room, Sandi came running into the room, screaming. The whole front of her blouse was stained red, and blood was gushing from her nose. Miss Sweeney grabbed her and rushed her to the girls’ bathroom.
It wasn’t long before the class took advantage of the situation. Nick started a chalkboard-eraser war. Our side was winning, when the door opened and Miss Sweeney stepped in, only to have a Nick-thrown eraser bounce off her forehead.
What a pitiful sight—there she stood with a blotch of white on her forehead, her pretty pink blouse polka-dotted with blood splatters, and an eraser lying silent at her feet. Nick hustled up to the front of the room, returned the eraser to the chalk tray, and stood in his usual spot in the corner, all without saying a word. He didn’t even turn around once all morning to pull faces at us.
Finally, near the end of the day, things seemed to be returning to normal. Then the door squeaked open, and in stepped Mr. McGruffen, our principal. He walked to the back of the room, found an empty chair, and sat down. Miss Sweeney looked a little nervous. I wondered if Mrs. Harmon had complained to him, too, about our class.
Everyone worked pretty well for the hour Mr. McGruffen was there—even Nick, who had been allowed back in his seat for the afternoon. Mr. McGruffen was just getting up to leave, however, when Alicia let out a howl of anger. We had traded history quizzes to grade, and Russell had put a zero on hers as a joke.
I laughed so hard that I fell out of my chair, which made the rest of the class laugh even harder. Poor Miss Sweeney just looked from Mr. McGruffen to Russell, to Alicia, to me on the floor, and back to Mr. McGruffen again. Fortunately the final bell rang just then, and the class stampeded out.
I was about halfway home when I realized that I’d forgotten my spelling list for tomorrow’s test. I figured I’d better go back to get it so that I could make up for yesterday’s failure.
When I got back to the room, Miss Sweeney was still sitting at her desk. She didn’t say anything to me when I came in, which was really unlike her. She was dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief.
She suddenly looked really down in the dumps. That was when I knew what I had to do. First I glanced toward the open door to make sure that none of my friends were still hanging around. Then I walked up to Miss Sweeney’s desk, put my arm around her shoulders, and said, “I know just how you feel, Miss Sweeney. We all have bad days, but tomorrow will be a sunny new day.”
I know that wasn’t too original, but it didn’t seem to matter to Miss Sweeney. She got teary-eyed all over again but smiled and said, “Thanks, Bradley, I really needed that!”
I know the guys would never let me live it down if they saw what I did, but I’m glad I did it. After all, I guess teachers have bad days, too, just like the rest of us.

A member wrote to me from England. When her bishop asked if she would accept a call to teach early-morning seminary, he told her she’d better pray about it before she accepted. She did. She accepted. When she met the parents for the first time the bishop stood beside her. She announced that she felt the program should go to five days a week. Some parents looked doubtful. One person said, “They won’t come. They’ll vote with their feet.”
Well, the doubt was half right. The students did vote with their feet. But their attendance in those cold and dark morning hours is now above 90 percent. That teacher and her bishop believed that if the students would start to come they would be strengthened by power more than their own. It came. That power will protect them when they go to places where they will be the only Latter-day Saints. They will not be alone nor without strength, because they accepted the invitation to gather with the Saints when it was not easy.
There is another simple thing to do. The Lord’s Church has been restored, and so any call to serve in it is a call to serve Him. That bishop in England was so wise. He asked the woman to pray about her call to serve. He knew what answer she would receive. It would be an invitation from the Father and His Beloved Son. He knew what she has learned by responding to the call from the Master. In His service the Holy Ghost comes as a companion to those who try to do the best they can. She must have felt that as she stood before the parents and when she saw the students vote with their feet. What looked hard, almost impossible under her own power, became a joy in the strength of the Lord.
When she reads and ponders over the scriptures and prays to prepare for those classes, she knows that the Savior has asked the Father to send her the Holy Ghost, just as He promised His disciples He would at the Last Supper, when He knew what trials they would face and that He must leave them. He did not leave them comfortless. He promised them the Holy Ghost, and He promises it to us in His service. So, whenever the invitation to serve comes, take it. It brings with it help to pass tests far beyond those of that call.

For example, I honor those special souls who face challenges of parenthood with unwavering faith in their Maker. To a family dear to Sister Nelson and me, a son was recently born. This child was afflicted with multiple anomalies affecting virtually every system of his little body. Two operations were required in his first week of life. More will be necessary. When I spoke with the child’s parents, they did not ask, “Why did this happen to us?” Instead, they declared: “We know that this child is meant for us. God has entrusted this special baby to us. We will love him and care for him to the best of our ability.” Thank the Lord for such parents!

This passage of scripture brings to mind an experience I had as a young boy. My family had traveled from our home in California to Salt Lake City, where General Conference was being held. After we had waited in line, an usher found a place for us, up behind the choir on a wooden bench at the base of the big organ pipes in the Tabernacle. It gave me a visual perspective on General Conference that I’ve never had since, and certainly don’t expect to enjoy again. Spencer W. Kimball, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, began to speak. I have no memory of what he said, but as I viewed him from behind, standing at the pulpit and speaking to the people, in an instant I understood – somehow perceived clearly – that I was seeing and listening to a prophet. It is difficult to describe other than as a moment of enlightenment. It was not a particularly emotional experience, but actually rather matter of fact. I recognized something about him that seemed plain as day to me. He later became the President of Church when I was in my early 20s. Sustaining him in that office was, to me, a completely obvious and easy thing to do.

Sister Patricia Parkinson was born with normal eyesight, but at age seven she began to go blind. At age nine, Pat began attending the Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind in Ogden, Utah, some 90 miles (145 km) from her home, necessitating her boarding at the school—which included all of the homesickness that a nine-year-old could possibly experience.
By age 11, she had completely lost her eyesight. Pat returned home permanently at age 15 to attend her local high school. She went on to college and graduated with an undergraduate degree in communication disorders and psychology, and after a heroic struggle against doubting university admissions officials, she entered graduate school and completed a master’s degree in speech language pathology. Pat now works with 53 elementary school students and supervises four speech-language technicians in her school district. She owns her own home and her own automobile, which friends and family members drive when Pat needs transportation.
At age 10, Pat was scheduled to have yet another medical procedure to address her diminishing eyesight. Her parents had always told her exactly what was going to happen in terms of her medical care, but for some reason they didn’t tell her about this particular procedure. When her parents did tell her that the procedure had been scheduled, Pat, in the words of her mother, “was a mess.” Pat ran to the other room but came back later and said to her parents with some indignation, “Let me tell you what. I know it, God knows it, and you might as well know it too. I am going to be blind the rest of my life!”
Several years ago, Pat traveled to California to visit family members who were living there. While she was outside with her three-year-old nephew, he said to her, “Aunt Pat, why don’t you just ask Heavenly Father to give you new eyes? Because if you ask Heavenly Father, He will give you whatever you want. You just have to ask Him.”
Pat said she was taken aback by the question but responded, “Well, sometimes Heavenly Father doesn’t work like that. Sometimes He needs you to learn something, and so He doesn’t give you everything you want. Sometimes you have to wait. Heavenly Father and the Savior know best what is good for us and what we need. So They aren’t going to grant you everything you want in the moment you want it.”
I’ve known Pat for many years and recently told her that I admired the fact that she is always positive and happy. She responded, “Well, you have not been at home with me, have you? I have my moments. I’ve had rather severe bouts of depression, and I’ve cried a lot.” However, she added, “From the time I started losing my sight, it was strange, but I knew that Heavenly Father and the Savior were with my family and me. We handled it the best way we could, and in my opinion, we handled it the right way. I have ended up being a successful enough person, and generally I have been a happy person. I remember His hand being in everything. To those who ask me if I am angry because I am blind, I respond, ‘Who would I be angry with? Heavenly Father is in this with me; I am not alone. He is with me all the time.’”
In this case, Pat’s desire to regain her sight will not be granted in this life. But her motto, learned from her father, is “This too shall pass.”

Not only does this service bless the homes from which missionaries come, it blesses lives where missionaries go. One young lady who worked among the Indian people wrote: “The Navajo are a great people. Words can’t express my love for them. …
“The Navajo people accepted me, a white girl, as one of their own. They called me their white daughter. I had a hard time with the language, but I could teach by reading the lessons. I was very fortunate to have Navajo companions who could explain in detail. We could communicate with love. I learned that love is the greatest language to know. This people loved me and I loved them. We spoke with smiles, laughter, and sometimes tears. They were patient with my broken Navajo and helped me when I couldn’t think of a word. I left with a testimony in my heart and a feeling that cannot be described in words. …”
She concludes with, “In December I met a returned missionary. We fell in love and have been married in the temple.”

A Relief Society president was at dinner. Suddenly she jumped up and said, “I’ve got to go!”

Her husband asked, “Where are you going?”

She answered, “I can’t tell you. I’ll be back later.”

She was gone for about an hour. When she came back, her husband asked, “What was that all about?”

She replied, “I had the strongest impression I had to go to the bishop’s. I went over and knocked on the door. The bishop’s wife came to the door, and I said, ‘LaRae, I’m here. How can I help?’

“The tears flowed down her cheeks, and she put her head down on my shoulder and wept. She said, ‘You know, everybody loves my husband. He’s the bishop. They bear testimony about him on Sunday and talk about what a great man he is. I’m not sure anybody in the ward even knows I’m here, knows I exist, or even cares. I wondered even if God cared or knew I was here. So I knelt down and prayed, “Heavenly Father, if you know I’m here or even care, please let me know.”’”

And there was a knock on the door, and the Relief Society president said, “I’m here. How can I help?”

Another missionary told of hearing about the gospel in France. The missionaries were not fluent in his language, but he knew that what they were telling him was important, so he studied English in order to better understand them. After hearing the discussions, he had difficulty breaking some of his bad habits. The missionaries told him to ask the Lord for help. One night he was having extreme difficulty and, remembering their advice, went to his bedroom to pray for help. An hour or two later he heard a knock at his door. The missionaries were standing there, drenched from having walked five kilometers in a heavy rainstorm. “Why are you here?” he asked them. “We were asleep,” they said, “and woke up feeling you needed us.” He paused at this point in his talk and looked out over the audience as if looking for someone. Then he said, in a voice trembling with love and gratitude, “I want you to meet my missionaries.” They both lived near the MTC, and he had invited them to hear him speak at our meeting. He spoke of his mission as a privilege.

My mind goes back to a day when I was approaching my eighteenth birthday. We were all very fearful. World War II was still being fought, and every young man knew that he had to make a choice. There was not much latitude to the choice: he could choose to go into the army, or he could choose to go into the navy. I enlisted in the navy.

Forty-four of us young men stood there in the recruiting office. I shall never forget the chief petty officers coming up to us and presenting a choice. They said, “Now, you young men must make an important choice. On one hand, you can be wise and choose to join the regular navy. You can enlist for four years. You will receive the finest schooling. You will be given every opportunity because the navy looks upon you as its own. If you choose not to follow this direction, you can go into the naval reserves. The navy does not have much interest in the naval reserves at this stage of the game. You will receive no schooling. You will be sent out to sea duty. No one knows what your future might be.”

Then they asked us to sign on the dotted line. I turned to my father and said, “What should I do, Dad?”

In a voice choked with emotion, he replied, “I don’t know anything about the navy.” That was the position of every father who was there that day.

Forty-two of the forty-four enlisted in the regular navy for four years. The forty-third one could not pass the regular navy physical, so he had to enlist in the reserves.

Then they came to me; and I confess to you that I sent a prayer heavenward, earnestly hoping that the Lord would answer it. And he did. The thought came to me just as clearly as though I had heard a voice, “Ask those chief petty officers which they chose.”

I asked each of those veteran petty officers: “Did you choose the regular navy, or did you choose the reserves?”

Each of them had chosen the reserves.

I turned and said, “With all the wisdom and experience that you have, I want to be on your side.”

I chose the reserves, which meant that I enlisted for the duration of the war, plus six months. The war ended, and within a year I was honorably discharged from the service. I was able to continue my schooling. I had the privilege of serving in many Church capacities. Who knows how the course of my life might have been changed had I not taken that moment to call upon my Heavenly Father for guidance and direction in what might appear to some to have been a minor decision!

Let me tell you a story about a man who received his PhD from this institution. We had known this person for a number of years. He married later than many, and as we watched him relate with a young woman, we wondered if she could keep up; we wondered if she had the capacity to understand life as he had learned it because he was more than several years older. Then, as we observed that couple at social functions and elsewhere, we saw that he would take time to carefully instruct her. As he returned from classwork, he would bring home books for her to read and to study. As they took long walks, they were constantly teaching each other. What a beautiful marriage and what a lovely family they now have because they have taken the time to compliment and to build each other! They are serving now in the mission field together, there because of his sensitivity and because of her sensitivity, there because they desire to build one another.

As we got back to the hotel after training, Sister Ihesiene started mentioning names of those that need be interviewed urgently as pioneers or past leaders before they depart mortality. One such name mentioned was brother Matthew Anucha, my first branch president and a pioneer member of what now constitutes Okpuala Ngwa Nigeria Stake and part of Osisioma Nigeria Stake. He brought the Church from Mbaise in 1980 to his village, Amapu, and after years of his great missionary efforts, a branch was officially organized in 1982. He became the first member, priesthood holder and branch president indigenous to the Okpuala Ngwa Nigeria Stake. As a branch president, he would travel weekly from his workplace in Mbaise, about 120 kilometers round trip, to preside over his unit until it became a ward years later.
On contacting the current bishop of the ward, Izuchi David, we learned that Brother Anucha died while we were on our first mission. How devastating to hear that a faithful pioneer who had done so much for the Lord and for His Church was without a recording of his photos, voice, quality experiences and testimony! So many questions remain, such as: Was this pioneer and past leader truly honored as the Lord expected? Was there a pioneer activity in which he was recognized at any time? Did he receive any plaque, medal or a letter of appreciation? Were there Church records of key events, such as the first baptisms, confirmations, ordinations, conferences, chapel dedication and apostolic visitations in the unit? Who were the first organizational leaders that served with Brother Anucha as the first branch president of the then Amapu Branch? Was there anything in the unit or stake annual history that captured his great sacrifices? What could we have done to avert this tragedy?
An African proverb says: “when an old person dies, a library burns to the ground” now makes more sense to us. Indeed, our dear pioneers and past leaders represent living libraries whose experiences, photographs, voices and testimonies we should endeavor to create, preserve and share. This is the cardinal mission of Church history—that the succeeding generations may be persuaded to remain on the covenant path as they come to know, in some personal ways, the consecrated lives of the pioneers and how the Lord blesses the Saints.
We are grateful to the Lord for blessing us with an Area Presidency that prioritizes Church history. As we remember and celebrate those who have made great efforts in building the kingdom of God and the establishment of Zion in our area through our active roles in oral and annual histories, the divine sympathies shall be invoked and power from on high to endure to the end becomes more evident to us.
We know by the witness of the Spirit that the Lord cares for all His servants and commands that we keep them in remembrance. With so great an inheritance from our forebears, we can do no less than our very best in living up to our mandate from the Lord by participating actively in Church history efforts before the next library burns to the ground!

Daniel L. Carter
As a young boy in Idaho, Dan Carter often cried when he listened to the Tabernacle Choir at conference time because the music was so beautiful. He said, “I always yearned to be able to share my testimony and feelings of the gospel through music.”
When he was asked to write a song to help prepare boys to receive the priesthood, he worried about his ability to write one that boys would enjoy singing. “After several weeks of working and rewriting, an idea for the music came. … I felt … sure that this song [‘A Young Man Prepared’] could help boys.”