Gospel Story Finder

Eleven-year-old Eduardo Dourado knows what he would do—nothing. Although some of his schoolmates make fun of him for keeping the standards of the Church, he chooses the right and refuses to fight. “I could beat them,” he says, “but I don’t want to hurt anyone. Sometimes I’ve had to protect myself, but I try other things first to keep from fighting.”
As Jesus taught, Eduardo ignores insults. But it isn’t always easy. Because he won’t swear and do other bad things, kids make fun of him. Sometimes he feels lonely. But he knows what Jesus wants him to do, and that is what he chooses to do.

Let me share a personal experience related to that. A few weeks ago, Mônica and I were in Logan for an assignment, and we decided to go on a date. A friend from that area recommended the Bluebird. Maybe some of you here today are familiar with that restaurant. It is a nice place. Founded in 1914, the restaurant opened in its present location in 1923.

As we were there in the restaurant, our server came to us and asked, “Are you Elder Godoy?”

I said, “Yes.”

Then he started to talk to us in Spanish. He had served as a missionary in Peru, where we had served also.

While chatting here and there, I sensed that he was not comfortable with the subject of mission service. Since I knew his former mission president very well, as we were eating I sent him a message asking about that elder. His mission president replied that he had been a good missionary but that he didn’t finish his mission. And then I could understand why he was a little uncomfortable with the subject. I didn’t want him to feel bad about himself.

And why not? Because missions—although they are so important to all of us and to the Church—are not a saving ordinance. I wanted to tell him that, but that was not the right environment. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to say, “Don’t feel bad about yourself. Just keep going.”

I want to tell those here today who for some reason have not served a mission or didn’t finish it, don’t punish yourself for the rest of your life. Just stand up and aim at the next ordinance. Ordinances are the keys for our salvation and exaltation. And the next ordinance after your mission is sealing. This should be your main concern, to be worthy to get there with the right person at the right time. Stand up, aim toward the temple, and keep going. There are so many things still to be done in this life, and the Lord still expects a lot from you.

I don’t suppose many of those who were there would still recollect that event without being reminded of it. It might have slipped from my memory, too, if it hadn’t been for another incident a few years later, one that taught me something else about being out of step.
Kent and Colleen Ockey were definitely different from other families I had met while selling photography. Not only were they genuinely friendly to me, but they showed great love to each other as well. I remember how happy they seemed, how comfortable and at peace I felt in their home even though I couldn’t find an ashtray. These people seemed completely out of step with others I had encountered in my work.
On a side table in their living room, I noticed a large copy of the Book of Mormon. I had read a few chapters of it earlier in my life, and now it attracted my attention again. The Ockeys answered my questions freely, and invited me back. They introduced me to the missionaries. I began studying, praying, and searching. Twenty-three days later, I was baptized. I finally felt that I was in step, and I’ve tried to keep in step with the Lord and guidance from his appointed leaders ever since.

An inspired decision is when individuals and families let God Prevail in their lives. I was a 10-year-old boy when we made the inspired decision to accept the Lord’s invitation to join His true Church. With my siblings Tomas, Nodel, and Victor, we followed our parents Francisco and Agripina into the waters of baptism on the morning of March 8, 1981.
My uncle Jacinto, my mother’s brother, was the first in our family to meet the missionaries and accept their message. After his baptism, he introduced us to the missionaries. My parents were members of a prominent faith, and going to church was a family matter and a priority to them. Growing up, I saw how they exemplified their faith by teaching us to pray daily as a family and attend church regularly. Though he had vices, my father taught us to believe in God.
Because I was very young, I did not fully understand the things the missionaries were teaching us. My siblings and I were so eager to join our parents every time the missionaries visited. My father was a chain smoker and it was hard for him to give up his habit but that changed when Elder Richard Irving and Elder Kurt Trotter taught them the Word of Wisdom.
“Your parents were seriously listening to the message, and when we extended the invitation to obey the Word of Wisdom, your father agreed and committed to obey the Lord’s Law of Health and refrain from smoking,” related Brother Irving when we met 43 years later. “As an expression of his faith in the Savior Jesus Christ and his desire to follow Him, your father handed and surrendered to us the pack of cigarettes he had in his possession,” added Brother Irving.
This was truly a faith-promoting experience for me to know that my Father was willing to follow the commandments and change from being a natural man to a man of God. I recalled how Nephi appreciated Lehi for his great example to his family, and how with his example Nephi was able to follow in his footsteps and became a man of God.
Three years after our baptism, I was the only member of our family who still went to Church. My parents and siblings stopped going. Every Sunday my responsibility was to extend the invitation for them to come with me to Church, but I always received the same response: “Just pray for us.”
I set a goal to bring everyone back to Church, so I did my best to be a good example to them and to never be weary of reminding them and extending the invitation to come back. My prayers as a 13-year-old were answered by the Lord and everyone eventually went back to Church activity. Our family was sealed in the Manila Temple in 1992, but sadly my father passed away before he could be sealed with us.
I was in my last year in college when my father died in March 1992. Upon graduation, I had the desire to serve the Lord on a full-time mission. I labored in the Philippines Quezon City Mission from 1993–1995. I took the board exam before I served, and while in the mission field, I received word that I passed!
While in my first area, my mother and other siblings qualified to receive their temple ordinances. I was fortunate enough to have been allowed to participate. I was sealed to my parents in the Manila Philippines Temple. My third missionary companion was given the opportunity to proxy for my father during the sealing. It was a great spiritual experience for our family to receive unparalleled blessing from the Lord.
I believe we received those blessings in part because of my faithful service as a young missionary. Truly, the Lord kept his promise: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). The Lord is always true to His promises as long as we put Him first in all that we do. No amount of temporal blessings can equal the spiritual blessings of families being sealed for time and all eternity.
The blessings that come as a result of inspired decisions benefit the succeeding generations. After my siblings and I served missions, many other members of our family also went forth to serve, including my children. They experienced the real joy that comes from serving God and our fellow beings. This would not have happened if it weren’t for the righteous example of Elder Irving and Elder Trotter, the two young American missionaries whose inspired decision led to our family’s conversion.
As a token of gratitude to the missionaries who brought the Gospel of Jesus Christ to our family, I did my best to reconnect with them. It was a challenge because the photos and letters they left with us did not have their contact information.
In 2019, while serving as stake president, I was prompted to search the Church Directory of Leaders (CDOL) for their names. I found 10 Richard Irvings in Utah serving as bishops. I decided to contact their clerks. The very first clerk that I emailed responded when I asked if his bishop served as a young missionary in the Philippines in the 1980s.
As I recall, the day that he received the information from his clerk, Bishop Irving was in a mutual activity with the youth of his ward, telling them stories about his mission and about the families he and his companion taught in 1981.
In short, Bishop Irving went back to the Philippines in November 2022 after almost 41 years since his mission. When he came, he brought a letter my father sent to him when he transferred from Tuguegarao to another area. In the letter, my father expressed his joy and his spiritual experiences as a new member, including the joy of receiving the priesthood in a district conference he attended. He expressed his great joy in joining the Church with his family with which no amount of earthly possession can compare.
As an Area Seventy, I have countless opportunities to minister and bless the lives of the people I meet. I am also blessed with experiences I never thought I would have, like attending General Conference and working with prophets, apostles, and other chosen servants of God. While in Utah, I was also blessed to reconnect with my companions in the mission and the family of Bishop Irving. We went to the Jordan River and Provo City Temples with our wives, and the first time we did he whispered “I never thought that this could happen, I was with you in your baptism in 1981, and 42 years after, now we are here together worshiping in the Temple.”
I testify that God lives. He will bless us beyond our expectations if we choose to put Him first in all that we do. As President Thomas S. Monson taught in the April 2002 Conference, “Each of us has the responsibility to choose. You may ask, ‘Are decisions really that important?’ I say to you, decisions determine destiny. You can’t make eternal decisions without eternal consequences.”
I am eternally grateful for the inspired decision that my father and mother made when the missionaries extended the invitation to follow the Savior Jesus Christ. It has truly blessed me, my family, and my posterity. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

They have this mountain in Norway, right by the town of Drammen, called the Spiralen. From the outside it looks like a normal mountain, nothing special, but inside it is hollow. The mountain hides an old quarry where rock was dug from the mountain forming a spiral tunnel. Now the tunnel has been converted to a roadway which takes cars to the top for a panoramic view of the town and the ocean.
On this day, 43 priests and Laurels from the Norway Oslo Stake were climbing the Spiralen as part of their annual priests and Laurel conference. This is not a normal youth conference. The stake also sponsors one of those each year. But the stake has a long tradition of holding a special conference where they gather all the priests and Laurels in the stake together for two days of fun and serious discussions.
At this conference they’ve had panel discussions where their Church leaders agreed to answer gospel questions. They gathered together for dinner and a dance. And then they were climbing the Spiralen. But soon it was clear that this hike was something more than just a fun activity. They should have known. The hike was going to be symbolic.
First they divided into family groups using last names from Church history. The family groups were sent on their way in intervals following the path. The first rest stop was for water. Everything seemed normal. Then the second stop was for juice. What the hike meant was starting to become clear—traveling in family groups, the rewards becoming better and better.
John Gundersen of the Fredrickstad Branch said he caught on to the symbolism of the hike at the first stop. “I started to understand when they told us to hold to the iron rod.” The first stop could be telestial glory. The second stop could be the terrestrial. So when the families emerged from the woods at the parking lot near the top, they were expecting the end of the journey and their celestial reward. But it was not over yet.
Each family was given a wheelbarrow loaded with five large stones. They were told to continue up the path. Everyone was laughing and joking, and no one thought this last stretch was hard at all. One strong boy could easily handle the loaded wheelbarrow—that is until they saw the last pull to the summit. It was so steep and slick that they would have a hard time just getting themselves up the hill. But their wheelbarrows and those loads of rocks would make it really hard work.
Each family figured out their own method for getting up the hill. ElRay Gene Hendricksen from the Hokksund Branch said, “We decided to share the burdens. Everyone took a stone out of the wheelbarrow. Two other guys took the empty wheelbarrow. We made it. We were the only family group who did it that way.”
No one complained. They all just pitched in and figured out how to get their rocks to the top. Then came their reward. Hot and tired, they could rest and look out at the beautiful country below them. They were pleased that everyone made it to the top, where they were able to drop their burdens, represented by the stones. They piled the rocks together into an impromptu memorial. Then they were served lunch, food to feed the body, and listened to a speaker who talked of heavenly things, to feed the soul.
Bishop Aabo of the Drammen Ward explained that at times the climb was more challenging for some than for others. For a while a few carried the burdens while the others just walked along and didn’t need to help. But even though the challenges were uneven, at times they all had to work together to make sure everyone made it to the top. Bishop Aabo pointed out that Christ promised he would help make our burdens light. Gaining their own testimony would give them strength to reach the pinnacle.
The hike was the perfect conclusion to the conference. On a social level, it was great fun. Cathrine Opdahl of the Oslo Second Ward said, “The most fun is meeting people of your same age from different parts of Norway, getting to know them in a new way.”
“Yes,” said Kathinka Svendsen, also of the Oslo Second Ward. “We have problems in common, especially at school where people are not accepting that you’re a Latter-day Saint with high morals.”
“Here,” said Kjetil Pedersen, Drammen Ward, “it’s people with your same attitude and outlook about religion. It’s good to do something together.”
Then it was time to leave the mountaintop and go back down to the real day-to-day world. But as these friends make their way back down, they know that in that high place they have built a monument more significant than of simple stones. ElRay Hendricksen explained, “It is a monument that symbolized that we have all done the same things and made it to the top by helping each other. But we are not finished yet. We will have to develop ourselves and stay together and stay true.”
On a mountaintop in Norway, one group of teens has found some answers.

My favorite year of rugby was the year after high school. The team of which I was a member was both talented and committed. We were the champion team that year. However, one day we were to play a lowly ranked team, and after the game we all had dates to take to the big, annual college dance. I thought that because this would be an easy game, I should try to protect myself from injury so I would be able to enjoy the dance fully. In that game, we were not as committed in the hard contacts as we might have been, and we lost. To make things worse, I ended the match with a very swollen, fat lip that did not enhance my appearance for my big date. Perhaps I needed to learn something.

So many of you are great examples of standing up for what you believe. You have made plans, you know where you are going, and you are great examples of commitment and integrity. A young woman, while attending her first year at BYU, didn’t date a great deal. The second year, she met a young man. She liked him a lot; they had so much fun together. Then she discovered he was not living some of the standards of the Church. She was so disappointed. She felt deceived. The scriptures caution, “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous” (1 John 3:7).

After denial and many heart-wrenching discussions with this young man, she said good-bye. It was so difficult to do. That young woman was filled with integrity. She knew who she was and what she wanted in her life, her eternal life. She had a plan and was committed, and she was guided by the Holy Ghost. Hopefully, those tender discussions helped that young man turn his life around.

Last year when I was called to be the Young Women general president, as I was leaving President Monson’s office, he reached over to a bouquet of white roses, took one from the vase, and handed it to me. The moment he handed me that beautiful white rose, I knew why. I went back to the time when, as a young woman, I chose the white rose as my symbol of purity—my personal banner. How did President Monson know? I took that precious rose home, put it in a beautiful crystal vase, and placed it on a table where I could see it every day. Every day that rose reminded me of the importance of my own personal purity and virtue, and it reminded me of you. As you grow and blossom, your personal purity will enable you to become a force for good and an influence for righteousness in the world. I truly believe that one virtuous young woman, led by the Spirit, can change the world.

At the age of fourteen, I was apprenticed to a dressmaker and learned how to make beautiful dresses. I worked for her for two years. Then my family made the decision to move to America. Times were hard in England. Jobs and food were both scarce. Also a call had gone out from the Church for the Saints to gather to Zion.
But first we had to sail to America!
I was excited when my family packed up their belongings and headed for Liverpool. It was a great seaport, teeming with ships of every kind. I loved watching the ships being loaded and unloaded with every kind of article you could imagine. Spices from India scented the air. Passenger ships were a hive of activity as their holds were loaded with food and water. There was so much to see!
Our ship was the Horizon, a good ship. We had fine weather all the way across the Atlantic, except for a few days when it was so foggy that we couldn’t even get candles to burn! On June 30, 1856, we safely landed in Boston, Massachusetts. We were thrilled to be in the land where the gospel had been restored!

During his fifteenth year Joseph F. Smith was ordained an elder, endowed, and sent to serve as a missionary in Hawaii. There he was to experience illness and discouragement far beyond that which is normal for a young man of his age. But with these experiences came an increased deepening of his soul and a broadening of his capacities as new spiritual insights were added in his life. One such experience was a dream, significantly centering in a family experience. This dream occurred during a time in his mission when he was greatly depressed. “I was … entirely friendless, except the friendship of a poor, benighted … people. I felt as if I was so debased in my condition of poverty, lack of intelligence and knowledge, just a boy, that I hardly dared look a … man in the face.”
The dream included many things, but central to the dream was the presentation of a male child to the Prophet Joseph Smith. In the dream he saw his father and his mother, and it was his mother who handed him the child. He carried the child to the Prophet Joseph, handed it to him, and then stepped back. Then Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Brigham Young—who was still alive at the time of the dream—formed a triangle around the babe, blessed it, and then the Prophet offered the baby again to Joseph F. When the young elder had presented the baby to the Prophet Joseph, he had thrust his hand up against the chest of the Prophet to test the reality of the presence of the Prophet. Upon returning for the baby, Joseph F. had determined to test again whether this were just a dream or a reality.
“I wanted to know what it meant. So I purposely thrust myself up against the Prophet. I felt the warmth of his stomach. He smiled at me as if he comprehended my purpose. He delivered the child to me and I returned it to my mother, laid it on her lap.
“When I awoke that morning I was a man, although only a boy. There was not anything in the world that I feared. … That vision, that manifestation and witness that I enjoyed at that time has made me what I am, if I am anything that is good, or clean, or upright before the Lord. That has helped me out of every trial and through every difficulty.”
It is rather evident from President Smith’s comments that his main interest in this experience lies in the fact that his testimony of the Prophet at that time was intensified and expanded, but one cannot help noticing one detail from that dream, a detail upon which President Smith does not comment, and that is the presentation of a male child to the Prophet Joseph Smith for a blessing. In light of the fact that two of President Smith’s sons were eventually to come into the Council of the Twelve, and one of these Joseph Fielding Smith, was later to become president of the Church to bear, as it were, the mantle of the prophet in succession from Joseph Smith, one might wonder if there was not also prophetic dimension to this dream that he received as a young missionary, “alone on a mat, away up in the mountains of Hawaii.”

Growing up with divorced parents was difficult. My dad remarried, and I enjoyed spending time with my stepmom and her kids. But even in the best of times, I carried the weight of my family’s situation.
I worried about my future family. I was afraid my marriage would fail and cause me so much pain. This fear made me extra careful when I started dating in high school. I didn’t want my heart broken, which made it impossible to open myself up to people, even to my good friends. When I went to college, I guarded my heart. I was extremely cautious and most of the time never made it past a first date because I was terrified. I thought I would never get married.
My fears about commitment took another bad turn when my dad got divorced a second time.
I was heartbroken by the news. I had suppressed my feelings about my parents’ divorce for most of my life out of love for my dad, but this news made all my anger, sadness, resentment, abandonment, and pain come out.
As I prepared to leave on my mission soon after, I counseled with Heavenly Father to help me let go of the hurt and have hope for a future marriage. I learned that healing takes time and continually seeking the Savior.
I carried that hope of healing with me throughout my mission, and I was blessed to meet people from all walks of life who could empathize with my struggles. These people helped strengthen my faith to trust in what the Savior could do for me.
But then I had a companion I struggled to get along with. After a hard day of disagreements, I wondered if the contention I had with my companion was a sneak peek at my future marriage.
“If she got tired of me in just a few short months, will my future husband dislike me too after marriage?” I thought.
Shortly after coming home from my mission, I remembered what I learned from the wonderful people on my mission. I was hesitant at first, but I relied on the Savior to help me overcome my fears and start dating again. It took some time, but I eventually got engaged to my best friend from high school. He knew everything about me, including my fears and my experiences, and I was overjoyed to be with him.
But I was terrified. He was one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I knew, but I still worried that my marriage would fail as my parents’ did. My faith in an eternal marriage was faltering.
With these thoughts swirling around in my head, I turned to prayer and was prompted to talk to my mom about her experiences. I asked her why it was worth getting married when I could avoid the potential pain by not getting married.
That’s when my mom bore her powerful testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. She reminded me that no matter how we struggle in life, the Savior is always there to buoy us up. If we trust in Him, then we have no reason to fear for the future.
My mom’s advice brought Doctrine and Covenants 6:36 into my mind, which says, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”
If we live in fear of what could happen, we will never get to experience anything, good or bad. The whole point of being here on earth is to have a body and to be tested, but the Lord also wants us to experience the great joys that He has in store for us.
A few months later as I focused on Christ and pressed forward with faith, my husband and I were sealed in the temple. Even though we have our challenges, we focus on Christ. Keeping Him at the center of my life and my marriage has made all the difference, and I have experienced more joy than I thought possible. My life has gotten better every time that I’ve put my trust in the Lord over my fears.

A few years ago a woman in my ward shared the following in sacrament meeting, and I share it with her permission. She said:

One of the most pervasive things I remember from living with my father is his sternness and his temper. I never felt completely safe with him. I loved my dad and I knew he loved me, yet I experienced fear when he was around. For many years I saw Heavenly Father the same way I saw my own father—as someone who, for the most part, kept his distance and was easily disappointed and frustrated at my weakness.

This sister then described what she did to help make this heavy burden light:

I have asked God many times to show me who He really is and to help me shed all my misconceptions and false beliefs so I can experience the real Him. He has responded with patience and love beyond my expectations. He has taken me by the hand, and I am slowly learning to trust that He is not distant but right here next to me. He is slowly walking me out of fearing Him and into the saving power of His love.

Perhaps you heard a few weeks ago of Brian Davis, a British professional golfer who in a PGA tournament was on the verge of his first tournament victory and a one million dollar first prize. On the first hole of a playoff, his ball bounced off the green and rolled into some nearby weeds and grass. When he tried to punch the ball back onto the green, he realized his club may have grazed a nearby weed; a violation of PGA rules requiring a two stroke penalty, and in a playoff, certain defeat.

The officials had not seen the violation; only Davis recognized the possible infraction when as he hit the ball he thought he saw movement of the obstruction out of the corner of his eye.

Immediately after the shot, he notified the official who with the help of slow motion television replays confirmed the violation. When the infraction was confirmed, Davis conceded the victory to his opponent. Brian Davis is reported to have said after the tournament that had he not reported the violation, he would never have been able to have lived with himself. A million dollar first prize lost because honesty was more important than wealth!

Such stories of integrity are multitude around us but in the din of world events reported on the six-o-clock news, too often only the revolting seems to be considered newsworthy. The world will be forever indebted to the Brian Davis's of the world whose integrity makes them truly worthy of emulation by all.

When my family moved to Japan, it was scary moving to a new place and making new friends. On my first day of kindergarten we were doing an art project. We had to trace our hands on paper. I noticed that a boy at my table was having a hard time tracing his hand. I wanted to help him, but I was nervous. Then I remembered that in family scripture study we had been talking about how Jesus loved and served others. I helped the boy trace his hand. It made him happy, and I felt happy too. Heavenly Father blessed me to not be nervous and helped me make a new friend too!

During my last two summers of high school, my parents sent me to work for my uncle in Idaho. He operated Budge’s Golden Sunshine Honey, a family business started by my grandfather.
My father knew what I was in for. He had grown up “working in the bees.” He wanted me to learn how to work as he did. The job was hard, and there were few benefits, except for one: occasionally, my uncle let me ride his motorcycle.
One day, I decided to go for a ride. The blue skies, the bright sun, and the wind blowing through my hair were exhilarating! For a moment, all the long hours of hard work seemed worth it. Suddenly, the motorcycle sputtered to a stop. I had run out of gas in the middle of nowhere! This happened before cell phones, so I was all on my own.
I thought that my uncle would be upset if I abandoned the motorcycle and walked back to town, so I decided to push the motorcycle home. It was well after dark by the time I reached town. The gas station was closed. I was thirsty, hungry, and exhausted.
As I pushed the motorcycle through town, I saw my uncle’s truck parked outside the movie theater. I found him and told him what had happened. His response surprised me.
“How could you run out of gas?” he asked.
He walked out to the motorcycle and flipped a switch. He then turned the key and kicked down the starter. To my surprise, the motor let out a roar!
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“There’s a reserve tank in case you run out of gas,” he said. “All you have to do is flip the switch.”
Embarrassed and humiliated, I rode the motorcycle home.

Elder Paul Christianson came from snowy Chicago to our home in Slidell, Louisiana. He grinned a lot as he taught my husband gospel discussions, but one day he revealed that he missed his mom. She’d been dead for two years, he said. He’d gone on a mission because of her.
Paul’s dad had died when he and his little sister were young. His mom went to work at a small factory across town, working the evening shift. Despite her meager salary, she managed to set aside a few dollars every week for Paul’s mission.
Paul said he didn’t worry much about being poor. Sure, he and his sister wore hand-me-downs, and they didn’t often have the money to go to movies, but his mom always made sure they had enough to eat. “The Lord will provide,” she always said, and Paul believed her.
Everything was fine until seventh grade, when Paul decided to try out for the track team. At the meeting, the coach announced that everyone had to wear a track suit to the tryouts, which would be held in two weeks. No suit, no tryout. Paul’s heart sank. He didn’t have a track suit, and he knew his mom didn’t have the money to buy one. Hesitantly, he asked her if they could borrow from his mission fund.
She smiled and shook her head. “Son, we’ve put that money away for a special purpose. If we remember the Lord first, He’ll take care of everything we really need.” Paul wondered if the Lord took care of track suits.
Since she was so insistent that he exercise faith, he ran track in a pair of cutoff jeans every day after school. He worried about what he’d wear when the big day arrived.
His mom worried, too. She mentioned the problem to her supervisor at work, who managed to scrounge up some fabric from home. Every night as Paul’s mom rode the bus across the long miles to their apartment, she hand-sewed a track suit to surprise her son.
The tryouts approached, and Paul ran and ran. His mom sewed and sewed. On the night before the tryouts she sat in the bus, putting the last few stitches into the track suit. It began to snow, and the bus grew cold. The tired woman fell asleep with the track suit cradled in her lap.
She woke up when the bus pulled into the terminal. It was one o’clock in the morning. The bus driver hadn’t noticed her in the back of the bus. He said he was sorry she’d missed her stop because no more buses would run that night. She got off and began to walk home through the snow.
She walked all night, and finally arrived at the apartment at 7:00 A.M. Her children were getting ready for school. With a weary smile, she drew Paul into her arms and kissed him.
“Tryouts are today, aren’t they, son?” she asked.
He nodded and looked at his feet. “I decided not to try out,” he said.
“Not try out? After all the running you’ve done?”
He told us he didn’t have the heart to remind her that he couldn’t try out without a track suit. She’d feel bad that she hadn’t been able to afford one. Maybe she’d feel bad that the Lord hadn’t provided, after all.
“Shut your eyes and hold out your hands,” she said.
His heart leaped in sudden hope. Had she been able to get him a suit after all? Holding his breath, he squeezed his eyes shut and held out his hands. He felt her place something soft and flimsy in them. He opened his eyes.
There in his hands was a polyester track suit. A bright-orange polyester track suit. The orangest, brightest, most electrifying track suit he’d ever seen in his life. The school colors were red and silver. No way would anyone believe this suit was red.
He gulped. His mom looked at him out of shining, worried eyes. “Do you like it, son?” she whispered.
“I … like it more than anything,” he said, and then he hugged her tight. He kissed her cold cheek and then went to try on his orange track suit.
Paul told us everyone laughed at him when he walked onto the track that afternoon. He almost fled back to the locker room, but then he remembered his mother’s small, cold hands and the anxious look in her eyes. He pictured her walking across town through the snow, clutching the suit she’d made on the bus.
His cheeks bright red, he put his head down, toed the chalk line, and when the starting pistol cracked he ran like the wind. He didn’t pay attention to the other runners—all he could think of was getting off that track as fast as he could.
Someone in the crowd yelled, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a jet-powered jack-o-lantern!” Everyone laughed again. Paul said he felt as if he’d been shot.
He leaned into the final turn, knees pumping, elbows like pistons. He heard someone coming up behind him. In a final burst of speed he lunged over the finish line and kept running straight to the locker room.
Later he learned that he’d set the fastest time in the 440 in school history. He’d not only made the track team; he would soon become one of its star runners. The coach provided him a red and silver track suit emblazoned with the school name. He wore it with pride for three years.
But folded into the bottom of the battered old suitcase he carried on his mission was a bright orange track suit. Every time he touched it, he felt his mom’s small, cold hands again and knew she’d given him a gift much greater than a track suit. She’d given him the gift of faith in the Lord’s ability to provide what he really needed. She’d given him the faith to eventually serve a mission.
And maybe, just maybe, she’d given him a little extra speed.

Oh, we have seen remarkable events as we have flipped the remote control of observation and memory. One of the most touching involved a young lady convert to the Church who had found in a Latter-day Saint fellow student, and in her fellow student’s home, where she was invited for family home evening, a spirit and a caring relationship she had never known in her own life. She said that since her baptism, things had not really materially changed in her own home; there were still abuse and argument and alcohol and foul language. “But,” she said, “there is one room at my house where I can go and shut the door and read the scriptures and listen to good music and pray and feel the Spirit of the Lord. In my little room I can have that blessing. One day, if the Lord will help me, I will marry a man with whom I can live in a home where we can have the Spirit of the Lord always.”

Three weeks after our fifth child was born, my husband was called to be the bishop of our newly divided ward. Our stake president, in interviewing us, had expressed his concern about our young family, but he emphasized that Larry had been called by the Lord to this position. My own concerns diminished as we felt the Spirit’s confirmation.
The next few weeks were exhilarating and exhausting for all of us as we experienced what being a bishop’s family meant and as our new son Jeffrey assumed his role in our family life. After the excitement of being a new mother and a new bishop’s wife started to wear off, I realized how tired I was both physically and mentally, and I found myself not coping very well.
It was then that Sister Camilla Kimball helped me. That year Sister Kimball was scheduled to address a Brigham Young University stake Relief Society, and my sister-in-law, the stake Relief Society president, invited my mother-in-law and me to attend. Sister Kimball based her talk on questions members of the stake had submitted to her. Among many others, she responded to the question, “How do you manage your problem-solving effectively when your feelings get hurt, and how do you act instead of react?” Her honest reply was, “I have mostly learned to keep my mouth shut.”
My spirit tuned in on that remark. I knew I was listening to someone who had been where I was, that she too had known the gnawing feeling of loneliness and the bruised sensitivities that sometimes accompany being the wife of someone busily engaged in activities that largely excluded her.
Sister Kimball talked about how to overcome those feelings—the same feelings I was struggling with. She described how she learned to carry her own weight and how she had found that she had to get busy in the Church and simply be happy herself. Then she said, “There is no more demanding job in the Church than being a bishop,” adding that she had great empathy for the wives of bishops, especially those with young families.
After the meeting, my sister-in-law introduced her mother and me to Sister Kimball as she escorted this dear lady to her car. The crowd had waned, and we were standing face to face. I told Sister Kimball that I truly appreciated her remarks about pulling one’s own weight, that she had helped me immensely. I explained that my husband had been a bishop for just two months and that we had five children from ages three months to ten years.
At that point, Camilla Kimball drew me to her and embraced me. As I felt her spirit and her great love, I knew that I was as close to a celestial being as I ever had been in my life. Then as we parted, she stepped back and said, “And you’re every bit as important as he is, and don’t you forget it!”
I went home that night renewed. Somehow Sundays didn’t seem so long and lonely anymore, my task as a bishop’s wife didn’t seem quite so formidable, and I was thrilled to be married to this wonderful man whom the Lord had called to be bishop. My own identity had shed its fuzzy edges and become sharply defined in my own mind once again.

I climbed Long’s Peak one time with a group of men. Long’s Peak is 14,256 feet high, and as one gets above the thirteen-thousand-foot level, he finds, unless he is used to it, that his legs go numb about every fifth step. One can go four or five steps and then his legs go numb, and he has to wait for them to come alive before he can go farther. It took us about an hour and a half or two hours to go the last thousand feet.

Up on top I noticed that there was a ridge apparently running down in a direction which, if I could get on it, would save me the hours of going around the way we had come. Against the advice of my companions, I decided that I would take that shortcut. So I dropped down off the peak into a series of ledges which were waist high, just like a giant staircase, and before very long I was a thousand feet down. Then I ran into ice. During the evening before there had been an ice-storm up there. It was clear ice; one could not see it on the rocks, and the first thing I knew I slipped. I caught myself and then began to worry; for I could see when I got there that I could not make that ridge. There were glacial cirques on both sides thousands of feet deep, and I was caught. I cannot tell you how panicked I was. I was terribly frightened. I realized that the only way I could escape was to work my way, somehow, back to the top. Every so often I could hear a whistle blow up on top; that meant that one of the men was still up there. I will not describe the things I went through to start back upward to get out of the particular danger I was in, but finally I got to where I could move. I went up that thousand feet in twenty minutes without even losing my breath. You will say, perhaps, that it was adrenaline, but it was not; and when I got to the top there was Golden Kilburn, a man who was with us, waiting. He said, “I couldn’t leave. I knew you were in trouble, so I decided I would not go down this mountain till I found out where you were.” And I found out there the value of friendship, too, and of the loyalty and devotion of those who care for you.

When I was a young missionary, I remember when a marvelous missionary that I had come to admire received some devastating news. His mother and his younger brother had passed away in a tragic accident. The mission president offered this elder the option to return home for the funeral. However, after speaking with his father on the phone, this missionary decided to stay and finish his mission.
A short time later, when we were serving in the same zone, my companion and I received an emergency call; some thieves had stolen the bicycle belonging to this same missionary and had injured him with a knife. He and his companion had to walk to the nearest hospital, where my companion and I met up with them. On the way to the hospital, I was grieving for this missionary. I imagined that his spirits would be low and that surely, after this traumatic experience, he would now want to return home.
However, when we arrived at the hospital, I saw this missionary lying in his bed, waiting to be taken into surgery—and he was smiling. I thought, “How could he be smiling at a time like this?” While he was recuperating in the hospital, he enthusiastically handed out pamphlets and copies of the Book of Mormon to the doctors, nurses, and other patients. Even with these trials, he did not want to go home. Rather, he served until the last day of his mission with faith, energy, strength, and enthusiasm.