Gospel Story Finder

Several years ago, Sister Pearson and I were called to preside over the Washington Tacoma Mission. The call was a complete surprise. With some trepidation I met with the chairman and the CEO of the company where I was employed and informed them of my mission call. They were visibly upset with my decision to leave the firm. “When did you make this decision, and why didn’t you discuss it with us earlier?” they demanded.

In a moment of clarity, a profound answer came into my mind. I said, “I made this decision as a 19-year-old boy, when I made sacred covenants with God in the temple to follow the Savior. I’ve built my entire life on those covenants, and I fully intend to keep them now.”

In the wintertime John and his dad and his brothers ice fish. Each winter they push the ice house out onto a frozen lake a few miles from John’s home. The ice house has a stove inside to keep them warm during blizzards and thirty-degree-below-zero (-34° C) temperatures. John says that the fish bite best at night and during blizzards. The ice house has three holes cut through the floor along two walls that are lined up with holes augered in the two-foot-thick (61-cm) ice. John likes to put his face down close to the holes and watch the fish swimming.

Indio High School’s water polo team was surprising everybody. The Southern California 3-A championship game was half over, and they were thrashing the El Dorado Hawks, 7–3. Indio’s Rajahs were considered a Cinderella club, strong on teamwork but lacking the polish and size necessary to pull off an upset. Yet somehow they were winning the game!
Calvin Lowell, 17, braced himself at the edge of the pool, ready to sprint to the center. (In water polo each quarter begins when the referee tosses the ball to the middle of the water, and players swim toward it in a scramble for possession.) He knew El Dorado would come out fighting.
Cal looked up at his father, Dr. John Lowell, who was standing near one of the diving boards, ready to shout encouragement. It wasn’t just another case of a proud spectator cheering on his boy. Cal’s father is the Indio coach.
The whistle shrieked. Waves foamed and churned. One blazing shot after another skittered into the net, despite flailing arms and lunging defensive maneuvers. Two of Indio’s top players fouled out. The lead narrowed to 8–7. Each team scored again quickly. Then with two minutes and 36 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, an El Dorado forward slapped the ball from the goalie’s hand and it floated into the net to knot the score at 9–9.
Coach Lowell bowed his head. Ignoring thousands of screaming fans, he said a silent prayer. He knew the Lord couldn’t promise a victory, but he hoped that each player would perform to the best of his ability. A new strategy came into his head, and he called a time out.
He gathered the players around him and counseled them to avoid the congested area just in front of the goals, concentrating on outside shots. Play resumed. The tactic worked perfectly, but the man who wound up free with the ball was the team’s poorest marksman. “Not him,” Coach Lowell wanted to shout. “Anybody but …”
The ball slammed into the goal’s canvas backing. Indio led again, 10–9. The same play worked twice more with other Indio shooters, while the Hawks tallied only one more point. The seconds timer read zero. The championship game was over, and the Rajahs had won, 12–10!
The CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) victory over El Dorado was the culmination of a lot of struggle and practice for the coach and his players. But more than that, it was the realization of a goal shared by a father and a son. Cal Lowell and his father, both active members of the Church, have been working together to build water polo in Indio for a long time.
The Lowell family came to the community under unusual circumstances. Brother Lowell had just finished his doctorate degree at BYU and was searching for a job. “I knew I wanted to coach swimming because Cal was in swimming. He showed talent as a youngster, and all I really wanted to do was help him develop it. I wanted to find a job that would allow me to spend time with my son.”
But after graduation Brother Lowell was 50 and unemployed. He’d been fasting and praying about finding a job and worrying particularly about his older son Ron who was still on a mission. As he sat at the kitchen table reading a swimming magazine, a small classified ad caught Brother Lowell’s attention. It described a coaching position available in a desert town 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Every detail seemed to be describing him. “It was like a hand came down on my shoulder, and I had to get up and call the number. I figured that an ad in a national magazine would already be filled, but I knew I had to call just the same. I told the man who answered the phone, ‘You may think I’m crazy, but I think the Lord wants me to come to Indio and coach swimming. I’m a Mormon, and I think that I’m being told that that’s what I should be doing.’ The man said, ‘I don’t think you’re crazy; I’m a Mormon, too!’” Brother Joe Rile, the man Brother Lowell had phoned, was on the board of directors for a private swim club in Indio. Soon the whole Lowell family was relocated.
When they arrived in Indio, there were good facilities, but there was no solid program for water polo. Brother Lowell started talking to community leaders, and Cal and his friends started “recruiting” potential players. The combined community and high school effort they initiated for both swimming and water polo has produced an enviable record.
Four boys formed the nucleus of the original team. (There are seven players per team, counting the goalie.) They played a summer of AAU league water polo in eighth grade before their freshman year in high school. In their first high school season they won athletic letters and started on the varsity polo team. In swimming they won the CIF freshman-sophomore 6-by-50-yard relay (freestyle). Then they captured the national Junior Olympics water polo crown (15 and under) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and six of the players on that trip, including Cal, were named to the All-America team.
The next year Indio’s high school team won the league water polo championship and made it into the second round CIF playoffs. Then during swimming season they won four out of seven events in the CIF freshman-sophomore relays, setting three records, including one national record that beat the previous time by three seconds. Cal was the anchor (final) swimmer on all the relay squads and qualified for the state championships in all four strokes on varsity time standards as a sophomore.
Brother Lowell also arranged for the team to travel to Australia and to the Church College of New Zealand and to play several exhibition games en route. To help fund that project, the polo players swam 7,000 laps in a hotel pool, with people pledging money for each lap completed. During the tour they stayed part of the time with LDS families and were impressed by their friendly attitude, high standards, and enthusiasm for life. “They made us feel at home,” Guy Baker, one of Cal’s teammates, said. The team gained enough recognition with its 13–1–1 record during the tour to receive tentative invitations to Japan and Cuba next year.
But the team members feel the high school championship over El Dorado in 1977 still tops their list of achievements. No team outside the Los Angeles area had ever won the 3-A water polo title before. (And incidentally, all of the starting Indio players were named to the all-CIF team, and Brother Lowell was named coach of the year.) It’s indicative of the growth water polo has made since the Lowells arrived in Indio. So is the formation of the Indio Aquatics Club, an AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) organization founded by Brother Lowell, which stars the same swimmers in tournaments against amateur teams.
Both Cal and his father are quick to point out, though, that their success hasn’t come without effort. “When we organized our first summer polo program here,” Cal said, “we didn’t even know what the tournaments were. We called up team after team, but they wouldn’t practice with us. Mira Costa (150 miles away) was the only team that would play us, and that was at seven in the morning.” So Sister Lowell and the players got up at 4:00 A.M., drove for three hours, played the game, and drove home. (Brother Lowell had to work at the high school and couldn’t leave.) They lost 14–2. They battled through the rest of that initial AAU season, too. In nine of the eleven final games, they won by only one point. (But then they battled on in championship playoffs to the Junior Olympic title mentioned above.)

I attended the Hamilton School, which was a big three-story building. The structure was old and poor by today’s standards, but I learned that it was not the building that made a difference; it was the teachers. When the weather would permit, we assembled in front of the school in the morning, pledged allegiance to the flag, and marched in orderly fashion to our rooms.

We dressed neatly for school, and no unkempt appearance was tolerated. The boys wore a shirt and a tie and short trousers. We wore long black stockings that reached from the foot to above the knee. They were made of cotton and wore out quickly, so they had to be darned frequently. We learned how to darn because it was unthinkable to go to school with a hole in your stocking.

We learned a lesson on the importance of personal neatness and tidiness, and that has blessed my life ever since.

Illustration by iStock/Thinkstock
I had just returned from school. I’d gotten into an argument with one of my best friends from church, and it had really got me down.
As usual, I sat down to read my email. I saw one from her and opened it. I scanned the text carefully. The hurtful words covered me like a wave. The tears streamed down my face as I read to the end. My heart felt like it had been blown apart.
I quickly created a new email to her and started to type, but then something told me to stop. I knew it was the Holy Ghost. I backed away from the computer. In my head I asked, “Why do I need to stop? I need to tell her how I feel.” Then came the words, “All right. Tell her how you really feel.” I quickly moved toward the computer again.
I paused to analyze the Spirit’s words. Though they had been almost exactly my own words, they made me ponder. I wondered, “How do I really feel?” Immediately the words betrayed, broken, and hurt came to mind. Again a voice said, “Tell her how you really feel.” True, I felt those things, but I wouldn’t want to hurt her like she hurt me. We were friends, weren’t we? I realized that what I really felt was love.
My anger and sadness still surrounded me, but I decided to trust the Lord. I deleted the words I had written and started listing things I loved about her. As I did, my negative emotions completely left me. I found myself making a list so long that it took multiple scrolls to get through it. When I finally hit Send, I let out a sigh. I felt like my heart had been cleansed of pain and grief. I knew that my Savior had taken away my pain and filled my soul with Christlike love.
A couple of days later I received a response from my friend. She explained that at first she had been too shocked to respond. As soon as she had seen the list, she started reading it, expecting it to be a list of insults. When she found that they were compliments, she was blown away with disbelief.
I learned that when you make someone else feel better, it makes you feel better. Never underestimate the power of God. It deeply affected my life at that moment. I’ll never forget my pause to question and listen and how it has benefited my life.

Organized to help women develop and express charity, the Relief Society gives many opportunities to love and serve others. Such service helps both the giver and the receiver develop charity—as the Relief Society sisters in one ward learned when they helped a young mother face tragedy.
Elizabeth was in her early thirties when she underwent an operation. But a mistake was made, a nerve was cut, and Elizabeth was left permanently paralyzed. She was confined to a wheelchair. Her husband was an alcoholic, and he soon left her and their four young children.
Elizabeth struggled to raise her children, with the help of family, friends, neighbors, and Relief Society sisters—all of whom helped her do what she could not do by herself. Surprisingly, many of those who served Elizabeth often left her home wondering who had given and who had received!

Seventy-five miles of backpacking beauty in the high Cascades and not a worry in the world! The immediate future seemed to hold nothing but blue skies and bluebirds for our Scout troop.
We were counting on an unforgettable experience, and we got it. With only a half hour of trail behind us, we were hit with a downpour that soon turned the steep trail into a slippery tightrope. For six days it rained, and for six days we slogged and slipped along that trail, and the experience kept getting more unforgettable with every step.
It was especially memorable for: The boy who slipped into a swift river and was being dragged by the current to a probable death when his head lodged between two tree branches just long enough for us to save him. The boy who slipped and slashed his forearm badly. The two of us who twisted our knees. The two boys who sprained their ankles. The boy who suffered second-degree burns when boiling water was spilled on him. The two boys who developed bad colds. The boy who contracted a serious case of diarrhea. The three boys who developed hypothermia—a dangerous lowering of the body temperature—especially one of them who came very near death as a result.
We started out expecting blue-birds—and maybe a few bruises and blisters if we were unlucky. When the bluebirds flew away and the brickbats started flying, we were very grateful that we had some first aid supplies and knew how to use them. If that boy with hypothermia had died, the hike would now be unforgettable in a way I don’t like to think about.
That hike in the high Cascades was the most accident-laden trip I had suffered through in my ten years of backpacking. It was the exception rather than the rule, and yet every year groups face much worse first aid challenges in the out-of-doors. I don’t want to scare off any would-be campers, but I want to emphasize that we must prepare for the worst case and not the best. I am constantly running into youth groups in the wilderness who aren’t even prepared to fix a blister—let alone deal with a serious accident. Such groups are simply courting tragedy.

In her youth she dreamed of marriage and motherhood but was single for many years. “Sometimes I wondered if my dreams would ever be fulfilled,” Sister Cook says. “But I tried to have faith and focus on the blessings I did have.”
During this time she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech pathology and audiology and an EdS (Education Specialist) degree from Brigham Young University. She worked as a special education teacher and later as a school administrator.
On July 16, 1988, in the Salt Lake Temple, she married Richard E. Cook, who later served as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. At that time, Sister Cook says she “inherited four wonderful children and became a grandmother of eight,” as Elder Cook’s first wife had passed away in 1984. They now have 17 grandchildren.

Our plane landed safely. We observed that there were three or four hundred people at the airstrip. President Strong’s son, Bert, also a stake president, was there and was very delighted to see us back safe. We asked Bert why so many people had collected at the airstrip that evening. He informed us that three Mexicans had gone in a two-motor plane across the jungles and mountains to the Usumacinta River that morning about the time we had flown there. They had not returned and the people of Tuxtla were out waiting for them. Some months later Gareth Lowe wrote informing us that the Mexican plane and its occupants had hit a mountain, and all were killed.

I lived in a ward where one woman was like a beacon of righteousness. Jessica (name has been changed) radiated love and goodness every week in our meetings. She went from person to person, greeting them and loving them—especially those who were “hanging on the edges” of the ward. She invited the lonely to her home, talked to the shy ones, and went out of her way to spread her commitment to Christ and His gospel. It impacted the entire ward for good.

I went once as a frightened new hiree to a Boy Scout summer camp. Royal Stone was its director. A few of you will remember the man, a great man. He came to BYU and worked with boys and the teachers of boys for a time. Royal was a kind of remote figure in the camp, though he soon made it otherwise; but I became quickly attached to, as my mentor and leader, a man named Don Carlos Kimball. Surely someone here would have heard of him or know him. Lank and lean, a professional Scout executive, he was spending his summer there. He helped us learn how to be leaders. And the lesson I remember best is that he, beginning one morning with an adze and an ax and a tree, carved out—from sunup past sundown, without stopping—a two-bladed canoe paddle and then knelt in a canoe with that paddle and beat the old motor boat across the lake.

I saw all of that in one day. He took his adze and his ax, and out of available materials he created an instrument and used it, and I will never forget him.

I used to be the same way. I reserved my best behavior for people I didn’t live with and let my family have what was left over. My mom and I fought constantly for years. I exploded over stupid things, and I was grouchy all the time. I’m a little older now and married. I don’t even know where most of my friends are, let alone what they’re doing. The people I thought were most important to me are gone. Now I realize that my best friends are at home.

Friends come and go, but families stay forever. Literally! Eternity will be much more fun if we’re friends with the people closest to us.

Start out small. Smile, give compliments, and express your love! When something makes you angry, pause and ask yourself, “Is this worth getting angry about?” Nine times out of ten it won’t be. Remember that your moods are your own and that you can set them. You can make yourself be cheerful. And it gets easier with practice.

You’ll find that a change in your mood and behavior will affect everyone in the house.

Ruth Boston, 21Salt Lake City, Utah
I know just how you feel! I go through that sometimes too. It’s sad how much we take our family for granted. We can’t act that way toward our friends for fear of losing them, but we know our family can’t go anywhere! Try to be more patient. Get more rest. Start your days with a prayer to Heavenly Father to help you be cheerful and loving. Then let your first words be kind ones! Try serving them, and don’t forget to let them know you love them! Good luck!
Wendy McGraw, 16Edmond, Oklahoma
When you go home, put yourself in a positive frame of mind. Tell your brother or sister that they look good. Compliment your mother on her cooking. Ask your dad if he had a good day at work. You’ll find that you enjoy being at home a lot more, and your family will love being with you.
Dawn Whetten, 13Plano, Texas
Just a couple of months ago I too was great to my friends, but when I came home, I would pick fights over the littlest subjects with my parents. I began to be depressed with my actions. I love my parents very much, and I wanted to find a solution to my problem. I found that prayer, scripture reading, attending and really taking Church meetings to heart, and speaking to my parents about my problem soon led me to the path back to being the real daughter of God that I should have been all along. I’m not perfect yet, but then again, neither is any of us. So just keep trying!
Laura Kim Wright, 17Franklin, Indiana
Well, if you want to change, that’s the first step. Now doing it is sometimes awkward. With my friends I always felt comfortable. They knew my secrets, and I knew theirs, but at home there was a distance, and it took help from both sides to pull us together.

I looked at what made me happy with my friends and did the same things at home. I shared secrets, stories, experiences, and found even my parents had some stories to tell. As soon as I stopped talking and saying me and I all the time and started listening and using words like you and us, I found my best friends were my family. It hasn’t solved every problem, but it sure started smoothing the big ones out. Knowing that my family, especially my parents, are my best friends and love me in spite of my mistakes and faults really made home and family a place I wanted to be.
Name withheld
First of all write down something good about each person in your family and keep this to refer to. Set time aside for your family so that you can do something fun together.
Talk to your family. They can help, and they love you very much. Remember when all else fails or whenever you need help, your Father in Heaven is always there and waiting for you to call upon him.
Wendy Jo Fackrell, 17Nampa, Idaho

The first example relates to the passing of my mother in October 1994. Our immediate family (Mom, Dad, my younger sister, Barbara, and I) had gathered for the weekend at my sister’s home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to celebrate Mom and Dad’s golden wedding anniversary. Although their anniversary was on October 20th, we decided to celebrate it the weekend before—from October 14th through the 16th—because I was choreographing a musical at BYU that was scheduled to open shortly after October 20, and I needed to be back in Utah with enough time to fulfill my professional obligations.

My sister and I prepared a weekend full of surprises for our parents, beginning with four gold-colored, helium-filled balloons with Happy 50th Anniversary printed on them, each balloon symbolizing each one of us. These we tied to a banister just inside my sister’s front door to greet our parents when they arrived. We enjoyed the most wonderful time that weekend that we had ever spent together as a family.

It was important to my sister and me that our parents have a final surprise on the actual date of their anniversary. This, we decided, should be a bouquet of Peace roses, a variety that Mom had chosen as her wedding flowers. As we proceeded to order these flowers, we learned that that particular variety no longer existed, but there was one that was very close—yellow with a tinge of pink around the top of the petals—and they had to be ordered from Holland. No problem. We ordered one-and-a-half dozen of them to be delivered to our parents’ home in Edmonton, Alberta, on the 20th. As soon as we hung up the phone, I regretted not having thought quickly enough to order 20 roses to symbolize the date of the anniversary. However, we decided to leave the order as we had placed it. And that was that.

Early in the morning of October 17th, the day we had designated for my parents and me to return to our respective homes, Mom suffered a severe stroke that ultimately took her life just after midnight on October 19th, one day short of the 50th anniversary. When we arrived home from the hospital that night, one of the four balloons on the banister, out of helium, was lying limp at the base of the other balloons.

The flowers from Holland suddenly became funeral flowers and were rerouted to Calgary for the private funeral we held there on the 20th. When the flowers arrived at the funeral home, there were not 18 roses but in fact 20. And during the ceremony one rose began to wilt. By the time we took the flowers back to my sister’s home, that one flower had significantly withered, leaving 19—for us symbolic of the date my mother passed away. A mere coincidence? I choose to think not. For us it was the Lord’s arms around us, telling us in His own way that it was time for our wife and mother to return to Him and that all was well.

Next: "I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink."[6] Having grown up along the banks of the Columbia River in Washington state, I never really acquired a serious appreciation for water--drinking water--until I spent some time in a country where you must not drink the water that comes out of the tap unless you wish to become seriously ill.

On the screen you can see three large six-liter bottles of water—yes, water. The bottle in the middle holds the first six liters of water that came out of the tap one day in the apartment where I stayed on a study abroad trip in St. Petersburg, Russia, about 12 years ago.

I honestly don't know what exactly made the water so orange, but it was rather disturbing to look at and contemplate drinking. Unseen in this water is a nasty parasite called giardia lamblia, which you really should avoid.

The bottle on the left contains the next six liters of water to come out of the tap--slightly less colored.

The bottle on the right has clear, pure water and was straight from the store. On the label is written, in rather small letters, pit'evaja voda, or "drinking water."

I'm sure you can guess from which bottle we chose to drink. This water was not easy to acquire: It involved carrying these rather heavy bottles about a quarter of a mile from the nearest store that sold them and then sometimes lugging them up the stairs when the elevator in our apartment building didn't work. They were not cheap, either, but the alternative was not appealing.

When I returned to St. Petersburg in 2015 to spend two months on a sabbatical leave, I was quite relieved to see a bottled-water dispenser in my host family's kitchen. I had a reliable source of clean drinking water.

My father once taught me about being "automatic for the Lord." I love all sports, but I really love basketball. When I was in high school, I was way too big and athletic to play varsity ball and so I played for the Pocatello 16th ward. Church ball was more important than anything to my friends and me. We played hard and my dad coached. I worked with my dad at our family business and one night we were hurrying home to get to a ball game. We were late, it was snowing and my dad pulled in the driveway. He stayed in the truck while I ran in the house to grab my gear. I jumped back in the truck and we headed down the street.

At the end of the street, Sister Olsen, a widow in the ward, was shoveling her driveway. My dad pulled over and said, "Grab her shovel." And then he took one out of the back of our truck and we started shoveling Sister Olsen's walks and driveway. I couldn't believe it. I was not happy. I might have even asked my dad, "What are you doing?" This game was important, not only to me, but to my dad too. Now I don't remember if we made it to the game, or if we won. But years later, I remember serving someone in need. I was taught what it meant to be a representative of the Lord. My Dad didn't hesitate or even have to think about not stopping. It's just what he does. I remember specifically feeling the spirit as Sister Olsen thanked us for the help.

A stirring example of their powerful desire to live the gospel is the story of Peter Vidmar, gold medalist in gymnastics at the 1984 Olympic Games.
As a boy of 11, Peter joined the Culver City Gym Club.
“And nobody after that could ever fault him for his drive, or his desire, or his purpose. Six days a week he worked out at the club, three to four hours a day and 10 on Saturday.
“Peter’s coaches, the widely respected Sakamoto brothers, Makato and Isamu, were suitably impressed. Not only was this kid willing to put forth the effort, he had potential.
“With more hard work they told him he could be world-class. And that would mean working out on Sunday as well.
“End of career. Or so it seemed.
“A teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood at the time in the Westchester 2nd Ward, Inglewood California Stake, Peter didn’t need to go to his bishop to ask what he should do. Even though that would have been easy since his father, John Vidmar, was the bishop.
“He told the Sakamotos he couldn’t train on Sunday for religious reasons.
“They kicked him out of the club.
“In their rigid training regimen, the Sakamotos looked at disobeying a coach as anathema. They had asked an athlete to follow an order and he had rebelled. In their minds they had no choice.
“Neither did Peter, who accepted the consequences and began searching for an alternate program. He couldn’t find a suitable replacement and began working out at nearby Venice High School, mainly on his own. It was not a happy time for a 15-year-old boy whose road to the Olympic Games had hit upon a detour.
“Happily, the impasse didn’t last. After four weeks, the Sakamotos came to Peter. They were now convinced it was a strong religious principle he was honoring—his persistence in staying away proved that—and they said he could be reinstated.
“From there it was nothing more complicated than work and success and then more work and more success, six days a week.
“When it came time to choose a college, Vidmar chose nearby UCLA since Makato Sakamoto would be his coach there as well. Through four years together they produced four NCAA all-around titles. Naturally, they moved on in tandem to the Olympic Games, which would be held not only in their home town, but in their college gym.
“When Vidmar finally got to the top of the Olympic parastyle, gold draped around his neck, nobody on earth knew better what he had gone through than Makato Sakamoto, who stood just off to the side and gestured with joy himself.
“Not only had he taught Peter how to get to the top, he had learned a lesson from his pupil in the process: You can get there without working out on Sunday. In fact, Sakamoto no longer coaches on Sunday, reserving that time for his family at home.
“‘He found out he needed that time away from the gym, and changed his thinking,’ says John Vidmar, Peter’s dad and former bishop.
“Brother Vidmar recalls that dilemma that threatened his son’s career when he was not quite 15 years of age.
“‘He was devastated about getting kicked out of the club. He loved gymnastics,’ he related. ‘But he never wavered. He didn’t ask me what he should do. He just told me, ‘No way, Dad, I won’t work on Sunday’” (Church News, 12 Aug. 1984, pp. 7, 11).

Living the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ just makes us happy! Listen to the conversion story of Dr. Richard Huang, a former atheist and a medical doctor from New York. He works as a pathologist and described himself as being logical and rational. He is a believer in facts. And yet he stated: “I was never really sure about my life. I knew that I live in this world, I knew I existed, but there wasn’t really a certainty as to the purpose, as to why, and as to what’s going to happen to me. Since I wasn’t happy and I wanted to change my life, I thought I should probably do something I had never done before. The opposite of atheism is theism, so that’s something I decided to explore.”[35]
So, he went to the internet and started his research with the book of Christianity, the Bible. And because the Church of Jesus Christ gives Bibles away for free, he requested one. A couple of days later, two sister missionaries stood at his door to deliver the Bible. They started teaching him, and a friend from medical school invited Richard to his home and to church. Richard was skeptical, but his friend invited him just to come and see and observe. He went for the experiment and was totally surprised at what he found. He describes it in the following way:
“These are people who are extremely happy, right? They always have a smile on their face, and they’re just laughing all the time. And to me, it was like watching a beer commercial without the beer.
“When I was looking for my faith, I was expecting a miracle to help me see the light, but God knew that I would not have believed in miracles, so what He did was put people in my life to show me the truth of the gospel. And I believe in people. It was like this big moment of clarity when I realized that if everything that I have heard is wrong, if everything is not true, then why are these people so happy?
“Everything they do is guided by their principles. And because I saw the fruit of them living the gospel, I was able to reason that the principle they live by must be true.
“I never thought I would ever end up being [a member of the Church]. Um, I am eating my words now. What I have found is I have a sense of purpose. It is to become better, to become more like Christ. And now, to me, my faith is everything, and I am so happy that I made that realization.”[36]

My beloved sisters, I think my first awareness or consciousness of the existence and the importance of the Relief Society came very early in my life.
My family left Salt Lake City for Arizona when I was three years old. My mother then had six children, and during the time that she went through five more pregnancies and five more births, she was president of the ward Relief Society.
We went to a new land, where water was drawn out of open wells; where flies were so thick you could hardly see out of the screen door in the evening; where typhoid fever was prevalent, and many other diseases, too; where medical help was extremely limited—there were no hospitals, no nurses, and no trained people except the country doctor who had more than he could ever do.
I read in my mother’s journal not long ago such expressions as these: “I left the children with Ruth or Delbert or with Gordon and went to Sister Smith’s home where the second twin had just died and where there were other children desperately ill with typhoid fever.” Again: “Today I spent the day with other sisters making burial clothes for the two children of Sister Jones.” and on and on and on. That was my introduction to Relief Society, and I am sure that to some degree that kind of work is still going forward, for as I understand your work, it includes not only the spiritual and the moral, but also the physical well-being of the people of the ward.

The 2005 hurricane season in the southern United States and the western Caribbean was the costliest and most devastating on record. Storm after storm lashed at homes and businesses from Honduras to Florida. Thousands of priesthood-directed volunteers were there each time a hurricane struck, providing the necessities to sustain life. Hygiene and cleaning kits, food, water, kitchen sets, bed linen, and other commodities helped clean homes and establish temporary housing.

Brother Michael Kagle took a convoy of trucks loaded with equipment from his own company to Mississippi. Many employees, who are not of our faith, volunteered to go with him every weekend to give assistance in the storm-stricken areas. Walkie-talkies were used for communication along the way. Mike’s high priests group leader, while driving along with them in his pickup truck, said he had white knuckles from driving so fast. Trying to slow the convoy down, he got on the walkie-talkie and said, “Gentlemen, do you realize we are going 80 miles per hour?” One of the truck drivers came on and said, “Well, you have to understand that’s all these big trucks will do. We can’t go any faster.”

Hundreds of letters of gratitude have been received. One woman, a nurse from Mississippi, wrote: “I was speechless. Had God answered my prayers so quickly? Tears immediately began to roll down my cheeks as men in hard hats and boots, with chainsaws of all shapes and sizes, appeared out of the debris. It was absolutely, unequivocally, one of the most supreme sacrifices that has ever happened to me personally.”

This project helped 11 villages with 18,000 people. In short, the people of Gubbi Taluk in the Tumkur District needed water. During the summer months, women would have to walk four kilometers to bring drinking water to their homes. The people have some wells, but they are very dirty, causing waterborne illness, diarrhea, cholera, skin diseases, etc. This area also has seen farmers commit suicide as they cannot carry on their debt and are unable to bear the sight of their starving children.
LDS Charities (LDSC) partnered with St. Thomas Mission to dig three new borewells and three new tower holding tanks along with repairing two existing towers and tanks. The contractor also enjoyed helping to create one water tank for the farmers’ livestock and several washing stations for each village. The finances came from LDSC, but the people, connections, and trust came from the Mission. Father Francis said, “We believe that you are angels sent by God to the people to quench their thirst.”
The government was not able to do this project due to the scarcity of funds, and so they are thankful to LDSC for having taken up this project. When the wells were dug and the water burst from the ground, the people were leaping for joy and they said, “LDSC is a gift from God.”
One village woman said, “Now I can get water every four days with many pots, instead of walking long distances every day to fill one pot.”