Gospel Story Finder

Many experiences have reaffirmed for me that our Church is divinely led and that priesthood leaders are inspired as to whom to call. One of those experiences took place in 1997, when I was a newly called General Authority. One of my first assignments was to assist Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in reorganizing a stake. Although I looked forward to this opportunity, I was a bit apprehensive because of my lack of experience.

During the reorganization process, we interviewed many priesthood brethren in the stake. It became apparent that several of these brethren were fully capable of successfully accomplishing the responsibilities of a stake president. The question then became: Which of these men did the Lord desire to be called?

After considerable discussion and pondering, Elder Hales and I felt prompted to select a particular candidate. Elder Hales then asked me to offer a prayer. What happened next was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. During the prayer, I asked for confirmation of the Spirit. As I uttered the name of this priesthood brother, the Holy Ghost bore such a powerful witness that he was the Lord’s choice that I could barely finish the prayer. Elder Hales and I both knew by revelation that this was the man the Lord had chosen. How blessed we are to be members of the Church, which is directed by divine inspiration!

Experience #2
In 2019, after 11 seasons as a head coach, I was called as stake president of the Annapolis Maryland Stake. At first, I wondered if the General Authorities were sure it was me. Maybe they didn’t know my schedule. Maybe they didn’t know how busy I was. But, both General Authorities bore their testimonies to me and my wife that the Lord clearly revealed to them, individually and collectively, that it was me. After that, I was at peace because I knew that they were called of God AND the Lord revealed to me that it was His will.

On our short ride home after that interview, I was still kind of in shock. The thought came to my mind, Lord, how can I do this? How can I be a stake president and a Division 1 head football coach at the same time? Then the Lord clearly showed me a vision. I saw my house, I saw the Naval Academy, and I saw the stake center. My house, the Naval Academy, and the stake center were all less than five minutes apart from each other. I saw a vision of me leaving our football field, getting changed, and rushing off to the stake center for a stake meeting. Brothers and sisters, that exact vision actually happened many times as I served as stake president.

2019, my first year as stake president, was the best season of my career! We finished 11-2 and ranked in the Top 25. I thought, wow, this is pretty sweet, just faithfully serve the Lord and honor your covenants and everything will be smooth sailing! Well, the next couple seasons weren’t so smooth; we had losing seasons. It caused me to be on my knees more in prayer, it caused me to study the scriptures harder, and it caused me to plead more with the Lord for help. The trials of those three seasons caused me to be close to the Lord, and it allowed me to hear His voice. I believe it helped me receive clear guidance from the Lord on how to lead our stake during the turbulent times of the pandemic. I also believe the great success of the 2019 season showed me that I could do both, be the head coach and stake president, and be successful if that was the Lord’s will. The Lord was clearly guiding me.

When Elder Cordón was a child, his father’s business went bankrupt and they had very little money. One day, Elder Cordón heard his parents talking about whether they should pay tithing or buy food. They decided to have faith and pay tithing. The next day, someone offered to pay his dad for work. They were always blessed with food on their table. Elder Cordón testified that we are blessed when we obey.

While I was serving as a bishop many years ago, my counselors and I decided that we would visit all of the members’ homes once a year. During one such visit we walked along an abandoned railroad track that was lined on both sides with small cardboard-box homes no larger than six feet by six feet (about 2 m by 2 m). This small space served as a family’s living room, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen.
The adults living in that area have set ways and established routines. Men are mostly unemployed or underemployed. They spend much of their time gathered together around makeshift tables smoking and sharing bottles of beer. The women also gather, focusing their conversations on the most controversial news of the day, sprinkled with backbiting and gossiping. Gambling is also a favorite pastime for the young and old.
What disturbed me most was that the people seemed content to live out their entire lives in that manner. I later concluded that perhaps for most of them, hopelessness allowed them to believe they were consigned to this fate. It was indeed a heart-wrenching sight.
Later I learned that my counselor, who was an engineer, used to live in that area. I never would have guessed it because his family was much different from the families I saw there. All his siblings were educated and raising good families.
My counselor’s father was a simple man. After I met him, questions came to me. How had he elevated himself? How did he pull his family out of those conditions? What made him catch a vision of what could be? Where did he find hope when everything about him seemed hopeless?
Many years later, in the Manila Philippines Temple, I attended a gathering of all the mission presidents and their wives then serving in the Philippines. A wonderful surprise greeted me as I entered one of the rooms in the temple. Standing before me was the father of my counselor—that quiet, unassuming man—dressed in white.
At that moment there opened before my eyes two scenes. The first scene was of a man drinking beer with his buddies and wasting away his life. The second scene showed the same man dressed in white and officiating in the ordinances of the holy temple. The stark contrast of that second glorious scene will forever remain in my heart and mind.
What allowed this good brother to elevate himself and his family? The answer is found in the power of the word of God.

The European trip was one of the first professional ventures the family undertook. It consisted of 28 concerts in 10 countries, many of them given for local Church groups in areas they visited.
“In England the missions used the concerts for fellowshipping,” Brother Phelps said. “They told us, ‘We’ve had people attend who haven’t been to church in 15 years!’ One of the mission presidents invited the entire town to hear the concert, had the mayor speak, and then had our family present the mayor with a Book of Mormon. During the intermission of a concert in France, a missionary came dancing back to tell us, ‘I’ve got my first contact, my first investigator!’”

When Cathy Gurley was young, she had a dream. More than anything else, she wanted to be Miss Rosewood, queen of her school. Her goal was to be someone that the other students at the school would look to as an example. So she practiced dancing and singing, talents she thought would help her win the contest.
When she was a senior in high school, Cathy was voted Miss Rosewood in the town of Goldsboro, North Carolina. Then she started winning other contests, like the district FHA Sweetheart, and queen of the Wayne County Fireman’s Pageant, and eventually Miss North Carolina Teen Hemisphere.
But on her way to those recognitions, Cathy became a real winner when she developed another talent. It wouldn’t help her win a contest, but it helped her win friends and lift the spirits of people who needed help. Cathy learned how to care about other people.
“I really enjoy helping people,” said Cathy. “When I smile, I like to see them smile back. And so many people need someone to help them.”
Cathy has been helping people—the elderly, the retarded, the handicapped. She’s spent hundreds of hours visiting her friends at rest homes, singing at dances for retarded people, visiting at a center for severely retarded people, adopting a grandparent, helping her mother teach a Sunday School class for the retarded, and being a friend to people who are too often friendless. Cathy’s mom gave her encouragement along the way and helped organize many of the parties where Cathy performed.
“My older brother Bobby is retarded, so it’s natural that I’d associate with other retarded children,” said Cathy. “I couldn’t ask for a better brother. He’s seven years older than I am, and I was born on his birthday. He’s always said that I was his birthday present. We’ve been very close.”
Cathy would go to parties for her brother Bobby and his friends and sing for them. “I’ve always wanted to be an entertainer, so it was fun for me. They don’t care how bad you sing. They appreciate even small things. The rest of us need to be more like they are.”
Cathy’s mother worked in rest homes when Cathy was little and sometimes had to work on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. “I wanted her to understand why I couldn’t be at home, so I’d bring her to the rest homes with me on those holidays,” said Sister Gurley.
“She’d leave me and go talk to the people. Cathy has never been afraid of a retarded or elderly or handicapped person, maybe because she was brought up around them.”
Growing up with her brother also helped Cathy develop sensitivity to others. Her mother said, “I’d come home from work tired, and Bobby would say he wanted to go meet his friends. I’d tell him I was just too tired and couldn’t get him dressed. Then Cathy would say, ‘If I dress him and get him ready to go, would you take him?’
“Christ told us we need to become like little children. So many of these people have that sweetness like little children. They never hold a grudge or lash out at people,” added Sister Gurley.
Cathy has also spent many hours helping at rest homes. “I guess because I was so close to my grandparents and my mother is a nurse, it was easy for me to volunteer my time,” said Cathy. “My Aunt Mamie worked as a recreation specialist at a rest home when I was 11, so she’d ask me and my cousin to go over there and help. We’d spend the whole day. We’d play bingo with the people. I’d help roll them in their wheelchairs out into the middle of the halls for supper, deliver the mail, read to them if they needed it, and just talk.”
Eventually, Cathy “adopted” a grandfather, a friend of her grandmother.
“My grandfather died when I was very young, so my grandmother started dating Waldo,” said Cathy. “They’d come out to my house to visit, and I enjoyed his friendship. When my grandmother died, he sort of got out of circulation and didn’t have any companionship. My grandmother had more or less taken care of him and fixed him supper each day. So Waldo and I kept in touch, and I decided to adopt him. I’d call and see how he was doing, stop by to see him, visit him on holidays, and take him treats. Now he’s in a rest home, and we keep in close touch.”
Cathy has helped with a Sunday School class for the handicapped, too, held in her home after regular church meetings. The first hour of the class the students learn about the scriptures, and the second hour they do crafts. Cathy often makes cookies or cupcakes for them. She also found time to organize a drill team for grade school girls.
Cathy has always found time to accomplish her goals. She has helped with political campaigns and even served as a page in her state legislature. She attended seminary for four years. (“It really helped me gain a testimony,” said Cathy.) She took modeling classes for several years, and her teacher encouraged her to enter the Miss Teen North Carolina Hemisphere competition.
“I won the state competition, so I competed in the nationals, which were held in Philadelphia and included the western hemisphere—Guam, Canada, the U.S., and the Bahamas,” Cathy said.
“I learned that it wasn’t that important to be beautiful. I just wanted to put on my jeans and be myself, but for 24 hours a day I was there fixing my hair and putting on lipstick, and I’m just not used to doing that much. You couldn’t go out of your door unless you were all dressed up, and that’s just not for me.
“I really enjoyed entertaining others for the competition, though, and it helped me develop a talent I didn’t think I had. I’d always taken ballet, but I realized I needed another talent to win the state competition. I told my mom, ‘I’ve got to sing!’ She smiled and said, ‘You can’t sing.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m just going to have to learn.’ So I took lessons and practiced, and I won the contest. I realize now that I can sing and not be embarrassed. I met some nice people in the pageant, too.”
She also realized that she was an example to a lot of her friends. “Lots of times at high school I wouldn’t go to parties because I knew there would be drinking. Everybody would go, and I would sit home. It wasn’t always easy, but it was the right thing.
“Then some of my friends would tell me things like ‘I really don’t enjoy drinking, and I don’t know why I do. I wish I had the courage to say no.’ They’d see me and realize that they didn’t have to drink. It’s important to do what you know is right.”
In the Gurley’s front room, Cathy’s trophies are displayed. She’s won awards for most valuable cheerleader, most valuable model at her modeling school, FHA Sweetheart, and first-place in beauty, talent, modeling, and most photogenic for North Carolina Teen Hemisphere.
But she doesn’t need a trophy for the things that are most important to her. She carries those qualities around with her every day.
The Savior said, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).
That’s another goal that Cathy’s working toward.

Two of my closest friends hated each other, and they would put the other one down. One day I finally told each of them, “Well, she’s my friend, and I’d really feel a lot better if you’d just keep your comments to yourself because if you are going to make me choose between you, then you aren’t really my friends.” Now they are talking to each other and are friends.
Heather Sorensen, 17Roosevelt, Minnesota

I got a kite for my birthday. It was fun to see it go up in the sky. Then the wind blew it into a tall tree. My daddy couldn’t get it down, so we prayed that Heavenly Father would help me get my kite back. Every day I went to look at my kite, but it was still in the tree. Several weeks later a big bucket truck came down our street. My mommy saw the truck and asked the men if they could get my kite down. They were happy to. I knew Heavenly Father would answer my prayer. I just had to be patient.

It’s time for another family gathering in Hooper, Utah. All the cousins scramble onto the big hay wagon, drawn by a team of Grandpa Parker’s Clydesdale horses, for a ride around the small farming community. During the ride Grandpa says, “This isn’t much different from the way the pioneers traveled across the plains.” The children smile because they know that Grandpa’s bay horses aren’t much like oxen.

Now the horses are ready to take the family for a ride. They trot as though they love to pull in their harnesses, and they are lucky to have someone who loves to train them.

After an enjoyable ride over to the park and back, Grandpa pulls on the right rein for the horses to turn into the area by the corral where he can unhitch them by reversing the harnessing process.

The children slide off the wagon, already looking forward to the next time that they come for a visit to Grandpa’s farm. It was a fun ride, but they are glad that they don’t have to ride on a wagon day after day or walk all the way across the plains as many pioneers did.

Imagine waking up to the smell of smoke, the sound of screams and gunshots, the sights of looting and beating. Imagine racially inspired violence so dangerous that schools close and curfews are imposed for days.
This tragic scenario might seem like something you’d see in a movie—the kind your parents and leaders would probably recommend you avoid—but during late April and early May this year LDS youth in the Los Angeles area actually lived it. They saw the rioting. They knew people who looted. They watched familiar buildings burn to the ground.
Yet even while the ashes were still smoldering, the Young Women of the Los Angeles area were busy putting the finishing touches on a long-planned multistake conference that would unite nearly 500 LDS young women of various ethnic backgrounds and affirm that the gospel offers peace to everyone.
The six-hour conference featured an address from Young Women General President Janette Hales. Her message focused on how the fundamentals of personal religious behavior, things like reading the scriptures, praying, and keeping the commandments, can get you through life’s trials and keep you close to Heavenly Father, no matter what is going on in the world around you.
The conference also included 15 workshops covering subjects like dating, preparing for a mission, self-defense, sign language, and baby-sitting. It was just what the doctor ordered for the girls after the tragedy of the weeks before. But the memories for some of the young women were still vivid.
“We went to the store before they burned it to get some food,” said Virginia Smith of the Inglewood Stake. “It was crowded. All of a sudden people were screaming and running to the back. Someone said there were people there with guns. So my mom said to get on the floor, ’cuz if they shoot, they’re not going to shoot down there. Then someone said they went out. The next chance we got, we headed for the door, got in our car, and left.”
Lisa Fu, of the Santa Monica Stake, was also affected. “I could see the looting in the morning when I went out. I have some friends who actually did it—just for their own benefit—because everyone else was doing it. We said to those kids who were taking groceries, ‘You just stole! Don’t you know what you did?’ And they said, ‘Yes, but we don’t know if there’s going to be a store tomorrow to buy food, so we have to get what we can now.’
“And sometimes I’d get really scared to walk by certain people because of the Korean incident. (A 15-year-old black girl was shot in a dispute with a Korean store owner.) Because they don’t know if I’m Japanese or Korean or what.”

My mom and I were shopping when I found a black skirt I just had to have. I tried on the skirt and came out to show my mom. She hesitated before saying, “Becky, I think it’s a little on the short side.” I replied that I didn’t think so and reassured her that all the girls at school were wearing similar styles—some a lot shorter. I tried for several minutes to persuade her to like the skirt.
My mom finally said firmly, “It’s too short. We’re not getting it. Go change.”
I didn’t understand why she was being so strict with me, especially when I felt like I was old enough to decide for myself what I could wear. Our shopping trip was ruined, and we drove home in silence.
Finally, my mom spoke: “Becky, the reason I didn’t let you get the skirt is because it didn’t look like you. That skirt was too short and didn’t reflect who you really are. You’re a daughter of God.”
My mom’s explanation taught me a principle that I will always remember. I am a daughter of God, and everything I do and wear reflects what I think of myself and how I feel about my Heavenly Father and my Savior.
Dressing modestly is a constant struggle, but I’m grateful that I didn’t give in and compromise my standards. I know that if we can come to truly understand that we are children of God, we will overcome our desires to dress like the world.

Shelby didn’t like hearing bad words, especially when her friends at school took the Lord’s name in vain.
“Please don’t say those words around me,” she’d say to her friends.
But sometimes they forgot, and she had to remind them.
One day Shelby’s friend Beth rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot. Nobody says those words in front of Shelby. She’s trying to make us good like she is.”
The other girls laughed.
Shelby was embarrassed. She felt bad for always asking her friends not to say those words around her—especially when they didn’t think the words were bad.
When Shelby got home from school, she flopped down on her bed. Her mother came in a few minutes later, and Shelby told her what had happened.
“Try not to worry about it,” Mom said. “You just keep doing the right thing, and eventually your friends won’t want to say those words anymore.”
“Why does it matter if my friends say those words?” Shelby asked. “It’s not like I’m swearing.”
“The prophets have taught us that we should keep ourselves worthy to feel the Spirit at all times. Bad words offend the Spirit,” Mom said.
Shelby remembered times she had felt the Spirit: at family home evening, when she bore her testimony, when she got a blessing from her father. Shelby liked feeling the Spirit, and she didn’t want to do anything that would offend that warm, peaceful comfort.
She made up her mind to keep being an example to her friends and help them to understand that she didn’t like to hear those words.
The next day at school, she heard those words again.
“Please don’t say those words around me,” Shelby asked Becca.
Becca glared at Shelby and then ignored her. Shelby was glad she had said something but felt sad that her friend was upset.
At recess Shelby heard someone say those words again. This time it was Beth.
“Please don’t say that around me,” Shelby said.
“Sorry,” Beth said, rolling her eyes.
Shelby felt silly once again.
At softball practice after school, Shelby hit a ball. It bounced to first base and got there before Shelby did. Shelby heard Bonnie, the new girl on the team, take the Lord’s name in vain.
Shelby hesitated. She was tired of asking people not to say those kinds of words around her. She didn’t want the other girls to make fun of her.
“Please don’t say those words around her.”
Shelby turned around to see who had spoken.
Beth was telling Bonnie that Shelby was a Latter-day Saint and that she didn’t say those kinds of words and didn’t feel comfortable hearing them either.
Bonnie turned and looked at Shelby. “Sorry, Shelby. I didn’t know.”
Beth grinned at Shelby. “I guess we’re all becoming more like you,” Beth said.
Shelby smiled. She was happy she had made the decision to be a good example to her friends and to follow the prophet’s counsel to keep the Spirit with her.

After I graduated, I decided to do a full-time mission, which was difficult as my family initially disagreed, and I decided to apply Alma’s advice in 37:37, and I prayed to the Lord to help me, and I began to prepare for my mission by saving a little money from my odd teaching jobs to fund my mission.

In 2018 when I submitted my mission papers, President Alfred Kyungu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Mbuji Mayi Mission explained to me the importance of doing a full-time mission and helped me with some advice to get there. I applied his advice, and it took me at least two years to get there and I saw other missionaries leaving on missions. It pained me at times, with everything, the sacrifice of cycling over 68 kilometers to get some documents I needed for my mission with other brothers with whom we were preparing together.
When we had submitted our papers, the COVID-19 pandemic had already started and foreign missionaries were forced to return home, and we were uncertain if we would serve a full-time mission. Two weeks later the prophet declared that we had to close the doors of the meetinghouses and 30 days later I received my call to serve a mission in the Kinshasa East mission with six months of preparation and saw the increase in the number of cases related to COVID-19.
I was still in a state of uncertainty, and I knelt down and asked the Lord if He wanted me to be a full-time missionary as I knew personally that He knew the situation perfectly, and my MTC date was postponed three more weeks. On Oct. 15, 2020 I started my training at Accra Ghana Missionary Training Center through technology and I experienced a most memorable experience of my life, spending the training on Zoom every day for three weeks made my faith grow and increase my trust in the Lord because He knew that He had prepared me to serve Him in this moment of technology in His work to learn the best ways to use technology and to help others to come to Him through this medium.
I am happy to serve Him in this time, I know that our Heavenly Father knows us personally and prepares us with the means to serve Him in his time by the tools He himself prepares to help us get there. Fervent prayer is the only way that can bring us closer to Him and help us prepare to become more like the Savior Jesus Christ.

Heiko Mazurek
Twenty-five years ago Heiko Mazurek was a young German music student in Vienna, Austria. One day he was walking down the street when a Book of Mormon display caught his eye. So he stopped to talk with the missionaries, and they gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He began to read it and to accept the missionary discussions. Eventually he was baptized.

Shortly after his baptism he moved back to his home in Germany to accept a teaching position in a music school. As the mission president at the time, I was concerned that a new convert might get lost in the shuffle of moving away so shortly after baptism. I called Heiko’s new stake president and asked him if he could give Heiko some special attention to assure that he remained active and committed to the kingdom.

A few weeks after Heiko’s arrival in Germany, his caring stake president invited him to travel three hours by train to a Saturday stake priesthood meeting to share his conversion story with the brethren. Heiko accepted the invitation with much fear and trepidation.

He’d never spoken to a large audience before, so the evening prior to his appointed speech Heiko spent a rather sleepless night tossing and turning. When the alarm clock finally rang, he turned it off and promised himself he would just sleep for a few more minutes and then get up. (Does this sound familiar?) However, he was so exhausted from his fitful night’s sleep that he awoke too late to catch the last morning train in time to arrive at the stake center to give his talk.

He hurriedly dressed and rode his bike to the small airport outside of town, and although he was a financially struggling musician, he chartered a small plane for $400 to fly him to his destination.

The stake president phoned me in Vienna after the meeting and described how Heiko had arrived all out of breath, but he gave a wonderful and inspiring testimony, and all in attendance were grateful for the sacrifice he had made to attend.

Several months later Heiko visited us in Vienna, and he recounted his experience of chartering a plane to the priesthood meeting. When he concluded, I asked: “Heiko, why didn’t you just call up President Rueckauer and tell him you would not be able to make it to the meeting and that you would be willing to speak on some future occasion?”

Heiko looked at me indignantly as he said: “President Condie, when the missionaries taught me the gospel, they explained the importance of commitments and of making covenants, and they said that when we make a promise to the Lord or one of His servants, we are expected to keep our word.” (See Spencer J. Condie, In Perfect Balance [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2004], 127–29.) To this day Heiko continues striving to do good continually, and Church members still introduce him to their nonmember friends as “the legendary guy with the airplane.”

Forty years ago this month, knowing of my interest in becoming a lawyer, Sister Funk served me with a “Summons to Court” and our courtship began. A few months later, I pleaded guilty to being in love with her and asked if we could be bound together forever. She said yes and my life has been eternally better as a result.

The president of the Church at the time we were married was President Spencer W. Kimball. He taught that we should not postpone marriage or children. We were married one week before I graduated from college and then we faced three years of law school together. A few days after my law school graduation, Sister Funk gave birth to our second child. Those early years were very hard financially, but we are grateful for our six children, their spouses, and now 13 grandchildren with whom we have been blessed.

Guillermo Javier Leiva remembers the pain of his divorce in 2007. He had to find his own apartment and was no longer able to return home every evening to his young son, Julian. He felt empty and alone.
“I was very unhappy,” he says, “and in moments of anguish, I looked for God.”
Guillermo began praying for answers and help. “I said, ‘Father, I’m not worthy for Thee to enter my house, but a word from Thee will be enough to heal me.’”
The answer to that prayer came a short while later when two young men in white shirts and ties stopped to talk with him while he was playing with his son outside his new apartment.
“One of them greeted me and asked if I had faith,” he recalls. “I told him yes but that I wasn’t the best Christian. He then asked if I would read a book if he left it with me. I told him yes.”
As Guillermo began reading the verses in Alma 32 that the missionaries had marked for him, he says, “I immediately felt a great joy in my soul that I hadn’t felt in a long time. The book touched my heart. I couldn’t stop reading.”
Guillermo no longer attended his previous church, but he told the missionaries that he had no intention of being baptized again. Nevertheless, he welcomed their visits and their reading assignments in the Book of Mormon.
As he read, his soul grieved with Nephi when he learned how that prophet had sorrowed “because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me” (2 Nephi 4:18). “I knew that I too had sinned,” Guillermo says, “and I felt bad about it.”
As he read, he felt that he was being rescued from darkness and despair and brought into “the light of the glory of God” (Alma 19:6).
And as he read of the baptismal covenant set forth at the Waters of Mormon, he realized the importance of baptism by proper priesthood authority. “If I recognized that the seed was good, what did I ‘have … against being baptized in the name of the Lord’?” (Mosiah 18:10), he asked himself.
“Every time I read, I felt peace and I found answers,” Guillermo says. “I realized that the Book of Mormon was the word of God I had asked for in my prayers.”
When he was baptized in March 2009, he experienced a spiritual rebirth and a renewed hope for the future. “Baptism was a chance to start over,” Guillermo says. “I have changed my life. I am very happy now. I know that this is the true Church of Jesus Christ and that God answers prayers because He answered the most important prayer I ever said.”

Photograph courtesy of Berry and Light Chu
Berry Chu of the Taipei Taiwan Central Stake needed wisdom beyond her understanding after she made an investment that didn’t turn out well, leaving her with a large debt. The situation briefly paralyzed Berry from moving forward. But Berry humbled herself and sought Heavenly Father in prayer. From that prayer, she gained the courage to tell her husband what had happened. With tenderness and humility, Berry’s husband, Light Tsai, reassured her that they would figure it out and overcome the debt. Together, Light and Berry prayed to seek the Lord’s guidance.
Berry and Light felt they could benefit from the Church’s self-reliance course for personal finances. Despite the overwhelming debt, they developed a repayment plan. With help from the course, they learned to “prioritize tithing and … to manage finances in a godly way,” Berry says. “We also learned to budget and prioritize our expenses for necessities only.”
Not only did Berry and Light learn to budget their income responsibly, but their personal finance group also inspired Berry to switch jobs. The transition led to a higher salary, which she could put toward paying off her debt.
Unified in their goal, Berry and Light used all their bonuses, investments, and extra income from their full- and part-time jobs to pay off Berry’s debt. With the Lord’s help, they covered all their expenses and, most importantly, still paid tithing and gave other offerings.

The answer to this question from the Roy Utah Central Stake young women is a resounding, “Yes!” With a goal to collect 1,000 pairs of new or gently used shoes from the members of their stake, the young women organized a shoe drive. On the day of the drive, the young women collected, cleaned, polished, tied together, sorted, and boxed up 1,223 pairs of shoes. The week following the activity, shoes continued to trickle in. When the shoes were finally dropped off at the Church’s Humanitarian Center, there were nearly 1,500 pairs of shoes ranging from baby shoes to hiking boots to sneakers.
One person who donated shoes left a note for the young women that read, “Thanks for doing this. It is a super neat thing for you to do. You will bless many lives.”

My daughter Carl Anne wrote to me describing a very difficult time in her life:
“In these lines of the song ‘Peace in Christ’:
‘There is Peace in Christ,
When we walk with Him.
Through the streets of Galilee
To Jerusalem.
Mend the broken hearts,
dry the tear-filled eyes.
When we live the way He lived,
There is peace in Christ,’”
“I have been impacted by these words because they remind me that in one of the most difficult moments I have ever experienced, I was able to recover because Jesus Christ helped me to remember the enabling power of His Atonement. I remember when my heart was broken, and I felt very sad about the loss of my first pregnancy—it feels like it was just yesterday—the day that I poured out my soul in prayer to My Heavenly Father seeking to feel peace and hope that everything would be all right. At that precise moment, I felt an intense warmth as if I were being embraced by my Savior Jesus Christ! Because He had experienced all of my pains and sorrows in the Garden of Gethsemane, I knew He felt my pain now. I knew without a doubt that Heavenly Father had a more perfect plan for me than I expected! Today, a year later, I am grateful to be the mother of a beautiful baby who brings me great joy, and to have the knowledge that it was all done in the Lord’s perfect timing.”

In 1989, when Daniel and Thérèse Kola learned about the restored gospel, much of their income came from sales of coffee, tobacco, and alcohol at their café. After accepting the Word of Wisdom, though, they wondered if it was right to market things they wanted to avoid. They debated what to do until the day of their baptism. They decided to give up their old livelihood, like Christ’s ancient disciples.
“In the morning, the decision was made,” Daniel Kola recalled. They sold their shop and were baptised, confident they had done what the Lord would have them do. “We had that joy in our heart because we felt something.”
For the next seven years, Daniel and Thérèse served faithfully as the Church grew in their country. Like others in DR Congo’s first generation of Latter-day Saints, they learned step-by-step. In 1996, Congolese Church leaders were challenged to take the next step in their development. Although Kinshasa was nearly 4,000 kilometres from the nearest temple, in Johannesburg, South Africa, a group of over 20 local leaders were invited to travel to the temple together to be endowed with power from heaven and sealed to their spouses for eternity. It was the first group temple trip in Congo’s history.
The years after the temple trip were vital ones for the Church in Congo. In the late 1990s, stake after stake was organized in the country. Most of the men first called as stake presidents, including Daniel Kola, had participated in that temple caravan.
In 2007, Daniel Kola was called as an Area Seventy. The next year, he travelled to Utah to attend general conference and was blessed to attend the temple an additional five times to perform initiatory, endowment, and sealing ordinances for his ancestors, including being sealed to his own parents. “When I received my endowment, there was a lot I didn’t understand,” Kola reflected. “But today, I understand, and my knowledge is much more profound.”
As he developed a deeper appreciation for the temple, Kola also developed a greater interest in family history. Along with many others, he came to recognize that he lived at a crucial time, when the names and stories of many ancestors were still in living memory but at risk of being lost if they were not recorded. In 2018, Daniel Kola’s nonprofit organization contracted with FamilySearch to travel around the Democratic Republic of the Congo recording oral histories, aiming to gather 400,000 names in 12 months.