Gospel Story Finder

While I was a mission president in Texas, I was informed that a particular missionary had lost his testimony and wanted to go home. Some checking disclosed that doubts of the divinity of his call had been planted in the young man’s mind by an investigator. In an interview with the so-called investigator, I experienced special discernment that enabled me to know that the man was actually a minister of another religion, posing as a college student and pretending to be honestly examining the Church. Confronted with what had been revealed to me, he became confused and admitted his fraud. With the truth known, the missionary stayed and completed an honorable mission.

My dad had been doing a lot of family history work. I loved hearing about my ancestors who were pioneers, ancestors who fought in the American Revolutionary War, and ancestors who had been kings and knights in Europe.
“How would you like to come to the Family History Library with me on Saturday?” Dad asked one day.
“Sure!” I couldn’t wait to see for myself the royal names on our pedigree chart.
We arrived in Salt Lake City and enjoyed the summer morning sunshine as we walked to the library. I became more and more excited the closer we got. There inside that big building were the names and stories of my own family—pioneers, soldiers, knights, and all.
Once inside, Dad pulled up a couple of chairs in front of a computer. We sat down, and he began navigating through databases to show me where our family tied into a royal line.
“Hmmm.” His forehead furrowed. “I can’t seem to find it today,” he finally said.
I was very disappointed. We spent the rest of the morning looking through books that held stories of my pioneer ancestors. I enjoyed that too, but I still wanted to learn about my other ancestors.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “We’ll come back next weekend.”
The week flew by, and soon Dad and I were sitting in front of a computer in the Family History Library again. This time, Dad said, “Aha! Found it.”
He scrolled through names of kings and queens from all over Europe recorded there in my family history! There were so many names and dates that it would take many days to get them all into our family history software. “We’ll have to come back a lot to get all the information we need,” I said.
A woman working on the computer next to us glanced over and saw what we were doing. “I’m related to that line too,” she said. “I’ve been working here every day to get information about those ancestors.” Within minutes, she copied all of her information onto a disc and handed it to Dad.
As we walked back to the car, I thought hard. “Heavenly Father must really want us to find our ancestors, don’t you think, Dad?”
He smiled. “I think you’re right. If we had found the ancestors we were looking for last week, we may not have met our new friend here today. And had we not met her, we would not have been able to find so many of our ancestors so quickly.”
I knew that Heavenly Father had helped us discover almost 1,000 years’ worth of family history in one morning. He loves our ancestors as much as He loves us. We needed to help them just as He had helped us—by finding their names, learning about their lives, and making sure their temple work was done. Someday I will meet them, and we can be an eternal family.

Because of my father’s experience, he was very anxious for me to have a good education. When I’d say, “But I don’t want to go to school,” he’d say, “Then I’ll go in your place. Do you think the teacher would mind? I wonder if I can fit into the seat at your desk?”

That always made me laugh because I think it would have frightened my teacher to see a grown man coming to school, and I knew he couldn’t fit into the small seat at my desk. So I would go to school.

Sometimes I’d complain, “My teacher makes me work too hard.” Then Dad would just smile and mess up my hair and say, “I doubt it.” (I’m not sure, but the way he smiled always made me feel as though he wanted that teacher to make me work hard. I never could understand why, for I thought the only good thing about school were the recesses.)

Later when I had graduated from high school, served a mission, and completed my courses in college, I went on to earn a Ph.D. from a school in New England. (Ph.D. just means you are a doctor that doesn’t give shots or fix broken legs. In fact, I’m not sure Ph.Ds can fix much of anything.)

When I received my diploma I wanted my father to have it. He had never received a graduation diploma from any school and I thought he deserved this one. I told him that although my name was on it, the diploma should really be awarded to him. I told him they probably just made a mistake in the printing. That made him laugh and then it made him cry. I wasn’t sure then why it made him cry—but I know now.

My father died last year, and now he is getting more of the education that he always wanted when he was a little boy. And me? Well, my wife and I have children of our own in school. And when they say, “But I don’t want to go to school,” I say, “Then I’ll go in your place. Do you think the teacher would mind? I wonder if I can fit into the seat at your desk?” And when they say, “My teacher makes me work too hard,” I just smile and mess up their hair and say, “I doubt it.”

Fathers, I guess, are like that. In His own special way, I think Heavenly Father is like that too.

Have a good year in school and learn all you can. It is going to be important to you for a long, long time. In fact, it will be important forever.

May I tell you of my own testimony concerning the benefits of Relief Society for single women?
After my husband’s sudden death several years ago, I felt that life was giving me more challenges than I should have. I felt a large amount of self-pity and rebellion to think that as a relatively young woman, I was facing the fact that I would probably spend the rest of my life alone. While I was wrestling with these problems, the opportunity came for me to accept a position at the headquarters of the Relief Society and to become a member of its general board. There was but one drawback—it required that I move far from my family and friends to Salt Lake City.
Of course, I accepted the calling and loved my work in it. But as satisfying as it was, I found that I still needed friends and companionship outside my world of work.
In Relief Society I found that I had friends in my ward. My testimony was strengthened as I participated in gospel studies and heard the testimonies of other sisters. It brought out my valuable feminine qualities, and I found opportunities for service, as well as for homemaking activities. It brought relief from some of the pressures of life and from loneliness, and it gave me a fresh point of view.

The pure love of Christ, which is charity,6 inspires us not only to act and provide service but also to have the strength to forgive, regardless of the situation. May I share with you an experience that has impacted and changed my life. Ted and Sharon, Cooper’s parents, who are here today, have given me permission to share what happened to their family more than nine years ago. I will tell the experience from the perspective of Ted, Cooper’s father:
August 21, 2008, was the first day of school, and Cooper’s three older brothers, Ivan, Garrett, and Logan, were all at the bus stop waiting to board buses. Cooper, who was four years old, was on his bike; my wife, Sharon, had walked.
My wife was across the street and motioned to Cooper to cross. At the same time, a car very slowly made a left turn and rolled over Cooper.
I received a phone call from a neighbor telling me Cooper had been hit by a car. I quickly drove down to the bus stop to see him. Cooper was lying on the grass, struggling to breathe, but had no visible injuries.
I knelt down by Cooper and said encouraging things like “It’s going to be OK. Hang on.” At that moment my high priests group leader, Nathan, appeared with his wife. She suggested we give Cooper a priesthood blessing. We laid our hands on Cooper’s head. I can’t remember what I said in the blessing, but I clearly remember the presence of others around us, and it was at that moment I knew Cooper was going to pass away.
Cooper was flown by helicopter to the hospital but did, in fact, pass away. I felt Heavenly Father was telling me that my earthly stewardship had ended and that Cooper was now in His care.
We were able to spend some time with Cooper at the hospital. The workers there prepared him so we could hold him and say our goodbyes and allowed us to spend as much time with him, holding him, as we desired.
On the way home, my grief-stricken wife and I looked at each other and started talking about the boy who was driving the car. We didn’t know him, even though he lived just one street over and was within our ward boundaries.
The next day was very difficult for us as we were all completely overwhelmed with grief. I fell to my knees and prayed the most sincere prayer I had ever offered. I asked Heavenly Father in the name of my Savior to take away my overwhelming grief. He did so.
Later that day one of the counselors in our stake presidency arranged for us to meet with the young man—the driver of the car—and his parents at the counselor’s home. Sharon and I waited for the boy and his parents to arrive. When the door opened, we met them for the first time. My bishop whispered in my ear, “Go to him.” Sharon and I embraced him in a big group hug. We wept together for what seemed to be a long time. We told him we knew that what had happened was the definition of an accident.
It was miraculous to Sharon and me, both that we felt the way we did and that we still do. By God’s grace, we were able to take the big path, the obvious path, the only path, and love this good young man.
We have become very close to him and his family over the years. He has shared his most precious milestone moments with us. We even went to the temple with him as he prepared for his mission.7

Janette Kasl lost her father when she was ten. Although she is now the mother of four, she vividly remembers how she wanted people to talk to her about the experience.
“I remember that I went back to school and everybody was studying as usual and I’d just had this trauma in my life and nobody was doing anything different. I just wanted to scream. Don’t keep silent. The more it was avoided, the more I thought that it wasn’t important to anyone else, and it was really important to me, so it was very hard,” she says.

Christmas is a great time to try to help your friend, especially because it is such a family-oriented time and will probably be particularly hard. But don’t forget your friend after the New Year’s parties are over. “That time is a letdown, even for people with normal families,” says Janette. “You can ease the letdown by visiting or just being there. The week after Christmas might be a good time to get someone involved in a service activity or something.”

“Every situation is different,” says Janette. “Something that worked one time might not again. The important thing is that you keep trying to help.”

Jim Jewell, who worked on the scriptures translation team at Church headquarters, tells a story of how close to home the scriptures can come when translated into the language of the heart:
“In translating the Book of Mormon into Sesotho, the language spoken in the African nation of Lesotho, we needed to find someone to help us evaluate the work of the translation team. The project supervisor, Larry Foley, identified a member of the Church from Lesotho who was a graduate student at Utah State University. In Lesotho, education is conducted in English, so this lady and her children had studied in English from the first grade on, but they still conversed at home in Sesotho.
“She agreed to work on the translation. Her evaluation of the chapters we sent to her was indeed helpful. We routinely submitted specific questions regarding vocabulary and language structure to which she provided helpful commentary. However, we noted that she had highlighted in yellow many verses unrelated to our questions. When we asked her about the highlighted verses, she said: ‘Oh, those are verses that touched my heart deeply which I had never fully understood in English. I highlighted them so that I could share them with my children.’”

When my children Mark and Carolyn were six and seven years old, respectively, they met a neighborhood playmate, Dana. Dana became a great friend, and through that childhood friendship, Dana and her mother became interested in the Church. Dana began attending Church services and Primary on a regular basis. Shortly after she was eight years of age, she was baptized. To this day, that friendship has strongly endured because its foundation in gospel principles was secure. There is nothing that provides a surer basis for true friendship than sharing the gospel truths with others.

One Sunday morning, we were sitting on the veranda when my oldest daughter, who was three years old, asked me a question that caught me by surprise. She saw some of her friends going to church in their nice clothes. “How come we don’t go to church?” she asked. At that time we weren’t attending church because my wife and I belonged to different churches and neither wanted to join the other’s church.
My daughter’s question really made me think. I was troubled because before I was married, I always went to church. That night I was inspired to kneel and seek divine guidance. I recall even saying that I would offer my life to serve the Lord.
A few days later, two young men knocked at our door and introduced themselves as messengers of the Lord. When I saw their calling cards, I remembered some things I knew about the Church. When I was young, I used to read western novels that talked about Mormon pioneers and settlements. I had also read about some members of the Church in American magazines. When we started talking about the doctrines of the Church, I was surprised to find that I already believed most of its teachings. I had read the Bible and knew that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost were three separate beings, and I felt that there must be prophets and revelation.
The elders continued to teach me for several months, but somehow I could not gain a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I had read the passages in the Book of Mormon that the missionaries marked for me, but I had trouble accepting their challenge to read the whole book.
I enjoyed having them in our home, but I had the feeling that they were getting discouraged with me. One day when they challenged me to read and pray, I felt that it would be the last challenge. I didn’t want to lose their visits, so I decided to read. This time before starting, I prayed with a real desire to know if the book was true. A miracle happened: instead of getting bored as usual, I was so interested that I couldn’t stop reading.
That night, after reading many chapters, I knew that this was the word of God. With a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, it was then very easy for me to accept Joseph Smith as a prophet. When the missionaries returned and asked me if I wanted to be baptized, I said yes. I was baptized in November 1964. I felt the Spirit of the Lord so strongly during my baptism that I really felt reborn. Besides the covenant of baptism, I made a private covenant that I would serve the Lord all my life.
I am very grateful to be a member of the Church. I hope that you children of the Church will learn through prayer and study that the gospel and the Book of Mormon are true. My wife and I have eight children whom we have raised in the gospel. I am grateful that my oldest daughter, when she was a small child, asked me that important question. Because of her, I began to seek the truth and to serve the Lord and others. You can help your parents and families remember the Lord, as my daughter helped me.

Every little girl should have the thrill of a new doll on Christmas morning. The Young Women of the Hughson Ward, Modesto California Stake, wanted to make sure such dreams came true for children of needy families. As a service project they dressed dolls and donated them to the community-wide Christmas basket project. Ward members donated the dolls, and the girls outfitted them in clothes of their own design.

Sister Moulder went to a training center in New York State for more than three weeks. She and Buddy learned there how to get along together. On their first Sunday together in our ward, Sister Moulder taught us how to help Buddy adjust to his new home and friends. Did you know that it helps Buddy if we do not look in his eyes, pat his head, or rub his ears? When he wears his working harness, he must not be distracted. If we invite him to play, we will be undoing the good training he has been given. We help him best by ignoring him. We must never call him by name or offer him food. He should take commands and food only from Sister Moulder. She takes good care of Buddy, and she trains him to behave nicely around people. He takes good care of her, showing her the way through the chapel door, down the hall, and into the Relief Society room.

When I was 15 years old, I decided to put the law of tithing to the test. I was working as a grocery bagger in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Every two hours I got a 15-minute break. During the break I would count how much I made in tips; then I would place my tithing money aside. After I started doing this systematically, I noticed that the amount of my tips increased! I don’t know that this was a result of divine intervention, but I knew that I was keeping a commandment and that when we keep commandments, sooner or later we receive blessings.
Of course, blessings don’t always come in quite the way we think they will. After I had been paying tithing for a while, I knew that what I was doing was sacred. It wasn’t just donating money to the Church. I was treating what the Lord had said with respect, and I was making sure my tithing was paid regularly and promptly. I was excited to do what I could to help build the kingdom of God.
Then one Sunday morning, I took longer than usual to wake up. My parents wanted to get to church early, so when I finally did get up, I was in a rush. I didn’t realize until we were at the meetinghouse that I had left my tithing money behind. “I’ll just pay it next week,” I thought. But I felt bad. I wanted Heavenly Father to know I was obedient.
After the meetings, we arrived home to find that our home had been burglarized. Jewelry, a video camera—pretty much everything that had value had been stolen. I rushed to my room and went through the drawer where I had left my tithing. It too was gone. Now I felt particularly bad. I felt that if I had remembered to bring my tithing to church, it would not be missing now.
Then I felt prompted to say something to my father: “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be OK. The person who robbed us took the Lord’s money, so he took something that is sacred.” I didn’t think the Lord would let that go unnoticed.
But I think the Lord wanted me to learn to be more careful with what belonged to Him. Soon the thief was apprehended, and everything was recovered—except my tithing money. To make things right, I took the same amount out of savings and took it to the bishop the very next Sunday. Ever since, I have always tried to pay my tithing in a timely manner. I know that tithing is a law from God, and that means I should take it seriously.

Camille N. Johnson has spent her life studying words, crafting them, and using them to help people solve problems during her more than 30-year career as a lawyer. And she has always found great peace in the words of the scriptures. She counts scriptural figures among her fondest friends.
Still, when she and her husband moved to South America to lead the Peru Arequipa Mission from 2016 to 2019, she longed for words. Having never studied Spanish, she prayed for the ability to communicate with her missionaries and the people so they would feel her love for them and her testimony of the Book of Mormon.
“I trusted in the Lord and relied upon the Spirit to communicate my love and testimony when words failed me. What a sweet and poignant lesson I learned to ‘lean not unto [my] own understanding’ [Proverbs 3:5] but to give it all over to my Savior.”
Along the way she relearned a simple truth of the gospel: “It is about loving the Savior, loving like the Savior, and letting the love and Atonement of Jesus Christ work in our lives.”
Sister Johnson was blessed with love for the mission’s 552 missionaries and now feels her heart expand to love the one million children for whom she has stewardship.
“I relish this opportunity to learn from the children who are a reflection of the pure love of Jesus Christ,” she said.

Three serious operations followed in very short order. There were only a few who knew about them and they were sworn to secrecy. Her pattern of life in the hospital was always the same. With her careful planning, she would attend church on Sunday, the operation would be performed early Monday morning. By Tuesday, she was trying to get out of bed. By Wednesday she would be up moving around, trying to regain her physical strength. Thursday would find her helping the nurses assist others who were in the hospital. Friday she would spend trying to convince the doctor that she was ready to go home. By Saturday morning the doctor would give up in despair and discharge her. Sunday she would be back in church looking radiant. No one would ever suspect that she had just gone through major surgery. After the meeting I would rush down to take her home to get her some needed rest. And as I would come close to her I would hear her say to someone else in need, “Now don’t worry about a thing. I’ll have dinner ready for you and at your home on Thursday night.”

Sitting in the courtyard of her high school, Aimee J. noticed that something was missing. Unlike other high schools, hers didn’t have a statue of the school’s mascot. She thought this was something she could probably change, having sculpted since she was young. All she needed was funding for materials and casting, as well as the permission and support of her school.
So Aimee drew up a proposal and presented it to the school principal. It was eventually approved, and Aimee started work on a model of the school’s mascot, a thunderbird. Her model was later cast in bronze to become a six-foot monument to her high school, dedicated to her senior class.
How did you feel while working on the sculpture? Sculpting the thunderbird was one of my Personal Progress value projects. I did the sculpting in May of my senior year, so I missed out on a lot of barbecues and parties. It was a service for all of my fellow seniors, and it took a lot of long hours being all alone in that sculpting room, but it was worth it.

—“When I first came here, I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to be,” said Melissa Marley, age 19. “I knew school was important, but it got to a point where just going to classes was a real drag.” Then she read an article in the campus paper about a new program in floral design, and decided to see what it was like.
“Remember,” she said, smiling, “I had just come from Green River, Wyoming. Living in Wyoming, you don’t see too many exotic plants.”
Soon she was spending hour after hour in greenhouses and floral design labs, surrounded by bright colors, breathing in sweet-scented perfumes.
“Even at the grocery store, I’d wander over to the plant section and start naming all the plants. My friends would look at me like I was weird. But I absolutely loved studying plants. I didn’t want to do anything else.”
—As a high school student from Ashton, Idaho, Ryan Gardner, now 18, participated in a student exchange program.
“I spent a year in Finland. While I was there, I was constantly noticing furniture. I was amazed at how beautiful a simple thing like a chair could be. I fell in love with their textiles—there were so many wonderful fabrics. And it seemed like in every home there was some kind of beautiful glassware. The more I saw, the more fascinated I became.
“One family I lived with had completely remodeled their home, from the plumbing on out. They redid everything themselves. It was a small home, and what they did wasn’t anything that cost millions of dollars. But there was a simple elegance in how they tied everything together, from the kitchen to the stairs to the furniture. The result was beautiful.”
When he returned to the U.S., Ryan, who had previously thought about being an orthodontist, decided to major in interior design.
—“My dad runs a welding shop,” said Blaine Hill, 19, who hails from Burley, Idaho. “He was always building swing sets and monkey bars for the family, doing repairs and making things for people. I grew up with welding.”
But he had no idea that it was the sort of thing he could get a degree in.
“I imagined that when you went to college you’d have to major in something big, like being a doctor or a lawyer or something to make money. I thought welding was something you did in your spare time.”
Then in high school, he heard about a welding contest sponsored by Ricks. He entered it, and it changed his life.
“I won a scholarship, so I came here just to get a feel of what it would be like.”
Not only did he discover that “welding is what I’d like to do for the rest of my life,” he also found out that it’s a topic of study and research at a number of major universities.
Blaine is currently serving in the Oregon Portland Mission. When he returns, he’ll “probably go on to Arizona State University for a master’s degree in welding engineering and technology.” That program, like the associate degree program at Ricks, has a job placement approaching 100 percent.
—“In high school, my older brother Jerry and I were real rivals,” explained Charisse Wolflick, 19, from Bend, Oregon. “He was always smarter than me. Then he took a drafting class and had trouble with it. So I took the same class just to show him I could do better.”
She did.
“At first I wasn’t sure that I liked it, but as the semester went on, I found I just loved it. I’d go in at noon and spend extra time on my drafting. Any time that I had, that’s what I wanted to do.”
A faculty adviser at Ricks steered her into design drafting and introduced her to the world of computers. Now she designs things like car parts and machines.
“We study natural forces, like the power of water and air,” Charisse said. “It ties in with the gospel because you think, The Lord made the whole earth, and we’re learning how it operates.”
Melissa, Ryan, Blaine, and Charisse figured out what they wanted to study mostly by being alert. Their road to discovery was fairly direct. But for others, traveling the road to discovery has meant maneuvering around roadblocks and detours, perhaps even making a U-turn.
—The son of a newspaperman, 18-year-old Michael Bitton of Idaho Falls had studied journalism since high school. He had also dabbled in drama. He was amazed when he landed a role in a major production at Ricks.
“I started thinking, This came so easily, maybe I should be in theater!” Soon, however, he found he was spending too much time with the show.
“My grades went down. I was on a scholarship and lost it. I was fired from my job because I didn’t show up.”
He looks back philosophically.
“Maybe being fired was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he said. “I discovered that success in one area is relatively unimportant if the rest of your life is falling apart.”
Now he’s back in journalism, and feels “certain that it’s where I want to be.”
—Melanie Finch, 20, of Idaho Falls, “always wanted to be a nurse.” But after candy striping and a high school vocational program which earned her status as a Certified Nurse’s Assistant, Melanie switched to another field.
“In nursing, you have to associate with just about every kind of person in the world, and have compassion for them all. I found out that’s not always easy to do.”
A year later, however, she became a nursing student again.
“I did a lot of growing during that year,” she said. “I realized just how important it is to take care of people, even if it is hard and dirty. Now I’m dedicated to helping others. And I’m happy to know I’m helping people who really need the help.”
—Caroline Olsen, a 22-year-old interior design student from Brampton, Ontario, Canada, enjoyed her studies, but wondered if they were superficial.
“I started to feel like what I was doing was unimportant. I mean, why be a designer? Who does it help? “Then one of the faculty members sat down with me and said, ‘Carrie, the things you develop will help others. Our environment is the most important thing that surrounds us each day. It creates an atmosphere for our workplace or our family. If it’s a good environment, it will influence us to be better people.’
“All of a sudden I understood that what I was doing was important. Thanks to that teacher, I found out I was doing something good.”
For Michael, Melanie, and Caroline, part of the journey to discovery was figuring out they were already following a good route. That’s the same sort of discovery others made in a different way, by becoming interns. It’s a process that allows students to temporarily enter the working world before returning to the classroom.
—Kevin Leach, 20, from Sparks, Nevada, spent a summer as an emergency medical technician intern in Atlanta, Georgia. He was able to associate with a lot of other people in the medical field. He came to see that besides his EMT and paramedic training, a nursing degree would be important. Since returning, he’s taken the additional courses necessary, and will soon graduate with three degrees.
“I’m not only going to be able to be a paramedic out on the streets, but I’ll be able to be a nurse in the hospitals, to ride on Life Flights, to teach emergency medicine up to a certain point, and to move up into administration. What I discovered was that some extra work can open a lot of doors.”
—Michelle Beach, 19, worked for 10 weeks in a floral design shop in Darmstadt, West Germany, not far from where her father is stationed with the army.
“They really wanted me to learn, so they gave me a lot of opportunities,” she said. “I worked on displays, color selection, care and handling of flowers, just about everything they do in the shop, except that I don’t speak much German, so I didn’t have much interaction with the customers.”
She studied firsthand the similarities and differences between German and American business practices, and between European and American floral designs.
“I learned that running a shop is not an easy thing to do. But it’s an opportunity to use your talents and work hard. And,” she said, “I found out that it’s really what I’m interested in.”
Through their internships, both Kevin and Michelle discovered something critical. They found that education doesn’t end when you leave the classroom. Learning is a lifelong pursuit.
That’s a topic Bart and Annette Heiner like to discuss, too. After all, they met in school.
—Annette describes herself as an “outdoorsy person,” a tomboy who was happy riding dirt bikes but not comfortable in the kitchen. It didn’t bother her at all to be the only girl in a welding class.
“When I first came here, my intentions were to graduate from Ricks, go on to Utah State University and graduate as a welding engineer, then to work.”
Bart grew up on a farm in Star Valley, Wyoming.
“I was always interested in industrial arts, particularly welding,” he said. He was also “kind of shy,” and only asked Annette for a date after prodding by an instructor who had them both in his class.
A friendship developed. Bart and Annette enjoyed doing things together.
“Then,” Annette said, “one time on the way home he started naming all these talents he wanted his wife to have—sewing, cooking, playing the piano—all these abilities I didn’t have. I said, Well, that’s it. I’ll never see him again. But by the time we got home, I’d forgotten about it, and we kept on dating.”
Soon they were married in the Idaho Falls Temple, and just recently their first child, Zachary, was born.
“Since then, I’ve discovered something,” Annette admits. “With a baby, every day you’re learning. I still enjoy outdoorsy things, and I still enjoy welding. But now I can hardly wait to graduate, so I can stay home and take care of our son.”
As students discovering a lot of things about welding, Bart and Annette made another major discovery—each other.
“And we learned there is something more important than anything else we want to be,” Bart said. “We want to be an eternal family.”
The Discovery.
Yes, it involves figuring out what to study. But it’s also more, much more. It begins as an awakening of curiosity, a finding of direction and purpose, an uncovering of natural talents and affinities. It blossoms into a growing knowledge of who we are and what we can do.
In fact, as these students at Ricks College are learning, finding out who you are is much more than an academic pursuit. It’s part of a lifelong discovery charted by our Father in Heaven—that we are his children, each blessed with unique abilities, and that if we will pursue them, he will magnify our skills.
Here are some tips to guide you along your road to discovery:
—Remember Heavenly Father knows you better than anyone. Pray. Get a patriarchal blessing. Study the scriptures. You’ll find that he can guide you to a great understanding of who you are and what you can be.
—It’s hard to feel inspired if you aren’t living right. If you need to, repent. Then the inspiration can be unrestrained.
—There may be many things you could successfully do. It may not be as important what you do as that you are honorable in doing it.
—You’ll spend a lot of time at work. Look for a career that will allow you to employ skills you enjoy using every day.
—Those who have discovered what they really want to do rarely talk about grades or money. They talk about how much they enjoy their work.
—Sometimes you have to try something to know it isn’t right for you. Chalk it up to experience. It can be a great discovery to know what you’re not interested in, too.
—Study lots of things. The more you become familiar with, the better chance you have of discovering what you really want to be. Take advantage of general education programs. If you’re at a Church school, attend forums and devotionals.
—Remember that a full-time mission, in addition to being a great opportunity to serve, is also an opportunity to learn and grow. A mission can be an education all by itself.
—Anything you truly learn will stay with you, through the eternities. (See D&C 130:18–19.)

I had often seen the battered old green truck sitting in the field under the big, scraggly elm trees that surrounded a broken-down cabin. Nobody lived on the ranch now, but I liked to explore the area, looking for old relics.
The day Sam went down there with me was one of those hot, lazy summer days when you’re restless for something to do. Sam had brought his BB gun. My dad would never let me have one. He said that they were only good for mischief.
When Sam and I came to the ranch lane, we turned in and wandered over to the pond, which was muddy around the edges and covered with algae.
“What this pond needs is some ducks,” I said. “They’d clean it up.”
“Right,” Sam agreed, raising his gun to his shoulders and aiming at nothing, “and I could clip them off with my trusty gun.”
We walked over to the truck and sat on the running board in the shade. We pulled up blades of field grass and chewed on the ends and looked out across the field.
“Who owns this truck?” Sam asked. “Your dad?”
“No,” I said, “one of my uncles.”
“Does it run?”
“I don’t think so.”
Sam stood up and walked around the truck, examining it. “It’s pretty old and beat up. I guess he’s just junked it down here.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I said as I looked at the truck. The tires still had air in them, and nothing looked broken, just old.
“Let’s take a few shots at it,” Sam said enthusiastically.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just for fun,” replied Sam. “The truck’s no good. It won’t hurt anything. Come on, move out of the way.”
I followed him out a little way into the field, where he raised his gun and shot a hole through the truck’s windshield. The sun glistened on the hole and the small sparkling cracks spreading out from it.
“Now, see how close you can come to my hole,” Sam said, handing me the gun. I hesitated, then raised the gun and shot. I made another hole, not very close to his. We took turns for a while until the windshield was full of holes. Sam shot a couple of times at the headlight. It was fun, in a way, to hear the craack! when one of us hit the mark, but a very uneasy feeling was creeping over me. “Let’s go now,” I said finally.
“We’re just getting a good start on this thing,” Sam said. “We can shoot it as full of holes as a sieve.” He laughed and raised his gun again.
“Look,” I said, getting a little angry. “It’s my family’s property, and I say we’re leaving.”
Sam lowered his gun, looked at me a minute, and shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you say.”
The next day our family left for our vacation to Yellowstone Park. We had a great time on our trip, looking at geysers and boiling mud pots and beautiful scenery. The day after we got home, my dad asked me to go down to the ranch with him to clear out the irrigation ditch. We climbed into the old blue pickup and headed for the ranch. After turning off the dirt road, we bumped across the field in the direction of the old truck.
Suddenly Dad put on the brakes and leaned forward. “What in thunder happened to that!” he exclaimed, nodding toward the truck. He slowly drove over to it, and we both got out. I was as surprised as Dad was. The hood was open, and wires were hanging out on both sides. The carburetor was in pieces and scattered on the ground. Looking inside, we saw that the radio was gone and that the instrument panel on the dashboard had been smashed in. The seats had been slashed. My dad turned and looked at me quizzically, but surprise showed clearly on my face too.
“This must have happened while we were gone,” he said. “I drove down around this way before we left and didn’t notice any damage to the truck.”
I heaved a big sigh of relief. He didn’t suspect me at all. I wasn’t guilty, anyway, I told myself. I certainly hadn’t done all this damage. I thought that my dad might ask me if I had any idea who had done it, but he didn’t.
That night at dinner Dad told Mom about the truck. “This is going to make a hardship on Uncle Cy,” he said.
I looked up quickly, my roast beef dry in my mouth. “Did the truck run, Dad?” I asked. “I’ve never seen Uncle Cy driving it.”
“Sure it did. He drives his car to get around, but he uses—used—the truck for hauling hay and garbage, things like that.”
“It looked so old and worn out.”
My dad looked at me sharply. “It was old,” he said, “but it served his needs. He sure can’t afford to buy a new one. He only has his retirement, nothing extra.”
Suddenly even Mom’s gooseberry pie didn’t look very good. I picked at my dinner a little more.
“Sometimes, Son,” my father said, startling me, “something isn’t very valuable in itself, but it has value for the person who owns it.” He looked at me so closely that I wondered if he knew, after all.
I excused myself and went out into the backyard and sat under the spreading branches of the willow tree. Uncle Cy had always been good to me. He was my grandpa’s brother, and he lived by himself in a tiny house with a coal stove and a big sheepdog. Mom took dinners to him sometimes. I still had a little horse that he had whittled for me.
I kept telling myself that I hadn’t really ruined Uncle Cy’s truck. The windshield and the headlight could have been replaced. Still, I felt responsible and guilty. Finally I came up with a plan.
On Saturday I went up to see Uncle Cy as soon as it stopped raining.
“Michael!” he said, slapping me on the back. “Glad to see you. Sit down a minute. I need an excuse to rest.” He motioned to a weathered gray bench under an old apple tree, and we sat down. “The rain was refreshing,” he said, wiping his forehead with a blue bandanna, “but it’s still hot.”
It was hot, all right, but I felt a chilly feeling in my stomach as I mumbled, “I was sorry to hear about your truck.”
Uncle Cy stuffed his bandanna into his pocket thoughtfully. “I was too. I don’t know how I’ll get hay to my horses this winter. I like to pasture them down at the ranch, where there’s water.”
“Well,” I said, shifting my weight carefully on the splintered boards of the bench, “maybe I could help you with that. I thought that maybe I could haul the bales in our wheelbarrow.”
Uncle Cy looked at me, and his old blue eyes were shining. “Michael,” he said, patting my leg, “that’s mighty thoughtful of you. Maybe we can work that out if I can get my hay hauled down there and into one of the sheds.”
“Dad will do that with his truck, I’m sure.” I didn’t look right at him. “I thought I could help with the garbage, too—maybe help you dig a hole to put cans and stuff in. We could burn the rest.” I was talking fast, and my palms were wet.
“That would be wonderful, Michael, but I couldn’t pay you very much.”
“Oh,” I said, looking up quickly into his ruddy face, “I don’t want to be paid. I just want to help.”
He looked steadily at me, and I looked at the grass and dandelions. “You’re a fine boy, Michael. Your dad can be real proud of you.”
I glanced up at Uncle Cy and saw tears shining in his eyes. I smiled at him, then took off up the lane.
As I neared home, my mind felt easier. I would help Uncle Cy with his work, and no one would ever need to know about my part in damaging his truck. But as I remembered his face and how pleased he was with me, something uncomfortable stirred in the back of my mind.
The next week school started. I went up to Uncle Cy’s two nights after school, and we dug the hole. I helped him smash cans and dump them into the hole. I burned garbage and cleaned up around his yard. When I’d finished, Uncle Cy put an arm around my shoulders. “I always thought that you were a good boy, Michael,” he said, “but I didn’t know how good until now.”
On Saturday we hauled Uncle Cy’s hay down to the ranch. The three of us loaded it, and Dad and I took it down. After we stacked the bales in an old shed, we sat down on the end of the truck bed and took a drink of cool water from Dad’s canteen.
“Uncle Cy’s really touched by all the help you’ve been giving him,” Dad said, “and I want you to know that I’m proud of you.”
I said nothing. The battered truck sat nearby in the sunlight accusingly, its wires hanging out like some wounded thing.
“Anything you want to tell me, Son?” Dad said quietly.
Suddenly, in a big relieving rush, I blurted it all out. “I don’t know who finished it off for sure,” I concluded. “Probably Sam and maybe someone else.”
Dad didn’t say anything for a while. He looked out over the fields.
“I guess you’re pretty disappointed in me,” I finally ventured.
“Well,” he said, “at least I’m glad that you told me. I kind of wondered if you knew something about it. What’re you going to do now?” he said.
I swallowed hard. “I thought that I was doing something about it, helping Uncle Cy out and all.”
“Yeah, that’s something, all right. But I wondered if you were going to tell him too.”
“Oh, Dad, do I have to?”
“No, you don’t have to. You didn’t have to tell me.”
“He thinks I’m such a great kid. If I tell him, he’ll know that I’m just a vandal.”
Dad laughed a little. “Maybe his opinion won’t be that bad. What you think of yourself is the most important, and I have a hunch that you’ll like yourself better if you tell him. Another thing, Sam needs a chance to make amends too. Maybe the two of you can haul those bales this winter.”
Dad was right. I felt as though a big weight had been lifted off my chest after I talked to Uncle Cy later that afternoon. Blackbirds called from the pond, and a meadowlark sang from the power lines as Dad and I climbed into the truck and drove home.

On Saturday Stephanie was happy because her grandma had come to visit. They had fun making round cookies, square cookies, and heart-shaped cookies.
On Sunday Stephanie and Grandma bundled into warm coats, furry hats, and warm gloves. They walked to church together. Grandma liked the talk Stephanie gave in Primary.
On Monday Stephanie put on a puppet show for Grandma and Rex the cat. Grandma laughed and clapped her hands. Rex licked his paw and went to sleep.
On Tuesday Grandma and Stephanie rode the bus to town for lunch. Stephanie was happy to see a fancy toothpick in her chicken sandwich.
Wednesday was Valentine Day, but Stephanie was sad. Grandma was going home today. Grandma handed Stephanie a long white envelope.
Stephanie opened the envelope. It was empty! “It’s a hide-and-seek valentine,” Grandma explained. “If you look in the kitchen, the living room, and your bedroom, you will have a valentine.”
“What fun!” Stephanie began searching in the living room. First she looked on the couch; then she ran to the bookcase. There she found a piece of red paper with lace on its edge.
Next Stephanie went to the kitchen. She looked and looked but couldn’t find anything on the counters or table. Then she looked in the silverware drawer and found another piece of the valentine.
Stephanie ran to her bedroom. A piece of shiny red paper with lace was hiding under her pillow.
“Now put the pieces together,” suggested Grandma. Stephanie laid the pieces on her bed and made a lacy heart-shaped valentine.
“The best part is still missing,” said Grandma. She gave Stephanie a big hug and said, “I love you.”

At school there was a girl with a disability. Most people used that as an extra excuse to make fun of her. My friend and I were the only ones who tried to help her. Some days it seemed like the whole class teamed up against her. It was challenging to know how to react. I wanted to just walk away, but I chose to remember that she is a child of God and to think about how Jesus would treat her. I felt the calming effect of the Holy Ghost. I remembered that I could make a difference. Following the Savior’s example helped me a lot, and I knew everything would be OK.
In my baptismal covenants I am promised to always have the Holy Ghost with me if I act as the Savior would. I’m grateful to have felt that comfort and strength from the Holy Ghost.
Alexis L., 13, Kansas, USA

I had many chores to do when I was about five or six. One of the most important was to gather the eggs about sundown each day.
We lived on a small farm on the south edge of Thatcher, Arizona. Our home was on the corner with open farm country south and east. Back from the home were the well, the pump, the windmill, a big wooden tank for our supply of water, the tool building, and a little farther back, a very large woodpile.
Then came the pigpens, corrals, haystacks, and the grainery. All these places were ideal for the hens to hide their eggs, so it was no small job for a boy to find the hidden nests of eggs. By experience, I became a good spy. Accordingly, every evening about sundown, I took the rather large bucket and scoured the area, and brought the eggs to the house.
One day, my mother took the three youngest of us for a long walk. We walked up the dusty road to the bishop’s home, Fannie in the baby buggy and Alice holding on to it. I carried the bucket of eggs.
As we walked along, I said, “Ma, why do we take the eggs to the bishop?”
She answered, “Because they are tithing eggs and the bishop receives the tithing for Heavenly Father. You remember every evening when you bring in the eggs, I have you count them out. The first one goes in the small basket and the next nine go in the large basket. Then we take the big basket of eggs down to the store and receive a ‘due bill’ for them. With the ‘due bill’ we buy shoes and food and clothing for the family, and the smaller basket of eggs goes to the bishop.”
I first learned the law of tithing from my beloved mother.