Gospel Story Finder

About this same time, Elder Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985), then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, visited Japan and encouraged the youth of the Church to achieve four goals: (1) receive as much higher education as possible, (2) serve a full-time mission, especially the young men, (3) marry in the temple, and (4) gain skills to support a family. Until that point I had never planned to accomplish these four things. But I later knelt and prayed: “Heavenly Father, I want to accomplish those four goals. Please help me.”
I knew that in order to stay on the path of the chosen, I needed to follow the counsel of the Lord’s servants. I committed to do all I could to follow Elder Kimball’s advice and to work hard to build up the Church.
For the next several years I continued to work toward my four goals. I served as a construction missionary for two years, helping build two chapels in my home country. Then I was called to serve a full-time proselytizing mission. Soon after returning home, I married in the temple the woman from the Matsumoto Branch who wrote me the letter. Later I landed my dream job in a foreign trading company. As I followed the word of the Lord and the counsel of the prophets, I felt that again I was on the path of the chosen. And I am striving to stay on that path today.

A sea journey was the only option for converts in Europe who heeded the call to gather with the Saints in America. Jane Rio Griffiths Baker revealed something of ship life during her emigration from England:
“Sometimes a few musical ones get together and have a few tunes, sometimes [we] get together and gossip, and so … the days pass along. When we have rough weather, we have enough to do to keep on our feet, and [we] laugh at those who are not so clever as ourselves.”

The days of mirth, however, were balanced by days of distress. Jane recorded her grief at the death from illness of one of her young sons. “I did not think his death was so near, though when witnessing his sufferings I prayed that the Lord would shorten them. He has done so, and my much loved child is now in the world of spirits, awaiting the morning of the Resurrection” (Diary, LDS Church Archives, 3–4, 5; spelling and punctuation modernized).

This week, my brothers and sisters, the woodcutters are laying their massive axes and taking their power saws to the still stately and once mighty elm trees that grace the countryside surrounding London, England’s, Heathrow Airport.

It is said some of the majestic monarchs are over one hundred years old. One wonders how many persons have admired their beauty, how many picnics have been enjoyed in their welcome shade, how many generations of song birds have filled the air with music while capering among the outstretched and luxuriant branches.

The patriarchal elms are now dead. Their demise was not the result of old age, the recurring drought, nor the strong winds which occasionally lash the area. Their destroyer is much more harmless in appearance, yet deadly in result. We know the culprit as the bark beetle, carrier of the fatal Dutch elm disease. This malady has destroyed vast elm forests throughout Europe and America. Its march of death continues unabated. All efforts at control have failed.

Dutch elm disease usually begins with a wilting of the younger leaves in the upper part of the tree. Later the lower branches become infected. In about midsummer most of the leaves turn yellow, curl, and drop off. Life ebbs. Death approaches. A forest is consumed. The bark beetle has taken its terrible toll.

On my office wall is a quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh: “My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds” (Gift from the Sea [1955], 124). For me, it is a needed reminder. A few years ago, already weary, I foolishly went late one afternoon to two different hospitals to give blessings to three individuals who were dying of cancer. Not only was I worn out, but worse, the last person really didn’t get much from me. Things had not been “done in wisdom and order.” I was running faster than my supply of strength and energy on that occasion. Those blessings would have been better given over two or three days, and I would have had more empathy and energy.

Almost as soon as the caravan stopped at the end of the forest road, the doors popped open and Scouts, dads, and a lot of backpacking equipment and fluorescent-orange life jackets came tumbling out of the cars and trucks. In no time at all the Scouts were lined up, drawing their allotment of food to carry, and stuffing it into their packs. Everyone seemed to know his duty and how to perform it. The few dads who were along to help were impressed with the organization. In fact, the only person not surprised by all this super efficiency performed by 12- and 13-year-old boys was their Scoutmaster, Nob Wimmer.
For Brother Wimmer this trip with the American Fork Utah 14th Ward Scouts was only one of hundreds of Scouting outings he has participated in during his 25 years of Scouting experience.
When asked how he got 12- and 13-year-old boys to perform much beyond their years, he commented on his philosophy:
“The age of the boys isn’t that critical. With cooperation you’d be surprised what even young boys can accomplish. There are three elements that do seem to make for a great trip. First, you need to plan well in advance. Second, a trip needs to require effort from everyone. Preferably the work starts a long time before the trip. If it does, the people involved get more excited about the actual event, they learn more, and they improve their teamwork. Then when we have taken care of all the variables that we can control, the third element of a great trip often comes into play. This is the element of surprise—the unexpected or the unusual happening that really makes the event stay alive in people’s minds long after the trip is over.”
To the 35 Scouts and adults who went, the trip was a success. They had been planning for months; each of them knew his duties and how to carry them out. They had also been working very hard to get ready. They learned how to handle canoes. They conditioned themselves to their backpacks, and many of the Scouts invested extra hours in learning to tie fishing flies. They worked one evening a week with Brother Wimmer learning how to do it, and then they tied quantities of flies in anticipation of the trip. In addition, every meal of the five-day camp was carefully planned in advance. Then, a few days before the trip, the food was bought and repacked so it would be easier to carry. They used off-the-shelf grocery items rather than the more expensive dehydrated backpacking foods. They even made their own oven-dried jerky to save on weight and expense.
Once the gear was out of the vehicles and strapped on backs, everyone started up the trail together. The few miles to the lake seemed more like a dozen since each person not only had to carry his own personal gear but also had to take a turn helping to carry one of the canoes.
At the lake, supplies and Scouts were ferried across the water to a lovely campsite. Scouts built simple, plastic-covered shelters under the pines, and had camp completely set up and organized in time to take in an evening’s fishing.

After four days at home and the office, Sister Kimball and I left on Saturday, February 28, for Florida for a week-long series of meetings with the Saints and some business leaders. On Saturday, March 7, we broke ground for the new temple in Atlanta, Georgia. Ten thousand were present for this occasion, including the governor of Georgia and his wife, several legislators, and U.S. senators Jake Garn and Paula Hawkins. Immediately following that service, we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The next morning, Sunday, March 8, we held a meeting with over twenty-six hundred members of the stake and mission on that island. We next visited the Dominican Republic and held a meeting at Santo Domingo on Monday. Two years ago there were only two families of members on that island, but at our meeting we had over fifteen hundred members present. We left Santo Domingo on Tuesday, March 10, and that night dedicated a new visitors’ center on the Church’s Deseret Ranch near Orlando, Florida.

On 100-year-old Polk Street, teenagers are more often seen cruising than cleaning, but the youth in the Amarillo Texas Stake changed all that with a special service project.
In conjunction with the city’s “Help Beautify Amarillo” project, the teenagers decided to restore some pride to this historic section of town. They came armed with tools and soap to get rid of graffiti, broken bottles, and other litter. About 50 youth participated in the activity that was planned as part of the Stake Standards Night.
This was such an unusual activity for teenagers in this area that it attracted the attention of the local media and was reported on the front page of the paper. Many community leaders commented on the willingness of the youth to work for their community and expressed gratitude to them.
After the project was finished, they headed for the stake center for dinner and a program on individual self-worth, followed by a dance.

My greatest growth came as I served in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission. I was among the first sister missionaries to serve there. The experiences I had, both positive and negative, helped me develop a greater Christian capacity for love and service. My joy felt complete.

Cinnamon, Mint, & Mothballs by Ruth Tiller Grandmother’s house is very old—it even has a bathtub with claw feet on it. It has a barn, too, but no animals except the cats. Going to sleep would have been hard in the strange bed with strange shapes in the shadows if it hadn’t been for Grandma’s singing as she sewed in another room, and for happy thoughts of the cake you helped put icing on.

My beloved brethren of the priesthood, as I begin, I would like to direct my remarks to each 12-year-old deacon attending this general priesthood session. Wherever you are, I want to acknowledge your presence and to tell or remind you of the experience that President Gordon B. Hinckley had when he was, like you are, a 12-year-old deacon.
From his biography we read: “Not long after he was ordained a deacon, he attended his first stake priesthood meeting with his father. … He felt a little out of place as he found a seat on the back row of the Tenth Ward chapel while [his father] (who was serving in the stake presidency) took his place on the stand. To open the meeting, the three or four hundred men present stood and sang William W. Phelps’s triumphant anthem … : ‘Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah! / Jesus anointed that Prophet and Seer. / Blessed to open the last dispensation, / Kings shall extol him, and nations revere.’ ”
Reflecting back on that experience, President Hinckley said: “Something happened within me as I heard those men of faith sing. It touched my heart. It gave me a feeling that was difficult to describe. I felt a great moving power, both emotional and spiritual. I had never had it previously in terms of any Church experience. There came into my heart a conviction that the man of whom they sang was really a prophet of God. I knew then, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet of God.”
Even as that experience had by President Hinckley as a 12-year-old deacon was “one he would remember for the rest of his life,” I pray that the experience you are having will be one you will remember for the rest of your lives.

Young women in the Port Harcourt (Nigeria) Ward Two held their first Young Women in Excellence program last December. Agnes Teigbanyo, a Laurel in Port Harcourt, received the first Young Womanhood medallion ever given in Nigeria.
Agnes says that earning her award has helped her improve herself in many ways.
“For my Laurel project, I wanted to teach gospel principles to children. I wanted them to know more about the gospel and to help them establish love and charity in their homes. I learned that dealing with children is not easy,” says Agnes.

Compare these brothers’ actions with those of the brother of another Joseph—the Prophet Joseph Smith’s brother Hyrum. As a young man, Joseph received visions. When he shared with his family the message he had received from the Lord, Hyrum accepted that message. He became a great strength to Joseph and a valiant servant of the Lord, serving alongside his brother, even to dying with him at Carthage Jail. Of Hyrum, Joseph wrote: “Brother Hyrum, what a faithful heart you have got. Oh, may the eternal Jehovah crown eternal blessings upon your head, as a reward for the care you have had for my soul.” (The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, compiled by Dean C. Jessee, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1984, p. 531.)

Writing and directing the New Westminster Ward roadshow was his last big venture. The Vancouver British Columbia Stake produced the combined roadshows from all the wards. When the judges came back with their verdict, Stephen’s roadshow had won “Best All-Round Entertainment.”
As the applause died down, the stake MC approached the microphone. “Stephen Farrance, writer and assistant director of the winning roadshow, died this morning. We’ve kept this sad news until now we didn’t want to influence the judges. We’d like to congratulate the cast and crew for going on tonight, with special mention to Stephen’s family, who did such a fine job. We dedicate the roadshows to Stephen.”
“How could his family be here tonight?” someone asked, and the reply was, “After living with Stephen, what else could they do?”

In February 2021, stuck in their apartments because of COVID-19, Elder Knowles and Elder Thomas were trying to spread the word of Jesus Christ through Facebook and Zoom. They had met Josh, a senior at a small Catholic college in western Massachusetts, and they wondered if I, a relatively recent convert to the Church, would join the three of them for a lesson. “He reminds us of you,” said one of the missionaries. “I think you guys would get along.”
I gave a quick yes. As the only member of the Church in my family, I was desperate for whatever gospel conversations I could have in those lonely months of isolation.
Josh and I got along exactly as predicted: he was an ebullient young man who had already made much more progress toward accepting the gospel in his life than he realized. We talked about his background and mine; the missionaries gave us the confidence to speak openly about faith and spiritual progress. I was much older than Josh, yet the conversation moved comfortably right along. “We should do this again sometime,” I said as the Zoom call started to roll to a close. “This was fun.”
“I would love to do this again,” Josh said. “But do you think I can invite my friend Eddie next time? He would really like this.” Eddie was another senior at the same college, and as it turned out, he had been great friends in high school with a member of the Church. Of course we would welcome Eddie, I said, but if he was going to invite Eddie, then I wanted to invite my friend Jack, someone I had just started talking to about the Church and who, as it turned out, also had a good high school friend who was a member.
And so it began. For several weeks in a row, Josh, Eddie, Jack, the missionaries, and I met and talked about life. It wasn’t a classic missionary lesson. Although we decided to start and end each hour with a prayer, it was clear that our friends weren’t necessarily interested in a predetermined lineup of lessons. Early on, we instituted an idea that would come to define the group over the course of the next few months. Every week, each person would come with a question—sometimes a softball question (“What’s your go-to flavor of ice cream?”) but usually a more thoughtful or serious question (“Who is your greatest role model and why?”). Then each member of the group answered the question.
It didn’t take long to discover that we were on to something important. Eddie noted it immediately in a text to a returned missionary friend: “It’s very weird because I’m not used to men being able to talk the way that we did; I felt very relaxed and shared more about my life than I thought I would,” he wrote. “I’m kind of used to the whole ‘you can’t have feelings’ deal with my guy friends.” But Eddie knew this was different; there was freedom in this meeting—a freedom to be ourselves, vulnerable and honest, and truly listen to one another.

I thought that righteousness was no more nor less than doing everything and anything asked of me by leaders of the Church. I guess I thought righteousness was somehow a system, a set of rules. So, I made this my goal and began. I filled a mission, married in the temple, was almost immediately ordained a high priest and called as a counselor in a bishopric, and subsequently held many other callings. I tried to regularly attend the temple, learn and do genealogy, hold family home evenings, pay tithes and offerings, give to the ward budget and building fund, and simply do whatever my bishop asked.
I could not deny that the rewards from these activities were great. But I also could not claim that I became wonderfully righteous as a result. Somehow, I was still troubled by feelings of guilt and unworthiness. I was still retaining the little character faults and other evils in my soul. Church activities alone didn’t seem to be eradicating my sins.
My first reaction when I realized all my efforts weren’t getting rid of my sins was to redouble my effort. I found myself increasingly concerned with obtaining some measure or recognition of success in the Church. Like many of us, I was mistakenly assuming that a call to high position was equivalent to the Lord’s approval. It took me several years to get rid of this misconception.
Another result of my goal to do everything I could in the Church was that I found myself feeling frustrated and guilty at times because I could not understand all the instructions I was receiving from Church leaders. Sometimes I heard, “Do this; it is most important.” Other times it seemed that something else had priority. When I felt torn between two “good,” my goal to simply do whatever I was asked didn’t help me make those hard decisions. Frustration and guilt set in when I found I simply didn’t have time to fulfill every church and family responsibility in a satisfactory way every time.
In time, I realized some important things. First, I realized that although my goal—righteousness—was still there, I had been mistaken in the means of achieving it. I had sought for external evidence rather than internal assurances from my Heavenly Father. I also saw that fulfilling the expectations of other people was not only not fully possible, but did not make me feel totally righteous. So I began again.

At the age of 16, he left the Church of England and later became a lay preacher for the Methodist Church. On one occasion when he was with one of his parish members on the way to an appointment, he stopped in the road and said, “I have a strong impression on my mind, that I have to go to America to preach the gospel!”2 This impression remained with him.
When John Taylor did leave England in 1832, he traveled to Canada, following his family, who had emigrated in 1830. There he met and married Leonora Cannon. Canada was also where he encountered a missionary named Parley P. Pratt, an Apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For the next 20 years, President Monson took extra clothes every time he visited East Germany. His generosity blessed many people. Before one Church meeting began, he looked at a young man sitting in the congregation and said, “That’s a fine suit you have on.”
The young man replied, “It should be. It’s yours!”

Some of my favorite entries are about my friends. When my brother was on his mission, I wrote to him every week—and included in my journal are a lot of the same thoughts I sent him. I’ve written about my own baptism, about Young Women activities, and just recently about sharing the gospel with a friend I’ve known for six years who finally took the missionary discussions and decided to be baptized. If she can’t remember who attended her baptism and how we all felt, I have all that recorded so I can share it with her. Now I’m trying to convince her to keep a journal of her own.

The New Era is a great comfort to me. I am a convert to the Church, and I have learned many wonderful things this past year just by reading this great magazine! I go to a Catholic school, and I have to take a course in religion. In this class I was assigned to give an oral report from a magazine or book on “My Personal Happiness.” I chose the article “The Business of Being” in the July 1983 issue of the New Era. Elder Cuthbert really knows the meaning of maturity. When I gave that report, I know that the Spirit was with me. He helped me to touch the hearts of many in my class, and I am grateful for that. By the way, I got an A!
Linda VillaromanSan Francisco, California

It could have been a disaster, but instead it turned out to be one of the best girls’ camps we had ever held in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Stake.
The campsite we usually used had mistakenly been double-booked that year, so we were forced, at the last minute, to share Camp Mack with another large group.
The other group could not have been more different from us. It was a police academy camp for troubled youth, ages 11 to 15. The camp had been set up to teach them discipline and coping skills through rigorous activities led by police officers.
At first, neither group was too excited about sharing Camp Mack. So, with the help of our priesthood leaders, we worked out a schedule with the other camp to try to stay out of each other’s way.
The first day, we watched the police academy group drilling, marching, and doing calisthenics. We heard their noise and yelling all day long no matter where we were. They, in turn, kept a watchful eye on us as we did crafts and rotated to different classes.
That first evening our young women were ending the day’s activities by singing “I Am a Child of God” (Hymns, no. 301). The police academy youth were walking to their sleeping area. They stopped and listened to the music floating through Camp Mack. When the song was finished, the campers walked slowly and quietly to their lodge. What a difference from the yelling we had heard throughout the day.
The second day we tried to keep out of the way of the police academy activities. Both groups continued to watch each other. At the end of the day two, police officers approached some of the Young Women leaders. They wanted to know what we were doing with the girls at camp and why they were so well behaved and friendly. What were our camp goals and philosophies, and what did Latter-day Saints believe? We were thrilled to have them ask these questions and grateful for the opportunity to share the gospel.
The following day the Young Women leaders told the girls that they had been standing as witnesses without even knowing it. They had made a deep impression on the police officers running the other camp.
Immediately, our girls wanted to give them a Book of Mormon. We presented an officer with a copy of the Book of Mormon the following night. We assured him that if he would read it and pray for an answer of its truthfulness, it would change his life. The Spirit was so powerful during this conversation that the officer got tears in his eyes and said he had never felt the peace he was feeling then.
By the last day of camp, there was a feeling of friendship between both camps. Their cooks stood side by side with our cooks as they helped each other make breakfast for both groups. The Spirit of God filled Camp Mack that week. What could have been a disaster turned into a wonderful experience for all of us. We learned that when we stand as witnesses of God at all times, in all things, and in all places, the Lord can use us to help Him perform miracles every day.