Gospel Story Finder

The house at 402 Cinnamon Street was covered with a blanket of darkness. The moon lit up the yard in dim, random patches, almost as if playing a game of hide-and-seek in the cloud-covered sky.
Gentle whispering of sleep echoed about the bedroom. In her dream the Grand Ballroom was even more beautiful than Amy remembered. The catering manager, dressed in suit and tie, was motioning with his arms.
“And, Miss Harding, your guests will enter the ballroom through these doors. Inside to the right on a table will be the wedding book to sign. Next will be a table for the gifts. Proceeding on around, the guests will meet you and Steve and your families here. We’ll have flowers and trees, and this is where the photographer will be taking pictures. Then the line proceeds on past the wedding cake.”
Amy slept peacefully in her bed. She was oblivious to the clouds, once small in number, building forces in the sky. In the midst of Amy’s pleasant dream, a storm was brewing.
Headlights from a passing car threw fleeting shadows across the bedroom wall. Amy pulled her blanket up over her shoulders and turned over. A flash of light streaked across the midnight sky. The bolt of lightning and accompanying crash of thunder awakened Amy with a start.
She stared at the darkened walls, going over the list in her mind.
She could hear her mother’s comments. “… a wedding cake, and we remembered to ask for the little pink flowers on the top. The invitations are all addressed, waiting to be mailed. I called the florist today. Do you think we’ve missed anything?”
Thunder continued to rumble. It seemed like tiny earthquakes were shaking the ground. In the excitement of her temple marriage, was she forgetting something? Was she leaving out some small detail, overlooking an important element?
Amy moved to the window to part the curtains. To Amy, who was always fascinated with electrical storms, it just seemed like a big show in the sky. As the rain pelted against the windowpane, Amy’s thoughts flashed back to her date with Steve that evening.
“You look great, Amy. But maybe you’d better bring along a jacket. The evenings can be cool.” Steve, dressed in his college sweatshirt and baseball cap, had been waiting for Amy. “Sorry, I’m late. You know how that dumb car is.”
Steve opened the car door for her, then walked around to his side. He was over six foot four, and his legs fit awkwardly behind the wheel. He turned onto the freeway and lowered the visor to keep the sun from blinding him. “Did you go to the hotel this morning?”
“You wouldn’t believe the ice sculptures, Steve. The catering manager showed me pictures. The largest one on the main buffet is of the temple, complete with the Angel Moroni. Oh, and get this! One sculpture is of two love birds kissing, and they’re sitting on a heart.”
Steve stared straight ahead at the road while Amy rattled on. “And another one is our initials on a huge pedestal.”
Steve hit the turn signal, glancing in his rearview mirror before making a turn. “Couldn’t we just use ice cubes like normal people?”
Amy nudged Steve hard with her elbow. “It’s for decoration, not to keep the punch cold. Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have made the arrangements without you, Steve. I keep thinking I’m missing something.”
Steve shook his head. “Naw, that’s okay. I don’t know anything about stuff like that. I trust your judgment.”
The drive to the park was fun. They drove around a few minutes before claiming a small picnic table nestled under several shade trees. Amy and Steve sat quietly for a few minutes, watching a little bird hop around and listening to a tiny stream nearby.
Amy dug her tennis shoe into the soft soil, leaving a ridged imprint. Then with her toe she smashed a fallen leaf, brittle from lack of nourishment. Steve sneezed. The trees brought out his allergies. Amy crunched another leaf. Steve sneezed again. Amy stepped on another leaf. Steve continued to sneeze. She tried, but she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Steve, please take an allergy pill. Your sneezing is driving me crazy.”
Steve reached for an allergy pill. He swallowed it without water. Then he leaned back, squirted two drops of medication into each eye, squinted, then raised his head. His eyes were tearing and were as red as the nose of a clown.
“I get the allergies from my mom. Sometimes I just wish I could have inherited my dad’s crooked toes. You can at least hide them.”
Steve’s voice dropped off. He didn’t remember much about them. Both parents died when he was young, and his aunt had raised him. But certain small memories were imprinted forever in his mind.
Amy reached over and took Steve’s hand. “Steve, we haven’t forgotten to invite a relative of yours to the reception, have we?”
Steve picked up a broken twig and drew Xs and Os in the dirt. “You know, I keep thinking we’ve forgotten something, too. And I’m wondering if we ought to spend so much money on a wedding band for me. And it bothers me that so much is being spent on the reception.”
Amy was agitated. “Rings represent forever, an endless circle. You know, like you and me. You are getting that wedding band. And you know how much the reception means to my mother. We can’t take that away from her.”
“I’m sorry, Amy. You’re right. It’s just that material things have never mattered much to me. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a couple named Young who used to sit in front of me every Sunday during sacrament meeting right after I joined the Church. They always sat so close together even though they had a bunch of kids crawling all over them.
“When they bore their testimonies I could really feel they understood what the Church meant to the other one. So I started praying for a girl I could take to the temple who really understood what the Church meant to me.”
Steve squeezed Amy’s hand. “I found her. I found her the night you bore your testimony at that fireside.”
Amy squeezed back. “I’ll always remember that night. I’d been a member two weeks. It took a lot of courage to stand when I hardly knew anything. I didn’t have Primary when I was young or Sunday School. But I did know one thing for sure the night I stood up. I knew the Church was true.”
Steve dropped his stick and took Amy by her shoulders. “We’re learning the answers together. We’ve been able to share so much.”
Steve put his arm around her. “Amy, I do want this wedding and reception to be everything you and your family want it to be. So let’s do something. How about if right now we start a special fast? Just the two of us. If something is missing, some small detail or someone we’ve forgotten, then we can find it. What do you think?”
Amy shrugged her shoulders. “Fasting is hard. But okay. Starting right now, for 24 hours?”
A tap at Amy’s door brought her back to the reality of her bedroom.
“Is that you, Mom?”
A soft voice responded. “Yes, dear. I couldn’t sleep and saw your light.”
Amy walked over to the door. “Come on in.”
Amy’s mom looked troubled. She sat beside Amy on the edge of the bed, pulling her robe tight around her.
“What’s wrong, Mom? I’ve heard you wandering around downstairs tonight. Is it the storm?”
Her mother stood up and began to pace. Her slippers made little squeaky noises across the hardwood floor. “I really like Steve. And I have the reception to look forward to. But honey, you’re my only child. I want to be at your wedding. Why can’t I go inside the temple?”
Amy lowered her head. This was hard for her too, having her parents missing from the sealing ceremony.
“Mom, I’m going to invite the missionaries over Sunday. I think they will be able to explain to you why nonmembers aren’t allowed in the temple. If only you knew how much I want you to be there.”
Her mother walked over and lifted Amy’s chin to look into her eyes. “It’s hurting your father, too, Amy. He understands very little about this church you have joined. But he knows how happy it has made you. Maybe it would help to have someone explain why we can’t go inside the temple. I’ll let your dad know they’re coming.”
She kissed Amy’s cheek. “Good night, honey.”
After her mother left the room and closed the door, Amy lay back on the bed. As she stared up at the ceiling, her eyes were drawn to the light fixture. Suddenly she imagined herself standing in the Grand Ballroom staring up at the chandeliers. The diamond-shaped crystal had tinkled delicately. Amy finally fell asleep.
The morning was almost gone when the phone rang on Amy’s nightstand. Amy was startled from a deep sleep. After grabbing the phone by instinct, it took her a moment to realize what she was doing.
“Hello.”
The caller hesitated. “Uh, hello? Is that you, Amy? It’s Steve. Were you still asleep?”
Amy pushed her hair away from her face and sat up. “Yeah. What time is it?”
The line was fuzzy. “Around nine I guess.”
“You sound so far away. Where are you calling from, Timbuktu?”
Steve chuckled. “No, but close. Somewhere near Storm Mountain. The car is acting up, and I stopped to cool it down. I’ve been rock climbing.”
Amy had a momentary vision of Moses climbing the mountain to talk to God. “Sounds pretty heavy. You shouldn’t be exerting yourself so much when you’re fasting.”
“I know, but ever since I started fasting I’ve been haunted by the impression that something very important was missing. I just had to get away to see if I could find out what it is.”
Amy heard a loud clunk. Steve had dropped the phone. “Oops, sorry. Hey, could we come up here for the Young Adult activity tonight? Campfire, games, and dinner. We could break our fast then.”
“But what about that history report you wanted to finish, Steve? Isn’t it due soon?”
“Yes, but it can wait another night. I’m afraid I’ve discovered what it is that’s missing, Amy. It’s not something missing from our wedding. It’s something missing in our lives, especially my life.”
Amy tried to clear her mind to think. “Well, okay. Pick me up at five, the car willing.”
Amy hung up the phone and sat staring at it for a minute, confused. Deciding not to think about it, she spent the afternoon with her nose buried in college textbooks and trying to keep her mind off food.
A large group had already gathered when Steve and Amy arrived. They had to stop twice to fiddle with the car. Steve lifted the hood as soon as they parked at the campsite while Amy visited with friends. Food was cooking, and the young people were throwing frisbees and playing badminton.
The smell of hamburgers teased hearty appetites, and the food was gone in minutes.
The sun began to set. More firewood was gathered, and everyone sat close together around the warmth of the campfire. Steve and Amy huddled together on a fallen log.
Roger, always the unspoken leader, suggested they play a game, one that his dad always loved to play for Family Home Evening.
One boy, Aaron, chided him. “Oh, brother. Not “button, button, whose got the button.’”
Everyone laughed.
Roger shook his head, leaning closer to the fire. “No. This game is called ‘Search Your Soul in Two Minutes or Less.’ And I’m the emcee.”
Roger squinted, trying to make out the familiar faces around the smoky campfire. He pointed to Heather. “Okay, Heather, you have two minutes to answer the first question. Ready?”
Heather shrugged her shoulders and nodded.
“Heather, why do you live the gospel?”
Heather, her short brown hair barely visible around the hood of her parka, was thrown off guard. “Come on, Roger, how can I answer a question like that?”
Roger smiled, enjoying the challenge. “I didn’t say the game was easy, did I?”
Heather lowered her head and took her full two minutes.
“Time’s up, Heather. Let’s have the answer.”
Her voice was shaky. “I lived with my Heavenly Father before I ever came here. I live the gospel because it’s the only way to get back to his presence.”
The group huddled even closer. Roger chose his best friend next.
“Okay, Craig buddy, reach down into your soul. Why do you live the gospel?”
Everyone expected a wisecrack. But instead Craig reached into his back pocket and dug through his wallet. He passed around a picture. Everyone leaned close to the light to make it out. The picture was worn with frayed corners.
“I have five brothers and two sisters. I have two parents who drive me crazy but love me even when I’m driving them crazy. I have aunts, uncles, cousins, and twin nephews two weeks old. My sister and her husband are staying with us for a little while. The babies kept us up almost all last night. I guess I live the gospel because for some stupid reason I want it to stay this way. I want to be with my family forever.”
Amy and Steve held hands. Roger pointed to Kathy. “Okay, greenie, you’re the newest member. In two minutes or less, why did you join the Church?”
Kathy stared at the fire, watching the little sparks jump in the air and burn themselves out. She appeared to look at Roger, but with a serious look seemed to see beyond Roger or anything else in the radius of the campfire.
“I’ve never been a happy person. I really don’t know why. Maybe I thought no one really cared. The elders were interested in me as a person. One was from Maryland, the other from England. That’s a long way to come to give me a message.
“I listened and knew it was true. I am happier. And I’m beginning to understand why. Without the Church in my life, something was missing. And if it hadn’t been for those elders sacrificing to go on a mission, it would always have been missing.”
Amy felt something creep up her back. She could hardly breathe. She turned to Steve and, through the light of the fire, saw in his eyes the answer he had brought down with him from Storm Mountain. Their eyes pierced through each other.
Amy jerked her hand away and hurried from the circle. She began to run. Through the shadows of darkened trees, Amy ran faster and faster, wishing she could run forever.
“Amy, wait! I can’t see you! You’ll fall or something! Amy, get back here!”
Steve couldn’t tell which direction Amy had headed. He stood still for a moment, then heard movement to his left. He saw Amy struggling up a steep incline. His heart was in his stomach, envisioning her falling over the edge. He followed her, watching her trip several times, holding onto tree roots and small, jagged rocks sticking out from the hillside.
At last Steve stood at the top, the whole valley lying before him in a panoramic view. The lights twinkled like Christmas trees. He spotted Amy crouched beside a large boulder.
He sat down beside her and put his arm around her gently, not wanting to frighten her and have her jerk away. Amy sniffed and wiped her eyes.
“Amy,” Steve said breaking the awkward silence, “today when I was climbing, I couldn’t think about anything except those four sets of missionaries I went through during my conversion. Elder Snow gave up a baseball scholarship. Elder Decker postponed his education. Another missionary’s father had to work two jobs to support him. And then all I thought about was a postage stamp.”
Amy shook her head, pulling a weed from the soil and picking it apart. “You climbed Storm Mountain, fasting and everything, and all you could think about was a postage stamp?”
Steve’s voice was barely audible. Amy knew right away he was going to talk about his mother. “Once when I was six or seven years old and my dad was out of town, my mom needed a postage stamp to mail Uncle Robert’s birthday card. We lived in the country. The mailman would pick up the mail but couldn’t sell us stamps. Mom couldn’t wait until Dad got back home with the car or the card wouldn’t arrive at the right time.
“Mom sent me to Mrs. Harold’s down the lane. She was an old lady who kind of looked after Mom and me when Dad was on the road. Of course Mrs. Harold loaned me the stamp, and we mailed the card on time. But the next day Mom told me we were going to pack a picnic lunch and walk the two miles to the post office to buy a stamp to replace the one we borrowed from Mrs. Harold.”
Steve picked up a little rock and tossed it down the hillside. “I remember saying to her, ‘Why don’t we just bake her some cookies or just give her ten cents to cover the cost of the postage stamp?’
“And then I said, ‘We could wait until Dad gets home in a few days and drive to the post office. Why today? What’s a couple more days?’
“Mom put her arms around me. Then she said, ‘Because today is the day we owe for the postage stamp, not tomorrow or the next day.’”
Steve tightened his arm around Amy. “Uncle Robert got his card when he needed it, and the debt was paid when it was owed.”
Amy buried her face in her hands, crying. “You’re telling me there isn’t going to be a wedding? After all the plans, all the dreams, you’re telling me that you’re leaving me for two years?”
Steve was sniffing and rubbing his nose, but not from his allergies. “Amy, look how the town is all lit up. We have the gospel here. But there are areas of the world that are pitch dark. Christ said, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16:15). I have to light up that little corner of the world that’s dark, Amy. Our corner.”
The drive home was a quiet one. When they pulled into the driveway, Steve looked at Amy as he turned off the ignition. He started to speak, but before he could say a word, Amy threw open the door and bolted from the car. Tears were streaming down her face. Steve got out and stood for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then he lifted the hood of the car, almost out of habit, while he glanced out of the corner of his eye as Amy slipped into the house.
When Amy walked in the front door, she was glad it was quiet. She wanted to go to her room to be alone. After opening her door and then closing it quietly behind her, she turned on her bedroom lamp.
The room was just as she had left it.
Amy glanced down at her engagement ring. A wave of deep sadness swept over her. She took a soft handkerchief and tried to polish the setting. The diamond didn’t seem to sparkle as brightly as it had the day in the jewelry store. She pulled her ring from her finger and placed it in her jewelry box.
The rain began to plink against her windowpane. Thunder was barely audible in the distance as tears flowed down Amy’s cheeks in torrents. She loved Steve so very much. But did she love the gospel more? And if she sacrificed Steve for just a little while, if she could somehow bear it, would both loves merge almost as one, making both even stronger?
Amy walked to the window. Rain was coming down faster now as Steve huddled under the hood trying to make some kind of adjustment. She looked at the terrible storm lurking on the horizon. The trees were beginning to bow and the house began to creek from the wailing wind sneaking through unseen cracks.
Amy went to her closet and pulled down a rain hat and coat. She grabbed a black umbrella from the top shelf. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, leave Steve out in that downpour trying to fix the car by himself.
When she came up behind him, he jumped, startled.
“How many times do you suppose we’ve fixed this dumb car, Steve?”
Steve turned. The umbrella barely covered the both of them. Steve looked like a drowned rat.
“Well, I don’t have my calculator handy.” He jokingly patted his shirt pocket. “But off the top of my head I’d say if we’ve fixed it once, we’ve fixed it a hundred times—in just the last two weeks.”
Amy moved closer, pushing his wet hair from his eyes. “Seems like whenever we’re in the car and feel something isn’t running right, we get out of the car together, lift the hood, and look inside, right?”
Steve nodded, wiping his forehead with a greasy hand.
“And we fix whatever is wrong and continue on to where it was we were heading. Is that what we’re trying to do tonight?”
Steve couldn’t resist hugging her. “Yes, Amy. And as I was going to say as we drove into the driveway, I love you. But I just want to pay our debt now, while we owe it. Two years is a long time, I know, but what did Roger say tonight? ‘Who said the game was going to be easy?’”
Amy felt her heart would break as Steve kissed her gently. He didn’t have to tell her it was a kiss that would have to last two years. Tomorrow was Sunday, and Amy knew Steve would go to the bishop in the morning. But then a bright hope flooded Amy’s thoughts. Sunday was also the day her parents agreed to see the missionaries. A lot could happen in two years.
They fixed the car. Amy went inside as Steve drove away in the yellow car. Amy went to her room, changed into her nightgown, towel dried her hair, and then knelt beside her bed. There was nowhere else to go with all the hurt she felt inside.
She prayed with all her heart for comfort. At first she just felt sick even trying to say the words, but a feeling of peace started in a little corner, building and building until she felt the warmth of a blazing fire.
As Amy fell asleep that night, outside a terrible storm was raging. The lightning cracked across the sky, the thunder boomed, the dark clouds could be seen hovering over the neighborhood around the house at 402 Cinnamon Street. But through the raging storm, Amy slept peacefully in the midst of pleasant dreams. No matter what transpired in the ominous sky, for Amy and Steve this particular storm was over.

Giving to those in need is important. President Monson tells of a Sunday School teacher who taught him to share.
I express gratitude for a Sunday School teacher [named] Lucy Gertsch. She was beautiful, soft-spoken, and interested in us. She made the scriptures actually come to life.
We undertook a project to save nickels and dimes for what was to be a gigantic party. Sister Gertsch kept a careful record of our progress. As boys and girls with typical appetites, we [imagined] cakes, cookies, pies, and ice cream. This was to be a glorious occasion—the biggest party ever.
None of us will forget that gray Sunday morning in January when our beloved teacher announced to us that the mother of one of our classmates had passed away. We thought of our own mothers and how much they meant to us. We felt sorrow for Billy Devenport in his great loss.
The lesson that day was from the book of Acts, chapter 20, verse 35: “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Lucy Gertsch asked, “How would you like to follow this teaching of the Lord? How would you feel about taking your party fund and, as a class, giving it to the Devenports as an expression of our love?” The decision was unanimous. We counted very carefully each penny and placed the total sum in a large envelope.
Ever shall I remember the tiny band walking those three city blocks, entering Billy’s home, greeting him, his brother, sisters, and father. Noticeably absent was his mother. Always I shall treasure the tears which glistened in the eyes of each one present as the white envelope containing our precious party fund passed from the delicate hand of our teacher to the needy hand of a grief-stricken father. We fairly skipped our way back to the chapel. Our hearts were lighter than they had ever been, our joy more full, our understanding more profound. We [had] learned through our own experience that indeed it is more blessed to give than to receive.

As the soft, gray drizzle grew into a steady downpour, Mackinzee Waters pushed a damp wisp of hair from her eyes and quickly finished filling the bucket with wild blackberries. She pulled her shawl tighter about her and glanced up at the steely sky. Huge black clouds were unfurling, and thunder boomed like Civil War cannons. The weather seemed much like her life—harsh and indifferent, even though her family was trying hard to live by God’s commandments. Sure, she sometimes argued with her older brother, Chase, or did her chores begrudgingly, but were those offenses worthy of all the misfortune that had befallen her family?
Lightning seared through the dark day, its crooked fingers of white clawing the heavy air. It had been lightning that burned down their prairie home just two years before.
Mackinzee and her family had been in church at the time. Why would God let such a thing happen while we were worshiping? she wondered now as she hurried back toward the sod house built in the face of the small hillock by a stand of cottonwoods. Was he punishing us for something, or had he somehow completely forgotten us?
She paused by a small grave under a scraggly willow and gazed at the little headstone:
Eric Waters
Born December 15, 1867
Died May 22, 1869
Her baby brother had passed away the year before, stung to death by a swarm of bees. Why? Why did God let it happen?
Distracted by the sound of someone’s knuckle tapping at a window, she glanced at the sod house. Papa was beckoning through the rain-smeared glass. He was lying in bed as he had been since being mauled three months ago by a grizzly that had wandered down from the timber. Doc Gunnerson had said that it would be another three months before Papa’s leg would be mended enough for him to go back to the fields. It had been a real struggle for Mama and fourteen-year-old Chase and herself to manage without him.
Mama met her at the door. “You’d best get out of those wet clothes, honey, before you catch your death.”
Mackinzee set the pot of berries down hard on the table. “Why should I expect anything different, Mama, after everything else that’s happened to us?” She turned abruptly and disappeared into a small adjoining room, the door closing behind her with a bang.
Chase looked up from a boot he was polishing with soot from the bottom of a stove lid, shook his head, and chuckled to himself. “She sounds more growly than a hungry bear.”
“She has been awful moody lately,” Papa admitted.
On Monday, Chase dragged the big black washtub into the yard and fetched water from a nearby stream. Mama heated water in a kettle on the stove, and Mackinzee carried it out and poured it into the tub until there was enough to do the laundry.
The washing took most of the day. Finally mother and daughter hung out the wet clothes on a rope stretched between two trees. As they did, Mama paused and glanced over at Mackinzee. A gentle breeze tugged at the young girl’s auburn hair that glowed in the sunlight like rusty gold. She was a pretty girl. “As pretty as a spring fawn,” Papa often commented, “with a gold-dust shine that could dazzle the hardest of hearts.”
But today that simple loveliness was overshadowed by lines of deep despair. This wasn’t the first time Mama had observed her daughter’s unhappiness. But whenever she had asked about it, Mackinzee always smiled and shrugged it off.
“What are you staring at, Mama?” Mackinzee asked, at the same moment realizing she had just given her mother an opportunity to enter her most guarded thoughts. Mackinzee was attempting a quick evasive smile when her mother stroked her cheek.
The gentle gesture broke the barrier that held back a sea of pent-up hurt and anger, and she broke into sobs.
Mama quickly pulled her close. “What’s the matter, honey,” she soothed. “What’s been tearing at you so?”
Papa pulled back a curtain by his bed and squinted out through the weather-streaked glass. “Do you know where your sister and your mama are, Chase? I saw them hanging out clothes about an hour ago. Now they’ve disappeared.”
Chase splashed water on his face and neck and rubbed them vigorously to get off as much sweat and field dirt as he could, then turned to his father. “When I came in from the field just now, I saw them sitting on the big log by the creek. They looked to be deep in talk.”
Papa gazed back out the window and nodded. “Good,” he said quietly. “Good.”
Out in the field, Mama put her comforting arm around Mackinzee. “I don’t expect there’s anything sadder than a body keeping a world of heartache to herself, honey, unless it’s thinking that she must.”
Mackinzee rubbed at a hot tear that oozed from a swollen eye. “I didn’t want to add to your or Papa’s worries by—”
Mama placed a gentle finger across her daughter’s lips. “Do you think your papa and I haven’t been concerned over not knowing what’s been troubling you? It’s a lot easier to puzzle out a problem once you have all the pieces before you on the table, right?” At Mackinzee’s slow, tentative nod, Mama continued, “And now let’s try to do that, shall we?”
Mackinzee agreed, but her first question almost caught in her throat. “Why does God allow bad things to happen to us? Is he punishing us?”
“Sometimes he allows misfortune to befall someone because of wrong choices. For every one of our actions, there is a consequence.”
Mackinzee’s eyes dropped. “Sometimes I haven’t done my chores with a good heart, Mama. And Chase and I get in arguments. Maybe Heavenly Father—”
Mama squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Shame on you for being normal,” she chuckled. “Besides,” she added, “I don’t believe that even bad experiences are wasted. Most can be for our profit and learning. It’s all in the way we accept them. And in how we deal with them.”
“Then you don’t think God has forgotten us?”
“If he counts every sparrow that falls, like the scriptures teach us, it’s a sure fact that he keeps track of the rest of us.” Mama’s eyes misted. “It’s in me to know that he keeps company with the afflicted,” she added with a granite conviction.
“Then why … ?”
Mama regarded her daughter with a look that was so profoundly reverent and alive with testimony that it made Mackinzee pause. “How do you suppose one would get to the top of that mountain over there?”
Mackinzee gazed off at the purple form that rose and fell at the bottom of the sky. “By climbing it, of course.”
“Yes. And always remember that heaven is up too. By climbing the mountains of adversity in our lives, we can develop our spiritual muscles. Doctrine and Covenants 136:31 [D&C 136:31] says that the Lord’s people ‘must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that [he has] for them.’”
As Mackinzee thought about this, Mama reached down and picked up a shiny river rock. “We must learn to let the waves that beat upon our shores wash away the weaker parts and leave in its wake a stronger man or woman.” She stood and went over to a wild rose plant and plucked a blossom with its stem. “If rain can make the flowers grow, then why not the rest of us?” She ran a finger lightly across a large barb on the stem. “This thorn flower can teach us a valuable lesson, honey,” she counseled gently. “A rose without a thorn is only half a rose.”
A slow smile rippled across Mackinzee’s face. She would learn to be happy, even when it rained.
Mama pinched off the thorn with her thumbnail, then put the rose in Mackinzee’s hair. The girl stood and took her mother’s hand, and they started toward home.

The rain started falling on Norfolk, Virginia, Thursday night while the Corbin children were still painting the banners.
“But it can’t rain tomorrow,” Matt, age 12, said. “That will ruin everything.”
“I don’t care if it rains all day,” 14-year-old Margaret said. “Dad’s coming home, and that’s all that matters.”
Out in the ocean, Richard Corbin, a Radio Officer, stood on the deck of the U. S. S. Nimitz, one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world. Corbin, the father of Margaret, Matt, and 10-year-old Nathan, and the husband of Jo Ann, was thinking of family and home. He’d been at sea for six months.
The carrier made steady headway through the misty sea. Rain was falling there, too, thick and heavy. In the evening light, the only way to tell the sky from the water was that the ocean was a darker shade of gray.
The Nimitz is a mobile, man-made island. Six thousand men live and work in its engine rooms and on its flight decks, in its galleys and its control tower. Among the thousands of men aboard are 15 LDS sailors. Brother Corbin is their group leader. Tonight he’d been finding his fellow Saints, taking time to wish them well and tell them good-bye.
“You get close to people when you work with them,” Brother Corbin said. “And you get especially close when you share the bond of the gospel. We have a place to hold Sunday meetings, and we have a family night activity. We invite other sailors to join with us and learn about the Church. And we talk about where we’re from, news we’ve received from home, how things are going. I’m glad to have an adopted family here on the ship, but I’m sure eager to see my real family at home.” Brother Corbin’s living quarters (he shares a small stateroom with another officer) are just six inches below where the airplanes land. “It gets rather noisy sometimes,” he conceded. “But after a while you can get used to anything. You learn to sleep, even with the noise. You get to where you can tell what kind of plane is landing or taking off just by the sounds it makes. There’s one plane, the S-3A Viking, that we call the ‘Hoover’ because it sounds like a vacuum cleaner.”
He looked around, above his desk and bed, at the collection of photographs of his wife and children, at the photos of the Washington D.C. Temple. “Every time the mail comes there are some snapshots,” he said. “After a while you get a pretty goodcollection.”
“I won’t sleep at all tonight,” he added. “Nobody will. We’re all too anxious to get home. They’ll show movies all night long to give us something to do. It’s funny. Lots of people dream of a cruise in the Mediterranean, and that’s where we’ve been. But nothing compares with coming home. Nothing.”
Nathan helped Matt finish the red border of a cardboard replica of the family coat of arms, a shield with two ravens on it. “That should stand out in a crowd,” Sister Corbin said. The other banners read, “Corbin’s the name we’re looking for,” and “Glad to have you back, Dad,” the last one spray painted on an old sheet so it wouldn’t fall apart in the rain. That was Margaret’s idea.
Matt and Margaret got out the stepladder and hung the sheet along the front of the house. Nathan watched.
“The one on the house will let everybody know he’s coming,” Margaret explained. “We’ll take the others with us to the docks so he can see us.
“You kids are soaked!” Sister Corbin called out the front door. “Come get dried off so you can go to bed.”
On the television, the newscaster was talking about the 16 ships heading for Norfolk and other home ports along the Atlantic seaboard. Everyone, it seemed, was anticipating the homecoming, the return of the men from the sea.
The rain kept falling all night long.
Friday morning dawned gray. The downpour had faded to a drizzle, but forecasts predicted more on the way. Brother Corbin climbed through a bulkhead, leaned over a railing on the carrier’s massive tower (called the “island”), and looked down at a helicopter taking off.
“That’s the travel agent, headed back to shore with orders for plane tickets. Once we dock, a lot of sailors will be headed for the airport,” Brother Corbin said.
He climbed back inside, down a set of stairs so steep it’s called a ladder. The interior of the ship was a flurry of motion, with men constantly running through narrow passageways, clanging up and down the ladders, or bending slightly to squeeze through a hatch. Almost every time Brother Corbin passed someone, there was a smile and a hello.
“The tide has finally come in,” Brother Corbin explained on his way to the communications center. “Now the water’s deep enough for us to make it to port. We won’t go quite fast enough for you to waterski behind the ship, but now we’re on a beeline for home.”
The Corbins live in Virginia Beach, a bedroom community near Norfolk. As Sister Corbin, Margaret, Matt, and Nathan rushed to beat the heavy traffic to the naval base, they could see signs everywhere. Some were red and white, posted along the road like Burma Shave ads. Others were simple but sincere, with messages like, “We love you” or “Happiness is having your ship come in.” In the car talk turned to Dad and the family. “Richard is from Webster, Texas (near Houston), and I’m from Spring Hope (near Raleigh), North Carolina,” Sister Corbin said. “We met while I was in school in Mars Hill, North Carolina. I had always told my mother I’d never date a Navy man. But then someone lined me up with a blind date.”
A whistle blown by a sailor pointing to a parking stall interrupted the discussion. On the waterfront, hundreds of people were already waiting. Banners and balloons were everywhere. Someone was handing out small American flags. “It’s like being at the airport with 6,000 missionaries all coming home at the same time,” Sister Corbin said.
As the family got out of the car, they opened their umbrellas. The rain was thundering down again.
You don’t unload the Nimitz in a minute or two. If you’re assigned to stand at attention as the ship pulls in (a ceremony known as manning the rails),then you can thrill at the sight of the crowds awaiting your arrival. But as soon as the ship is docked, it’s back to your duty station again, or back to waiting.
The planes flew home days ago. The four-and-one-half-acre deck is now empty, except for a few sailors scanning the docks for loved ones. Like others still on duty, Brother Corbin is busy filing reports and finalizing communications records. Down in the hangar bay normally used for plane storage and repair, the majority of the carrier’s personnel wait for permission to disembark. The bay is larger than a football field, now filled to standing room only. Men and duffle bags are everywhere.
Brother Corbin asks for permission to go ashore and bring his family back with him. Permission is granted. He joins the men in the hangar bay. And he waits, too. It seems like hours.
Finally, a microphone clicks on. Congratulations for a successful cruise are given. Announcements are made. Officers not on duty are cleared to leave, and they walk out single file. Then all others not on duty are cleared to leave, and they race for the quarterdeck and down the brow (a landlubber would say they’re rushing down the gangplanks).
On the pier, the crowd, now grown to thousands, cheers as the first sailors touch the ground. A band plays. Desperate eyes search and search, then finally meet. Then there’s running, running through a crowd for miles it seems, until those who stayed at home and those who have been at sea try to melt the absence in embraces. Fathers and mothers hug their sons, brothers and sisters smile and cry as though the reunion can’t be real. Husbands and wives hold each other and kiss. Older children put on their father’s cap or try to pick up his gear and find it far too heavy. Younger children hold onto his legs and wait for their turn to be held and loved. Babies, oblivious to it all, doze in their strollers as the rain keeps pelting the ground.
Margaret and Matthew spot Brother Corbin first. They start jumping up and down, almost screaming as they point him out to Sister Corbin and Nathan. Then Sister Corbin and Nathan are jumping up and down too, and so are some friends and neighbors who have joined them. They wave the soggy banners whose colors have faded in the rain.
“I looked and looked at the crowd and couldn’t see anything,” Brother Corbin said. “There were thousands of people, all holding signs. Then, when I was about halfway down the ramp, I spotted the red shield with the ravens.”
Now it was Brother Corbin’s turn to jump and shout, and finally free from the rails and the ramps, to rush into the embrace of those who love him.
The Corbins were finally reunited.
And this time, Brother Corbin was home for good. “I’ve been assigned to shore duty at a communications station in Virginia for three years,” he said. And with his record for time already spent at sea, he shouldn’t have to go away again.
Over the next few days, the rain would be forgotten in the sunshine of love. The Corbins would talk and talk. They would want to take Dad everywhere and tell him everything. They would listen to his stories of ships, planes, places, and people. They would hear his thanks for their Christmas package full of cookies and dried pineapple. They would tell him thanks for seashells from Israel.
On Sunday he would tell them about 18 missionaries who visited the ship in Naples, Italy, about holding church right above the flight deck where catapults launch jets into the sky, about mechanics who came to sacrament meeting dressed in dungarees. Margaret would tell him about being Beehive class president. Matthew would know his father was watching him pass the sacrament. Nathan would show Dad the new kittens born while he was away. And Brother and Sister Corbin would gather the family together to pray.
More than once they would wonder if this wasn’t what it will be like in heaven, when a loved one returns after being away. And more than once they would rejoice, glad their family was sealed in the Hawaii Temple years ago, an ordinance that opens the door to family homecomings forever.

Andy straightened his neckerchief and grabbed his Webelos manual.
“Hurry, Andy! You’re going to be late,” his mother called from downstairs. He rushed down and out the front door.
“Bye, Mom!” he yelled as he hopped on his bike. In his last ward, his mom had driven him to the church every week for Scouts. It seemed so cool that now he could ride his bike just around the block to Sister Snow’s house for den meeting.
Sister Snow’s son, B.J., answered the door. Andy liked B.J., but B.J. always seemed to be looking over Andy’s shoulder, like he was hoping someone else would show up. B.J. led Andy to the family room where David, Tanner, Bryce, and Jemison were busy painting a poster. David looked up and smiled when Andy said hi.
All during the meeting Andy tried to be friendly to everyone, but especially to B.J. He wanted to have some friends in his new ward before school started. It would be easier to go to a new school if he already had friends.
When den meeting was over, Sister Snow said that the boys could stay and play together a little longer if they wanted to.
“Great!” B.J. said. “Let’s play a video game. You have to see this new one I got.”
Andy looked to see what game B.J. was putting on. With a sinking feeling, he realized it was not one his parents would let him play.
“What’s wrong?” David asked. All the boys turned to look at Andy.
“I was just wondering what other games you have,” Andy said to B.J.
“Why? Don’t you like this one?”
“It’s just—it’s just that …” Andy stammered, trying to make his voice work. “It’s just that my parents won’t let me play that game.”
B.J. laughed. “Oh. Well, that’s OK. We won’t tell them.”
Andy felt the other boys watching him. He said in a small voice, “I think maybe I’ll go home.”
Nobody said anything for a second. Then David said, “Hey, guys, let’s pick another game.”
“You could always stay and just watch, you know,” B.J. said.
Watching wasn’t the same as playing, was it? But, no, that didn’t feel right to Andy either. He felt all tight inside and wanted to cry. “No, I think I’d better not.”
“Better not what?” Sister Snow asked as she passed through the room. “What’s wrong, Andy?”
“Andy thinks his parents won’t let him play this game,” B.J. said.
“Wow, Andy. That’s really responsible of you to obey your parents even when they aren’t around.” Sister Snow smiled. Then she left. Andy had hoped she would make B.J. change the game. Now what would he do?
Finally B.J. said, “All right. Let’s just pick another one.” He put in a different game. Even though Andy was allowed to play it, he still felt lonely.
When he got home, Andy ran straight to his room. A few minutes later his father knocked on the door. “Andy? Can I come in?”
Andy rolled over and looked at the wall. “I guess,” he answered softly.
Andy’s dad came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sister Snow called,” he said. “She told me you followed our family rules and didn’t play the game the other boys chose.”
Andy shrugged. Then he looked up into his father’s face. He was smiling. “Andy, I am so proud of you.”
Hearing the love in his father’s voice made tears come into Andy’s eyes. “I thought about calling you or Mom. I thought maybe if I asked on the phone, you might let me play it.”
“So why didn’t you call us?”
“Because I knew what you would say. Then the other boys said I should just play it, because you would never know.”
“But you didn’t do that,” Dad said.
“No, but I almost did. The game looked really cool, and I felt like a baby not playing it. I can’t wait until I’m a teenager and can play those games.”
“Wait a minute,” Dad said. “Are you sure you’ll be playing them when you are a teenager?”
“But the rating was—”
“I know. But some things are still not good for us even when we are older. Your mother and I are both old enough to see any kind of movie, but we don’t because the Holy Ghost has told us that some movies aren’t good for us. We have rules for you now, but as you get older you’ll have to make rules for yourself—rules that will help you keep the Holy Ghost with you.”
“But it’s so hard to be left out,” Andy said.
“Let me tell you something that has helped me,” Dad said. “I have a best friend who helps me choose the right: Mom. We can always do good things together. Do you have any friends who might feel the same as you about video games?”
Andy thought about that. “Well, I think David might have been glad when they switched to another game.”
“It sounds like David is the kind of boy you might want to spend some more time with.”
“Yeah, maybe so. Dad, can I invite David over tomorrow?”
“OK,” Dad said. “I love you, buddy.” Dad rubbed Andy’s hair and left the room.
Andy sat on his bed for a few more minutes and thought about David. It would be nice to have a friend who didn’t want Andy to do what felt wrong.
Andy looked at the bare walls around his room and the moving boxes on the floor. He would call David right now. David was probably the right person to help Andy hang his posters up tomorrow.

Following the recommendation of the Council of the Twelve to feature cultural programs in conjunction with June regional meetings, the Payson (Utah) Region youth got together last summer for a lively, creative dance festival on a local high school football field.
“The Colorful World of Dance” was a treat not only for the audience but for the 360 participants from Payson Utah, Payson Utah East, and Santaquin Utah stakes who kicked up their heels in such numbers as “Devil’s Dream,” “Muskrat Love,” and “Spinning Wheel.” Swedish, Norwegian, and Hungarian folk dances were also featured, and a Lamanite sister rendered “The Lord’s Prayer” in Indian sign language.
Many hours were spent sewing colorful costumes and practicing under the leadership of 16 stake dance directors and two ballroom dancers from BYU. As the group concluded by gathering to sing “I Am a Child of God” with the audience, it was generally agreed that it had all been worth the effort.

Fireworks and firecrackers, brightly colored nativity scenes, and feasts featuring stuffed tamales—that’s Christmas in Guatemala. As a full-time missionary I found the traditions very different from my own traditions in the United States. I was homesick and thought my Christmas would be miserable.
My companion, Sister Anaya, said we would find joy on Christmas by serving others. She suggested that we spend the morning singing at the hospital, and we invited other missionaries to join us.
As we approached the entrance, I watched the people waiting in line to see their loved ones. Their faces were sad, their sandal-clad feet dusty, their clothes faded. We waited with them. When we were finally allowed to enter the building, we walked down narrow halls with flaking green paint and cement floors. The smells of medicines and sickness overwhelmed me.
In the dim light I could see sick patients on beds in a large room with little ventilation or privacy. They lay there, some with bandages, some with IVs, some hooked up to machines to help them breathe. Some moaned quietly. Others slept. I wondered why we had come. Most in our small group of missionaries stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do.
But not Sister Anaya. She went to each bed, greeting those who were sick, asking them how they felt, and wishing them a merry Christmas. Her boldness reminded the rest of us why we had come, and we started to sing Christmas carols, softly at first but more confidently as we continued. Some of the patients smiled, some just lay there and didn’t seem to notice, and some hummed along.
Sister Anaya, singing with a hymnbook in her hand, approached a woman who was wrapped in bandages. The woman began to cry quietly, and my companion lovingly stroked her hair. Through her tears the woman spoke, “You are angels. You are angels.”
I will never forget Sister Anaya’s response. “No, you are not hearing angels,” she replied. “You are hearing Latter-day Saints.”
But I also think of Sister Anaya. I remember her encouraging us to sing at the hospital and how we found joy by spreading joy. I remember her stroking the hair of that sick woman. And I remember that I don’t need to be an angel to serve others. I can serve them as a Latter-day Saint.

Another time, Kim and Christy’s 13-year-old cousin and her parents dropped in unannounced from Los Angeles.

“They invited us out to dinner and we talked about the Church,” Christy said. “Our cousin seemed really interested, and her parents said it was okay for her to listen to the missionaries.”

Kim told about a home evening during which the missionaries taught about Christ, baptism, and temple work. “She was excited about her family being sealed together,” Kim said.

Now the cousin is being baptized. “And she’s working on her parents too,” Christy said.

“It doesn’t just have to be adults who are responsible for getting their families sealed,” Kim said. “Share the gospel with children and teenagers, and their parents may get interested too.”

Meagon Doering knows how to get the job done. This 16-year-old Laurel from Rock Island, Tennessee, has organized fundraising efforts for the Hospital Hospitality House in Nashville, raising a total of $2,400. Meagon and her family were grateful to find the HHH when Meagon’s dad, Michael, was hospitalized for nearly three months 90 miles from their house. The house provided a very inexpensive place to stay so that the family could be near Meagon’s dad for long periods of time without having to make the long drive from home. Meagon says this project was her way of saying thanks.

Youth in the Sunset Ward, Kaysville Utah Stake, have service all sewed up.
The young men and young women in the ward spent an evening sewing scripture carrying cases for the youth in two Serbian branches. Amazingly, it only took them about two hours to complete 29 cases. They also matted and framed pictures of the Frankfurt Germany Temple (the nearest temple) and pictures of the Savior. The cases and the pictures were then taken to Serbia by a couple in the Sunset Ward going to pick up their missionary son.
“The project really came together well. We were able to get a lot of the materials donated, which helped a lot,” says Cami Stanger, the Laurel who headed up the project. “We also each wrote our testimonies and sang ‘I Am a Child of God’ to them on a videotape. The people who took the materials over to Serbia said the people really appreciated them and were thrilled to get them. That made me feel great.”

In addition to the LDS recipients, there was at least one Scout recognized who came from an LDS-sponsored troop but who is not a member of the Church. John C. Eisenhart received a Medal of Merit for saving his grandfather’s life when the grandfather fell from a six-foot ladder and fractured his skull. John used a handkerchief compress to stop the bleeding, and then called an emergency squad. The wound required 61 stitches. “I was glad that I had had my Boy Scout first aid training,” John said. He is senior patrol leader of Troop 51, Newark Ward, Columbus Ohio East Stake.

The author’s parents not long before her father died.
Photograph courtesy of the author
As a child, I always loved spending time with my dad. To me, he was the funniest, smartest person in the world. In my young eyes, he was a lot like Moroni, “a strong and a mighty man … of a perfect understanding” (Alma 48:11). He was one of my greatest friends.
One of the things I remember most about my father was how hard he worked for his family. It was not always easy to support a wife and six children, so he would often juggle three jobs at a time to give us the things we needed. He definitely did “labor exceedingly for the welfare and safety of his people” (Alma 48:12). Even at a young age, I could see that my father’s biggest concern was making his family happy.
Time spent with my busy dad was always time well spent. Some of my fondest memories with him include the nights we watched old Western movies on the couch and the weekends we spent at our favorite campsites.
I especially loved gathering as a family in the evenings to read from the scriptures. My father had a great love for the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. He wanted all his children to know and treasure the Book of Mormon as well.
He often used my brothers’ action figures to reenact classic Book of Mormon stories like those of Samuel the Lamanite, the stripling warriors, and the brother of Jared. He brought to life a book that for me as a child was sometimes hard to understand. My father’s love for the Book of Mormon was contagious. Not only did he share the captivating stories, but he also taught our family to live its teachings.
When I was 14 years old, my family received a visit from two police officers telling us that my father had passed away in a car accident on his way home from work one night. At first it was hard for me to believe that it had actually happened. I felt that we saw things like this only in movies. But it soon became very real and extremely difficult for my family. For some of us, it was easy to wonder why a loving God would take such a great man from a family who needed him so much.
Shortly after his death, my mother gathered us kids around the table that my father had made just a few years before and said something that I have never forgotten. She told us, “Now it is time to put into practice everything that we believe.”
My mind went back to my father’s love of the scriptures, and I began to read them more diligently on my own. Over time, I felt greater peace in my life. Certain verses brought me hope that I would see my father again because of the Resurrection of the Savior. I experienced personally that “the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ” (Mosiah 16:8).
Photograph posed by model
Reading the Book of Mormon has taught me that our loving Heavenly Father knows each of us and speaks to us in times of need through the holy scriptures. I have come to understand that we will all experience trials no matter who we are, but that Heavenly Father loves us enough to give us tools to find peace even during our darkest times. For me, one of these tools has been the Book of Mormon.
I will forever be grateful for my father’s example and for the way his love of the scriptures has changed my life.

I experienced this true principle with my wife and two children. On Christmas morning in 2016, while I was serving as a stake president in Lubumbashi, the four of us knelt and begged Heavenly Father to bless us with a spirit of peace, simplicity, love, and generosity. We followed President Hunter’s example and shared with our friends, brothers, sisters and our parents all that we had—and what we felt by the end of that Christmas Day was wonderful. Yes, we did experience joy and peace on that special Christmas day, and ever since, that spirit has always led my family.

The second lesson was learned several years later when we were more financially secure. Our wedding anniversary was approaching, and I wanted to buy Mary a fancy coat to show my love and appreciation for our many happy years together. When I asked what she thought of the coat I had in mind, she replied with words that again penetrated my heart and mind. “Where would I wear it?” she asked. (At the time she was a ward Relief Society president helping to minister to needy families.)

Then she taught me an unforgettable lesson. She looked me in the eyes and sweetly asked, “Are you buying this for me or for you?” In other words, she was asking, “Is the purpose of this gift to show your love for me or to show me that you are a good provider or to prove something to the world?” I pondered her question and realized I was thinking less about her and our family and more about me.

After that we had a serious, life-changing discussion about provident living, and both of us agreed that our money would be better spent in paying down our home mortgage and adding to our children’s education fund.

“I grew up on a farm in Salt Lake Valley and learned to appreciate work. I developed a tremendous love for the outdoors, for crops and animals, and for all nature.

“We had a gentle horse that I could put the bridle on by climbing onto a wagon wheel. I was riding that horse the day I was to be baptized, and it slipped and fell in a muddy spot in the orchard. I sprained my leg when it fell, and I couldn’t be baptized until the following month.

“Our summertime baptisms were performed in the irrigation ditch across the street from our chapel; the water wasn’t sparkling clean. My father was the bishop, but he didn’t baptize me. He felt that he should pass the privilege around, so he called a priest in the ward and asked him to baptize me.”

When we could find one, we set up camp next to a stream. One time when we did, Ed and I took off with the fishing pole to look for a deep hole in the nearly dry creek. We found a beautiful spot out of sight of camp but close enough that we could still hear the cries of Annie-I-over. There was a strict rule that no one got so far away that he couldn’t see or hear the camp.
When we got off alone together like this Ed tried to show me how to talk, and I learned to say a few new words. “Look at that frog,” he shouted and bounded across the mossy stones to grab it.
“Frog,” I said. “Frog.”
“What a beauty! Look how big he is. I wonder how far he can jump.”
We stayed until nearly dark testing his ability. By the time we heard Papa coming to get us, the frog’s record was six feet, measured with Ed’s feet.
“Papa, look at my pet,” Ed called as he came closer. “Can I keep him? Can I?”
“That’s a fine frog all right,” Papa said. “But you’d better leave him here. He’d only die if we took him with us.”
“I can take him in a bucket of water. He won’t die.”
“A bucket of water is not the same as a stream. This is his home.”
“Please, Papa.”
“No, Ed. Now put him down, and I’ll tell you a story on the way back.”
“What about?” Ed asked.
“About a frog.”
“A true story?”
“Absolutely.”
Papa’s stories were always worth whatever we had to give up to hear them. Ed put his pet down carefully in a sheltered spot by the stream and took hold of Papa’s other hand. Then the three of us began to walk toward camp.
“What’s the story?” Ed asked.
“How butter was discovered.”
“You said it was about a frog.”
“So it is. You see, a long time ago, a frog jumped into a bowl of cream that was left by a dairymaid to keep cool at the edge of a stream. All night long he paddled around trying to get out, and when the girl came the next morning to get the cream, it had turned to butter.”
“Was the frog still alive?”
“I don’t remember that, but since there was no cream to spread on the bread, the dairymaid used the butter. She was afraid she’d be scolded for being careless enough to leave the lid off the cream, but everyone said the new spread was better. ‘Betty’s better spread’ they called it and wanted her to make more.”
When we got back to the wagon Mama had a good hot supper ready. Afterward we had a campfire program and evening prayer. Then the children were put to bed, and soon the fiddle began its tune and the grown-ups were moving their feet in time to the music. We happily watched them from the place where we slept beneath the wagon.
The next morning was washday, which meant the clothes were put into a half-full water barrel with a bar of homemade lye soap and jostled clean as we rode along. When we stopped, they’d be rinsed, wrung out, and hung on ropes stretched between trees. It wouldn’t take long to dry them if there were a little breeze.
Washdays were always planned between two stops where there was plenty of water so we wouldn’t run short. And since it was an extra busy day for Mama we had to help more than usual. Before camp broke up she assigned the chores.
“Caroline, you take care of the chickens,” she said. “Make sure they get fed and watered and don’t let any of them get lost when you turn them out to run.
“Dora, I’ll need you to watch Frank and Georgie while I do the washing. And Ed, you can churn the butter.”
Just then I saw the look come into Ed’s eyes that meant he had an idea, and I knew what it was because I had it too. Although he didn’t need to, he jerked his head at me in a way that said come on. Grabbing a bar of soap and a towel, we ran off in the direction of the stream.
“Where are you two going?” Mama called, and Ed shouted, “To wash our hands.”
“You told a lie,” I accused.
“No, I didn’t. We’ll wash our hands.”
The frog hadn’t got warmed up enough to move around yet so he was still where we had left him.
Ed started to lather him with the soap, and he slipped away. He picked up the slick frog again and said, “Have to get him clean enough.”
After he’d washed and dried the frog, he put him inside his shirt. We stayed by the stream cutting willows until the camp was ready to leave and then ran and jumped in the back of the wagon.
Mama was riding up front with Papa, holding Frank on her lap, and Georgie was asleep in his wash-basket bed. Caroline was walking with her friends.
Ed plopped the frog into the butter churn, and we settled into the back of the wagon for a leisurely ride. We reached over the tailgate, dragging our willows in the dust to make patterned trails behind us.
Several times we peeked into the churn where the frog was still swimming around, but there was no sign of butter. Ed started to work on teaching me some new words, and we forgot about everything else.
At lunchtime Mama asked, “Did the butter come yet?”
“Not yet,” Ed said.
“Well, it will pretty soon,” she encouraged. “Even the bouncing wagon helps it along.”
Then Papa told her the frog story. “Now don’t go giving these children any crazy ideas. It would be just like Ed and Dora to try that out.” She looked at us. “AND DON’T YOU DARE!” she warned.
We were glad she didn’t check out the butter churn before the wagons started up again. We decided that as soon as it was safe, we’d get the frog out of the cream and churn the way we were supposed to. When we lifted the lid, there sat the frog on an island of butter it had made. We laughed and laughed, and Ed put the frog inside his shirt to keep him safe until later. He wasn’t going to turn him loose here where there was no water.
As soon as we stopped, we took off for the stream to release the frog, and no one but us ever did know how the butter was churned that day.

President Wilford Woodruff recounted the difficulties of early missionary work:
“In my early missions, when preaching in the Southern States—Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky—I have waded swamps and rivers and have walked seventy miles or more without eating. In those days we counted it a blessing to go into a place where there was a Latter-day Saint. I went once 150 miles to see one; and when I got there he had apostatized, and tried to kill me. Then, after travelling seventy-two miles without food, I sat down to eat my meal with a Missouri mobocrat, and he damning and cursing me all the time. … In those days we might travel hundreds and hundreds of miles and you could not find a Latter-day Saint.”

I have been blessed by the collective apostolic, personal, and professional experience and insight of the quorum members with whom I serve. An example from my association with Elder Robert D. Hales highlights the remarkable opportunities I have to learn from and serve with these leaders.
Several years ago I spent a Sunday afternoon with Elder Hales in his home as he was recovering from a serious illness. We discussed our families, our quorum responsibilities, and important experiences.
At one point I asked Elder Hales, “You have been a successful husband, father, athlete, pilot, business executive, and Church leader. What lessons have you learned as you have grown older and been constrained by decreased physical capacity?”
Elder Hales paused for a moment and responded, “When you cannot do what you have always done, then you only do what matters most.”
I was struck by the simplicity and comprehensiveness of his answer. My beloved apostolic associate shared with me a lesson of a lifetime—a lesson learned through the crucible of physical suffering and spiritual searching.

At the San Jose 23rd Ward, youth representatives had decided to clean up the meetinghouse as their service project. This posed a problem for Burke Perry, 12, the bishop’s son. He is the only boy his age in his ward. So he recruited some help.
Urged on by Burke’s promises that they could compete in the chariot race, several of his nonmember friends also grabbed buckets and sponges to help scrub down chapel benches and the kitchen, joining forces with the girls in the ward. Such fellowshipping is typical for Burke, who kept 10 nonmembers coming to church all year so he could play on a ward basketball team.
“I just call them up and ask them to come,” he said. “They’re used to it, I guess. Their parents really like it.”

Sister Yanet Gómez is the living testimony of how great the love of our Heavenly Father is for each of His children, and she manifests the strongest faith and gratitude of a faithful servant.
Despite living with very particular health conditions, Sister Gómez maintains her active service as Young Women president of the La Vega District, in the Dominican Republic. She affirms that although she has lived through so many experiences that have led her to critical states of health, she could never deny the Lord or get angry with Him, rather she feels fortunate to go through all these situations and considers that the Lord allows her to have them so that she can help others.
Having been diagnosed in 2018 with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), with congenital thrombophilia and dual pathways, conditions that currently have no cure, being alive has been considered a miracle by medical specialists, who affirm that Yanet is the only person who has survived so long after being diagnosed with this condition.
Science says that the congenital thrombophilia that affects Yanet is an inherited coagulation disorder, due to a reduction in the level of synthesis and/or activity of protein S and characterized by the development of symptoms of recurrent venous thrombosis, with the condition two-way, it causes your body to bleed and clot at the same time.
On the other hand, the antiphospholipid syndrome that she also suffers, occurs when the immune system mistakenly creates antibodies that make the blood more prone to clotting, causing dangerous clots in the legs, kidneys, lungs and brain and, in pregnant women, can lead to miscarriage and fetal death.
Doctors say that they do not know how to explain how she has been able to survive so long, while she, for her part, assures that “the Lord is the one who knows, He is the one who has the purpose in His hands.” Everything has been an experience to help her to understand life more clearly, to value people well, not to hurt anyone and to try to do what she can to help others. She considers that she truly has benefited greatly despite all this.
With great conviction, she says that she has never asked why, and that she does not feel unfortunate or sad about her health condition. In her own words: “God gives the wound and gives the cure. I do not know if the same gospel prepared me since I was a child to understand life in a different way from other people, because that is something that I am trying to understand a little bit, whether what happens to me is for myself or for others. I have seen that it has been reflected much more in other people than in myself.”
Yanet Gómez explains that her family joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when she was 6 years old and two years later, she was baptized. Since then, she has served in various callings, including as the director couple of the For the Strength of Youth conference (FSY 2016 and 2017), among many others.
Less than three months after she was married, she was hospitalized for a thrombosis in her right leg, and, after several months in the hospital, her leg was in such a bad condition that the doctor determined that the only option to avoid further complications was to amputate it. At that moment, she felt desperate: “I was anguished, not because of myself, but because I felt it was unfair for my husband that when he was newly married, he had to go through having his wife in that situation.”
Asking the doctor for a day to think before the surgery, she wondered what they could do to find out if that was really the Lord’s will. She claims that something told her that she “had forgotten some things,” and she was inspired to ask her husband and her father to call some members of the Church to do a collective fast.
She was greatly surprised to see that many members joined this fast, and what surprised her even more was that she could see that the Lord performed a miracle. The next day, the doctor could not believe the great change in her condition, reversing his decision to do the surgery and allowing her to have her leg today, with no sign of the state it was in at that time.
It has not been the only moment of adversity in her life. She always dreamed of having a large family, but due to her health condition, she had already lost two pregnancies and her prognosis was that she might not be able to have children. However, during the dedication of the Santo Domingo Temple, she and her husband were able to greet Elder Richard G. Scott (1928-2015) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Upon learning of their nearly four years of marriage and their difficulty having children, he assured them with a very penetrating and serious look that they would have a child very soon.
Sister Gómez not only had that child, but she also had a second, and although in both cases they were born at six months of gestation, they were born healthy.
For her second pregnancy, the doctor recommended performing an abortion before she was four months along; she flatly refused. After prolonged hospitalizations, the child was born without signs of life and without responding to neonatal resuscitation. But her husband, who is a doctor, “began to breathe on him with his mouth and to give him heart massages and I heard him say, ‘let’s go champion, champion up,’ and after a long time the baby screamed. It was a miracle, it really was a miracle,” said Yanet.
In search of other professional opinions, in November 1999 she traveled to Utah at the invitation of her sister who lives there, to be evaluated by specialists from that state. Surprised, the doctors could not believe that she, with her health conditions, was alive. At the time, the doctors told her that she might not survive three months.
“I kind of made a deal with the Lord at that time, and He granted it to me. I told him, let’s do something Lord, take me when my children no longer need me, when they can fend for themselves, and when they can understand many things in life. It has really been like that, they were young then, and now the oldest is 24 years old and the other is 23, and I’m here,” she says.
“Looking and going back, I feel like it perhaps is one of the purposes for which I came to earth, to help other people to endure certain situations in their life, to carry it in a lighter way, with more love, as perhaps the Lord wants. This year I have really had a lot of time to think about why the Lord allows certain things in our lives.”
With joy, Sister Gómez says that the gospel has helped her in everything in her life and has been the greatest blessing she has ever had. She understands that it is through Him that she has been preparing herself, continuing to learn, practicing, perfecting herself, and edifying herself, affirming that everything she is and the knowledge she has obtained is due to the gospel.
She says that through the movie that the missionaries played in their early days in the Dominican Republic, Man’s Search for Happiness, she understood that one of the purposes in our life is to be happy. She then continued learning in seminary, and she has made happiness a priority in her life. Nothing that comes to her makes her depressed. “I try to be happy as much as I can, if I can, I try to help someone else to be happy too.”