Gospel Story Finder

Another typical example of President Hinckley’s caring for an individual occurred during the 2002 Winter Olympics, which were held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Nearly every day he met with presidents, ambassadors, and other dignitaries. One day, shortly before meeting with the president of Germany, he met with a 13-year-old young woman on her birthday. “[She] suffers from aplastic anemia, a very serious illness,” he recorded. “We had a delightful visit. … I told her that we would remember her in our prayers.”13

After Elsa joined the Church in the Netherlands, she experienced a genuine connection with a loving Heavenly Father. But as a young single adult, she also dealt with loneliness when family members and friends felt uncomfortable with her new religious beliefs and habits. “The best thing members have done for me,” she said, “is to willingly befriend me outside of church. Some go to the temple to do baptisms with me even though they have been endowed. I need to interact with members beyond Sunday to get strength and endure to the end.”

Elsa feels like her biggest challenge as a recent convert is “the expectation to suddenly understand everything,” she says. “All the acronyms, events, callings. It can be a little mind-blowing, and I sometimes worry people are judging me for not learning faster.” Additionally, like many others, she experiences social anxiety that “keeps me comfortable sitting toward the back of the chapel, rarely interacting.” Large groups are daunting, and she wonders if others judge her for her lack of participation. “It’s not that I don’t want to take part in the lessons or sing hymns openly or say a public prayer,” she explains. “It’s just that I’m afraid I might actually burst out crying in front of these people I don’t really know yet.”

Members who are nonjudgmental, Elsa says, help her the most. “They listen to my dilemmas and don’t intrude into my personal space. They act with sincerity and patience while I learn for myself what being a member is all about.” In spite of her anxiety, she accompanies the missionaries and looks out for new members and investigators. “I know how it feels to be new,” she explains, “and want to make sure no one turns away from the gifts of the gospel that saved me from despair.”

To a child of seven, the phrase “a judge in Israel” seemed much too profound a term to understand. In my teenage years, however, I learned that this was a phrase used to describe a bishop. I couldn’t imagine myself being a bishop, but I knew that if I was going to be one, I’d better live worthily. I charted a course that included honesty, high standards, and living a moral life. (And eventually, I was called to be a bishop, by men who did not know of that patriarchal promise.)

Brother Connell was a recent convert to the Church and was called to be the teachers quorum adviser. I was fourteen and a new member of the quorum. I was called as the president, even though I was having a great deal of trouble learning to control my temper.
The young men of the ward went on a cave exploration trip to a cave in Indiana, about two hundred miles from home. This trip was taken in the cool of October. I became very angry over a situation and said I was going to walk home. I started out on my long journey. After I had walked a short distance, all the cars in our party went past me and did not even slow down. My jaw dropped and I thought, “Oh, no, they’re leaving me.” Then I turned around and saw Brother Connell following me. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I stopped and waited for him to catch up. He told me he would not let me walk home alone and would join me. We walked for about five miles. Brother Connell helped me understand my feelings and straighten them out. By prior arrangement, one of the cars returned and picked us up. This was the beginning of a great friendship between Brother Connell and me. During the time that Brother Connell was my adviser, he helped me to control my temper and use my energy in constructive ways. He had me come and help him put a new roof on his house. He has had me babysit his children. Brother Connell has helped me learn more about the gospel and how to care about other people.

You’ve fallen in love, you two who were friends. You look at each other and the world around you with an eye single to your own needs. Out of all the faces in all the world, this one face is your kind of face; this one smile, the warming one.
You build your dreams, set the date, and go through the motions of becoming betrothed. And while that enchanting spell spreads over you, you marry. Then, holding hands, you walk off into the sunset to live happily ever after.
New in your discovery of each other’s ways in the daily tasks of life, you are full of wonder—you wonder how you could not have known that this marvelous skier decorates the bedroom with socks, ties, and used lift passes. And when he dries the dishes, he absentmindedly puts the eggbeater in the silver chest.
He wonders how you, his beautiful and sensible wife, could possibly emerge as a toothpaste tube mutilator, a cap leaver-offer, and a financial hazard with a checkbook. What’s more, you starched his no-iron shirts.
You each wonder if two people so different, cloaked with love and some frustration, can ever become one.
It is at such moments that you are glad that you are friends as well as husband and wife. You are thankful for an understanding of the plan of life and the potentiality of the human spirit. In all of your differences there is one important quality you share—imperfection and the right to grow.
So you pick up the socks; he replaces the toothpaste cap; you retrieve the eggbeater; he copes with the overdraft one more time. Then you kiss each other.
Maybe not the perfect partner yet, but you keep trying because you promised you would.
Two imperfect children of God who now look at each other and the world around them with an eye single to another’s needs—friends still and forever.

Wyatt B., age 10, New Mexico, USA
I helped my grandma fill out her tithing form. I felt good I could help her.

Blake closed the Book of Mormon. I did it, he said to himself. He jumped up and ran to the kitchen, slipping a little in his church socks.
“I did it!” Blake announced. “I finished reading the whole Book of Mormon.”
“You finally finished!” Dad said.
Mom pulled him in for a hug. “That’s amazing! Well done.”
“Wow,” Blake’s brother, Austin, said through a mouthful of pancake. “Was it hard?”
Blake thought about that. It had taken him a year and eight months to read the Book of Mormon. “Yeah, it was pretty hard,” he said. “But I’m glad I read it. Sometimes it seemed like I’d never finish, but I kept reading.”
“What was your favorite part?” Mom asked.
“I really liked when Jesus visited the Nephites,” he said. “The best thing is that now I know it’s true. I felt good when I prayed about it.”
Mom smiled, and Dad gave him a hug. They finished eating and got ready for church.
Today was stake conference. Many of the speakers talked about how important it is to read the Book of Mormon every day. Blake was glad he’d already done that.
At the end of the meeting, the stake president gave his talk. “I want to give you a challenge today. I ask everyone to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year,” he said.
Does he mean me too? Blake wondered.
“Whether you have never read the Book of Mormon or you have read it many times, you will always find blessings from studying it daily,” President Miller said.
On the drive home, Blake was very quiet. His family was talking about the challenge. But Blake wasn’t excited at all. The happiness he’d felt this morning was gone. He didn’t want to start all over. He’d just finished! When they got home, Blake shuffled to his room and flopped onto his bed. He closed his eyes.
When Blake woke up from his nap, the first thing he saw was his Book of Mormon. It was on his nightstand right where he’d left it this morning.
He picked it up and opened to the title page. “The Book of Mormon, an account written by the hand of Mormon … ,” Blake read aloud. He felt a warm, peaceful feeling. He finished reading the page. Then he knelt down and prayed. “Heavenly Father, please help me read the Book of Mormon again.” He started to feel excited about reading it.
Blake walked to the living room. “I’m going to read the Book of Mormon again,” he told his family.
“Good for you,” Dad said. “Mom and I are going to take the challenge too.”
“Will you help me read it?” Austin asked.
“Sure.” Blake said. “We can do it together!”

Lori Ransom, a 16-year-old Idaho girl, recently won first place nationally in the American Legion Auxiliary Americanism contest.
Lori’s essay placed first in the senior division in Pocatello, went on to win in the state, and was then entered in the national competition. She was flown to Seattle, Washington, on August 22, 1976, to attend the Legion’s national convention where she read her essay to 2,000 women representing every state. Her essay was geared to the question “Is Americanism in danger of extinction? How may I preserve my heritage?”
Winning essay contests is not a new experience for Lori. She was first in the local Americanism contest in both the fifth and seventh grades. Lori has also won two state awards in French competition.
Lori is secretary of her Laurel class, organist for the junior Primary, and is a third-year seminary student. She does a lot of artwork for her ward and for Highland High School (Pocatello, Idaho).

In July 1972 Harold B. Lee became the eleventh President of the Church. One hour after the announcement was made, he met with newspaper and television reporters. One of them asked him if he had a message for Church members.
President Lee said: “The safety of the church lies in the members keeping the commandments. There is nothing more important that I could say. As they keep the commandments, blessings will come.” (See Church News, 15 July 1972, page 3.)

One Rainy Night Not many children get to play in the rain at night! Actually, the boy isn’t playing. He’s helping his mother catch wood frogs, salamanders, snakes, turtles, and toads in the beams of their car’s headlights for the nature center where she works. In a couple of weeks, on another rainy night, they’ll return the animals and catch more for people to look at.Doris Gove7–10 years

A lot of people are thankful to Shawn for their introduction to the gospel. One of his favorite activities is helping the missionaries. When invited, he sometimes travels across four or five states on an airline or in his own plane to tell an assembly of investigators about rodeoing and the gospel. He explains some of the finer points of bronc riding and then winds up the meeting telling them why the gospel is so important. After a recent trip to an Indian reservation where he explained about the gospel and how to ride broncs, he said, “I guess this approach has helped opened a few more doors for the elders.”

1 Tomorrow would be Father’s Day, and Jimmy, Henry, and Bob were busy making cards for Dad. Jimmy was trying to think of something special he could do for Dad.
“How do you like my card?” Henry asked as he held up a piece of paper with a picture of a boy and a lawn mower drawn on the outside. On the inside Henry had printed:
Happy Father’s Day!I will mow the lawn.Love, Henry
2 “I like it,” Jimmy said. He wished he were as old as Henry so he could draw nice pictures and use the lawn mower.
“Look at my card!” cried Bob. His card had a picture of a shiny car pasted on the outside. Inside he had printed:
Happy Father’s Day!I will wash and shine the car.Love, Bob
3 “That’s nice,” Jimmy said. Bob was ten, and he was big enough to do lots of things.
Jimmy used a yellow crayon to color a sun in the blue sky on the outside of his card. “I wish I could think of something to do for Dad too,” he said as he bent over his card.
4 “Maybe you could bring in the paper every afternoon,” Henry said.
“I do that all the time anyway,” Jimmy replied. “I want to do something special.”
5 “You could try to find the nozzle for the water hose,” Henry suggested. “When Dad was washing the car this morning, he couldn’t find it.”
6 Henry and Bob picked up their cards and crayons and left Jimmy all alone.
Jimmy tucked his card inside his shirt pocket and put away his crayons. Then he began to try to find the lost nozzle for Dad.
7 He went out to the garage and looked on all the shelves, in the corners, and even inside Mother’s watering can. He looked inside Dad’s tool box and behind his own toy box. But he couldn’t find the nozzle anywhere.
8 Jimmy looked again at his toy box. Maybe I should straighten it up a bit, he thought. So he carefully took all of his toys out of the box and put them on the floor. Then one by one he replaced them—all except an old pair of cowboy boots with the toes worn out. As he picked the boots up, something fell on the floor with a clatter.
What a surprise! There on the floor lay the lost nozzle.
9 The next morning Henry and Bob gave Dad their Father’s Day cards, and Dad was very happy.
Then Jimmy handed Dad the hose nozzle and his card. On the inside of the card, Henry had helped him write:
I will help find things!Love, Jimmy
10 Dad laughed and put his arm around Jimmy’s shoulders. “I have one boy to help me keep the lawn mowed,” he said. “I have another boy to help me keep the car shined. And I also have a boy who finds things for me. This is a happy Father’s Day.”
Jimmy was happy too. Finding things is a very special kind of gift, he decided.

The girls in the activity days group of the Sand Creek Ward, Fountain Colorado Stake, wanted to learn to sew. They found a perfect way to learn and to give service. They spent two activities making dolls and then took them to the local police station. Now the policemen can give the dolls to children in need. The girls enjoyed the opportunity to serve.

Twelve-year-old Lao Moy wiped the rock dust from his eyes and squinted into the wintry heavens. The sharp wind that knifed down through the cottonwood canyons of the Wasatch Mountains cooled the sweat on his face. He thought of the high winds he and his father Chen had experienced on the clipper ship that had brought them to America from their ancestral home in China seven years ago.
Lao Moy’s father had been a fisherman on a sampan in Canton when a terrible wharf fire took the lives of Mother, Grandfather, and his baby sister Sze. Then the lure of gold in a strange, far-off land called America tempted Chen in the summer of 1855 to leave China for the goldfields of California. Perhaps, he thought, I can do better by Lao Moy there.
But Lao Moy was to discover at a very young age, along with his father, that the Lord makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. What little gold Chen was able to earn as a mine worker was stolen by his rough, bad-tempered employers. Then had come that awful night when a half-dozen drunken men had broken down their shanty door and killed him.
Lao Moy stared at the cloud shadows drifting across the canyon walls like a vulture’s wing. He gritted his teeth and his eyes filled with tears. The bitter memory of his father’s death lodged once again in the depths of his heart.

Bishop Edgley: Think of what would happen in a deacons quorum if there were enough chairs in the classroom for every member of the quorum, not just those who regularly attend, and if on the back of each chair was the name of one quorum member. The empty chairs would be very apparent to the quorum presidency. That’s one example of what could be done to enliven the quorum presidency and the quorum’s sense of the need to reach out to others.

When we were being evacuated, I found out that on Sunday afternoon after our sacrament meeting, a group of protesters had been preparing to attack our apartment. One of our neighbors shouted, “They aren’t French!” but they would not leave. Finally, another neighbor cried, “They’re missionaries!” and the rioters dispersed. I again remembered the words, “My Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you,” and I realized that I was living the promise from my stake president’s blessing. I had seen prophecy fulfilled.

One day in April 2024, I was looking through one of the family history pages on Facebook when I saw a post which caught my eye. It mentioned a William Cross living in the Hafod, which is part of Swansea where I live and grew up. I thought: William Cross? That’s my great-grandfather.
Cross isn’t a common name in Swansea and my great-grandfather was originally from Huntingdonshire. The lady who wrote the post was looking for relatives of William Cross. She had a Bible and she wanted to return it to the family. From what I could gather she and her family had moved into the house in Grandison Street where my grandparents had lived. She’d found the Bible in the house.
I phoned her and explained who I was and we arranged to meet. She gave me the Bible and I was in tears. When I saw it, I thought: I’ve seen this before. I must have seen it when I was a youngster.
William Cross was born in 1840. I couldn’t find out when he came to Swansea, but my daughter and I found him there in the 1871 census. He married Mary Thomas in 1871 in St Mary’s church. She was from Walton in Pembrokeshire and was working in Swansea, I’m assuming as a domestic. He was living in the same area of the town. They moved into 11 Grandison Street where all the children were born. My grandfather, Walter, was their youngest child.
I was thrilled to have my great-grandfather’s Bible, because it’s part of him. It was given to him. On the front page is written: “William Cross, his book, a present from his loving mother.” The Bible is very frail. I’m almost afraid to handle it. I would like to have it re-bound, but it wouldn’t have the same character. Even though it’s all dog-eared and broken, you can still make out who it belonged to. It gives me a bit of insight into my great-grandparents. They died before I was born.
The Bible has a list of the children in the front. I knew who they were because I’d heard of them. And my grandfather was there, so it was my close family. But among the list of children there were two I didn’t know anything about. I’ve since taken their names to the temple, so I think the family is now complete. And I think that’s why the Bible came to me.

I’ve got a real bad temper, too. People used to irritate me with the littlest things. Sometimes it got so bad that I’d yell at someone just for touching me. The worst part about it was that it was usually my family. But I found that I have a vitamin deficiency that was causing me to be irritable. I also realized I needed to learn to love. The Savior loved everyone, even those who betrayed him.
Believe me, my little brother gets so irritating I want to kick him.
But I asked my Father in Heaven, not to make him be nice to me, but to help me be nice to him. And it really works. He’s not less irritating, but I’m less touchy about it.
Sheila Webb, 17Sunnyvale, California

When Harold B. Lee was in high school, he joined the debate team.
Harold’s friend: Harold, did you hear? We’re leaving town for a debate tournament!
Harold: When?
Harold’s friend: Next week!
Harold prepared his speeches and packed his suitcase, trying to not be nervous for the tournament. On the day of the tournament, he was ready.
When his turn came to speak, he stood at the podium and did his best. His team won every debate!
Harold: Mother, you’ll never guess what happened—we won!
Harold’s mother: I know all about it. I’ll tell you why when you come home.
Harold returned home, eager to find out how his mother had heard the news.
Harold’s mother: When I knew it was time for your debate to start, I went out among the willows by the creek, and there, all by myself, I prayed to God that you would not fail. And I received assurance that you would not.
Harold learned the strength of his mother’s love and faith. He learned that Heavenly Father answers the prayers of those who love Him, that He helps His children to do their best in all of their activities, and that that is even more important than winning.

When tensions ran high in northern Missouri in the fall of 1838, the Prophet Joseph Smith called for all the Latter-day Saints to gather to Far West for protection. Many were on isolated farms or in scattered settlements. He specifically counseled Jacob Haun, founder of a small settlement called Haun’s Mill. A record of that time includes this: “Brother Joseph had sent word by Haun, who owned the mill, to inform the brethren who were living there to leave and come to Far West, but Mr. Haun did not deliver the message.” Later, the Prophet Joseph recorded in his history: “Up to this day God had given me wisdom to save the people who took counsel. None had ever been killed who abode by my counsel.” Then the Prophet recorded the sad truth that innocent lives could have been saved at Haun’s Mill had his counsel been received and followed.