Gospel Story Finder

Olmedo Roldán, 18, sees missionary work as a natural result of friendship. “A few days after I was baptized,” he says, “I read in the Liahona about a young man who helped the full-time missionaries even though he had just been baptized. So the next day I helped the missionaries too! And I loved it. Now the bishop has called me to serve as a ward missionary, and I’m preparing to serve a full-time mission. It was through missionary work that we found the Church. A lot of people need the Church and are looking for it. We can help them find it.”

Nor is the religious theme of Joseph Smith’s life confined to his own writings; it continues in the writings of those who knew him. Charles Dana wrote that his wife became so ill in Nauvoo that he despaired of her life. In desperation, he “mustered courage to go for Brother Joseph.”
He found the Prophet very busy and concerned over an important document that had been lost. As Joseph left the house with several others to go in search of the missing item, Dana took the opportunity, “as he was passing out of the gate,” to say, “Brother Joseph will you go and administer to my wife?” The hasty answer was, “I cannot!” But, with tears in his eyes, Charles pleaded, “Brother Joseph she is sick nigh unto death; and I do not want to part with her.”
Charles’s description continues:
“He turned his head, saw my face and answered. ‘I will be there presently.’ My heart leaped for joy: I hurried home. … I had not much more than got there before Brother Joseph came. … He asked me. ‘How long has she been so sick?’ He then walked back and forth for some minutes: I began to fear that he considered her past recovery; but he finally went to the fire, warmed his hands, threw his cloak off, went to the bed, laid his hands on her, and while in the midst of his administering to her he seemed to be baffled; the disease, or evil spirit rested upon him; but he overpowered it and pronounced great blessings upon her.29

The young adult center in Oslo, Norway, is just one of many centers where young adults are learning how to build the kingdom. Take Mathilde Guillaumet, from France. Missionaries began teaching her at a center in Paris in 2009 after Sister Guillaumet’s friend invited her to learn more about the gospel.
Sister Guillaumet was baptized in 2010 and then moved to Norway for a year, where the local center for young adults continued to play a role in her growing testimony.
“The center really was a home away from home. It was definitely more welcoming than my dorm room,” said Sister Guillaumet. “The center’s missionary couple became like parents—wonderful people to come to for comfort and advice. Both in Paris and in Oslo, I have been able to go to the missionary couple to talk about the gospel, which I couldn’t do at home, considering I am the only member in my family.”

You may have heard of Elder Green, as he has accumulated some fame during his two years of full-time missionary service as one of the first service missionaries in the UK. Despite this, he is a very humble young man.
Missionary service has had its challenges for Elder Green. But his mission has been a transformative experience, changing forever the life of Elder Green and his family.
In those two years (half of which was during the COVID-19 lockdown), Elder Green served at the Batley Food Bank. Not only did he help in the food bank, but also in the collecting of and shopping for food and items they needed. In his last year, he also volunteered at the Oxfam warehouse, in addition to his Church callings with young single adults and as a Young Men’s advisor. Oxfam have offered him a full-time paying job now that he has ended his service mission.
His greatest love was the BillionGraves project, and in his last three months he felt he could achieve the transcribing goal of 100,000 graves. When he reported at the end of his mission on 8 January 2023, he had transcribed 112,000 graves. Even though he has finished his mission, he plans to continue this work.

As members or missionaries talked about their baptisms with Li, Chiun-tsan in preparation for his own in 1971, they described a powerful, invigorating experience. So the overwhelming weakness that Brother Li felt after emerging from the waters of baptism was not what he was expecting and was certainly out of the ordinary.
Baptized and confirmed in Taipei, Taiwan, at the age of 17, Brother Li had accepted Christianity several years earlier, but he didn’t find the peace he was looking for until the Book of Mormon touched his heart.
“I felt the Spirit very strongly,” he says. “The Holy Ghost told me this was the true Church.”
So he couldn’t understand why he felt so weak now that he was a member, and he prayed to find out why he suddenly lacked strength. The unexpected answer set his life’s course.
“I would find strength as I searched out my ancestors to do their temple work,” he remembers the Spirit whispering.
Over the past 35-plus years, Brother Li, a member of the Hu Wei Ward, Chung Hsing Taiwan Stake, has dedicated himself to family history and temple work. He and his wife, Li-hsueh, have traced his family line back nearly 5,000 years to the Yellow Emperor, said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese. They have submitted more than 100,000 names to the temple.
“Family history work can seem overwhelming sometimes,” Brother Li says. “But the desire to bless one’s ancestors is richly rewarded.”

Matt: Mom, my throat hurts really bad!
Mom: I know, dear. I’m sorry. It will get better.
Matt: You don’t know! Nobody knows how bad it hurts!
Mom: Well, that’s not quite true. Jesus knows because when He suffered for our sins, He also suffered our pain and sorrow.
Matt: Every bit of it?
Mom: Every bit.
Matt: For everybody?
Mom: For every single person who ever lived or ever will live in the whole world.
Matt: How?
Mom: I don’t know all the hows. But I know that He did it because He loves us, and that His love is stronger than pain or even death.
Matt: I can’t love that big, but I love Him too.
Mom: So do I.

I remember visiting South Vietnam some years ago. I talked individually with two or three hundred men—men who had waded through the blood and heat of battle, but men who were virtuous in their lives. I remember one of them, a boy who had just come down from the Rock Pile near the Demilitarized Zone, who said in response to a question on morality: “Not on your life—I couldn’t do that. I want to be worthy of a great girl some day.”

For a number of years he pursued his goal of working for President Heber J. Grant, whom he had known and admired as a boy in the Salt Lake business community. It was not an easy pursuit. President Grant was a “rapid-fire speaker,” and few secretaries had been able to record his sermons in shorthand. Undaunted, Joseph sat in the audience during a Sunday talk in the Tabernacle to take down the President’s remarks. A little later he recorded another of President Grant’s talks given in the Assembly Hall, at the request of the President who had been impressed by Joseph’s minutes of the earlier talk. “He surely gave me the drilling of my life. He was a fast speaker.” Illustrations, stories, poetry, quotations went by “like a threshing machine.” Afterwards, Joseph felt a little dejected, but his wife encouraged him to go to the library and copy some of the President’s references and quotations.

On 1 February 1922, Joseph Anderson became private secretary to President Grant, beginning an intimate association that would last twenty-three years. The firm, monumental figure beloved by the Church became Joseph’s personal friend. “Generosity,” replies Elder Anderson when asked which of President Grant’s qualities he remembers most. “I kept his accounts. I know of the many times he helped those in need, even paying off mortgages of widowed friends from his own pocket.”

President Grant was always ready to give. After an energetic conference talk in San Diego, the President invited Joseph to play golf with him. “I had never played golf, … but I couldn’t very well turn him down,” Elder Anderson reminisced. The President arranged for a lesson and a pail of golf balls to practice with, and then they played a number of holes. The next day in Los Angeles President Grant suffered a debilitating heart attack. On the way to the hospital, he whispered, “‘Joseph, you made some very good strokes yesterday.’ I said, ‘Yes, President, I’m afraid you’ve converted me. I will have to get some clubs and get busy.’ ‘Don’t you worry about the clubs,’ he said, ‘I’ll take care of that. I’ll buy them.’”

Fortunately, the President recovered to live five more years, although his life was very much endangered. From his sickbed, he insisted that every well-wishing card and gift of flowers be acknowledged, and, though barely able to move his hand, signed his name to every response. “He was the kindest of men,” says Elder Anderson. A day or two before his death at 88, President Grant met with his faithful secretary for the last time. “Joseph, have I ever been unkind to you?” he asked. His secretary was happy to be able to say, “You have never said an unkind word to me.”

School was even more wonderful than I had imagined. I got to see Lucy every day, and we could share secrets at recess or trade sandwiches and cookies during the lunch hour. The rest of the time there were plenty of girls for a game of hopscotch, jacks, or jump rope.
The school was only one room that could be divided into two when a big partition was let down from the ceiling. The first four grades met in one half of the room with the new teacher Miss Foster, and the older classes met in the other half with the principal Mr. Stern. Stern was a good name for him too. I seldom saw him smile, and he was very strict and sometimes cruel in his punishment. Although I was two grades behind Ed, I was in the same section of the room with him, and since we were seated alphabetically, I sat next to him.
I learned to read rather easily after my games with the ABC’s and that opened new doors of adventure. I found that if I studied and knew the answers, there were no cracked knuckles or no standing in the corner. Once I learned something, it stayed in my memory for a long time and that was very handy for examinations.
My favorite subject was grammar, and I especially liked to diagram sentences. It was fun to draw lines like shelves in the air for the words to be put away in just the right place, some sitting on top, others hanging down below, and some sliding down a slanty line to another word on a line below that. Sometimes the diagrams covered half a page and looked like a neat design, with the words all filed away where they belonged—subjects and predicates and modifiers of simple, complex, or compound sentences.
The boys thought it was fun to pull pranks on the teacher, so Miss Foster was in the habit of shaking out her handkerchief with a loud snap when she took it from the top drawer of her desk to make sure there were no stinkbugs or caterpillars hidden in it. One day when she opened the drawer, a kangaroo rat leaped out in front of her face. She was so startled she screamed and jumped back, upsetting her chair and knocking her off her feet. She fell over backward and sprawled on the floor.
Mr. Stern came in fuming from around the other side of the partition, demanding to know what on earth was going on. He tried his best to find out who was guilty of putting the rat in the drawer, but no one would tell, so he made the whole class practice penmanship during recess as a punishment. We wrote: “I will not play pranks on the teacher” over and over in our best handwriting.
One Saturday, soon after school started, Sister Williamsen left Lucy at our place to play while she and Mama went to the store. We were practicing for the circus we had been planning, and Lucy was learning how to ride standing on Bessie’s back so we could be twin riders. Ed was trying to do flips in the haystack, and Georgie was clowning around with Spot. Frank came out of the barn carrying his whip and a cat in each arm.
“Why don’t you do what I tell you?” he scolded. “I’m only going to give you one more chance!”
He put each kitten on one of the steps in his lion taming cage. “Now stay there!” he shouted and cracked his whip. Both cats streaked off through the fence and right in front of Bessie’s nose. The horse reared, and Lucy flew off and hit a fence pole.
“Now look what you’ve done,” I shouted at Frank and ran over to help Lucy get up.
She was lying there still and white, with a red stream of blood trickling down her face. Ed and Frank came running over to see. I was scared, but just then she opened her eyes. “You hit your head,” I told her. “But it’s going to be all right. Let me look at it.”
I found a deep cut on her scalp and tried to stop the bleeding by pushing it together. “It has to be sewed up,” I said. “Go get Papa, Ed. He’s down in the field somewhere. And hurry, she’s bleeding badly.”
Ed jumped on Bessie and galloped off to find Papa.
“Frank,” I said urgently, “go into the house and get the needle and thread and scissors, and a match.”
“You aren’t going to stitch it are you?” he asked fearfully.
“Of course not, but we need to have it all ready for Papa when he gets here.”
He came back with a darning needle and cotton thread.
“Not that kind, dummy! The curved needle and the black silk thread Papa uses on the animals.”
While he was gone I clipped the hair away from the cut. The blood was still oozing out though not as fast as at first. Lucy was pale and silent.
I pinched the wound together, and when Frank came back I instructed him how to sterilize the needle with the match and put the thread through it.
In a little while Ed galloped up. “I can’t find Papa anyplace,” he reported. “He’s not in the corn patch or the garden. Where else shall I look?”
“Maybe he’s fixing the fence. Keep looking, and hurry.”
He was gone a long time and my fingers were cramping from holding the cut together. But every time I released the pressure, it bled some more. Finally I decided I would have to sew it up myself.
“Will it hurt?” Lucy wanted to know.
“Don’t know,” I told her. “Haven’t ever been sewed up. Probably will sting a little.”
I was finishing the last stitch when Papa and Ed rode up. Papa jumped quickly from his horse. “What’s the trouble here?” he asked and took a look at Lucy’s head. “Why it’s stitched up already,” he marveled, examining my work.
“Couldn’t have done a better job myself. You’ll be as good as new,” he told Lucy. “Now why don’t you girls go over by the house and play something quiet until your mamas get home?”
We were sitting on the back steps, cutting out dancing paper dolls holding hands when Mama and Sister Williamsen drove up.
“Get your hat and come along, Lucy,” her mama called from the wagon. “We need to hurry home and get some supper for your daddy.”
“OK,” Lucy said, folding her dolls back together and standing up.
“What’s that white spot on your head?” Sister Williamsen asked.
“Oh, that’s just where I cut off some hair before I sewed her up,” I explained.
“See,” Lucy said and showed her mother the spot.
All the pink had gone out of Sister Williamsen’s face, and I could hear a little gasp and see her lean against Mama.
“Papa says she’ll be as good as new,” I assured her. “It won’t leave hardly any scar at all.”
“Run get Sister Williamsen a drink of water, please, Dora,” Mama directed. “She’s had a shock.” Then she helped her out of the wagon and into a chair on the porch. In a little while she quit shaking and took another look at Lucy’s head. “She could have bled to death if you hadn’t known what to do.”
“Papa would’ve done it, but we couldn’t find him,” I replied.
“You did just fine,” Sister Williamsen said. “And I’m mighty grateful.”
Lucy wore a wide ribbon around her head until her hair grew out. She always had one to match her dress, and I almost wished I had had my head stitched up so I could have pretty hair ribbons like that.
A few weeks later I thought I was going to have a chance to wear ribbons, but it didn’t work out that way after all.
One day I was having a quarrel with Caroline, and she screamed her usual taunt, “You make me sick! You think you’re so smart with that curly hair. I’ll fix you once and for all!” And she grabbed the scissors and cut off one of my long ringlets.
Mama was horrified, and she punished Caroline severely. I didn’t really care too much. Now, I thought, I’ll get to wear a ribbon like Lucy does. The only trouble was, the bare spot was right on the crown of my head. And there’s no way a ribbon will stay tied around there unless it goes under your chin, and that looks pretty silly. In the end, Mama had to cut all my hair short to match.
I was glad to have my hair cut, except when I thought about being a great circus lady riding my horse standing up. Then I was sorry I didn’t have long hair to fly out behind me.
(To be continued.)

My name is Thomas, and I am a gatherer.
This year in Primary we are learning how to gather. Our leaders asked us to gather our families for prayer and scripture study. They want us to practice gathering so we will know how to gather now and when we grow up—on missions, at school, or even when we are alone. That way we can always spiritually gather with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and find peace in Them.
My job is to gather my family for morning prayer. I ask, “Will you please join me for prayer?” My brother Henry gathers us for evening prayer and scripture study.
One Saturday morning, we left early to play basketball. Afterward, we ran errands. I suddenly remembered and said, “Mom, we forgot to gather to pray.” She told me we could gather when we got home. But I said, “We need to gather and pray right now!” She asked me to say the prayer, but she kept her eyes open because she was driving.
Mom and Dad tell Henry and me how thankful they are that we gather our family for prayer and scripture study. They say our small voices make a big difference in our home. They tell us that because we gather, our family is blessed.

I believe most of us are familiar with the sad account of Thomas B. Marsh and his wife, Elizabeth. Brother Marsh was one of the first modern-day Apostles called after the Church was restored to the earth. He eventually became President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
While the Saints were in Far West, Missouri, Elizabeth Marsh, Thomas’s wife, and her friend Sister Harris decided they would exchange milk in order to make more cheese than they otherwise could. To be certain all was done fairly, they agreed that they should not save what were called the strippings, but that the milk and strippings should all go together. Strippings came at the end of the milking and were richer in cream.
Sister Harris was faithful to the agreement, but Sister Marsh, desiring to make some especially delicious cheese, saved a pint of strippings from each cow and sent Sister Harris the milk without the strippings. This caused the two women to quarrel. When they could not settle their differences, the matter was referred to the home teachers to settle. They found Elizabeth Marsh guilty of failure to keep her agreement. She and her husband were upset with the decision, and the matter was then referred to the bishop for a Church trial. The bishop’s court decided that the strippings were wrongfully saved and that Sister Marsh had violated her covenant with Sister Harris.
Thomas Marsh appealed to the high council, and the men comprising this council confirmed the bishop’s decision. He then appealed to the First Presidency of the Church. Joseph Smith and his counselors considered the case and upheld the decision of the high council.
Elder Thomas B. Marsh, who sided with his wife through all of this, became angrier with each successive decision—so angry, in fact, that he went before a magistrate and swore that the Mormons were hostile toward the state of Missouri. His affidavit led to—or at least was a factor in—Governor Lilburn Boggs’s cruel extermination order, which resulted in over 15,000 Saints being driven from their homes, with all the terrible suffering and consequent death that followed. All of this occurred because of a disagreement over the exchange of milk and cream.
After 19 years of rancor and loss, Thomas B. Marsh made his way to the Salt Lake Valley and asked President Brigham Young for forgiveness. Brother Marsh also wrote to Heber C. Kimball, First Counselor in the First Presidency, of the lesson he had learned. Said Brother Marsh: “The Lord could get along very well without me and He … lost nothing by my falling out of the ranks; But O what have I lost?! Riches, greater riches than all this world or many planets like this could afford.”

The patient was tall, good-looking, and dressed in white, and he looked into my eyes without uttering a word. I had come to pick up his prescription so I could go buy his medication.
Just then a nurse, also dressed in white, appeared and held out a piece of paper to me. It seemed to be a medical history.
“Is this his file number?” I asked.
She did not reply but merely turned the sheet over. There on the back was a number: 12.830.
This incident would not be remarkable in any way if it were not for the fact that this particular patient had died more than a year before, on 7 April 1990. He was my younger brother, Carlos Hugo, and I was only dreaming.
I awoke at 4:00 A.M. and immediately wrote down the number. That same day I got up early and told my daughter Ana about the dream. I showed her the number, and she said it looked like a date, not a number on a medical file. A light went on in my mind. This dream had to have something to do with the family history information I was looking for on my paternal grandmother. For 10 years I had tried to find my father’s birth certificate. With no success, I had turned my efforts toward locating information on his mother.
When I had the dream, I had intended to return to the historical archives in the province of Mendoza, Argentina, to see if researchers had found any information that might be useful to me. I had asked them to search the years between 1925 and 1932. But before going to the archives, I felt a strong prompting to visit the Godoy Cruz cemetery.
By 8:00 A.M. that same morning, I was asking Mr. Paz, an employee at the cemetery, if he would do me the favor of using that date to look through his records for any information on the death of my grandmother, Margarita Flores. As he leafed through the old worn books, I prayed silently and fervently.
Suddenly I heard him say, “Well, are you ever lucky! This is where your grandmother is buried.” He wrote out a document so stating, signed it, affixed a seal to it, and then kindly went with me to sector H, where I saw a small brass plate that read, “Margarita Flores. Died 12/8/1930”—the same date I had seen in my dream.
I was not yet born when my grandmother died. But more than 60 years after her death, I was able to find the place where she was buried.
I next went to the archives to see if they had found anything relating to my grandmother. “Negative,” said the man who waited on me. I handed him the certificate Mr. Paz had given me at the cemetery, and five minutes later I was holding a photocopy of my grandmother’s death certificate in my hands. Using this information, I was eventually able to locate my father’s birth certificate and the names of my great-grandparents.
In His infinite mercy, our loving Heavenly Father had made it possible for necessary information to be communicated to me. I immediately sent all the data I had obtained to the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple so that vicarious ordinances could be performed.
I know I have much more to do. But I also know that when our minds and hearts are willing and when we make the effort, we receive help from heaven. One day there will be a glorious resurrection, and with all my being I desire to find myself united with my loved ones.

I am so grateful that I was born to a family that knows about the true gospel of Jesus Christ. My eighth birthday fell on Easter Sunday, and I felt great joy to be baptized on the day we celebrate the Resurrection of the Savior. I was a little nervous, but my father was there, and I knew that I could trust him. During the baptism I had a warm, happy feeling in my heart, and then I knew that I could trust Heavenly Father the same way I trust my father.
I am 11 now, and I am looking forward to going to the temple to be baptized for the dead. I know that only through baptism can we return to our Heavenly Father.
Mirjam S., age 11, Switzerland

May I express thanks to the nimble fingers that have produced thousands of beautiful blankets and a special thanks to the not-so-nimble fingers of our more senior sisters who have also crafted the much-needed quilts. One 92-year-old great-grandmother has produced several hundred blankets. In her case, both the creator and receiver have been blessed. As her son admired her handiwork, she asked, “Do you think anyone will ever use one of my blankets?” A letter from a young mother in Louisiana answers that question:
“I live in Louisiana, and I go to a local health unit for my children. While I was there, they gave me some outfits, diapers, wipes, and two beautiful baby blankets. One blanket has a yellow backing with footprints and handprints on the front, and the other blanket is tan with zebras. They are beautiful. My four-year-old loves the zebra one, and of course my seven-month-old can’t say much. I just wanted to say thank you to you and your Church members for your generosity. God bless you and your family.”

“At a distant conference, my plane brought me to the city many hours early. The stake president met me at the airport and took me to his home. Having important work to do, he excused himself and returned to his work. With the freedom of the house, I spread my papers on the kitchen table and began my work. His wife was upstairs sewing. In mid-afternoon, there came an abrupt entry through the front door and a little fellow came running in, surprised to see me. We became friends; then he ran through the rooms calling, ‘Mother.’ She answered from upstairs, ‘What is it, darling?’ and his answer was, ‘Oh, nothing.’ He went out to play.
“A little later another boy came in the front door calling, ‘Mother, Mother.’ He put his school books on the table and explored the house until the reassuring answer came from upstairs again, ‘Here I am, darling,’ and the second one was satisfied and said, ‘Okay,’ and went to play. Another half hour and the door opened again and a young teenager moved in, dropped her books, and called, ‘Mother.’ And the answer from upstairs, ‘Yes, darling,’ seemed to satisfy and the young girl began practicing her music lesson.
“Still another voice later called, ‘Mother,’ as she unloaded her high school books. And again the sweet answer, ‘I am up here sewing, darling,’ seemed to reassure her. She tripped up the stairs to tell her mother the happenings of the day. Home! Mother! Security! Just to know Mother was home. All was well.” (Faith Precedes the Miracle, pp. 117–18.)

Zachary found the shiny star the Sunday before Christmas. He asked Mommy. “Where does it go?”
“I think I know,” she said. “You see if you can find where it belongs.”
Zachary looked at the Christmas tree, but the star at the top was still there. “Do you know where this star goes?” he asked Daddy.
“I think I know,” Daddy said. “You see if you can find where it belongs.”
Zachary looked at Mommy’s ears, then said to himself, “It’s too big to be one of Mommy’s earrings.”
He asked his big brother, Keith, “Do you know where this star goes?”
“I think I know,” Keith told him. “You see if you can find where it belongs.”
“OK,” Zachary said. He closed his eyes tightly and thought. But he couldn’t think where the star belonged. He went to play with the nativity scene while he waited for family home evening to start. As he tried to stand the angel on top of the stable, he had an idea.
When family home evening started, Daddy asked, “Who has something to share with us?”
“I do,” said Zachary. He put the star on top of the stable in the nativity scene. “Here is where the star goes—above Baby Jesus.”

I labored with the company of pioneers to prepare the way for the Saints through Iowa, after which I had the privilege of returning to Nauvoo for my family, which consisted of my wife and three children. I moved them out into Iowa, 320 kilometers, where I left them, and returned 160 kilometers to settlements, in order to obtain food and other necessaries.
I was taken sick, and sent for my family to return to me. My wife and two children were taken sick the day after their arrival. We found shelter in a miserable hut, but some distance from water.
One day I made an effort to get some water for my suffering family, but failed through weakness. Night came on, and my family were burning with fever and calling for water.
These very trying circumstances called up some bitter feelings within me. It seemed as though in this, my terrible extremity, the Lord permitted the devil to try me, for just then a Methodist class leader came by, and remarked that I was in a very bad situation. He assured me that he had a comfortable house that I could move into, and that he had plenty of everything, and would assist me if I would renounce “Mormonism.” I refused, and he continued on his way.
I afterwards knelt down and asked the Lord to pity us in our miserable condition, and to soften the heart of someone to administer to us in our affliction.
About an hour later a man by the name of William Johnson came with a 12 liter jug full of water, set it down and said: “I came home this evening, weary, having been working with a threshing machine during the day, but when I lay down I could not sleep; something told me that you were suffering because you did not have water. I took the jug, went over to Custer’s well and got this for you. I feel now as though I could go home and sleep. I have plenty of chickens and other things at my house, that are good for sick people. When you need anything I will let you have it.” I knew this was from the Lord in answer to my prayer.
The following day the quails came out of the thickets, and were so easily caught that I picked up what I needed without difficulty. I afterwards learned that the camps of the Saints had been supplied with food in the same way.

The afternoon my mother died, we went from the hospital to the family home. We sat quietly in the darkened living room for a while. Dad excused himself and went to his bedroom. He was gone for a few minutes. When he walked back into the living room, there was a smile on his face. He said that he’d been concerned for Mother. During the time he had gathered her things from her hospital room and thanked the staff for being so kind to her, he thought of her going into the spirit world just minutes after her death. He was afraid she would be lonely if there was no one to meet her. He had gone to his bedroom to ask his Heavenly Father to have someone greet Mildred, his wife and my mother. He said that he had been told in answer to his prayer that his mother had met his sweetheart. I smiled at that too. Grandma Eyring was not very tall. I had a clear picture of her rushing through the crowd, her short legs moving rapidly on her mission to meet my mother.
Dad surely didn’t intend at that moment to teach me about prayer, but he did. I can’t remember a sermon from my mother or my father about prayer. They prayed when times were hard and when they were good. And they reported in matter-of-fact ways how kind God was, how powerful, and how close. The prayers I heard most were about what it would take for us to be together forever. And the answers which will remain written on my heart seem to be the assurances that we were on the path.
When I saw in my mind my grandmother rushing to my mother, I felt joy for them and a longing to bring my sweetheart and our children to such a reunion. That longing is why we must teach our children to pray.

A quick shoulder fake to the right, and then with pistonlike force, his legs drove him down the left side of the foul lane. By now the opponent had recovered from his very slight disadvantage caused by the fake and with blinding speed had caught up sufficiently to block the shot. But there was no shot. It was a fake and then a pivot back to the left; a right-handed hook shot came off the glass into the net. The grueling tournament competition that had lasted all morning was over. Devin Durrant had just been victorious in the most prestigious high school one-on-one tournament in the nation. In so doing he had defeated, one at a time, five all-Americans.
There was little time to savor that victory in Louisville, Kentucky. In just a few more hours the big game between the United States all-stars and the Kentucky-Indiana all-stars would begin.
That evening as the game progressed through the first quarter, it was a see-saw battle all the way. But then, midway through the second half, the public address announcer shouted out in quick succession: “Devin Durrant with a jump shot.” “Durrant with a driving lay-in.” “A jump shot from the kid from Utah.” The United States all-stars now had the lead.
A few minutes later the game was over. As the excited crowd of 12,000 stood anxiously listening to the post-game announcement, the public address man shouted enthusiastically, “Tonight’s most valuable player is Devin Durrant.”
After Devin’s seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade years, we moved back to Utah. As we did, Devin left many choice memories in Kentucky. It was there that he formed the dream that he would be a star and someday, somehow, he would play in the Kentucky Derby basketball all-star game. The chances of ever doing that were minute, even if we stayed in Kentucky. But now that we had left Kentucky, the chances were a million to one, for no Utahn had ever been so honored.
After his graduation, Devin’s fondest dream to that time came true. He was asked to play in the McDonald’s high school all-American games, the third of which was a fulfillment of his dream—the Kentucky Derby Classic. I’ve never seen him more thrilled than he was at the news that he would return to his beloved Louisville.
Our family took the opportunity to return to our former home to see him play, and we rejoiced with him at the successes which I related earlier. The next day’s papers told the story of the boy from Utah, his dream, and how he had come home to Kentucky to make that dream come true.
A night later at a fireside, hundreds gathered and heard Devin explain his dream, his prayer, and his joy.

Our Primary president asked us to think of ways we could be like Jesus Christ. In a family home evening, we read a lot of scriptures to give us ideas. Then we (Addie and Jared) made a list of the ways we could be like Him. Mom wrote our ideas down and decorated our list. We learned that we need to be nice to each other and to all the family and to everyone.
Jared and Addie Wahlquist, ages 11 and 5LaPorte, Indiana