Gospel Story Finder

The opportunity to visit a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a seemingly impossible, yet cherished dream for those who live an ocean away. A group of people from the small Vanuatu island of Tanna were grateful to have recently made the trip to Suva Fiji to worship in the temple there.
The people of Tanna have endured much hardship in recent years as cyclones have destroyed many homes and crops. This temple trip was a bright spot and an inspiration as they continue the labour of building back their lives.
For one member of the group, Rex Morgan Ialulu, worshipping in the house of the Lord was an unforgettable experience. He said, “We were overjoyed to feel the love of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the temple. I know God lives, He loves His children and has a plan for them to return to Him. The temple is the House of the Lord.”

Once there was a man who dreamed that he was in a great hall where all the religions of the world were gathered. He realized that each religion had much that seemed desirable and worthy.
He met a nice couple who represented The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and asked, “What do you require of your members?”
“We do not require anything,” they replied. “But the Lord asks that we consecrate all.”
The couple went on to explain about Church callings, home and visiting teaching, full-time missions, weekly family home evenings, temple work, welfare and humanitarian service, and assignments to teach.
“Do you pay your people for all the work they do?” the man asked.
“Oh, no,” the couple explained. “They offer their time freely.”
“Also,” the couple continued, “every six months our Church members spend a weekend attending or watching 10 hours of general conference.”
“Ten hours of people giving talks?” the man wondered.
“What about your weekly church services? How long are they?”
“Three hours, every Sunday!”
“Oh, my,” the man said. “Do members of your church actually do what you have said?”
“That and more. We haven’t even mentioned family history, youth camps, devotionals, scripture study, leadership training, youth activities, early-morning seminary, maintaining Church buildings, and of course there is the Lord’s law of health, the monthly fast to help the poor, and tithing.”
The man said, “Now I’m confused. Why would anyone want to join such a church?”
The couple smiled and said, “We thought you would never ask.”

Then I walk around the lake by myself. I see the eagle snatching another fish. “That’s my grandpa’s fish!” I yell, and realize my heart is beating rapidly just at the sight of the diving eagle. I look up at the sky. It looks bigger than I’ve ever seen it before, and there are pink clouds on the horizon. I say “Thank you” aloud to my grandfather for all he’s taught me.
And I thank my Heavenly Father, for the pink clouds, the eagle, one cousin named Erin, and the big sky that’s whispering “eternity” to me personally. I speak to my grandfather. “You’re right. Computers have pause buttons because you can’t pause life. I should know. I’ve been trying to pause mine.”
My heart is full of so many things, and they all translate to love. I pick some tiny flowers on my way back up the hill. I see Adam on the front deck examining the telescope.
“Think you could find Venus tonight?” I ask.
“I’m gonna try.”
“Let me know if you do.”
Erin looks at me curiously. I hand her the flowers, and she holds them close to her nose. She seems to be pondering deep thoughts for a long time. Then she raises her head and says, “Grandma said I can make chocolate chip cookies for dessert tonight. You wanna help me?”
“Sure.” She holds my hand in one of her small hands, the flowers in the other, and she escorts me to the kitchen, squealing enthusiastically, “Grandma, look at these beautifullest flowers!”
I don’t even flinch.

When Elder Dale G. Renlund was 12, his family lived in Sweden. One Sunday, Dale’s friend Steffan brought a large firecracker and some matches into the Church building. Dale was excited. Dale took the firecracker and lit the fuse. He was going to snuff out the fuse, but he burned his fingers and dropped the firecracker! Dale and Steffan watched in horror as the fuse kept burning.
The firecracker exploded! An awful smell filled the chapel. Dale and Steffan quickly picked up the pieces of firecracker and opened the windows to let the smell out. They hoped no one would notice.
As people came to sacrament meeting, they did notice. The smell was so strong that people couldn’t focus on the meeting. Dale felt very embarrassed and ashamed. He knew that what he had done had disappointed Heavenly Father.
After church, President Lindberg, the branch president, asked Dale to come to his office because he could tell that something was wrong. Dale told President Lindberg how sorry he was about the firecracker.
President Lindberg was kind. He opened the scriptures and asked Dale to read some underlined verses. Dale read, “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more. By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them” (D&C 58:42–43).
When Dale finished reading, he saw President Lindberg smile. As Dale left the office, he felt happy.
Elder Renlund learned that he could be forgiven when he did something wrong. He could feel happy when he repented and kept Heavenly Father’s commandments.

It was a cold day, and I was scared. I shook hard in my speed suit. It was my first ski race since I had been injured. The course was a long blur of blue and red gates. My coach skied by me.
“Noah, are you OK?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, but I was actually scared out of my skin!
It was time for me to be at the start gate. Oh no! I thought as I skied down to the start gate. But then I remembered something I had learned in Primary: I can pray anytime, anywhere.
So I prayed, Heavenly Father, please help me to be safe and do well. Right then, I pushed out of the start.
What came next was natural instinct. Left, then right, gate after gate, for what felt like days until I finally crossed the finish line. Boy, I was slow! I thought. But I looked at the timer. I was 12th in my category!
“That was so good!” Mom said.
During the excitement, I silently thanked my Heavenly Father for answering my prayer.

“My mother and dad were active in the Church, and both were disciplinarians. I didn’t get away with much, and I had to help around the house. Some of my duties were to scrub and wax the kitchen, bathroom, and hall floors and the wooden stairs that went down to the basement. It seemed like I had to do them weekly. I don’t think I was ever able to get them done right the first time. My mother always checked them, and I’d have to do them again. Although it was difficult for me as a child, I’m grateful now that she taught me the value of doing things the best that I could.”

None of us knows how long we are going to live. In the Book of Mormon, Alma asked the question, “Can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands?” (Alma 5:19.) I remember when the need to have “clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. 24:4) became very meaningful to me.

It was just after my friend David Carlson and I had graduated from Preston High School. We were happy with the fact that it was the same school that Presidents Ezra Taft Benson and Harold B. Lee had attended when they were growing up. Even though they had changed the name from the Oneida Stake Academy to Preston High School, we still had some of our classes in the same building.

We thought that 1946 was the “golden year” of athletics at Preston High. That year our teams won the district championship in every sport, and in basketball our team won the state championship—and that was in the days when the small high schools played against the big ones.

David was a good friend to me and, I think, to everybody in the school. He was a fine student. He worked hard and received excellent grades. He achieved in Scouting and seminary and was a well-coordinated athlete. David was a member of the basketball team, and his playing was one of the reasons our team won the state championship.

Soon after high school graduation, David went to the hospital for what everyone thought was a routine operation, but there were some complications. Infection set in, and the next thing we heard was that he had died. We could not believe it. At age eighteen, David had died. What a shock! I still remember how painful it was to lose a good friend.

His funeral was held in the stake center. Everyone seemed to come. It was like a crowded stake conference with standing room only.

Bishop Eberhard included a statement in his remarks that made a powerful impression on me. He pointed over to the sacrament table and said, “When David knelt to bless the sacrament, I knew that he knelt there with ‘clean hands and a pure heart.’ I never had to worry about what he had been doing the Saturday night before.”

I thought that was one of the finest compliments he could have paid to my friend, and I wanted to live in such a way that my bishop would not have to worry about what I had been doing the night before. I’m sure that all of us could benefit from making a similar decision.

Gene has learned a lot about aiming high by following the example of his mother.
“When she was 16 she contracted polio. Doctors said she’d never walk again, or that if she did walk, she’d never have children. But she worked her way from braces to crutches to a cane. And she went ahead and had four sons. I’m the youngest.”
Even though his mom is currently confined to a wheelchair, the doctors are now saying she should be able to walk again.

My years at Ricks College, during which I tried to seek God’s will and do it, kept the pavilion from covering me or obscuring God’s active role in my life. As I sought to do His work, I felt close to Him and felt assurance that He knew of my affairs and cared deeply for my happiness. But as they had at Stanford, worldly motivations began to present themselves to me. One was an attractive job offer, extended just as I was finishing my fifth year as president of Ricks College. I considered the offer and prayed about it and even discussed it with the First Presidency. They responded with warmth and a little humor but certainly not with any direction. President Spencer W. Kimball listened to me describe the offer I had received from a large corporation and said: “Well, Hal, that sounds like a wonderful opportunity! And if we ever needed you, we’d know where to find you.” They would have known where to find me, but my desires for professional success might have created a pavilion that would make it hard for me to find God and harder for me to listen to and follow His invitations.

My wife, sensing this, had a strong impression that we were not to leave Ricks College. I said, “That’s good enough for me.” But she insisted, wisely, that I must get my own revelation. And so I prayed again. This time I did receive direction, in the form of a voice in my mind that said, “I’ll let you stay at Ricks College a little longer.” My personal ambitions might have clouded my view of reality and made it hard for me to receive revelation.

Thirty days after I was blessed with the inspired decision to turn down the job offer and stay at Ricks College, the Teton Dam burst nearby. God knew that dam would burst and that hundreds of people would need help. He let me seek counsel and gain His permission to stay at Ricks College. He knew all the reasons that my service might still be valuable at the college and in Rexburg. So I was there to ask Heavenly Father frequently in prayer that He would have me do those things that would help the people whose property and lives had been damaged. I spent hours working with other people to clear mud and water from homes. My desire to know and do His will gave me a soul-stretching opportunity.

“A [woman] walking along a road fell into a pit so deep [she] could not climb out. No matter what [she] did, [she] could not get out by [herself]. The [woman] called for help and rejoiced when a kind passerby heard [her] and lowered a ladder down into the pit. This allowed [her] to climb out of the pit and regain [her] freedom.

“We are like the [woman] in the pit. Sinning is like falling into the pit, and we can’t get out by ourselves. Just as the kind passerby heard the [woman’s] cry for help, Heavenly Father sent his Only Begotten Son to provide the means of escape. Jesus Christ’s atonement could be compared to lowering a ladder into the pit; it gives us the means to climb out.”10 But the Savior does more than lower the ladder, He “comes down into the pit and makes it possible for us to use the ladder to escape.”11 “Just as the [woman] in the pit had to climb up the ladder, we must repent of our sins and obey the gospel principles and ordinances to climb out of our pit and make the Atonement work in our lives. Thus, after all we can do, the Atonement makes it possible for us to become worthy to return to Heavenly Father’s presence.”12

Many years ago, there lived an unusual man who chose to live underground. Some people even called him “the human mole,” because moles are small burrowing animals that spend most of their lives beneath the earth’s surface.

Although no one is small enough to crawl through the dark earthen tunnels inhabited by moles, thousands of people have visited the Fresno Underground Gardens, an estate created by Baldasare Forestiere. This unusual “house” is a short distance north of Fresno, California, and has been open to the public since 1954.

Mr. Forestiere was born in Messina, Sicily, in 1879. When he was 21, he came to America and worked in the underground subways of New York City.

Later, Mr. Forestiere used his savings to move to California. He bought 800 hectares of land near Fresno, which was like a desert in those days before an irrigation dam could be built. Temperatures there reached as high as 120 degrees, and Mr. Forestiere found such heat very uncomfortable. He also found that he was unable to plant fruit trees because the earth was parched and hard.

Remembering how cool it had been working down in the subways in New York, he decided to make tunnels to escape the heat. At first, he was going to dig only a few rooms to live in. But his digging lasted for 40 years and his underground rooms and passageways extended for three hectares. Most of the rooms were built three meters below the surface of the ground. In some places, he also dug a “second story” about seven meters down.

Although he was only 1.6 m, Mr. Forestiere hauled hundreds of tons of earth with his wheelbarrow. He had a natural talent for designing rooms and passageways with the strongest forms of construction known—the arch, the column, and the dome. He created an interesting variety of rooms, grottoes, and sunlit patios beneath the ground.

The underground architect’s first living quarters consisted of two rooms with some interesting features. He carved seats into the sides of the walls and made notches to hold shelves. Skylight openings above each room let in the natural light and air. In wintertime, they were covered with glass to keep out the rain.

Eventually, he constructed a more elaborate apartment that included two bedrooms and a living room, kitchen, chapel, library, and bathroom. He had a snugly recessed bed, a slide-away table to provide additional space, and two fireplaces. He built sliding windows in the kitchen and a half-wall picture window in one bedroom. He also made a “see through” or peephole so that if he heard someone coming, he could see in advance who it was.

After Mr. Forestiere had lived in his home for some time, he planted flowers, vegetables, shrubs, vines, and trees in certain sections of his underground maze where they could receive the proper sunlight and air. He experimented with various sizes and styles of skylights for this purpose. Many of the trees were grown in planters placed in the center of the rooms and gardens.

Some of the trees bear strange combinations of fruit, the result of Mr. Forestiere’s experimental grafting. His “Second Story Tree,” grown seven meters underground, produces seven different kinds of citrus fruit—navel and Valencia oranges, sweet and sour lemons, tangerines, grapefruits, and cheedro (a fruit native to Sicily). Other plants grown in the underground gardens include grape, wild mulberry, Chinese date, hibiscus, rose, date palm, avocado, almond, quince, strawberry bush, Bartlett pear, coronation pear, fig, Rose of Sharon, and loquat. There is also a carob tree, the beans from which flour and chocolate can be made.

To obtain nourishment for his plants, Mr. Forestiere made many trips in his Model T Ford pickup to bring back the rich loam of ancient lakebeds 20 km. away. Water at the necessary levels was provided by a well and pump. Mr. Forestiere even constructed an aquarium for keeping goldfish and tropical fish, with places for watching them above and under the ground.

In recent years, man has left the earth and walked on the moon. He has built submarines that became temporary homes beneath the surface of the seas. A number of science-fiction books have been written about people who have lived underground. However, it is truly remarkable that this talented man, more than 50 years ago, built a home so livable, so interesting, and so rare that thousands of visitors come each year to marvel at his accomplishment.

Christmas that year was a memorable one. I took the bus to Saigon, where the members met together for the first time in ten years in Viet Nam. The meeting was in a park. There were nearly one hundred people there. We had ice cream and cake. Later, at our table, brethren holding the priesthood broke bread and poured water into small glasses for the sacrament. We bowed our heads and prayed silently. Our joy was full.

We need to make sense of what we perceive as injustice. Raising a child with a disability can give you a close view of the cruel side of life. Creating a new definition of what is fair and just, however, can reduce anger. For example, when my daughter was 10 years old, she attended a Sunday School party. She came home scraped and bleeding. One of the boys in the class had called her a “stupid retard” and pushed her down. I felt angry that my child was hurt. Angry feelings can be a message that something needs to be done. Anger can alert us to dangers, problems, and offenses that may need some correcting. We can make decisions, however, about how we act on those feelings. We can deal with anger in a constructive way.
My husband and I visited the boy’s family. We sat with the boy and his parents and calmly talked about what the word retarded meant. We asked the boy how he would feel if he were unable to do the things he enjoyed. This boy became one of our daughter’s strongest allies. That experience ultimately helped another person to grow. This seemed “fair.” Retaliation would not have produced justice. Although anger may come from experiences with injustice, we can turn them into good experiences for ourselves and others.

A six-year-old Primary child said: “When I was chosen to be a class helper, I could choose a friend to work with me. I picked [a boy in my class who bullied me] because he never gets chosen by others. I wanted to make him feel good.”4

What did this child observe? He noticed that the class bully never got chosen. What did he do to serve? He simply chose him to be his friend as a class helper. Jesus taught, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”5

In one ward, Aaronic Priesthood holders first observed and now serve in a meaningful way. Every week the young men arrive early and stand outside the meetinghouse in rain, snow, or blistering heat, awaiting the arrival of the many elderly members in their ward. They lift wheelchairs and walkers out of cars, provide sturdy arms to grasp, and patiently escort the silver-haired seniors into the building. They are truly doing their duty to God. As they observe and then serve, they are living examples of the Savior’s teaching: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”6 As the new youth curriculum is implemented, the eyes of these young men will undoubtedly be opened to even more opportunities to serve in a Christlike way.

Max’s family visited the temple grounds every week. He always brought his video game with him. Otherwise it would be too boring to just walk around. On the way home, Max’s sisters joked and giggled beside him in the car, but he didn’t hear them. He was too focused on his game.
When they all got home, Max walked inside. He was so proud of himself. He didn’t even have to look up to make it to the living room. So much gaming must have made his brain bigger.
“Max, how did you like the temple?” Mom asked. He didn’t answer.
“Max!” she said a little louder. He jumped. He hadn’t seen her sit down next to him.
“Did you like the temple?” Mom asked again.
“It was nice,” he said. His eyes moved back to the game.
“Did you feel anything special?” she asked.
Max sighed and paused the game. Couldn’t she see he was busy?
“I don’t know, Mom. I guess it was all pretty special,” he said with a grin.
Mom didn’t smile back. “Max, I’m a little worried. It seems like you’re playing that thing more and more.”
“Mom, I’m fine,” Max said. “I’m just having fun. I can stop anytime.”
“Oh, really?” Mom said. Now she was smiling. “How about you stop playing your games for a week? And maybe when we go to the temple you’ll be surprised.”
A whole week! What would he do? He worried about giving up his games, but he loved Mom and thought he could give it a try.
Max sighed. “OK. I’ll do it.”
Mom gave Max a big hug. Max looked at his game and frowned. What had he gotten himself into?
The first two days were the worst because all he could think about was his game. He was so bored that even cleaning sounded good. So he did all his chores, and since he had more time before dinner, he did his sisters’ chores too.
After dinner, Max helped with the dishes. Then he thought of something else to do.
“Hey, Dad, wanna play catch?”
Dad smiled. “I’d love to! It’s been too long. Grab your mitt.”
Max went to bed feeling happy. He usually played video games until he fell asleep, but tonight he didn’t even want to. He thought of what he was going to do tomorrow. It seemed like he had so much more time now.
The week raced by. Max spent time with his family, helped his sisters, read the scriptures, and even started learning how to crochet! He had to admit that using his time differently felt pretty good.
Soon the day of the temple trip came. Max had totally forgotten what Mom had said about a surprise. He was just excited to spend time with his family.
The sun was setting as Max’s family walked around the temple grounds. The sky was red, orange, and yellow. Max felt something special as he watched the light shine on the temple windows. This is what it must feel like to live with Heavenly Father, he thought.
Max knew he was feeling the Spirit. He thought about how serving and spending time with other people made him feel happier than always playing his games did. He felt closer to Heavenly Father too.
Mom walked up beside him. “What are you thinking?”
Max looked up at the Angel Moroni glowing gold in the sunset. “That this is even better than video games.”
Mom wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Surprise,” she said.
Max just smiled.

When she was five years old, her whole life had revolved around her stuffed animals. They were real to her, and Rosie was her favorite. Unfortunately Ruff the dog liked Rosie almost as much as Annie did, and between the two of them, most of Rosie’s fur had been rubbed off. So she had patches everywhere. She had one green eye and one blue eye, and a well-worn nose. Her dress had been borrowed from a baby doll and was pinned in the front. Rosie hadn’t seemed to mind her appearance, so neither did Annie.

Annie was a pretty little girl with a pixie face and big dark eyes, but she was shy and very quiet. Rosie Bear was everything that Annie was not. She was the leader of all the stuffed animal adventures. She had all the exciting ideas and knew the best games, and she routinely saved everyone from disasters and villains. Annie loved her teddy bear and took her everywhere.

Because her father took their car to work, Annie and her mother had to rely on the big green city bus for transportation. One day they had several things to get. They went from store to store, then stopped at the sidewalk cafe for lunch. With its colorful red-and-green striped awnings, the cafe reminded Annie of the circus. The air was filled with the delicious smell of hamburgers sizzling on a grill, and her joy knew no bounds as she sipped a lemonade and watched little sparrows picking up crumbs near her feet. When they finally piled back on the bus, Annie leaned against her mother and fell fast asleep.

“Come on, honey,” her mother said, gently jostling her awake. “This is our stop.”

Annie sleepily began to search for her things. “Mama, where’s Rosie?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for a while.”

Annie was wide awake now! She looked through their packages and under the seat. Rosie was nowhere to be found! She fell to her knees and frantically searched up and down the aisle until the bus driver turned around to ask what was wrong. Her mother apologized and explained the delay as she pulled Annie to her feet. He was understanding and said that if any teddy bears turned up, he’d be sure to let them know. They thanked him, and Annie reluctantly followed her mother off the bus.

“Mama,” Annie quavered as the bus lumbered on down the street, “I must have left Rosie in one of the stores. She’s just lying there somewhere. What if someone else finds her and takes her?” Terrible visions began to crowd into Annie’s mind. “Mama, I have to go back and find her—I can’t leave her there!”

“Leave her where, honey? We don’t know where she is, and it took us all day to go to those stores.” Her mother glanced at her watch. “We can’t get back on the bus and go look for her now. I’m sorry, Annie,” her mother added quietly.

Annie knew her mother was right, but as she trudged home, she grew more and more upset. Her best friend was lying patiently on a shelf in one of those stores, waiting for Annie to come and get her. She’d lie there hour after hour, and pretty soon she’d realize that no one was coming and she’d start to cry . …

Annie ran the rest of the way home with tears streaming down her face. She burst into her room and threw herself sobbing onto the bed. She needed her daddy. He always understood and made her feel better.

Annie cried herself to sleep. When she woke up, she heard silverware being set on the table for dinner. But she didn’t hear a newspaper rattling. Daddy worked hard loading and unloading heavy boxes from his big truck all day. He always hurried home to be with his family. He’d take a shower, then sit contentedly in his chair and read the paper while dinner cooked. He was never late.

But tonight, when Annie needed him most, he wasn’t there. Annie decided to sit in his chair and wait for him. Finally she heard the car pull up outside. When he walked through the door and held out his arms for a hug, Annie ran into his arms and poured out the terrible story of how she’d left her best friend to perish.

He looked at her solemnly. “That’s a pretty sad story,” he said. “Do you think that if you had another chance, you’d take better care of Rosie?”

“Oh yes, Daddy! I’d never let her out of my sight again. I’d make sure she was tucked into bed every night so Ruff wouldn’t chew her. I’d even make her some new clothes that fit.”

Her father looked lovingly at her tear-streaked face. He nodded. Then with a grin he reached deep into the pocket of his big coat and pulled out a small, ragged, brown bear.

Rosie! How could this be? Annie had left Rosie in a store downtown. Her father had been at work. It just didn’t make sense.

“I guess Rosie got tired of lying on the shelf with the dolls,” Daddy told her. “She must have walked over to where I work and hopped into my pocket so that she could come home.”

Of course! she thought. Rosie wouldn’t just lie there and cry. She would hurry to ask Daddy to take her home. Annie was so happy that she danced around the house all that evening.

A sharp knock on the bedroom door shook her from her reverie. “Annie, are you in there?”

“Come in, Mom.” She grinned at her mother’s happy reaction to her tidy room. “I just felt like cleaning.” She held up her beloved teddy bear. “Mom, do you remember a long time ago when I lost Rosie, and Daddy came home from work with her in his pocket?”

Mom nodded.

“How did he end up with her? I mean, I know now, of course, that she didn’t really get up off the shelf and go jump into his pocket.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” Mom said as she sat down on the bed beside Annie. “I felt terrible when I realized just how upset you were about losing Rosie that day. I called your father at work and told him the whole story. Do you know,” she said, laughing softly, “that he went to five different stores that night before he finally found that bear! He loves you, Annie. He’d do just about anything to make you happy.”

Our cleanup person at school wanted to give us a treat for being nice. She put little bags of candies in our mailboxes (where we put our things to take home). Our teacher, Mrs. Richardson, showed us how to reach all the way to the back to make sure that we have all of our papers and things.
When Emily reached all the way back, she couldn’t find any candy, and she was sad. She told everyone that she didn’t have any candy, but no one else shared. I said, “I’ll give you my candy.”
She said, “Thank you.”
I felt good inside because I did the right thing. Mrs. Richardson told my mom what I did, because she thought it was really nice. My mom was very happy to know that I am trying to be like Jesus at school.

I started going to church with Joe, and we made a plan to deal with my concerns. The first step was to identify what, exactly, bothered me about the gospel. We bought a small journal that I brought with me every Sunday. Whenever someone made a comment that irritated me, looked at a scripture with a perspective that I thought seemed odd, or talked about a policy that rubbed me the wrong way, I wrote down my feelings.
I scribbled in that journal for months. I would say things like, “I hate it when people say … ,” “Doesn’t anyone fact-check?” and “That makes no sense to me.” Expressing my feelings as I had them made them easier for me to understand and process. Before, when something bothered me, I would hold on to it all day, and it would poison my church experience. But as I wrote in my journal, I became free to enjoy more of church, in between the moments I struggled with. I was getting more out of it than I had in a long time.
Now that I had identified what bothered me, the next step was determining why these things bugged me. As we would eat Sunday dinner, Joe and I would discuss what I’d written in my journal. Sometimes I would simply say, “This is how I feel. I don’t know why.” Figuring things out took a lot of discussion, personal thought, and prayer. One thing I’ve always believed is that prayer is the most important and accurate source of information on pretty much everything.
Working together, Joe and I realized that when you know who you are and what you believe, it builds a wall of protection around your heart. And so, after a while of writing in my journal and discussing it with Joe and with Heavenly Father, I ran out of criticism regarding the Church.

For the youth in one ward in Maryland, USA, acting and theater are more than just a hobby. “It’s my happy place,” says Mary A., a high school senior. “Our theater group has a really strong family vibe.”
The youth in this ward have many different hobbies and interests. Theater, though, is common ground. “All of us are involved in theater,” says Sonja G., also a senior. “It’s a really good place to get together and make something great.”
For this group, the appeal of the open stage is obviously a big one.
So it wasn’t a small thing when an upcoming school play was announced that made them feel uncomfortable.
“I had no idea what this particular show was about,” says Nathan H., a senior. However, he soon got the feeling that the play in question wasn’t just any old production. A few friends from school started asking him if he planned to actually audition this time. Intrigued by why they’d ask, Nathan did some research.
“I looked into it and made a decision based on what I found that I wasn’t going to be a part of this show.”
He wasn’t the only one. “Once I learned about the story, I didn’t audition,” says Carolyn K., a junior. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to be up there on stage to show these characters.”
This wasn’t merely a matter of waiting for the next show to come around, either. For the seniors, it would be one of their last chances to perform at school. This was also the only musical of the year. “It was devastating,” Mary says about the prospects of not being in a show with her friends.
Sonja, who would have been stage manager for the musical, also chose not to join. “There was not really a way for me to do my job and not watch the things I wasn’t comfortable with,” she says.
One by one each of the youth in the ward decided not to participate.
The director asked the students to please reconsider, but their decision held. Soon, the director paid the rights for the show (payment which could not be refunded), auditions were held, and parts were cast. Everything was looking like a done deal.
And then along came a snowstorm.
Right when things were getting rolling with the musical, an enormous snowstorm shut down that part of Maryland. They were out of school for over a week.
During this time their theater director—who some of these youth think of as a kind of second dad—gave the matter a lot of thought. This director, who is a Christian from another faith, had been praying about what to do. Before school resumed after the big storm, the drama group got some big news. Mary said, “He sent a text. The text said, ‘I’ve been praying and I don’t feel right leaving out the Mormon kids. You’ve got until Tuesday to come up with a monologue and a song.’” (That’s theater-speak for get ready to audition.)
Yes, the director decided to drop the original musical entirely. And just like that, the curtain beckoned once more.
“We were all really excited!” Carolyn said.
The youth all jumped at the chance to help in the new production and have enjoyed rolling up their theatrical sleeves once more.
Now, not all stories of this nature can have this kind of a happy ending (on or off the stage). Most of the time, choosing not to participate in something inappropriate doesn’t result in such a significant reversal. But even realizing that they’d be missing out on one of their favorite interests, the youth were at peace with their choice. “I had finally come to terms that it’s OK,” Mary said.
From the start, this group of youth kept each other strong and helped one another live the gospel. “It was easier for us to stand up for our beliefs because there was more than just one of us,” says Sonja. “It’s good when you have friends and you can stand together.”

A woman was converted up in Idaho. She comes down to see me often. She calls me after nearly every conference. She is a nurse. She gave me a check for $500 for the children’s hospital because, at the death of her husband, one of our Saints stepped in to tell her what she might expect in the future if she just knew the truth. I got a letter from her recently. She said she had found more love in this church than she had ever known in her life—even from her own mother.