Gospel Story Finder

It was quite late. The missionaries had just finished their scripture reading and turned out the light as an anxious knock at the door broke the silence. Elder Franklin swung the door open to find Steve, one of their fine young converts of nine months, standing there without his usual smile and holding a rolled up paper in his hand.
“Elder Franklin,” he said. “I have come to give you my priesthood certificate of ordination. Please hold it for me until I can work out a problem. I don’t feel worthy of the priesthood right now, but I know I will be back to pick it up real soon.”
As it turned out, what Steve did was not necessary—except perhaps for his own peace of mind until he was able to sort things out to his own satisfaction. But peace of mind is the key. He had no peace while a conflict existed with his priesthood calling. We all need peace—peace of mind.

Third Reader: In the fall of 1845, after the Prophet Joseph had been martyred and the Saints were preparing to move west, Brigham Young asked William Clayton to purchase musical instruments and to organize a brass band. The band’s music lifted the hearts of the Saints at their evening camps. Sometimes the band performed concerts at settlements in Iowa in exchange for grain, supplies, or money for the Saints’ journey.

It would make a good movie scene: the hymn writer, pen in hand, sighing and restless, casts eyes toward heaven. Suddenly—in one magic lightning bolt of inspiration—the entire, polished poem leaps into the writer’s mind! But that isn’t how poems get written. Any serious poet will tell you that a fine poem is mainly the result of hard, hard work.

I recently read the account of some deacons who got a little careless in their attitude towards passing the sacrament. They began to think of it as a chore, something that no one else wanted to do. They often came in late, and sometimes they didn’t dress appropriately. One Sunday their priesthood adviser told them: “You don’t have to worry about the sacrament today. It’s been taken care of.”

They were, of course, surprised to hear this, but as usual, they were late for sacrament meeting. They slipped in casually during the opening hymn and sat in the congregation. That’s when they noticed who was sitting on the deacons’ bench—their adviser and the high priests of the ward, who included men who had served as bishops and stake president. They were all dressed in dark suits with white shirts and ties. But more than that, their bearing was one of total reverence as they took the sacrament trays from row to row. Something was deeper and more significant about the sacrament that day. Those deacons who had become so perfunctory in their duties learned by example that passing the sacrament was a sacred trust and one of the greatest of honors. They began to realize that the priesthood is, as the Apostle Peter called it, “a royal priesthood.”

But Mommy reads the story of
The lions in their den
That wouldn’t eat old Daniel up
’Cause he was Jesus’ friend.

“I pair the doctrines from Come, Follow Me lessons with Church videos. We watch a video, I teach a doctrine, and my children say and sign it back to me (we’re a bilingual ASL/English family). Simple, yet meaningful!” —Michelle H.

Think about hiking in the mountains with a map indicating that a certain creek, a clump of leafless trees, and a triangular lake are crucial spots along your homeward route. The map enables you to see the creek, the trees, and the lake as landmarks. Without it, they would have no more significance for your journey home than any other parts of the landscape; they would be visible as a creek, a tree, and a lake, but they would be invisible as landmarks. A person sees things only in the way that his “map,” or network of ideas, represents them.

I was watching television at a friend’s house when her mom called her to wash the dishes. At first I kept watching television. Then I felt the Spirit telling me to go help with the dishes. I helped my friend and felt really good about it afterward.

Ten years after my surgery, my husband was also diagnosed with cancer. He was soon in and out of the hospital. Before he passed away, he left me with these words: “You have the temple, so you will be OK.”

The temple has always been at the center of every important decision I have made in my life of faith. As I have played the organ in the temple chapel every day, I have come to understand more deeply the Lord’s plan of redemption—especially after my husband was called beyond the veil.

A journalist once questioned Mother Teresa of Calcutta about her hopeless task of rescuing the destitute in that city. He said that, statistically speaking, she was accomplishing absolutely nothing. This remarkable little woman shot back that her work was about love, not statistics. Notwithstanding the staggering number beyond her reach, she said she could keep the commandment to love God and her neighbor by serving those within her reach with whatever resources she had. “What we do is nothing but a drop in the ocean,” she would say on another occasion. “But if we didn’t do it, the ocean would be one drop less [than it is].” Soberly, the journalist concluded that Christianity is obviously not a statistical endeavor. He reasoned that if there would be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the ninety and nine who need no repentance, then apparently God is not overly preoccupied with percentages.

Tyler cut a rectangle out of paper and carefully printed his name on it. Below his name, he wrote, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” He taped a folded paper to the back of it to insert in his pocket to hold the name tag on. He went to the mirror to see how it looked.
First thing in the morning he thought about his name tag. Hurriedly he got dressed and put it on.
When Mom went grocery shopping, Tyler went too. He walked around, hoping that everyone saw his name tag. While they were going back to the car, it started to rain. He pushed the cart quickly and helped Mom load the car before they both got very wet. “Such a good helper!” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
At home he helped carry in the groceries. When he leaned over, he noticed that his name tag was torn and sagging. And rain had smeared the words. I need a better name tag, he told himself.

In January 2009, my husband and I flew to Germany. He had accepted a job there, and we spent a week in Berlin to prepare to move our family.
Instantly, I felt overwhelmed by the differences between Germany and the United States. That night, I didn’t dare leave our hotel.
But the next morning, Sunday, I gathered my courage to attend sacrament meeting. When we entered the chapel, a kind man recognized us as Americans and gave us an English hymnbook. As I sat on the back row and sang different words from everyone else, I felt like an outsider.
The ward offered English translation and gave us headphones. Halfway through the meeting, I wanted to tear mine off and return to my American ward. But when I sang the second verse of “How Firm a Foundation,” the Holy Ghost took hold of my heart.
At home or abroad, on the land or the sea—
As thy days may demand, … so thy succor shall be.1
The hymn felt like a message from the Lord. Tears poured down my cheeks as I hurried to the foyer, where a soft-eyed man gave me his trusty pocket packet of tissue. (Nobody in the ward was ever without one.)
Fast forward three and a half years. In the same chapel on a Sunday morning in June, the organist began playing a hymn. I opened my German hymnbook and started to sing.
That’s when the Holy Ghost enveloped me again. I was again singing “How Firm a Foundation,” but everything was different.
I looked around. Instead of seeing strangers, I saw friends. Behind me sat our former stake president, who had quickly learned our names. On the front row my deacon son rubbed shoulders with the young men who had visited him in the hospital when he was diagnosed with diabetes. Near them sat the ward Young Women leader, who had taught my daughter to make delicious potato pancakes.
Throughout the chapel sat young people I had taught and loved in an English-speaking institute class, my faithful visiting teachers, and others who cheerfully joined the ward ballroom dance classes the bishop had asked me to teach.
Tears blurred my vision, but this time I didn’t run from the chapel. Instead, I dug into my purse for my own trusty pocket packet of tissue.
Nobody in the ward was ever without one.

A typical day in the village of Nazareth, where Jesus lived, began at sunrise, with each family probably eating a simple meal of bread and curds (what milk first turns into when it is made into cheese). Bread was the main part of each meal. After eating, the father and mother began their daily work.
The mother and her children walked to the well near the marketplace for fresh water; she carried an earthenware jar to hold it in. On the one or two days of the week that farmers and merchants sold their goods there, she did her shopping.
Returning home, the mother started her most important task of the day—making the bread. Wheat or barley kernels were taken from a storage pot and ground between two stones. The coarse flour was put into a bowl, and water was mixed in. Small pieces of day-old dough were kneaded into the mixture for leavening, which is what makes dough rise.
After the dough had risen, a bit of it was saved for the next day’s bread, and the rest was shaped into round flat disks. They were then baked in an earthenware oven that had been heated during the night. Soon the delicious-smelling, golden brown crusted bread was ready to eat.

Our grandchildren are learning that when they make a choice, they also choose its consequences. Recently one of our three-year-old granddaughters refused to eat her dinner. Her mother explained, “It’s almost bedtime. If you choose to eat dinner, you are choosing ice cream for dessert. If you choose not to eat dinner, you are choosing to go to bed now, without ice cream.” Our granddaughter considered her two choices and then stated emphatically, “I want this choice—to play and eat only ice cream and not go to bed.”

Brothers and sisters, do we wish we could play, eat only ice cream, never go to bed, and somehow avoid consequences like malnutrition and exhaustion?

One day my sister told me about a young woman in her ward who had become pregnant. This young woman continued going to church and seemed happy and excited about the upcoming event in her life. The other young women were confused by what they perceived as her seemingly flippant attitude about the situation.
But my sister, who was a visiting teacher to the mother of the young woman, learned of the countless nights the young woman had cried herself to sleep, in misery over the choices that had led her to this predicament. After many weeks of torment, the young woman decided that she could continue to mourn over her actions, or she could move forward and be happy. Because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, she could accept the consequences of her decisions and once again become clean through repentance.

Several years ago, my bishop asked me to help all the young people in our ward to read the entire Book of Mormon in a certain period of time. It was a glorious year as the young people read and reported. These young people learned that the Book of Mormon could help them conquer discouragement. It helped them conquer feelings of loneliness. It helped them conquer disobedience, anger, and lack of faith.

For the first time, participants living outside the United States joined the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square during general conference.
The choir has recently broadened its mission to reach a global audience, said choir president Michael O. Leavitt, who describes the pilot program as a natural progression in the choir’s growth. “We’re going about it in the only way we know how, which is one step at a time—learning, improving, and asking the Lord for more guidance,” he said. “With each step, it now becomes clearer that this can happen.”
Because of the choir’s rigorous practice schedule, choir members have been required to live within 100 miles (160 km) of the historic Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. However, Brother Leavitt said the pilot program opens the door for others with exceptional musical abilities to also engage on a temporary basis.
Along with their vocal ability, the international participants were required to demonstrate proficiency in music theory and English during the selection process.
Those selected to sing with the choir came from six countries:
Alvaro Jorge Martins of Natal, Brazil, baritone
Rodrigo Domaredzky of Curitiba, Brazil, baritone
Thalita De Carvalho of Sao Paulo, Brazil, second soprano
Tubo-Oreriba Joseph Elisha of Accra, Ghana, tenor
Jonathan How of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, second tenor
Denisse Elorza Avalos of Tijuana, Mexico, second soprano
Georgina Montemayor Wong of Monterrey, Mexico, second soprano
Ronald Baa of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, tenor
Sundae Mae Indino of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, first soprano
Pei-Shan Chung (Kylie Zhong) of Taipei, Taiwan, first alto
The international participants joined in choir rehearsals, attended choir school, visited several Church historical sites, and toured the Church’s Welfare Square, Temple Square, and Bishops’ Central Storehouse.
At the conclusion of general conference, the Utah-based choir members sang “God Be with You Till We Meet Again” to the visiting participants as a final farewell.
Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé expressed his love and gratitude for the global participants. “I hope when you return to your country, you will testify of this experience and you will raise a new generation of singers everywhere—all over the world,” he said.
The two-week experience helped the participants feel a greater sense of connection and unity with the Church community. “We spent a lot of time with the Church music department. While meeting them, I truly felt that the Church leaders hope Latter-day Saints all around the world can have a deeper spiritual experience through music,” Pei-Shan Chung said.

The Prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and received the revelations laying the foundation for the restored Church. He had premonitions of his own death and hastened to confer on the Quorum of the Twelve all the priesthood keys. In the words of Wilford Woodruff: “And thus addressing the Twelve, [Joseph] exclaimed, ‘upon your shoulders the kingdom rests, and you must round up your shoulders, and bear it; for I have had to do it until now. But now the responsibility rests upon you’” (Times and Seasons, 1 Nov. 1844, 698).

Kevin S. Hamilton
(99) A family begins to leave the Church with a decision to take a Sunday ride rather than attend sacrament meeting.

The following is an excerpt from volume 3 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, which will be released in the spring of 2022. The setting for this account is 1918, after President Joseph F. Smith’s son Hyrum M. Smith died unexpectedly from a ruptured appendix. Within months of Hyrum’s passing, his wife, Ida Bowman Smith, passed away following childbirth.
Joseph F. Smith’s family did not immediately tell him about Ida’s passing, afraid the news would crush him. He had grown more frail since Hyrum’s death, and he had rarely appeared in public over the last five months. On the day after Ida’s death, however, family members brought her newborn son to Joseph, and he wept as he blessed the baby and named him Hyrum. The family then told him about Ida.
To everyone’s surprise, Joseph received the news calmly.1 So much suffering and pain had descended on the world lately. The daily newspapers contained horrific reports on the war. Millions of soldiers and civilians had already been killed, and millions more had been maimed and wounded. Earlier that summer, the soldiers from Utah had arrived in Europe and witnessed the unrelenting brutality of the war.