Gospel Story Finder

I’m from France, but my sister and I spent a year in the eastern United States as exchange students. During that time, we met lots of people, but the one who left the biggest impression on me was a girl named Destiny. She became one of my best friends. We did all kinds of things together, during school and after school and with my sister. Destiny was always happy. That was the thing I liked most about her.
Then one day I saw her in a troubled mood I had never seen her in before. I asked her what was wrong. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. Then I noticed a paper in her hand. I took it and read it.
Someone had written unbelievably mean things to her. The anonymous note said she was ugly, that no one liked her, that she didn’t have any purpose for being alive, and that she ought to go and kill herself. I would never have believed someone like her could be attacked like that. It affected me deeply to know the pain she was going through.
From then on, I made an even bigger effort to be Destiny’s friend—not just to spend time with her, but to always be there for her, and especially to be sincere. I explained to her that she is a daughter of God, blessed with a divine nature, worthy of admiration and capable of great things.
It’s difficult to try to love yourself when others treat you badly and criticize you. As I befriended Destiny, I learned that sometimes the best way to help others is just to love them and to help them know who they truly are.
At the end of the year, when I had to return to France, Destiny told me something I will always treasure. “Emma,” she said, “you saved me. Before you came, I wanted to kill myself. But then you and your sister helped me a lot, just by caring. Today I love myself, and I love you.”

It was three o’clock in the morning. My dad had just nailed the final trim on the three-story dollhouse we had built for my little sisters (the trim was not quite dry and the white paint still bears several thumb prints). Mom and I placed inside all of the furniture we had made and gathered, and then sat back and looked with real pleasure on our creation. It had been a hectic three weeks of building, creating, and upholstering, but this year Christmas somehow seemed more real. The small house was beautiful. The furnishings were charming, and the tiny crocheted rugs just fit the decorating scheme we had chosen.
Since that Christmas several years ago we have made a few improvements in our dollhouse—pasted 1-by-1 1/2-inch cardboard pieces on the roof for shingles, added tiny accessories on the tables and shelves, found a potbellied stove for the upstairs bedroom—and with each passing year, and the arrival of each new niece and nephew, the dollhouse has grown in popularity; it has even become the pattern for several others as far away as Michigan.

Two days after Ryan’s accident, my brother Clay became a marathon runner. He started tugging on his gym shoes without a word to anyone and disappeared for hours. Each time he returned, his T-shirt was soaked through, and his hair was in wet spikes.
I think he ran to try to outrun the pain.
I stayed home and cried, reliving the accident as though it had been caught in a series of snapshots, frame by frame. First I saw Dad’s white face on the phone. Then we were driving to the hospital silently, and I could only stare at the armrest on the car door. I was afraid to look outside at the dark road, afraid I might see Ryan’s mangled bike still lying there.
At the hospital, I memorized every brand of candy bar and potato chip in the vending machine. They said when they found Ryan, he was lying in the road by a torn sack, with loaves of bread and grapes scattered around him.
The news that hurt so much was that they also found an Almond Joy (Mom’s favorite), a bag of peanut M&M’s (Clay’s favorite), a packet of sunflower seeds (Dad’s favorite), and a Snickers bar (my favorite). We knew he had spent his own money on the treats because he had a couple of pennies in one pocket and a folded receipt and six dollars and some change in the other pocket.
Ryan was in surgery when we arrived, and I remember staring at the TV screen in the waiting area, watching a pretty girl on a soap opera pout and plan to get her boyfriend back. She acted like it was the most important thing in the world. Eons later, we were allowed into intensive care. Ryan was difficult to recognize under the bandages. The doctor rattled off his injuries like a grocery list: a broken patella, femur, clavicle, and spine, a ruptured spleen, and a lacerated liver.
A broken this, a low that, a positive test for something else. All the news was negative. I was impatient, wanting to say, “Just tell us what isn’t broken.”
Ryan wore a metal brace, a halo, around his head, which kept it perfectly still, though he never moved. The only thing that moved was the ventilator, filling the air with a hiss. The IV kept up a quiet, steady drip. The heart monitor blipped ceremoniously.
Ryan would have liked the sounds, the rhythm of the IV and the steady beeping of the heart monitor. He used to sit at the table with a fork and spoon, tapping out a rhythm. He found patterns of rhythm in everything—the only person I know who appreciated a flat tire because it went “ga-WHUMP, ga-WHUMP, ga-WHUMP.”
I remember when he got excited as we watched rain fall one day on a long trip to Yellowstone. “Katie,” he said, “hear that?” He noticed little things, like the way raindrops hitting the windshield looked like miniature cat paw prints. Even though he was 15, he still had playing cards clipped to his bike spokes.
We were all there when the monitor stopped, the drumbeat fading to one long beep without rhythm or motion; Mom with red eyes, clutching a shredded tissue, Dad clenching his teeth; and Clay sitting near the bed, his head in his hands.
So Clay ran. And ran. I never saw him cry, but I think he must have done it during his runs. He was running miles and miles every day. Mom and Dad were quiet. No teasing or laughing or even music was heard in our house. Mom cried and cried when the drum set she’d ordered for Christmas came. I signed for it, and the delivery man went back to his truck, bewildered and apologetic.
I started to cringe whenever the doorbell rang. Who would be the next to blunder into our grief? A life insurance man? A boy Ryan’s age selling candy bars to finance a band trip?
Clay was out running the day the two young men, not much older than me, knocked on our door. I was surprised to see them in serious-looking suits because I couldn’t see a car. Instead, I saw two bicycles leaning against the porch. They wore nametags: Elder Martin and Elder Weiss.
Mom was in the kitchen cutting up vegetables for dinner. I didn’t call to her, and I had the two guys sit on the front porch in lawn chairs. They said they had a message about families, but I think I listened to them because they reminded me of Ryan—kind of young and innocent-looking, like they were playing at being grown-up in their father’s suits and ties, still riding bicycles.
They looked young, but they sounded wise and they had the kind of light about them that Ryan had. I didn’t tell them about Ryan, but their words were gentle and kind. They talked about a plan God has for his children and how he wants us to return to him.
I was intrigued, wondering how they knew so much. And as I listened, the porch, the lawn chairs, and the bicycles melted away and I felt like I was dreaming a comforting dream. Ryan, alive again. All of us happy again.
Suddenly Clay stood at the foot of the steps, breath coming out noisily, sweat dripping from his forehead.
“What are you guys trying to sell?” he demanded.
They looked at him. “We’re not selling anything. We’re teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Clay sat down and unlaced his shoes, jerking at the laces.
“Get out of here. There is no God.”
The missionaries rose but stayed where they were. Clay stood up too. He looked ready for a fight, but they calmly spoke to him. One of them said, “I know God lives and he loves us. He wants us to be happy.”
Clay became more angry. “That’s a bunch of baloney.” He shoved viciously at the bicycles, and they fell over like dominoes.
“Why did he take my brother? He was just a kid. Just a sweet little kid!” He threw his shoes at the house as hard as he could, barely missing the missionaries.
One elder looked ready to cry, but not out of fear. He said, “I felt the same way when my sister died of leukemia. But death isn’t the tragedy. Sin is. The gospel has taught me that I will see my sister again someday. Her spirit still lives on.”
His voice faded and he almost whispered. “Sometimes I can feel her near me.”
Clay stared at him for a moment, then brushed past him into the house. The elders thanked me for listening to them and asked if they could come again. I wanted them to. I wanted to know more. I wanted the comforting feeling they brought.
They did come back, and they gave me a blue book. As fall deepened into winter and it grew more serious and cold, the only thing that was in motion in our family was Clay, still running every day. The rest of us went through our routines. School, work, housework. But that was all. Anything extra took too much energy. But I did read the blue book, the Book of Mormon.
I brought the elders inside, and sometimes Mom listened briefly at the kitchen door, dish towel in her hands. She’d been a cleaning fanatic before, but now she cleaned twice as much, vacuuming twice a day.
What the elders said made so much sense.
“To every thing there is a season” (Eccles. 3:1). They said there is a pattern, a rhythm in life, and “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22).
Clay saw me reading the Book of Mormon one day and said, “Those guys think they have all the answers, don’t they?” I told him I had been reading and praying, and that it was helping.
“I feel closer to my Heavenly Father, and he is helping me, one day at a time, one hour at a time,” I said. “And I feel closer to Ryan too. Sometimes he seems so near that I talk to him and tell him what I’m learning.” I was surprised to hear myself telling Clay such a private thing, but maybe I did it for a reason. Clay turned away and went to his room.
In March, Elder Martin told me and Mom, “I love springtime. It comforted me so much after Michelle died. I saw the plants die in the winter and be buried in snow. But in the spring, everything came alive again. I believed in the Resurrection. I believed in God’s purposes, and I finally trusted in his wisdom to take Michelle, even though we missed her so much. I knew Michelle was free from pain and that I would see her again.” He looked earnestly into our faces. “You will see Ryan again.”
Clay had come in from running and stood quietly as Elder Martin finished speaking. It had started snowing, but I could still see the daffodils, crocuses, and tulips Mom and I had planted the week before Ryan died, their yellows, blues, and reds brilliant against the pasty sky.
The elders smiled at Clay and shook his hand. Clay dropped his hat, and Elder Martin picked it up. He scooped a tiny bit of snow into his hands and it immediately melted.
“Look at snowflakes,” he said, looking at his wet palm. “No two alike, but they each have a pattern. You don’t see it unless you have a microscope. You have to look closely. If God gave something so small a pattern, he certainly gave us, his children, one. We can’t see it always, so we have to trust him.”
Clay said quietly, “I ran the marathon today. Twenty-six-point-two miles. It was a killer.”
“You should have told us!” Mom said. “We would have come to cheer you on.”
He looked at me. “I thought about what you said about praying. The whole time I was praying that God could help me understand why Ryan died and help me know that he wasn’t gone for good. Near the end of the race, I was the only one in front. I don’t even remember passing the other runners. It was like Ryan was running next to me, saying, ‘Go for it. You’re gonna win. Listen to your feet; keep up the rhythm; keep up the pace.’ And I won. I think I understand now. Ryan was like a sprinter. His race was quick, over in a few seconds. The rest of us are going for distance, though we don’t know when our own race will end.” His eyes filled, and he rubbed them with the back of his hand.
His voice dropped. “Ryan’s alive. His spirit is still alive.”
Elder Martin turned to Clay. “You’re right. You will see him again and be with him.” His eyes shone.
Elder Weiss said, “Hey, Clay, you’ve inspired us to start running every morning. What if we come by here on our way and pick you up? We can do some running together, and you can give us some pointers.”
Clay nodded. His breathing had slowed. He looked more healthy and alive than he’d looked for a long time. “Yeah, sure. That’d be okay.”
I watched the elders pedal away, smiling and talking like brothers, their long coats flapping behind them, ears already red with cold. Even though they wore dark suits, they seemed as bright as our flowers against the dull sky. Part of the pattern was becoming clear to me, and I knew those two young men would be connected to our family forever.
The snow changed to sleet, hitting the window with a pinging sound Ryan would have liked.

Building anything in Alaska in the winter can prove quite a challenge, and constructing a temple is no exception. When work on the Anchorage Temple had to be delayed because of the weather, the youth in the area decided to give themselves a preview of what having a temple in their city would be like.
So they built a scale replica of the temple out of snow bricks, complete with an Angel Moroni statue on top. With a little help from the temple’s architect, who gave a youth fireside prior to the project, they came up with a pretty good likeness. The snow replica is about one-fifth the size of the real thing, which the youth can hardly wait to see.

It all started when my friend Brett said, “Last night when I talked to my friend, I found out that her parents have been telling her stuff about our religion, making us sound really bad. She told me that I was wrong for being Mormon, and she seemed to have plenty of evidence. Lots of stuff that I didn’t know about. I figured I can’t defend this if I don’t know what we believe.”
Then he asked me, “Do you want to come over and study scriptures tonight? You know, we could do a little reading, look some stuff up.”
“Seriously?” I hesitated. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. It was just that I was taken off guard. I mean, how many teenagers hang out on weeknights to study the scriptures for fun?
“Sure, I guess,” I accepted slowly. “If you really want to.”
Brett was the only other Church member in my grade, and he’d never seemed very religious. I still remember being surprised my sophomore year when I first met him. He asked me why I chose not to date until I was 16. I was astounded by his question because Brett had been an active member his entire life but he somehow still didn’t know some of the basic teachings of the Church. To him, church was a Sunday thing. I remembered answering Brett’s question about my decision not to date until 16 and then enlightening him on many other standards we had as Church members.
Now, as seniors, we’d grown to be close friends. And once again I found myself surprised by Brett.
I arrived at his house not sure what to expect. As I walked into his family’s study, I noticed the Bible was open and several LDS reference materials were stacked on the desk. He’d already begun. “Look at this,” he said excitedly, pointing to James 2:21–26.
“I thought we could find some answers.” Then he asked, “Do you have any questions?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“After listening to my friend, I know I need to study more,” Brett continued.
“So, are you looking up things about the points she made?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can see where she’s coming from, but you know, the more I find out about what we believe,” he continued, “the more I see and feel just how right our beliefs are. It’s exciting. I want you to help me.”
I’d never considered the scriptures exciting before. I felt humbled by his enthusiasm. He wanted my help because I’d read the Book of Mormon, prayed, felt the Spirit, and from then on hadn’t had doubts.
But at that moment, I realized I too needed to search the scriptures more.
Brett and I really studied the scriptures that night and found the answers to his questions. Time and time again, Brett searched the scriptures in response to criticisms of the Church. As he learned to trust the scriptures, his testimony grew. Not only did that study help him talk with his friend, but his example of asking questions and finding the answers in the scriptures made a difference for me too.

Trish Goodsell, of the Atwater Second Ward, Merced California Stake, is especially sensitive to the needs of the handicapped. She is handicapped herself, and this inspired her to plan a Laurel project that involved helping the teachers and Mia Maids in her stake put on a Halloween party and dance for the residents of a local facility for the mentally and physically disabled.
The youth provided games, a costume contest, a parade, and, of course, a dance that even those in wheelchairs loved. Each guest was escorted by one of the young people, so no one was left alone.

It calls to mind an incident I read that tells of the naturalist, William Beebe, who made a visit to another naturalist whose name was Theodore Roosevelt. In describing the visit, William Beebe said that each evening, after a talk in Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill, the two men would go out on the lawn and gaze up at the sky to see who could first detect that faint spot of light-mist beyond the lower left-hand corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Then one or the other would recite: “That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is 750,000 light-years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.” After an interval Beebe reported that Mr. Roosevelt would grin at him and say, “Now I think we are small enough. Let’s go to bed.”

I had great pleasure in training a well-bred colt. He had a good disposition, clean, well-rounded eye, was well proportioned, and all in all, a choice animal. Under the saddle he was as willing, responsive, and cooperative as a horse could be. He and my dog, Scotty, were real companions. I liked the way he would go up to something of which he was afraid. He had confidence that if he would do as I bade him he would not be injured.

But my horse Dandy resented restraint. He was ill-contented when tied and would nibble at the tie rope until he was free. He would not run away; he just wanted to be free. Thinking other horses felt the same, he would proceed to untie their ropes. He hated to be confined in the pasture, and if he could find a place in the fence where there was only smooth wire, he would paw the wire carefully with his feet until he could step over to freedom. More than once my neighbors were kind enough to put him back in the field. He learned even to push open the gate. Though he often did damage that was provoking and sometimes expensive, I admired his ingenuity.

But his curiosity and desire to explore the neighborhood led him and me into trouble. Once on the highway he was hit by an automobile, resulting in a demolished machine, injury to the horse, and slight, though not serious, injury to the driver. Recovering from that, and still impelled by a feeling of wanderlust, he inspected the fence throughout the entire boundary. He even found the gates wired. So for a while we thought we had Dandy secure in the pasture.

One day, however, somebody left the gate unwired. Detecting this, Dandy unlatched it, took another horse with him, and together they visited the neighbor’s field. They went to an old house used for storage. Dandy’s curiosity prompted him to push open the door. There was a sack of grain. What a find! Yes, and what a tragedy! The grain was poisoned bait for rodents! In a few minutes Dandy and the other horse were in spasmodic pain, and shortly both were dead.

Conversely, charity can both deepen knowledge and make it more productive. This is demonstrated by the story of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who in 1514 was a rather ordinary 40-year-old Catholic priest living what was the typical gentlemanly life of a Spaniard on his estate in Cuba. Like many of his fellow countrymen in the Americas at the time, he owned ample land and numerous Indian slaves. Although he was a university graduate, he had not, up until that time, shown much interest in, or aptitude for, scholarly things. Fifty-two years later, when he died at the age of 92, Las Casas had become one of the greatest scholars of the Spanish empire, producing thousands of pages of materials, including works on law, history, anthropology, political theory, and theology.17 Moreover, Las Casas’ scholarship was as productive as it was extensive, and he became a vocal advocate of the Native American people. His scholarly reputation was such that when the king of Spain convened a conference in 1550 to consider the most pressing issue of the day—the manner in which the Spanish should deal with the indigenous population of the New World—Las Casas was one of only two scholars invited to debate the matter.18
What triggered this sudden outburst of scholarly productivity, this seemingly unquenchable search for knowledge? It was Las Casas’ arrival at the conclusion that the indigenous people of the New World were being treated unjustly and that they, of all people, were in need of the love of Christ. The way in which Las Casas arrived at that conclusion demonstrates how charity can transform awareness of factual information into the kind of deep and productive knowledge that only a lifetime of dedicated searching can produce.
Shortly before Christmas in 1511, Las Casas was part of a congregation in Hispaniola that heard a stern sermon from the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos concerning the Spaniards’ mistreatment of the indigenous people. Although Las Casas remembered Montesinos’ words well enough to record them in a work he began more than 16 years later,19 they had no immediate impact on him. Las Casas “took no steps to change his way of life and for more than two years after the sermons continued to play the role of comfortable gentleman-ecclesiastic.”20 Without charity, Las Casas’ awareness of the plight of the Indians remained unconnected and isolated dots of information. He had, at best, incomplete knowledge of the matter.
Yet something began to work within Las Casas once he began to view this information from the perspective of charity. While preparing a sermon to deliver at the Pentecostal mass at the newly established settlement of Sancti Espiritus in 1514, Las Casas came upon a verse from chapter 34 of Ecclesiasticus:21
Tainted his gifts who offers in sacrifice ill-gotten goods! . . . Like the man who slays a son in his father’s presence is he who offers sacrifice from the possessions of the poor. The bread of charity is life itself for the needy, he who withholds it is a person of blood. 22
These powerful words greatly affected Las Casas. As historian Lewis Hanke explains:
Pondering on this text for several days and turning over in his mind the doctrines preached by the Dominicans, Las Casas became increasingly convinced “that everything done to the Indians thus far was unjust and tyrannical.” The scales fell from his eyes, he saw at last what was to be forever after the truth for him, and experienced as complete a change of life as did Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.23
Once Las Casas viewed the information he had from this new perspective, previously unperceived connections began to appear everywhere. Thus he said, more than four decades later:
Never have I read a book . . . all these interminable forty-four years, in which some argument or authority was not adduced to prove and corroborate the justice of these Indian peoples and to condemn the injustices and evils and harm done to them.24
The same charitable impulses also motivated Las Casas to make this more expanded knowledge productive. He not only preached the sermon at Sancti Espiritus, he immediately gave up his Indian slaves and embarked on a lifelong journey to acquire and use all the knowledge he could on behalf of the Indian people, making repeated arduous trips across the Atlantic to persuade the Crown to alter its policies toward them.
Sparked by what he called “the charity of Jesus Christ, which knows no measure nor seeks any rest while on this pilgrimage,”25 Las Casas’ knowledge was both deepened and made more productive.

Rick Daniel was a hot item as a high school senior. Universities like Miami, Stanford, BYU, and Texas A&M wanted him to play football for them. It was an exciting time. He could seemingly play anywhere he wanted. Even though he was quickly approaching mission age, a mission was the last thing on his mind.
When Rick accepted A&M’s offer, his dad tracked down the address of the LDS Institute of Religion so Rick could find it when he got to school. But when Rick saw the institute schedule, he couldn’t fit a class in—or at least at the time he didn’t want to try to fit one in. So Brother Tom McMullin, the institute director, met with him one-on-one each week to study the Book of Mormon. “The spiritual growth I experienced from it was well worth my time,” Rick says. “I really matured spiritually.” By his sophomore year, he was ready to make time in his schedule for a regular institute class.
Rick didn’t quite know how much his testimony had grown until one day while he was sitting in institute class. “I had this overwhelming feeling that it was time to go on a mission,” he said. The knot in his stomach told him it wasn’t going to be that easy—he still had to tell his coach.
“I was so nervous,” Rick says. “I didn’t know what he would say.” So Rick carefully explained to his coach what a mission is and that he would like to go on one. Before Rick could even squirm, the coach said, “Will you come back?”
“That broke the tension right there,” Rick says. “I said, ‘Of course. I’d want to come right back here, and would ya’ll keep my scholarship?’ He said, ‘Sure, without a doubt.’ It was great. Since then everything has been falling into place.”
Rick is now serving in the California Anaheim Mission, the same city where he played against Stanford in the Pigskin Preview just last year.

Years later I found myself asking this same question to a less-active Melchizedek Priesthood holder. He was a wonderful man who loved his family. He, however, had not been to church for many years. He had a talented son who played on an elite travel sports team that practiced and played games on Sunday. That team had won multiple major championships. As we met, I reminded him that, as a priesthood holder, he was promised that if he magnified his oath and covenant, he would receive “all that [our] Father hath.”2 I then asked him, “Is a national championship worth more than all the Father has?” He gently said, “I see your point” and made an appointment to visit with his bishop.

There is a young man in the Laie Park YSA ward who just recently got baptized. His name is Kyle Geroski. He shared with me a story that led him along his conversion path. Kyle was living in St. Louis Missouri. He had always felt in his heart a desire to do good and to serve others. But the environment he was in was not conducive to his desire. He wanted to change the path he was on and felt a prompting that he needed to leave his family and friends in Missouri. He acted on the prompting and made the decision to move to Hawaii to be with his Brother Dustin, who had joined the Church a few years earlier and was attending BYU-Hawaii. Dustin also happens to be the Ward Mission Leader for the Laie Park YSA ward.

Soon after arriving in Hawaii, Kyle had his first lesson with the missionaries. During the discussion, he shared how he seemed to have always known what was right in his heart, but how it seemed to be in conflict with his surroundings and what his friends were pursuing. The missionaries taught him about the light of Christ, and how it is given to us that we may know right from wrong. Learning about the light of Christ was something new and intriguing to Kyle. After that first discussion, he prayed that he could have a greater understanding of what the light of Christ is.

That evening, Kyle was walking down the street with a friend when they came across a gentleman taking out his trash. As it turns out, this gentleman was Elder Tanner, a service missionary serving here at BYU–Hawaii. They greeted Elder Tanner and talked with him briefly. Then Elder Tanner turned to Kyle and said, “I have something in my heart that I would like to talk to you about. Have you ever heard of the light of Christ?” He then proceeded to teach Kyle about the light of Christ. It was the very knowledge that he had been seeking and praying about just a few hours before. It was a testament to Kyle that the Lord hears and answers prayers. This experience solidified his desire to continue the missionary discussions and was instrumental in his decision to be baptized.

The Lord knew Kyle was seeking guidance and answers. The Lord also knew that Elder Tanner had the answers and was prepared to act. The prompting was given and Elder Tanner acted and was an instrument in the hands of God in fulfilling his purpose. Kyle was baptized last month, on his 22nd birthday.

“This will be the last time we meet here until next spring,” Betsy’s father said as they entered the meetinghouse. “For the next six months, until our building is finished, we’ll meet across town.”
Betsy knew all this. Work had already started on getting the meetinghouse in better condition. The grassy area out back where Betsy’s Achievement Days class used to go for activities had become a parking lot. Trailers and big trucks were parked there now.
The whole ward had been getting ready for this change. On Saturday, Betsy and other Primary children helped pack up everything in the Primary closets. Her father was moving desks and chairs from the family history center into storage units in the parking lot, and her mother was packing books and videos from the meetinghouse library.
Everyone else seemed to be happy as they worked, but Betsy felt sad. The building looked so empty! She missed looking at the picture on the wall in the Primary room of Jesus and the children, and she missed the hallway bulletin board with its photographs of the full-time missionaries. She even missed the cheery flower arrangement that was always on the table in the lobby.
Now the building no longer looked like the church Betsy remembered. It was plain and bare. Starting the next day, the ward members would not be allowed in the building until the work was done. After today everything will be different, Betsy thought.
“Will I still have Achievement Days?” she asked on the way home from church. She didn’t think she could stand going for six months without that. “And what about Primary activity days? Where will we have them?”
“These things have all been figured out,” her mother assured her. “Don’t worry. You won’t have to give up anything important. Things won’t be that different. You’ll see.”
Betsy wasn’t sure about that. Things looked very different when she walked into the rented building the next week. For one thing, the “chapel” was huge. It even had a balcony. And there was no organ and no choir seats. But still, there was her bishop sitting up on the stand, smiling at her. She felt good when she saw him.
She felt even better when he announced that it was time to bless and pass the sacrament. She had been afraid that they wouldn’t be able to have the sacrament there. The priests had to sit behind a folding table, and the deacons had to go single file up some stairs to get the trays, but it didn’t matter. The prayer had been exactly the same. She knew that the same priesthood was here, just as it had been in the other building, even though the walls were different.
After sacrament meeting, Betsy followed her friend Chelsea down two flights of stairs, through a long narrow hallway, and down three more stairs to get to the temporary Primary classroom. There was no carpet in the room, and sounds echoed. Sister Roberts, her teacher, asked them to be as quiet as possible as they sat in their chairs.
Through the thin walls, Betsy could hear the younger Primary children singing one of her favorite songs, “The Wise Man and the Foolish Man.”* The music made Betsy feel more comfortable in the tiny room. Primary hadn’t changed, either, even if the walls were different. They still sang the same songs.
Betsy looked around the room. There was a picture of the prophet and the Apostles on the chalkboard, and a picture of Jesus Christ. It reminded Betsy of the picture that had hung in the Primary room of their meetinghouse.
When the music stopped, Sister Roberts asked someone to give the opening prayer. Then she said, “Open your New Testament to Ephesians 2:19–20. Here Paul describes how the gospel is like a building.”
Betsy listened carefully. She wanted to hear if anything was said about their building.
But Sister Roberts didn’t mention walls. “Do you know what we call the thing that holds the whole building up?”
Brian raised his hand high. “I know,” he said with a smile. “My dad’s a builder. It’s called the foundation.”
“That’s right,” Sister Roberts said. “And what does this scripture say the foundation is?”
“Apostles and prophets,” Chelsea said.
Betsy looked at the picture of the Apostles and prophet on the chalkboard.
“And do you know what a cornerstone is, Brian?”
Brian shook his head.
“A cornerstone is a stone that connects the foundation with the rest of the building. They are the most important stones in the building. Who does the scripture say is the chief cornerstone?”
“It’s Jesus!” Betsy burst out, excited. She had just realized something important. “Sister Roberts, now I know why this building feels almost like our meetinghouse. Even though these walls are different, it doesn’t matter as long as the Church still has the same foundation and the same cornerstone.”
Sister Roberts smiled at Betsy. “You’re absolutely right!”

During the 150th anniversary of the pioneers’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Brother Myron Richins was serving as a stake president in Henefer, Utah. The celebration included a reenactment of the pioneers’ passage through his town.
President Richins was heavily involved with the plans for the celebration, and he attended many meetings with General Authorities and others to discuss the events. He was fully engaged.
Just before the actual celebration, President Richins’s stake was reorganized, and he was released as president. On a subsequent Sunday, he was attending his ward priesthood meeting when the leaders asked for volunteers to help with the celebration. President Richins, along with others, raised his hand and was given instructions to dress in work clothes and to bring his truck and a shovel.
Finally, the morning of the big event came, and President Richins reported to volunteer duty.
Only a few weeks before, he had been an influential contributor to the planning and supervision of this major event. On that day, however, his job was to follow the horses in the parade and clean up after them.
President Richins did so gladly and joyfully.
He understood that one kind of service is not above another.
He knew and put into practice the words of the Savior: “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”9

“Cut your headlights. That must be him. Yep, ’80 rust bucket with an exhaust system loud enough to wake the neighborhood. Okay, he’s far enough ahead of us now. Pull out and follow him,” she said.
“Okay, so we followed him to this church and watched him go in. Now what? We know he hauls himself out of bed at an insane hour every morning to go to this church. You’ve seen what you wanted. Let’s go.”
“No. I want to wait a while and see if anybody else shows up. Then I’m going in to see what’s inside.”
“You’re going in? He’ll recognize you and know something’s up.”
“Don’t worry, baby brother. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m wearing my black wig today. I always wear my blonde wig to school. Anyway, I don’t exactly have the kind of face that will turn any heads. He’ll never know.”
“This is so stupid. If you’re that interested in this guy and his church, why don’t you just ask him what you want to know?”
“Listen. Anyone can mouth scriptures and high-sounding ideas. But does he really believe what he said last Wednesday. I want to know what this guy and everybody else inside are like when they don’t have an audience.”
“You can’t disgrace the Church by doing the right thing. I hear you substituted for the Gospel Essentials teacher this morning.”
Keith shrugged. “Another disaster. I was supposed to be giving a lesson on the importance of baptism, but halfway through the class this black-haired, skinny girl comes in and sits on the back row. All of a sudden the lesson plan goes completely out of my head and I start talking about the plan of salvation. About a half hour of this andshe excuses herself and cuts out of class.”
The bishop raised his eyebrows. “Sometimes that happens to me too. I feel impressed to teach certain principles at certain times.”
But Keith didn’t hear the bishop. “I drove away the only investigator that’s come to that class in a month.”
“Well, how’d it go? You look like you’re hyperventilating and your eyes are red. Should I call the doctor?”
“No, just give me a few minutes. I’ve decided I’m going to need your help tomorrow, though.”

I helped take care of Grandma Pinegar a few Sundays ago. Grandma is 99 and very frail. She is blind and quite deaf, and recently it has become difficult for her to talk in more than a whisper. Her little body is so bent over that there is not much room in her lungs for air.
I leaned close to her and asked, “Grandma, tell me how the gospel has blessed your life.” She whispered softly and shared her gratitude for the promptings and guidance she had received from the Holy Ghost.
When her second child, James, was 18 months old, he and his older brother were playing outside and she was watching them from the window. Suddenly, she couldn’t see him and ran from the house calling and searching frantically. There was water in the irrigation ditch that shouldn’t have been there, and she searched along the edge of the ditch and could see nothing. She ran for the hired hands to come and help and ran back to where the ditch went through a long culvert. Running to the other end of the culvert, she saw two little shoes, and pulled on them. When she had her son in her arms, she was prompted to clasp her hands together and place them under his stomach and carry him in front of her in this way, using her knee to hold some of his weight. She ran toward the road crying for help. The promptings she received to carry him in such an unnatural manner saved his life.

Was the Prophet himself faithful sufficiently that he was ever healed? Yes—repeatedly. He once was poisoned and then vomited so violently that his jaw was thrown out of joint. He was immediately administered to and healed.71 In another experience, this time with his brother Hyrum, at the end of the Zion’s Camp march, he prophesied that because the Camp was not repentant and not living as a modern Camp of Israel should, some of them would die. One account says, “like sheep with rot”—a terrifying statement.72 Thirteen died. In spite of his prophecy, Joseph yearned to heal them. He and Hyrum tried, but they had no sooner laid their hands on the sufferers than they themselves were smitten with cholera. They felt its ravages, fell down prostrate together, and prayed for deliverance. Even at that moment, Mother Smith was praying for them.73 In prayer they asked for a testimony that the Lord would relieve them and that healing would come. Within minutes they arose free of the disease which, in other cases, was fatal.

Allow me to share two experiences from my recent interactions with the young men of the Church that have taught me about leading and following.
Recently my wife and I attended a sacrament meeting away from our home ward. Just before the meeting started, a young man approached me and asked if I would help pass the sacrament. I said, “I’d be happy to.”
I took my seat with the other deacons and asked one who was sitting next to me, “What is my assignment?” He told me I was to start passing at the back of the chapel in the middle section and that he would be on the other side of the same section, and together we would work our way to the front.
I said, “I haven’t done this for a long time.”
He replied, “That’s OK. You’ll be fine. I felt the same way when I started.”
Later the youngest deacon in the quorum, ordained only weeks earlier, gave a talk in sacrament meeting. After the meeting, the other deacons rallied around him to tell him how proud they were of their fellow quorum member.
As I visited with them that day, I found out that each week, members of all the Aaronic Priesthood quorums in that ward reach out to other young men and invite them to be part of their quorums.
These young men were all great leaders. And they clearly had some wonderful behind-the-scenes Melchizedek Priesthood holders, parents, and others who mentored them in their duties. Caring adults like these see young men not just as they are but as they can become. When they talk to or about the young men, they do not dwell on their shortcomings. Instead, they emphasize the great leadership qualities they are demonstrating.

Some time ago Sister Edgley and I were being chauffeured through a city in South America. Our driver was a stake president who was a convert to the Church. This stake president was a very successful international attorney. As we were passing the slums of the city—houses of cardboard and tin with no water, sewer, or plumbing of any kind—my wife asked the stake president where he grew up.
He pointed to the slums and said, “A place just like this.”
My wife then asked, “How in the world did you ever climb out of this kind of poverty to become the successful person you now are?”
The stake president simply responded, “It was the gospel. The missionaries came and taught us who we really were and what we could become. My brother broke out, got an MBA from BYU, and now is the president of a large corporation in South America. My only other sibling is a sister, and she is a successful attorney.”
This story is repeated over and over—hundreds, even thousands of times. In fact, the restored Church was born out of poverty and what some would see as absolute hopelessness. But the Saints came to believe in themselves, who they were, and what they could become.

When Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife, Kathy, visited during our stake conference, Sister Andersen shared a story with us. She said that when they were living in France, she made photocopies of the conference talks for each of their children—even the very young ones. She was shocked when she found out the price of the photocopies, which was very high. Then the thought came into her mind: “What is it worth to you for your family to have the words of the prophets?”

This story really touched me, and I made sure everyone in our family had his or her own copy of the conference talks. Our daughters were very excited. We used them for family home evening and during scripture study. I loved seeing one daughter reading talks on her own and marking them with her highlighter. Another daughter, recently baptized, begged me to read talks with her one-on-one.

As part of my lesson in Relief Society, I challenged each sister to review the talks from the previous conference; some sisters reread the talks, and others watched them online. Several sisters expressed how they felt much more prepared for the upcoming conference.