Gospel Story Finder

Perhaps a personal experience will help to illustrate the point. When I was a young resident physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, I worked long hours and traveled between the hospital and our home in Watertown, Massachusetts, mostly by bicycle since my wife and young family needed our car. One evening I was riding home after a long period in the hospital, feeling tired and hungry and at least a bit discouraged. I knew I needed to give my wife and four small children not only my time and energy when I got home but also a cheery attitude. I was, frankly, finding it hard to just keep pedaling.
My route would take me past a fried chicken shop, and I felt like I would be a lot less hungry and tired if I could pause for a piece of chicken on my way home. I knew they were running a sale on thighs or drumsticks for 29 cents each, but when I checked my wallet, all I had was one nickel. As I rode along, I told the Lord my situation and asked if, in His mercy, He could let me find a quarter on the side of the road. I told Him that I didn’t need this as a sign but that I would be really grateful if He felt to grant me this kind blessing.
I began watching the ground more intently but saw nothing. Trying to maintain a faith-filled but submissive attitude as I rode, I approached the store. Then, almost exactly across the street from the chicken place, I saw a quarter on the ground. With gratitude and relief, I picked it up, bought the chicken, savored every morsel, and rode happily home.
In His mercy, the God of heaven, the Creator and Ruler of all things everywhere, had heard a prayer about a very minor thing. One might well ask why He would concern Himself with something so small. I am led to believe that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that the things that are important to us become important to Him, just because He loves us. How much more would He want to help us with the big things that we ask, which are right (see 3 Nephi 18:20)?

The Nativity set is my favorite part of Christmas!
See, Lizzy? It’s the shepherds, the Wise Men, and …
Baby Jesus!
You can play with baby Jesus, but you have to be really careful.
OK!
A few days later …
Where is baby Jesus?
What are you looking for?
Baby Jesus!
We can’t find Him.
He’s lost!
Christmas isn’t ruined, and Jesus isn’t lost. He is always with us.
How?
I think I know …
He’s with us in here.
That’s right! The Nativity set is just a model. The real Jesus lives and loves us. We can feel His love in our hearts. Especially when we show love to others.
See, Jesus is with us for Christmas after all!

I’m going to tell you about a goal I made when I was 10 years old.
It all started on a trip to visit my grandparents. My grandparents had temple books in their living room, and I loved looking at the pictures. I decided that I wanted to make my own temple book. I made a long-term goal to draw all of the temples.
I decided to draw my first temple. I picked up a pencil, looked up a picture online, and drew the St. George Utah Temple. Then I drew the Logan Utah Temple and the Manti Utah Temple. My mom suggested that I use a big sketchbook for my temples. Now, a year and a half later, I am at temple number 81, the Reno Nevada Temple. I still have 105 temples to go!
There are times when I want to give up on the temple I’m drawing. When this happens, I like to say a prayer and ask Heavenly Father to help me through the hard parts.
Something cool about this goal is how it has helped my three younger brothers love the temple more. My little brother Kade draws temples he wants to visit someday, and my other brothers draw temples for teachers and friends.
My goal has also helped me find some of my other interests. I love to design! I started creating 3D temple models last summer, and I hope to be an architect when I grow up.
This goal has helped me feel closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus. Whenever I draw a temple, I feel the Spirit. I know that temples are houses of God. Recently, I’ve been able to go inside the Payson Utah Temple and others. I feel the Spirit so strongly when I do temple baptisms.
Whenever I see a temple, it helps me to be stronger in choosing the right.
Since writing this, Brayden has drawn over 100 more temples! Go to the back cover to see how you can send us a drawing too.
Drawings by Brayden B.

In 1839 some members of the Quorum of the Twelve left for missions in England under very trying circumstances:
“Wilford Woodruff and John Taylor were the first to start out. Wilford, in Montrose, had been suffering for days from chills and fever. His infant daughter, Sarah Emma, also seriously ill, was being cared for by friends with more suitable accommodations. On August 8 he finally bade [his wife] Phoebe a tender farewell and walked to the banks of the Mississippi. Brigham Young paddled him across the river in a canoe. When Joseph Smith found him resting by the post office, Wilford told the Prophet that he felt and looked more like a subject for the dissecting room than a missionary. …
“It took Elders Woodruff and Taylor, traveling together, the rest of the month to make it as far as Germantown, Indiana. …
“By the time they arrived in Germantown John Taylor was so desperately ill that it was impossible for him to continue. …
“[He] remained ill, sometimes near death, for about three weeks. His optimism was tenacious, however, as suggested in a tender letter to [his wife] Leonora, dated September 19 [1839]:
“‘You may ask me how I am going to prosecute my journey. … I do not know but one thing I do know, that there is a being who clothes the lillies of the valley & feeds the ravens & he has given me to understand that all these things shall be added & that is all I want to know. He laid me on a bed of sickness & I was satisfied, he has raised me from it again & I am thankful. He stopped me on my road & I am content. … If he took me I felt that it would be well. He has spared me, & it is better’” (James B. Allen, Ronald K. Esplin, and David J. Whittaker, Men with a Mission, 1837–1841: The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the British Isles [1992], 67–70).

I was 60 years old, my pockets were empty, and my life was a disgrace. I believed that life was for my own enjoyment. I was lost, my eyes were closed, and then Jesus Christ opened them.
My baptism, confirmation, and the covenants I made with Jesus Christ are the miracle that changed my whole life. I realized what I could gain and what is important to me. Now I am a happy person because I know Jesus Christ.
I would never have thought that a worldly man such as I was would one day become a Church member, a priesthood holder, and a branch president. It is a great gift for me to serve Jesus Christ, our Savior.

The immigrant’s youthful eyes shifted to Mosiah Twiggs, the big, bearded Mormon who had rescued him that fateful night. Waves of love and gratitude rolled up the shores of Lao Moy’s sore heart and washed away his tears.
Mosiah, too, had been ensnared by dreams of gold, so he left the Salt Lake Valley settlement in ’49 to fall prey to the same misfortune that had beset so many others—empty pockets and broken dreams.
After his father’s death, Lao Moy had agreed without misgivings to return with Mosiah to Salt Lake City, feeling a loyalty to the soft-spoken stranger who had risked his life to save someone he didn’t even know.
It had been a hazardous journey by wagon from the goldfields of California to the Salt Lake Valley, and they had encountered countless perils. But Mosiah’s promise that the God of Israel would protect them had planted the seeds of a testimony in the boy’s heart. Lao Moy wondered about this man who dutifully paid 10 percent of his earnings to his church for tithing.
Yet standing in the way of Lao Moy’s spiritual progress was that old bitterness born in the goldfields. It crouched like a great beast over his peace and challenged his moments of newfound joy. He had long wished to rid himself of it, to strike out against it, but something or someone always seemed to stand in the way.
Mosiah gazed curiously in the direction of the boy’s unbroken stare. “Autumn leaves die beautifully, don’t they, Lao Moy?” he said, his face lifted into the leaf-spattered wind.
“Yes,” answered Lao Moy, his hurtful thoughts suddenly scattered by his guardian’s grand vision. Autumn was indeed a beautiful time of year, especially in the canyons. Lao Moy’s eyes raced up the huge, yellow red chasms with renewed excitement. He loved these mountains. Mosiah had told him many times about them. How the erosion of long ages had cut deep canyons. How huge glaciers, descending with unyielding power, had broken loose and carried countless boulders, many of goliath size, down the immense mountain furrows. It was these isolated blocks, called erratics, that provided the supply of building stones for the Salt Lake Temple.
In these canyons, Mosiah, Lao Moy, and many other faithful Saints worked tirelessly to divide the boulders with hand drills, wedges, and low-power explosives. The rough blocks were then transported by oxteam—four yoke required for each block—and every trip was a difficult three- or four-day journey to the temple site some twenty miles away.
Mosiah touched Lao Moy’s shoulder and brought him out of his reverie. “I’m going to set off the blast, Lao Moy,” he cautioned, and then shouted a warning to the nearby workers. Mosiah lit the fuse and sprinted with Lao Moy for cover.
Two other workmen held a team of oxen. One of them was fourteen-year-old Corey Atwood. Corey, a tough, stout boy, had long taken pleasure in cruelly funning Lao Moy because of his broken English, his long queue (braid), and his quiet and obedient ways. It was often Corey who kept Lao Moy’s bitterness alive, but the Chinese boy had held it all inside, even when the troublesome Corey had once grabbed Lao Moy’s queue and threatened to cut it off with a knife.
The blast erupted like the sound of cannon fire over a Virginia cottonfield, and the big piece of granite split in two. Cheers went up, and Mosiah scrambled up the rocks to view his accomplishment. Lao Moy started up, too, but was soon held fast by Corey, who held onto his queue.
“What’s the matter, Lao Moy,” he chuckled, “somebody got your tail?”
Suddenly something exploded inside Lao Moy with no less force than Mosiah’s dynamite blast. He turned and struck Corey in the face so hard that the big boy was lifted off his feet and thrown backward in front of the team of oxen. The wide-eyed Atwood looked as surprised as Lao Moy. He wiped at the blood on his mouth and started to lift himself up when a clap of thunder suddenly boomed. As the already spooked oxen lurched forward, Lao Moy sprang for Corey and rolled him out of the path of pounding hooves and grinding wheels.
For a long moment the two boys just lay there, staring at each other. Finally, a smile broke across Corey’s dusty, blood-smeared face. Lao Moy smiled back, and all the old bitterness in his heart seemed to melt away like ice in a summer sun. A new peaceful feeling assured him it would not return.
Lao Moy was forty-five years old when the Salt Lake Temple was finally dedicated on April 6, 1893; Mosiah, seventy-six; and Corey Atwood, forty-seven. Corey sat close beside Lao Moy as President Wilford Woodruff offered the dedicatory prayer. A friendship had grown between them, a friendship as strong as the temple granite they had helped to cut. And like that granite, it would last forever.

Jessie’s story is told by her friend, Maria Russo, who serves as the communication director in the Adelaide Australia Firle Stake.
Jie Ren, or Jessie as she likes to be called, arrived in Adelaide in March 2020 to study a master’s degree in speech pathology at the Flinders University.
Little did Jessie know that she had arrived just when the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus to be a pandemic and her first semester would be in lockdown.
Jessie felt completely alone, isolated and scared. She said that all she had in her life during that time and all she did was to be “home alone, study, eat, sleep and repeat.” She was relieved when in July 2020 she was able to attend university for the first time since arriving in Australia.
Jessie said that being in a new country, away from family and friends, not knowing anyone in Australia and having to do all her studies (in what she said is an intense program) online for the first semester, took its toll on her and by November 2021 she was physically and mentally drained to the point that she needed to seek medical help.
During this time (Nov. 21) Jessie saw an advertisement on Facebook inviting people to English classes. The classes were being held by missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jessie had previous experience with the Church in Shanghai when she was invited by friends to attend meetings, which she did sometimes. When she saw this post on Facebook, she was super excited and wanted to attend not only to learn English but also to be able to interact with people and perhaps make some friends.
As she dialled the number given in the ad, she was worried and apprehensive that she wouldn’t be accepted. She thought that the Church was a “sacred organisation and only members could attend.” She wanted to know if it was possible that she would be “accepted by God because [she had] little knowledge of Him.”
When Jessie was told she was more than welcome to attend she was delighted—ecstatic would be a more appropriate word.
Jessie still remembers the first day she entered the Adelaide Branch for English classes. She said the missionaries made her feel so very welcome and for the first time in a very long time she said she felt that “everything seemed right again.” She said it was like she “saw the light guide [her] through the darkness and felt hope again.”
Jessie couldn’t find a way out of COVID-19 and that first English class made her feel like there was light at the end of the tunnel.
After many English classes and the missionaries and members making her feel “so loved and welcomed” Jessie felt like she had arrived home. She was baptized on the first day of January 2022. She says it was a perfect way to start a new year and a new life.
Following is a quote from Jessie’s talk at her baptism:
“It is a big relief to know that there is a plan for everything happening in my life, and that plan is in the hands of God. He teaches me that I do not need all the answers and that it is okay not to know everything. Having faith in Him and keeping His commandments, I will find my inner peace. I can be calm to face difficulties in my life and believe I will make it eventually.
“I am so grateful that I am able to know God and get to experience the love and care that He has for me. I am ready to continue this journey with Him and pray that He will draw me closer to Him and guide my steps.
“Today I’m so excited to be baptized and share with all of you that I love Jesus, and He is my Lord and Saviour.”

Clint was speechless.
So was everyone else in the congregation for that matter. The warm, tender, emotion-filled quietness was so thick we could practically touch it. It wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, no one wanted to disturb it. So we sat in silence at Clint’s missionary farewell, while he tried desperately to blink back his tears.
Some people might have been surprised to see Clint, the student-body officer, the lead singer in the band, the enthusiastic basketball player, unable to speak, but it didn’t surprise me at all. I’d seen him at a loss for words more than once.
In fact, he was like that when I first met him. I was about 11 years old, and that summer I’d become a close friend of his sister Lisa. My first contact with Clint came when I called their house to ask Lisa if she wanted to go on a bike ride, and Clint wasn’t exactly verbose then.
“Hi there,” I said. “Is Lisa home?”
“Umph,” a voice said.
“May I speak with her?” I asked, wondering if her dog Clancy had accidentally knocked the phone off the hook and was growling at it.
“Umph,” said the voice, and the grunt was followed by a crash that sounded like the phone had been dropped. Soon Lisa picked up the receiver and greeted me.
“Have you got a Neanderthal butler or what?” I asked.
“Nah—that’s just my brother,” she told me. “He isn’t very articulate today, or any other day really. You know how big brothers are.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. But I really didn’t. All I had was a big sister, and she certainly didn’t have any problems talking on the phone.
When the summer was over, Lisa and I returned to our cross-town schools. We kept in touch, but as far as I knew, her big brother had slipped into oblivion.
He suddenly emerged from it one day several years later when my older sister Karen brought him home—her latest crush. Surprise! Over the last several years, he’d grown tall and thin, and had dark blond hair that just sort of drooped over his head. I’d never noticed his deep, dark brown eyes before. And his vocabulary had improved too. “Lisa and I are old friends,” he said with a smile as Karen began to reintroduce us.
I heard his voice around the house a lot after that, and I was glad. Of all the people my sister dated, he was definitely my favorite. He took the time to drive my friends and me to the beach, he’d visit me at the ice cream parlor where I worked, and he was there to softly console me when I didn’t make the freshman cheerleading squad. And he didn’t just do it to make points with Karen either. He genuinely liked the mischievous adolescent that I was, and he wasn’t embarrassed to show it around his high school friends.
He started coming to our church for the right reasons too. A number of the boys in town would attend just because they were smitten by the local LDS girls. But not Clint. Sure, sometimes he would come to our meetings with Karen, but he began coming with his other LDS friends too. Sometimes he’d even come on his own. “I like the feeling I get there,” he said to me one day. “I know there’s something to this.”
I knew there was something to it too, and I prayed, really prayed, that he would discover what it was.
Clint learned a lot about the gospel. He admired the people in the Church. He read the Book of Mormon, felt of its spirit, and he knew it was true. He had one problem though. Although he could easily talk to everyone around him, when it came to conversing with the Lord, he was speechless. Actually talking to someone he couldn’t see, and having that being respond directly was a foreign concept to him. He didn’t believe God would really pay personal attention to him.
It took a major upheaval in his high school world to help him understand just how important that heavenly communication is. Some of the players on his basketball team were suspended for using drugs, and most of the team, along with most of the school, were convinced that Clint had turned them in. His popularity at school took a nosedive, and he realized just how fickle a crowd can be. He needed to embrace something more solid—something more enduring. He couldn’t base his life on ever-changing popular opinion.
What could he base his life on? Clint decided that the Lord was the only one who could tell him. He drove his battered car up a canyon not far from his house, and, like the account he’d read of Joseph Smith, he dropped to his knees and began, for the first time in his life, to really, sincerely, inquire of the Lord.
After a while, Clint knew. He knew The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the true church of Christ on this earth and that he should be baptized. But that knowledge wasn’t given to him by a thunderous voice or by an angelic chorus. It came to him wordlessly, on a soft breeze that seemed to envelop him with warmth.
He was almost speechless when he called to tell me of his decision to be baptized. About a year later, he was speechless when he rose to thank the patriarch for giving him a wonderful patriarchal blessing. And now, here he was, speechless again as he stood at the pulpit of a chapel that was packed to the rafters with people wishing him well on his mission.
But the silence was a comfortable one. It wrapped us in the same feeling Clint had felt when he went out to pray about the truthfulness of the Church. The Spirit was touching us all.
Through his speechlessness, Clint taught me that some of the most beautiful emotions in this life aren’t communicated by words from mouth to ear, but are communicated by the Spirit from heart to heart.

While serving as president of the Japan Hiroshima Mission, I attended the services of the Hamada Branch in the Hiroshima Japan Stake. This small branch has an average attendance of about 35 members and investigators and meets in a rented building. When I entered the chapel, I was warmly welcomed by 10-year-old Eimi Funaki, who was playing prelude music on the branch’s electric organ. When the sacrament meeting started, I was surprised to see Eimi remain at the organ, thinking that a more mature member would be serving as the branch organist. I was even more surprised when 11-year-old Miho Hirano took her place behind the music stand as the branch chorister and began leading the congregation in the opening hymn. They both did a beautiful job. Although they are young in body, they are very mature in spirit. Their faithful efforts brought a wonderful sweet spirit to the meeting. I hope their example will help other Primary children want to develop their talents.

“Is something bothering you?” Mom asked Isa as they rode the tram home from church.
Isa stared out at the canals that crisscrossed Amsterdam’s streets. “My Primary teacher said that having the priesthood in your home is a blessing,” Isa said. “But Dad doesn’t have the priesthood, so we can’t be blessed.”
“We can still have the priesthood in our home, even if your dad isn’t a member of the Church,” Mom said. “There are lots of worthy priesthood holders in the ward who can help you. What about Brother Van Leeuwen, our home teacher?”
Isa liked Brother Van Leeuwen. He always brought stroopwafels, Isa’s favorite cookie, and talked with her about science, her best subject. But at church other children told about their dads giving them priesthood blessings when they were sick or upset. Isa couldn’t ask her dad for a blessing.
“I love Dad,” Isa said. “But I wish he had the priesthood.”
When they got home, Dad was in the kitchen cooking dinner. “How was church?” he called to them.
Isa didn’t reply. Instead, she went into her bedroom and flopped down on the bed. She wished things were a little different.
The next week Isa had to take a big test at school. Every child in the Netherlands has to take a test when they are 12 years old to determine where they go to school next year. Even though Isa had been studying hard and was prepared, she was very nervous. The night before, her stomach felt like it was tied in knots. She couldn’t sleep. As she tossed and turned in bed, she remembered the lesson from Primary about asking for a priesthood blessing if you were afraid. Even though her dad couldn’t give her a blessing, she knew Heavenly Father would help her if she asked.
Isa got out of bed and walked into the living room. Mom was at work, but Dad was on the couch watching TV.
“Is everything OK?” Dad asked.
“I’m really nervous about the test tomorrow,” Isa said. “Do you think we could call Brother Van Leeuwen and ask him to give me a blessing?”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Dad said. “Let me give him a call.”
“We can live every hour ‘blessed by the strength of priesthood power,’ whatever our circumstance.”
Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “Power in the Priesthood,” Liahona, Nov. 2013, 92.
Soon Brother Van Leeuwen and his son Jaan came over and gave Isa a blessing. Brother Van Leeuwen asked Heavenly Father to help Isa not be nervous for the test and to help her do well. While Brother Van Leeuwen gave Isa the blessing, Dad sat on the couch and folded his arms and closed his eyes.
After the blessing Isa felt much better. Her stomach wasn’t so tight anymore, and she was even a little sleepy. “Good luck tomorrow,” Brother Van Leeuwen said as they left. “You’ve worked very hard, and I know Heavenly Father will help you do well.”
“I’m proud of you for having faith,” Dad said to Isa as he tucked her back into bed. “Even if I’m not a member of the Church, I’m glad that you believe in God, and I hope you know that I do too.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Isa said, and he kissed her on the cheek.
As she snuggled under her covers, Isa felt happy and peaceful. She was grateful to have a dad who loved her. She was glad her dad believed in Heavenly Father and Jesus. And she knew the priesthood could always bless her and her home.

Mom, Dad, can we invite my friend Lily and her dad and brother for Thanksgiving?
Yeah, can we? Her brother Oliver is in my class.
We have lots to be grateful for. If we can share, that’s another blessing.
In that case, how about inviting Audrey and her mom?
And Franco and his dad?
On Thanksgiving Day the Cooper house is crowded but happy.
Thanksgiving Day is in October in Canada. Do we have any family there?
Why?
’Cause next year we could go to their house for Thanksgiving. If we did this twice a year, I’d be twice as thankful!

Some years ago, my colleagues and I left Calabar to attend a funeral at a distant local government area. Hours later, in the night, I observed some form of discomfort amongst my colleagues who had the intention to be unfaithful to their wives. I was sitting right on their way, preventing them from achieving their plans in secret. I had positioned myself, unknowingly, at the only entrance to the hotel. After enduring for over four hours with no sign of my leaving the position, one of them walked up to me and asked me to go have some rest in my room. When I replied that I wasn’t feeling asleep and would remain awake for a long period, he sorrowfully walked away through the entrance door only to return in company of strange women. As he walked past me, I felt how his life would have been different if he had the blessings of making and keeping temple covenants. I testify that he would have done things differently to honor his temple covenant. He would have been armed with the power of righteousness. He would have remembered sitting next to his wife in the temple. He would certainly have remembered the promises he made to Eternal Father to strive to keep His covenants and honor his body as the sacred temple of God.

When I was 11 years old, I was baptized as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a decision that stands out as the most significant in my life. I am thankful for the gospel’s influence on me as a young girl. My dreams were always centered around having an eternal family. Because of the covenants I would one day make in the temple, I knew that I could be with my loved ones forever.
I met my husband when I was a young woman, and after he served his mission, we got married in 1999. We had our first child a year later, the same year that the Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Temple was dedicated. We were sealed in the temple when our baby was just three months old. I remember when they brought him dressed in white into the sealing room. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, achieving the goal I had set as a young woman—to be sealed for eternity with my family.
Our second child was born four years later, and I was happy because everything I had planned and prayed for was coming true. We had faced difficulties, but I felt like I was a beloved daughter of God, blessed with an eternal family.

We saw an Ethiopian man who was perhaps 80 years old stumble into the feeding station camp with a desperate, beaten look on his face.
He was obviously starving to death. However, on the way to the feeding station, he had passed a deserted village and had heard the cry of a baby. He searched until he found the baby sitting on the ground next to his dead mother. In spite of this man’s emaciated condition, he picked up the baby and carried him in his arms for 25 miles to the feeding station. The man had a look of glassy-eyed bewilderment, but his first words were not “I’m hungry” or “Help me.” They were “What can be done for this baby I found?”
I feel that the members of our church should be doing all we can to alleviate suffering. I am thrilled with the fact that our full-time missionaries now devote several hours of their week to community service. When followed properly, this program does not detract from the primary goal of missionaries, but enhances that goal.

When David was a boy, he dreamed of playing professional baseball. He thought the greatest moment of his life would be to hit the game-winning home run in game seven of the World Series.

When he was older, he changed his mind about this dream. One day Elder Haight was sitting with his wife and three children—one of whom was about to be married—in a sealing room of the Los Angeles Temple. Looking around the room, he thought, “David, you had your priorities all mixed up. Being a hero in a worldly event isn’t the great moment of life. … The great moment … is here, … because all I have that is really important is in this room. All of my children are committed to the Church.”1

Donna, a young girl with mental disabilities and not a member of the Church, was limited, but she wanted very much to be included. Sensitive to her needs, several young women invited her to participate in the ward road show. Her family was invited to the performance. Donna’s father wanted to know more about a church whose people cared enough about his daughter to include her. The whole family embraced the gospel and were baptized.

One day while upset with his younger brother, our nine-year-old loudly complained of his brother’s faults. This had happened many times before, and it had troubled me, but this day I felt inspired to try a more positive approach to solving the problem. I sent my son to his room and told him not to come out until he had written down ten nice things about his younger brother. When he emerged with the list, his attitude had changed. Looking for the positive had crowded out his negative thoughts and feelings.
We have since used this form of discipline frequently and have found it an effective way to maintain an atmosphere of love in our home. And learning early in life to look for a person’s good qualities will make our children happier and better prepared to get along with others in the future.

The other day I was talking to an enthusiastic returned missionary who had been a member of the Church for only five years, and this is the story he told me, which I found most interesting.
He said he was raised in a good home by fine parents with high ideals; but he had never thought of, let alone been told, many of the things which the Church teaches, such as a prophet of God being on the earth today, of a literal resurrection where the body and soul will be reunited after death and continue on throughout eternity, and particularly of the beautiful and most important concept that he was literally a spirit child of God. He had never been taught of the restoration of the gospel, that there was a living personal God, and that Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, lives; that he was literally the Son of God in the flesh.
While working at a summer resort where a number of young people were employed, and where all seemed to be having a good time, this boy’s attention was drawn to three young men who seemed to be living apart from the others and not participating in the smoking, drinking of alcoholic beverages, and using drugs, etc. They were living very high standards in every way and seemed to be morally clean.
He said, “I became attracted to them and engaged in conversation with them to find out why they were different. They told me they were Mormons, that they observed a Word of Wisdom, which they explained to me, and that the Lord had said, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ (Ex. 20:14), and that sexual transgression was considered by the Church as one of the most grievous sins.”
He said further, “I became very close to these young men and liked what they taught and the way they lived. They were very free in telling me about the Church. They seemed to be proud of it and were not ashamed of the fact that they were not living as other young men were living. They did point out, however, that some of the young men who were members of the Church and living in the camp were not living the principles of the gospel.”
I thought how sad it was that these other members were not living as they should, had succumbed to temptation, and were not strong enough to stand up for what they knew was right. If they had been converted and not ashamed of the gospel of Christ and its teachings, they too could have been influencing some others for good and changing their lives in preparation for ultimate blessings promised to the faithful.
My friend continued, “One of the three young men was a returned missionary, and as I became more interested, he taught me the gospel as he had taught it in the mission field. I corresponded with my parents and told them what I had found. They were very disappointed and unhappy; but when I returned home and told them all about it, and they saw the good effect all this had on my life and the change in habits, they gave me permission to be baptized, for which I was most thankful.”
He was just 19 when he joined the Church. He went on to say what a great privilege it was when he was given the Aaronic Priesthood and he was able to administer and pass the sacrament in remembrance of the Lord’s crucifixion. He said it made him very humble as he felt the sacredness of this ordinance, and he always tried to be worthy and well-groomed and to act as the Lord would have him do were he standing by his side.
He felt greatly blessed when as a priest he was given the privilege of baptizing new members, realizing that this gave him the same privilege and authority that was given to John the Baptist who baptized the Savior. And as he talked, I wished that every young man could feel and realize just how important that is and what a great privilege it is to be able to perform these ordinances and know that the Lord depends on all of us to live worthy of and magnify the priesthood which we hold.
Then this young man said how pleased he was a year later as he was interviewed to go on a mission to be able to tell his bishop and stake president that he was keeping the Word of Wisdom strictly, keeping the Sabbath day holy, paying his tithes and offerings, and keeping himself morally clean in every way, and that he really honored womanhood and had never treated a girl friend differently from the way he would want a young man to treat his sister. He felt so good about this and was so very glad that he could go into the mission field as an ambassador of the Lord, feeling that the Lord would approve his going as his representative. He told of the glorious feeling he had as he baptized and confirmed his first convert.
These were humbling experiences for him, he said, as was also his being called upon to confer the Melchizedek Priesthood upon a man and ordain him an elder. He realized how important it is that a man be worthy of these privileges to act in the name of the Lord and that the man he ordained was just as much an elder as if the president of the Church had ordained him. He felt most humble and grateful to the Lord.
He concluded by telling me that he was going to be married soon, and his countenance beamed as he expressed his gratitude and happiness that he and his sweetheart were clean and worthy to go to the temple where they could be sealed for time and all eternity.
Then I said to him: “No greater privilege or responsibility can be placed upon any young man than for him to be given the priesthood of God, which is the power of God to act in his name. And now you will enjoy all the added blessings and privileges that will come from being sealed by the holy priesthood in the temple of God.”

Clare Magee has lots of friends. One of her best friends is her mother, Sue. They enjoy working in the kitchen together, where they often make one of Clare’s favourite treats, banana sandwiches.
She is also best friends with her sisters, Sara and Emma, who help her get ready for dance concerts. Clare (11) has been dancing since she was four years old; she is also good friends with her dance instructor, Sharon Moore. Sharon’s dance school has been featured on the BBC, a British television network.
Another of Clare’s best friends is her father, William. He’s a firefighter, and she loves to go with him to the station, just down the street from their home, to see the big fire engines. “The firefighters let my dad and me climb up in the engine, and they don’t even say anything!”
She and her father often take their dog, Wags, out for a walk. He’s one of her best friends too. “We rescued him from the pound. He was an abandoned pup, only twelve weeks old. His tail hasn’t stopped wagging since we first met. That’s why he’s named Wags.”
As a family, the Magees like to go bowling, go to the cinema (movies), spend summers at the seaside, and go camping. “It’s a wonderful thing to spend time with your family, because they are your eternal friends,” Clare says.
Her father is the bishop of the Portadown Ward, Belfast Northern Ireland Stake. Her parents have taught her a lot about other friends, like the Prophet Joseph Smith and the living prophet, President Ezra Taft Benson. She has learned of great heroes and heroines in the scriptures; and, most of all, she has been taught about the Saviour, Jesus Christ, and about Heavenly Father. “I know I can trust Heavenly Father and Jesus. When I say my prayers, I know they are heard.”
Clare also likes Primary, where she has been excited to learn about temples. “The Church is building a new temple near Preston, England, and I know I’ll be going there someday.”
The Magees live on a busy street in a house next door to a chemist shop (drugstore). Her family could have moved to the countryside, buy they decided that they like their neighbours and that it was important to have good friends where they live, so they stayed put. “Our neighbours and friends accept us as a Mormon family,” her father says. “They are kind to us, and we try to be kind to them.”
Clare makes friends wherever she goes. She has friends she met in Brownies and in Girl Guides. She has friends she’s made while swimming or playing field hockey. And she has friends she knows from doing a pantomime show at the local town hall, where her mother helped make costumes for everyone in the cast.
When her mother learned that some of the cast members had questions about the Church, she invited them to visit the Portadown Ward meetinghouse. While they were there, many of them and their mothers noticed pictures of the Saviour and learned how deeply Latter-day Saints love the Lord. “Some of them didn’t know that Mormons are Christians,” Clare’s mother explains. “Now they understand that we are.”
Does Clare have some secret that helps her in making all these friends?
“I just remember that we’re all children of the same God, ” she says, “so that means we’re all brothers and sisters.”
And that’s not really a secret.

Their struggles and triumphs are very real. One girl, faced with the assignment to pray, writes of her struggle to bend her “stubborn knees.”
“It was fifteen minutes before I could speak. If there really is a God, could he please let me know? I prayed like the woman who asked for the mountain to be moved and who, seeing the mountain intact the next morning, said, ‘I knew it wouldn’t work.’
“No heavenly messengers appeared; no visions manifested themselves; no inner voice acknowledged my completion of the assignment … (but) I think somebody heard me.”
Accounts of other youth “breaking through” can be of special help in moments of doubt or concern over the state of your testimony. Those youth acquiring or buttressing up a testimony will find The Faith of Young Mormons a helpful building tool. As Brother Pace wrote, “Their papers speak for themselves. The Savior is real; we can know him and be as he is. He does change lives.”