Gospel Story Finder

I remember when I used to dread fast Sundays. Going without food was awful. My stomach made big growling sounds all through sacrament meeting and Primary. It was embarrassing. All I could ever think about was food. And in sacrament meeting, the men and women always seemed to be crying. Mom said that it was because they felt close to Heavenly Father. I thought that it was probably because they were hungry.
That’s how I felt until something happened when I was nine years old. My younger sister, Millie, was climbing the big old tree in our backyard. No one was paying much attention to her because we were always climbing that tree. I was busy building a castle in the sandbox when I heard tree branches breaking. I looked up just as Millie hit the ground headfirst. When I ran over to see if she was all right, she didn’t move. “Millie!” I screamed. But she didn’t answer. I began screaming for Mom as loudly as I could.
Mom came running out of the house. White-faced, she bent over Millie to listen for a heartbeat and breathing. “Stay here,” she said to me. “I’m going to call the paramedics.” I didn’t know if Millie was dead or alive. I was afraid to even touch her.
Soon an ambulance and the paramedics came. After checking Millie with their instruments and bracing her head, they very carefully lifted her onto a stretcher and carried her to the ambulance. Mom got in too. Sister Lindsay, our next-door neighbor, came over to stay with my brothers, Ben and Jeff, and me. She told us that everything would be all right, but I wasn’t sure. She hadn’t seen Millie lying there.
Dad came home about eight o’clock that night so that Sister Lindsay could go home. Looking very sad, he said, “Millie broke her neck. Mom is going to stay at the hospital with her. She’s unconscious, and we can’t make her wake up. Even if she does wake up, there’s a chance that she might be paralyzed for the rest of her life.”
I wasn’t sure what paralyzed meant, so I asked, “Does that mean that she’ll never be able to walk again?”
Dad looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Yes, it does, Beth. She may not even be able to move her arms and hands.”
I was horrified. Jeff began to cry, and Ben pleaded, “Can’t they do something to make her get well?”
As Dad tried to comfort us, he said, “They’re doing everything that they know how to do. But we can do something to help Millie too.”
“If you mean prayer,” I said, “we’ve been doing that. I’ve never prayed so hard in my life.”
“I’m glad,” Dad said. “But prayer is only part of it. I called Grandma and Grandpa Wilson and Grandma and Grandpa Abbot, and they have called your aunts and uncles and cousins. Tomorrow they are all going to join with us in a special family fast for Millie.”
The next day we all fasted, and that evening Mom came home from the hospital to get some sleep. Before Dad went to take her place next to Millie’s bed, we all knelt and had a special family prayer for Millie. He told Heavenly Father that we wanted Millie to get well, but we would accept whatever He thought was best. We all felt better after the prayer.
Sometime in the middle of the night the telephone rang, and I was scared. Why would the telephone ring now, unlesssomething is wrong? I strained to hear what Mom was saying. Although I couldn’t understand all the words, she didn’t sound sad at all. I got up and went down to the kitchen.
“Oh, Beth!” Mom said as she hung up the receiver, “Millie is awake! She opened her eyes and said, ‘Daddy.’”
Ben was standing in the hall. “Can she move?” he asked.
Mom’s eyes clouded a bit. “No,” she said. “Not yet. But that doesn’t mean that she won’t. She may just need more time.”
Two days went by. The Relief Society sisters took turns staying with us kids and bringing in meals so that Mom could stay at the hospital with Millie, and Dad could go to work.
On the afternoon of the second day, the telephone rang. Sister Stevens handed it to me. I had barely said hello when Mom cried, “Oh, Beth, she moved her fingers! Millie moved her fingers!”
“Does that mean she isn’t paralyzed?” I asked excitedly.
“At least not from her waist up,” Mom replied. “I was just so happy that I wanted you to know right away. Tell the others, won’t you, Beth?”
Grandma Wilson arrived that night to stay with us. And Mom and Dad were both home for supper. Now that Millie was awake, they dared leave her for a little while. Mom said that the doctors were pretty sure that Millie would soon be able to move her toes and legs. “They said that children’s bodies mend much more quickly and better than adults’ do.”
“Mom,” I asked, “do you think that that’s why Millie is getting better?”
Smiling, she asked, “What do you think, Beth?”
My cheeks felt like they were glowing when I answered, “I think that Heavenly Father blessed her because of our fasting and prayers too.”
Dad grinned at me and said, “I’m sure of it.”
Millie had to stay in the hospital for a long time, and even after she came home, it was a long time before she could run and play like she used to. But she did get completely better.
I’m eleven years old now—almost twelve. I don’t mind fast Sundays anymore. I even understand why some people cry when they bear their testimonies—I did when I stood up to tell everyone that I knew that fasting and prayer really work.

Susanna has courage in other areas of her life too. A good friend taught her to jump horses. The friend wanted Susanna to compete in jumping competitions that were held on Sunday, but Susanna told her friend she wouldn’t.

My first day going to senior Primary was a little scary at first, but I had a lot of fun! My class sat on the front row. I can’t wait to go to senior Primary again!
Alexa B., age 7, Missouri, USA

The Mare on the Hill It took a year for the mare to trust people again. Each right-hand page of this brief story is a picture beautiful enough to frame.Thomas Locker4 years and up

One Saturday a schoolteacher knocked on our door to talk to my father about my nephew. I found myself looking at a book he held, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder. Seeing my interest, he offered to leave the book. He also said I could attend a study group.
I spent almost the whole night scanning the book, stopping to take notes whenever I came across something new. Although I did not fully understand the doctrine, I felt no doubt about its truthfulness. I had a feeling of joy—as if I were discovering a genuine gem among thousands of imitations.
The next evening I joined five other people in a study group at the home of Mr. Kasongo. He had been doing research when he came across a book about American churches. “My heart pounded as I read the name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he said. After writing to the Church’s headquarters, he received some literature—including A Marvelous Work and a Wonder by Elder LeGrand Richards (1886–1983) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“I sing and play the piano and violin. For a Personal Progress project, my older sister Marinda and I performed at a rest home every Sunday morning. This gave me the opportunity to share my talents and to make those people happy. It was also fun for my family, who helped me when they could.
“One Sunday we asked the elderly people if they had any favorite songs they would like us to sing next week. One sweet lady said she loved ‘Danny Boy.’ This was a song my family knew well. But when we prepared our music, we decided not to do ‘Danny Boy’ because we figured that lady would have forgotten, and we had other songs to do.
“When we got to the rest home that morning that lady came in looking very sick and tired. She told us that she was not feeling well at all, but she came to hear us perform because she knew we would be singing ‘Danny Boy’ for her. Luckily we had brought along the book with that song in it. My brother Richard sang the song for her in his beautiful bass voice. That lady cried during the whole song. I was impressed that she came to hear us sing even though she was sick. She was a great example to me. I hope all youth find an opportunity to serve the elderly. They have a sweet spirit about them, and it is fun to serve them.”Jessie Allred, 16Park Ward, Centerville Utah North Stake

In a video series on mormonchannel.org, a young man named Bubba shares his story about how his life was headed for disaster.1 He had grown up in a violent home, where his father was murdered when Bubba was only three years old.
Bubba grew up choosing the same life he’d always seen. He joined a gang and started fights with anybody who crossed him. By high school he figured he would end up in prison before long. And he didn’t care.
God intervened. At this dangerous crossroads in his life, Bubba met a Latter-day Saint family who showed him loving kindness and goodness. He’d never been around people like this before—people who showed compassion and love. He started spending as much time with them as possible. When he asked the family why they acted the way they did, they said it was because of their faith in Jesus Christ.
He wanted to find out what they knew. He began praying and studying the scriptures. And soon he felt something he’d never felt before. “Surely there is a God, and He loves me!” Bubba says. With God’s help, Bubba began to build his life over again with Jesus Christ as the foundation, leaving his old life behind.
“My nature changed. Who I am as a human being is different than who I was. Now I have a purpose. I have a destiny,” he says. “I have somewhere that I’m going.”
These days Bubba sees his future with brightness, faith, and hope. “I know that it is only through Jesus Christ, my faith in Him, that will help me get to where I want to get to,” he says.2

It may seem like Shellee’s got it made. Being deaf hasn’t kept her from dancing, doing well in school, or making friends. However, it has made the gospel harder for her to understand than it is for most teenagers.
Only in the last year has Shellee attended a deaf ward, so until then she had to fend for herself at church. “I never knew how much she was actually getting,” says Janell Frost, one of Shellee’s Primary and Young Women teachers.
Fortunately, Pleasant Grove High School has a deaf seminary teacher whose class Shellee can attend. “Seminary has helped me a lot,” she says. “For example, I didn’t know I would live again after I die. I was so happy because then I knew I would see Grandma again.” Shellee hadn’t been able to grasp that concept until then, although she has always been an active member of the Church.

History tells us, for example, of a great council held in A.D. 325 in Nicaea. By this time Christianity had emerged from the dank dungeons of Rome to become the state religion of the Roman Empire, but the church still had problems—chiefly the inability of Christians to agree among themselves on basic points of doctrine. To resolve differences, Emperor Constantine called together a group of Christian bishops to establish once and for all the official doctrines of the church.
Consensus did not come easily. Opinions on such basic subjects as the nature of God were diverse and deeply felt, and debate was spirited. Decisions were not made by inspiration or revelation, but by majority vote, and some disagreeing factions split off and formed new churches. Similar doctrinal councils were held later in A.D. 451, 787, and 1545, with similarly divisive results.

His challenges have helped him to become a more caring person. Nolan likes to play the drums, and he recently received a new drum set. He decided to send his old drum set to the children in the rehabilitation unit at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. When asked why, Nolan simply answers, “I wanted them to learn to play the drums.”

My brother, Colonel Leon C. Packer, was stationed at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A much decorated B-24 pilot, he became a brigadier general in the Air Force.
While I was at Langley Field, the war in Europe ended, and so we were ordered to the Pacific. I spent a few days with Leon in Washington before shipping out for combat.
He told me of things he had learned under fire. He flew from North Africa on raids over southern Europe; very few of those planes returned.
On April 16, 1943, he was captain of a B-24 bomber returning to England after a raid in Europe. His plane, the Yard Bird, was heavily damaged by flak and dropped out of formation.
Then they were alone and came under heavy attack from fighters.
His one-page account of that experience says: “Number three engine was smoking and the prop ran away. Number four fuel line was shot out. Right aileron cables and stabilizer cables were shot out. Rudders partially locked. Radio shot out. Extremely large holes in the right wing. Flaps shot out. Entire rear part of the fuselage filled with holes. Hydraulic system shot out. Tail turret out.”
A history of the Eighth Air Force, published just two years ago, gives a detailed account of that flight written by one of the crew.
With one engine on fire, the other three lost power. They were going down. The alarm bell ordered that they bail out. The bombardier, the only one able to get out, parachuted into the English Channel.
The pilots left their seats and made their way toward the bomb bay to bail out. Suddenly Leon heard an engine cough and sputter. He quickly climbed back to his seat and coaxed enough power from the engines to reach the coast of England. Then the engines failed, and they crashed.
The landing gear was shorn off on the brow of a hill; the plane plowed through trees and crumbled. Dirt filled the fuselage.
Amazingly, though some were terribly wounded, all aboard survived. The bombardier was lost, but he probably saved the lives of the other nine. When smoke poured from the engines and a parachute appeared, the fighters stopped their attack.
That was not the only time Leon had crash-landed.
As we visited, he told me how he was able to hold himself together under fire. He said, “I have a favorite hymn”—and he named it—“and when things got rough I would sing it silently to myself, and there would come a faith and an assurance that kept me on course.”
He sent me off to combat with that lesson.

In that same inner-city ward I observed a similar type of faith in the gentle, loving care of a bishop who wasted no time despairing over the vast needs of an ever-growing number of new converts. Rather, he pressed forward by rallying the more experienced members of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood quorums to help prepare new converts from Africa and Latin America for their priesthood responsibilities. The newer brethren were taught how to hold the trays while passing the sacrament, how to kneel and reverently bless the bread and water. Their more seasoned, often younger brethren practiced along with them the words of the sacramental prayers so they would feel confident in giving them. Then, together, all the brethren discussed the sacred nature of this important priesthood ordinance.

A note from Dianne Francis, Suzanne’s mother: Suzanne wrote this to help other young people see they miss out if they don’t have a close relationship with their mom and dad. Talking helped us realize we were best friends, that we loved each other and enjoyed being together. This knowledge is particularly meaningful to me now, since Suzanne was killed in an automobile accident a few weeks after she wrote this.

Dark, cold, and rainy. Sort of like my life right now. I am in my room, studying. It is almost 11:00 P.M. Mom and I went over each other’s notes in preparation for the final tomorrow in Family Relations 101. Then I came up here to hit the books. Downstairs, everything is quiet. The rain slashes against my window. It’s on nights like these that I most often think of my sister and wonder where she might be.
I hear a commotion on the porch. I get up from my desk, wondering what is going on. There is a loud knock on the door. Mom and Dad are at the bottom of the stairs, fumbling with bathrobes, turning on the entry lights. Dad opens the door a little and peers into the darkness. A figure steps into the light spilling from our home.
It is my sister, soaking wet, looking tired, looking very different than the skinny junior in high school I knew when I left on my mission.
“Can I come in?” she asks, her voice trembling.
“This is your home, Jan,” my dad says softly.
“Mom, Dad, I need to start over.”
“We’ll talk later,” Mom says. My sister throws her arms around Mother, and they both begin to cry.
I think my slump is history.

Photograph courtesy of Libby M.
I was really inspired by Elder Dale G. Renlund’s talk, especially when he said, “Our absolute distance from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ is important, but the direction we are heading is even more crucial.” Often I feel overwhelmed by all the things I need to change in my life, and Elder Renlund’s words reminded me that having the desire to come closer to God and working toward becoming who He wants me to be matters more than how far I am in that journey.
Libby M., 15, Maine, USA

My mother also had my brother and me do all the chores we could do, including chores that, at the time, were traditionally done by women. Many people in our village made fun of us for fetching water and firewood and for cooking. But doing those chores taught me that work is more fulfilling than keeping up appearances (see Doctrine and Covenants 42:40–42).

Above the Great West Door of the renowned Westminster Abbey in London, England, stand the statues of 10 Christian martyrs of the 20th century. Included among them is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant German theologian born in 1906. Bonhoeffer became a vocal critic of the Nazi dictatorship and its treatment of Jews and others. He was imprisoned for his active opposition and finally executed in a concentration camp. Bonhoeffer was a prolific writer, and some of his best-known pieces are letters that sympathetic guards helped him smuggle out of prison, later published as Letters and Papers from Prison.
One of those letters was to his niece before her wedding. It included these significant insights: “Marriage is more than your love for each other. … In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. … So love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God.”

The afternoon wind rolled like a wave up the little hillock above the sea, tugging at Joby Kelsey’s huck shirt as he tromped up the crooked dirt road toward home. He was trying to keep pace with Lucius Potter, an aging fisherman with a mass of wild white hair that looked like the breaking surf. Lucius’s long beard jerking in the wind resembled a great tuft of dry seaweed.
The tall, craggy seaman paused at the crest of the hill and looked back longingly at the restless, swelling sea. “Hear that song, lad?” he asked. “Hear that mighty chorus swell?”
Joby stared at the pounding surf, feeling its power as it lashed the rocks below them. Then he turned to look at Lucius, whose face mirrored the excitement of the churning sea.
This wasn’t the first walk the boy had taken with Lucius Potter, nor was it the first time he had listened to the seaman’s tales expressing his love for a fisherman’s way of life. The pair had become quite close after Joby moved with his parents to the small fishing village along the rugged northern California coast two months before. Joby’s father had taken over the job of the retiring proprietor at The Tradewinds, a mercantile store at the edge of town.
It was summer, 1910, and there were few fences to restrict a young boy’s desire for barefoot wanderings across the grassy, flower-blanketed seaside slopes. Nothing to restrict him except, perhaps, the old man’s stories of the sea. Lucius told them with such passion and mystery and wave-slamming excitement that Joby regularly sought out the old fisherman. “Can you tell me another story?” Joby would ask eagerly. Lucius’s smile would deepen the lines of his weathered face, and another adventure would unfold as they tramped the beachline. Sometimes they would stop to watch seals slip in and out of the churning tidewaters or rest atop a great barnacle-laden rock in the dampness.
Lucius never tired of reliving his yesteryears when he’d hauled his nets down to the sea with his crew and set sail upon the capricious water. Fishing was his life.
What puzzled Joby and his parents were the tattered clothes Lucius wore and the small shack in which he lived—a crude little dwelling made of tin scraps and driftwood. And the old seaman was so thin! Why such an experienced fisherman with a sturdy, seaworthy skiff and ample nets didn’t fare better was a mystery. Someone told Joby’s father it was because the old man refused to hire a crew. Why, no one knew. It seemed obvious that he desperately needed help. But Lucius sailed alone, never allowing anyone to accompany him, even when seamen out of work volunteered their services.
“There was a time when he was a rather prosperous man,” someone had said. “He wasn’t rich enough to live in a big house, but he didn’t live in a shack, either. He always had more than enough to eat, and he wore the nicest clothes in the village.”
Joby looked earnestly and curiously at Lucius as his friend gazed seaward with a kind of disturbed, unbroken stare. Finally the boy’s curiosity got the best of him, and he asked Lucius once again why he didn’t take on a crew. As always, the old fisherman quickly avoided the subject, pointing out the hump of a great whale on the horizon. Then he got up abruptly and said, “The day will turn into night before we reach your place if we don’t get a move on.”
Lucius had been invited by Joby’s parents to an evening meal, and along with his desire to keep ahead of any more of the lad’s uncomfortable inquiries, the thought of good food quickened the old man’s step.
Lucius was halfway through dinner when the soft glow of candlelight on Joby’s hair caught his eye. He gazed fixedly at the lad across the table, then noticed Joby’s parents staring curiously at him. Lucius spoke softly. “It’s the lad’s hair. It has a gold-dust shine just like lamplight reflecting on miller moths. Or like the gold on the waves at the last light of day.”
The Kelseys were often touched by Lucius’s poetic way of saying things, and the old fisherman always spoke with such deep reverence that it was hard to doubt what he said. That’s why the trio waited anxiously for Lucius to put the last forkful of potatoes into his mouth and wipe the leavings from his beard. They knew a colorful tale would follow—it always did.
“It’s the least I can do,” Lucius would say, “after a meal like that.”
Joby’s mother always glowed with appreciation. “Tonight,” she announced, “there’s blackberry pie—after your story.”
Lucius’s eyes grew as large as plump berries. “It’s liable to be the shortest story I ever told,” he replied, and everyone laughed.
The three Kelseys sat spellbound. Ocean waves seemed to roll and fall off Lucius’s tongue. Masts split, and men were hurled into the sea!
Suddenly Lucius stopped. Joby and his parents traded puzzled glances. The boy saw the same troubled look on the fisherman’s face that he had observed before as Lucius gazed out through the window at the heaving sea.
“Were you washed overboard, too, Mr. Potter?” Joby asked, caught up in the man’s story.
Then, as though the boy’s question had released a floodgate, Lucius’s painful secret tumbled out. He seemed almost relieved now in the telling of it … “Me and two others,” he sighed. “We were securing the rigging when the wave hit. I … I tried to save the men,” he said with anguish, “but I was the only survivor.”
“Is that why you never take anyone with you on your skiff, Mr. Potter?” Joby’s father asked gently.
Lucius nodded. “I never want anything like that to happen on a boat of mine again.” He rose from the table. “It’s late. I’d better go.”
“It wasn’t your fault in happened,” Joby’s mother consoled him.
“Mom’s right,” Joby chimed in. “You were in a storm.”
“It could’ve happened to anyone,” Mr. Kelsey added. “You have no reason to punish yourself, Mr. Potter.”
“Perhaps,” muttered Lucius as he turned toward the door and opened it. “But it’s a shameful thing when a man loses faith in himself.” He stepped out into the raven-black chill and was swallowed by the darkness.
“There must be something we can do to help him,” Joby said.
“I wish there were,” Joby’s father replied, “but I’m afraid the only person who can restore Mr. Potter’s faith in himself is Mr. Potter.”
Saturday morning the sea was furious as Joby climbed the brow of the great surf-battered rock where he had often sat with Lucius and listened to the old man’s tales. In two days the lad would be returning to school, and the times would be fewer when Lucius could tell him stories.
Lucius emerged from the dense fog on a small hillock above the churning water just in time to see a huge wave spill over Joby and dash him into the sea.
“JOBY!”
Lucius leaped across the narrow cleft that divided the steep hillock from the big rock, and gazed agonizingly into the seething water below. The boy was nowhere to be seen. Then, shouting louder than the thundering waves, Lucius doubled his fists and leaped into the sea.
The old fisherman carried the boy in his arms along the little path toward home. Tears streamed down his face—tears not of sadness but of indescribable joy. Joby was alive! Lucius had saved him.
One morning a few days later, Joby bounded out of the house with his schoolbooks slung over his shoulder. Multicolored autumn leaves fluttered about his feet. He paused to join his mother and father, who stood just outside the gate, staring toward the sea. A fishing boat bobbed in the sun-glazed water, and a crew could be seen pulling in a line of nets—Lucius’s crew! An old fisherman with a long, seaweedlike beard and a new pair of boots paused to wave at the trio on the hill.

We teach all young men and young women to prepare to go to the temple so they can “receive the blessings of [the] fathers that [they] may be entitled to the highest blessings of the priesthood.” When one of my nieces received her temple endowment a few months ago, she exclaimed with joy: “I made it! All of my life I have been taught about preparing for the temple, and I made it!”

Today, my wife and I simply request that visitors in our home observe the Word of Wisdom. We have no ash trays, and serve no coffee or alcohol. I even ask friends not to smoke in the car I drive and the small planes I fly. None are offended. But it wasn’t always that easy.
I remember a tough time when we were just married. I was barely back from my mission and had accepted a position with one of the most important international banks in the world. They sent us to South America, where we were expected to entertain friends of the bank and many dignitaries. I learned something fundamental about different cultures during those years. Every culture devises social forms and rituals to communicate hospitality, friendliness, and acceptance. Some of these rituals fit comfortably with the Word of Wisdom, but others do not. We found, however, in nearly every situation, as both hosts and guests, that we could modify the content of these social rituals and come up with something that would still let us participate warmly and sincerely in the friendliness implied in the ritual.