Gospel Story Finder

When Elder LeGrand Richards left to attend college, his father, George F. Richards, said to him and his brother, George F. Jr., “I would trust you two to go anywhere I would go myself.” Their hearts swelled with love and pride in his words. LeGrand later said, “They put rods of steel in our spines, and we couldn’t do anything that would disappoint him.”

When missionary couple David and Theresa Nish, from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, noticed a need for improved oral hygiene for children living in Saint Lucia, they knew it was time to do something about it.
Enlisting the help of the Church’s Welfare and Self-Reliance Services Department, young Latter-day Saint volunteers, the Saint Lucia Government and local school administrators, the Dental Hygiene Project was born.
The young women were given the responsibility of purchasing the supplies needed for the dental hygiene kits. They began by enquiring at various shops to find the best value for their money.
Eventually 3,200 toothbrushes, 3,200 tubes of toothpaste and 3,200 plastic cups were purchased and then assembled into 3,200 zipper-lock plastic bags for distribution by the Nishes to local primary schools.
The project was funded by Latter-day Saint Charities which receives donations from Latter-day Saints and others around the world.
“There are few dental facilities or clinics in the communities,” Sister Nish says. “And when they get dental decay and their teeth fall out, that is it, they don’t have any more teeth.”
“We found they weren’t brushing their teeth adequately” David says. “We realized if we got involved at the primary school level there was probably a better chance for children to understand about oral hygiene.”
The Dental Hygiene Project has been moving forward since January 2020 under the direction of the couple, and now includes primary and special-ed schools.
The Nishes’ work with school leaders to set up appointments to teach the children and distribute the dental hygiene kits.
They delight the younger children with role play and stories that teach why brushing your teeth is important.
“The response and gratitude from the local school administrators for the Church’s help has been overwhelming,” David said. “Most were astounded that we gave the dental kits out with no strings attached.”
The Dental Hygiene Project is one of many service projects with which the couple have been involved. Missionaries for just over a year in Saint Lucia, the Nishes spend their days and most evenings looking for ways to serve the people.
“We work with people. We talk to people, we hear what their problems are,' Sister Nish says.
Elder Nish continued, “A lot of what we do—we don’t know why we do it at the time—but a month or two or three months down the line it just all seems to fall into place. It really is not us, it’s the Lord working through us.”

The other day on national television I heard a psychologist pushing the notion that, since the old ethics of our American society are no longer reconcilable with our behavior, we ought to adjust our ethics downward. My mind at once recalled another age and another advocate who pushed the carnally convenient notion that “whatsoever a man did was no crime” (Alma 30:17).

This psychologist was saying, in effect, that because young people mature today at 12, on the average, and don’t marry, on the average, until they are 22, the idea of abstaining from fornication and associated wrongs is unrealistic. With the avoidance of pregnancy seemingly being the only real challenge for this psychologist, very heavy petting was encouraged and all the things associated with it as a safe substitute.

When I was 18, as I was preparing to serve a mission, my bishop called me to teach the Sunbeams. I had never before learned to love others more than myself until I had served those children in such a simple assignment. With time and patience I learned how to keep those seven children in their seats and listening to a simple lesson.

In 2005, after nearly 60 years of marriage, my dear Dantzel was unexpectedly called home. For a season, my grief was almost immobilizing. But the message of Easter and the promise of resurrection sustained me.

As a teenage boy I watched my six-week-old sister, Carol, struggle with whooping cough at a time when there were no antibiotics. I came home one night from having been a grease monkey [mechanic] at a bus depot and saw the light was on. It was about four o’clock in the morning. I knew it meant trouble. As I came in, Carol was laid out on the round dining room table, and Dad was waiting for a neighbor to come to join in blessing her. I thought she was gone. It seemed to me she had quit breathing. Then I watched the power of the priesthood, and I watched her start breathing again. That experience let me know the reality of the priesthood at a very young age. Our prayers for her were answered.

Some prayers are answered dramatically, as with Carol. With others we must wait. But if we do that, in those waiting moments there will come to us special things.

Gustavo, the Soareses’ oldest child, remembers the night when, as a boy, he disobeyed his parents and slipped away to check out an annual celebration in their São Paulo neighborhood known as Festa Junina.

“I was in the middle of a large crowd having a good time when I heard an announcer call me up to the front,” he says. “That’s when I saw my dad.”

His parents had been worried sick, but rather than scold Gustavo, Ulisses hugged him tight.

“We had a serious conversation about me getting lost, but my parents treated me with respect,” Gustavo recalls. “I felt protected, and I knew that they really loved me.”

The youth had a recent joint youth conference titled “Standing for Something,” named after the title of President Gordon B. Hinckley’s book. Using For the Strength of Youth as a guide, the Anoka and Minneapolis youth served, participated in workshops, and bore their testimonies. They agree that although the standards of the Church are good and important, it’s not always easy to live them. But they also agree that the more they obey those standards, the easier it is to have high standards and to form a solid foundation on which to build the rest of their lives. So the youth of these stakes decided to take a stand for some simple, but important, standards.

An elder told of traveling from Vietnam and arriving at a refugee camp near Seattle, Washington. While trying to learn English so he could live in the United States, someone gave him a small card with a picture and an address on it. He kept it for some reason. Later, when he was asked where he wanted to live he showed this card to the customs official. “I can’t send you there,” he was told “but I can send you to a place nearby.” He was sent to live with a Latter-day Saint family in Salt Lake City where he learned about the Church. As he finished telling me this story, he showed the card he had been given in the refugee camp. It was a picture of the MTC. “I am here, President,” he said. Like the others, he thought it was a privilege to go on a mission.

I believe that many members of the Choctaw Nation who lived during the early 1800s have accepted the temple work completed in their behalf. As I participated in baptisms for the dead one Saturday morning, I felt their gratitude. During one particular temple session, I was asked to speak to the members of a Logan ward. While we sat together in the temple’s chapel, I told them the story behind the names they carried that night. I remember that temple session as one of the most sacred I ever attended.
I recall feeling a vivid sense of light and joy at one particular point in the session. I thought of my son’s dream. My friends and neighbors were now giving the “bread of life” to those who had asked for it. I again felt that those whose work we were performing, though unseen, were grateful for the opportunity to accept the gospel. Though they had once walked the “Trail of Tears,” now they could walk the straight and narrow path of joy that leads to eternal life.

Some time ago I spoke with a priesthood leader who was prompted to memorize the names of all of the youth ages 13 to 21 in his stake. Using snapshots of the young men and women, he created flash cards that he reviewed while traveling on business and at other times. This priesthood leader quickly learned all of the names of the youth.

One night the priesthood leader had a dream about one of the young men whom he knew only from a picture. In the dream he saw the young man dressed in a white shirt and wearing a missionary name tag. With a companion seated at his side, the young man was teaching a family. The young man held the Book of Mormon in his hand, and he looked as if he were testifying of the truthfulness of the book. The priesthood leader then awoke from his dream.

At an ensuing priesthood gathering, the leader approached the young man he had seen in his dream and asked to talk with him for a few minutes. After a brief introduction, the leader called the young man by name and said: “I am not a dreamer. I have never had a dream about a single member of this stake, except for you. I am going to tell you about my dream, and then I would like you to help me understand what it means.”

The priesthood leader recounted the dream and asked the young man about its meaning. Choking with emotion, the young man simply replied, “It means God knows who I am.” The remainder of the conversation between this young man and his priesthood leader was most meaningful, and they agreed to meet and counsel together from time to time during the following months.

That young man received the Lord’s tender mercies through an inspired priesthood leader. I repeat again, the Lord’s tender mercies do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Faithfulness and obedience enable us to receive these important gifts and, frequently, the Lord’s timing helps us to recognize them.

Merry Milly Mollycot,
Upon the first of May,
Shook out her sheets and swept the floor
And then was heard to say,
“My work is done, I’ll do no more;
I’m tired of toil and taskets.
I’m off into the forest lands
To make some May Day baskets!”
And off she went a-tripping light
Where trees stood all around,
And various things and sundry
Were growing from the ground.
She took some bark, she took some moss,
She took some leaves and tendrils;
She took some threads from fern fronds
And tender willow bendrils.
And these she wove this way and that
And shaped them square and rounded,
Then piled them high with posies sweet
That in the grass she founded.
Then Merry Milly Mollycot,
She hung her baskets high
Upon the lamp posts of the town
Where every passerby
Could see them and admire them
And say with smiling eyes,
“These must be Merry Milly’s work—
A First-of-May surprise!”
Merry Milly Mollycot,
She grinned a Cheshire grin
And chuckled so her dimples
Kept ducking out and in.
Then up she danced a hornypipe
And sang, “I am the lady
Who made these bits of handiwork
To welcome in sweet May Day!”
And then she bowed and curtsied,
Turned a cartwheel on the spot,
While all the people laughed and cheered
For Milly Mollycot.

My first experience as an institute teacher was a disaster. I had taken an entire week to prepare my lesson. But before class began, I forgot many of the things I wanted to say, and my one-hour lesson lasted only 30 minutes.
When the branch president called me to be an institute teacher in the Fatima Branch, Joinville Brazil Stake, I felt uncertain about my abilities. But I did not want to refuse the call to serve. So I prepared myself by studying the scriptures and praying to Heavenly Father for help with my new challenge. But after that first class I wondered if I was cut out to be an institute teacher.
However, despite the discouragement I felt, a voice within me insisted, “Don’t give up.” So I again immersed myself in the scriptures, fasted, and prayed for help to overcome my inadequacies.
When the hour of the second class arrived, my anxiety about teaching had not abated. I wondered why I didn’t feel the comforting influence of the Holy Ghost. I welcomed everyone, and the class sang an opening hymn. During the hymn, a battle raged within me. Would I be able to perform my duties as a teacher? Would the Lord magnify my abilities? Would the students be edified by the Spirit? At the peak of my insecurity, I cried out in my heart: O God, where art Thou? I need Thy help.
A class member offered the prayer, and I arose to begin the class. As I spoke, I felt the Spirit and immediately experienced a transformation within myself—I no longer felt nervous, my voice became calm, and the words flowed from my mouth. I was able to remember everything I had prepared.
When class ended, I felt happy with how the lesson had gone and grateful to Heavenly Father for His help. I could not stop thanking Him.
I have learned that by the Spirit all members of a class can be edified. When we accept callings and persevere in spite of difficulties, we are not alone in our efforts.

Bart is now influencing his own family. There’s four-year-old Derek, six-month-old Zack, and, of course the former Michelle Ivins, a convert Bart met at BYU and married in the Salt Lake Temple when he’d been home from his mission just under two years.

The children also had a special opportunity to make a rug that would be used in the temple’s cornerstone services. They first participated in a drawing contest for the rug’s design. From the winning designs, a lovely rug with six colorful panels was created. Each child was able to take a turn stitching a part of the rug. Their finished handiwork was exhibited at the temple during the cornerstone service.
The children will never forget their experience of making a rug for the dedication of the San Diego California Temple. That rug is now displayed in the children’s center inside the temple, where many will see their labor of love.

Examples of his high regard for youths are abundant. When John Bellows and his father once visited the Prophet, the boy felt important because Joseph Smith paid “considerable attention to me” during the hour’s conversation between the two adults. William H. Walker told how the Prophet, upon learning that a house guest had insulted one of the hired girls at the Mansion House, ordered the man out without allowing him to pay his bill: “I want none of your money, or any other man’s of your kind.” On another occasion, Emma and Joseph took in some of the ten Walker children when Sister Walker died. “Every privilege was accorded us,” daughter Lucy Walker recorded. Joseph Smith treated her brother Loren like an intimate and trusted friend: “He was ever by his side arm in arm; they walked and conversed freely on various subjects.” When the prophet, as a house guest once with the Hess family, tired of studying, he diverted himself by playing with the children in their games around the house, including fourteen-year-old John W. Hess.

April 14, 1832, was a snowy day in Mendon, Monroe County, New York. In spite of the cold, thirty-year-old Brigham Young went down into the waters of the river near his home and was baptized by Elder Eleazer Miller. Immediately after, at the river’s edge, he was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Brigham Young had given his heart to a great cause, and he never wavered from the promises he made that day.

A young husband said: “My most important priorities at home have become more clear since I’ve made Come, Follow Me a regular part of my mornings. Studying leads me to think more about the things that matter most to me, like the temple, my relationship with my wife, and my calling. I’m grateful that my home is a sanctuary where God comes first.”

I talk to my school friends about my church friends and tell them how much fun we have together. Then they start asking questions about the Church. When I take them to activities and they meet my friends at church, they say, “Oh, so this is who she’s been talking about.” Knowing a little about who they’re going to meet makes them feel more comfortable.
Sarah Boardman, 14Dewitt, Michigan

“I don’t have a calling,” says Olmedo’s younger sister, Grimaneza, 14, “but I try to help by fellowshipping. I was new in the Church just 14 months ago, and I know how important it is to have friends support you. When there’s a new girl at church, I sit next to her, get to know her, and encourage her to continue learning about the gospel. And I invite her to come to Young Women with me.”