Gospel Story Finder

Recently I was able to travel with more than 100 other young men and young women from the Hamburg Germany Stake to the Frankfurt Germany Temple to do baptisms for the dead and to attend a youth conference. Maybe it was because I was 13 and had unrealistic expectations, but the trip didn’t start out exactly as I had thought it would.
We stayed in a youth hostel in Bad Homburg. The hostel is a really old building with dim rooms and old furniture. It seemed that the knights of old had slept in those beds. Some of the youth in our group, who had expected the comforts of home, were disappointed by their first impressions and wanted to go home.
Our leaders tried to encourage us by reminding us that we were here to serve people who had lived on this earth before us—people who were waiting for us to be baptized for them in the temple.
Our feelings began to improve as we became involved in the activities and workshops of the conference. Each morning we had a devotional in which many of our personal questions were answered. And one evening we had a fireside with Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Seventy, a member of our Area Presidency. He encouraged us to write down the goals we wanted to work on during the coming year. We put the letters in envelopes and addressed them to ourselves. In a year, we will receive these letters. I am already working toward reaching my goals.
During the rest of the trip, I didn’t hear anything else about going home. As we became more unified in our purpose, the worldly environment as well as the just-for-fun activities became less and less important. For example, we had planned to hold a social one night, but it lost its excitement for me.
I frequently had the feeling that a lot of us had come on the temple trip actually hungry for spiritual experiences. Many of us had those righteous desires fulfilled by our experiences in the temple. Tears of gratitude were shed, and friendships became stronger. Nowhere on this earth have I felt closer to Heavenly Father than in the baptistry. How marvelous it will be when I can go to the temple to receive my own endowment and enter the celestial room! I don’t know when that will happen, but I am already looking forward to it. I now know that I want to return to the Lord’s house often.
Some of my friends who came to the conference hadn’t prepared themselves to attend the temple. They quickly realized that next time they don’t want to come just for the activities; they want to be able to enter the temple.
At our closing testimony meeting, we felt a spirit of unity. All testimony meetings when we are together as youth are wonderful, but this one was something special. Some of us shared special feelings we had experienced in the temple; others who want to come back to the Church or to make peace with their families or to feel close to Heavenly Father also shared their feelings.
At the youth conference and in the temple, we felt the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. When we returned home, we took many memories with us—not of our uncomfortable accommodations, but of the Spirit we had felt in our hearts.

We named our old minibus Peggy because of all the peg bags. Peggy wasn’t the most beautiful or the most functional minibus, but she got us over our Welsh mountain. There was always a spot near the top where she stalled, but all except the little ones would get out and push Peggy the rest of the way to the summit. We would then all scrambled back in and Peggy would sail down the other side.
One day, the inevitable happened. Peggy died on the mountain! It was a sad day for us when Peggy expired and was left to an unmarked grave at a car dealership. However Heavenly Father saw the plight of the Caerphilly pioneers and prompted Merthyr Tydfil Stake to start a Caerphilly Branch, renting rooms in Caerphilly, with Brother Kitt as branch president.
We were shortly joined by more members - all pioneers of faith and humour. We had so much between us – it was the golden thread that kept us going through difficult times and increased the love between us.
Our wards and branches have grown now and so have our families. From one seed can come a whole forest of oaks and every member is a seed. We are all pioneers in some way, in some wilderness, are we not? And Peggy had helped us over our not-so-rocky mountain.

I will tell you of an experience I had before I was a General Authority which affected me profoundly. I sat on a plane next to a professed atheist who pressed his disbelief in God so urgently that I bore my testimony to him. “You are wrong,” I said, “there is a God. I know He lives!”
He protested, “You don’t know. Nobody knows that! You can’t know it!” When I would not yield, the atheist, who was an attorney, asked perhaps the ultimate question on the subject of testimony. “All right,” he said in a sneering, condescending way, “you say you know. Tell me how you know.”
When I attempted to answer, even though I held advanced academic degrees, I was helpless to communicate.
When I used the words Spirit and witness, the atheist responded, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” The words prayer, discernment, and faith, were equally meaningless to him. “You see,” he said, “you don’t really know. If you did, you would be able to tell me how you know.”
I felt, perhaps, that I had borne my testimony to him unwisely and was at a loss as to what to do. Then came the experience! Something came into my mind. And I mention here a statement of the Prophet Joseph Smith: “A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the Spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas … and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith.)
Such an idea came into my mind and I said to the atheist, “Let me ask if you know what salt tastes like,”
“Of course I do,” was his reply.
“When did you taste salt last?”
“I just had dinner on the plane.”
“You just think you know what salt tastes like.” I said.
He insisted, “I know what salt tastes like as well as I know anything.”
“If I gave you a cup of salt and a cup of sugar and let you taste them both, could you tell the salt from the sugar?”
“Now you are getting juvenile,” was his reply. “Of course I could tell the difference. I know what salt tastes like. It is an everyday experience—I know it as well as I know anything.”
“Then,” I said, “assuming that I have never tasted salt, explain to me just what it tastes like.”
After some thought, he ventured, “Well-I-uh, it is not sweet and it is not sour.”
“You’ve told me what it isn’t, not what it is.”
After several attempts, of course, he could not do it. He could not convey, in words alone, so ordinary an experience as tasting salt. I bore testimony to him once again and said, “I know there is a God. You ridiculed that testimony and said that if I did know, I would be able to tell you exactly how I know. My friend, spiritually speaking, I have tasted salt. I am no more able to convey to you in words how this knowledge has come than you are to tell me what salt tastes like. But I say to you again, there is a God! He does live! And just because you don’t know, don’t try to tell me that I don’t know, for I do!”
As we parted, I heard him mutter, “I don’t need your religion for a crutch! I don’t need it.”
From that experience forward, I have never been embarrassed or ashamed that I could not explain in words alone everything I know spiritually. The Apostle Paul said it this way:
“We speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:13–14.)

The center of St. Petersburg, crisscrossed by canals, is full of palaces, monuments, statues, churches, gardens, and museums. For seminary students from the Obukhovskii Branch, it seemed a perfect place to talk about their love of seminary, their love for the scriptures, and their love for their city.
Julia Shaikhulina reminisces about returning from a trip to the Stockholm (Sweden) Temple. “I wondered how I’d feel coming home, since going to the temple is such a wonderful experience. But it was autumn, and as our bus drove across the city, the trees and the buildings were bathed in a golden light. It made all of the buildings look beautiful. And I said to myself, I know that I love my city. It made me feel like I wanted to share the gospel with everyone.”

Illustration by George Ermos
Vern’s eyes snapped open as he woke up. Today would be the day. He just knew it! He jumped out of bed and hurried to the back door.
Vern flung open the door and stepped onto the porch. The cold cement stung his bare feet.
There was the bench, just like normal.
And there on the bench was … nothing at all. No model airplane, just like normal.
Vern’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Am I praying wrong or something?”
He went back inside and poured a bowl of cereal. Does Heavenly Father answer prayers, or not? he wondered.
As he ate his breakfast, Vern thought back to a few weeks ago, when he went to church for the first time. The teacher who taught the lesson said that you can pray about anything at anytime, anywhere. Heavenly Father always hears your prayers! Vern felt warm and happy inside as the teacher talked about prayer.
So he started praying! Each night he prayed for what he wanted more than anything else—a model airplane. “Please put it on the bench on the back porch,” he’d pray. And for two weeks now, he had run out to check the porch every morning. But the plane never appeared.
Vern finished his breakfast and got ready for the day. On his way to school, he couldn’t stop thinking about prayers and airplanes. As he walked past an empty field, something caught his eye. Someone had thrown away a couple of old wooden fruit crates.
Maybe I can build a plane out of those, he thought.
All day at school Vern imagined what kind of plane he could build with the crates. Pretty soon his notebook was full of drawings of his ideas.
After school, Vern ran back to the empty field as fast as he could. He picked up one of the crates and carried it home.
First he pulled out all the nails and stacked the boards on the ground. Then he got the old saw and kitchen knife Mom let him use as tools. He was carefully cutting one of the boards into the shape of an airplane wing when Mom got home from work.
“What’s that?” Mom asked.
“An old crate,” he said. “I’m using it to build a model plane!”
Mom looked impressed. “That sounds like a great idea.”
Every day after school, Vern worked on his airplane. Little by little, he kept shaping the wood. He didn’t have anybody to show him what to do. But somehow he always figured out what to do next.
Vern was grinning widely when he showed his mom the finished model.
“Wow!” Mom said. “You did this all by yourself?”
He nodded. The plane had turned out even better than he’d hoped!
As Vern showed Mom all the cutting, sanding, and nailing he’d done, he suddenly realized something. His prayers had been answered after all! They just hadn’t been answered the way he was expecting. Instead of giving him a plane, Heavenly Father helped him figure out how to build his own. Prayer did work.
That evening, Vern took his airplane outside and set it on the bench. “Heavenly Father, thanks for helping me make this plane,” he prayed. “I promise to take good care of it!”
When Vern grew up, he fixed and flew planes for a living. He knows God guided his life all along, including his love and understanding of airplanes.

Just a couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of taking my family downtown as Santa Claus made his appearance. It was interesting. Crowds gathered. One little girl I particularly noticed had been standing on the side of the curb for what seemed like many minutes, waiting for this great event. Just as Santa Claus was to make his entry, great throngs of people crowded in front of her, and she began to cry.
A six-foot-three man who stood by her asked, “What’s the matter, dear?”
She said, “I have been waiting to see Santa, and now I can’t see him.”
He picked her up and placed her on his shoulders, providing her a commanding view. As Santa Claus came by, she waved her little hand toward him, and he smiled and waved back to her and to everyone else who was in the crowd.
That little girl grabbed the hair of that great, big fellow and exclaimed, “He saw me! He saw me and smiled at me! I’m so glad it’s Christmas!”
That little girl had the Christmas spirit.

You should know that at the outset of the invitation to speak here, I questioned my ability to provide meaningful material for students and faculty such as you. I don't consider myself a great scholar or scriptorian, although I have great admiration for academics and gospel scholars. Throughout my life, I have wondered why the opportunities and callings I have enjoyed have come to me. I am truly an ordinary man-one who, at the stage of life you are now in, would never have dreamed of having any of the callings that have become such a significant part of what I now represent. I grew up in small communities, working on farms and raising animals. My parents were faithful members of the Church, my father having served a full-time mission. They didn't live close enough to attend a branch regularly and were, for years, the only members in their entire community. They taught me and my siblings the principles of the gospel in our home by word and by example. Perhaps that is where we learned that the Lord uses ordinary people to do His work and build His kingdom.

As I received my patriarchal blessing, I had no idea of the import it would ultimately have in my life. A few words from that blessing have taken on a rich and deep meaning as my life has unfolded: "You will be called upon to lift up your voice in defense of the everlasting gospel and to bear testimony to the people of the world of its divinity and its truthfulness."

As a young man, newly called to serve in the Northern Mexican Mission, I felt that this blessing was surely being fulfilled. Of course, being of pure Danish/Scandinavian descent from both my father and mother, I had always desired to serve my mission in Denmark. Little did I know, at that time, that the Lord was preparing me for future callings, many of which were dependent upon my becoming fluent in teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Spanish language. For instance, how many Danish-speaking mission presidents do you think are needed in the Church at any given time compared to the number of Spanish-speaking mission presidents? Our service in the Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission helped me see that this promise in my blessing had a greater far-reaching effect than I had previously imagined. In the October 1999 general conference, as I stood at the pulpit of the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City and addressed the membership of the Church all over the world, as you might suppose, the promise took on even greater significance.

Half of the time that I served in the Second Quorum of the Seventy was spent in the Chile area, where Spanish was essential to the members of the area presidency in fulfilling our responsibilities and interacting with the members. Even the call that Sister Oveson and I received in 2005, to serve as president and matron of the newly dedicated Newport Beach Temple, involved using our Spanish-language skills in helping with the temple ordinances for many of the Spanish-speaking members of our temple district.

In retrospect, at this time of our lives, during this, my seventy-fifth year and after having recently celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary, we can see the hand of the Lord in our lives more clearly when we look back on the ways He prepared us to become worthy instruments in His hands to help build the kingdom in the places He called us to serve.

I also remember the day I discovered death. I was 16 and had a brand-new 20-gauge shotgun. I had gone pheasant hunting that morning and, like every hunt since I had been given the gun, had failed to hit anything. It was late afternoon, and I was skirting a hill north of my home when I saw a bird standing about 18 meters in front of me. I raised the shotgun and fired. A cloud of dust and feathers signaled a direct hit.
I ran to the spot and there found, flapping painfully on the ground, a wounded meadowlark. It stopped moving as I reached down to pick it up. Instantly, the excitement drained from the day, and in the pit of my stomach grew a sickness I’ve since learned to call disgust. I had killed, not for food or for any other useful reason, but simply for the pleasure of killing. I was ashamed. The meadowlark was gone—and with it a small part of my youth.

I am grateful to President Grant and other prophets for teaching the principle of tithing to my parents and to them for teaching it to me. My attitude toward the law of tithing was set in place by the example and words of my mother, illustrated in a conversation I remember from my youth.

During World War II, my widowed mother supported her three young children on a schoolteacher’s salary that was meager. When I became conscious that we went without some desirable things because we didn’t have enough money, I asked my mother why she paid so much of her salary as tithing. I have never forgotten her explanation: “Dallin, there might be some people who can get along without paying tithing, but we can’t. The Lord has chosen to take your father and leave me to raise you children. I cannot do that without the blessings of the Lord, and I obtain those blessings by paying an honest tithing. When I pay my tithing, I have the Lord’s promise that he will bless us, and we must have those blessings if we are to get along.”

Some time ago, my wife and I took our two youngest sons to France to tour the areas I had served in as a full-time missionary. We visited branches of the Church I had served in and rejoiced with members I had taught. We also visited historical sites.
One site was the ruins of the Château de Châlucet. This massive medieval castle was attacked and largely destroyed centuries ago. Vegetation had grown all around the ruins, and the trail to get there was narrow and steep. We had a difficult climb, but it was worth the effort once we arrived.
The boys loved climbing down into what was once the dungeon and high up on what little was left of the castle walls. The castle captivated their imaginations just as it had captivated mine 24 years earlier.
While we were there, a summer storm appeared in the distance. It moved in fast. Dark clouds and lightning filled the sky, followed by great claps of thunder.
We scrambled down the trail and made a run for the car as the storm raced toward us. Soon, torrential, pounding rain drenched us and the dirt trail turned to mud. We worried that we would lose our footing and fall down the steep, rocky trail.
We spotted some shelter among the trees on the edge of the path. We huddled together under the shelter and wondered how long we would have to wait to get back down.
“Let’s say a prayer,” our youngest son said.
He asked to offer it and prayed that the rain would stop so we could get down the hill safely. He looked at us and said, “Now all we need is enough faith.”
I explained that prayers don’t always work like that.
“No,” he said, “it’ll stop in 10 minutes!”
After about 10 minutes, the rain stopped.
“OK, let’s go!” he said.
“If we leave now, the rain will start again and we’ll be trapped,” our older son said.
“It won’t!” our youngest replied. “Let’s go!”
We made our way through the drier parts of the path, holding back bushes and branches as we went. Back at the car, we offered a prayer of gratitude. Soon the rain started again.
“See what a little faith can do?” our son said humbly.
He taught us all a great lesson that day.

A striking feature of the effect of a deepened understanding of Christ’s love is how such comprehension dignifies and lifts the individual to action. Julia Mavimbela, a Church member in Soweto, South Africa, tells how her conversion brought her from bitterness at her life’s circumstances to faith and strength to help those around her and beyond her. She taught gardening to relieve hunger, and she organized women for peace to calm their strife-torn country.

Brother Brownie Tomlinson helped to demolish the interior of the old tabernacle and excavate the ground under and around it. His sons, Russell (13) and Shawn (11), assisted by hauling bricks and stones and doing other jobs that were safe for boys their age. They donated long hours and worked hard to prepare the site. Brother Tomlinson noticed that as Shawn became covered with white dust, it looked as if an angel were working among them. Although Shawn can’t remember feeling like an angel, he reported that it felt good to help build the temple. “I got to thinking about all the people who would be married and sealed and baptized there, and it was really special to be part of it.”

I am a member of the Church because of a five-year-old member missionary.
When I was young, my mother was searching for a church to answer all her questions. We attended a different church each week, but none of them satisfied Mom. Finally she gave up.
My best friend at the time was Sandy Guthrie. We played together nearly every day. One Saturday evening she asked me if I would like to attend church with her the next day. I asked her which church she belonged to, thinking I had visited them all. She told me it was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It was a church I had not attended, and I agreed to go. Unfortunately, when I asked Mom, she said she had other plans that Sunday.
The next week Sandy invited me again, and once again I asked Mom. She had another excuse, and I wasn’t allowed to go.
Being a good missionary, Sandy didn’t give up. She suggested I get up on Sunday morning and get ready by myself before asking my mother if I could go. I thought it was a great idea. If Mom didn’t have to make a special effort to help me get ready, she might be more willing to let me go.
On Sunday morning I put on my best clothes and woke up Mom. This time she flatly refused. She offered no excuse and left no room for bargaining. She simply said no. So I did what most five-year-olds would do. I cried.
I suppose the tears and my desire and determination touched my mother, because she agreed to let me go on the condition that she go with me.
Mom and I attended church with Sandy and her family that morning. Mom felt the Spirit very strongly and knew immediately we had found the true Church. That evening the missionaries taught her the first discussion, and she agreed to be baptized.

As two missionary sisters currently serving in the England Bristol Mission, we have really appreciated the New Era during the past week. One of us has had a contagious throat infection, so we weren’t allowed to contact people. The doctor said, “Do not spread the gospel or your germs!” Hence we’ve had plenty of time to study. Although none of the New Eras in our flat are too up to date, the oldies gave us plenty of “food for thought.” Keep up the good articles!
Sisters Reid and HornbyEngland Bristol Mission

When a very young child in the home of my youth, I was fearful at night. I traced it back to a vivid dream when two [Native Americans] came into the yard. I ran to the house for protection, and one of them shot an arrow and hit me in the back. Only a dream, but I felt that blow, and I was very much frightened, for in the dream they entered the house and frightened Mother.
I never got over it. Adding to that were the fears of Mother, for when Father was away, Mother would never go to bed without looking under the bed; so burglars were real to me, or wicked men who could come in and try to take advantage of Mother and the young children.
One night I could not sleep. I was only a boy, and I fancied I heard noises around the house. Mother was away in another room. My brother Thomas by my side was sleeping soundly. I could not sleep, and I became terribly fearful, and I decided that I would do as my parents had taught me to do—pray.
I thought I could not pray without getting out of bed and kneeling, and that was a terrible test. But I finally did bring myself to get out of bed and kneel and pray to God to protect Mother and the family. And a voice as clearly to me as mine is to you said, “Don’t be afraid. Nothing will hurt you.” Where it came from, what it was, I am not saying. You may judge. To me it was a direct answer, and there came an assurance that I should never be hurt in bed at night.

With a twinkle in his eye, Chea recalls the first person he told the elders about. “Sothom Chea was in my class at school. At first I was afraid of him. I thought he didn’t like me. I asked him if he would like to meet my friends, Elder Black and Elder Gooch. When Sothom said yes I was surprised but very, very happy.” Chea accompanied the elders to all of Sothom’s discussions. He says, “I enjoyed translating the lessons. I learned so much. I could feel the Holy Spirit. Besides, it was fun.”

In the town of Drammen, a few miles from Lier, there is a beautiful new branch chapel, and in spite of the busy schedule at school, Bonnie was able to attend Church meetings and participate in branch activities. “When Mr. Gurholt from the school drove me from Oslo to Lier, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, there aren’t any Mormons way out here.’ But there were! And I found that I knew the mission president too. The missionaries lent me their Norwegian books from the Language Training Mission and the sisters invited me to go tracting. I really enjoyed that. Several of my friends at school even agreed to have the missionary lessons, and one family was baptized shortly after I left Norway.”

When I was in the seventh grade, in a health class, the teacher read an article. A mother learned that the neighbor children had chicken pox. She faced the probability that her children would have it as well, perhaps one at a time. She determined to get it all over with at once.
So she sent her children to the neighbor’s to play with their children to let them be exposed, and then she would be done with it. Imagine her horror when the doctor finally came and announced that it was not chicken pox the children had; it was smallpox.
The best thing to do then and what we must do now is to avoid places where there is danger of physical or spiritual contagion.

It bothered me for some time that a grocery store had magazines with offensive covers in full view of everyone in the checkout line. After I returned home one day, I called the manager and explained that I enjoyed shopping at the store, but it offended me that magazines with sexually suggestive covers were in full view of everyone. The next time I shopped there, I was grateful to see that the magazines had been moved to a less conspicuous location.

Although Adam likes to have fun, he can be very responsible. Once when Adam, Mandy, and their one-year-old brother, Thomas, were staying with their grandmother, she got very sick and had to lie down on the couch. Adam brought her a glass of water, as he’d seen his mother do. Then he knelt down beside the couch and said a prayer, asking Heavenly Father for help.
When he was finished, he knew just what to do. He brought his grandmother a pillow so that she would be comfortable and gave Thomas and Mandy some toys so that they wouldn’t cry. Then he called his mother, who was working at a nearby hospital. “Grandma doesn’t feel well,” he said. “Could you please come and help?”
Adam tried to keep his brother and sister occupied until his mother came to help. Then he said another prayer of thanks to Heavenly Father.
His grandmother felt much better by the time his mother arrived, but Adam wasn’t surprised. “I knew that Heavenly Father would hear and answer my prayer,” he said.