Gospel Story Finder

I was standing in the foyer waiting for church to begin when he walked in. He came right over to me, called me by name, and asked, “Do you know why I’m here?”
His pointed query took me off guard. Who is this guy? He looks familiar, but I sure don’t know him. And why should I know why he’s here? “No,” I answered, feeling a little awkward.
“I’m here because of you,” he said bluntly.
That got my attention. Though there was a vague familiarity, I couldn’t remember ever meeting him before. I had no idea who he was, yet he was standing there saying he was at church because of me.
My face must have revealed my incredulity. “We have the same P.E. class at college,” he explained. When I graduated from high school, I decided to go to a community college near my home just outside Los Angeles. He was in my gym class with about 100 other guys.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said.
Watching me? What does he mean by that?
“I noticed right off that you were different,” he continued. “You never swear. You don’t lose your temper. You don’t smoke. You never tell dirty jokes or even listen to them. You’re never involved in all the filthy talk that goes on. I really admire you. You’re exactly the kind of person I want to be,” he said. “So I started asking around about you. I found out your name, that you’re a Mormon, and that this is where you go to church. That’s why I’m here.”
There are probably a dozen words I could use to describe how I felt at that moment. I just tried to live the way I’d always been taught, and I probably hadn’t done that especially well. I was preparing to go on a mission, but I certainly wasn’t perfect. And he’d been watching me. That was the scary part. Had I done anything I should be ashamed of? I hoped not.
He stayed for church, and over the next few weeks he took the missionary lessons and was baptized. A year later, just before I left on my mission, he left on his. He served faithfully, returned, and was married in the temple. He is one of the happiest and most peaceful persons that I know.
I take no credit for his conversion. I was just a Mormon kid trying to live the standards I’d always been taught and believed were right. It wasn’t really me he was watching—it was those standards. But today, every time I read the Savior’s admonition to “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16), I remember the day he walked up to me and said, “I’m here because of you.”

Aunt Helen’s barn was old and weather-beaten and not used much anymore—except by us children as a refuge from boredom all during the spring and summer. The old rope swing tied to the ridgepole provided hours of excitement in our contests to see who could swing the highest and farthest. The barn’s many nooks and crannies offered great hiding places for games of hide-and-seek. And the old straw and hay gave us soft nests to curl up in while we shared secrets, desires, and dreams.
We thought of the barn as ours during the warm months. But when old Jack Frost started to paint the leaves on the mountainside each year, Aunt Helen would start acting mysterious. “The barn is closed now till spring,” Aunt Helen would state matter-of-factly, but with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Aw, Aunt Helen. Please just let us play in the barn after school,” we would beg.
“That old barn needs a rest after your playing in it all summer,” Aunt Helen would state firmly, and we knew not to ask again.
What’s Aunt Helen’s mystery? I wondered. What does the old barn have to do with it all? This year I was curious enough to decide to find out!
To get to the school bus stop, I had to walk right past the lane that led up the hill to Aunt Helen’s house. From the bottom of the lane, I could see her house and the old barn just beyond it.
Each morning and afternoon I routinely stopped to study both buildings. The first few days I saw nothing out of the ordinary. On the fourth day, while coming home from the bus stop, I noticed something that made me stop and stare: Mr. Rice was driving his hay wagon with a full load of hay up her lane. What’s Aunt Helen doing with a load of hay? I wondered. She doesn’t have any cows or horses to feed. Now, I knew that Mr. Rice had just built a huge new hay barn to put his hay in. He wouldn’t need to use Aunt Helen’s old barn for storage too. Why all the hay?
The next day was Saturday, bread-making day for Aunt Helen. Since Mom thought that it was well past time for me to learn the art of bread-making, I had no trouble persuading her to let me go over to Aunt Helen’s for the morning.
Aunt Helen was pleased to see me and tickled that I had come to help make bread. Soon I was up to my elbows in flour and dough. It was always fun to be with Aunt Helen. She liked to hear all about what I was doing at school. And she had funny stories to tell and interesting things to discuss. As we kneaded the dough and talked, I said as casually as I could, “I saw Mr. Rice coming up your lane yesterday with a load of hay.”
“Oh, did you?” was all that she said.
Her answer threw me off. “Why do you need hay?” I asked not so casually.
“A barn isn’t a barn without hay,” she said, adding abruptly, “It’s time to put the dough into the pans.”
This is going to be tougher than I thought, I realized as I put the dough into pans to rise.
Now, Aunt Helen had been a schoolteacher for over thirty years. And since she knew everything there was to know about anything, she was the most likely person to ask when I needed help with my homework. So after school Monday, instead of just passing by Aunt Helen’s lane, I walked up it. I made my mind up to become Aunt Helen’s shadow until I had solved the mystery.
“Hi, Aunt Helen,” I said as I walked up to her in the flower garden, where she was pulling weeds. “We were given a really tough assignment in English today. Would you help me with it?”
“Oh, I think so—after you have some cookies and milk. One can’t do tough homework on an empty stomach,” she said with a big smile.
Each day after that I spent the afternoon with Aunt Helen. She’d help me with my homework; then I would help her with whatever needed to be done. Sometimes some of my other cousins would stop by for help or to visit, but most of the time, I had her all to myself.
One very cool afternoon I found Aunt Helen in her vegetable garden, digging carrots. “Hi,” I said. “No homework today. Wow! You sure have a lot of carrots,” I remarked, looking at the three huge baskets full of carrots. “You must really like them.”
“No, actually I don’t,” she said with a chuckle.
I bent down and helped her dig some up. Is this another clue to the mystery? Hay and carrots … hay and carrots … what’s the relationship? “For someone who doesn’t eat carrots,” I said, “you have enough to feed an army!”
She just chuckled, but I thought I heard her say softly, “No, not an army, just a small herd.” When we finished digging up all the carrots, she said, “Run and get the wagon, and we’ll load these baskets into it.”
When it was loaded, Aunt Helen pulled it while I pushed. We headed for the old barn! I’m finally going to get a look inside the old barn! I thought. I just knew that I was going to solve the mystery that very day. But when we unloaded the carrots in the old side storage room, it was completely empty except for a few baskets of carrots already stored there.
I was able to catch a glimpse of the main part of the barn, but it was just as we’d left it weeks before, except that there were stacks of hay scattered around. It did seem strange that the hay was stacked only a few bales high—most hay is stacked as high as the barn rafters.
As we walked back to Aunt Helen’s house, I was desperately trying to piece everything together. “My, you’re awfully quiet,” Aunt Helen observed.
“Oh, I’m just thinking,” I replied, and I saw that mysterious twinkle in her eyes again.
Soon the leaves on the mountainside were a blaze of color. One afternoon as I went into Aunt Helen’s house, I overheard part of a telephone conversation. “Yes, Howard, I’ll need at least ten bushels of apples this year. Yes. Two bushels for here at the house, and the rest can be put into the barn’s side storage room. The end of the week will be fine. Thanks, Howard. Good-bye.”
Apples in the barn? Hay, carrots, and now apples? This is getting more and more mysterious!
After my homework was done and I was eating homemade bread and jam, I said, “Dad says that it’s going to be an early winter this year. He says that he can’t remember a year being so cold so early. I bet he and the boys freeze their feet off on the deer hunt next week.” I started to chuckle. “It serves them right, too—grown men chasing and killing helpless deer like that. It’s totally disgusting!”
Aunt Helen laughed, too, but it was a mischievous laugh. “Yes, it would serve them right. I bet they don’t get any deer around here again this year.”
Saturday, the first day of the big deer hunt, was indeed cold, and there was a biting breeze. Aunt Helen had asked me to come over that morning. She hadn’t said why, but she had had that mysterious twinkle in her eye when she’d asked. So as soon as the breakfast dishes were done, I ran over to her house.
I found her sitting on her back porch, watching her barn with that funny little smile on her lips. “Hello, dear. Come sit down for a minute,” she said. “Well, you were right about the hunters getting frozen feet today.”
We sat for a couple of minutes without talking. I studied the old barn. Nothing seemed to have changed about it, but I knew that something was going on inside. I could just feel it.
“Rebecca, do you know that you are the only one of the children who realizes that there is something secretive about my barn in the autumn? And that is why I’m going to share my secret with you. I know that I can trust you and that my secret will be safe with you. Come on.” With this she took my hand and started walking toward the barn.
About halfway there, Aunt Helen stopped and pointed to it, saying, “Shhh. You must be very quiet now.”
Just inside the barn doors stood a beautiful deer. Her fawns were not far away, and apples and carrots were scattered on the barn floor. I could see at least six more deer inside the barn, lying in the soft hay or eating. I just stood there with my mouth open.
After about five minutes of watching, Aunt Helen pulled me away. I was speechless until we sat down in her warm kitchen. “How?” was all that I could say, even then.
“Well, Rebecca, I hate the killing of the deer. About ten years ago, just before the hunting season, I saw a doe and her fawn eating out by the barn. I said to her, ‘Go into my barn. Go into my barn with your baby. You’ll be safe there.’ And she did! She stayed there with her young for about two weeks. Then she just left. I think that somehow she knew when it was safe to leave.
“Since then, about this time each year, a number of deer come to my barn. I make sure that there is food for them—hay, carrots, and apples. Then, when the hunting season is over, I tell them that it’s safe to leave. And they seem to understand and leave. But when we’ve had winters with lots of snow, the deer come back to feed in the barn. They know that there will always be food for them until the snow melts enough for them to browse for their own food.”
“Safe in the barn!” I exclaimed gleefully. “Safe in Aunt Helen’s old barn!”
Each year now both Aunt Helen and I become a bit mysterious in the autumn because we share and enjoy the secret in the old barn.

Miracles were experienced by the instructors and by the students. Deborah Darkwah, a member of another faith and YSA Gathering Place student, also shared that learning how to make wigs has blessed her family and brought extra income to her.

I grew up in a small community outside of Seattle, Washington. It was relatively close to a big city but just rural enough that opportunities to earn money for a mission were extremely limited. There were, however, a large number of gentlemen farmers in the area, so my brother and I decided to haul alfalfa hay from the big farms in the eastern part of the state, over the Cascade Mountains, to the small farms in our community. We fixed up an old truck that had fallen into disrepair and prepared it for hauling up to 20,000 pounds (9,000 kg) of hay. We made a number of successful trips with our dad along to make sure we had things figured out before he left the operation to us.
My brother and I left very early one morning for our first solo trip. We made it over the mountains but had some difficulties loading the hay. Eventually we headed back over the mountains with a full load.
The return trip was uneventful until we noticed that it was starting to sprinkle just a bit. We immediately found an overpass on the freeway and parked underneath it just as the sprinkles turned into rain. We had not yet been able to purchase a tarp to cover the hay, and no animals can eat the alfalfa hay if it gets wet because it starts to rot and mold quickly. We knew that if we lost this load of hay, our business venture would probably fail.
We sat under the overpass for quite a while, waiting for the rain to stop. Eventually, we realized that the Lord would help us if we prayed. My brother offered a prayer, and we waited. The rain did not let up. We decided that perhaps I, the elder brother, should offer a prayer. It started to rain harder. We sat there for what seemed an eternity. We knew that once we left the protective cover of the overpass, the next possible shelter was an hour away and home was another hour past that.
Finally, one of us remembered the admonition that faith precedes the miracle, and we realized that we needed to exercise our faith. We put our trust in the Lord and left the cover of the overpass. To this day I remember every drop of rain that I saw land on the hood of the truck as we inched out from under the overpass. It was a severe trial of our faith, but by the time the cab of the truck was out in the open, the rain had stopped. The next two hours were filled with much prayer and thanksgiving.
We made it home with our load in good shape, and as we were pulling the truck into the barn, the heavens released their pent-up downpour. Our business survived, and both of us were able to successfully fund our missionary service.
Not all of my prayers have been answered this way, but I am very thankful for the lesson in faith my brother and I learned sitting under the freeway overpass in the rain.

There was a tornado where I live. I prayed that it wouldn’t hit our house. In the morning, we saw branches everywhere! People from our ward came and helped clean up. I thanked Heavenly Father for helping us be safe.
Rhett B., age 12, Wisconsin, USA

More than a year later, I participated in the Mesa Temple Easter Pageant. It depicts Christ’s life on the earth and plays six nights during the week of Easter. The best part was that it took place on the temple grounds. I was just one of the crowd in a cast of 300. For several weeks, I was able to spend hours near a house of the Lord.
As I watched Christ’s life portrayed to thousands of people, I was able to witness a representation of His birth. I was feet away when He was shown healing the sick and raising the dead. I watched when He was portrayed suffering and atoning for the sins of the world, and I was there when He was depicted dying on the cross for all. I was there and saw the portrayal of Him rising from the dead three days later, and I saw the representation of Him ascending to His Father.
The feelings I had at that time are indescribable. It seemed so real to me. I was able to testify of Christ’s message many times to those who had never heard it—that He lives!

In our family, we try and do all that we can. Everybody gets involved. I am so happy with how my children help each other as we read the Book of Mormon together. They love the Book of Mormon. We’ve had a nice time reading and sharing our testimonies together.

When Harold was very young, he wanted to go to school like his older brother.
Harold: May I please go to school with Perry, Mama? I want to go to school!
Mother: No, Harold, you are too young. When you are Perry’s age, you can go.
Harold kept begging. Finally one day, his mother relented.
Harold: When can I go to school with Perry, Mama? Can I go today?
Mother: You may go with Perry this morning if you promise to be a good boy and sit quietly and not disturb the other children.
Harold walked excitedly beside Perry up the two-mile path to school.
Harold: I bet I can beat you to school!
Perry: Oh yeah? I’ll race you!
Sister Howell recognized Harold because he was also in her Primary class.
Sister Howell: Harold, what a surprise to see you at school today! Here are some crayons for you to play with while I teach the older children their lessons.
Harold became so absorbed with his crayons and paper that he didn’t notice Mrs. Howell watching over his shoulder.
Sister Howell: You have written all of the ABCs and your name! You should come to school every day. I’ll speak to your mother about it.
That afternoon, Sister Howell came to visit.
Sister Howell: You have taught Harold well. I think he should come to school with Perry every day.
Mother: But other boys Harold’s age won’t start school for two more years. Are you sure he is ready?
Sister Howell: Yes. I’m sure.
Harold always loved school. He decided to become a teacher. For many years he was involved in education throughout Idaho and Utah.

Apia Samoa Temple
After fire destroyed the original Apia Samoa Temple, members waited two years for a new temple to be built. Their wait ended on September 4, 2005, when a new temple was dedicated on the same ground where the original temple had stood.
The Apia Samoa Temple today has more than 16,000 square feet (1,486 sq m), slightly larger than the former temple built in 1983.
After two decades of attending a temple close to their homes, members in and around Samoa said they have learned gratitude from traveling to a temple farther away for two years. While the temple was being built in Samoa, members had to travel 475 miles (760 km) to the Nuku‘alofa Tonga Temple.
“I believe members now have learned to be more appreciative of having the new temple,” said Uele Va’aulu, Church public affairs representative in Samoa. “They are now more eager to do their family history and are filled with the Spirit of Elijah.”

Sharing sorrow is what has strengthened Lee Hing Chung and his wife, Kumviengkumpoonsup. Six years ago, he lost an arm in an industrial accident. Sick and unemployed, he became despondent. Support from his wife, children, and other members pulled him through.
Today hope shines in his eyes as he speaks of the present and the future, including being sealed to his wife and children in the Hong Kong Temple. “Before we joined the Church, I was primarily concerned with making money,” he says. “Now I have different priorities. There are many people out there who have lots of money, but they don’t have love. We have found that.
“Many people at church are the only members in their families,” he continues. “When I attend church on Sunday with my family, I am so grateful that we are together and that we can be together forever.”
As he speaks, he gestures toward a picture of the Hong Kong Temple hanging prominently on a wall. “One day I was reading the scriptures and looked up,” he relates. “The first thing I saw was that picture, and I experienced such a strong, peaceful feeling from the Holy Ghost. We pray every night that we can be together as a family. The presence of the temple reminds me to be good, to be disciplined, to be worthy.”
Although still unemployed, Brother Lee is at peace with his circumstances. “There are challenges in life, certainly,” he acknowledges. “But I have faith in Jesus Christ. We will be all right.”
In addition to preparing for the temple, the Lee family has been busy doing missionary work. One neighbor family has already joined the Church through the family’s missionary efforts, and a second family is investigating. “The parents told us they were impressed with our children and asked why they were different,” Sister Lee explains. “They said the children were respectful, obedient, and cooperative with each other. We told them it was simply the Church.”

“I can remember my first big fishing trip. I was ten years old, and we went to Mackay, Idaho. My father taught me how to put the worm on the hook, and it was very distasteful to me. I kept thinking, Dad, why can’t you do this? I don’t want to do it. When I asked him, though, he said, ‘If you’re going to learn to fish, you have to learn to do everything.’ And so he made me put the worm on the hook. Then, when I caught my first fish, I didn’t know what to do with that wiggly, slippery thing. My father taught me how to clean the fish: I had to hold it in one hand and cut it open and clean out its entrails, which was a very unpleasant job for me. But I could see my father’s wisdom—without actually doing all that a task requires, we often don’t learn everything we need to know.”

As a young man, I committed a serious sin, a sin for which I knew excommunication would follow just as surely as I knew the sun would rise the next day. But I had convinced myself that no price was too great to pay for “true love,” and I was sure that this love would justify me in the end.
Later, I knew that I must go to my priesthood leader and tell him the heavy secret that weighed down my mind and soul. Just as I had known, this loving man immediately took the steps necessary to excommunicate me from the Church. He did so with all the love and compassion of an understanding, gentle man who knew what must be done.
The reality and pain of my excommunication did not hit me until I returned to my family’s home with the news. I was sullen as I sought the right words to tell my father that the only thing I had to give him on his birthday was the news that I had been excommunicated from the Church he had loved and served so faithfully all his life.

Many of the teens talk about the close bonds they forged with the youth from their own ward and also from the other units and stakes. Beehive Elizabeth Hall recently moved to Roswell, Georgia, when dance rehearsals were under way and was excited to take part. “Getting involved in the dance festival enabled me to get to know a lot more of the youth quickly,” she says.

Elder Corbitt spoke about a woman he talked to on a bus ride. She asked why he believed in Jesus Christ. He wasn’t sure what to say. Then he decided to focus on what mattered most. He told her that we need Jesus to help us return to Heavenly Father. We can share our testimonies too.

Susan was eight years old. She had just been baptized. She was playing out in the yard with her sisters and some friends, and she went into the house to get a drink of water. Her mother said, “Susan, dinner’s ready. Will you please call your sisters to eat?” So she went to the door and called to them.
They really didn’t want to go in, so they argued and said, “Oh, no, it isn’t time for dinner. You are just teasing us.” And they accused her of not telling the truth.
Well, she gathered herself up in all of her eight-year-old dignity, put her hands on her hips, and said, “It is dinnertime. I’m telling you the truth, and you can believe me because I have been baptized.”
She knew that her baptism required of her a certain standard of behavior. Her choice was that she would tell the truth, and she was willing to commit to that.

Bobbie sat on the edge of the pool, looking at the warm, clear water. She remembered that last summer she had run into the waves at the beach. And at the neighborhood pool, she had stood in the shallow end and stuck her head underwater. She had even opened her eyes to count her fingers. This year she had learned to float around in the deep end of the indoor pool.
But today Bobbie just sat on the edge of the big indoor pool and worried. She watched some of her friends kicking up and down the pool lanes, holding onto blue and red kickboards. Bobbie had already done that. In fact, last week Bobbie had kicked all the way down and all the way back in the pool. She secretly thought that she might be the best kicker in her class.
Others in her class were in the shallow end, practicing their overhand strokes. Bobbie could lean over and do a really good crawl stroke. Her swimming instructor had told her how nicely her arms curved when she pulled them through the water.
Another small group was working on breathing. They blew into the water, then breathed in, then blew, then breathed in. Bobbie knew that she could do the breathing. She had worked on that in the bathtub as well as at the beach and in the pool.
Bobbie looked at the depth marker—10 FEET. She looked up at the sign over the door—THIS POOL IS 75 FEET LONG.
I can breathe correctly, and I can kick a good, strong kick, she thought. And my arms don’t get tired.
Just then the buzzer sounded for class to be over. Slowly Bobbie got up from the steps. If only I had a little more time … She really hated to get dressed and go home. Mother wouldn’t say anything. She would smile at Bobbie, sort of raise her eyebrows expectantly, and have an encouraging twinkle in her eyes. But Bobbie would have no beginner’s swimming card to show.
All that week Bobbie walked to the pool, she put on her swimsuit, grabbed a kickboard, and kicked up and down the pool. She practiced her arm strokes until she was quite sure no one could do them any better. She blew bubbles and breathed in, and she even sat on the bottom of the pool in the shallow end.
But each time Bobbie went over to the deep end of the pool and thought about jumping into ten feet of water, she knew she just couldn’t do it.
Every once in a while, Bobbie saw her swimming instructor smiling at her. When Bobbie felt that she was ready to put her arm strokes and her kicking and her breathing all together and swim the length of the pool, her instructor would be right there beside her. So Bobbie wasn’t afraid of sinking.
Bobbie started thinking about just why she couldn’t jump into the deep water and swim to the other end. I must be afraid of something. I wonder what it is. It isn’t the water. It isn’t my teacher, and it certainly isn’t Mother. It’s not my friends, either. Some of them still haven’t learned how to breathe or kick or do the arm strokes. Bobbie thought about all the people who would love her whether she learned to swim this summer or not.
Suddenly Bobbie realized that there was one person she had not thought of—herself. I’m afraid because I don’t want to fail. As long as I don’t try to swim, I can tell myself that when I do try it, I’ll be the best one in the class. But once I jump into that water, maybe I’ll find out that I can’t do it.
Bobbie looked up at the clock. Class wouldn’t be over for another half hour. She left the pool area, went into the dressing room, faced herself in the mirror, and said, “Bobbie, just go do it. Even if you don’t make it today, you can try again tomorrow. The important thing is to try. You’ve got to believe in yourself.”
The mirror Bobbie looked back at the real Bobbie. They smiled at each other.
Walking quickly back into the pool area, Bobbie stood by her swimming teacher and said, “I’m ready to try.”

In preparation for that assignment, I reread the Life of Heber C. Kimball, written by his grandson Orson F. Whitney, who later was called to the apostleship. This volume was given to me by my precious mother when I was almost seven years old. We were preparing to attend the dedication of the This Is the Place Monument on July 24, 1947, by President George Albert Smith. She wanted me to know more about my ancestor Heber C. Kimball.

Their concern for the deaf and blind is obvious. And their Church principles give them a natural concern for alcoholism and drug abuse. But making those issues part of the Osmond Foundation responsibilities was the singing group’s idea, according to Virl.
“Letters poured into the fan club headquarters by the thousands, saying, ‘I’m on drugs, what can I do?’ The boys really saw a need for concern.”
The Osmonds have planned television commercials and films to help the victims of drugs. The foundation has also published a pamphlet on drug abuse.

Our family was recently baptized, and we love our new church. One night for home evening, our mum suggested we make a family tree using our old passport photos. It was a fun night!
Joshua, Matilda, and Graeme K., ages 9, 11, and 7, Tonga

During the 1920s an 80-year-old missionary went to the Austrian Mission from Utah. It was Elder Biesinger, serving his fourth mission to Europe. He felt that the Lord was allowing him to return to Austria in order to finish the mission he had started that cold winter morning in Vienna in 1883.