Gospel Story Finder

Josh carefully colored in the last black spot on his white T-shirt. Normally he’d be grounded for a million years for coloring on his clothes. But Mom said it was OK this time. Josh was going to a Primary activity, and all the kids were supposed to dress up like their favorite book or movie character. Josh was going as Dex the Dalmatian, the mystery-solving dog!
After Mom dropped Josh off, he spotted Robbie and Nate from his Primary class. Robbie looked like a pirate, and Nate was some kind of superhero.
“What are you supposed to be?” Robbie asked when Josh came closer.
“I’m Dex from Sticky Ricky.”
Robbie and Nate laughed. “That show is so lame!” Robbie said.
Josh felt his face go red. “Well, who did you guys dress up as?”
“Can’t you tell?” Robbie asked. “I’m Percy, from The Pirate’s Revenge.”
“And I’m Captain Scorpio,” said Nate. “You seriously haven’t seen those movies? Everybody has!”
Josh looked down. “I guess my family watches different kinds of shows.”
Just then Sister McCarthy called everyone to get in a circle for a game. Josh made sure he was far away from Robbie and Nate.
The next week, Josh played basketball with some other boys from Primary. He tried his best, but he wasn’t very good at it. He couldn’t bounce the ball right or make a basket. The other boys laughed when he couldn’t throw the ball very high.
Josh ran home, trying not to cry. I’m not doing that ever again! I don’t even like sports! he thought. And I’m not going to any more Primary activities, either. I just don’t fit in. When Josh got home, he played the piano to calm himself down. Then he read his favorite book until he felt better.
A few weeks later, a boy named Mark moved into Josh’s ward. Josh could tell right away that he was cool and popular and good at sports. Would he make fun of Josh like the other boys did?
But he was actually really nice! Mark sat by Josh and talked with him about a book he was reading. A few days later he invited Josh to play basketball.
Josh didn’t really want to play basketball. It had been pretty awful last time. But maybe with Mark there it would be better. He decided to give it another chance.
The first time Josh tried to shoot the ball, it didn’t get very far. It dropped to the ground and bounced away. Josh froze, waiting for Mark to laugh at him. But instead, Mark just grabbed the ball and smiled.
“Hey, good try!” Mark passed the ball back to Josh. “Try again.”
Later, during a game, Mark kept passing the ball to Josh. Their team lost, but Mark didn’t seem mad about it.
“Great game!” he said with a smile. “If you want, we could stay and practice for a little while.” Mark taught Josh how to hold the ball when he was shooting and how to aim for the basket. After a little while, Josh made a basket!
“Awesome!” Mark gave Josh a high five.
“Thanks for helping me,” said Josh.
“It was fun! See you tomorrow?”
“OK!”
As Josh walked home, he couldn’t stop smiling. He was glad to have a friend like Mark. And maybe one day, he could be a friend like Mark to someone else.

When I was about 11 years old, a man came to our little town to teach at the Church academy. He played the violin a little, and we hadn’t had anyone there for a long time that had played the violin. My mother was impressed and picked up a little violin, I guess at some little rummage sale somewhere, and decided that I should learn to play the violin.
Even though I had never seen anyone play the violin in public, he came to our house and started giving me some little simple lessons on playing the violin. I was coming along fairly well by the time we graduated from the eighth grade in grammar school, and for the graduation exercises held in the high school I was asked to play a violin solo.
I’d carefully practiced the little number “Traumerei,” as I remember the name. My sister who was four years older than I and was then one of the popular girls in high school was my pianist. At the graduation exercises, Connie McMurray was the valedictorian. Girls are always smarter in school than boys. As she was giving the valedictory address, there was a little pedestal with a pitcher of water and a glass on it for the school board. The school board was on the stand, plus a little handful of us who were graduating from the eighth grade.
As Connie McMurray was giving her famous valedictory address, near the end of it we noticed the little doily under the pitcher of water on the pedestal was moving over a little bit towards the edge, and over it fell with the pitcher and glass of water! Connie McMurray fell in a dead faint.
In the scurrying around of cleaning the water off the stage and rearranging the chairs, they announced that we would now have the violin solo from David Haight. I walked over to the little old piano, and my sister came up from the audience. I took that little simple violin out of that wooden case as my sister sat down at the piano and sounded an A. I said, “Go ahead and play.”
She said, “David, you’d better tune it.”
I said, “No, no, I tuned it at our piano at home.” We had an old Kimball piano at home. You know, homes in those days—if you had a piano and books, that’s all you needed for the family. I had carefully tuned the strings by twisting those ebony pegs of that violin, but I didn’t know that all pianos weren’t the same. So as my sister said, “You’d better tune it,” I said, “No, no, it’s all tuned. I tuned it at home.”
So she went ahead and played the introduction, and then I came down on the first note. We were off about two notes.
As she slowed down, I said, “Keep playing,” because I couldn’t imagine anyone would take the time of a famous audience like I was playing to—you know, 100 people in that little high school auditorium. You wouldn’t hold up Carnegie Hall while you tuned your violin! That would be shop work. You would do that in the back room so that when you would start to play, why, you’d be all ready to play.
She slowed down. I said, “Keep playing.” We finished it, and she didn’t speak to me for days following that show.

I have known many modern-day Samaritans. A friend of mine named Larry is an amazing example of showing love for others. He once shared:
When I joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 35, one of the many things I quickly learned was that I needed to be willing to serve others. Whether it was to help someone move, offer lawn care, do repairs, or provide transportation, I tried as much as possible to respond to requests for service from my quorum or from individuals. . . .
. . . I had the opportunity to serve an older couple. Their small, old country home needed a lot of repairs, including its leaky roof. The couple, however, suffered from serious health challenges that prevented them from doing physical labor.
On a hot day in July, my good friend . . . and I were up on the roof putting down new shingles. We were uncomfortable [in the hot sun] and dripping with sweat. Suddenly, [my friend] stopped nailing, stood up, and looked at me.
“Do you realize how blessed we are to be the ones capable of being up here doing this work and not the ones inside who can’t?” he asked.
His question hit me like a bolt of lightning. It was literally a life-changing moment. My whole perspective on service took on new meaning. I realized how blessed I was to be able to do all the things that I could do.
. . . The Lord had blessed us with the ability to truly be His hands. With that realization, it was easy for me to feel love for those we were helping.36

Elder Bednar highlights both “learning by experience” and “learning by faith”. We all know what it means to learn by experience. I’m sure we’ve each had situations where what we learned by experience was both surprising and impactful. For me, learning to swim was just such an experience. When I was approaching my twelfth birthday, my mom decided that I needed to learn to swim, since my dad was the Scoutmaster and I would obviously need that skill to become an Eagle Scout. She enrolled me in a swimming class in the community.

I still remember my nervousness when she dropped me off for my first class. The teacher, a rather gruff track coach, lined us all up at the deep end of the pool and then walked along behind us, pushing us in one by one. I thought I was going to drown that night. I was angry and frustrated but also frightened, and intent on quitting the class. But my mother didn’t believe in quitting, and so I returned. Eventually, I became good enough to make the high school swim team and then, through continued experience, practice and learning, I made the University swim team. Later on, I became a swimming instructor at a Scout Camp and taught each of my five children how to swim. Even now, what I learned by experience about swimming allows me to enjoy exercising several mornings a week in our campus pool.

Another opportunity to learn by experience did not turn out quite as well. From about age ten until about age twelve, my mother had me enrolled in weekly piano lessons. Like many kids that age, I would much rather have been out playing instead of practicing the piano each day. As a result, I tended to complain often about how much I wasn’t cut out for the piano. Finally, one day in exasperation, my mother said that if I would take piano until my 12th birthday, it could then be my decision as to whether I continued or not. Because I’d spent so much time complaining, I did quit piano when I turned twelve. I still recall feeling bad about that decision because I was starting to enjoy the piano. But I felt like I’d already set the course to leave piano and didn’t have the courage to reverse my decision. That was the end of my piano learning.

As a special gift for her dad, Carolyn learned to play one of his favorite hymns, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” It is a difficult piece for a third-year piano student. “I worked and worked on it until I could do it,” she said. It is a special song for Brother Fox. Before he joined the Church, his father passed away. The next Sunday was Easter, and he went to the Methodist church. They sang “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” It caused him to think about the Savior and to realize that he really did believe in Christ’s resurrection and that his father would be resurrected. Since then, that hymn has always made him feel close to the Savior and to his father. Carolyn’s efforts to learn to play it make the hymn even more special.

Just last month our youngest son, Chad, went to the temple with a beautiful, worthy young woman to be married for time and all eternity. As he took her hand and knelt at the altar, I looked into the mirrors on either side, and again I wanted to whisper, “Do you understand why it is so important to be clean and pure?” But this time I didn’t have to remind him, because the Spirit did the whispering.
To the youth of the noble birthright, look into the windows of eternity! See yourselves in the Lord’s holy temples. See yourselves living worthy and pure lives. Generations are depending on you! I testify that worthiness is possible because of the redeeming and enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I pray that it may be said of each one of us, “They shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I assumed our new ward in the East of England was a regular ward of the Church. It is full of good people, striving to do their best, ready to bring a casserole over when someone is sick, or lift boxes for an hour when a family needs moving. But at the same time, very busy with their lives.
So, when our family of seven unexpectedly had to move houses within the ward boundaries, I decided to do it all by myself. A few people offered to help, but I was sure that their offering was simply out of a sense of obligation, and I dislike inconveniencing people.
The moving day had nearly arrived. The moving van was booked, boxes packed, and two days off work arranged. The day before the move was a Sunday, so we thought attending sacrament meeting would be a respite before undertaking the arduous task of moving all our household belongings. The chapel was full that beautiful winter’s morning. A single row of chairs could not accommodate our entire family, so our eldest child, 14-year-old Preston, sat two rows in front of us on an aisle seat.
A few minutes into a talk by our high councillor, Preston slumped over and fell into the aisle and laid there for a few moments before the onset of a full-body seizure. The scene that followed was traumatic for all in attendance. The ensuing days and weeks in hospital, while Preston was intubated, was a time of great uncertainty.
But there was one special thing—the love and service offered by our ward members. The entire ward was mobilised to a degree I never would have imagined was possible. Sisters of the ward tended our children, not for hours but for days, to allow Preston’s mother and me to be by his side. Meals were provided; children were taken to and from school, and a kind sister with five children of her own drove five hours to pick up my mother from the airport.
And if that was not enough, other members worked until 1 a.m. to move our entire household and then clean the old home spotlessly. These and other labours of love were performed while my wife and I were far away at the regional medical facility with our son.
The hours spent in service to our family were incalculable and remarkably synchronised. How the bishopric and Relief Society presidency organised help was astounding. It took the notion of ward coordination to an entirely new level.
The spiritual encouragement of the loving bishop of the Huntingdon Ward, and the wisdom offered by the caring stake president of the Northampton Stake, were significant.
When all hope seemed lost, our children’s seminary teacher was called upon to provide a priesthood blessing of healing in an intensive care unit. That blessing appeared to shake the hospital’s foundation and replaced despair by faith in the hearts of Preston’s parents.
We learned many lessons from that harrowing experience. But chief among them is that, given the opportunity, members of the Church can marshal and serve with awe-inspiring intensity. There is no obligation, and no one waits for thanks. Members of the Church are disciples of Christ and invariably respond to the challenge, whether providing a casserole or moving an entire household.
In the end, it turns out we do belong to a regular ward of the Church. And we thank Heavenly Father every day for that fact.

Hey, Andy. How was school?
Good. We talked about different religions. I learned a lot about other beliefs—we have more in common than I thought!
Wow! What did you learn?
I learned that Ayla is Muslim, and she prays five times a day.
Stephen is Baptist, and he praises God when he goes to church.
Anastasia is Catholic. She repents through prayer and confession.
And Levi is Jewish. His family follows God’s laws to guide their life.
Wow, you learned a lot! Did you share anything with your class?
Yep! I told them that Jesus Christ knows and loves me, and that I try to be like Him.

I can trace my first exposure to the word reconcile and my knowledge of the reconciliation process to a summer when I was a teenager working for the retail chain that employed my father as its chief financial officer. While I eventually moved to the Accounts Payable Department where I had a different boss, the first summer I worked directly for my father. My job was simple. I was given a desk with a four-function calculator, which as hard as it is to believe 45 years later, took up most of the space on the desk. I was given stacks of hand-written spreadsheets and asked to add the rows and columns in order to reconcile them. For example, there was an annual sales spreadsheet that had the monthly sales totals broken out by department. I was expected to add the columns to arrive at monthly sales totals, and also add the rows, which gave me year-to-date sales figures by department. The column totals and the row totals were not reconciled until they produced the same grand total in the bottom right-hand corner of the spreadsheet. Until I arrived at the same grand total I knew I had made a mistake and there was more work to do.

The greatest challenge I experienced reconciling a spreadsheet's row and column totals was finding my mistakes. I never knew whether my mistake was in the row or column totals, and sometimes it was both. Reconciliation would have been much easier if I knew the grand total was perfect and correct.

Our loving Father in Heaven, in His infinite wisdom created a perfect plan by which we could be reconciled to Him. First, He brought His perfect Son into the world. Jesus was without sin-He was a perfect and correct example of righteousness, and, therefore, we could be reconciled to God by being reconciled to Him. Then, through God, the Father's infinite grace, He allowed His Son, the only perfect man, to atone for the sins of His other children. Because Jesus Christ is faithful to God's perfect plan, everything we cannot do on our own, He, in His pre-ordained role as our Savior and Redeemer, does for us.

In the summer of 1994 I took a break from school in Taipei, Taiwan, to return to my hometown of Miao-li to spend my vacation. While home I took a job at a floral shop. My heart is full of gratitude when I recall what followed.
As I was watering plants one day, a man in a motorized wheelchair stopped by to look at the flowers. He bashfully declined my invitation to come inside the store, but something about him left a deep impression on my mind. Afterward I ran into him several times on the street, and we would exchange a nod and a friendly smile.
One hot day as I was sitting in a restaurant enjoying a bowl of shaved ice, someone patted me on the shoulder. It was the man in the wheelchair. He was dressed up nicely and had a big smile on his face. He bravely asked for my name and phone number and left.
A few days later, he called to invite me to attend a Church dinner. Encouraged by a friend, I hesitantly went. The dinner was delicious, and the reception the members gave me made me feel welcome from the moment I entered. Later that evening another Church member asked for my address and phone number in Taipei and sent my information to the missionaries there. Thus began my eternal tie with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I was baptized and confirmed in the fall of 1994 and served a full-time mission in 1997. Two years after I returned home, I married a returned missionary, and we began our family.
All of these blessings came to pass because a member of the Church had the courage to ask a question. At the time, he was a total stranger, but eventually he helped lead me to the Savior’s gospel. He reminds me of a scripture I came to know in the Book of Mormon: “I have none other object save it be the everlasting welfare of your souls” (2 Nephi 2:30).

When I was a missionary, as my companion and I were studying, we came across a four-word verse: “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thes. 5:19). We thought that was an intriguing verse and that quench was an interesting word. As we would walk along tracting, if we found ourselves being somewhat light-minded, one of us would say to the other, “Quench not the Spirit.” It became a phrase that would come up whenever we found ourselves beginning to say or do things we felt we shouldn’t. That phrase has continued to come to my mind at such times throughout the rest of my life.

In the spirit of sacrifice, I recall a conversation I had some years ago with my stake president in Idaho. We were discussing the forthcoming Aaronic Priesthood–Scout campout. I explained to him that it would be necessary for each person to bring his own sleeping bag, to which the president replied, “I have never slept in a sleeping bag.”
I quickly responded, “President, you can’t be serious. You have lived in beautiful Idaho all these years and you have never slept in a sleeping bag?”
“Nope!” he said, “I never have. But I have sure lain in a lot of ‘em.” And then he went on to say, “And I’ll lie in a whole bunch more of them if it will help to save boys.”

One autumn day during my shift as a worker in the Salt Lake Temple, a young man and his friends, clearly not dressed for temple worship, arrived.
“We’re here to see the temple,” the young man said.
“Do you have a recommend?” I asked.
The young man thought for a moment. Then he said, “Yes. My mother has a Mormon friend in Minnesota. She recommended that we come see the temple.”
I felt impressed to pull the young people aside and talk to them. The young man’s name was Lars. I explained to him that not only could he come to the temple but also that Heavenly Father wanted him to come. I told Lars that he first had to prepare, and I explained how.
The following spring, Lars wrote me a letter, thanking me for explaining the real meaning of a temple recommend. “I did learn more about a temple recommend,” he wrote. “Actually, I was baptized and received a recommend of my own last January!” My eyes filled with tears as I looked at the photograph he had enclosed of himself in his white baptismal clothes and of the missionaries who had taught him.
My journey back to the temple was remarkable, and learning of Lars’s journey was a wonderful blessing that reminded me how we can all touch lives for good.

Joseph was jailed more than 50 times for standing up for the Lord’s word and His ways. What did he do when his jailers with coarse language and abhorrent behavior rabbled around outside his cell? As Parley P. Pratt recorded, Joseph stood and commanded: “Silence!”
Parley P. Pratt went on to describe:
Chained, and without a weapon; calm, unruffled and dignified as an angel, he looked upon the quailing guards, whose weapons were lowered or dropped to the ground. . . .
. . . I have tried to conceive of kings, of royal courts, of thrones and crowns; and of emperors assembled to decide the fate of kingdoms; but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri. [PPP, 1985, 180; emphasis in original]

As a boy Dale had a testimony-strengthening experience after reading the Book of Mormon. The mission president in Sweden had invited the young men of the Aaronic Priesthood to read the Book of Mormon, so Dale’s older brother, Gary, who was 12 at the time, accepted the challenge. Eleven-year-old Dale also took the challenge. After reading the Book of Mormon, he prayed and asked if it was true. Elder Renlund recalls, “I had a distinct impression: ‘I’ve been telling you all along that it’s true.’ And that was an amazing experience.”

One afternoon while in my office in Manila, a man came to see me. I invited him in. He had such a sweet, peaceful countenance that he almost glowed. Yet I could tell that he was a man of very humble circumstances. He told me that he lived on one of the outer islands and had come to Manila to take his family to the temple. From his pocket he pulled out a letter written to me by his district president.

The letter told of the man’s faithfulness. He and his family had joined the Church four years earlier. Since that day they had worked to save enough money to go to the temple in Manila. The fare for the long boat journey seemed almost impossible for this family to save. They had hoped to go to the temple the previous year, but they hadn’t been able to save enough money for the trip. Attending the temple this year was so important to them that they sold most of their worldly possessions to buy tickets for him, his wife, and their two daughters. The letter indicated that his wife was not well and asked if we could arrange to have her see a doctor while she was in Manila.

I was touched as I read of the faithfulness of this humble man and his family. I asked him where his wife and daughters were. He said that they were waiting for him outside. We went out and invited them in. He was so proud of his wife and his two beautiful teenage daughters.

I could tell that his wife was not well. When I asked about her health, she said that she was plagued by constant, severe headaches. She took off the scarf she was wearing and showed me that her hair was falling out. She said that sometimes she would pass out and fall. Then her husband spoke and said, “President, I love my wife and my daughters. I don’t know what will happen to my wife. I don’t know whether she will live or die.” As he stopped to wipe away some tears, he looked out the window across the street to the beautiful Manila Temple. “President, this morning we were sealed as a family together in the holy temple. We don’t know what the future will bring. But whatever happens, it will be okay because we now can be together forever. This is the happiest day of my life.” That humble, faithful Saint from the Philippines did not know what the future might bring for him, his wife, or his family, but there was peace in his heart because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The past few years, I have struggled with clinical depression and anxiety. Last year was a record low for me. My testimony was slipping, and seminary was the only thing barely pulling me through. I met a few girls who quickly became my best friends. The scriptures began to resonate with me. And our teacher taught in such a way that the New Testament stories of Jesus Christ from so long ago became relevant to our teenage lives. I grew to know my Savior and my Heavenly Father. Slowly my testimony not only was restored but also became stronger and more immovable. My battle with my mental health has never left me, but because of seminary, the hope that was once lost is now abundant. I have a testimony of Jesus Christ; I know He lives, He loves us, and He can bear our burdens if we come to Him. Without seminary I would not have received that blessing.
Jalee D., 16, Colorado, USA

For example, my full name is Clarence Weldon Tom Collins III, but I go by Tom. Every once in a while, especially at the beginning of school while teachers are still figuring out their rolls, someone will laugh and say, “Ha! Your name is Clarence!”
Now I could get upset about it, but that wouldn’t stop the teasing. So I just say, “Clarence means bright. What does your name mean?” They find out it’s something I’m not ashamed of and won’t be teased about, and they end up respecting me.

In July 2011, the Atiwa District in Ghana experienced an unusual amount of rain. After a day or two, and without warning, the local rivers overflowed their banks and flooded the countryside. This deluge of water turned the village of Abomosu into an island, as well as the adjacent villages of Asunafo and Sankubenase. The flood not only isolated these villages, but also flooded their farms and swept away most of their crops.
For the small branches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, these were perilous times. Their main supply of food was gone, many homes were flooded, and some were cut off from their families and loved ones.
Seth Oppong, President of the Abomosu District, was in Abomosu when the river flooded, cutting him off from his village of Asunafo and his small family. As the extent of the danger began to dawn on him and other priesthood leaders in the town, they quickly gathered at the local branch building to counsel together and ask the Lord to help them.
Elder James Dalton, who along with his wife Pam, had just arrived in Abomosu six weeks earlier as MLS missionaries, were among the eight priesthood leaders who met in the local branch building to discuss the situation.
After pleading with the Lord to protect the people and to guide them in responding to the danger, they quickly developed their plan: first, they needed to account for all the members of the branch; second, they needed to take inventory of the food sources that were available to them; and third, they needed to distribute the food according to the needs of each family. As they discussed feeding the local members, they quickly realized they could not ignore their nonmember neighbors and friends, so they were added to the distribution list as well.
Their plan was quickly passed on by cell phone to the other branch presidents in surrounding villages. The goal was to locate every member and identify food sources and report back in two hours.
Within two hours, the priesthood leaders reported back. In Abomosu, all but three members of the branch had been accounted for (they were later found and rescued). The report was that there was not much food available. Some members had food storage and were willing to share.
Stephen Abu, the former district president and current stake patriarch, had a field of corn near Abomosu that was located high enough to avoid the flood waters. He told the district president that the corn was not ready for harvest, but they were welcome to take whatever they needed. Two young missionaries and several members were given the keys to Elder Dalton’s truck and told to fill the truck with corn. When the missionaries returned, the back of the truck and the back seat of the truck were completely filled with corn. They spent the rest of the day, driving through the village, handing out corn to members of the Church and their neighbors.
That night the priesthood leaders met again. They had enough corn to feed the village for a couple of days, but how would they be able to feed them after that? They knelt and prayed that the Lord would help them find a way to keep the people from starving.
The next morning, another member of the Church came forward and said that they had some corn that they were drying to be ground into meal. It was not completely dry, but they could have it to help feed the people. Those who had food storage continued to help those in need. Several days later, the two young missionaries and several local members went back to the small corn field of Stephen Abu to see if they could find any more corn that could be picked. Because the flood waters were so high, they needed rafts to get to the farm and bring the corn back. No one expected much, but when the missionaries returned, they had another load of corn. This little miracle continued four or five times until they were able to find additional sources of food, some of which came from friends and relatives and the Church in Accra.
In talking about the flood and the efforts made to take care of the people in Abomosu, Brother Abu said, “Isn’t the Lord wonderful! The more you give, the more he gives back.” Both Brother Abu and President Oppong referenced the Savior in feeding the 5,000 as they reflected on how the Lord had preserved them.
Elder Dalton reflected on the words of the Prophet Elijah to the widow of Zarephath, “make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.
“For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail . . .
“And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days.” (1 Kings 17:13–15)

“Then there was the time on the bus. (The girls and boys teams ride together.) I was reading the Book of Mormon. I have a big quadruple combination, and it was kind of conspicuous. One of the guys who had been living in Utah said he’d never seen a Book of Mormon before and wanted to see it. He started looking through it and asking me questions about it. Before long, the whole back of the bus was involved in a discussion about the Book of Mormon. It was as if a curtain had been drawn between the front of the bus and the back, because up in front they were telling dirty jokes.”
Jodi has been known to “give out copies of the Book of Mormon like crazy.” She always carries a spare in her bag with her soccer uniform, bringing comments like, “It’s nice to see someone who really lives her religion.”
“People have said good things about the way I play soccer,” said Jodi, “But that’s really the best compliment I’ve ever been paid.”
No, there was never a question about playing on Sunday—not even in this tournament. But making her teammates understand was another story.
“Look,” she tried, “if I don’t play on Sunday, sure, I’ll disappoint my team, and I feel bad about that. But if I do play on Sunday, I’ll disappoint so many more. I’ll disappoint myself, because I’d be breaking a promise. I’d disappoint my parents, who know how important that promise is to me. I’d disappoint my cousins, who don’t play on Sunday because of my example, and I’d disappoint my seminary teachers, who have taught me better. But most important of all, I’d disappoint God. I just can’t do that.”
It was a great explanation, but it didn’t do Jodi much good. All Saturday night the team tried to convince her to play. They made fun of her. They called her every name they could think of. Finally, at about midnight, Jodi called home in tears. It wasn’t that she was tempted to give in. It’s just that she felt so alone.
Her parents listened. Her parents understood. Both her mother and father got on the phone and had a prayer with her. After they hung up, they called an old friend in the Bay area and asked her to give Jodi some support.
The next morning Jodi got up and got dressed—in a dress, which she wore as she stood on the sidelines watching her team play. They ended up tying their opponents, 1–1, and afterwards, many of her teammates apologized for being so critical of her.
The team ended up tying for third in the tournament, which was better than they’d ever done before. Jodi thought this would be a good note on which to end her soccer career, even though she was a junior in high school and could play for one more year.
“I’ve achieved just about everything I wanted to with soccer,” Jodi said. She had been ranked as the number one goalie in the state and had been scouted by a number of universities, but when they heard of her policy on Sunday play, they lost interest. “I’d like to try to develop some other talents now—things like music and acting. Plus being on the seminary council will require a lot of time,” Jodi said.
So Jodi’s senior year in high school will be a busy one, despite the lack of soccer, the sport she’s dedicated so much to for so long. She says she won’t miss it too much and that the things she’s learned from it will help her in other parts of her life.
“‘To everything there is a season,’ and the soccer season is over,” said Jodi. “I have no regrets. Because of soccer, many missionary doors have been opened. The Lord has blessed me, and others through me. I haven’t gone unrewarded. I’ve been humbled, pushed, and just about everything else, but I learned that I can stand up to it. The Lord knows he can count on me, and I know I can count on myself.”
Jodi couldn’t be happier knowing that she didn’t let one little game spoil all that.