Gospel Story Finder

The pathway program (now called PathwayConnect) is an inspired program brought by Church leaders to help members be blessed by the Lord in so many ways for their future. When PathwayConnect was introduced for the first time in Bangalore, I was interested to join and learn.
I work in a nationalized bank in India, and a Brigham Young University certificate is not acceptable. My Church leaders encouraged me to join, so I obeyed the leaders‘ word. I was accepted by pathway and joined others for the first ever semester to begin in India.
I can see the Lord’s hand guiding me in the pathway program. As I review my own personal change and spiritual growth that occurred during my pathway study program, I recognize that It was impossible for me to do it alone. With heaven’s aid, I was able to complete it.
During this wonderful program, my wife gave birth to a beautiful girl baby. It was a very challenging situation to balance work, travel, my Church calling, and fulfilling family responsibilities. With all these things, studying pathway was an added pressure, but I strongly felt the Lord’s hand in it. My secular education, spiritual help, and revelations were received from Him from time to time. —Ebenezer Paul Magendran, Bengaluru India

My friend and I were kicking a rock back and forth as we walked to school. I kicked the rock and it hit the side of my neighbor’s truck and made a small dent. I was scared that I would get in trouble, so I decided not to tell anyone. When I got home from school, I felt worse and worse until I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I told my parents what had happened. My dad took me over to my neighbor’s house, and we told him about it. My dad asked if we could clean the truck as payment. We spent a long time cleaning the inside and outside of the truck, and when we took it back I felt much better. I was glad that the Holy Ghost had helped me to choose the right.

Even before Robbie went on a mission, the impact of his example was not just on friends at school—it was also much closer to home. Robbie’s brother Scott, who is now a priest, decided to follow his brother’s example and made a plan to read his scriptures every day and to also keep a scripture journal. Scott wanted to experience the same kinds of blessings he saw Robbie enjoying. Scott faithfully reads from the Old Testament in the morning to match his seminary schedule, and then he reads from the Book of Mormon in the evening. Like Robbie, he says his Duty to God plans have helped strengthen him and bring him closer to the Savior.
“I can see a big difference in how I handle things throughout the school day,” says Scott. “I just feel happy, and I feel clean and pure. It gives me more assurance that I’m doing the right thing.”

In late 2020, a group of women from the Como Ward Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints organised a collection of various items to donate to the Lifehouse project. The Relief Society motto—charity never faileth—invites women to seek out and help those in need, so the members gathered suitable contributions over a period of two months.
Steve Klomp, the president of RTLWA expressed his appreciation to Relief Society member Geri Campbell for the donations which were delivered in “bootloads” via her car. He said he was “particularly impressed with how the Church has the ability to organise and mobilise its members when there is a community project or a need to be filled.”

When my grandfather James E. Fisher, born in 1865, was set apart for his mission, he was told: “You may have the gift of tongues if necessary, that you shall use the language fluently that is foreign to your mother tongue, that those who listen to you may listen in their own tongue.”
Within a few weeks after his arrival in New Zealand, a Maori boy came running to him and excitedly speaking in Maori said, “Come quickly, my father is ill. He is possessed of an evil spirit.”
Elder Fisher understood every word the boy said. He and his companion quickly followed the boy to his house and found a frightening situation. The man was entirely out of control, screaming, cursing, and leaping high into the air. When the missionaries entered, he shrank away and said in Maori, “You can do nothing. Go away.”
James E. Fisher took hold of the man and said quietly, “Be calm.” The missionaries laid their hands upon his head, blessed him, and commanded the evil spirit, by the authority of the holy priesthood, to depart. The man then thanked them for their assistance.
From that time on, James E. Fisher could understand the Maori language and rapidly learned to speak it fluently. He never lost his ability to speak the language. More than 40 years later, he met some Maori people at general conference in Salt Lake City and carried on a conversation with them easily and fluently in their native tongue.

I begin by reminding you of an ancient story—a story so old that it even predates the writings of Moses. It is the story of an ancient king named Gilgamesh, whose search for authentic reality is even more ancient than the story itself. What we know of the tale is preserved in a handful of clay tablets dating from the seventh century B.C. found in the royal library of Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian king. The story itself, however, dates from a millennium or more before Moses and comes from the ancient kingdom of Sumeria.
The epic tells of the search by Gilgamesh for the greatest of all prizes: immortality. After the death of his beloved friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh struggled to find meaning for his life and sought—through adventure, travel, the pursuit of pleasure—to find immortality. His attempts were in vain. Life, he concluded, is bounded by the cradle and the grave.
I finish where I began, with the story of Gilgamesh, the ancient king who longed for immortality but could not find it. What is the meaning of his search for ultimate truth? It is simply this: man, despite all his efforts and inventiveness, cannot find the true meaning of life using his own resources. He cannot, with his own power, escape the existential despair which grips mankind in its icy embrace. Only Christ’s resurrection provides that escape, by breaking the seal of the grave, by revealing death as the door not to extinction but to immortality and eternal life.

We have had the New Era in our home since my daughter was 12 years old. She reads it from cover to cover and loves it, but my experience with the New Era has been limited only to articles she has felt would be of special interest to me.
Last year I was called to teach Course 17 in Sunday School and have found the articles by the General Authorities to be my best source of material. The course manual only has lessons for half the year, and I can choose the other lessons from the Church magazines. I have found the articles in the New Era to be interesting, timely, and easy to present and discuss in my class.
Thank you for such an excellent magazine. It has now become a race between my daughter and me to the mailbox each month to see who gets to read the New Era first!

My first assignment was supervising the nine missions on the East Coast from Canada to Florida for five years. That was a great experience. My next assignment was with President Spencer W. Kimball, who was then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, supervising South America.
We organized the first stake in South America in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in May of 1966. As Elder Lynn A. Sorensen mentioned, the growth there has been tremendous. I remember that President Kimball said, “We’re not going to call any North Americans to the major leadership positions.” And there were many Latter-day Saints living in Sao Paulo at that time working in businesses associated with the United States. He said, “We’re going to call the local people.” And so our policy was to call local men and women to those positions and to be missionaries. At that time, in 1966, there were no stakes in South America, whereas now there are nearly two hundred stakes.

There are other ways the Lord uses miracles to answer our prayers. Sometimes, for instance, he seems to manipulate our temporal world to our benefit, as one sister related in testimony meeting:
“We knew when we were preparing to send Roger on his mission that we would have to change our lifestyle to afford it. But when we sat down and figured out exactly what our new budget would be—to the penny—we discovered that we wouldn’t have enough even for must items. We worried and prayed about it; we were going to trust the Lord and send Roger anyway, but we didn’t know how we were going to do it.
“Then, the day before Roger left, my husband’s boss called him into his office and said they were giving him a raise effective immediately. He then wrote the amount of the raise on a slip of paper and handed it to my husband. It was the exact amount—to the penny—that it was going to cost to support Roger on his mission.”

“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded” (1 Nephi 3:7), a scripture that has been a motivating tool for me, Sister Mercy Leonardo, as I was soon to be a missionary in the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo West Mission. This is one of my faith-promoting experiences.
Everything started to fall into place when it came time for me to serve my mission. I could feel my testimony of this wonderful gospel growing stronger every day. After serving in my mission for four weeks, my mother, Rosa, expressed a desire to be baptized. My joy could not have been greater. I could see that my desire to share the gospel with others had been affecting the lives of many, including that of my mother. Seven months later, my mother was baptized. It was a beautiful and spiritual baptism. There were many family members and friends that attended, and even though many of them were not members of the Church, they were extremely happy for her. It was a day of great joy. I was grateful to be able to witness this great miracle and to know that someday my family would be together for eternity.

The clouds hung low and white over the small town of Liberty Bell that twenty-sixth day of December 1908. Sarah Moseley made her way from her family’s house at the end of the street toward the boardwalk, where her new dress would get a brief respite from mud-spraying wagon wheels.
Sarah’s family had been laboring under the stressful effects of no income in recent months, but her mother had managed to rummage up sufficient materials from an old attic chest to fashion a beautiful patchwork dress for Sarah. It was the only gift she had received for Christmas the day before, and she was fitly grateful for and proud of it.
As she continued along the street, she turned the collar of her frayed wrap up around her neck to ward off the biting chill of wind and lightly-driven snow. Suddenly someone wearing a tattered sheepskin coat stepped out in front of her. He had a tangle of red hair, and a crooked scowl on his face. Toby Wilder! Last week he had asked Sarah for some answers to a test in Miss Cornaby’s class, and Sarah had refused. Now he looked ready for revenge. “I would have passed that test if you had slipped me those answers,” he growled.
“There’s a right and a wrong to everything, Toby Wilder,” Sarah said, swallowing hard, “and cheating is wrong.”
Toby glared at her with a look that could have bent an iron poker, then pushed her back toward the edge of the boardwalk. “‘There’s a right and a wrong to everything, Toby Wilder,’” he mimicked. “You think you know all there is to know about what is and what isn’t, don’t you little Miss High-and-Mighty?”
“No,” Sarah told him, her body stiffening with growing fear, “but God does. And He’s told us in the scriptures about honesty.”
Toby glowered at Sarah. He glanced up and down the street through the haze of falling snow. No one was in sight. “Since you’re such good friends with God,” he said mockingly to Sarah, “why don’t you ask Him to keep you from falling down and getting mud all over your new dress?”
Shoving her roughly off the boardwalk, he laughed derisively and swaggered away as she pulled herself up from the street mire. Her eyes welled up with tears as she wiped at the icy ooze on her new Christmas dress and headed for the store.
The bell above the door jangled as Sarah stepped into John Walton’s Mercantile Store. The man behind the counter regarded her solicitously. “What happened, Sarah?” he queried.
“Toby Wilder,” she sighed.
Mr. Walton nodded. “That boy ought to be over somebody’s knee, getting redder than a near-set sun, if you ask me.”
“Yes sir!” Sarah heartily agreed.
“Warm yourself by the stove there.” When Sarah hesitated, he added kindly, “Go on child. There’s no sense in all that warmth going to waste, now, is there?”
“I guess not,” Sarah responded submissively. “It’s just that you’ve given us so much these past few months, all our food and such, that I just don’t feel right about hogging the only spot in front of your stove.” She motioned toward a customer who was stamping the snow from her high-button shoes just outside. “You have paying customers, Mr. Walton. They should be able to warm themselves before someone who—”
“Sarah Moseley,” Mr. Walton declared, “since when did I ever charge a body a cent for warming himself at my potbellied stove?”
Sarah smiled in gratitude and stepped in front of the stove. Mr. Walton came out from behind the counter, nodded to the woman who was making her way to a far corner, and pulled up a chair in front of Sarah. He sat down and spoke privately. “After that boxcar explosion at the depot last September, it’s a wonder your father is still alive. It’ll be a little while yet before he’s up and about.” He pushed a wisp of damp hair from Sarah’s eye. “Your father is a good man,” Mr. Walton continued. “He’ll pay me back when he’s able. Now give me that shopping list I know you have.” Sarah obliged him. “Besides,” he added as he stood with a little grunt, “it’s Christmastime, isn’t it? A time for giving? It would be a shame to deny a man the right to earn a celestial reward in the world to come.”
Sarah’s face wrinkled with curiosity. “What do you mean, Mr. Walton?”
“Christ gave His life for you and me, Sarah, not to mention for those that crucified Him. It seems the least I can do is give a can of beans and”—he checked Sarah’s list—“a box of baking soda and the like to people I love. Of course, that’s easy. The trick is giving to, or doing something for, someone you don’t like. Now there’s the real test. The problem is that I like everybody.” He laughed. “Well, almost everybody.”
Sarah watched Mr. Walton climb the ladder behind the counter. A ray of winter sun made his face radiant. “Why is it so important to be nice to people who are mean to you?” she asked.
Mr. Walton reached for a box of baking soda on a high shelf, then looked down at the girl below him. “Maybe because the Savior was. Maybe because it’s part of forgiving. It’s the same thing, wouldn’t you say?” He climbed down the ladder and began placing the few gathered items in a sack on the counter. “And maybe it’s because of a revelation the Prophet Joseph Smith received once that said, ‘For if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you.’”* He pushed the groceries across the counter to Sarah. “I have a sneaking notion that charity is one of those things, honey. And that forgiveness is another. What do you think, Sarah?”
“I guess you’re right, Mr. Walton,” Sarah answered, thoughtful.
It wasn’t until Sarah was outside again that she noticed something extra in her sack. A large candy stick. She puzzled over it a moment, then smiled at Mr. Walton’s kindness.
No sooner had Sarah started down the boardwalk in the direction of home than she spied Toby Wilder just ahead, leaning against a pole. His back was to her, and he was looking toward the sun as if he were aching for a little warmth on an otherwise bleak, unfriendly day.
Bracing herself, Sarah stepped up to him. “Toby?”
Toby whirled around. When he saw who it was, he growled, “What’s the matter, Sarah. Didn’t you get wet enough the first time?”
Sarah handed him the candy stick. “Merry Christmas,” she said.
Toby didn’t answer. He just stood there gaping.
Sarah glanced back in the direction of the mercantile store, where she could see Mr. Walton looking out the window, waving. She waved back, then turned and continued down the boardwalk toward home.

I carried my patriarchal blessing with me during service in the United States Navy in World War II. I had grown up in Taylorsville, Utah, sheltered and shy, the product of a tranquil pioneer community. I now entered a harsher life, where oaths and profanity were common, where some men made bragging about sexual exploits part of their daily ritual. But again, my patriarchal blessing served as a beacon. Its promises gave me hope that I could stay clean, that I could survive the conflict and live to serve in our Heavenly Father’s kingdom.

Dinner at the Panda Palace In this rhyming counting book, the different animals all come and eat their favorite foods. (The party of three will be very familiar!) When a mouse arrives, the restaurant’s tables are already full of customers—will there be room for him? Easy to read.Stephanie Calmenson3–7 years

My mother is a very special woman. I am the oldest of eight sons, and I also have seven sisters. With such a large family, my mother had great responsibilities. The best thing my mother did for us was to be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She gave us the opportunity to learn about the gospel. This opportunity changed our lives.
I remember the day we received the missionaries. I was about 10 or 11 years old. The missionaries shared a message about the First Vision. As soon as my mother listened, she was converted. She believed Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son.
We began to attend church. I didn’t want to accept the gospel at first, but the missionaries persuaded me to see what it was all about. As soon as I did, I loved it. I am so grateful for my mother. She received a testimony during that first visit of the missionaries. From her baptism until today, she never missed a Church meeting.

Both boys eagerly participate in the Scouting program. In New Brunswick, boys seven years old and younger are Beavers. As a Beaver, Stephen is learning to share, be a good sport, and work with others. In Cub Scouts, Jason has earned his sports badge by jumping over a rope. He was the only one who didn’t knock it down! He also earned his artist badge by drawing a picture, and his pet-care badge by caring for and feeding the family cat and one of the dogs.

I was raised in a family that made family home evening a priority. In order to make it home in time on Mondays, we would go straight home from school without making plans to be with friends. Personal tasks, such as homework, were completed following family home evening. There really was nothing that took precedence over this special time for our family to be together.
Family home evening made an impact on us growing up not only because of the priority we placed on it but also because we worked together to make it happen. We rotated who would give the lesson, who would prepare the refreshments, and who would say the opening and closing prayers. We didn’t just listen to lessons but also had opportunities to be instructors. As a result, I was blessed to obtain a knowledge and testimony of the gospel and to have strengthened family ties.
Because family home evening has become a habit in my life, I look forward to the blessings it will bring when I have a family of my own.
Chieko Kobe, Japan

When we humbly and symbolically kneel at the altars of the Lord, it is an opportunity for reflection, “checked as to the pride of [our] hearts, … [humbling ourselves] before God.” Before I went out with my friends as a youth, my mother would often say, “Remember who you are, and check in when you get home.” Some nights I missed my check-in because I arrived home too late. I regret missing those important visits with Mom.

The heat rose in dizzy waves before us as we sped along the freeway. “It must be very hot outside,” I thought as the air conditioner hissed away in our station wagon. I had heard how difficult it was for the first settlers to even enter the St. George Valley in southern Utah, let alone survive there. This was almost impossible to comprehend as we drove easily along through rocky volcanic barriers on a ribbon of asphalt.
We rapidly ascended into the Virgin River Valley, and the little community of St. George stood out against the scorching sandstone cliffs.
A barrage of bright signs beckoned us with “Enter,” “Vacancy,” “Color TV,” “Sauna,” “Pool.” When I rolled down the window, a blast of hot air reminded me that I would soon be refreshed by a swim in the blue waters of a motel pool.
The heat from the hot pavement penetrated the soles of my gym shoes as we walked the few blocks from our motel to the old St. George Tabernacle.
Hewn from native red-orange sandstone, the thick rock walls showed countless small markings from the pioneer stonecutters’ hand-held instruments. Directly under the stately spire was a tablet with the inscription “Commenced 1863—Completed 1871.”
While my little sisters played under a shade tree on the Tabernacle grounds, I walked around the building for closer inspection. The doors were locked, but by shading my eyes, I could just make out through the old window panes the beautiful circular wooden staircases.
My mother pointed out some of the old buildings surrounding the tabernacle and told us that these were at one time part of the old Dixie Academy—later Dixie Junior College. The new Dixie College campus is now located clear across town.
As I peered into one of the old vacant classrooms where biology had once been taught, I could hear my young sister Terressa protesting crossly, “I’m tired and bored, and I don’t want to see any more old buildings.”
A morning of tennis and sight-seeing left me weary. I lay by the pool, and the perspiration trickled freely. It was then I realized I was more than just a sun-warmed visitor. I felt at home here, as if somehow I belonged. My passing feet had disturbed shadows in the sand—reminders of a life-style long since gone. And yet it was as if I had discovered a golden chain in those sands—a chain of people linked together by time and love—my family.

Let me cite a hypothetical example of a dear sister in any ward, the one who has perfect children who never cause a disturbance in church. She is the one working on her 20th generation in her family history, keeps an immaculate home, has memorized the book of Mark, and makes wool sweaters for the orphaned children in Romania. No disrespect, of course, intended for any of these worthy goals. Now, when you get tempted to throw your hands in the air and give up because of this dear sister, please remember you’re not competing with her any more than I’m competing with the members of the Quorum of the Twelve in winning a 50-yard dash.

I’m grateful that two of my own widowed sisters were able to serve as missionary companions together in England. They were sixty-eight and seventy-three years of age when they were called, and they both had a marvelous experience.