Gospel Story Finder

Blaze and the Mountain Lion, Blaze and Thunderbolt, Blaze and the Lost Quarry, and Blaze Shows the Way In these slim, easy-to-read stories, Blaze’s owner and Blaze help locate a mountain lion’s lair and save a calf, tame the magnificent Thunderbolt, find a lost quarry and rescue a dog there, and win a silver cup.C. W. Anderson6–8 years

Lela Godwin, a Laurel in Pensacola, Florida, knows that when it comes to friendship, age doesn’t really make a difference. In addition to being a candy striper at the local hospital where she meets lots of new friends, Lela has made friends with Grace Hardin, an elderly woman in her ward.
“Sister Hardin is so sweet, and I love her,” says Lela. “She always tells me how much she loves the gospel and her children. She loves having me around and makes me feel good. Who wouldn’t want a friend like that?”

There is a picture of another girl in that yearbook. She was not particularly beautiful. But she had a wholesome look about her, a sparkle in her eyes, and a smile on her face. She knew why she was in school. She was there to learn. She dreamed of the kind of woman she wanted to be and patterned her life accordingly.

She also knew how to have fun, but knew when to stop and put her mind on other things.

There was a boy in school at the time. He had come from a small rural town. He had very little money. He brought lunch in a brown paper bag. He looked a little like the farm from which he had come. There was nothing especially handsome or dashing about him. He was a good student. He had set a goal for himself. It was lofty and, at times, appeared almost impossible of attainment.

These two fell in love. People said, “What does he see in her?” Or, “What does she see in him?” They each saw something wonderful which no one else saw.

Upon graduating from the university, they married. They scrimped and worked. Money was hard to come by. He went on to graduate school. She continued to work for a time, and then their children came. She gave her attention to them.

A few years ago, I was riding a plane home from the East. It was late at night. I walked down the aisle in the semidarkness. I saw a woman asleep with her head on the shoulder of her husband. She awakened as I approached. I immediately recognized the girl I had known in high school so long before. I recognized the boy I had also known. They were now approaching old age. As we talked, she explained that their children were grown, that they were grandparents. She proudly told me that they were returning from the East, where he had gone to deliver a paper. There at a great convention he had been honored by his peers from across the nation.

I learned that they had been active in the Church, serving in whatever capacity they were asked to serve. By every measure, they were successful. They had accomplished the goals which they had set for themselves. They had been honored and respected and had made a tremendous contribution to the society of which they were a part. She had become the woman of whom she had dreamed. She had exceeded that dream.

The life of the other had been difficult. It had meant scrimping and saving. It had meant working and struggling to keep going. It had meant simple food and plain clothing and a very modest apartment in the years of her husband’s initial effort to get started in his profession. But out of that seemingly sterile soil there had grown a plant, yes, two plants, side by side, that blossomed and bloomed in a beautiful and wonderful way.

Those beautiful blossoms spoke of service to fellowmen, of unselfishness one to another, of love and respect and faith in one’s companion, of happiness as they met the needs of others in the various activities which they pursued.

As I pondered the conversation with these two, I determined within myself to do a little better, to be a little more dedicated, to set my sights a little higher, to love my wife a little more dearly, to help her and treasure her and look after her.

Dear Reed,
Sam and I need your help. We need it soon. You see, our family had Sam’s family come for family home evening last night. Dad taught a lesson about being a family forever. Sam and I sang “I Am a Child of God.” Then we made fruit sundaes with frozen yogurt and watched family movies.
Sam’s mom and dad said that they want to start having family home evenings at their house, and Sam asked if we could come to their house for one next week. His dad said that he has to be out of town next week and that he needed to practice giving lessons first. So Sam asked if we could come the Monday after that and said that he and I would give the lesson—and his parents said OK!
Now Sam and I have to get a lesson ready. We went through the Family Home Evening Resource Book, but we can’t decide what to do. What would be a good lesson for Sam and me to give? Please write soon!
Love,Buddy

Before the Helsinki temple was dedicated, members of the Church traveled to the Stockholm Sweden Temple, which sometimes included a two-hour bus ride and an 11-hour overnight ship ride. Aleksi says that at first, he was disappointed to lose the fun youth trips to Sweden, but after attending the Helsinki temple, concludes that these temple trips are special in their own way. “It is fun to see how other members honor the same things I do,” he says.

The sky turned cloudy and dark. “Rats!” Dad said, putting his telescope away. He couldn’t see even one of these.

During humankind’s early push into space, the unmanned rockets had no windows. But by the Apollo 8 mission to the moon, the astronauts had one. While floating in space, they were struck by the power of seeing our earth and took this spectacular image, capturing the whole world’s attention! Those astronauts experienced a sensation so powerful it has been given its own name: the overview effect.

NASA

Viewing from a new vantage point changes everything. One space traveler said it “reduces things to a size that you think everything is manageable. … We can do this. Peace on earth—no problem. It gives people that type of energy … that type of power.”

Once they discovered the approach, the Jacobs sisters used it, with variations, on numerous occasions. For example, eighth-grader Susan spiced up a science lecture on the effects of smoking by dissecting a calf’s heart in class (she had been prepped on where to cut and how the heart worked by George Washington University medical student Milo Andrus, who also supplied surgical gloves and scalpel). Such a graphic presentation by a petite girl made quite an impression on the class—and they got a strong Word-of-Wisdom explanation simultaneously. The grade was A!

Some years ago, a friend of mine was doing some work one morning on his garage roof. He looked down and saw a load of cement being delivered to his nonmember neighbor. He could see that the neighbor could use some help. My friend came down from his roof and, without being asked, carried his own cement finishing tools across the street and began helping with the job. Because he had experience doing cement work, his help turned out to be most welcome. Although the neighbor had expressed a dislike for members of the Church, he showed genuine appreciation for this one by the end of the day. This was the beginning of a long and lasting friendship.

May I share with you tonight, brethren, a letter which I received some time ago, written by a husband who strayed far from the priesthood path of service and duty. It typifies the plea of too many of our brethren. He wrote:

“Dear President Monson:

“I had so much and now have so little. I am unhappy and feel as though I am failing in everything. The gospel has never left my heart, even though it has left my life. I ask for your prayers.

“Please don’t forget those of us who are out here—the lost Latter-day Saints. I know where the Church is, but sometimes I think I need someone else to show me the way, encourage me, take away my fear, and bear testimony to me.”

Music has always been important to my own eight children too. When one of my four daughters was about nine or ten, we were all sitting at the kitchen table, reading the book of Mark in the New Testament. She said, “Daddy, is that where the song comes from? Could we please sing it?” We got out the hymnbooks and sang “Master, the Tempest Is Raging.” We weren’t a challenge to the Tabernacle Choir, but that hymn will never be the same again to me, because we sang it around the kitchen table.”

On Gratitude to the Lord
Obeying God’s commandments has been important to us. We stood firmly by our decision to keep the Sabbath day holy and wouldn’t bend. As we did all that we could do, our children learned that there is a God and He blesses us. Our children really do hear and remember.
When our oldest son was serving in the Japan Fukuoka Mission, the mission president often introduced him by saying, “Elder Kawada’s father stopped growing potatoes so he could keep the Sabbath day holy. Elder Kawada was raised in a family like that.”
We feel happy when we see our children. They come to church. They have served missions and married in the temple. We are grateful to our Heavenly Father, who knows us and has blessed us.

Last Wednesday, President Hinckley and I had a most delightful visit with President Benson. He greeted us warmly, flashed that friendly smile all of us love, and made us feel most welcome. When President Hinckley outlined the plans for conference and asked the President if it was his wish that we go forward with the arrangements and extend his love to all, he responded with a resounding, “Yes!” We understand his concerns. We share his love, and we bring to you his blessings. This giant of the Lord merits our constant prayers and our abiding faith.

“Before I was baptized, I asked in prayer if I was doing the right thing,” says 16-year-old Paola. “I felt a great joy in my heart. After that, I was baptized and felt the Spirit dwelling inside me. I know this is the true Church. I do not doubt it. I feel happy when I do what is right.”

Why is it that the most impoverished seem to know best how to thank the Lord? In the highlands of Guatemala, members barely subsist. Going to the temple requires great sacrifice. A visit takes a year of preparation. There is hard work, sacrifice to save money and food, the spinning, dyeing, and weaving of new clothing. There is the long, barefoot walk out of the mountains, the crossing of Lake Isabel, the bus rides with little food. Tired and worn, they arrive at the temple. They scrub until they shine, dress in their new clothing, and enter the house of the Lord.
Reclothed in white, they are taught by the Spirit, receive ordinances, and make covenants. One highland woman was greatly touched by the spirit and meaning of the endowment. Entering the celestial room, she saw others seated, with heads reverently bowed. Innocently, she knelt at the entrance to the room, oblivious to others. She bowed her head, sobbed, and for twenty minutes poured out her heart to her Father in Heaven. Finally, with her dress soaked with tears, she raised her head. The sensitive temple matron asked, “May I help?” She responded, “Oh, would you? This is my problem: I’ve tried to tell Father in Heaven of my gratitude for all of my blessings, but I don’t feel that I’ve communicated. Will you help me tell Him how grateful I am?”

Most significantly, Irene was a devoted Christian, of the Anglican order. She gave time to keeping the local church building clean and tidy. It was she who was responsible for bringing a knowledge of Christ into my life and helping me to prepare for confirmation in the Anglican faith when I was twelve (I also had to be baptised just before, as there was no record of this having been done when I was an infant). I remember many of those times.
But, tragically within a year, Hilda died from a bloodborne disease, probably arising from an insect bite, but never confirmed. So, the wonderful architect of our recovered life was taken away from the family that she had gathered, loved, and cared for during the 1950s.
Life thereafter was very much based on the children taking up various responsibilities, the greatest burden falling on Sue (Gwen married a year later in 1959). Gwen nevertheless became a confidant during my growing teenage years. My formal attachment to the Anglican faith quickly faded, my father being a declared atheist. However, I often wonder whether, in some way or another, the spirit of Hilda, in her post-mortal state, was influencing events when I became a member of the Church in 1979 (I do like to think so).

While I was serving my first mission to Mexico and Central America, my companion and I received a very interesting final assignment from our mission president. He asked us to leave the mission home and go down to Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico, where some months before missionaries had been withdrawn due to religious and political persecution. Their lives had been threatened by mobs. A few converts had been baptized, but a real organization of the Church had not been established. As a result, these new members had been left alone, and for months the mission president heard little about how things were going.

We were given a list of names and asked by the mission president to go there, find the people, see how they were doing, and, if possible, locate a place where we could quietly conduct a sacrament meeting. For all those months, they had not had the privilege we take so much for granted of partaking of the sacrament each week.

We arrived early in the morning and immediately searched for the address of the first name on the list. We located her address and passed through a door in a high adobe wall that surrounded a crowded cluster of tiny huts around a central area where there was a common water source.

It seemed that all eyes were upon us. Back in the corner in the least prestigious part of the area was a little grass-thatched hut with a dirt floor. This sister came to the door, saw us, and easily recognized by our dress that we were missionaries. With tears in her eyes, she rushed to us and greeted us with a hug. We identified ourselves and the purpose of our assignment from the mission president.

After this brief exchange, she went back into her hut and brought out a clay jar into which she put her hand and withdrew some pesos and centavos she had been saving for months. Even though she had been alone without any Church organization, she had been saving her tithing with faith and hope that someday her tithing would be taken to the appropriate place.

She stood there in the poorest of clothing, bare feet, holding an infant child. She obviously had many unmet needs; yet, she was handing us money. My first impression was not to accept it and to encourage her to spend it wherever she might need it. Then I realized that was not my prerogative because she was obeying a commandment. She had gained a testimony that tithing is a divine commandment and was willing to live that principle—even when she was alone.

The October dawn was frosty as I helped load our belongings into the covered wagon. The weight I carried in my ten-year-old heart was heavier than the bundles of clothes and food under which I struggled. It just isn’t fair, I thought. I don’t want to leave our home and my friends and travel three hundred miles to an unknown place.
It was 1877, and our home near St. George, Utah Territory, was already one of the farthest away from Salt Lake City.
My mother called. “Mary Agnes, please make sure everything is cleared from the back porch before we leave.”
As I made my way around the house, I thought back to the day six months ago when my father had returned from the dedication of the St. George Temple. Mother and I had stayed home because my baby brother was very ill. One look at Father told me that something serious had happened.
Mother spoke first. “William, what is the matter?”
My strong father took her in his arms with tears streaming down his face. “We must leave our beautiful home.” He could say no more.
Leave? How could we leave? After years of saving and doing without, we had finally been able to buy 260 acres of farmland and build a comfortable brick home where the ten of us could live. We had many horses, cattle, and other farm animals. We lived near my grandmother and my cousins. I was able to attend the school in town. Who would ask us to sacrifice all this?
Later, I heard my parents discussing what was happening. Families were needed to extend Church settlements and influence farther south. Brigham Young had called my father to move with his family. He counseled my father to sell all that we had so that we would not be tempted to return to Utah. We were needed in Arizona.
Arizona. A place where there was very little water. Where there were great distances with nothing to see. Men had been called there by the prophet last year. Many had returned to Utah because they could not endure the hardships. Father said no greater sacrifice could be asked of him.
Mother’s voice brought me back to the present. “It is hard to leave, is it not, Mary Agnes? Do you know the real reason we are moving?”
I shook my head.
“We are going to Arizona because the prophet gave that call to us. Remember what I told you about when I was your age and my family lived in Nauvoo? After the Prophet Joseph Smith was killed, there were contentions with nonmember neighbors. The Brethren told us to leave our homes and move west. There our lives would be spared, and we could worship as we pleased in peace.
“Terrible as it was to leave our home, there was nothing else to do unless we turned away from God, the Brethren, and the Church. We made the long, hard journey to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. We sacrificed again when we followed President Young’s direction to leave there and settle here.
“Now we have been asked to go to Arizona. We do not have to go to the unsettled desert. No one is forcing us. We are not fleeing for our lives. We could make excuses to not go. This time the struggle to obey comes from within.”
Mother hugged me to her as she continued. “In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord said that when we receive a commandment ‘whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.’*
“Our prophet has spoken to us. I know he speaks for God. Your father and I decided long ago that we would follow the counsel of the prophet, no matter what the sacrifice.”
The Spirit warmed me as I listened to Mother’s testimony. I gained strength to face the uncertainties ahead.
As I climbed in the loaded wagon, I took one last look at our home, then turned to face the trail to Arizona. I realized that I, too, had a testimony of God’s representative on earth. Like my parents, I would follow the prophet, even to the last frontier.

In this city at this moment, a noble, unselfish young lady who has experienced her own travails serves nearly around the clock at the bedside and in the anxious home of her sorely ill sister, having interrupted her own cherished and long-struggled-for graduate studies to help.

Elder José A. Teixeira recalls a lesson he learned as a young boy in Portugal. During a family reunion, he sneaked away to go fishing. He felt he should tell his parents where he was going, but he decided not to because they were busy talking.
Hours later, his worried parents found him at the riverbank. From that experience, he learned to obey not only his parents but also the whisperings of the Holy Ghost.
Since then, Elder Teixeira has made a habit of heeding the still, small voice. He and his family were introduced to the gospel in 1976, after Portugal was opened to missionary work. He was baptized at age 16 and later served as a missionary in the Lisbon Portugal Mission.