Gospel Story Finder

Pat Morrell didn’t let her age prevent her from starting something new either. Needing to supplement the family’s income, she returned to school after her children were grown and studied to be a nurse. Several years later, she graduated from nursing school and is doing work she has always wanted to do. “I wasn’t a good student in high school, so I was unsure whether I could complete requirements for nursing,” she says. “It took six years of squeezing classes in between a day job cleaning houses and caring for others to finish my degree. Besides time, it also took persistence, patience, and support from others—and many blessings.”

The night was freezing, with snow coming thick and fast. I was warm and safe in our home, and our three children were sleeping soundly. My husband was attending a bishopric meeting at the chapel some five miles (8 km) away. At about 8:30 there was an unexpected knock at the door. Immediately I felt strongly impressed that I was not to open the door. This certainty—this warning of danger—had never before come to me so strongly.
I was therefore quite stunned to hear my husband’s brother answer my query as to who was there. My husband’s only brother, Michael, a member of the Church, lived 70 miles (110 km) away. We had a very good relationship with him, and it was not surprising that he would visit, possibly expecting to stay a few days, as he had done many times before. It wasn’t even surprising that he hadn’t called, since the phone lines were down because of the weather. I should have felt safe and relieved, and it would have been normal for me to welcome him into our home on this cold winter night.
I could not understand the strong feelings I had or why I heard myself asking him to travel to the chapel to meet my husband. After a stunned silence my brother-in-law explained in a rather strange manner that he had traveled by train, then had caught the bus to our home, and now the snow was getting quite deep.
A powerful prompting continued to impress upon me that I must not, for any reason, open the door. I calmly explained that I was sorry and repeated my request for him to travel to the chapel to meet my husband.
For the remainder of the evening I reflected on my actions. Poor Michael had traveled several hours by train and bus, and on a cold winter evening I had turned him away. How could anyone be so uncaring? Yet at the same time I was unable to deny the strong witness that I was in danger and must not open my door.
It was late and I was almost asleep when my husband returned home. We discussed the situation very briefly, my husband confirming that his brother had met him and was now sleeping downstairs. I no longer felt any fear and slept very soundly.
The next morning I puzzled over how I could explain my actions to Michael. Would he be angry with me? I took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. “Michael, about last night … ,” I began but stopped when I saw that, far from being angry, he was actually smiling.
“I’m so glad you did not let us in last night,” he said. I had no idea until then that he had not been alone. He proceeded to tell me how he had met Steve, an old school friend, on the train, and it had taken him some time to realize that Steve was high on drugs. By then Michael had already told him where he was going. Steve became more and more aggressive during the journey. He explained he urgently needed money and a place to sleep. He forcibly accompanied Michael to our home with what my brother-in-law could describe only as “the most evil of intentions.”
“So, you see,” said Michael, “I stood outside the door, praying that you would not let us in. By the time we set off on the long trip to the chapel, Steve lost interest and said he would go and find some ‘action’ somewhere else.”
I will never know what might have befallen our family or me that winter night. I will just be eternally grateful to have learned one of the most valuable lessons here on earth—to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Even when there appears to be no logical reason, we will be kept safe by relying on that still, small voice.

For many years I operated a small grocery store on the avenues in Salt Lake City. One day a salesman called on me, and I noted that he spoke with an accent not common to the West. I felt I should ask him the Golden Questions, but l couldn’t muster the courage.
Some time later he returned again to put up a display. I didn’t let the opportunity to share the gospel pass a second time, and I received a most interesting reply.
The salesman said, “It’s rather interesting that you should ask those questions. A few nights ago I was at the airport in Salt Lake City and it was extremely crowded. I hadn’t been there very long when your ‘boss’ came in. The only empty seat was right next to me, and there I was smoking a cigarette. As he sat by me I turned away from him and blew the smoke in the opposite direction. He then put his arm around me and said, ‘Never mind, young man. We know that not all of the people in the state of Utah are members of the Church.’”
Then the salesman told me that the man, President David O. McKay, my “boss,” had asked him basically the same questions that l had.
President McKay started the program “Every Member a Missionary” and set the example himself, as do all of our leaders today.

He was always tall. “By the time I was 13, I was already 182 cm (six feet). But my real growth spurt didn’t begin until my sophomore year in high school.” He reached his full height by his senior year, and, as with most tall kids, it was assumed he would play basketball. That was not to be.
““I never really liked basketball,” he noted. “The other kids and the coaches always kind of made fun of me, telling me I couldn’t jump.”
His mother urged him, instead, to try a local recreation league volleyball team. “I had never had so much fun in any sport before,” Chambers says. “I was hooked! Even though I wasn’t very good, I went home and told Mom that volleyball was the sport for me!”
Great club coaching helped him find his footing in the game, and because of his prodigious height, they made him a middle blocker. Finally, the burden of being tall began to pay-off. After a season of club volleyball, he was anxious to join his high school team and test his new skills. But disaster struck in his very first scrimmage.
““I jumped and extended myself to try and block a ball, and when I came down, I landed on the foot of the guy on the other side of the net and broke my ankle,” Chambers recounted. “I had to wear a boot everywhere after that and I didn’t get to play at all my freshman season.”
““It was frustrating to have made progress in this new sport I really liked, then lose that whole season.”
But from the ashes of that setback rose the phoenix of an all-star career. Over the next three years, Chambers became a feared opponent on the court, drawing the attention of college volleyball teams throughout the US. He turned down scholarships offered by top schools—Stanford and UCLA among them—in favour of what he truly wanted: to play for the nationally-ranked Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah (USA).
Chambers’ youth career culminated in the summer of 2022, with the victory of his Orange Coast Volleyball Club at the under-18 national club volleyball championship. Chambers was named first-team all-American by the American Volleyball Coaches Association. The kid who couldn’t jump had proven all of those early naysayers wrong.

As a matter of fact, attempts to keep illness or other problems secret can sometimes backfire. One elder heard by accident that his mother had undergone heart surgery. A frantic, long-distance phone call from England partially reassured him that she was progressing satisfactorily. But the remaining year of his mission was edged with anxiety. As he put it, “If they had leveled with me, I could have relaxed when the crisis was past, but this way, I was never sure how things really were at home.”

At 1995’s track-and-field venue in Connecticut, the LDS youths gathered near where the athletes entered the track and shook hands, gave pats on the back, and offered encouragement. The athletes’ smiles got even bigger when their LDS helpers asked for their autographs.
“They are really happy when you smile or say congratulations to them. As soon as you start talking to them, they become cheerful and talkative,” says Stephanie Perry.
That attitude rubbed off on the LDS volunteers, too.
“At other youth conferences I’ve been to, we do service, and then one of our leaders gets a letter of thanks. Half the people who worked on the project don’t even realize what we did was appreciated. It’s so much better being interactive,” says Merilee Hales. “You could see the excitement these kids had when we would shake their hands and give high-fives.”
Says Ben Stratford, “The best thing about it was the time we spent with the Special Olympians and the example they provided for me.”

I am a member of the British Army based in West Germany. When I first arrived I found it hard being away from my family and home ward (the Catford Ward in London).
The nearest LDS chapel is 22 kilometers away, and it is only possible for me to attend when a member of the German-speaking ward in Celle can collect me and take me to the chapel. I don’t yet know how to speak German, but every Sunday a member translates for me.
I am grateful for the New Era, as I’ve only been a member for three years. When my brother Philip has finished with each month’s issue, he keeps it until I get home so I can take a stack when I return to Germany.
The New Era always strengthens me when I’m down and helps me keep the Spirit of the Lord close. Thanks for such a great magazine.
Allon William Shaftoe1st Armoured Field AmbulanceRoyal Army Medical Corps

We learn of the dedication which was given to the seminary program in its very beginning by reading from a diary of John M. Whitaker, one of the early instructors of the seminary program. In April of 1915 he was employed as an instructor in the Granite Seminary with a salary of $1,500 per year. He found little to work with as he assumed his new position. His diary records:
“I had to start without the least scratch, or outline, and I thought out many approaches to the new problem before me. I had taught several years at the University of Deseret. But there I knew my course well, but to commence a course now, where here-to-fore the Bible alone had been the guide, and to meet the need of the hour when students of the age coming into high school and junior work, with strict outlines and supervision, with everything before them and now coming from the discipline of high school requirements, into religion class work where they could come if they desired or remain away, … but to take religion which was frowned down upon during the week days, only for Sundays, was a task too great to undertake alone. So I did as I have always done when presented with a task, went in humility and prayer to my Father in Heaven and in my simplicity told him my problem and asked for inspiration, guidance, wisdom and courage for the task before me. … I was unknown to most of the Faculty and students of the Granite High and so during the summer I thought out how best to make a beginning.”
He became enthusiastic about the beginning of the year in teaching at Granite High School and looked forward to registration day, on September 3, 1915. A crowd of students was on hand, and his journal entry describes the event: “Commenced a very important period of my life and one that will, I am sure affect the destiny of thousands of the youth of Zion, if the plans maturing in my mind blossom into fruition” (quoted in Lyman Clarence Pedersen Jr., “John Mills Whitaker: Diarist, Educator, Churchman” [master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1960], 167).
His diary records events step-by-step which led to the tremendous success he had in carrying forward this program over the years. Significant is the statement of the late S. Dilworth Young, one of the Seventy, who was one of Brother Whitaker’s earliest seminary students: “Had Elder A. Theodore Tuttle been clairvoyant, he would have seen in the year 1914 a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old stripling entering the first seminary instituted by the Church. Across the street from Granite High School a building had been constructed—one room in size—a teacher employed, and the school opened to students. I was that stripling. There died yesterday the third teacher of that particular seminary. The teacher was John M. Whitaker.
“I should like to make a short tribute to Brother Whitaker. He likely did not know the profound influence he had upon me as a boy, as I studied minutely under him and Guy C. Wilson before him, the detail of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. I look back upon it now, realizing that there was where I got my first detailed knowledge of these standard works. Could I have enough influence I would see to it that every boy and every girl in the Church had a like experience under a man of faith” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1960, 80).

We often hear that love can heal all wounds, but I didn’t know just how true this was until I lived it.
For years, my family struggled to find a place to belong. My two boys were diagnosed with autism and ADHD at a young age, and due to their uncontrollable and often disruptive behavior, many people weren’t understanding of their situation. In my home country of Japan, 98 percent of the population is Japanese. In any area with low diversity, it can be difficult for society to accept those who are even a little bit different.
When my children were young, I tried to enroll them in preschool. I began applying to schools in the area, but with each application, I encountered the same difficult response: as soon as the staff met my sons and found out about their condition, we were informed that the school no longer had any openings. Eventually a facility in a neighboring town welcomed us, but this was only after we were rejected by every preschool in our city.
It was incredibly painful.
Riding public transportation wasn’t much easier. Sometimes, when I would scold the boys for making too much noise on the train, they would act out, causing strangers to tell me that I was being abusive. Other times, I would restrain myself from quieting the boys out of fear of how they might react, only to have other passengers tell me that I was being neglectful.
I even had social workers insist that I place one of my children in a semipermanent facility, with contact only once every two years, because they believed I’d never be able to raise two children with autism and ADHD as a single mother. However, having personally experienced the pains of a difficult childhood—my parents divorced when I was a toddler and for various reasons weren’t able to care for me—I was determined to do my best to give my sons the deep love that every child deserves.
Several years ago, I attended a work seminar, and I noticed that some of the seminar leaders would fold their arms and bow their heads before eating lunch. These people are usually so nice, I thought to myself. Why are they in such a bad mood whenever they sit down to eat?
I quickly learned that they were praying—not sulking—and I couldn’t help but ask more questions about their faith. They were overwhelmingly kind and had such a unique spirit about them, and I yearned to know more. I learned that they were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we quickly accepted their invitation to attend church with them.
Due to his autism, my younger son was afraid of being in large groups and meeting new people, but the ward welcomed us with open arms and did everything they could to accommodate our needs. The members set aside a special room at the back of the chapel just for my son, and they fulfilled our request to avoid making eye contact with him until he felt more at ease. Even when one of my children would disrupt sacrament meeting, we were treated with the utmost respect and kindness.
I saw my sons unfold in the warmth of the ward’s embrace. They quickly made new friends, and my sons even started to attend Primary classes on days that I was unable to attend church.
We were eventually baptized, a memory that still brings tears to my eyes. At the baptismal service, the ward members—understanding my children’s fear of crowds—tiptoed into the back of the room after the boys had been seated to avoid frightening them. Afterward, we were offered a mountain of congratulatory sweets, and the love in the room was so palpable that my sons remarked, “I want to be baptized again!”
I have nothing but gratitude in my heart when I think about the deep love demonstrated by the members in our ward—a love that ultimately allowed us to find the light of the gospel. The ward perfectly encapsulated what it means to have our “hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another” (Mosiah 18:21). My family was truly blessed by the kindness of these welcoming Latter-day Saints.
It’s now been two years since my sons and I were baptized. Both of my sons have been ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood, and I’ve seen an incredible change in their demeanors.
I’m grateful for the many caring individuals who accepted my family and who helped my sons overcome their fears through the power of love. I’m grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ, through which even the deepest wounds of prejudice can be healed. And above all, I’m grateful for a loving Heavenly Father, who prepared a way for my family to find peace and belonging, even when I couldn’t see what that path would be.
I’ve learned that as we make room for our differences, we make room for greater love. Each of us is a beloved child of heavenly parents, and as we remember this truth, we can all—no matter where we are or who we are—become one in Christ (see Doctrine and Covenants 38:27).

Q: Experience has a lot to do with that also, doesn’t it?
Freed: Yes, that’s a good point. At one point in my career I said to myself, “Well, I’ve lost plenty of matches by underhitting the ball; from now on, when the big point comes up, I’m going to lose it by overhitting. I’m really going to sock the ball.” So I started losing them by socking the ball! But I really did better in the long run by hitting hard. I lost some good points when I did that, but it loosened me up, and later I won a lot more because I was a little more cool.

One beautiful spring day, I heard a knock at my front door—then another and another. It sounded like the knocks came from little hands.
Dropping a basket of clean laundry on the couch, I opened the door. There stood Wade, Savannah, Mace, and Zane. At once they began showering me with questions: “Is it OK if we pull the weeds in your garden?” “May Mom and Dad trim your bushes?” “What color are your favorite flowers?”
For a moment I stood there speechless. Then I asked, “Would you like to come in to visit?”
The children smiled up at me. “Oh, no,” they said. “We’re not here to visit. We’re here to help you!”
The children showed me the tools they had brought. “May we get started?” they asked. “We will be careful of your purple flowers.”
Soon eight little helping hands were busy at work as four happy voices filled the air. All day long they worked, pulling weeds and planting flowers.
What a beautiful example of love and service those children set for me. I will always remember their kindness—and the gorgeous marigolds they planted in my garden with their little helping hands.

About six months before the end of the war, I was assigned to an unit where the new incoming young people were trained on radar equipment. We were stationed in Seesen in the Harz Mountains, and I was about 17. One day we had to write a composition about Germany, and mine was judged the best one. The officer had me stand in front of the whole unit, and he said: “Congratulations for writing the best composition. I expect you to volunteer now to become an officer for the German Reich. We need people with your potential, and I expect your written application tonight.”
“I don’t have to wait until tonight,” I said. “I refuse.”
He got really furious and wanted to punish me. He said, “Tomorrow, I will ask you again, and the next day again.”
“Well, I’m not going,” I told him. I was not in tune with the spirit of national socialism. My father was a friend of the Jewish people, and we had always prayed for them in our home. The officer asked me what I wanted to do. “I want to go with the rest of the group,” I said. He told me if I didn’t want to volunteer I was ordered to stay behind and train the young people. There was no other choice.
Although I was forced to stay in that group where I didn’t want to stay, once that officer said I had to stay I felt very secure about it, like that was where I was supposed to be. All my friends were sent to Russia. Only one came back—all the others were killed. The Lord guided me to be in the right place at the right time for my life to be spared.

Many times the most beautiful examples of obedience and service are given by ordinary people who live close to us. Sister Ana Rita de Jesus, an elderly widow, lived in Anápolis, Brazil. She could not read or write. The missionaries would go to her home every week to read the scriptures to her. She was loving and kind. Every Sunday she asked the missionaries to help her fill out a tithing slip. Sometimes her tithing and offerings were not more than a few cents, but she knew the law and wanted to obey it. After paying her tithing, she would walk into the room where the sacrament meeting was held in a rented house and would place a flower on the pulpit. In doing so, she served her brothers and sisters, bringing beauty to the place where we worshiped the Lord. That sister, in a very simple way, taught us obedience and service. She knew that obeying the commandments is the best preparation to serve.

A few years ago I was in a Salt Lake hospital emergency room with my sons and a neighbor boy—the result of a backyard touch football game.
While we waited in the emergency room for the doctor to put one of the participants back together, we saw a young lady brought into the hospital. She may have been seventeen—tall, willowy, well dressed, and having a wild reaction to an overdose of drugs. As we watched, she collapsed, and I thought, There is no way this child can survive this experience. I wondered how she had come to this sad situation in her life. Had she not heard the words of the prophets? Had she heard them and laughed as if they were the warnings of men out of touch with the realities of a modern world? Had one of us been negligent in our opportunities to teach her? Had her parents known the truth but not been willing or able to help her understand?
While waiting in that hospital thinking, pondering, and praying for her, I recalled a principle the Lord teaches us in the 89th section of the Doctrine and Covenants. It is found in the fourth verse:
“Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation.”

Tanna Island, in the Tafea Province of Vanuatu, is a 45-minute flight—or a very long boat ride—to Efate Island, where the mission office for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is located.
During the global pandemic, travel to Vanuatu was severely restricted, making it difficult for the Church in the area to send out or receive missionaries. Eventually, Tanna Island had no full-time missionaries and missionary work was forced to slow down.
In early 2022, as life began returning to normal, Vanuatu’s mission president, Mark Messick, was delighted to receive a request from Tanna’s district president: “Send missionaries as soon as possible!”
President Messick learned that while Tanna was without full-time missionaries, local members of the Church and returned missionaries on the island continued to teach the gospel to their friends and neighbours, and they had around 85 candidates ready to be interviewed and baptised. President Messick immediately arranged to send his assistants to Tanna.
The plan was postponed because Tanna’s live volcano started rumbling. Then, a small cyclone hit the island, causing widespread damage—further solidifying Vanuatu’s status as number one on the World Risk Index for the likelihood of natural disasters. Just as Tanna began to recover from the cyclone, a sudden outbreak of COVID-19 shut all of Vanuatu down, and once again, travel was restricted.
It wasn’t until the middle of August that President Messick was finally able to send his APs to Tanna to interview the baptismal candidates and prepare them to join the Church. By then, President Messick was worried that the long wait had deterred some of them, that their interest might have waned.
But when Elder Silas Toa and Elder Brian Moses Nalin arrived—armed with a stack of paperwork for the baptismal interviews—they found the opposite to be true. Not only were all 85 still eager to join the Church, but their numbers had increased by 29. Now, 114 candidates were faithfully waiting to be interviewed and baptised. The elders embarked on their tour of all eight of the Church’s branches in Tanna.
After they interviewed and baptised six people at the first branch, Elder Toa and Elder Nalin headed to Saetsiwi, an isolated area tucked high in the mountains. They had no way to contact the Saetsiwi Branch president but knew he was expecting them at some point, so the missionaries drove their truck as far as they could then continue on foot for the remaining 3-hour trek. When they finally arrived, the branch president was nowhere to be found. The elders had hiked all that way in vain.
Then the big rain fell. Everyone in Saetsiwi knows that when it starts to rain hard, getting off the mountain is treacherous. Elder Toa and Elder Nalin rushed back to their truck, knowing every second counted before the local rivers swelled and became impassable. They made it to the truck in time to drive through the first and second rivers, but they knew the third river would be a challenge.
Sure enough, their truck got stuck partway. They tried to push it—no luck. They called the district president, and soon help arrived, but the truck still wouldn’t move. The river rose and flowed so swiftly that the helpers had to get out and move to safety. Then, Elder Nalin spotted something else that worried him. He saw that the waters in next river over—which converged with this river—had become torrential and threatened to break through.
In his mind, it seemed to Elder Nalin that an invisible force was holding that third river back, as though buying time for them—but he knew it wouldn’t be for long. The torrent was racing.
Elder Toa and Elder Nalin are examples of the finest possible young men from Vanuatu—responsible and excellent in every way. To them, a truck is of almost incomprehensible expense, especially in a country where families can barely afford to educate their children, much less buy a vehicle. The elders were determined to preserve the Church’s truck at all costs, but now the water was up to its door handles. They called their mission president and asked, “What should we do?”
President Messick’s response was: “Thank you for calling. Now get out of the truck and save yourselves. I don’t care about the truck; I care about you.”
As they rushed out of the truck, Elder Toa climbed into the back seat to grab their scriptures and the 114 interview papers they needed for the baptisms. He couldn’t see them anywhere. Then a voice yelled, “The water is coming! Get out of the truck!” and Elder Toa slipped out of the back door just as the truck was swept downstream.
As soon as the elders realised that their scriptures and the 114 interview papers were still in the truck—which was now well out of sight—they used the power of the priesthood and commanded the truck to protect their precious documents. “That’s what you can do with the priesthood,” the young men said later, with absolute confidence. “You can command.”
Elder Toa and Elder Nalin managed to pull themselves out to safety, and there by the side of the river, they knelt and prayed. As they prayed that the truck would be safe and that their scriptures and interview papers would stay dry, the missionaries felt a peaceful assurance that all would be fine. Then they walked the rest of the way off the mountain.
The next day, the elders received a call from the district president. Saetsiwi’s branch president had found their truck, 250 meters downstream. When the Elders arrived to retrieve it, they discovered not a dent or a scratch on the body of the vehicle, despite its journey in the river, past trees, rocks, and debris.
The inside of the truck wasn’t so fortunate. It was drenched. The engine suffered electrical damage, and everything in the cab—pamphlets, manuals, books—was soaked beyond repair, except for the Elders’ scriptures and the 114 interview papers. These sat in plain sight above everything else, completely dry.
While the truck was being repaired, Elder Toa and Elder Nalin resumed their tour on foot. At their next stop, they interviewed and baptised 48 candidates before continuing right across Tanna Island. “When you get tired of walking,” one of them told a fellow missionary, “You walk with your heart.”
Their hearts and a priesthood miracle helped these faithful elders reach and bring all 114 candidates safely into the Church of Jesus Christ.

“Not long ago, my dad was caught in the beaters of a forage harvester bin. I know that Heavenly Father gave him the strength to break the drive chain to prevent further damage. As it was, his skull was broken in ten places and his neck was cut open to the windpipe. He said prayers and was given a blessing before he was raced from Kingaroy, where the accident happened, to Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland.
“From this I learned that someone could be lost at any time, so we should all endeavor to lead a worthy and clean life. This has brought me closer to my dad and taught me that if we have faith, the Lord will look after us. I love my mom and dad, and I know the Church is true and that Jesus lives.”
John Taylor, 14Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia

The panel discussions had everyone’s interest. All the participants were given slips of paper. They could write any question they wanted discussed without a name attached. They put all the questions into a hat and then the stake president, several bishops, and Young Women leaders would attempt to answer the questions as they were drawn at random. The panel did reserve the right to refer the question to someone more knowledgeable or simply not answer.
“All the questions were interesting,” said Jaran Rosaker, Oslo Third Ward. His friend, Tarjei Gylseth agreed, “And they gave good answers as well.”

When the stranger with bloody feet asked to come in, Father questioned the “new” religion the stranger talked about. But Father read Brother Reed’s Book of Mormon and was willing to hear Brigham Young preach. It was Mary Ann’s best friend, Betsy, who called Brother Reed and Brigham Young fakes!
Just as Mary Ann returned to sit with her family at the meeting, Brigham Young was getting up to speak again. He told of the need to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. After testifying that the Savior lived and spoke to a prophet today, Brother Young told them to repent and to be baptized.
One old man from the back called, “I’ve been baptized. Why do I need to be baptized again?”
Brother Young told them about the authority brought to earth by John the Baptist to Joseph Smith. Joseph gave that authority to him and to Brother Reed. Brigham Young asked if any wanted to be baptized.
Mary Ann’s mother stood up. Then her father stood up, and Nathan and Mary Ann did too. No one else in the whole congregation did. Brother Reed beamed at them. They sat back down, and Brother Young closed the meeting. As Mary Ann walked by, Betsy turned her face away.
Mary Ann touched her arm. “I’m sorry I got mad at you. It’s just that I believe what these men are telling me. I know it’s true, and I want you to know it too.”

The first meeting I attended was a fast and testimony meeting. I came late, and as I walked into the chapel, a young woman was crying and talking about how the gospel helped her with her problems. After listening to her and to some of the other members, I realized that all of them had problems. They weren’t perfect, and they knew it. But I could also see they had something strong inside them. Their faith in God was helping them. With that kind of faith, I thought, maybe I could overcome my problems, too.

The balloons made their journeys, and much like the parable in the scriptures, some seeds fell on fertile ground. A message written by Laura West in the Salt Lake Cottonwood Height Stake was found by one who desperately needed her encouragement. Laura had written, in part, “Keep your hopes up and rise like the balloon. Always have faith in Christ and Christ will have faith in you.” Her balloon was found only a couple of miles from where it was released. The man who found it wrote to Laura that he was a member of the Church but had fallen away 18 years earlier while he was in his teens. He told of his struggle to be reunited with his wife and children and the decision he made to come back to the Church. He wrote, “I’ve been reading the Book of Mormon and praying since Sunday night (the day after I got your letter). I went to the bishop of my ward that night and told him I knew it was time for me to straighten out my life. … If only you could feel the peace and tranquility that has come to me since I began the reading and prayer. It’s truly like the difference between night and day. To top off my own feelings that I’m on the right track, I picked up your letter. You said you hoped your letter would brighten my day. It not only brightened my day, it was a godsend! I will remember your letter forever.” He signed it “Your friend you’ve never met” and his name.