Gospel Story Finder

Allison Bowman of Chandler, Arizona, explains her way of saying no. “I don’t preach; I just say no. You can’t be rude or they’ll think you’re stuck up. I just let them know what my standards are, and that’s the way I am. They can’t change me.

“When I moved to Arizona, there were some older guys in my debate class who wanted me to ditch class and go out to lunch with them. I told them, ‘No, I don’t do that.’

“They used to ask me to go on dates too. Every time they’d ask me, I’d tell them, ‘No, I can’t date until I’m 16.’ I must have explained it 100 times. But now they kind of look out for me. We’re all still good friends.”

When President Spencer W. Kimball was nine years old, his job on the family farm was milking from two to nine cows every day. Milking cows can become boring, so he thought of things to do while he milked that were interesting and good and fun. He practiced squirting a stream of milk into the mouths of the cats that gathered around at milking time. He memorized every word of the Articles of Faith and the Ten Commandments to the beat of milk squirts hitting the pail. He copied most of the songs in the hymnbook on sheets of paper and memorized them. On a one-legged stool, with his head pressed against the cow’s side, he sang them to the cows.

President Kimball made his spirit clean and pure and free by filling his mind with worthwhile things while he worked. How can you do the same thing?

On the way home from church, Anna remembered the little slip of paper her teacher had given her. “Mom, guess what! I’m giving a talk in Primary next Sunday.”
“That’s great,” Mom said. “On what?”
“I have to talk about the Restoration. But I’m not sure what that is.”
“Restoration means that God brought back, or restored, everything He wants His Church to have,” Mom said. “Through the Prophet Joseph Smith, He brought back temples, the priesthood, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Without the Restoration, we wouldn’t have the Church!”
Anna nodded. “I guess that makes sense. But I don’t think I can explain it like you did.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” Mom said as they got home. “Come with me.”
Anna followed Mom to the family room. They had started a puzzle last night, and the pieces were still spread out on a small table.
“Think of the gospel like a finished puzzle.” Mom picked up a piece. “Many pieces of the picture were on the earth at different times. But after Jesus and the Apostles died, many gospel truths were lost or changed. Those pieces of truth needed to be brought back.”
“So then what happened?” Anna shuffled some of the loose pieces.
“Many years later God called a young farm boy to bring all the pieces back and put them together like when Jesus was on the earth. Who do you think that was?”
“Joseph Smith!” Anna said, smiling. “I think I’m starting to get it.” She and Mom talked more about Joseph Smith and the different pieces of the gospel that God brought back through him.
The rest of the week, Anna wrote and practiced her talk. She prayed to Heavenly Father that she could be brave and share her message in Primary.
On Sunday, when it was time for Anna’s talk, she stood up, took a deep breath, and held up a puzzle on a board so everyone could see. All the pieces were together in the puzzle.
“A long time ago, many of the important pieces of the gospel were on the earth. When Jesus and His Apostles died, some pieces got lost.” Anna took some pieces out of the puzzle and set them down. “Then Heavenly Father and Jesus called Joseph Smith as a prophet to bring back the missing pieces of the gospel. This is called the Restoration.” She picked up a puzzle piece to show the Primary. On the back were the words “Priesthood power.”
Then Anna showed the rest of the pieces. She read the back of each piece before she put it in its spot in the puzzle. “A living prophet … twelve Apostles … temple work for eternal families … baptism by immersion … laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
Anna held up the finished puzzle. “Now we have all the pieces of the gospel. That means we can see the big picture of how we can be happy and live with Heavenly Father again someday. I am grateful for the Restoration. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

Illustrations by Shauna Mooney Kawasaki
Boy: Hey! What do you two think you’re doing?
Matt: What does it look like? We’re cleaning up this vacant lot.
Boy: Why?
Mandy: Heavenly Father gave us a beautiful world. We’re just trying to help keep it that way.
Boy: Oh, right, the two of you are going to save the earth all by yourselves!
Mandy: Two not enough? Join us, and we’ll be three.
Boy 2: Hey! What do you three think you’re doing?

Brothers and sisters, I am personally grateful for the promptings we received as a Primary presidency. During the general conference when we were sustained, President Gordon B. Hinckley described some of the terrible atrocities that have been inflicted on children throughout the world. We read in newspapers and periodicals of the evil influences that are invading our homes.
As a new and very concerned Primary presidency, we prayed and searched the scriptures and were led to a verse in Isaiah that describes conditions during the Millennium: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord” (Isa. 11:9). That was exactly what we wanted to have happen. We didn’t want any child to be hurt or destroyed, but we didn’t want to wait for the Millennium. We wanted that to happen right now. If our Primaries were full of the knowledge of the Lord, if our homes were full of the knowledge of the Lord, there would be peace and righteousness and the children would not be hurt in any way. We prayed to know how we could help that happen and were led to 2 Nephi 25:26 [2 Ne. 25:26]. Our homes and our Primaries will be full of the knowledge of the Lord when “we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ.”
We are so grateful for the peace and hope these scriptures gave us and for the direction we received through the Holy Ghost to encourage Primary leaders to have Christ-centered Primaries.

Mariam Conarroe, 12, yawned. She was tired and had a right to be. “Only three days,” she said to herself. “And we’ve done everything.”
Even before the trip began, the schedule had been full. Six months ago, as part of the preparations, everyone had been challenged to read the Book of Mormon. There had been regular reminders and repeated encouragement. Everybody had at least read some of it. Then there was the planning, and the preparation—how many times had they talked in Young Women classes about coming here, about how fun this would be?
Then—was it just a few days ago?—Mariam remembered getting up early, piling into trucks and cars, getting teased and teasing back, and suddenly being in Vernal, at a service station where Tyrannosaurus rex waves at motorists, urging them to buy gasoline.
From there the next three days rushed by in a blur. A visit to the bone quarry at Dinosaur National Monument. Two hours at a water slide. Pitching tents for camp. Skits and talks and firesides. Washing your hair with the help of a bucket. Floating the Green River—not once, but twice. A morning spent alone, reading the Book of Mormon and praying. Testimony meeting. A service project clearing aspen seedlings at the base of a fire lookout tower. Biting into juicy, sweet fruit at a watermelon feast.
Mariam yawned again, tired but happy.
“It’s been busy.”
She felt something comfortable, but it was more than the glow from the campfire. There was a wonderful feeling inside of her, a knowledge that here among leaders and friends she could do good things and be accepted.
She wrapped her quilt around her. It sure felt nice to be warm.

But it was in 1982 that the Komadinas made ballooning history. It started out as a service to the elderly in the Albuquerque 5th Ward, where the Komadinas live and where Jenny was at the time Beehive president.
“There was one couple, Brother and Sister Pat Miller, who had never been able to get out to the Fiesta,” Jenny said. “We thought it would be fun if we brought the Fiesta, or at least part of it, to them.” So instead of launching their two balloons at Cutter Field the Komadinas inflated them at the ward parking lot.
The youth of the ward sponsored a “balloon breakfast” and provided transportation for older members who might not otherwise have a chance to see a balloon up close.
“I can still remember what it felt like to touch the fabric, look at the basket, and watch them use hot air to make it fly,” Brother Miller said. “It was wonderful to think the youth would organize something so we could have a chance to see.” The breakfast also helped to fund a temple trip for the Young Men and Young Women.
After breakfast, many of the ward members joined the chase crew—the people and vehicles who follow along behind the balloon on the ground and assist when it lands. That’s where the history comes in. The Komadinas hold the record for the Fiesta’s largest chase crew ever—97 people in 23 vehicles. “Everywhere you looked you’d see them following you,” Amy said.

I saw that happen when I was a young man. I was the first assistant in a priests quorum. The bishop called me one day at my home. He said that he wanted me to go with him to visit a widow in great need. He said he needed me.
As I waited for him to pick me up at my home, I was troubled. I knew the bishop had strong and wise counselors. One was a famous judge. The other ran a large company and would later become a General Authority. The bishop himself would someday serve as a General Authority. Why was the bishop saying to an inexperienced priest, “I need your help”?
Well, I know better now what he might have said to me: “The Lord needs to bless you.” At the home of the widow, I saw him, to my amazement, tell the woman that she could get no help from the Church until she filled out the budget form he had left with her earlier. On the way home, as he saw how shocked I was, he chuckled at my surprise and said, “Hal, when she gets control of her spending, she will be able to help others.”

One year after Mohamed Turay had joined the Church in Caldwell, Liberia, the 1989 war broke out. As rebels moved closer to Caldwell, he saw people in his community leaving. He had a dream in which a bomb fell near his home. Finally, after seeing an article in the newspaper describing how people were being beheaded, Mohamed knew he and his family were in danger and he resolved to flee Caldwell. Mohamed believed the dream was a warning from God. “It was a blessing for my family,” said Mohamed. “A serious blessing.”
“Come,” he told Abie, his wife. “Today, we’ll not sleep here.” Mohamed took Abie and their children to the border where they would be safe. But he had to return to Caldwell to make final arrangements for their departure. Just hours before rebels took the city, Mohamed managed to escape and join his family.

Whenever I lose my patience
And holler, argue, or whine,
Or forget about sharing nicely
And scream at others, “That’s mine!”
I just remember Jesus
And the children ’round his knee.
I whisper a prayer for kindness,
And quickly I make peace.

My friends and I were playing together one afternoon when one of them said, “We’re going to Primary. Would you like to come?” Primary was held on a weekday then. I went. I was interested in the lessons and being with my friends. I knew my teacher cared about me, and the Primary songs touched my heart.

After a few weeks, the Primary teacher asked me if I would like to learn more about the Church. She invited my parents to learn too. The ward missionaries came to our home. My parents chose not to join the Church, but they could see my desire and said I could be baptized. After my baptism, I continued to go to Primary with my friends but only occasionally attended Sunday meetings.

Elder Wall from the Spain Barcelona Mission had a wealth of information. “I didn’t turn straw into gold; I used hay, sheep, a TV, spare parts, wood, cars, and a lot of paint,” he said.
Hyrum was speechless. This guy knew the secret. We begged him to tell us more. He laughed.
“I’ve been working since I can remember. When I was eight my dad put me on a tractor and pointed me at a hay field. I worked when other kids fished. Sometimes I would dream about lying on a riverbank, but I don’t regret working. I painted curbs with house numbers when I was ten. I sold candy bars in junior high and made more money than the school store. I picked berries. I learned to drive a truck before I drove a car. That led to driving a forklift and later a berry harvester for $8.00 an hour. I’ve laid over 100,000 feet of sprinkler pipe; planted shrubbery; trimmed, pruned, and mowed lots of lawns. During high school, Ernie Harwood and I formed a housepainting partnership. He completely paid for his mission to Japan with this job. We bid for jobs with a realty company. Before I left I trained one of the priests, who will carry on with the contacts we made. I hope they keep passing the job around the quorum. I earned a lot of my mission fund this way.
“The most unusual job I had was six weeks as a sheepherder. I lived in a camper 70 miles from the nearest settlement. There was no hot water, shower, or washing machine. The weather was often 15 degrees with a 30-mile-an-hour wind. I cared for sick sheep and helped with the lambing.
“My favorite work was the least profitable. I love to invent. I formed a direct sales company partnership to sell my inventions all across the United States. I even invented a device to prevent ewes from rolling onto their newborns. My boss said it would save millions of dollars by preventing lamb deaths.
“I’ve chopped several cords of wood, delivered and stacked it. There are opportunities all around if you keep your eyes open. I bought things at auctions, then cleaned, fixed, and sold them at a profit, still giving the customer a bargain. This became a game. A popcorn machine, calves, mag wheels, televisions, cars, and motorcycles all turned into gold.
“You can spin anything into gold if you turn yourself into an expert first. I never watched television. I read how-to books. The best advice I can give you is to keep your eyes open, read and learn, and listen to your dad.”

When Gary Stevenson was about 11 years old, his father took him hiking. “I was jumping from rock to rock in front of my father,” he remembers. “I intended to climb a large rock and look down. As I clambered toward the top of the boulder, he grabbed me by my belt and pulled me down.
“‘What’s the matter?’ I said, and he replied, ‘Don’t climb on that rock. Let’s just keep on the trail.’ A moment later as we looked down from higher up the trail, we could see a rattlesnake on top of the rock, basking in the sun.
“‘That’s why I pulled you back,’ my father explained.
“Later as we were driving home, I knew he was waiting for me to ask the question: ‘How did you know the snake was there?’ He said, ‘Let me teach you about the Holy Ghost.’ We had an impromptu lesson about the roles the Holy Ghost can have in our lives: protector, comforter, and one who testifies. ‘In this case,’ my father shared, ‘the Holy Ghost was protecting you through me. He warned me to pull you away.’”
This experience, though simple, helped Elder Stevenson to understand that when promptings of the Spirit are received, they should be accepted and acted upon. It was one of many lessons gleaned from his father.

It may seem natural to react to a situation by giving back what is given to us. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Reflecting on his horrendous wartime experiences, Viktor Frankl recalled: “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (Man’s Search for Meaning, rev. ed. [1984], 86; emphasis added).

One ever remembers that Christmas day when giving replaced getting. In my life, this took place in my tenth year. As Christmas approached, I yearned as only a boy can yearn for an electric train. My desire was not to receive the economical and everywhere-to-be-found windup model train; rather, I wanted one that operated through the miracle of electricity. The times were those of economic depression; yet Mother and Dad, through some sacrifice I am sure, presented to me on Christmas morning a beautiful electric train.
For hours I operated the transformer, watching the engine first pull its cars forward, then push them backward around the track. Mother entered the living room and said to me that she had purchased a windup train for Mrs. Hansen’s son, Mark, who lived down the lane. I asked if I could see the train. The engine was short and blocky, not long and sleek like the expensive model I had received. However, I did take notice of an oil tanker car that was part of his inexpensive set. My train had no such car, and pangs of envy began to be felt. I put up such a fuss that Mother succumbed to my pleadings and handed me the oil tanker car. She said, “If you need it more than Mark, you take it.” I put it with my train set and felt pleased with the result.
Mother and I took the remaining cars and the engine down to Mark Hansen. The young boy was a year or two older than I. He had never anticipated such a gift and was thrilled beyond words. He wound the key in his engine, it not being electric like mine, and was overjoyed as the engine and two cars, plus a caboose, went around the track.
Then Mother wisely asked, “What do you think of Mark’s train, Tommy?”
I felt a keen sense of guilt and became very much aware of my selfishness. I said to Mother, “Wait just a moment. I’ll be right back.”
As swiftly as my legs could carry me, I ran home, picked up the oil tanker car plus an additional car from my train set, and ran back down the lane to the Hansen home, joyfully saying to Mark, “We forgot to bring two cars that belong to your train.” Mark coupled the two extra cars to his set. I watched the engine make its labored way around the track and felt supreme joy, difficult to describe and impossible to forget. The spirit of Christmas had filled my very soul.

“Get up, Kevin.”
I looked over to the other side of the room at my brother’s bed. He lay asleep, curled up tightly in the blankets against the cold. This morning ritual began a year ago when Dad had traded half the rabbits, complete with cages, for a milk goat named Colleen. It was my job to milk her while Kevin fed her and cleaned out her cage.
“What time is it?” Kevin asked as he got up and dressed, noticing the light filtering into the room.
“It’s six-thirty.” I was fully clothed and standing by my dresser, putting on my coat and knit cap. The coat smelled of alfalfa hay and dried milk.
“Hi, Mom,” we said in unison as we walked downstairs. I opened the back door, grabbing the clean steel milking pail on our way out. As we walked toward the barn, we noticed that water from the lake had vaporized into a thin fog that drifted across the nearby horse pastures. The ground, just beginning to thaw, felt like thick peanut butter on our boots.
“Kevin, what do you want for your birthday?” I asked. For the past two days I had been trying to think of what to get my seven-year-old brother. I didn’t have any money to buy a present, and there was no snow to shovel to earn a few dollars, either.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said as he scooped up some alfalfa pellets with a cut-out bleach bottle and poured them into a container by Colleen’s milking stand. “Why don’t you do my chores for me tomorrow morning?” He was referring to a tradition in our family—if it was your birthday, other members of the family did your chores for you.
“OK.” But I wanted to get him something else, something more than what was done traditionally.
“Tim and Kevin,” Dad called, “it’s time for breakfast.”
After leading Colleen back to her pen, we carried the milk into the house and placed it on the counter, then sat down to eat. The steaming cereal, cooled by yesterday’s milk, tasted sweet because of the addition of honey and raisins.
“Time for school,” Mom said when we had finished eating. After grabbing our schoolbooks, we returned to the living room for family prayer, then left for school.
Kevin’s elementary school was just under two miles away, while I only had to walk a half-mile to the middle school. Each day Kevin silently wished we lived a quarter mile to the south, making him eligible to ride the school bus that picked up many of his classmates. On most mornings, we witnessed them entering the bus at the beginning of its route. Kevin would stop, watch for a moment, then continue walking, most of the time arriving at his school long after the bus had dropped off its passengers. It was a cruel part of his day, especially on snowy or really cold winter mornings.
“See you later,” I said, watching him walk away when we reached my school.
All day I thought more about his birthday. I remembered last summer, when he had weeded all of the neighbor’s vegetable garden to earn money to buy me a present. It was a small, single-bladed pocketknife he had bought secondhand at a thrift store. He had removed the rust with steel wool, then shined the blade and the handle with silver polish.
That night when I said my prayers, I asked Heavenly Father to help me find Kevin a gift.
After a fitful sleep, I awoke before the morning light had entered our bedroom. I dressed quietly in the darkness and glanced over to see Kevin wrapped in his blankets. I tiptoed downstairs and outside.
The landscape had changed from the morning before. A snowstorm had arrived, and the snow blew around me. A little blew into the house before I could close the door. I hurried to the barn, wanting to complete the morning chores quickly.
Just as I finished, I noticed something tucked into a corner of the barn. I hadn’t seen it since the summer before, and it gave me an idea for Kevin’s birthday.
I quickly ran back to the house to drop off the milk, grabbed a bucket of warm, soapy water and some old rags and carried them out to the barn. The dust of a winter and the rust from the dampness made cleaning difficult, but I kept working. Finally the call for breakfast came.
The smell of bacon and pancakes, food reserved for Sundays before church and other special days, met me at the door. We sat and ate, Kevin happy because of his seventh birthday, and me nervous, hoping he would like my present for him.
“Time for school,” Mom said as Kevin finished the last pancake. After family prayer, we went out into the gray snowstorm.
“Kevin, I have a present for you. It’s in the barn.” He followed me around the house and into the barn.
There stood our old red wagon, washed clean, then polished with car wax I had found on a shelf above the alfalfa pellets. A small wool blanket covered the bottom, and on the side of the wagon I had carefully painted “School Bus” with some old house paint.
“Get in, Kevin. You don’t have to walk to school today. This is your bus.”
His face lit up, and he scrambled in. I put another blanket around him so he would keep warm.
I pulled the wagon out of the barn, past the house, and onto the snow-packed road. Mom and Dad stood on the porch, watching the delight on Kevin’s face.
“Everyone off!” I yelled as we pulled onto the sidewalk just in front of the entrance to Kevin’s school. I tried to sound like a bus driver, and he laughed with me at my attempt. I hurried back down the road with the wagon, and once I arrived at my own school, I hid it in some bushes.
When the final bell rang, I ran outside, rescued the wagon from the bushes, and hurried back to the elementary school.
I arrived just after the bell rang, and saw Kevin with two excited friends. “Tim, can they come with us?”
“Sure,” I said. “Everybody ‘booooard,” I yelled like a bus driver. Kevin climbed in first; the other two squeezed in behind him.
By the time I pulled the wagon to the second boy’s home, I was really tired.
“Tim, I’ll pull you the rest of the way home,” Kevin offered.
“No, it’s your birthday. I want to do this.” That night as I got into bed, I felt too tired to pray. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been more tired. My legs and back ached, and my hands were sore and blistered from gripping the wagon handle. I lay in the darkness, thinking about the presents Kevin had received from Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and me. Just before I drifted off to sleep, I heard “Tim?”
“Yeah.”
“Out of all the presents I got today, yours was the best.”
“Thanks,” I said. Then I remembered my prayer from the night before. I crawled out of bed, knelt on the cold wood floor, and thanked Heavenly Father for helping me find my brother a birthday gift.

Before I came on a mission, I struggled to know whether I should go. Eventually I decided to ask Heavenly Father, who truly knows everything we go through and knows if we need to serve a mission. Through prayer I received a confirmation that I needed to go. I know that Heavenly Father answers prayers. Go to Him with your questions, and He will answer you according to your faith and His will and timing.
Sister Terpend, age 21, Jamaica Kingston Mission

We did two other things in obedience to the counsel of our leaders. We decided to give our children good food so that their bodies would be healthy, and a good education so that their minds would be strong. As a result, our children are all good students. Our oldest son, Moroni, who is eighteen, is studying at the University of São Paulo, one of the largest and best universities in South America.

“The most visible evidence of the benefits of Preach My Gospel has been that the missionaries all seem to be leaders,” says President Jeffrey R. Morrow of the New York New York South Mission. One elder wrote in a weekly report to President Morrow, “I have had two or three times more success in the past six months than in the previous year.”

Ronald A. Rasband
(113) Ronald A. Rasband counsels a friend who is experiencing a “crisis of faith.”