Gospel Story Finder

In February of 2016, my wife Nancy passed away after an 11-year struggle with breast cancer. The overwhelming grief I felt in the first months after she died would be impossible to describe to one who has not experienced this kind of a loss. Sorrow, anguish, misery, pain—none of these words do it justice. It was unbearable.
I have long understood that Jesus Christ “descended below all things” (D&C 88:6) so that He would be able “to succor [give relief or aid to] his people according to their infirmities” (Alma 7:12). This means that the power of the Savior’s Atonement extends beyond providing for the Resurrection and for the redemption from sins. Through this power, He can also heal us in our times of suffering and need. In my grief, I urgently—almost frantically—tried to learn what I needed to do to activate this aspect of the Savior’s power in my life. For weeks I searched the scriptures and talks by the General Authorities of the Church. I sincerely believed that, at the cost of considerable pain and sacrifice to Himself, the Savior knew the pain I was experiencing. But how did His knowing that help me? Since He suffered this for me, what did I need to do to receive the succoring that He thereby knows how to provide?
After much searching, study, prayer, and temple worship, I began to understand. First of all, I started to see more clearly that the Lord already had been succoring, comforting, and supporting our family, especially in the weeks leading up to Nancy’s death. There were marvelous spiritual experiences that I now recognize to be blessings that come from the healing and strengthening power available to us because of the Savior’s Atonement. And just knowing that the Savior was already taking care of us in a very individualized way was, in and of itself, immensely comforting. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego of old, He has been with us in the “fiery furnace” (Daniel 3:17) of our affliction.
I also learned that there are some things required of us in order to receive the Lord’s comfort and healing. Most importantly, we have to trust in Him. That can be a difficult thing to do. Why should I trust in God when He could have prevented Nancy’s death in the first place? In answer to this question, I continually ponder something that the Lord told the Prophet Joseph Smith:
“Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation” (D&C 58:3).
We were blessed with many signs that the manner and timing of Nancy’s death were according to the Lord’s will. I have come to understand that an omniscient and loving Father has allowed us to suffer these things because, in His perfect design for our family’s exaltation, this affliction is somehow necessary. Knowing that, I understand that my part in His design is not just to endure it but to “endure it well” (D&C 121:8). To the extent that I can consecrate this tribulation to Him, I will be not only succored but also sanctified. I have already experienced this in many ways.
I have counseled our children to do what I have learned in this process myself:
Let the pain of hard experiences drive you toward greater discipleship.
Pour out your heart in prayer.
If you feel anger toward God for allowing tragedies to happen, beseech Him to replace that anger with faith and submission.
Covenant that you will love Him and be faithful to the end.
Drink from the word of God constantly—from the scriptures and talks and writings of modern prophets and inspired teachers.
Go to the temple with a hunger to be taught the things of eternity.
Find people for whom a personal crisis is becoming a crisis of faith, and strengthen them with your testimony of these doctrines.

When Maria walked up in front of the class, her knees were wobbly because she had never given a talk in church before. She was grateful for her notes, because suddenly she had forgotten everything she was supposed to say. Finally, after a quick look at her notebook, Maria began: “Five years ago my mother and I were living in Germany, where I was born. I was in kindergarten then, and my mother was in medical school, studying to become a doctor. My father had just died. The following year my mother graduated, and she had the opportunity to do her internship in Baltimore, Maryland. That’s how we came to the United States.
“On the plane coming over, we sat next to two young men who said they were Mormon missionaries. They had spent two years in Germany preaching the gospel. My mother and I had never met a Mormon before, and we thought they were very brave to leave their homes for such a long time.
“After we had been living in Baltimore for about six months, my mother found out that a doctor she was working with was a Latter-day Saint. She told him about the two missionaries she had met and how impressed she had been by them. The doctor invited us to his home later on, and we began to attend church with him and his family. After a few months my mother was baptized. When I turned eight, I was baptized too.”

I have seen the contrast between those who have spiritual confidence in the Resurrection and others who are confused and uncertain about our postmortal condition. I was inspired by one mother who faced the untimely death of a two-year-old daughter with serenity, despite her deep sorrow. She attributed the peace she felt to her faith in a merciful God and in life everlasting. She was confident that this sweet child was encompassed in the arms of God’s love and that she and her daughter would be together again.

That fantastic article entitled “Are You Ready to Be a Disciple of Christ” in the April New Era struck us in a beautiful way. We missionaries here in Spokane recently participated in a wonderful conference on the same subject. It was as though our Father in heaven had inspired the New Era to print it at this time just for us. We hope others were similarly inspired. What a tremendous message for the Easter season when we contemplate the atonement of Christ and the resurrection.
Elder Timothy GreenwoodWashington Seattle Mission

It’s important to be thoughtful of your friends’ frames of reference, too. Remember that LDS culture, beliefs, and even language can be very foreign to people who are not familiar with it. A little Muslim girl, for example, was invited to go to Primary with her friends. When she got home, she quickly announced to her mother that she was never going back to the Mormon church. “Why not?” inquired her mother. “Because it’s haunted,” the girl replied.

“What do you mean it’s haunted?” her mother asked. “What makes you think that?”

“They told me so,” she said. “They said there was a Holy Ghost there, and that you could feel the spirit all around.”

Her friends didn’t drop her just because she was scared, though. They continued extending invitations to her, and, most important of all, they continued being her friend. When she was 19, she decided to embrace the gospel and was baptized.

I have always felt a little bit cheated in my life that no one has ever tried to talk me out of my faith. I have heard many people say that they got into the wrong crowd or listened to the wrong professor or were influenced by the wrong philosophy. But everywhere I have gone, people have encouraged me to live my religion. Once I thought that maybe I believed as I did just because I didn’t know any better, so I got the complete works of Robert G. Ingersoll. In my opinion Robert G. Ingersoll was the greatest atheist, if you could use that term, that ever lived in the world. I don’t know how convincing other people’s atheism is, but Robert G. Ingersoll was a great salesman. He was a great orator. He was a great architect of speech. He knew how to put ideas together. If anybody could persuade me about something, I think maybe it would have been Robert G. Ingersoll. His complete works are made up of 19,900 pages. There are 214 pages in my New Testament, so I read 90 new testaments of atheism. I didn’t read his works to try to out-argue him or to find fault with them. I read them actually to try to help him persuade me that there was something better than those things that I believed. I read him very carefully. I don’t skip read. I don’t jump over things or just read things that I think will be interesting. If something is important enough for him to write down, it is important enough for me to study and to try to find out the right answer to the subject discussed. And in all of my experiences in reading his work, he hasn’t shaken my faith in the smallest degree. Since that time I have read 987 of the great books, and I have had some tremendous experiences in a lot of different directions with what I have read. These great new philosophies have enabled me to have an “intellectual rebirth.”

Lou Gehrig, Pride of the Yankees Though he was left-handed and not a catcher, the best present Lou ever received was a right-handed catcher’s mitt from his parents. He never missed a day of school, and he played in 2,130 consecutive games and set many other records as a Yankee. Easy to read.Keith Brandt9–12 years

The beauty of home teaching in this way is that it meets the family right at the point where they’re living. One man wanted to hear nothing at all about the beliefs of the Church, having been deeply hurt by another Church member years before. “They’re all hypocrites,” he said.

The quorum leader who was visiting neither agreed nor disagreed. Instead, he said, “I’ve seen some things in my life that weren’t fair and equitable too. It’s too bad things are like that sometimes.”

The man was surprised at the leader’s response. He invited the visitors into his home to talk about it.

“We listened with real intent until he had exhausted his bitterness,” the leader said. “Then we talked about the Savior’s all-encompassing love and forgiveness, being careful not to refer to specific Church members’ actions. We explained that he had a great opportunity to develop the capacity to forgive. When we prepared to leave, we asked if we could come again and discuss the gospel. He told us we were welcome to come to his home any time.”

The home teachers have since visited that home many times, and have witnessed a complete change of attitude in the man.

Frédéric, a research biologist from Sandy, Utah, was born in France but his roots are in India. In 1854 his great-great-grandfather, Arokium (he had no last name and his name has become the family surname), left his village of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu and sailed from Chennai with his parents to Mauritius. His father was an indentured servant contracted to work in the sugar cane fields there.

After the death of his own father two years ago, Frédéric began to wonder about his family history. “We could trace all our family in Mauritius, but the connection to India was lost,” he explained. “I was curious about this great-great-grandfather Arokium, whose first name became my last name, so I asked my aunt for his picture. I had tears in my eyes when I saw it. I took a copy to the National Archives [in Mauritius] to find out where he came from.” That is where Arokium’s quest began.

More than 150 years after his ancestors left, Frédéric returned to India to find out more about them. “Being in Chennai,” he said, “is very emotional for me. This is where all my ancestors boarded ships at different times to come over to a strange land. I believe that it was heart-rending to leave, but they kept moving forward with hope in their hearts. They have sacrificed a lot for us to be where we are today.”

He added, “It is important to know their story to better appreciate my life now and understand the amazing legacy they left to me: courage, hope, hard work, hospitality, strong family values and faith in God.”

Frédéric wants to help others find their Indian roots. For this reason, he has created the Indian Diaspora Genealogy Group on Facebook.

His message to Saints in India is to get a temple recommend; start talking to family members and gather names, old photos and stories; get in touch with a family history consultant; download the FamilySearch app and create an account; enter your ancestors’ names and get their temple work done.

After the fireside in Chennai, Frédéric talked excitedly with a young woman from the audience. It appears that they have ancestors from the same village in Tamil Nadu. Perhaps her research can help him find another generation of family. They exchanged contact information.

“This is a labor of love,” Frédéric said. “After all they have done for me, this is the least I can do for them.”

“God is … deploring now the inevitable result of the follies, the transgressions and the sins of His wayward children, but we cannot blame Him for these any more than we can blame a father who might say to his son, ‘There are two roads, my son, one leading to the right, one leading to the left. If you take the one to the left it will bring upon you misery and unhappiness and perhaps death. If you take the one to the right it will lead you to success and to happiness, but you choose which you will. You must choose; I will not force either upon you.’”
“The young man starts out and, seeing the allurements and the attractiveness of the road to the left, and thinking it a shortcut to his happiness, he concludes to take it. The father knows what will become of him, he knows that not far from the flowery path there is a mire hole into which his boy will fall, he knows that after he struggles out of that mire hole he will come to a slough into which he will flounder. … He could see it long before the boy reached that condition, and he could, therefore, foretell it. The father loves the boy just the same, and still continues to warn him, and plead for him to return to the right path.”

When I went to Russia as a volunteer English teacher, I knew very little Russian. But as I lived among the Russian people, I began to have the desire to serve them and share the gospel with them. So I started working harder to learn the language.
I started by reading a children’s version of the Book of Mormon in Russian. Armed with a Russian/English dictionary, I struggled through a chapter a day, looking up nearly every word. Then I taught myself to pray in Russian, feeling foolish as the foreign words stumbled off my tongue. Finally, I started learning to bear my testimony. To practice, I would write it in Russian in my journal. It didn’t take long for me to decide that it was hard to learn Russian.
Nearly three months into my stay in Ufa, Russia, another English teacher and I planned a trip to a faraway city called Saratov. We were met at the train station by a wonderful Latter-day Saint family who opened their hearts and their home to us. Our time there was soon over, and we were once again on the train, ready for the 20-hour train ride back to Ufa.
We shared our small compartment with two businessmen who made us a little nervous. They were extremely polite though, so we soon felt safe.
When we were leaving Saratov, the family we had stayed with explained the importance of being an example. They said, “Don’t forget that everyone is watching you. Everyone.” They gave us a few missionary pamphlets and challenged us to give them away before we got home. Dubiously, I eyed the two men across from us. I sighed and decided they probably wouldn’t be interested.
But when I got out my scriptures to read, the men were curious and started asking questions. We gave them the pamphlets, which they read.
Later on the trip I started writing in my journal. The men asked why I wasn’t writing in Russian, so I showed them that I often did. The pages I happened to show them contained my testimony. They asked to read it, and I willingly obliged. They also eagerly started reading the Russian copy of the Book of Mormon I gave to them. As they asked questions, I felt as if the room would burst from the Spirit that filled it. One of the men asked if I could feel in my heart “the fire” that was in his and asked if I knew what it was. In my broken Russian I explained it was the Holy Ghost.
I had him read 3 Nephi 11. As we read of the Savior’s ministry among the people on the American continent, tears came to his eyes. He stopped reading and quietly asked, “Does Jesus Christ love me like He loved those people?”
With tears in my eyes I answered, “Yes, He knows you, and He loves you. That is why He wants you to know the truth about His gospel.” He looked at me for another moment and then dropped his eyes to read further. When we arrived in Ufa, we gave him the missionaries’ phone number.
It took a special 20-hour train ride to teach me that I don’t need to be on a full-time mission to serve the Lord and share the gospel. I don’t know if the little seeds that were planted that night have grown. But I do know that miracles occurred. I was converted, even if those men were not.

Linda Kemple, 13-year-old Latter-day Saint from Las Vegas, Nevada, has been named first place winner in this year’s regional California State Automobile Association School Traffic Safety Contest. Linda’s winning entry was selected from over 2,600 eligible entries from throughout California and Nevada.
The primary purpose of the contest was to promote interest in safety through artistic means among young people from kindergarten through high school. The winning entries now go on to national competition.
Linda, an honor student, serves as second counselor in her Beehive class in the Las Vegas 25th Ward.

Thank you for doing an article on a deaf person (”Good Vibrations,” Oct. 1993). I really enjoyed it. I’m not deaf myself, but I do know sign language. That article helped me understand the challenges faced by those living in a hearing world.
Nicole MitchellTaylor, British Columbia, Canada

Janel E., 18, Washington, USA
A roommate once asked me how I could believe in something I could not see. I answered that it was because I can feel the Holy Ghost, who testifies that God knows me, and this increases my faith and brings peace to my soul. I cannot see Him, but I know He loves me because I have faith and I feel His Spirit.

One day while my new companion, Sister Neumann, and I were teaching a sweet young woman, her boyfriend, Tom, came to see her. She had warned us that he did not want her to continue meeting with us. Tom saw our bicycles in front of the house and knew we were there that morning, so he decided to wait outside until we left. As he waited his curiosity grew stronger and stronger, and he thought of more and more questions to ask us. Eventually his interest overcame his reservations, and he came inside to put us to the test. After briefly explaining the basic principles of the gospel and outlining the Apostasy and the Restoration, we made an appointment to begin teaching him the next evening. He was baptized 10 weeks later. I was so full of joy I would have reenlisted for 10 years if I could have.

A friend of mine once shared an experience he had on his mission in Brazil. He and his companion met a woman who forcefully declared that she was not interested in any religious message. A religious leader had once told her that her infant son who died could never be saved because he had not been baptized. The thought of that broke her heart. She told the missionaries that unless they had a better message, she wanted nothing to do with their religion.
Fortunately, they had a better message.

Lucy Smith’s later life is more familiar, since her story merges with the story of the Church. In her history one glimpses the three witnesses returning to report their joyous experience of seeing the angel and plates, the move to Ohio and the faith of the Saints in building a new city and their first temple, her move to Missouri and miraculous healing after contracting severe infection after days traveling in the rain, the trauma of parting with loved ones and loss of possessions in the Missouri persecutions, and the settlement in peace in Illinois, to be her home until death. But if Illinois gave new security for the Mormon people, it also brought personal tragedy, for Lucy’s husband died in 1840, followed the next year by her tall, handsome son Don Carlos. In three more years she stood by the bullet-torn bodies of Joseph and Hyrum and soon after grieved over Samuel, weakened or injured by his ride to join his brothers at Carthage. The close ties of this family made these partings doubly hard, but Lucy knew that God gives and takes away. During inexpressible grief she could, nevertheless, feel the peace that the next life offers, virtually hearing her sons say, “We have overcome the world by love … [O]urs is an eternal triumph.”11

“While watching conference I was so happy. The Spirit was clearly there, and I found it a solace to the confusing world around me. I found answers to my prayers. Elder Bednar’s talk, though directed to those who are not members, gave me a new perspective on what nonmembers are thinking. We really need to put ourselves in their shoes and try our best to understand them.”
Rachel O., 15, Alberta, Canada

I am not without personal experience. Sister Hinckley and I will soon have been married for 66 years. I do not know how she has put up with me all this long time. Now we have grown old. But how grateful I am for her. How anxious I am to see that she is comfortable. How much I desire the very best for her. What a wonderful companion she has been. What a marvelous wife and what a tremendous mother and grandmother and great-grandmother.

The Ramabulana family from South Africa each took a turn to share how they #ConnectwithChrist:
“How I connect with Jesus Christ is when I help people, and then they say thank you and it makes me feel good inside.” —Mulungisi, brother