Gospel Story Finder

The sisters in Cache Valley, Utah, ministered to the Saints in the spirit of the Relief Society to “work in unity to help those in need.” My great-grandmother Margaret McNeil Ballard served at the side of her husband, Henry, as he presided as bishop of the Logan Second Ward for 40 years. Margaret was the ward Relief Society president for 30 of those years. She took into their home the poor, the sick, and the widowed and orphaned, and she even clothed the dead in their clean temple robes.

Jackie’s sentiments reflected feelings a lot of others shared, both during a testimony meeting and during an early morning seminary session.

“After the seminary lesson on parent-child relationships, my mother (who, as stake Young Women president, was at the conference) told me that she loved me,” Sherry said. “My back was to her and I didn’t hear her for sure. I thought maybe I was just wishing. Then turned around and saw her.”

Now, lest some of you think all of this giving up of things and this rearranging of your habits is more painful than it really is, I should repeat a statement by Lady Astor.
She had dreaded old age. When it finally came, she commented philosophically, “I always dreaded growing old, because then you can’t do all of the things you want to. But it isn’t so bad—you don’t want to!”

All the children know how to use the computer. A favorite computer game centers around the prophet Nephi. In order to win the game, the player must know certain scriptures. Crystal was the first to win. There are games on the computer that even the younger girls play, though they prefer to just draw on it.

When you make pancakes, the first few probably won’t turn out great. That’s OK. You just adjust the heat, add more milk if the batter is too thick, and keep cooking. Soon you’ll be making great pancakes! Be sure to get an adult’s help.

Sister Sveinbjörg Gudmundsdóttir of Reykjavík, Iceland, endured a most difficult experience. One morning, two of her sons and a friend hiked up a nearby snow-encrusted mountain. During the hike, two of them—her oldest son and the friend, their branch president—lost their lives. Sorrow pierced Sister Gudmundsdóttir’s heart like a sharp knife. She could not understand why the Lord had allowed this tragedy to happen.
As she did each evening, Sister Gudmundsdóttir knelt to thank the Lord for the day that had passed. But she could not utter a word. She asked herself, “How could I thank Him for this terrible day?” And then she remembered the son who had come back alive. She thanked the Lord for protecting him and for the goodness of the two men who had died. She then expressed gratitude for her four other children and for children-in-law and grandchildren. “With each word of thanks,” she writes, “the burden on my chest lightened, and a warm, life-giving feeling started flowing through my body. My mind was filled with peace, and my heart with joy.” She wondered, “How could I feel joy after what had happened?” The ministrations of the Spirit taught her that “even in deepest sorrow our Father in Heaven can bless us with peace and joy” (“Even in Deepest Sorrow,” Liahona, December 1997, 44).

Another approach is to provide books on subjects that interest the child. For example, after hearing about an earthquake, our sixth-grader wondered what the Richter scale was. Finding and exploring books on the subject not only answered the question but led to further understanding about earthquakes.

For the past few years I have had the privilege of home teaching with an ordained teacher part of the time and a priest with whom I am teaching at the present time. They make the appointments and take their turn in presenting and leading the discussions. The other day my home teaching companion called me and said that the head of one of the families we visit was in the hospital and suggested that we go to see him. We did and blessed him.

Thank you very much for the tips in “That’s How the Cookie Doesn’t Crumble” in the October issue. My mother and I were wondering what to send to my brother who is serving a mission in Italy and how to get it there safely. Thank you also for this great magazine, especially the Jack Weyland stories. He is a fantastic writer!
Kim WilsonWalnut Creek, California

Certainly family concerns are real and should not be considered lightly. But we cannot meet our family challenges without the blessings of the Lord; and when we sacrifice to serve as full-time missionary couples, those blessings will flow. For example, one couple worried about leaving their youngest daughter, who was no longer active in the Church. Her faithful father wrote: “We prayed for her continually and fasted regularly. Then, during general conference, the Spirit whispered to me, ‘If you will serve, you will not have to worry about your daughter anymore.’ So we met with our bishop. The week after we received our call, she and her boyfriend announced they were engaged. Before we left for Africa, we had a wedding in our home. [Then we gathered our family together and] held a family council. … I bore testimony of the Lord and Joseph Smith … and told them I would like to give each of them a father’s blessing. I started with the oldest son and then his wife and proceeded to the youngest … [including our new son-in-law].”

As we consider couple missionary service, it is appropriate to involve our families in the same way. In family council meetings, we can give our children the opportunity to express their support, offer special assistance we may need, and receive priesthood blessings to sustain them in our absence. Where appropriate, we may be able to receive priesthood blessings from them as well. As the faithful father in this story blessed his family members, his son-in-law felt the influence of the Holy Ghost. The father wrote: “By the end of our first year [the] heart [of our son-in-law] began to soften toward the Church. Just before we returned home from our mission, he and our daughter came to visit us. In his suitcase was the first set of Sunday clothes he had ever owned. They came to church with us, and after we returned home he was baptized. A year later they were sealed in the temple.”

In 1883 the Widtsoe family immigrated to Logan, Utah, where young John later enrolled in Brigham Young College. A hard worker and bright student, he graduated in 1891, studied chemistry at Harvard University, and graduated with highest honors in 1894. While at Harvard, he met Leah Eudora Dunford. They married in the Salt Lake Temple in 1898 and became the parents of seven children, only three of whom lived to adulthood.

Lucy also exercised faith and liberally drew upon the power of God to heal her from physical affliction. While living in Kirtland, Ohio, she made a concerted effort to study the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants. Then, an accident occurred in her home, where she fell down the stairs face first and severely bruised her head. Her eyes became inflamed until she went blind. The ensuing distress Lucy endured for days was indescribable. Turning to priesthood power when medical remedies had failed, Lucy called upon elders to administer to her. Instead of asking for the restoration of her sight, Lucy asked for something better. She requested that the elders ask God to not only heal her eyes but ensure she would never have to use glasses again. After the elders administered to her and removed their hands from her head, Lucy read a passage in the Book of Mormon and never wore glasses again.7

For the past year I thought there were too many rules in the Church, and I thought, “How can it be fun in heaven?” I felt like I was tied to the Church and it was impossible to break free.
I then watched my friends’ lives. Why didn’t I go through some of the trials they did? One night it hit me—I didn’t get into that stuff because I followed the rules that Heavenly Father set out for me. I also figured out that if you follow the rules, you can be happy and can raise a family and live with Heavenly Father and Jesus for eternity.
Stephanie H., age 13, Utah, USA

Following the earthquake there was a run on gasoline. The fuel trucks that could maneuver over broken roads traveled very slowly, resulting in three-hour waits for gasoline, if any was available at all. But the Lord provided for us in miraculous ways. For example, while evacuating sisters and elders to safety in Niigata on the other side of the island, we realized we had driven 18 hours on a single tank, with a gas gauge that always registered “full.” As we neared Niigata, the gas gauge immediately dropped to “empty.”

Little Tree
Deborah Kogan Ray’s muted illustrations are perfect for this classic poem about a little tree that is taken home, decorated lovingly, and put proudly in the window for all to see. As with all cumming’s poems, there are few capital letters and almost no punctuation.e.e. cummings

Elder Dale G. Renlund visited remote locations while on assignment in Argentina and Chile, such as Antofagasta in the desert region of northern Chile; a conference for the Argentina Comodoro Rivadavia Mission; the El Calafate Branch in Argentina, where a small chapel was filled with people far beyond the 30–40 who were expected to attend; and a gathering in Ushuaia, Argentina, where the 600 in attendance represented the majority of active members throughout the entire region of Tierra del Fuego. In places like Rio Gallegos, Argentina, Elder Renlund spoke about the blessings of the home-centered, Church-supported curriculum and how families will be blessed by observing the Sabbath day.

We had a pump organ in our chapel. I wanted to help at church, and pumping the organ was one of my jobs when I was eight and nine years old. It felt wonderful to contribute to sacrament meeting by pumping the organ so the congregation could sing.

When I was a little girl just two years of age, my father died in a tragic accident. I had a sister who was seven and a brother who was six. Life became very hard for my mother, who had to face life alone with her three little children. For some reason she decided to tell me that my daddy had gone away on a trip. Maybe she was so sad that she didn’t have the courage to tell me the truth.
So I kept waiting to see him and hear his sweet voice and be wrapped in his arms. My birthday would come, and I would wait. Christmas would come, and I would wait.
Then one day I learned the truth from a neighbor girl who was my age. It was devastating; I cried so hard. I started noticing other children with their fathers even more than before. It seemed so cruel.
The years went by, and I was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I married a good man who wasn’t a member of the Church. But he gained a testimony and decided to be baptized.
Through our membership in the Church, a most wonderful blessing came into our lives. We learned that families can be forever, that a link in our family chain that had been left hanging by itself could be joined to the rest of the family. Through temple ordinances, my father could be baptized by proxy and sealed to his parents and I could eventually be sealed to him.
My husband was baptized for my father, and we had all the necessary temple ordinances performed. The Spirit of the Lord brought great joy to us. The anguish I had gone through as a child didn’t seem to matter when I compared it with this great joy and blessing. Knowing that families can be eternal was better than all the Christmases or birthdays my father and I could have spent together.
Today my father is sealed to his parents, and they, in turn, are sealed to their parents. As a result of the happiness I have experienced, I dedicate a great part of my time to doing family history so I can help families be joined together. Temple work brings the most wonderful blessings into our lives.

I was privileged to have a small role in a marvelous example of this kind of love. When I was serving as President of the Pacific Islands Area, I received a call from President R. Wayne Shute. As a young man, he served a mission in Samoa. Later, he returned to Samoa as a mission president.8 When he telephoned me, he was the Apia Samoa Temple president. One of his young missionaries, when he was mission president, was Elder O. Vincent Haleck, who is now the Area President in the Pacific. President Shute had great love and respect for Vince and the entire Haleck family. Most of the family were members of the Church, but Vince’s father, Otto Haleck, the patriarch of the family (of German and Samoan descent), was not a member. President Shute knew I was attending a stake conference and other meetings in American Samoa, and he asked me if I would consider staying in Otto Haleck’s residence with the view of sharing the gospel with him.
My wife, Mary, and I stayed with Otto and his wife, Dorothy, in their beautiful home. At breakfast I shared a gospel message and invited Otto to meet with the missionaries. He was kind, but firm, in refusing my invitation. He said he was pleased that many members of his family were Latter-day Saints. But he forcefully indicated that some of his Samoan mother’s ancestors had been early Christian ministers in Samoa, and he felt a great allegiance to their traditional Christian faith.9 Nevertheless, we left as good friends.
Later, when President Gordon B. Hinckley was preparing to dedicate the Suva Fiji Temple, he had his personal secretary, Brother Don H. Staheli,10 call me in New Zealand to make arrangements. President Hinckley wanted to fly from Fiji to American Samoa to meet the Saints. A certain hotel used in a previous visit was suggested. I asked if I could make different arrangements. Brother Staheli said, “You are the Area President; that would be fine.”
I immediately called President Shute and told him that perhaps we had a second chance at spiritually blessing our friend Otto Haleck. This time the missionary would be President Gordon B. Hinckley. I asked if he thought it would be appropriate for the Halecks to host all of us in President Hinckley’s travel group.11 President and Sister Hinckley, their daughter Jane, and Elder and Sister Jeffrey R. Holland were also part of the travel group. President Shute, working with the family, made all the arrangements.12
When we arrived from Fiji after the temple dedication, we were warmly greeted.13 We spoke that evening to thousands of Samoan members and then proceeded to the Haleck family compound. When we gathered for breakfast the next morning, President Hinckley and Otto Haleck had already become good friends. It was interesting to me that they were having much the same conversation I had had with Otto more than a year earlier. When Otto expressed his admiration for our Church but reaffirmed his commitment to his existing church, President Hinckley put his hand on Otto’s shoulder and said, “Otto, that’s not good enough; you ought to be a member of the Church. This is the Lord’s Church.” You figuratively could see the resistive armor fall away from Otto with an openness to what President Hinckley said.
This was the beginning of additional missionary teaching and a spiritual humility that allowed Otto Haleck to be baptized and confirmed a little over a year later. One year after that, the Haleck family was sealed as an eternal family in the temple.14
What touched my heart throughout this incredible experience was the overwhelming ministering love exhibited by President Wayne Shute for his former missionary, Elder Vince Haleck, and his desire to see the entire Haleck family united as an eternal family.15

Pretend that you have been chosen for the first manned flight to Planet X in Solar System Z and that your spaceship is programmed so that each day your rate of speed doubles (i.e., you travel twice as far the second day as you did the first day, and so on). Now pretend that you leave Earth on February 15, 1992, and that you land on Planet X on July 19, 2003. How many leap-year days do you need to include when you figure out the date on which you were halfway there?
Answer: