Gospel Story Finder

It was Thanksgiving Day morning, and Elizabeth was looking out the window and wishing that the snow would stop. No longer could she see the mountains that rose behind her uncle’s farm. The snow swirled about and drifted against fences.
“Don’t worry,” said her cousin William. “Your parents will probably stay at the trading post until the storm stops. I don’t think anyone will try to get through Craggy Pass in this weather.”
“But if they left on time, they’ll be ahead of the storm,” countered Elizabeth, hopefully. “Father said that they would be back for Thanksgiving.”
Elizabeth turned to the window and flattened her nose against the glass, staring out at the dancing snowflakes.
William felt sorry for his cousin. Elizabeth and her parents had recently moved from Massachusetts, near Plymouth, and the girl was still homesick. She also missed her parents, who had been away for several days buying supplies and looking at land to purchase.
Elizabeth had told William about her old home and the small rolling hills and stone walls that defined the pastures. Her favorite spot had been on a high knoll where the pastureland overlooked the bay at Plymouth. She also spoke about the Pilgrims who had settled there. She made it sound so exciting that William almost felt as if he had been there himself. William had studied about Governor William Bradford, but it was more interesting to listen to Elizabeth tell about the feast at Plymouth in late July of 1621 when the Pilgrims had invited Chief Massasoit. He had come with a number of his Indian braves and had joined in the feasting and games of skill.
Elizabeth had described how pretty it must have been then—the clear blue waters of the bay and, on shore, splashes of colorful wildflowers—and how in this new land the Indians and Pilgrims had formed a fellowship.
“Tell me, Elizabeth, do you have snow back in Massachusetts at Thanksgiving time?” asked William, hoping to get her mind off her parents.
Elizabeth turned from the window. “Sometimes we do,” she said. “It looks strange when it falls on the beach.”
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” said William. “I hope that someday I will.”
“It’s lovely, like your mountains, but different,” said Elizabeth.
“Come on, Elizabeth, we better help my mother get the big dinner ready. It’s a tradition in our family to set a large table for our many friends who come. And each year Mother puts out her best hand-dipped candles.”
“I’ll be happy to help you,” said Elizabeth. “The snowflakes are making me dizzy.” But she couldn’t help remembering her own family tradition that had always been an important part of their Thanksgiving meal. And for the first time she would miss this annual custom.
Elizabeth and William set the table, and the candles looked lovely. “I like the special candles you use for Thanksgiving, Aunt Emily,” said Elizabeth.
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” answered Aunt Emily. She looked at the sadness in the girl’s face. “Perhaps there is a family tradition you have that you can share with us?”
“Oh, there is,” said Elizabeth, “but Mother and Father are not here.”
“All the more reason for you to carry on your custom,” Aunt Emily gently encouraged.
“Oh, I’d like that,” said Elizabeth. “But I’ll need—”
“Hush!” said Aunt Emily with a smile. “Why don’t you surprise us with your family tradition?”
The idea delighted Elizabeth and she disappeared from the room. William and his mother were happy to see Elizabeth forget her troubles. But the storm still worried them. The wide open spaces of their western land could be very hard on travelers, especially newcomers such as Elizabeth’s parents.
Meanwhile Elizabeth was very busy. She took a clean sock and stepped into the pantry for a minute. When she came out she was smiling. “Before we sit down and say the blessing, I want to go to the table,” she explained. “And nobody may peek,” she added. Then she took from the sock a handful of corn and carefully placed five kernels by each plate.
In a short while, friends who lived nearby arrived. They came in, stamping snow off their feet and bringing dishes of hot food. Before he started to carve the turkey, her uncle said, “Well, Elizabeth, I’ve never seen kernels of corn at my place like this before. They must be part of the tradition that you wish to share with us.
“Yes, Uncle John,” said Elizabeth. “My father usually tells the story of the corn, but I’ll do it since he isn’t here.”
“Many years ago,” she began, “during one of the early winters, the Pilgrims had very little food. Because their corn supply was almost gone, each Pilgrim was given only five grains of corn to plant. The following years they had more corn. But the Pilgrims wanted their children to always remember the sacrifices and the hardships that made the survival of their small settlement possible. So each year when they celebrated Thanksgiving, they placed five grains of corn by each plate. My family still does it so we won’t forget those brave days either.”
“That’s a wonderful tradition you’ve shared with us,” Aunt Emily said, hugging Elizabeth. “I think we should all carry it on. It will give us strength for the days to come.”
Just then there was a banging on the door, and in burst Elizabeth’s parents covered with snow. Elizabeth raced into their arms. “I didn’t think you’d come!” she said. “But I prayed and prayed that you would.”
“Not be here for Thanksgiving!” exclaimed her father. “It would take more than a snowstorm to stop us.”
He strode to the table. His hand reached into the pocket of his coat and he started to take something out. But he put it back when he saw the grains of corn at each plate. His eyes met Elizabeth’s and a smile lighted up his face. “Elizabeth, you remembered. You did this, didn’t you!” he said.
“Yes, Father, just like we always did back home,” she replied softly.

What does one who has a heart like unto God’s own heart have? A few years back I was in Canada at a Nathan Eldon Tanner Camp. This training of adult leaders paralleled what we do at Philmont except that we took the training to Canada instead of having them travel all the way to New Mexico. The Church furnished all of our instructors and youth leaders and ran the full-week camp with wonderful members of the Church.

During that week the staff organized a Polar Bear Club. In order to qualify you had to swim at six a.m. four mornings in a row in the cold Elbow River. It had snowed eight inches at an elevation 1,000 feet higher than our camp. They thought I ought to join. I didn’t have a swimming suit, so they drove into Calgary fifty miles away and got me one. The first morning I went down to the river with the group. I have always had a difficult time wading into a lake or river slowly. It is just like cutting your finger off a little bit at a time. I would rather have one giant breathtaking shock than the dozens of painful ones that come from slowly wading into the river. I filled my lungs with all the air they could hold so I could not suck in anything else when the shock of the cold water caused me to catch my breath. I dove in and it was ice cold. I swam out to the middle of the river. It was almost chest deep.

In a moment a stake president dove in and came up right beside me. After the shock of cold, he said, “Did I have my glasses on?”

I replied, “I don’t know, did you?”

He said he thought he had.

I said, “Swim over to the bank and check.”

In a moment he came back, and he said, “I did have them on.”

The Elbow River was flowing about ten to twelve miles an hour, I estimated. I imagined it would have carried his glasses off down the river toward Calgary.

Here was a stake president who had spent hundreds of dollars to drive from Western Canada to Calgary and had brought his whole family with him in an older wood-paneled station wagon, as I recall. He had all the gasoline, lodging, and meal expenses coming and the training fees. I knew it must have been a terrific financial strain on him. I was certain he could not afford $200 or $300 for a new pair of glasses.

I walked upstream about twenty or thirty feet. I offered a prayer and asked God to help me find his glasses. Mind you, it was six a.m.; the water was cold and clear but flowing relatively fast. I lay down on my back and floated downstream. I had an impression and stopped. I looked down in the water and thought I could see something glistening on the bottom of the river. I dove down and came up with the stake president’s glasses and handed them to this great stake president.

I think if you have a heart like unto God’s own heart, you are interested in little things that may not be important to a lot of other people but would be very important to the person involved.

About a year ago I presented an early proposal to address some challenges with our new construction design to CES leadership. I suggested a modest increase in the overall budget. I shared the idea…and it was made very clear to me that I could be a better steward by creatively solving problems with the significant resources that had already been committed to the university. Although it was not easy to hear this feedback, I reflected and knew it was valid. This was an important and humbling experience for me.

On my way home from the meeting, I sent the following text to my leader “Thanks for the budget feedback today. I’m headed home with renewed urgency to help our team be careful and frugal. I spoke with Michael after our meeting and brainstormed about ways to be more creative and frugal in design. I have some ideas and will report back soon.” [12]

The reply I received was an expression of love and encouragement. The resulting solution was excellent, cost-effective, and inspired! I am grateful that my leaders love me enough to provide clear feedback and tell me when change is needed. Their willingness to have that tough conversation and give me correction is a blessing to my life and to my stewardship.

1 Indians in the Western Hemisphere are often called Lamanites by Church members because these Indians are descendants of the Nephites and Lamanites in the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer, Jr., were called to go on a mission to the Lamanites. Other men wanted to go with them. The Lord indicated that Ziba Peterson and Parley P. Pratt were to accompany Oliver and Peter.
2 First the missionaries went to the Catteraugus Indians in New York. Finding a few Indians who could read, the missionaries gave them two copies of the Book of Mormon.
3 Near the Ohio border the missionaries preached to the Wyandot Indians, who were happy to learn about their ancestors in the Book of Mormon.
4 In Missouri the missionaries preached the gospel to the Delaware Indians. These Indians were also given the Book of Mormon. They thanked the missionaries for traveling so far and for caring enough to give them the Book of Mormon.
5 Other people in Missouri did not believe the gospel, nor did they believe the Book of Mormon. They told the missionaries to stay away from the Indians.
6 When told that soldiers would force the missionaries to stay away from the Indians, the missionaries were sorry, but they obeyed the authorities and left the Indian settlements.
7 One of the missionaries, Parley P. Pratt, went to tell the Prophet Joseph about their mission to the Lamanites. The mission had been a good one; the gospel had been taken to three great Indian tribes.

Recently I finished serving as the Mission President in Toronto Canada, I resolved I was going to follow Elder Scott's counsel and write down every impression I felt, however small it may be. Those impressions didn't always come when I was sitting at a table with pen in hand. Sometimes they came at the most inconvenient times. One night, I kept getting out of bed to record impressions that had come. Finally my wife said to me, "Why do you keep popping out of bed?" But I had learned a sad lesson from the past—if I waited until the morning I would usually forget the impression. There is an urgency about recording our impressions while we are still in the spirit.

Eventually, I made my way back to BYU–Hawaii after serving a 19 month mission in L.A., a 14 month district mission in Guam, and a semester at BYU Provo. Like most return missionaries, you get thrown back into college life. I remember taking a religion class where there were more than 50 of us in a room. Mid-terms came and so, like you, we too had to take mid-term exams. Not too far into the exam, I noticed the teacher nodding his head, he then proceeded to pull people out from class. I wondered what was going on. We later learned from our teacher that the students were cheating on the mid-term. I thought to myself, “Are you serious?” Of all the classes to cheat in, it had to be this religion class. My teacher was so disappointed; you could tell in his facial expression. It was one of the saddest days in my college life. Here I thought, this is no ordinary school. This is the Lord’s University and people cheat! I thought to myself, they should be like my friend Leila. Leila was not your typical college student. She was from Tahiti and retired from working with CES. One day, she told me that she walked into her religion class; sat down to take the exam and after having read through it she realized that she did not know how to answer the questions on the exam. She wrote, “I don’t know how to answer these questions, but I live it.” She turned in her exam to the teacher and walked out of the class. She got an A for the exam.

The young man’s name was John Andreas Widtsoe. He lived with his widowed mother and little brother in a small, poor cottage. They had come from Norway in 1884. On June 27, 1894, in Sanders Theater, in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University conferred upon the young immigrant the degree, Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude (with highest honors). He completed the four-year curriculum in three years. He had undergone many hardships. His widowed mother and little brother had sent him small sums of money from their meager earnings. The rest of his education had been financed by unusual personal sacrifice and by loans from kind friends in Logan, with notes signed at 12 percent interest.

One lunchtime in the fall before my sixth birthday, Dad came home and presented me with a beautiful, shiny-new harmonica. The wooden part was painted a bright red. A gleaming, nickel-plated metal guard on both sides protected the delicate reeds. The harmonica came in a small cardboard box lined with dark red velvet. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen!
I knew nothing about playing the harmonica, so I just blew and drew air through it as I had seen other people do. Somehow, I expected it to make music. I tried again and again, but nary a tune came out. “It doesn’t work,” I told my dad.
“Oh yes it does,” he responded. “Here. Let me have it a minute.” He tapped it in the palm of his hand a couple of times to release the moisture, then played an old Danish dance. It sounded smooth and happy.
“Can you play ‘Yankee Doodle’?” I begged.
He immediately switched tunes, and “Yankee Doodle” came out sharp and crisp.
I tried again, but all I got was that same monotonous, discordant sound.
“When I get home tonight,” Dad said, “I’ll teach you how to play some tunes. In the meantime, keep trying to play it. You may learn something by yourself.”
Dad wanted me to eventually learn to play a more difficult instrument. He reasoned that if I learned to play the harmonica well, it might be easier for me to learn a more complicated instrument.
When my friend Arthur Schultz came over later, I showed him the harmonica, and we decided to show it to some of our other friends. Hans Larsen was the first one we met. He was about a year younger than me, and we played together often.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a brand new harmonica that my dad gave me,” I answered. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
Hans looked skeptical. “Can you play it?”
“Sure,” I replied.
“Play ‘Yankee Doodle.’”
I began to play. It was that same monotonous sound.
“I bet I can play it better than that,” he bragged. “Here—let me try it.”
I gave him the harmonica. His “tune” sounded exactly like mine.
“This harmonica’s no good,” he said, and he threw it as hard as he could. I let out a yelp when I saw that it had landed in an irrigation ditch. We’d had a big rainstorm the day before, and the water in the ditch was so muddy that the harmonica instantly sank out of sight.
I ran to the water, got down on my hands and knees, and began probing around. I thought that I knew exactly where the harmonica had landed, but it wasn’t there. I searched for ten minutes before I finally located it. When I waded out of the ditch, my pants were wet from my thighs down. My shirt was wet up to my elbows, and the harmonica was all covered with mud and dirty brown water.
After Hans had thrown my harmonica into the irrigation ditch, he had run away as fast as he could. I was really angry. In fact, I was furious! I couldn’t believe that Hans would do such a terrible thing. Hans deserves some awful punishment, I decided. Looking at that mud-streaked harmonica only increased my anger. I had to figure out a punishment equal to his terrible crime.
Arthur walked with me over to Hans’s house. I imagined that he was hiding somewhere inside. “Hans,” I yelled, standing on his front porch, “you’re going to get it! I’m going downtown and tell the city marshall on you. He’ll come and arrest you and take you to jail. He’ll put you in a cell all by yourself. At night it will be dark and cold. No one will talk to you, you’ll have to eat miserable jail food, and everybody will hate you. I won’t come to see you. They’ll make you do all kinds of hard work!” The list became longer and longer.
Then Arthur and I started downtown. I didn’t exactly know where the city marshall might be, but surely I would find him there. As we walked along talking, my voice became louder and louder. Pretty soon I was shouting about what was going to happen to Hans Larsen.
“What’s going on, boys?” a man sitting on his front porch asked. He was wearing a business suit, with his coat and vest unbuttoned. I explained to him about Hans’s terrible deed and told him that I was on my way to tell the city marshall to arrest him.
“Why don’t you come up on the porch so that we can talk about it some more,” the man suggested.
We climbed the man’s steps.
“My name is Brother Allred,” the man said. “What’s yours?”
I told him that my name was Christian Jensen and that my friend was Arthur Schultz. I showed him the muddy harmonica, and he agreed that it looked pretty shabby.
“His dad paid fifteen cents for it at the Co-op,” Arthur explained.
“It looks like a very fine instrument,” Brother Allred remarked. “Let me have it for a minute, and I’ll see if I can clean it up a bit.” He took the harmonica and went into the house. In a few minutes he returned. The harmonica looked brand-new. “It’s all cleaned up now,” he said, “inside and out. By evening the reeds will be dry enough that you can play it again.” Then he asked, “Can you play it yet?”
“I can play it, but I can’t play any tunes on it yet,” I answered.
“Do you know where you live from here?”
I pointed in a south-easterly direction.
“Don’t you think that your folks might be wondering where you are and that they might be worrying about you because you’ve been away so long?”
In all my excitement I hadn’t given a thought to my folks. “I guess that you’re right, but I still have to go downtown and tell the city marshall about Hans.”
“I can take care of that for you,” he answered.
“Do you know the city marshall?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” he replied. “You might say so. Now listen, I’ll walk with you boys up to the corner, and then I think that you’d better get home as fast as you can.” Pointing to me, he added, “You’re going to need to get into some dry clothes.”
The three of us walked to the corner, and Brother Allred said, “Well, boys, it was good to visit with you, but now I must get to work.”
As he was talking, he began buttoning up his vest. Under his left armpit was a holster with a revolver in it! On his buttoned vest was a star!
Then it dawned on me. “You’re the—” I couldn’t bring out the words.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m the city marshall. I’ll leave you boys now. I have to do my job.”
Does he mean that he’s going over to Hans Larsen’s house to arrest him right now? I agonized as Arthur and I headed for home. Suddenly I panicked. I had told the city marshall about Hans, and now he’d arrest Hans and put him in jail! Deep down in my heart I didn’t want Hans arrested, even though I had made those threats against him. I must stop the city marshall right now, I decided.
When we caught up with the marshall, I said, “Marshall Allred, about Hans—”
The marshall put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me from saying anything more. “I understand,” he said. “You were angry because he threw your brand-new harmonica into the dirty water, and you had a right to be angry. I’m sure that Hans is sorry for what he did. He’s probably worrying now about what he can do to make things right with you so that you can be friends again. I want you to go straight home and get on some dry clothes. Things will work out.”
I said good-bye to him, and Arthur and I hurried home. While I was getting on some dry clothing, I told my mother about the entire incident.
As Marshall Allred had predicted, after supper the harmonica was dry enough for my dad to begin teaching me how to play it.
The marshall was right about Hans, too—in a little over a week, Hans and I were playing together again.

Tiffany Roy, of the Port Charlotte Ward in Florida, had an experience in which she was true to the teachings of the Church even though it was uncomfortable.

“I had just moved to another state and started school. There was a group of girls who found out that I was Mormon and started asking me all these questions. When they found out that I would not swear, this little group of girls blocked me from going inside the classroom. They told me that they would not let me go in until I would swear. I told them that we would be sitting there all day because I would not lower my standards for them. The girls let me go inside because they knew I wouldn’t do it. They avoided me the rest of the year. I did not care what they thought of me. I stood true to my faith by doing this.”

On that frozen morning, I heard shouting and distressed moos in the distance behind me as I ran to get an axe and some rope.
OK, hold on—let’s back up for some context.
Two years before that snowy morning, my family had moved from suburbia to a tiny little plot of farmland in Missouri. Our new property had some forested land to explore and a small pond, which was nice, but I wasn’t a fan of all the animals that I was now expected to help take care of.
Now, back to that cold winter morning. We could tell there was a problem when one of our poor little cows didn’t come to his food dish at the regular time, even after we shook the food in a metal tin. They were trained to come running when we shook the tin. It seemed to be some sort of angelic summons to them, but the tactic didn’t work that morning.
We kept waiting and soon heard distressed moos off in the distance. We went to investigate and discovered that the cow had walked out into the middle of the frozen pond and had fallen in. The pond was only about five feet deep, but the cow was quite small and had to bounce on his hind legs to keep his head above the frigid water.
And that’s when the yelling started.
My parents directed me to run to our toolshed a quarter of a mile away and bring back an axe that we could use to break up the ice, as well as some rope. The moment I got back to the pond, we tried to use the rope to pull the cow out but quickly discovered a couple of things: one, none of us actually knew how to tie a lasso, and two, the only rope available was closer in strength and size to twine. It seemed to me that our little cow was a goner.
My dad and mom really cared about that cow, so my dad led the charge, axe in hand, and they started to literally chop their way through the ice towards the cow, clearing a 20-foot-long path for the cow to walk out of the pond. Everyone was worried that either the cow would kick my dad or that my dad would accidentally hit the cow with the axe, but somehow the crazy plan worked. The cow didn’t drown!
But the worry wasn’t over. As soon as the cow got out of the water, he started shivering like an old washing machine on spin cycle. My parents were freezing too, but they were more worried about the cow. My dad ran to get a campfire started in the middle of the field while my mom ran to get some quilts. Us kids corralled the cow close to the fire so that he wouldn’t run away. Soon, he warmed up enough to stop shivering and eat some of his hard-won breakfast.

Elder David B. Haight provides an insight into what can happen by sharing an experience from his life.
When he and Sister Haight were returning from Scotland, where he had presided over the Scotland Edinburgh Mission, they decided take a boat to New York leaving from Southampton in England. After the first day they observed a billboard advertising the entertainment that was available. They noticed the title of a movie they had enjoyed many years before. The movie was called "Gigi".
It featured Maurice Chevalier, a French actor and singer. They remembered the film as being happy and wholesome and decided it would be nice to see it again.
As they left the theatre following the performance, and walked along the deck of the ship holding hands, Ruby said, "They changed it."
As they walked and talked about it, Ruby said,
"That is not the show we saw before. They had some scenes we did not approve of in this production that were not in the previous version!" After a prolonged discussion Elder Haight said they concluded that the movie had not been changed. But they had changed.
Such experiences provide an excellent indicator of our progress toward true discipleship.

This happened to me when I was serving my mission. For a while, I felt that my prayers were going unnoticed by Him. But with time I searched the scriptures and came across different verses like Doctrine and Covenants 88:63–64:
“Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
“Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you.”
I meditated on those words, studied prophetic counsel, and prayed several times a day. As I tried to trust that He could guide me and provide me with answers, I felt my faith in Him growing, and I started noticing more promptings from the Spirit each day.

“Is anyone still awake?” The first time I asked, I had received two whispered responses in the affirmative. Now, hours later, the silence answered that I was the last one in the room who couldn’t get to sleep.
It was my first night in the Missionary Training Center (MTC). That day, I had said good-bye to my parents, met my companion and the other new missionaries going to Italy, and been to the first set of classes. I was exhausted, but my mind was spinning with anxiety. “What have I gotten myself into?” I asked myself over and over. I didn’t know if I could really learn to be a missionary. Would I have the courage to fly to a foreign country and talk to strangers about the gospel? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be here. Tears started to roll down my cheeks.
Then I remembered something my mom had told me about her brother Larry. Uncle Larry served his mission in Uruguay and Paraguay in the 1970s. At first he had spent sleepless nights worrying about his inadequacies. When he felt like he couldn’t bear it anymore, he would get out of his bed, go into the bathroom, and kneel down to plead with Heavenly Father for peace. Somehow, with the Lord’s help, Uncle Larry made it through and served a faithful mission.
I felt some hope at this thought and crept down the hall to the bathroom. In the dim light, I knelt on the cold tile floor and sobbed. I begged Heavenly Father to grant me a feeling of peace so that I could have the courage to move forward.
I waited. Nothing happened. I waited some more, hearing only the sound of my crying. Finally, there was nothing to do but go back to bed.
In the moment before I fell asleep, the answer came. The Spirit filled my mind with a bright, warm impression of a beautiful place. Suddenly I knew that although I might have a hard time with fear in the beginning, if I pressed forward, I would get to where the Lord meant me to be. The thought filled me with peace, and I fell asleep.
The Spirit had hinted of beautiful things ahead. In hard moments during my stay at the MTC, I closed my eyes and remembered what I had felt. With prayer and hard work, I outlasted my fears.
It wasn’t long before I found myself in Genoa, Italy, with my new companion. In the kitchen of our apartment was a glass door that led to a balcony. I stepped out on the balcony and gazed at the city. I already knew and loved this city. This was the place I had seen in my mind’s eye that night at the MTC. I knew the Lord had led me to this moment, and I was right where I belonged.

I have mentioned before an experience I had in the military in World War II. I hasten to say I was not a hero. But I did my duty. I endured and survived. I was assigned to a British liberty ship sailing from San Francisco to Suez. I was on that ship for 83 consecutive days except for a brief stop in Auckland, New Zealand. I was the only member of our faith on board. On Sundays I would go alone to the bow of the ship with my little set of servicemen’s scriptures and songbook. Amid the howling of the wind, I would read the scriptures, pray, and sing all by myself. I did not try to bargain with the Lord, but I did pray fervently that if I could survive the war and go home to my wife and family, I would earnestly try to remain true to the sacred covenants I had made at baptism, to the oath and covenant of the priesthood, and to my temple vows.

As part of our tour of duty, our little cargo ship was ordered to tow a large, burned-out oil tanker into Auckland, New Zealand. The tanker had no power and was wallowing helplessly in the ocean. Although we never saw them, we knew enemy submarines were lurking near us. While we were pulling that ship, we were caught in a violent storm, which we later learned sank many vessels. Because of the load we were pulling, we did not have enough power to go into the giant waves head on, and our ship was thrown from side to side in the trough of the pounding seas. It would creak and groan and roll from side to side, almost capsizing on every roll. Of course I prayed, as I imagine others did. In time the storm moved away from us. I am grateful for the sustaining influence and comfort my prayers gave me then and since in other times of peril.

They chat on the school bus, during breaks and lunch hour, between classes, and walking home. Sharline Niblett first heard the gospel this way. “I was invited to another Grice sister’s (Wendy’s) 21st birthday at their home, stayed the weekend, went to church meetings Sunday, and have been attending nearly every Sunday since,” she laughs.
So she kept in touch with the Grice girls. “I attended church with them on and off for three years,” she admits. Then came Sharline’s baptism. “I had such a good feeling inside,” she recalls. “During the testimony time, I sat next to Rachael and could clearly hear the Spirit whispering to me, ‘Go on up there.’ I tried to explain to Rachael, asking her to come with me. Rachael hesitated, so I told Sarah I had to go up. She was really surprised. Eventually we walked up to the stand together, and I was just able to say, ‘I know this church is true,’ before bursting into tears.”

I was not a very impressive teenager and spent little time serving others. During this time my mother invited me to come with her to visit my great-aunt at a nursing home.

My cousin and her daughter Stephanie accompanied us on this visit. Stephanie was seven or eight years old. As we walked into the nursing home, she waved at everyone she saw. They lit up as if she were handing out sunshine and rainbows. I, on the other hand, avoided eye contact.

When we entered the room that my great-aunt shared with another elderly woman, I did my best to disappear into the background. Stephanie, however, jumped onto my aunt’s bed and began to regale her with stories.

I noticed something about this room. On my aunt’s side were signs of love and family. Pictures and crayon drawings hung on the wall, and flowers adorned a nightstand. The other side of the room was sterile and bare. There were no signs of any visitors; no cards or pictures hung on the wall.

My aunt’s roommate sat alone in a wheelchair and did not acknowledge our presence. She was humming a tune and tapping the arms of her wheelchair, which made me uncomfortable.

Stephanie tugged on her mother’s arm and asked, “Mommy, what’s the matter with that lady?” Stephanie’s mother leaned down and whispered, “She needs love.” I was not prepared for what happened next.

Without hesitation, Stephanie ran over and jumped into the woman’s lap. She then began to tell her stories and ask all kinds of questions. The woman did not answer. Instead, tears ran down her face as she embraced Stephanie. For the next several minutes, Stephanie sat in her lap, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek.

I had never witnessed this type of unselfish love before, and I tried to hide my tears. Later, as we drove away from the nursing home, I marveled at how young Stephanie could be so selfless and so full of love and compassion for a complete stranger.

Fourteen days ago, I looked down on the Salt Lake Valley from the window of an airplane as it circled around to the international airport. I could pick out familiar spots on the ground: my old high school, my grandma’s neighborhood, a park my family had gone to once or twice. A wave of nostalgia hit me like I’d never felt before, and even the sight of Redwood Road almost brought tears to my eyes. Seeing the Jordan River Temple actually did. At 8:00 that evening, my plane touched down and I stepped onto home soil for the first time in two years.
Like all homecomings, mine was bittersweet. I spent two years as a missionary for the Church in the Scotland/Ireland Mission, speaking Mandarin Chinese. The call was unique, and not a day went by that wasn’t similarly special. My mission took me to soaring heights, but also to lows I never thought I’d experience. It filled my life with a wide range of color and emotion I hadn’t thought possible, things I figured were exclusive for other people, but not for me. It felt like I’d spent my whole life playing a video game, and suddenly I’d been dropped straight into it for real.
The day I arrived in the mission field, I found a question staring me in the face everywhere I looked: Why did you come? Companions, the mission president, and ward members all asked us why we came on a mission. I had a good, general response to it. But, for whatever reason, maybe because I repeated it so much, those words began to sound hollow. So, I began to question, and one day, not too long into my mission, I woke up with the scary realization that I honestly had no idea why I had come.
Serving a mission had always been in my future. It was something I’d planned on and even enthusiastically looked forward to for my entire life. And yet somehow I didn’t understand fully what a mission would entail. I’d have to talk to people? Teach them? Why did something so basic come as such a shock to me? Was I really prepared for this? How did I get here? Why had I come?
It wasn’t until a few months later I was posed a different question, which put everything into perspective.
“Why do you stay?”
That was a more immediate question, so it required a more immediate answer. Rather than looking deep into the past for a reason I wasn’t sure was there, I could look at myself in the here and now and decide. Why did I stay today? Why would I stay tomorrow? Well, for one thing, I couldn’t well give up on something I’d just started. The work was anything but comfortable, but I didn’t feel so out of place as I sometimes had back home. I knew I was accomplishing something, even if I wasn’t sure what it was. But there was something more than that. As I pondered, I realized that throughout all of the ups and downs and lefts and rights, the highs and lows and every shade of color you can imagine, there was one thing underpinning it all. It was the grace of Jesus Christ.
Grace lifts us, fills us, and makes us more than anything we could ever be. It is the love of Jesus Christ taking effect in our lives, and it is always available to us. It is the way spoken of by Nephi when he said, “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7).
That is why Christ promises us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
Without Christ, we would be left to ourselves, but with Him, we will far exceed what we think is our vast potential. Growth is never easy nor smooth, but even on the nausea-inducing roller-coaster called life, I found the sweet symphony of grace consecrating all of those experiences, the good and the bad, so even amidst the uncertainty I could say I enjoyed the ride.
That is why I went on my mission, and why I stayed; nothing else has taught me so much of the Savior and allowed me so much unfettered access to His divine power and love. Christ is real. He lives, He loves each of us, and He is with us in ways we cannot even imagine. Trust in Him, hold fast to His teachings, live by His words, and even in the darkest of night, life will carry a special glimmer that you cannot find anywhere else. That is so necessary in missionary life, but oh so much more vital in our daily lives.
“Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:34).

Testimonies abound in Tonga of the power of the priesthood as a means of bringing comfort or healing to those in distress. When 44-year-old Sione Siaki of Tongatapu fell ill with fever and pain, many feared he would die. The hospital in Tonga was full, but a nurse brought medication to his home. Day after day he suffered, for more than a month. “I was waiting to die,” says Brother Siaki. “Then our Relief Society president suggested a ward fast. She talked with our bishop, and twice our ward of 300 members fasted for me. Before the fasts, I couldn’t move. Two weeks after the second fast, I sat up and gradually got better. Now I am a temple worker. When I am in the temple, it comes straight into my mind that maybe this is why I was saved.”

1. Grace was nervous. She was going to sing with her little brother, Ethan, in sacrament meeting.
2. When it was time for Grace and Ethan to sing, Grace looked at Mom. “You can do it, Grace,” Mom whispered.
3. Grace and Ethan walked to the front of the chapel and stood behind the podium so that everyone could see them. Grace saw Dad smiling at her.
4. When the music started, Grace and Ethan sang “Jesus Has Risen.” Grace remembered all of the words and all of the notes.
5. When the song ended, Grace gave Ethan a big hug. Grace felt happy inside.
6. Grace and Ethan walked back to their seats and sat next to Mom and Dad. They were happy too. “That was beautiful,” Dad whispered.
7. Grace smiled. She was glad she and her brother could sing about Jesus.

A little over a year earlier, this kind of work would have been impossible for Peyton. At that time he was battling a dangerous infection that threatened to paralyze him. On top of that, his family had just moved to Idaho from Oregon, USA, and during the months he was stuck in bed and making daily hospital trips, he relied on his new friends and his trust in God to get him through.
Just before Peyton’s junior year of high school, his dad got a new job in Idaho. The family packed up everything and started the drive. “It didn’t really hit me until we started driving that we were actually moving,” Peyton says. “Then I really got scared.” Peyton’s mom remembers him quietly crying through a lot of the drive. “In fact, it was one of the only times I’ve seen him cry,” she says.
After the move Peyton joined the school soccer team. Although Peyton met a lot of new people, he had a hard time connecting with them. “It was all scary because everything was new,” he says. “The first couple of months were super hard.”
But his new friends kept reaching out to him. And it made a difference.
“There wasn’t a specific day where everything magically changed,” Peyton says. “It just happened slowly and over time as they kept inviting me to hang out with them. I slowly grew closer and closer to all of them.”
From the time Peyton was little, he loved all sports—but he had dreamed of playing on a high school varsity basketball team. Even though he didn’t make the team at his new school, he decided to play on the junior varsity team to prove himself.
Halfway through the season, Peyton noticed that his lower back began hurting, and gradually the pain got worse. For a while, taking a simple hot bath would relieve it. Then one morning Peyton woke up in intense pain, and over the next few days, he could barely walk. Finally, Peyton’s mom drove him to the emergency room.
The doctors gave him painkillers. “After that,” Peyton says, “I thought things would return to normal soon.”
They didn’t.
After a scan, the doctor told Peyton that he had a rare condition called a spinal epidural abscess—possibly from a freak hit to Peyton’s back during a basketball game. It was serious. If not treated in time, the swelling from the abscess could cause paralysis and even death.
Because the doctors wanted to avoid surgery, they put Peyton on the strongest antibiotics available. A permanent IV was put into his arm to give him internal medication. Peyton had to return to the hospital every day for treatments and tests, and he couldn’t go back to school. “I was scared,” Peyton explains. “But mostly I was frustrated that I couldn’t do anything I’d normally do.”
Peyton’s new friends visited him in the hospital after school. They texted, they heart-attacked his room, they helped throw a small birthday party for him, they even brought junior prom to the hospital for him, and they prayed.
“One of my friends, Ellie, would visit me pretty much every single day,” Peyton says, “and it was such a big help, strength, and source of joy to me. My friends were so helpful and supportive.”
But the weeks of treatments and waiting were still really hard. Peyton turned to the scriptures for comfort. One night, while reading in the Book of Mormon, he came across a passage that reached him: “And now, O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth … [and] I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day. … I do put my trust in him, and he will still deliver me” (Alma 36:3, 27; emphasis added).
“I trusted in those verses,” Peyton says. “They taught me to look to God, and I knew He would help me get through.”
Six weeks later Peyton had a follow-up scan. “I thought and hoped that I’d be declared infection-free,” he explains.
The results: the infection had diminished but not been eliminated, and there was potential it would come back. That meant another six weeks of treatment and increasing his trips to the hospital to three times a day. “I was super sad and frustrated. That was really hard.”
Finally, after the second round of treatments, Peyton was declared infection-free. “When they told me that I would be able to walk again and I wasn’t going to be paralyzed as long as I was careful, I was so relieved. I still pray and give thanks almost every day for the ability that I have to be able to walk and to exercise.”
With life somewhat back to normal, Peyton was eager to play sports again, especially basketball. “I really wanted to play, but I didn’t know if my back could handle it. I knew I had to take my question to God. I prayed a lot. Then I started having dreams about playing basketball and getting hit and becoming paralyzed during a high school game. At first I just brushed it off, but I kept having them. Then I started having dreams about me being a dad in a wheelchair.
“I decided I shouldn’t play basketball because one day I wanted to be able to play and do stuff with my kids. I felt like I was following a prompting.”
The following March, Peyton began his mission in North Carolina. One month later, Hurricane Matthew ravaged the eastern coast of the United States, and North Carolina was in emergency status. Although he had to be careful, Peyton and the other missionaries helped fill and place thousands of sandbags to protect businesses and homes from the floods.
Peyton reflects: “All of my experiences in Idaho prepared me in different ways for my mission. All of my experiences made me physically, mentally, or spiritually stronger, and I’ve needed all those in helping the people here in North Carolina.
“I’ve realized that God gave me that trial to humble me and to give me more compassion for other people. This experience also made me a lot more grateful for all the things that I take for granted. There was a reason the Lord preserved me and that I wasn’t paralyzed or dead. That’s when it really hit me that I was here to help and bless others.”