Gospel Story Finder

I was born in Romania. That is a country far, far away from my home in Salt Lake City, Utah. My mother went to Romania and adopted me. She loved Romania, but she said that there was not much food there. My mom found me in a hospital. I was three months old and weighed only five pounds.
When we got to Salt Lake City, I was very sick. I couldn’t keep food in my stomach, so I was very skinny. And I had sores all over my body.
My mom kept praying that I would get better. One night, she had a vivid dream about what she was supposed to feed me. The next morning, she got up and made rice pudding and put it in the blender so she could feed it to me using a baby bottle. Not only did I eat it, but I liked it a lot.
Rice was all I would eat for six months. The sores all over my body went away, and I started gaining weight. Mom says that she knows Heavenly Father inspired her to feed me rice pudding, because she doesn’t like it and had never made it before. I’m glad Heavenly Father knew that rice pudding would help me get better. My mom calls me the Rice Pudding Baby.
Kateri Daniela Combs, age 8Salt Lake City, Utah

John Taylor stayed with the Prophet Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum Smith, and Elder Willard Richards at Carthage Jail. John sang to help comfort the prisoners.
John: “A poor wayfaring Man of griefHath often crossed me on my way …”*
After John had sung it once, the Prophet Joseph asked him to sing it again.
Joseph: Sing that song again, will you, John?
John: I do not feel like singing.
Hyrum: Yes, please sing that song again.
Joseph: You’ll feel better once you begin, and so will I.
John: “A poor wayfaring Man of griefHath often crossed me on my way …”
Then a mob of men with painted faces and guns stormed up the stairs to the room where the Prophet and the other prisoners were staying.
Mobster: The Mormon Prophet is up here!!
Elder Richards tried to keep the mob out of the room with a hickory cane, but could not. The mob killed Hyrum. Then Joseph ran to the window and was shot by more members of the mob from below.
Elder Taylor was shot five times. One of the bullets was stopped by the watch in his vest pocket. That saved his life.
Later, he wrote this about Joseph Smith.
John: “Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”**

“We have a tradition at Christmastime of going to Granddaddy’s house where we dress up and act out the birth of Jesus while someone reads the story from the Bible.”
“Heidi was Baby Jesus one year, ‘cause our family didn’t have a boy baby then.”
“I got to be an angel last year!” Natalie, age five, declared.

I was once invited to speak at graduation services at a university. The university president had wanted President Gordon B. Hinckley to be invited but found that he was unavailable. So by default I got the invitation. I was then a junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
The person who invited me to speak became anxious as she learned more about my obligations as an Apostle. She called me on the phone and said that she now understood that my duty was to be a witness of Jesus Christ.
In very firm tones she told me that I could not do that when I spoke there. She explained that the university respected people of all religious beliefs, including those who denied the existence of a God. She repeated, “You cannot fulfill your duty here.”
I hung up the phone with serious questions in my mind. Should I tell the university that I would not keep my agreement to speak? It was only two weeks before the event. My appearance there had been announced. What effect would my failing to keep my agreement have on the good name of the Church?
I prayed to know what God would have me do. The answer came in a surprising way to me. I realized that the examples of Nephi, Abinadi, Alma, Amulek, and the sons of Mosiah applied to what I was. They were bold witnesses of Jesus Christ in the face of deadly peril.
So the only choice to be made was how to prepare. I dug into everything I could learn about the university. As the day of the talk grew closer, my anxiety rose and my prayers intensified.
In a miracle like the Red Sea parting, I found a news article. That university had been honored for doing what the Church has learned to do in our humanitarian efforts across the world. And so in my talk I described what we and they had done to lift people in great need. I said that I knew that Jesus Christ was the source of the blessings that had come into the lives of those we and they had served.
After the meeting the audience rose to applaud, which seemed a little unusual to me. I was amazed but still a little anxious. I remembered what happened to Abinadi. Only Alma had accepted his witness. But that night, at a large formal dinner, I heard the university president say that in my talk he heard the words of God.

For Vishakha it all started in India. That was where Vishakha Ram was invited to go to something called “institute” with a friend. She hesitated because she didn’t really think religion was her thing, but she finally agreed. On her first visit, she found a small class studying about preparing for an eternal marriage. Vishakha was amazed. “They were actually talking about these things. I grew up as a Hindu, and we don’t have the concept of eternal marriage. But in this class it was interesting to me because everything was so pure and clear. It was just like looking at pearls. It was really beautiful.”
Vishakha didn’t have the opportunity to join the Church in India because she went to Berlin, Germany, on a student exchange program. But she remembered the Church and the institute class she had found so interesting. When she arrived in Berlin, she called the missionaries, and they also took her to institute. She arrived just in time to see a great change take place at the Berlin institute. The Church had finished building a new institute addition adjoining the stake center. This shared building provides room for sports such as volleyball and basketball, a kitchen, a lounge, a library, and plenty of classrooms. The center would now support a new emphasis called institute outreach.
Just a year and a half since her baptism, Vishakha, 26, from the Lankwitz Ward, was called as student council president at the institute. Now there are activities or classes nearly every night of the week at the Berlin outreach center. She is attending the Church history class with 25 other students. For their institute, Vishakha says, “the class is mighty big.” She is excited to get some more activities going, more chances to go out to museums and concerts, more fun activities like playing games, maybe an evening to watch movies, and more testimony meetings. “So far,” says Vishakha, “there hasn’t been a dance course. We want to do that.”

Now consider if you had looked on FamilySearch for the ancestor you didn’t know and saw some pictures of him. Perhaps he looked very much like your grandfather. Perhaps there was a story that talked of how during one rainy season, there was a big flood in his village. His home washed away, one of his children died in the flood, and his fields were ruined. He didn’t have anything left to support his family, so after praying, he migrated with his family to the city, where he struggled but eventually found work to support and feed his family.

A dear friend of mine sent me an old article from the Nebraska Advertiser, a Midwestern United States newspaper, dated July 9, 1857. It read: “This morning early a company of Mormons passed through on their journey to Salt Lake. Women (not very delicate to be sure) dragging hand carts like beasts, one [woman] tumbled down in this black mud which caused a slight halt in the procession, little children trudged along in their [strange] foreign dress looking as determined as their mothers.”

I’ve thought a lot about this mud-drenched woman. Why was she pulling alone? Was she a single mother? What gave her the inner strength, the grit, the perseverance to make such a wrenching journey through mud, pulling all her possessions in a handcart to an unknown desert home—at times being mocked by observers?

President Joseph F. Smith spoke of the inner strength of these pioneer women, saying: “Could you turn one of these women away from their convictions in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Could you darken their minds as to the mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith? Could you blind them with reference to the divine mission of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? No, never in the world could you do it. Why? Because they knew it. God revealed it to them, and they understood it, and no power on earth could turn them from what they knew to be that truth.”

One of the highlights of our vacation last summer was a stop at the old cemetery in Ephraim, Utah, where many of the Peterson family are buried. The younger family members had never met any of these relatives, although they had heard stories about them and had seen some of their pictures. When we read on the gravestones the birthplaces of these Peterson kin—Sweden, Norway, and New York—we imagined those days long ago when they heard the missionaries, joined the Church, and then traveled to Zion. We all feel a greater appreciation for our heritage since that day and have an increased interest in genealogy.

About two years later, I was praying one night when a thought entered my mind: “What about a mission?” I dismissed the idea as impossible. After all, I had signed a contract and was enlisted to serve in the army for a set amount of time. The next night the same thing happened, and I shrugged it off again. But when the thought came back for the third consecutive night, I decided to ask Heavenly Father about it.
“If I really am supposed to serve a mission, help me know what to do,” I pleaded.
About 10 minutes later I was lying in my bunk when someone knocked on the door. It was my elders quorum president, looking a little uncomfortable.
Somewhat sheepishly he said, “I’m not exactly sure why, but for the past three nights the Spirit has prompted me to tell you that you are supposed to serve a mission. Tonight the prompting was so strong that there was no way I could ever think of sleeping without telling you.”
I knew my answer, and so I started to act on it. I knew it’s extremely hard to get permission to take a two-year break from the army, but after much effort and many small miracles, I was finally granted leave for two years to serve a mission. I received my call to the Alaska Anchorage Mission, where I’m now serving.

Today I went to that mountain,
the one we climbed every Fourth of July.
It’s not that steep.
But then I didn’t run.
Was I five the first time?
Your khakis sandpapering my wrist
below our hands, your Bunyan boots
cutting the sharp white-rock path to crescents,
you pacing me groundless to the ridge.
Our seats, the red cliffs sanded into hollows,
Sego lilies spidering the clefts, purple sky and
stomach-grabbing fear that rattlers might undo
themselves along the cracks. Milk-warm oranges.
Smashed tuna sandwiches. Melted Hersheys. A stone
thrown out to see how far down was.
One year you let me wait high on the Devil’s Slide,
you jarring down ahead, shoulders heaving
in your shirt, soles showing. You turned and waved,
expecting me.
I started down like you, easy, bouncy.
But down was farther than I thought
and steeper. Frantic legs
jack hammering. Windmill arms. Jammed face.
Slope sucking me. Eyes aching open,
then—crushed closed. I sprawled in dumb surrender.
But you surrounded me. Sudden, fierce,
your chest against my fall, safe
among white rocks and pines.
Today I came down slow, feeling for footholds,
clutching at my woman’s urge to run
here to your grave.

Both “established in one” is the way two eyes see or function. Because I have glaucoma, I have to apply sight-saving miracle drops in both eyes twice a day to prevent blindness. Before doctors discovered that I had glaucoma, I had already lost partial vision in one eye. I am profoundly grateful for modern-day medicine and that I am not blind. I am also thankful for my second good eye, which compensates for the partial loss of vision in the other. The two-eye metaphor has profound and personal relevance for me.

Like my daily eye drops, it is only by “continually holding fast to the rod of iron” (1 Nephi 8:30; emphasis added) that we can avoid being blinded by the latter-day mists that are so subtle and prevalent. Whenever a person becomes less active or leaves the Church, it’s almost a certainty that person has stopped reading the Book of Mormon.

There were lonely hearts warmed that evening. Young people from small towns who rarely know more than one or two Latter-day Saints their own age couldn’t even count all the Mormons. One leader reported that as she was walking between the refreshment tables at the dance, she noticed a young lady sitting all alone, sobbing softly to herself. The leader sat down, talked to the girl, and found that she was hard of hearing and had a low estimation of herself. Her friends had left her, not maliciously, but they had been asked to dance and were all out on the dance floor. A little while later this same leader noticed a young man sitting quietly alone. He wasn’t too coordinated and didn’t feel bold enough to ask anyone to dance with him. So she took the boy over to the young lady, introduced them, and chatted with them for a while until they felt comfortable together. The young couple danced and talked and laughed and drank lemonade and danced some more and were as happy that evening as anyone could be. Others felt less alone and gathered strength from the numbers that evening. Tim Turner from Roanoke explained his feelings after the banquet: “Meeting all these other Mormons made me realize that there are many others who have the same goals I have.”

Youth in the Mesa Arizona Central Stake (all 430 of them) participated in 26 service projects ranging from cleaning a city cemetery to playing basketball with a homeless child. No matter what they participated in, the youth worked hard and had a great time.

When I was baptized into the Church, I wasn’t baptized by my father; I was baptized by a priest. When I was a priest, I had the blessing to baptize my sister. And one of the great experiences I had as a father was when my son, who was a priest, ordained his brother to be a teacher.

This historic letter that I hold in my hand was typed 98 years ago. Each sheet is placed in a plastic, sealed envelope to protect it. Though written nearly a century ago, the words contained on these pages have a great deal of significance for us today.
The year 1899 marked a jubilee celebration—the 50-year anniversary of the organization of the first Sunday School of the Church. As a culmination of that jubilee year, a time capsule in the form of a beautiful hand-carved box was filled with items considered to have meaning for those who would be present at its opening 50 years in the future.
Accordingly, in 1949 the time capsule was opened, and among other historical items was this letter addressed to the “General Sunday School Authorities of a.d. 1949.” The letter includes the following:
“The establishment of the first Sunday Schools in the Rocky Mountains was attended with hardships and discouragements. The people were in a dry and barren land and were subjected to many privations. It required all their time and strength to secure the necessaries of life; yet in the midst of it all, with the limited facilities at hand, they began the education of their children.”
The letter continues: “Now brethren, we can but dimly see what the next fifty years will do for the youth of Zion. The methods of today may be entirely abandoned for new ones to be discovered in the future.
“It is probable that when you receive this Jubilee box, many of us, whose names are signed to this greeting, will have passed to the other side with the great army of Sunday School workers, and the greeting therefore of those of us who have gone to the great beyond, will be to you as a voice from the dead.
“This Sunday School work has been to us a labor of love and our interest does not merely exist for today, but extends into the future.
“… We beseech you that whatever may be the methods employed, whatever may be the changes wrought in the fifty years to come, that you never forget for an instant the object of the great Sunday School work, viz: To teach the children the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; to make Latter Day Saints of them.”
The letter was signed by the general Sunday School presidency, as well as 21 other board members, including Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant, both of whom later served as President of the Church.

I recalled the day some years earlier when I picked up the telephone to hear the familiar voice of President Spencer W. Kimball, who carefully extended a call to me to serve as a mission president.
After the telephone call, I was troubled with great feelings of inadequacy. My wife and I were yet in our 30s, with a young family of six children. I remembered the deep love and respect that I felt and still feel for my mission president. Could President Kimball have made a mistake? Did they really understand who I was?
A few days later, we were granted an appointment with Elder Rex D. Pinegar. We explained to him our feelings. I will always remember Elder Pinegar’s answer: “Brother Brough, have you a testimony as to the divine calling of our prophets and other Church leaders?”
“Yes, I do,” I answered. “From my earliest childhood, I have believed in the sacred callings of our Church leaders. From the deepest part of my soul, I believe President Spencer W. Kimball to be a prophet.”
Elder Pinegar then said, “Now you must gain a testimony as to the divine nature of your own calling. You must come to know that you also have been called of God.”

Throughout our years at the university and for a considerable time thereafter, my wife and I lived in a congested area near downtown Salt Lake City. After graduating from law school, I was fortunate in obtaining a job at the state capitol. Church callings and the proximity of our home to my office caused us to be in no hurry to leave our small apartment, even had our financial situation allowed us to. One of the economies which my wife allowed me to practice was walking to work. The distance was not too great, and the capitol hill climb kept me fit.
One brilliant, warm day I had come home for lunch; and as I was returning to work I noticed a small boy sitting on the curb at the foot of the hill. I knew him by sight as a neighbor who lived in a large apartment house next door to us. His parents were divorced. His mother worked and often left him alone in the afternoons to look after himself. As I was in no hurry to begin my ascent, I stopped to talk with him for a moment.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Waiting for my brother.”
“Where is he?” I asked as I contemplated the hot climb up the hill. His answer brought me immediately to attention.
“He’s in school.”
“Don’t you know that school isn’t out until 3:30?” I gently replied.
He shuffled his toe in the dirt of the street and looked at me with what I am now positive was condescension.
“Sure,” he said, “but I don’t want to miss him.”
“Maybe the kid had a point,” I thought as I climbed the hill. And I have pondered his statement many times since that day. Of course he did. Whatever his reason for wanting his brother; whether for love or loneliness or just to deliver a family message, it was of sufficient importance for him to wait on the curb at the side of a hot street all afternoon. He was not going to miss his brother, whatever the discomfort or whatever the cost. He had nothing more important to do.

This past summer at the Nauvoo Aaronic Priesthood Encampment, special missionary preparation workshops were held. Bishops conducted these sessions with their Aaronic Priesthood. Every young man was given his own missionary preparation book. Two thousand young men participated in this activity.
A bishop reported that one young man would not get involved. He lazed on the grass a few feet from the group. He would occasionally laugh or seem to make fun. He would not participate, as he had no intention of serving a mission. Around a campfire that night, during a testimony meeting, this young man stood up and began to talk. He said, “This morning I did not participate in the missionary preparation workshops, but I was listening, I was listening. I have been thinking, thinking a lot.” Then, with great emotion he said, “I have made a decision to go on a mission.”

About six months after graduating from college, I started experiencing panic attacks, bouts of anxiety, and waves of depression. I had no idea where these feelings came from, but they were strong and debilitating.
I struggled to stay focused. At work, any new task brought such anxiety that I couldn’t sit still. My mind would race, and my heart would beat so hard that I thought it would leap out of my chest. This would go on for days, and after returning home from work each day, I would collapse on the couch. Before I knew it, the evening was gone and another workday had begun.
These feelings persisted for months, even after I found a new job and sought professional help.
I prayed every morning on the way to work for the strength to just make it through the day and return home to my wife and daughter. I couldn’t see an end to my struggle, and I often wanted to give up. Many days I begged heaven for help as my eyes filled with tears. I prayed with more sincerity than I ever had before, pleading with Heavenly Father to help me understand this trial and to remove it from me.
I felt lost in darkness and despair when I didn’t feel the Spirit. But when the Spirit lifted me out of my hopelessness, I found the confidence to continue—if only until my next prayer. I came to rely on my Heavenly Father for more than just a prayer at mealtime or a casual nightly check-in. As a result, I grew closer to Him.
In the middle of my anxiety and despair, I reread the account of the Jaredites crossing the “great deep” (Ether 2:25). I can only imagine their anxious anticipation as they entered their barges. Their journey might be perilous, but they knew they were headed to “a land choice above all other lands” (Ether 2:15).
Of their journey, we read:
“The Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind.
“And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind.
“… When they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters.
“And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind” (Ether 6:5–8).
These verses became personal to me. I felt that I was in my own barge, with winds of anxiety beating upon me and waves of depression swelling over me and burying me in the depths of despair. When I was “encompassed about” and would cry unto the Lord, I would break through the surface but would then be buried once more.
I read verse 8 again: “The wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land … and thus they were driven forth before the wind” (emphasis added). Then it hit me. The very wind that caused the mountainous waves to bury the barges also blessed the Jaredites on their journey. I had been pleading with Heavenly Father to calm the wind and waves, but without them, I might not reach whatever “promised land” He was leading me to.
These verses changed my outlook on life. My anxiety and depression had increased my reliance on Heavenly Father. Without the wind and waves, I might never have come to know God as I have—and the Jaredites might never have reached the promised land.
For now, a few years after this experience, my winds of anxiety are no longer gusting and my waves of depression have ceased to bury me. But if and when the tempest returns, I will call upon the Lord and be thankful, knowing that calm seas don’t carry barges to the promised land—stormy seas do.

The first BYU PathwayConnect centre in Africa was established in Accra, Ghana, in November, 2010. It commenced classes with 20 students under the leadership of Brother and Sister Samuel Boakye-Yiadom who were called as the first Pathway missionary couple in Africa. There are now two additional centres located in Tesano and Odorkor, serving students from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cote d’Ivoire.