Gospel Story Finder

With all her extra-curricular activities and despite having missed so much school, she kept up with her classes and graduated with a 3.94 gpa. When she missed a month of school for further training with leg braces, Arlene came bouncing back to get the highest grade in her algebra class. She took a physics class and couldn’t help but note, “The ratio was great—5 1/2 boys to each girl.”

My wife, Séraphine, is an amazing person. When she received her patriarchal blessing, the Lord told her through the Patriarch, “You are a teacher, a noble calling. In order for you to serve everyone, your Father has given you this teacher calling for you to serve Him. Serve Him by helping everyone, whether it be members of your own immediate family, or extended family, whether it be on your husband’s family side, or on the Church side, feed them all and support everyone so that the work of God, our Father, may go forward.”

From the time she received this blessing, she has been serving and feeding everyone. No one can enter our home and leave without eating—even something small.

I see my wife fulfilling her calling and really trying to keep it that way. If we all do our best to serve others, the work of our Father will go forward, and the world will be better because members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are serving one another and are serving their neighbors.

One of my earliest recollections happened when I was about four years of age. Several blocks from our home was a little wooden grocery store. In the front of the store windows the proprietor had built a ledge about four inches wide, where at this time of the year he placed big juicy apples to attract those passing by. As I walked by the front of the store, I saw those beautiful red apples, and my mouth began to water. Without realizing what I was doing, I took one and continued walking up the street.

When I got a short distance away, I looked at what I had in my hand and suddenly realized I had stolen an apple. I began to run but made the mistake of running the wrong way.

On the downhill side of our front porch, there was latticework between the porch level and the ground level. A small door enabled us to store gardening tools under the porch and also gave us access to a convenient place to hide.

I ran all the way home, crawled under the porch, and sat there all afternoon shivering with fear—and eating the apple. I knew that I had done wrong, and I knew that my Heavenly Father knew that I had done wrong.

I have often reflected upon how I suffered from a remorse of conscience at such an early age. The Light of Christ, which lights every man that comes into the world, was evident that day, which in later years caused me to ponder about how the Light of Christ can influence our lives.

This same desire to live Christian principles was evident in Aurelia Spencer Rogers, who founded the Primary organization of the Church. She had a concern for the moral character and social development of children. Leaders of the Primary since Aurelia Spencer Rogers continue to teach wholesomeness, virtue, and love for one another as well as to instill a desire to understand and live by traditional values.

A few years ago on our television set we had a set of rabbit ears for an antenna, and the pictures and messages were not clear. They were foggy and there was what they call “snow” on the set. Often we were unable to understand the message.
You cannot pick up the celestial message, the bread of life, the word of God, with rabbit ears on your human mind, your human body; the message will not be clear. You need your antenna high, well placed, and turned toward the divine message. You need to keep the mind clear and focused on the heavenly message. It takes time to plan and install in the human heart and mind an antenna to pick up spiritual revelation and inspiration from God. You must be in tune. If you’re out of tune, you’re out of harmony, and static and wrong impressions come from satanic and worldly sources.

I recently attended a YSA stake conference. I was late, as usual, and felt like all eyes were on me as I slid into an empty seat near the back. I folded my arms and sat quietly, trying to focus on the Spirit and the songs, but it all turned into garbled noise.
This sort of thing—a group of faithful peers singing and worshipping together—should be uplifting and spiritual, right? So why couldn’t I feel it? Why wouldn’t my mind stop racing? And why did this keep happening?
Eventually the meeting ended, and I left in tears.

At a recent stake conference, a young lady came up to me at the conclusion. As we were shaking hands, she said, “Bishop, you could improve your general conference talks by smiling.” I wanted to tell her about fear and smiling, but I didn’t have time. But I’ll try and hope for the best.

“Each morning I did something a little different—setting goals, studying scriptures, studying my patriarchal blessing and spiritual gifts—and each morning I was able to feel God’s love. I know that He and the Savior are my biggest supporters, and that They love me, are helping me, and will always be there for me. And I know I am good enough.”—Jemma Telleman, Queensland, Australia

Photograph by Leslie Nilsson
We were all excited for Agatha’s birth in 2015. She would be my parents’ first grandchild. Everything went well until the day she was born. She was a large baby, I suffered complications, and the doctor was late getting to the hospital. When he finally arrived, he had to use forceps to remove her. By then, she had suffered neonatal asphyxia.
When they put Agatha on my chest for a moment, I thought it was so I could say goodbye. Nurses then whisked her away for neonatal intensive care. I found out later that her Apgar score, used to assess a newborn’s overall condition, was only 2. A score of 7 to 10 is considered normal.
Scans showed a large white spot on Agatha’s brain, revealing significant damage from lack of oxygen. Doctors told us that if she lived, she would suffer serious cognitive and physical disabilities and likely have epilepsy.
When my family learned how gravely ill Agatha was, my parents and in-laws were given permission to enter the neonatal intensive care unit at different times to see Agatha and say goodbye. My father and father-in-law, unbeknownst to one another, each gave her a blessing. My husband also gave her a blessing. That Sunday we organized a family fast for her.
Agatha spent 11 days in the hospital before we could take her home. For several months, she underwent tests and procedures. She couldn’t swallow, she lacked reflexes, and she suffered convulsions. They told me she would never move her head, never walk, and never speak.
Over the next year, we continued to pray and fast for Agatha, and we took her to a physical therapist to help her learn to move. The left side of her body had been especially affected by her asphyxia. She could move her right hand but not her left hand. Doctors told us that progress would be slow. But after only a few sessions, she could move both sides of her body equally. The therapist said it was a miracle. Because she learned so quickly, he wondered why we had brought her in the first place.
Every small improvement brought us happiness. Soon Agatha began to move her head. Then she began to sit up. When she started to smile, we knew that our faith and prayers were being answered. And when she said “Mama” for the first time, I felt great joy.
We received our biggest miracle at her annual checkup. A magnetic resonance image (MRI) showed no white spot on her brain. Her doctor couldn’t believe it.
“This scan looks like it came from a different child,” he said, comparing the new image with the original image taken after she was born. He requested a second scan, asking, “What is going on here?”
Today, Agatha has no cognitive or physical disabilities, and she no longer takes medication for epilepsy. Her school knows her as an intellectually advanced child.
We attribute Agatha’s healing to what my father calls “a perfect triangle”: faith, fasting and prayer, and priesthood blessings from righteous men. We know that the Lord loves us, we know He has power, and we know He gives us His power to exercise here on earth. We are grateful that He healed Agatha.

Forgive me for a personal conclusion, which does not represent the terrible burdens so many of you carry, but it is meant to be encouraging. Thirty years ago last month, a little family set out to cross the United States to attend graduate school—no money, an old car, every earthly possession they owned packed into less than half the space of the smallest U-Haul trailer available. Bidding their apprehensive parents farewell, they drove exactly 34 miles up the highway, at which point their beleaguered car erupted.
Pulling off the freeway onto a frontage road, the young father surveyed the steam, matched it with his own, then left his trusting wife and two innocent children—the youngest just three months old—to wait in the car while he walked the three miles or so to the southern Utah metropolis of Kanarraville, population then, I suppose, 65. Some water was secured at the edge of town, and a very kind citizen offered a drive back to the stranded family. The car was attended to and slowly—very slowly—driven back to St. George for inspection—U-Haul trailer and all.
After more than two hours of checking and rechecking, no immediate problem could be detected, so once again the journey was begun. In exactly the same amount of elapsed time at exactly the same location on that highway with exactly the same pyrotechnics from under the hood, the car exploded again. It could not have been 15 feet from the earlier collapse, probably not 5 feet from it! Obviously the most precise laws of automotive physics were at work.
Now feeling more foolish than angry, the chagrined young father once more left his trusting loved ones and started the long walk for help once again. This time the man providing the water said, “Either you or that fellow who looks just like you ought to get a new radiator for that car.” For the second time a kind neighbor offered a lift back to the same automobile and its anxious little occupants. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at the plight of this young family.
“How far have you come?” he said. “Thirty-four miles,” I answered. “How much farther do you have to go?” “Twenty-six hundred miles,” I said. “Well, you might make that trip, and your wife and those two little kiddies might make that trip, but none of you are going to make it in that car.” He proved to be prophetic on all counts.
Just two weeks ago this weekend, I drove by that exact spot where the freeway turnoff leads to a frontage road, just three miles or so west of Kanarraville, Utah. That same beautiful and loyal wife, my dearest friend and greatest supporter for all these years, was curled up asleep in the seat beside me. The two children in the story, and the little brother who later joined them, have long since grown up and served missions, married perfectly, and are now raising children of their own. The automobile we were driving this time was modest but very pleasant and very safe. In fact, except for me and my lovely Pat situated so peacefully at my side, nothing of that moment two weeks ago was even remotely like the distressing circumstances of three decades earlier.
Yet in my mind’s eye, for just an instant, I thought perhaps I saw on that side road an old car with a devoted young wife and two little children making the best of a bad situation there. Just ahead of them I imagined that I saw a young fellow walking toward Kanarraville, with plenty of distance still ahead of him. His shoulders seemed to be slumping a little, the weight of a young father’s fear evident in his pace. In the scriptural phrase, his hands did seem to “hang down.” In that imaginary instant, I couldn’t help calling out to him: “Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”

I had been thinking about your genealogy for several weeks, and I felt that I should go to the address of your great-grandfather’s home to check the area.
After two hours on the high-speed train, I bussed to the city of Chi Kan, a place I had never been before. I fell asleep, and at the final stop the driver woke me up. I got off, looked around, and saw I was in a fishing village. I asked a young shop owner across the street for directions. He called a taxi for me and directed the driver to a place where an old man lived. When I arrived and asked that man where I could find the town’s genealogy record, he told me to walk a few blocks to a temple by the seashore.
At the temple, I saw a group of men having tea and chatting. They said that they were just starting an annual meeting of the Liu Shi family genealogy to prepare for a big conference in October. I explained that I was there to find family names for my friend.
“Usually no one is at this temple,” they said. “The door is locked except for the two to three hours when we hold the annual meeting. You are very lucky to meet us here.”
When I told the men I was looking for the name Liu Bei, they told me they had been collecting the Liu family genealogy for years and didn’t recall that name. One of the men kindly offered his genealogy records for me to take a look. They continued their meeting while I searched the records. After about 10–15 minutes, I shouted, “I found it!”
Shocked, they stopped talking and grabbed the book. I showed them the name, and they told me that it came from the family line of Mr. Liu Qiu Shan, who was attending their meeting that day. I purchased a copy of the genealogy book, which contained records going back 26 generations and 2,460 years of ancestors’ names on extended family lines.
Mr. Liu Qiu Shan later gave me a ride to the train station. He told me if I had come an hour earlier or the next day, I wouldn’t have found anyone or anything there. He said, “This place is always locked. It must be the ancestors’ blessing. It is truly a miracle.”

But the members themselves have probably done more to gain acceptance for the Church than anything we could have planned. We have a few Church members who are members of high political circles. Other Church members have held high rank in the military—Colonel Augusto Conde, for example. Because of his integrity, he retired from military service in Guatemala with the finest reputation any man could have; then he served in the Guatemala temple presidency. The secretary to the vice president of El Salvador is the wife of a counselor in a stake presidency. She’s outstanding.

I listened intently
as the speaker voiced from his heart
the deep, inexpressible joy we would
someday feel upon seeing our Father in Heaven
again
and rushing into His arms.
My heart was full at this thought, but an
understanding was not yet born.
I returned home
(The college coed!)
and flung my suitcase, gathering my family
into my anticipating arms.
Ah! Completeness. I was home. But dad
was still downstairs
and I fairly flew, without a thought.
It was as fast as a breath and as natural
and life-sustaining
to rush into his arms. A warmth of understanding
came—so this is what it must be like.
And I knew.

On another occasion, I was in New Zealand visiting the home of a single mother with three teenage children. The oldest son was 18 and had received the Melchizedek Priesthood just the previous Sunday. I asked if he had been able to exercise this priesthood yet. He said, “I’m not sure what that means.”
I told him he now had the authority to give a priesthood blessing of comfort or healing. I looked at his mother, who had not had a Melchizedek Priesthood holder by her side for many years. “I think it would be wonderful,” I said, “if you would give your mom a blessing.”
He replied, “I don’t know how.”
I explained that he could put his hands on his mother’s head, state her name, state that he is giving her a blessing by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, say whatever the Spirit puts in his mind and heart, and close in the name of Jesus Christ.
The next day, I received an email from him. It read in part: “Tonight I blessed my mum. … I felt very, very nervous and inadequate, so I prayed continually to ensure I had the Spirit with me, because I could not give a blessing without it. As I started, I completely forgot myself and my weaknesses. … I [did not expect] the immense spiritual and emotional power I felt. … Afterwards the spirit of love hit me so hard I could not contain my emotions, so I hugged my mum and wept like a baby. … Even now as I write this, [I feel] the Spirit [so much that] I never want to sin again. … I love this gospel.”
Isn’t it inspiring to see how a seemingly ordinary young man can accomplish great things through priesthood service, even when he feels inadequate? I recently learned that this young elder has received a mission call and will enter the missionary training center next month. I believe he will lead many souls to Christ because he has learned how to follow Christ in his priesthood service—beginning in his own home, where his example is having a profound influence on his 14-year-old brother.

And for Christian, so does studying Church doctrine and history. In fact, his favorite stories come out of Church history. For example, he finds strength in the 1834 experience of Zion’s Camp when mobbers threatened to attack the encampment and the Prophet Joseph Smith prophesied that the Lord would not permit it. That evening, a terrible storm scattered the mobbers. This tells Christian that he can prepare for the future without fear because the Lord can protect those who serve Him.

Isabel Faye Hills was excited for a very special birthday. On the day she turned eight, she was baptized and confirmed! At home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, Isabel’s family says she is a shining example of staying on the right track with hard work and a great laugh.
Isabel helped plan her baptism service, and she made the program herself. She was baptized by her dad and confirmed by her Grandpap Conklin.

Once I was at my friend’s house. The family didn’t say a prayer before meals. I said, “Can we please say a prayer before we eat?” They said, “Sure.” I am glad I chose the right and suggested that we pray.

I thought of this lesson about repentance after watching my sister one afternoon. Our family’s backyard opened onto a field that had been cleared for construction. During heavy rainstorms, the field would turn to mud. This was no average mud. No, this mud was gross, gooey, and deep. If you got stuck, getting out was like trying to run through peanut butter.

One day my little sister decided she wanted to go outside and play. My mom reminded her to stay on the cement patio close to the house. Instead, my sister wandered off into the field.

After a while, I heard somebody crying and looked outside. I couldn’t believe it! My sister was sitting in the middle of the mud, completely covered, with tears rolling down her face. She kept trying to get out, but it was impossible. Every time she tried to move, she sunk deeper and deeper into the gross mud. Of course, we quickly ran out to rescue her.

I helped my mom lay down boards so we could walk out to my sister without getting stuck ourselves. The mud was so thick that when my sister was pulled out, her shoes and socks were sucked right off!

When my ballet teacher died, I brought flowers and a card to her mom. I knew she was very sad. She sent me a card back saying how happy the flowers and card made her. It made me happy that I could help her feel better and let her know that I remembered my ballet teacher.
Kahri M., age 6, Switzerland

One Sunday evening not very long ago, I had the opportunity of attending sacrament meeting in the Pesega Third Ward. It happened to be the Sunday of the children’s sacrament meeting presentation.
The theme for the meeting was “Thou Shalt Live Together in Love.” Perhaps you remember putting on this program in your own sacrament meeting. It is the same one the First Presidency asked bishops all over the Church to have children present.
The program was very well prepared. But it was presented just a little different from the way it was in most other wards and districts. The children gave all of their parts in both English and Samoan. This was because some of the parents in the audience could not understand English and others could not understand Samoan. The children wanted everyone to enjoy their program.