Gospel Story Finder

Some time ago I received a letter from Brother Rafael Pérez Cisneros of Galicia, Spain, telling me about his conversion. Part of his letter said the following:
“I had no concept of the purpose of life or what the family really is. When I finally allowed the missionaries to come into my home, I told them, ‘Give me your message, but I warn you that nothing is going to make me change religions.’ On this first occasion my children and my wife were listening attentively. I felt separated from the group. I felt afraid, and without thinking I went to my bedroom. I closed the door and began to pray from the depths of my soul like I had never prayed before. ‘Father, if it is true that these young men are Your disciples and have come to help us, please make it known to me.’ It was in that very moment that I began to cry like a small child. My tears were abundant, and I felt happiness like I had never before experienced. I was absorbed in a sphere full of joy and happiness that penetrated my soul. I understood that God was answering my prayer.
“All of my family was baptized, and we had the blessing of being sealed in the Swiss Temple, making me the happiest man in the world.”
I think this story should motivate us to do “all we can do” to share the blessings of joy that come from living the gospel of happiness.

That was the way he looked when I reached the summit of Snowdon for the first time. As the highest mountain in England or Wales, Snowdon, for a six-year-old, seemed as inconquerable as Everest does to me now. The old miner’s track was surfaced with rough shingle that shifted unnervingly as we walked. The craggy gray rocks and scattered boulders were a stark contrast to the sailor-blue sky and white scudding clouds above. Occasionally, we would pass a stray sheep searching for an area to graze. These hardy animals were so used to human invaders that they barely noticed us passing.
It wasn’t long before my short legs were failing, and with them my spirits. The gray path seemed endless. “Come on, Sian. You can do it,” Dad coaxed as he heaved me onto his back. It made the climb more difficult for him but helped revive me. We trudged past crumbling stonewalls that had been built by a now forgotten shepherd long before the era of cement. From a distance they looked like huge scars on the face of the mountain.
At last we reached the final scree. Dad held my hand tightly as we scrambled up. When we reached the plateau on the top, we sat down breathlessly. I looked around. Far below I could see moving people like multicolored ants. As far as the eye could see there were mountain ridges, deep valleys, and in the distance the glint of blue from the North Sea. I gazed around in wonder, then laughed excitedly. “We made it, Dad. We reached the very top!” I looked up to see that the expression in my father’s eyes at that moment was a reflection of my own. It said, I love you, I have faith in you, and I know that you can do what you set your mind to do.

As the anchor on the four-man 1,600-meter relay for his high school in Kansas City, Missouri, Adam Mack (center above) knew a lot was at stake. A good showing in the sectional meet, and his team would qualify for the state competition. After the first two legs, his team was in third place. Then during the third leg, a rival runner pushed Adam’s teammate off the track. He recovered, but the team finished seventh.
Things erupted. Everyone was angry. There was profanity, pushing, and threats, and the crowd was yelling. Adam’s team members were in tears.
Adam was an example of how Mormons conduct themselves in a bad situation. “How could we rid ourselves of that horrible feeling of contention?” said Adam. “I stopped my friends in the middle of the field and told them we needed to pray. I prayed to the Lord that we would have forgiveness in our hearts. I asked him to take away our sorrow and our feelings of contention. I asked for peace and that each of us would have understanding. I also prayed that the Holy Ghost would be with us through hard times.
“As I looked up, my friends were crying. They told me they had never felt a power like that before. They thanked me over and over again. The tension and the hurt of the loss were gone.”
Although most of the team members have gone to college, they are still close. The bond they formed went beyond teammates to true friends.

Harold B. Lee learned to recognize the Spirit at an early age. One day he started toward some rundown sheds, but a voice called his name and told him not to go there. Harold obeyed. He continued to follow the Spirit throughout his life, such as when he led the Church Welfare Program. He also led the Church department that developed learning materials to help members recognize the Spirit in their own lives.

I was excited to don the costume of the Easter Bunny at my school’s Easter egg hunt. I’d always loved children, so when a volunteer was needed to wear the rabbit suit for the event, I raised my hand. Setting aside for a moment the idea that a bunny isn’t the manliest animal costume you can wear (after all, there’s no such thing as an Easter Alligator), I knew I could make the most of it.
And I did.
I had dance moves. I had charisma! I passed out high fives by the dozen to the children. Kids of all ages wanted to take pictures with me while they waited for the hunt to start. I was a rock star.
That all changed about 90 seconds after the whistle blew to start the candy grab. What happened next has been seared into my brain ever since.
A tidal wave of older kids swept across the grassy hill we’d chosen for the hunt. The eggs vanished almost instantly while several dozen younger kids were left behind with nothing more to collect than candy wrappers, their young faces filled with disappointment.
I felt awful. Watching the excitement fade from their eyes was enough to make me want to sprint to the store and buy them buckets of chocolate eggs.
But then it got worse. These younger kids, the very ones who had been high-fiving and taking pictures with the Easter Bunny, all turned to me as if the whole thing had been my fault. I can still hear their voices: “I didn’t get any caaaaaaandy!”
Never mind I’d been their best pal only minutes earlier. Something had gone wrong, I was the guy in the rabbit suit, and that made me the main culprit.
The egg-hunt tradition at my school improved after that first year. For one thing, it became better organized so that different hunts were held for different age groups. And the person in the rabbit costume always had a basket of candy to hand out at the end, just in case. So at least the inaugural hunt proved to be a good learning experience.
For me, however, the big takeaway that I’ve thought about ever since was realizing how differently the children viewed me because of the uniform (costume) I wore. Never mind that there were plenty of other people running the event. Fair or not fair, the blame fell on me in the kids’ eyes because I was dressed as the Easter Bunny.

Transportation was either difficult to obtain or nonexistent. Brother Krause reported that it was common to walk twelve or thirteen hours, for distances of up to fifty kilometers, to visit various branches of the Church. But many members, like Sister Elli Polzin, still had to be found and cared for.
“I came from Stettin [now in Poland] with our children and my mother in 1946. … One day two missionaries, one of them was Brother Walter Bohme from Groitzsch, came by to help us make contact with the Church once again. They encouraged us to move into Schwerin where there was a branch of the Church. I got a job there … and after much difficulty I was able to bring my family to Schwerin. … For years we lived in one room until we got an apartment. And then in December of 1949, one day before Christmas Eve, my husband came home from prison” (Schutze, page 18).

In South Africa I met the Cleverlys, who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The mother of the family invited me to their home at various times. She always told me about young adult activities, but I could never attend due to my job schedule. Then she invited me to attend church, and I accepted. But before Sunday came, I had three nights of duty. I went downstairs to the embassy library where there was a computer with a huge search capacity. I just typed in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All kinds of information came up, and I read for eight hours the first night, eight hours the second night, and eight hours the third night. What I looked at most of all was what Latter-day Saints believed and how they applied it in their lives. Did they live according to what they had established as laws or standards of the Church?
The week preceding my visit to church, I had a dream. I was sitting at a table, and there were two young men with white short-sleeved shirts and black name tags. They were sitting at the sides of a table, and I was seated at the head. When I woke up, I didn’t think much about the dream.
The first time I walked into a Latter-day Saint meeting, I knew there was something different about this church. It happened to be the first Sunday of the month, which meant the members had an opportunity to stand and bear testimony. Now this is the true order of church, I thought.
I was introduced to two missionaries. One of the young men was one of those in my dream, the exact person. Sister Cleverly invited the missionaries and me to her home for dinner. She placed us at the table exactly as my dream had predicted. The missionaries began teaching me.
Later, when I learned the principle of baptism for the dead, I thought it amazing that one could go to a sacred place and do these things for people who had passed away. I thought about my two grandfathers and my grandmother who had passed away. That’s when I started to feel the Holy Ghost. The teachings sounded right to me.
We got to the next principle, which was about families, and I realized I had always known that was true. When I heard about eternal families, I told the missionaries, “I knew this existed.”
Then the missionaries taught me about the Word of Wisdom, and it was then I made a discovery. It felt as if my soul unfolded, and I shed a sort of shell and a new person came out. I felt like I was floating off the ground. I had always lived the Word of Wisdom, and I had wanted to know why I was the way I was. No one had ever had the answer for me. But the Lord did, and I learned that answer through the missionaries and the discussions. I knew everything they had taught me previously was true and everything they would teach me would be true. I had never felt the Spirit so strongly reading the scriptures as when I read Doctrine and Covenants 89:18–21. I knew it was true. I always knew my body was important, and I knew it was never to be defiled.
From this point forward, I began to experience mixed emotions about becoming a member of the Church. I was concerned about my father’s opinion and his reaction to my decision.
During the sixth discussion, I received the message that I had an incoming call from my father. The phone rang. I picked it up, and it was indeed my dad.
He said, “Your mother informed me you’ve made a decision to join the Latter-day Saints.”
I said yes.
He said, “I’m here to prevent that from happening.”
And I said, “You know what, Dad? I love you and you’ll always be my dad. You’ve done a great job with me. But I’m 22. I’m a man now, and these decisions are for my family and my future. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me and will continue to do for me, but this is my decision. I’m going to do it, and I know the Lord wants me to do this.”
My dad wasn’t very happy when he hung up the phone. Immediately I got on my knees and asked the Lord to help me see and understand that what I was going to do was correct. I was thousands of kilometers from home. I was all alone, and nothing was going right. Only when I was with the missionaries did I feel good. At that moment the Spirit testified to me that it was the Lord’s will and that the Lord wanted me to be baptized. A very clear voice said, “You are to do the Lord’s will. You are to follow His example.” Then I knew. I never looked back after that. I was baptized on 12 October 1995.
It was a year to the day of my baptism, 12 October 1996, that I entered the Washington D.C. Temple to be endowed in preparation for serving full time in the Spain Madrid Mission.
During the first year of my mission, my parents were not supportive of my missionary service. The Lord revealed to me while I was on my mission that my family was fine and they would be taken care of. Then things changed all of a sudden. The last six to eight months of my mission, my family was very supportive. They said they were receiving blessings, and they knew it was because of my mission.
After I returned from my mission, I stayed with my family for three weeks before leaving to enter Brigham Young University. Before school started my father visited me, meeting my friends and seeing Salt Lake City. When I took him to the airport, he embraced me and said, “Out of all 46 years of my life, never ever have I felt more love or the Spirit of God in my home than when you were home the last few weeks. I know we owe it to the service you gave in Spain for two years.”

The story is told of a 14-year-old boy who had come to Nauvoo in search of his brother who lived near there. The young boy had arrived in winter with no money and no friends. When he inquired about his brother, the boy was taken to a large house that looked like a hotel. There he met a man who said, “Come in, son, we’ll take care of you.”
The boy accepted and was brought into the house, where he was fed, warmed, and was given a bed to sleep in.
The next day it was bitter cold, but in spite of that, the boy prepared himself to walk the eight miles to where his brother was staying.
When the man of the house saw this, he told the young boy to stay for a while. He said there would be a team coming soon and that he could ride back with them.
When the boy protested, saying that he had no money, the man told him not to worry about that, that they would take care of him.
Later the boy learned that the man of the house was none other than Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. This boy remembered this act of charity for the rest of his life.13

The last story took place later that fall while a family was taking a pleasant, 3 1/2-mile hike to a beautiful lake in the Cascades. As they returned down the trail later that day, their young daughter started falling behind. They weren’t really too concerned as it was a good trail, it was still light, and they had been on similar hikes before. The parents continued down the trail, arriving at the road just a few minutes ahead of their daughter, so they thought. After waiting for more than an hour for her, they became concerned and started back up the trail in search. This started a search that would last three days and cost thousands of dollars and many man-hours.
The third illustration even more effectively points out the value of always carrying a whistle and being trained in its use. The little girl had wandered off the trail while picking flowers and had gotten lost in the process. After wandering around for many hours, she lay down beside a large tree where she remained in shock and exhaustion for two days while searchers walked all around the area looking for her. When she was finally found on the third day, she was only 100 yards from the trail!

June 7, 1955
This afternoon I watched the girls play outside. They were having so much fun making necklaces out of dandelions. They laughed and giggled at the silly things each would say and do. As I quietly watched, Elizabeth noticed me and ran over to give me a big, yellow dandelion. “I love you, Mom,” she said.
In my heart I thanked Heavenly Father for such precious children. They are like the sunshine that lights my day. I continue to pray and work toward the blessing of being sealed as a family in the temple. Until that day arrives, I will put my trust and faith in the Lord.

My name is Magnolia. I go to a ward where we speak Spanish. One day Mia came to my Primary class. She speaks only English. I wanted to help Mia feel welcome, so I decided to help her. I would be her interpreter!
An interpreter translates words that someone is speaking into a different language.
Keeping Up
At first it was hard to keep up when I was interpreting for Mia. Then the teachers slowed down to give me time. We all felt good that we could help Mia.
Lots in Common
We both just got baptized and confirmed. We both like music, especially hymns and Primary songs. We both like family home evening. And both of us like to read stories in the Liahona.
Whispered Help
My name is Mia. My parents speak Spanish, so we went to the Spanish-speaking ward. I couldn’t understand what people were saying. Magnolia saw that I was frustrated. She moved over next to me and whispered English in my ear.
Good Friends
After Primary, I asked Magnolia if she would be my friend. She said yes. From then on, Magnolia was my friend and my interpreter. She helped me make other friends too.

In 1992, just three years after Naume and I were married, we were struggling with the basic necessities of life. A friend?—Jerry D. Hymas from San Diego, California, USA?—taught me a self-reliance principle that has made a difference in our lives, even in times of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown, which we experienced from 2000 to 2008. Jerry said to me, “Eddie, here is a formula for financial success that has worked for me over the years and has enabled me to retire early. When you receive your paycheck, you (1) pay tithing, ten percent; (2) pay ten percent to yourself; and (3) save ten percent for emergency purposes.” Then he looked at me and said, “Never spend money you do not have.”
Naume and I have always paid our tithing and enjoyed the promised blessings, but we did not know about the other 20 percent he shared with me. Since then, Naume and I tried to the best of our ability to follow this model, and it has blessed us tremendously.

I always tell my granddaughter that tithing is the best money I ever spend.
It was nearly 60 years ago when I got into the tithing habit. I had gone to Chicago to find a job after graduating from college. I had in my pocket the money I’d earned from a summer job. It wasn’t much, but since I would be staying with friends and since the cost of living in 1941 was low, I thought I would have enough money to support myself until I could earn more.
The first Sunday I attended church in the Chicago area, one of the speakers talked convincingly about the importance of paying tithing and bore his testimony about the blessings of keeping that commandment. Although I had been raised in the Church, I had never paid or even thought of paying tithing. But that changed during that sacrament meeting. When it was over, I calculated how much money I had made during the summer and figured the tithing I owed on it. With almost all the cash I had, I paid my tithing debt. I had barely enough left for bus and train fare, and I didn’t have a job yet.
When I had left my family in another state, I had been sure I could make it on my own without financial help from my parents. Now I wasn’t so confident.
Finally, with only a few coins left, I stopped in a department store and used some free stationery to write my parents a letter asking for help. The letter would probably take three days to be delivered. Could I hold out that long? I wondered.
The next day I received a call from a company that needed some temporary help. (It later turned into a full-time job.) Gleefully I called my dad to tell him, “Never mind! I don’t need any money.”
Since that time I have always had what I need when I pay my tithing. And that is why I say to my granddaughter, “Paying tithing is the best money I ever spend. It buys me peace of mind.”

I was baptized in May 2016. My first year of seminary started later that year. I was skeptical at first, and I wasn’t ready to get up early, but I was prompted to go. I was still a little unsure about recognizing the voice of the Spirit, but being in seminary has helped me recognize that voice. Through the Spirit, I’m able to know the scriptures are true. I know that the Spirit prompts me to highlight scriptures with meaning and that there’s always a reason. The scriptures guide me when I’m lost, and they teach me. Whenever I’m having a bad day, I can open them up and make my day better.
Shelby L., age 16, Montana, USA

We have 10 children. One unsettled Sunday morning when our family was young, my wife was in sacrament meeting. As usual, I was away on Sunday. Our children took up much of a row.
Sister Walker, a lovely, gray-haired grandmother who raised 12 children, quietly moved from several rows back and slid into the row among our restless children. After the meeting, my wife thanked her for the help.
Sister Walker said, “You have your hands full, don’t you?” My wife nodded. Sister Walker then patted her on the hand and said, “Your hands full now; your heart full later!” How prophetic was her quiet comment. That is what grandmothers do!

Shortly before turning 30, Roberta Tuilimu realized she wasn’t happy. She had three beautiful children, and she loved their father, Daniel Nepia, but Roberta and Daniel weren’t married. Daniel wasn’t a member of the Church, and it had been a long time since Roberta had attended regularly.
She was a long way from the temple marriage she had always dreamed of as a young girl who went to church every week with her parents in Auckland, New Zealand. But turning her back on her eternal goals wasn’t a one-time decision; it had been a slow turn completed gradually through little decisions she made each day.
For Roberta one decision clearly sticks out as the moment she first stepped off the gospel path, though a number of other choices had likely brought her to that point. As a teenager Roberta skipped going to church a couple of weeks to do homework. “It’s interesting that it can start with something that seemed so small at the time,” she says.
After missing a couple of weeks it was much easier for her not to go the next week. Weeks of only sporadic attendance turned into months. After she turned 18, her friends convinced her to go clubbing late at night on Saturdays, which made it even harder to get to church on Sundays. It also led her to start drinking.
“I knew it wasn’t right, but I thought that I could stop straightaway if I wanted to,” she says. “I tried to justify my decisions.”
She was living a lifestyle incompatible with entering the temple, yet after meeting Daniel, she took him to the Hamilton New Zealand Temple grounds and told him she wanted to be married there.
“I knew that’s where I wanted to go,” she says. But each bad decision seemed to make the next bad decision easier—leading her further from her desired destination. Soon Roberta and Daniel were living together.
“There was a disconnect between what I wanted—what I knew was right—and the decisions I was making,” she says. “I was in the now. I didn’t connect current decisions with where they would take me.”
As far as she was from where she had intended to go, Roberta was not lost to the Lord. Though Daniel and Roberta didn’t realize it at the time, the Good Shepherd, who came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), had been seeking after them all along.
The Spirit had been working on Daniel, such as when Roberta had taken him to the temple grounds and when Roberta’s father had blessed their children. Though they had moved several times, with each move they ran into—and occasionally studied with—the missionaries.
Then, after relocating again in 2006, they ran into some old schoolmates, Dan and Lisa Nathan, who were active members of the Church. Daniel and Roberta had just moved into the Nathans’ ward boundaries.
For three weeks Roberta put off Lisa’s invitations to go to church with her. “I didn’t want to have to explain my situation,” she says. “But I decided I wanted my kids in Primary.”
Soon Daniel and Roberta were meeting with the missionaries again. Daniel began attending church, where a good Gospel Principles teacher made a difference. The visiting teachers visited every month. The couple even met Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during a special devotional.
Roberta sees in their experiences evidence that Heavenly Father had prepared “a whole bunch of good people who helped us.”
Through various experiences and people, Heavenly Father had provided Daniel and Roberta opportunities to “consider [their] ways” (Haggai 1:7). But they had to “commit [their] way unto the Lord” (Psalm 37:5) before they could make any progress.
“I knew my ways had not been His ways,” Roberta says (see Isaiah 55:8–9), “but I hadn’t known how to connect the two.”
The turning point came when the missionaries asked Daniel and Roberta to decide where they wanted to go, spiritually speaking, and what they needed to do to get there.
“When we decided in the end that what we wanted was to be where His way leads,” she says, “we started looking at what it would take to follow His way there.”
In the months that followed, Roberta worked to turn her back on the poor decisions in her past and return to the path she had left more than a decade earlier. Just as her turn from the gospel path as a teenager began with small decisions, Roberta’s return to the path began with doing seemingly little things each day.
“When I started trying to do the basics every day—individual and family prayers, reading the scriptures, taking the kids to church, helping others when I can—I could feel Heavenly Father looking after us and hearing our prayers,” Roberta says. “Our family was happier.”
Those little decisions helped strengthen Daniel and Roberta when it came time to make the big decisions. They decided to get married. Then, nearly a year after Daniel and Roberta started meeting with the missionaries, their desire to be together with their family forever led Daniel to be baptized.
Finally, after two years of trying to match what they did each day to what they wanted in the future, Daniel and Roberta were sealed in the temple—fulfilling Roberta’s childhood dream.
As part of Heavenly Father’s plan, Daniel and Roberta have the opportunity to decide each day which way they will choose—theirs or His. The couple is now more conscious of the direction their daily choices will take them.
From personal experience they understand how easy it is to lose their way when daily decisions are made without considering their effect on eternal destinations. But they are also grateful to have learned firsthand that there is a way back.
“I know the Lord loves me and wants me back because He blessed our lives with the people we met along our journey who helped us return,” Roberta says. “He never forgot me during my time away from the Church.”
Thanks to the love—and the atoning sacrifice—of the Good Shepherd, “the wicked [can] forsake his way, and … return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him … , for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7).
Now the Nepias are trying to stay focused on where they want to be. “When you realize there is more to this life than what’s now,” Daniel says, “it changes your choices.”

Such a lesson was recounted on a radio and television program many remember with fondness. The program was entitled Death Valley Days. The narrator, known as the Old Ranger, seemed to come right into our living rooms as he would tell tales of the West.
On one program, the Old Ranger related how the glass was obtained for the windows of the St. George Tabernacle. The glass was manufactured in the East. Then it was placed on a ship in New York that sailed forth on the long and at times perilous journey around Cape Horn and up to the west coast of America. The precious glass, stored in cartons, was then transported to San Bernardino, California, to await the overland trek to St. George.
David Cannon and the brethren in St. George had the duty to go to San Bernardino with their teams and wagons to retrieve the glass, that the tabernacle of the Lord could be completed. One problem: They needed the then-astronomical sum of $800.00 to pay for the glass. They had no money. David Cannon turned to his wife and to his son and asked, “Do you think that we can raise the money, that we might obtain the glass for the tabernacle?”
His tiny son, David Jr., said, “Daddy, I know we can!” He then produced two cents of his own money and gave it to his father. Wilhelmina Cannon, David’s wife, went through the secret hiding places that all women have in their houses. Her search produced $3.50 in silver. The community was scoured for money, and at length the sum of $200.00 was accumulated—$600.00 short of the required amount.
David Cannon sighed the sigh of despair of one who had failed although he had tried his best. The little family was really too weary to sleep and too discouraged to eat, so they prayed. Morning dawned. The teamsters gathered with their wagons and teams, prepared to undertake the long journey to San Bernardino. But they had no $600.00. Then there came a knock at the door, and Peter Neilson from the nearby community of Washington entered the house. He said to David Cannon, “Brother David, I have had a persistent dream that I should bring the money I had saved to expand my house—bring it to you, that you would have a purpose for it.”
While all of the men gathered around the table, including little David Jr., Peter Neilson took out a red bandanna and dropped gold pieces, one by one, upon the table. When David Cannon counted the gold pieces, they totaled $600.00—the exact amount needed to obtain the glass. Within an hour the men waved good-bye and, with their teams, set forth on their journey to San Bernardino to retrieve the glass for the St. George Tabernacle.
When that true story was told over Death Valley Days, David Cannon Jr. was then 87 years of age. He listened to the story with rapt attention. I believe that in his mind he once again heard those gold pieces, one by one, dropping upon the table as astonished men saw with their very eyes the answer to their prayers.

“My husband’s family was very poor. His mother made rugs to sell at a trading post, and his father tended sheep, cut firewood, and hauled water for the family,” explained the lovely young wife of this General Authority, while rocking a baby on her lap. “There were ten in his family and they lived fifteen miles from the nearest town in a remote desert area. There were no cars or running water. And the drinking water was often so bad that the people there would drink fruit juices and soda pop instead.
“When my husband was four years old, he became very ill and went into a coma. Everyone thought he had died. In fact, his body had been placed in a casket for burial. In a little while they heard a faint knocking on the side of the casket. The child was alive! The casket was quickly reopened and the boy sat up. ‘I want a soda pop,’ he said.
Thereafter, he was known as the ‘soda pop kid.’ His parents have often said that after this experience he was a changed child. He was more responsible and would help tend the others in the family. He was concerned about others and seemed to be blessed with a special spirit.
“The main diet for his family was fry bread made from biscuit dough, mutton stew, and often soda pop. Today, his favorite foods are anything hot and spicy that he can put pepper on.
“He herded sheep until the age of nine; then he was placed in boarding school. Since the people there could not pronounce his real name, they gave him an English one. The only problem was that they also gave three other children the same name. So there was a number one, two, three, and four with the same name.
“A Latter-day Saint missionary couple at the trading post baptized my husband when he was ten years old, and he attended Church services from that time on. He was selected to be part of the Church’s placement program and was to be sent to Utah to live with a foster family and go to school. An hour before the bus was to leave, a friend, Brother Bloomfield, put a bowl on his head and gave him a quick haircut. All of his belongings were put into a shoe box—he had no shoes. There were more holes in the Levis he was wearing than there was denim material. He was put on a bus at night, given two dollars by Brother Bloomfield, and told that he would arrive there by morning.”
At this point, I was thinking how difficult it must have been for that little boy to leave his family to go all alone on a bus to a place with a different culture where he knew no one. The only tie that he had with them was that he was a member of the Latter-day Saint Church.
The General Authority’s wife continued: “On the first day at his new school in Utah the children all gathered round my husband. They had never seen an Indian before. ‘Where’s your war paint?’ they asked. ‘Where are your moccasins?’
“The new foster parents were concerned because their Indian son was so shy. In fact, the only words he spoke to them during the first three months were yes and no. At Christmastime they gave him some new clothes—two pairs of pants, four shirts, two pairs of stockings, etc. The mother asked him to go upstairs and try them on. After quite a while he came downstairs with all of the shirts, pants, and socks on at the same time. It was difficult to get used to a new language and customs.
“Even though my husband’s now very busy, he enjoys football and basketball. When he’s hot, he has a great corner shot and can’t miss! When he has spare time, which isn’t often, he loves to play the harmonica. Last Christmas he played for the General Authorities at their Christmas party.
“My husband believes that family home evening is a great time to train children to be leaders. He always has one of our children conduct. One of them will assign the prayers and choose the hymns. At the conclusion, the one conducting thanks all those who participated. Usually the person who gave the lesson is sincerely complimented. Then the closing song is announced and the name of the one to give the closing prayer.
“One morning the children’s father had to leave at 5 A.M. for an early meeting at the Church offices. Later he called when the children were just getting up and we all had family prayer with him on the telephone.”
His small children had these comments: “When Daddy comes home, he tells me that if I eat my dinner he’ll give me a horsey ride. Sometimes he’ll give my friend a ride too!”
“Dad is helping me to save money for my mission.”
“My daddy shows us how to clean. He always tells us to clean the counter when we wash the dishes.”
“He’s kind.”
“When he plays football with us, we all have to speak nicely.”
When asked about her husband’s favorite topic to speak on, she said, “He always says that we’re all God’s children, no matter what color we are, and that our church has no room for prejudice. When he speaks, he represents the whole Church, not just the Lamanite people.”

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I was your age. I didn’t worry about drugs or pornography because they were not available then. I worried about school and where it would lead. It was the season of the terrible economic depression. I worried about how to earn a living. I served a mission after I finished the university. I went to England. We traveled by train to Chicago, made a bus transfer across that city, and went on to New York, where we caught a steamship for the British Isles. While riding the transfer bus in Chicago, a woman said to the driver, “What is that building ahead?” He said, “Ma’am, that is the Chicago Board of Trade Building. Every week some man who has lost his fortune jumps out of one of those windows. He has nothing else to live for.”

Such were the times. They were mean and ugly. No one who did not live through that period will ever understand it fully. I hope with all my heart we never have anything like it again.

I remember a young man in my third area who was very passionate about serving the Lord and zealous in his effort and contribution to missionary work. He once tried to call a friend on phone but instead dialed a wrong number. The number belonged to a young lady who had been prepared to receive the gospel. They interacted for a few minutes and soon discovered they lived in the same area.
The meetinghouse was not too far from her home, and my young friend introduced himself and his faith and expressed interest in meeting her. The young lady’s name was Vivian. She was welcoming and friendly. She had a listening spirit. We acted promptly, and I soon met the strongest convert I will ever have on my mission.
What amazed me the most about Vivian was her readiness to act and keep commitments. She attended all Church meetings, usually arriving even earlier than the branch presidency on Sunday and earlier than everyone else on other meeting days within the week. She asked important questions that increased her knowledge of the gospel deeply. I was moved by her profound character and was inspired by her love for the Lord and for missionary work.
After her baptism, her voice became a powerful third witness to my later converts in the area as she spoke the language of the heart and with not many, but a few words, communicated passion for Christ, His righteousness, and the restored gospel unlike any other. To this day, I remember fondly the lovely experiences we had with her while walking in the sun, teaching and testifying to all those who would listen. She became an inspiration to the young men and women, and she helped us teach. It was a difficult area to work in but Vivian, with her light, made the hardest times the most memorable.