Gospel Story Finder

Imagine you’re invited on a pleasure cruise with friends. At 3:00 A.M. the first night out, you are awakened by a loud explosion. A shout of “Fire!” startles you. You race for the deck. Amid the excitement, someone shouts the warning command: “Prepare yourself with life preservers!” Through the eerie dawn and jagged fingers of flame, you see a variety of lifesaving equipment on deck. There are cushions, belts, rings, and several kinds of vests and jackets. Would you grab the nearest piece of lifesaving equipment? Do you think one is as good as another?

A painful aspect of having PCOS is infertility. When I first realized it would be difficult for me to have children, I felt angry and betrayed.
As I have relied on Christ, I have learned to trust in God’s will and timing.
I don’t know if I will have children in this life, but I believe, as Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught, that “we have every reason to hope for blessings even greater than those we have already received.”4

During high school my heart wasn’t really in the gospel. In the mission field I slowly learned what a mission was really about and wanted the power and progress it could bring in my life if I were truly worthy. Finally, the guilt and sorrow from past transgressions bore me down, and I wanted freedom—to be clean and to be a better tool in the Lord’s hand. After some discussion with my mission president, I went home to take time to repent.
Returning home was among the hardest times of my life. I began reading the scriptures differently, actually understanding and applying them. While I was doing everything “right,” I still felt a great burden of guilt. Then I started to focus my studies on Christ and His Atonement, how He could be my Savior and how His infinite Atonement could redeem my soul. One night while meditating upon all I had learned from those prayerful studies, I felt the Spirit touch my heart, heal my soul, and comfort me. I felt secure and loved, and my guilt left.
When I first got home, I thought a change of heart was all I needed for the repentance process. Now I know that I needed time to repent—change comes line upon line, a little at a time. It requires prolonged effort to change our hearts, desires, and habits to be more like Christ. We can’t make 180-degree changes instantaneously, but because of the Atonement, they can happen completely.
Name withheld, Georgia, USA

If the young men of 150 years ago wanted to give service to a good cause, they could carry water to the men working on the temple. Today young men in Nauvoo are also deeply involved in giving service regularly. Each summer thousands of visitors come, swelling the numbers attending their ward. Every Sunday morning, the young men arrive at the meetinghouse an hour early to set up hundreds of folding chairs and prepare up to 32 trays for the sacrament.
It doesn’t take a great deal of skill to set up chairs, but it takes ingenuity and a carefully organized plan to pass the sacrament to all those people tucked into classrooms or lining the hallways. All the deacons, teachers, and priests are needed to pass the sacrament. And they want to do it with dignity. “We get tired and want to take off our ties and jackets,” says Mark Hasek, age 14, “but we know people will go back to their wards and say, ‘The Nauvoo boys did this.’ We’re a big example.”
After meetings they have to move those hundreds of chairs outside, ready to be set up for the City of Joseph performances the following week. The young men are doing a little good-natured complaining about having to set up so many chairs when one of the young women pipes up and says, “We help with the chairs, too.”
The young men start to tease. “Yeah, the boys are responsible for setting up the chairs. The girls are responsible for sitting in the chairs. Everyone in the stake knows to call the Nauvoo Ward about setting up. We know chairs.”

When I was 16, most of my friends at school weren’t members, but they knew that I was a member of the Church. They started to smoke and do other things I wouldn’t do. So things began to change between us; our types of conversation were very different, and our thinking and activities weren’t compatible.
One day my father asked me, “Why aren’t you thinking about your friends’ effect on you?” He counseled me to be careful and think about the necessity of changing my friends.
When I started at the university, I became very busy and didn’t spend a lot of time with my friends, but one time when we were together, they decided to do something bad. We were in a car, and they drove really fast. A policeman pulled us over, and I was scared. I remembered the words of my father about taking care of the future. That experience helped me make a decision about the kinds of friends I wanted to have.
I became very involved in Church activities. Attending Mutual was wonderful because I decided to have those kinds of friends. I learned that my father was right—that I should take care of my relationship with good friends. I needed friends who would help me prepare for a mission.

Looking for a cheap project with a big reach, the group harnessed the power of sidewalk chalk. They obtained approval from the city and set out. “We went downtown and wrote kind messages on the sidewalk with chalk,” says Isabelle C., a 15-year-old Lutheran. “When we finished, we left some chalk and wrote a message saying ‘write some more’ so other people could keep writing kind messages. This was my favorite project because I knew the messages we wrote would make someone smile. And they made me smile!”

During the next few years, Mormon missionaries seemed to be all over the place. Even my barber was trying to preach to me! Several sets of missionaries came to visit me. Feeling somewhat ashamed about my treatment of the two I had left standing on the doorstep a couple of years earlier, I began inviting them inside, on the condition that they “leave their books in the car, and don’t preach to me.” I always felt uncomfortable when they came, and I would not allow any discussion of religion.
How was I to make them leave without being extremely rude? How? Then I got an idea. Sure, why not? It should be easy. I would just prove that they were wrong. I would show these people that their doctrines were false, and I would do it with their own scriptures. The next time they came, I would be ready.
If I were going to prove them wrong, I had to know something concerning what they believed. How could I find out what they believe? That Book of Mormon the two lady missionaries gave me years ago. Sure! I had put it away in some drawer or box. I soon found it. What did it contain—the story of Joseph Smith’s life? A history of Mormonism? I didn’t know. But one thing I did know: when the missionaries next came, I would be ready for them.
I took the book to work, where I had some free time throughout the day. The first chance I had, I opened the book. Why, this didn’t appear to be about Joseph Smith at all! I noticed a page in the front showing interesting things to look up—the Sermon on the Mount on the American continent, Columbus, the Savior in the Americas. What was I getting into?
Not finding anything about Joseph Smith’s life story in the book, I picked up some missionary tracts at a gas station owned by a Mormon. I wanted to find out about this Joseph Smith. I read about Joseph’s First Vision. Somehow it seemed different from what I remembered hearing years before. I read about an angel named Moroni and some gold plates. Returning to the Book of Mormon, I began reading it in my spare time.
Something strange began to happen. My hostility began to disappear. Indeed, my desire to prove the missionaries wrong disappeared. My brief curiosity after first opening the book was replaced by a desire to know. What was this strange power that seemed to literally reach out and pull me toward this book? What was happening to me? I had to know.
I found myself using all my spare hours to search through the Book of Mormon. I found something else too: a promise by an ancient prophet named Moroni—a bold declaration that I could know the truth of the book by asking God to reveal it to me. Alone one day, I bowed down before my Maker, and, holding the Book of Mormon in my hand, I asked Heavenly Father what it was that was pulling me to the book. Immediately—almost before I had finished my prayer—a recollection of my past habits and hostilities flooded over me. I begged for forgiveness, having not recognized my wretched state until then.
The next few days were about the same—I tried to cope with an overwhelming desire to immerse myself in studying the Book of Mormon. Then it happened. It was a Thursday night before the October general conference of the Church. I came home from work with a peculiar feeling growing inside me—a feeling I had never before experienced. I did not know what to think of it. It slowly grew in intensity. What a marvelous feeling! I remember thinking, “If this is what it feels like in heaven, I wish I were ninety-nine years old and about to die.”
Then came the testimony—that sureness of the missionaries that had disturbed me in the past. I knew! Joseph smith had been in the presence of the Father and the Son. Indeed, he had been visited by angels. I knew. Yes, indeed, I knew.

Elder Sheffield has been under the knife eleven times in major surgery and many more times in surgery lasting less than an hour. The greatest desire of his life was that the surgery would make him acceptable for a mission. A year before he entered the mission field, he had his final operation. Since he has been on his mission, he has averaged seventy to eighty hours a week in proselyting. He is greatly loved by all.
He has been a great blessing to missionaries who thought they had problems. In one interview his companion told me that Elder Sheffield’s shoulder separates and falls out of place quite often. When this happens he is in severe pain. It happens most often during the night. When I interviewed Elder Sheffield, I suggested that we put him in a local hospital here and have the doctors do what needed to be done to correct this problem. He looked me in the eye, and with a sternness seldom seen he said, “President, I have spent most of my life in hospitals, and when I complete my mission I am returning to several more major surgical operations. I promised the Lord that if he would let me serve a mission, I would not spend one day in the hospital during the two years no matter how sick I was or how much I suffered.”

Russell M. Nelson
(81) After a group of exiled Saints pass a “merry night” in the cold, Eliza R. Snow observes that “Saints can be happy under every circumstance.”

I have a brother who was associated with a large university. He told of a student athlete who was an outstanding hurdler. The young man was blind. Rex asked him, “Don’t you ever fall?” “I have to be exact,” the athlete responded. “I measure each time before I jump. One time I didn’t, and I nearly killed myself.” The young man then spoke of the countless hours his father had devoted over the years teaching, helping, and showing him how to hurdle until he became one of the best.
How could this young man fail with a team like that—a father and a son.

Buzz, buzz.
Tyler sprawled on top of the jungle gym in his backyard, watching a fuzzy bee zip around and between the bars. “You won’t find any nectar here,” he said to the bee. “Go look somewhere else.”
A gust of wind blew through the yard, spinning the bee away. Tyler sat up. It was getting really windy. He looked over at the apricot tree his brothers Brad and Adam were playing under. Its branches were blowing straight back, like a giant brush was combing through its leaves.
“Tyler, get off the jungle gym,” a voice inside Tyler said. It wasn’t loud, but it was calm and sure. Tyler knew it was the right thing to do.
Tyler climbed down. Sitting beside his brothers under the apricot tree, he looked out at the backyard as the wind grew stronger.
Just then a tall tree on the side of the yard began creaking in the wind.
Tyler and his brothers watched as a powerful gust of wind hit the yard. With a loud crack! the tall tree crashed down directly in front of them. It smashed into the jungle gym Tyler had been lying on, bending it in half.
Tyler and his brothers stared at the fallen tree, their eyes wide.
Tyler shakily lifted his hand to touch a branch of the tree. It had fallen only a few inches from his nose. His hands shook, and his insides felt all jiggly-wiggly.
“Wow,” Brad said, his voice quiet. “You could have been smushed.”
Adam’s mouth hung open like a big letter O.
The three boys walked around the fallen tree, staring at the giant branches and the bent jungle gym.
Tyler looked down at the roots of the tree. They had grown together in a big ball and were pulled completely out of the ground. “That’s why the roots couldn’t hold the tree up,” Brad said. “They grew in a ball because the ground here is mostly sand.”
“The foolish man built his house upon the sand,” Adam said. He laughed.
Brad turned to Tyler. “How did you know the tree would fall?” he asked.
As Tyler looked at the ball of roots, a warm feeling washed away the fear he’d felt when the tree fell. “I listened to the still, small voice,” he said. “It told me to move, so I did.”
Adam looked at him with a big smile. “Your house is built on a rock.”

By the end of May 1829, the same kind of persecution Joseph had experienced in Manchester began occurring in Harmony, and Joseph realized he would need to move again to complete the translation. Along with his wife, Emma, and his scribe, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph was taken into the household of some acquaintances: Peter and Mary Whitmer of Fayette Township, New York.

Mary Whitmer was shown the plates by a heavenly messenger. As far as we know, she never committed her experience to writing. But Mary shared her experience with her children and grandchildren, who later shared it with others. Her grandson John C. Whitmer related, “I have heard my grandmother (Mary M. Whitmer) say on several occasions that she was shown the plates of the Book of Mormon by an holy angel.”15

Mary Whitmer was shown the plates by a heavenly messenger.

Mary Whitmer and Moroni, by Robert Pack

Her son David said that “she was met out near the yard by [an] old man.” Grandson John said this man was “carrying something on his back that looked like a knapsack” and that “at first she was a little afraid of him.” However, “when he spoke to her in a kind, friendly tone and began to explain to her the nature of the work which was going on in her house, she was filled with unexpressible joy and satisfaction.”

John provided further detail on the wonderful witness of the sacred record that Mary received at that time: “He then untied his knapsack and showed her a bundle of plates. … This strange person turned the leaves of the book of plates over, leaf after leaf, and also showed her the engravings upon them; the personage then suddenly vanished with the plates, and where he went, she could not tell.”

John stated: “I knew my grandmother to be a good, noble and truthful woman, and I have not the least doubt of her statement in regard to seeing the plates being strictly true. She was a strong believer in the Book of Mormon until the day of her death.”16

Mary’s son David would become one of the Three Witnesses, who were shown the plates by an angel when the translation was complete. Moreover, Mary’s other sons would be among the Eight Witnesses to whom Joseph Smith showed the plates, who got to heft and handle the plates uncovered and to turn the plates and observe their ancient engravings.17

When I was six, my dad took me and my older sister to play basketball. It was my first time playing at a real gym. The basketball felt heavy in my small hands and the hoop—even at its lowest setting—seemed overwhelmingly high.
“Don’t worry, just take a shot,” my dad said.
I turned to my dad. “But what if I miss?” I asked.
More than two decades later, I don’t remember if I made that shot or not. But I do remember the fear I felt: “What if I miss? What if my best efforts fall short? What should I do if I fail?”

I am Brother Bassa N’Da Germain Eby, from Cote d’Ivoire, Anonkoua Stake, Avocatier Ward. I served in the Liberia Monrovia Mission, and returned home in March of this year. Before going on my mission, I graduated from the university in accounting and finance. I had worked in a company for eight months. Life after my mission was like a puzzle as I did not know what to do.
I met with my bishop and explained my circumstances to him. He counseled me to meet with the WSRS manager. My encounter with him was a new dawn in my life. He introduced me to the WSRS tools. Following that, I participated in an orientation for returned missionaries. That was an eye-opener, because I was able to set goals and to identify resources that I could use to achieve them. I also attended an accelerated job search training. I regularly received one-on-one coaching from the WSRS manager. He helped me to develop a very good resume.
My job search effort yielded results when a company I contacted, Perfect Communication, gave me an offer as a trainee. I devoted myself to the training so much that after a month I was given a full-time appointment. Just about the same time, I got a better offer from another company including opportunities for career growth. I chose the latter. I have been working with Olam International, a rubber factory, since July.
It is indeed a blessing to secure a job in these difficult times when companies are downsizing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am grateful to the Lord for His providence. I owe the WSRS manager loads of gratitude for his support. I am still learning from life’s experiences and I know I have embarked on the journey to become self-reliant. I encourage every returned missionary to participate in the WSRS group meetings. They will open the door of opportunity to them.
I know that God lives. He loves us. We are His children. He cares for our growth, so He always prepares the way for us to obtain every needful thing to be happy.

A good friend of mine in Washington D.C. came home months ago as his house was in the process of being burglarized. He made the mistake of struggling with the burglar, who shot him in the spine, severing most of his spinal cord so that he is paralyzed from the waist down for life. He was a very athletic, vigorous, sinewy man whose life was tragically changed and struck down in a moment. As I went to visit him in the hospital shortly after the tragedy, I went, as we often do in the Church, to bring comfort; but I came out comforted. Because of his wrestling with the problem of forgiveness, he was able to tell me, Through his tears, that he had come to forgive his assailent and bore him no malice, nor was there any bitterness. There was only love. Now that can’t happen except in the context of the brotherhood of eternity. When we use those words we ought to specify more often the ways in which we use them and explain their implications, lest the young assume that our jargon means the same thing as the jargon of those outside the kingdom. When we talk about the fatherhood of God, we speak not of a life force that is unreachable, we speak not of a kindly grandfather who would indulge mankind in whatever they wish to do, who cares not and judges not. Ours is a loving Father who will, if necessary, let come to each of us some harsh life experiences, that we might learn that his love for us is so great and so profound that he will let us suffer, as he did his Only Begotten Son in the flesh, that his and our triumph and learning might be complete and full. It is vitally important for the young to understand what that kind of loving fatherhood means as compared with the ideas of those about them.

When Church leaders told Jirí in 1988 that renewed effort on his part could change the government’s decision to grant the Church official recognition, he did not hesitate. Although he was putting at risk his family’s safety, his job, his freedom—possibly even his life—he said, “I will go! I will do it!” Embracing his wife, he said, “We will do whatever is needed. This is for the Lord, and his work is more important than our freedom or life.”

After Brother Snederfler submitted that request, the suspicion and persecution he and other Church members had endured for so long became even more severe. However, “the Saints continued in courage and faith,” says Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who, accompanied by Elder Hans B. Ringger of the Seventy, had made repeated requests over several years for formal recognition. Elder Nelson adds, “Ultimately, after periodic fasting and prayer and complete compliance with all requirements, that glorious announcement of recognition came. How I admire the Snederflers and all these stalwart members who endured so much interrogation and risk!” (Tambuli, May 1992, 14–15).

Over the next few years, Jirí renewed efforts to gain official recognition for the Church. And all active Church members in Czechoslovakia contributed their faith, fasting, and prayers. For two years, the Czechoslovak Saints had two monthly fast Sundays: they fasted on the first Sunday of each month, along with Church members worldwide—and they also fasted on the third Sunday of every month for freedom of religion.

During a visit with the Communist government’s secretariat of religious affairs in 1987, Elder Russell M. Nelson was informed that the official leader of the Church in Czechoslovakia—the Church’s official liaison with the government had to be a Czech citizen. Elder Nelson and Elder Hans B. Ringger called Jirí Snederfler to be that Czech leader.

Of course, Jirí was more than willing to accept the assignment; he had already made countless petitions to the government over the years and had been regarded as a troublemaker and an enemy of the state. Now, by the secretariat’s own decree, he—a Czech citizen—would officially represent the Church in the eyes of the Communist government.

When accompanied by Elder Nelson and Elder Ringger, Jirí was received kindly. But when he was invited to come alone to a meeting in December 1988, “the officials of the secretariat showed their true faces,” he says. “They tried to intimidate me into withdrawing the Church’s petition for official recognition. They even used threats, telling me what might happen to the Church members if we continued to pursue it.”

At that moment, Brother Snederfler fearlessly opened his mouth and expressed his outrage at the way the Church had been treated during the preceding four decades. “I lost my patience and told them they had only two alternatives in order to get rid of us: either grant us official recognition and permission to worship publicly—or eliminate, lock up, or kick all of us out. I knew I could have landed straight in jail for saying that! But surprisingly they started to treat me with courtesy. Perhaps they were afraid the Church would publish in the free world how the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was illegally oppressing religiously inclined citizens. Be it as it may, I know I was under the protection of God.”

For the next year, Jirí found himself near the top of the secret police’s list of people dangerous to the state. “I had grown used to that for the past 40 years anyway,” he says. But although he was interrogated monthly by the secret police, he now also dealt monthly with the secretariat for religious affairs. He used those frequent opportunities “to let them get used to the idea that we would not withdraw our cause.” On 17 May 1989, he submitted a renewed official request for recognition. When he received no reply, he wrote letters of complaint and began making weekly visits to the secretariat.

Then came that remarkable day of 17 November 1989—the beginning of the nationwide “velvet revolution” against the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. “That was a signal to us to intensify even more the pressure regarding our petition. The secretariat for religious affairs referred me to the ministry of culture, who referred me to the state department, who claimed not to be able to do anything without a decision of the cabinet. There was chaos. Nobody knew anything; nobody was responsible for anything. Then the secret police ceased to exist, the secretariat for religious affairs was eliminated, and the power of the Communists was broken.”

In January 1990, Brother Snederfler submitted the Church’s petition to the new administration’s minister of culture, who was overseeing the registration of churches and religious societies. After hearing Jirí’s account and reading the documents, the minister of culture “immediately wrote a petition recommending that the government grant the Church official recognition and permission for public activity as soon as possible. He wrote that the new government had a moral duty to rectify the injustice done to our Church by the Communist regime, which had ‘illegally and criminally abolished the activity thereof.’”

On 6 February 1990, Elder Russell M. Nelson, Elder Hans B. Ringger, and Brother Snederfler met with the vice chairman of the new government; that afternoon they retraced Elder John A. Widtsoe’s steps up Priests Hill near Karlstejn Castle, and Elder Nelson reaffirmed the dedication of Czechoslovakia for the preaching of the restored gospel.

On 21 February 1990, the new administration passed a resolution granting the Church’s request, effective 1 March 1990. The news was broadcast nationwide in newspapers and on radio and television. “Finally, 40 long years of struggle for official recognition and public activity in Czechoslovakia had come to an end!” says Brother Snederfler.

After we left the venue, I could see the love and joy my daughter, Angel, had towards President Nelson—and she asked me what the prophet had said to me. I told her, “The prophet loves you children. He said we, your parents, should love you and not give corporal punishment. But you also need to be obedient so we, your parents, will be able to obey the prophet!”

When I was called as a General Authority by President Russell M. Nelson, I was flooded with emotions. It was overwhelming. My wife, Julie, and I anxiously awaited the Saturday afternoon session of general conference. It was humbling to be sustained. I carefully counted the steps to my designated seat so as not to fall in my first assignment.

At the conclusion of that session, something happened that had a profound effect on me. The quorum members formed a line and greeted the new General Authorities one by one. Each one shared their love and support. With a hearty abrazo they said, “Don’t worry—you belong.”

When I was nine, I moved away and no longer got to spend time in the garage with Grandpa. A few years later the distance multiplied when my grandparents were called to serve a mission in Hawaii. However, it was truly a blessing. My grandpa finally got the chance to serve the Lord as a missionary. Growing up in such a large family meant that money was limited, and a full-time mission wasn’t possible for him when he was young. While my grandpa had the desire to serve, a full-time mission involved a great deal of sacrifice. I had always wanted to serve a mission, and seeing my grandparents serve and the blessings that came from their service bolstered my desire. When my grandpa came back, the garage was waiting for him. The sounds of power tools and metal once again reverberated through the walls.

It was then that I moved to Kinshasa to commence my studies in law. Once I arrived in 2007, I enrolled at the University of Kinshasa. In my first year in 2008, we experienced a total strike at the University of Kinshasa. During the strike, I left the neighborhood where I lived to go to the commune of Masina to stay with my older brother.
And once in Masina, during the strike, I discovered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the neighborhood where I lived with my older brother.
I made the decision to go to a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a Sunday. When I arrived at the building, a brother greeted me at the door and invited me to come inside. I then participated in the Sunday service and afterwards I was placed in contact with the full-time missionaries.
I took the missionary lessons for two weeks. After being taught, I had a strong desire to be baptized.