Gospel Story Finder

At the age of 17, my grandfather left Denmark to find a new life in America. He worked his way to Mendon, Utah, where his uncle lived. He was employed by his uncle to help him with his farming. After some period of time, he came to his uncle and said: “You Mormons are a funny people. I have worked with you for many months, and not once have you tried to tell me anything about your religion or invited me to attend church with you.” His uncle asked him if he would like to know something about it, and he answered affirmatively. So his uncle told him about the Prophet Joseph Smith and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. He gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon to read. After doing some reading in the book, my grandfather gave it back to his uncle and said, “I don’t see anything in that book that has much value to me.” The next day he was out plowing the field, and his thoughts turned to the story his uncle had told him about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. He thought in his mind that no young man with limited education could have produced such a book. Maybe he should give it a second look. He asked his uncle if he could borrow the book again. This time he could not put it down. The Spirit burned within him that this book was true. He asked for baptism and remained active throughout his entire life.

Twelve-year-old Ramon placed the steel ring up around the bottom of the pear to determine its size. The ring slipped easily about it. No, Ramon thought, this pear won’t do—it’s still too small.
He tried another pear, and the ring wouldn’t fit around the fruit’s greatest width. “Good,” he said out loud to the old dog, Cleveland, lying in the shade at the bottom of the tree. Ramon picked the pear and placed it in the almost-filled sack that hung over his head and shoulder.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat off his face. A little breeze wound its way through the long rows of fruit trees. It felt good—but not as good as the cold lemonade his grandmother had made for him.
Ramon climbed down the ladder, placed his pickings in a basket, and sat down beside the dog. He unscrewed the lid from the canteen and took a long drink. Resting against the tree, he stroked the big dog and gazed down the length of the big orchard. From where he sat, he could count twelve baskets of fruit. “Not bad for one morning, huh, Cleveland? Grandpa Alban will be happy. He’ll have a lot of fruit for his stand today.”
The boy dug in his shirt pocket and took out a small, worn photograph. Posed beside him in the picture was his mother. He ran his finger across her countenance, and his eyes misted. It was the first time since he’d been adopted that he’d been away from her. Linsey and her husband, Peter, had taken the legal measures to make him a part of their family when he was only two years old. Now Peter was dead.
Ramon rested his head against the tree trunk and gazed down the road that wound past the orchard to his grandparents’ home. About two months before, he had ridden down that road with his mother. It had been a two-day trip by car from Horsely Springs, where he and his mother shared a small apartment.
More than once while they traveled, his mom’s eyes had welled up with tears at the thought of not seeing him for the summer. But a decision had been made after earnest prayer, and she knew that he would be in good hands with her parents. Her lack of education and experience had made the going rough for them, but a special three-month training class being offered back east would qualify her for a better-paying job. “I know I can do it, Ramon,” she assured him. “With God on our side, there isn’t anything we can’t do.”
Ramon admired and took great comfort in his mother’s courage and faith. He was trying to build up his own faith. He was sure that the pear ring on the ground beside him would easily fit around his faith, but he was confident that it would grow, just like the fruit that the old man had nurtured so well. The two young missionaries who had brought the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to him and his mother last year had promised that, with effort, it would, indeed, grow.
A little cloud of dust above the far end of the orchard told Ramon that Grandpa Alban’s flatbed truck was on its way to collect the baskets of picked fruit. Ramon warmed at the sight of his grandfather.
Grandpa Alban poked his head out the truck window as he neared, his eyes rounding at the sight of the long row of baskets brimming with fruit. “I said it before, young man, and I’ll say it again: I’ve never seen a better picker in all my days!”
Ramon chuckled and pointed to the old dog at his feet. “Well, Grandpa, I have a good helper.”
A hearty laugh burst out of Grandpa. “I figure you have a raise coming, son.”
“You pay me enough already, Grandpa.”
The old man smiled but insisted, “Didn’t your sweet mama ever tell you that it’s easier to argue with a fence post than with your grandpa? Besides,” he added, “you’ve earned it.”
“I’ll put it toward my mission,” Ramon relented with a happy enthusiasm that puzzled his grandfather.
“You really feel strong about that church you and your mama joined, don’t you? Most kids your age with money to spend would sink it into video games, movies, or whatever.”
“I won’t save it all for my mission, Grandpa,” Ramon assured him. “Ten percent of it goes to tithing, and a little more of it I’ll give you toward gas to drive me to church each Sunday.”
Grandpa shook his head. “This church of yours requires a lot of sacrifice, it seems to me.”
“The missionaries told us that sacrifice brings blessings. Like Mom is sacrificing now so she can get a better job to take care of us. It isn’t easy for either of us, but …” Ramon hesitated, searching for the words to explain. Then he said, “You have a beautiful orchard, Grandpa, with a lot of beautiful fruit.” He held up the sizing ring. “Almost every piece of fruit I held this ring to was too big to go through. You had to sacrifice, Grandpa, for this orchard to grow the way it has. You had to spend a lot of time working and tending it—” Ramon picked up a large piece of fruit from the basket—“but look what your sacrifice brings.”
Grandpa smiled. “Hey, Ramon, who’s teaching who here?”
That night the high-pitched whine of a mosquito awoke Grandpa. He slapped at it, then lay waiting for sleep to again overtake him. He noticed a light shining beneath Ramon’s door across the hall. Lifting himself up on an elbow, Grandpa Alban gazed at it curiously. The creak of the bed awoke Grandma. “What is it, honey?” she asked.
“That light under Ramon’s door. It’s—” he glanced at the clock—“it’s after eleven o’clock! What could Ramon be doing at this time of night?”
Grandma smiled. “He does the same thing every night.”
“Does what, Francie?”
“Reads.”
“Reads?”
“From a book of scriptures he has, called the Book of Mormon. Go back to sleep dear, he’ll be just fine.”
How can anyone work all day and then stay up so late reading? he wondered as he drifted off to sleep.
The screech of a hawk circling above cut through the silence of the noonday sky like a paring knife. Ramon took the handkerchief from his pocket and tied it about his head to keep the sweat from running down into his eyes. He climbed down the ladder, filled a basket, and picked up the container of lemonade. He was about to take a swallow, when he spied what looked like his grandfather seated under a tree at the far end of the orchard. That’s unusual, he thought. Grandpa never just sits. He’s always busy doing something. Maybe he’s sick.
Ramon walked quickly to where his grandfather sat. Grandpa Alban was gazing off into the hills, his eyes wet with tears. When Ramon made his presence known, Grandpa tried to mend his composure.
“Are you all right, Grandpa?”
“Actually, no,” he said, his open candor taking Ramon aback. “I’ve just been pretending far too long that I am all right.”
Ramon sat down beside his grandfather. After a heavy silence, Grandpa went on. “I’m a proud man, Ramon. I always have been, I guess—too proud to ever own up to my mistakes. On top of that, I’ve always figured it would be too hard and painful to change. But something you said yesterday got me thinking. …”
What can I say? Ramon wondered. I don’t really know what he’s talking about. The boy offered a silent prayer for Heavenly Father’s help. Suddenly repentance and the Lord’s great plan of redemption that the missionaries had taught came to Ramon’s mind, and words came to his lips. He was so moved that he began to cry. This, in turn, deeply touched the old man, and he clung to every word that his grandson spoke.
It was two days later, just after Ramon had loaded two baskets of fruit into a customer’s car, that Ramon’s sapling faith began to flower. As he turned back toward the fruit stand, he saw a look on his grandfather’s face that he had never seen before. It was a look of sweet resolve, of courage. “What is it, Grandpa?”
“Would you mind if I went to church with you next Sunday, Ramon? I’d like to ask the missionaries to come talk to me.”
Later that afternoon, as Ramon picked fruit, he paused and gazed at the ring he held in his hand. He wondered if it would still fit around his faith—and his joy. He doubted it.

Wilford Woodruff was with Joseph before and after his death. He traveled thousands of miles with him and often acted as scribe for him—it was Brother Woodruff who wrote the revelation given through Joseph Smith concerning the Civil War. (See D&C 87.) In the Millennial Star he recounts the delightful and revealing first meeting with the Prophet Joseph:
“Before I saw Joseph I said I did not care how old he was, or how young he was; I did not care how he looked—whether his hair was long or short; the man that advanced that revelation was a Prophet of God. I knew it for myself. I first met Joseph in the streets of Kirtland. He had on an old hat, and a pistol in his hand. Said he, ‘Brother Woodruff, I’ve been out shooting at a mark, and I wanted to see if I could hit anything;’ and says he, ‘Have you any objection to it?’ ‘Not at all,’ says I; ‘there is no law against a man shooting at a mark, that I know of.’ He invited me to his house. He had a wolf skin, which he wanted me to help him to tan; he wanted it to sit on while driving his wagon team. Now, many might have said, ‘You are a pretty Prophet; shooting a pistol and tanning a wolf skin.’ Well, we tanned it, and used it while making a journey of a thousand miles. This was my first acquaintance with the Prophet Joseph. And from that day until the present, with all of the apostacies that we have had, and with all the difficulties and afflictions we have been called to pass through, I never saw a moment when I had any doubt with regard to this work. I have had no trial about this. While the people were apostatizing on the right hand and on the left, and while Apostles were urging me to turn against the Prophet Joseph, it was no temptation to me to doubt this work or to doubt that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God.” (Millennial Star, vol. 53, pp. 627–28.)

So far, the life of Fetauai Unasa Tautiaga Tuifalefa Tiatia has been a model of accomplishment.
He began his teaching career over 27 years ago, after gaining a diploma from Samoa Teachers Training College, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in education. In the early 2000s, Fetauai received postgraduate degrees from the renown Malua Theological College, where he also qualified as an ordained minister in one of Samoa’s most prominent Christian denominations.
Along the way, he met and married the beautiful Lili Laufiso, and they had children—three girls and a boy. When it was time to choose a high school for them, given Fetauai’s own background in education, the couple considered their options carefully.
“We chose to take our girls to Vaiola College,” Fetauai says, referring to a high school in Savaii, Samoa, that is run and owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was an interesting decision for a practicing minister of a different faith, but he was impressed by Vaiola’s high moral standards and church-based values.
Little did Fetauai know at the time, this decision would spark a fire that would change his life.
His daughters soon began investigating their high school’s church. They took seminary classes, and in their family’s evening devotionals, they would share what they learned about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
Fetauai and his wife grew fond of the missionaries who would visit their girls at home. Sisters Niutua and Laulu taught them Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation, and in April 2010, Fetauai’s daughters were baptised. Fetauai recalls that in their tear-filled farewell prayers, these sweet sister missionaries voiced their deepest desires that the rest of his family would also join the Church.
He also remembers an interesting family home evening lesson with a missionary couple from Utah. Elder and Sister Krogh brought over a tin of homemade cookies, which was wrapped up in a long piece of metal wiring. After the lesson, each person took a turn unwinding the metal wire off the tin until, finally, they were able to open it and enjoy the cookies inside. Elder Krogh then testified: it is only when we open (unwind) our hearts to the gospel that we can enjoy the sweetness of its blessings.
Little by little, these faith-building experiences worked a mighty miracle in Fetauai’s own heart, and soon, he could no longer withstand his yearning to join the Church. “[It was] like the feeling you have while in a long journey without water and . . . food in a desert,” he says.
Fetauai immediately called the local bishop to organise his own baptism, and less than a week later, this well-known educator and minister was now a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The news was shocking, especially for parishioners in the church he left behind. “People talked about our conversion . . . with disbelief. [It was] the main topic in the street, the market and on public transport in those times!” Fetauai laughs. But the backlash was also fierce. “We had friends who turned into foes . . . in the village, [and] in our families.”
It was a difficult transition, but Fetauai now refers to those painful memories as the “forgotten experiences” because, he says, “after the raging storms against us calmly faded away, we finally saw the light of Christ, brighter than any other light shining into our lives.”
Fetauai was baptised in 2013, then sealed to his family for time and all eternity the year after. By 2016, he was a bishop, and in 2017 he was called to serve as president for the Savaii Samoa Pu’apu’a Stake.
On reflection, President Tiatia has one explanation for his eventful pathway to the true gospel of Christ. “Through all the challenges we faced and the decisions we made, we . . . review the beginning and finally say: ‘God is always at the helm of every soul.’”

I always looked forward to Primary activity day because it meant exciting activities, great games, and tasty treats. Sometimes the activities were serious and spiritual, and I liked those, too, because I learned so much. But of all the great activities I went to, I remember one more than any other.
At 10:00 on the dot that Saturday, I showed up at church, along with the rest of the Primary-age children in my ward. After an opening prayer, a song, and a few instructions, we split into groups. I followed my group into a classroom and was surprised to find a large piece of green-and-white-checked fabric and a piece of solid green fabric, with a layer of fluffy stuff in between. It was all stretched out and tacked to some boards. Nearby were yarn and big needles. “A quilt,” I thought. “Who would be tying a quilt right in the middle of our Primary activity?”
“We are all going to help tie this quilt for someone in the ward who isn’t feeling well,” one of our Primary leaders explained. “After it’s finished, we’ll give it to her.”
“What a great idea!” I thought. When I’m having a hard time, I enjoy wrapping up in a nice warm blanket. But I wondered how well it would turn out since I had never tied a quilt and was pretty sure the rest of the Primary hadn’t either.
Then the Primary president announced who would receive the quilt—my own lucky mom! I was even more excited to try my hardest so the quilt would look nice.
My mom had been very ill all month. In fact, Grandma had to stay with us for a while because Mom was so sick she couldn’t take care of us. She had to be released from her Primary calling, too. Even though Mom’s illness wasn’t easy for our family, something good was going to happen. I would have a baby brother!
With the help of our leaders, we set to work. Even though I wondered if we could really do it, we tied that quilt. Everyone made a stitch or two. Then we each wrote a message, signed our name, or drew a picture in a book that went along with the quilt. I knew what we were doing would mean a lot to Mom because she told me how much she loved and missed all the children in Primary. And the person who bought the fabric must have been inspired, because green is Mom’s favorite color.
Tying the quilt wasn’t hard, but keeping quiet about it sure was. A few weeks later, the secret was finally revealed. On a sunny Sunday morning during singing time, we all walked a block from the church and around the corner to my backyard. We sat on the lawn and waited while one of our leaders knocked on the door.
You can probably guess that when Mom stepped outside and saw all the children gathered, she cried. She cried even more when we sang some of our favorite Primary songs in our best voices. Then the Primary president presented the finished quilt and the book of messages.
“Your singing was beautiful,” Mom said through her tears. “This is one of the nicest things that has ever happened to me.” I knew she meant it. She smiled and cried some more and said that she was going to go inside, wrap up in the quilt, and read every message we had written.
Mom still has that quilt, and I know she always will. It has a few extra-long loops of yarn on the back where some of the stitches weren’t pulled all the way through. Mom says that makes it even more special. To this day, when someone in the family is sick or has a bad day, nothing makes us feel better than wrapping up in the memories and warmth of what we affectionately call the “Primary quilt.”

Young members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their Muslim friends in Queensland are helping an Australian charity to bring light into communities in Vanuatu impacted by energy poverty.
Last October, 186 young single adult volunteers, including friends from the Ahmadiyyah Muslim community, Church members and friends, gathered to assemble 1,000 solar lights.
The workers also wrote a greeting or message of encouragement on the instruction sheet that accompanies each light.
One volunteer said, “Not only are we building the lights, but we are also writing a letter to send with the lights, and it really makes it personal, and it really feels good to help others.”
Billie Murphy, SolarBuddy representative, said, “These lights will be used for children to study at nighttime and to move about their community safely and hopefully give them a really good opportunity as they move forward.”
Carl Maurer, self-reliance manager and Area Seventy, said, “I see this as an opportunity to relieve suffering, to increase the capacity for education to be a profile in somebody’s home, to offer better health opportunities in their homes, where they can become more self-reliant.”
Volunteers registered on JustServe, a free community service platform for building unity through community service, where the service project was posted.
The lights were purchased as a humanitarian project, by Latter-day Saint Charities, the service arm of the Church, from Solar Buddy, which is an Australian charity with the goal of ending energy poverty for all children.
After assembling the lights, which took about five minutes each, the young adults continued to mingle with games, activities, and, of course, food.
Carl Maurer said, “I hope that this will be a significant opportunity for families and individuals to see not just the light from the light, but see the Light of their lives, Jesus Christ.”

When Vyacheslav and Zoya Gulko of Ukraine began investigating the Church, their 13-year-old daughter, Kira, wasn’t thrilled. She refused to participate in missionary lessons, and when she knew the elders were coming to their home, she “demonstratively shut the door of her room,” her mother remembers.
Brother and Sister Gulko, who decided to join the Church, suspected that if they could just provide an opportunity for Kira to feel the Spirit, her heart might be touched. Because Sister Gulko’s own testimony had begun when she attended another person’s baptism, she asked Kira to come to her baptism—just to help her change into dry clothes afterward. To Sister Gulko’s surprise, Kira agreed.
“It happened!” Sister Gulko remembers. “Heavenly Father was working in a very miraculous way.” Kira did feel the Spirit, and a week after her parents’ baptism, she agreed to meet with the missionaries. She began reading the Book of Mormon. A few weeks later, Sister Gulko noticed a piece of paper hanging above Kira’s desk; written on it were the words of 2 Nephi 2:25. Two and a half months after their own baptism, the Gulkos attended their daughter’s baptism. Now, 20 years later, Kira is married. She and her husband, Dave, have been sealed in the temple and are raising their two sons in the gospel. She has served faithfully in a number of callings and has remained active in the Church.

I remember watching other kids reading with delight in class. Everyone in my family could read and did a lot of it. I once asked my brother, Rob, what was so great about reading. He smiled when he told me that when you read it’s like a whole new world opens.
I had heard the stories of Joseph Smith only being 14 when he received answers to his prayers. I wanted to experience this new world of reading. I was 13, living in Arizona with my dad. In early October, I prayed, sobbing into the sheets of my bed, begging the Lord to grant me the gift of reading. I promised that if he would grant me this great blessing, I would read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover.
Amazingly, in less than 18 days, I jumped six reading levels and was up to the same grade level as others my age. Once I had been told that was impossible. The miracle happened. I struggled but kept my promise and read the whole Book of Mormon. I have since moved on to the other scriptures.
Now that I am 15, I bear my testimony that the scriptures are so important that Heavenly Father allowed a girl with a learning disability to read. I know it is important to him that all of his children read his sacred books. The scriptures have changed my life forever.

It was typical of a national junior college finals wrestling match, especially in the heavyweight division. Both competitors struggled and strained, muscles bulging, feet grasping for a hold on the mat made slippery with sweat. Then the Ricks College wrestler slipped quickly behind his opponent, grabbed his arm, with a shoulder forced him onto his back, and held him helpless until the referee called a pin.

Afterwards, in the dressing room, the rivals smiled and shook hands. “When you go on this ‘mission’ of yours, I hope you get your call in my area,” the loser said. “I really want to hear more about your church.” J. L. Coon, 19, Ricks’s heavyweight, smiled broadly. But he smiled even more broadly a few months later when his mission call arrived: he was called to his opponent’s area, the Washington Seattle Mission! “I’ll have to look him up if I get near his city,” J. L. said.

J. L., whose real name is Joseph, has been winning at wrestling—and football and weightlifting and track—since starting high school. He had 34 straight pins in his senior year, was an all-state football player, took first place in the Utah high school shot-put competition, and won the Utah power-lifting competition by dead lifting 585 pounds. His record at Granger High School earned him scholarships in wrestling and football at Ricks. Recently, as a freshman at Ricks, he took fourth place in the national junior college wrestling championships, and his future as an athlete seems assured.

But J. L., who stands six feet tall and weighs 230 pounds, is giving it all up—for two years—to accept the mission call.

“It was an easy decision,” he said just before entering the Missionary Home in Salt Lake. “I’ve known all my life I would go.” He said living the Word of Wisdom, praying constantly, and reading the scriptures daily have helped him prepare. “Besides,” he adds, “I know this is the true church. I want to share it with others.” He plans to continue his sports career when he returns.

2:06 p.m. The missionaries jump on another bus, this time to El Casco, the historic quarter of Toledo, Spain. They stop by an investigator’s business to invite him to an activity that night.
“You can get lost in here really quick if you aren’t paying attention,” Elder Ward says of the maze of narrow streets lined with buildings that seem to lean over those walking below.

7:45 p.m. Two buses later the elders make it to the activity they had planned with the sister missionaries who work in the same city, Sister Kathleen Bonifay and Sister Brittany Hofman.
The people they were expecting to come didn’t. “That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Elder Ward says. But after a little footwork, the missionaries are able to gather a handful of other investigators living nearby. After a hymn and a video, you can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost as the missionaries bear testimony of the Book of Mormon as another witness of Jesus Christ. The activity is a success.
“The Lord takes care of you when you put forth your best planning and best effort,” says Sister Bonifay.

Illustrations by Greg NewBold
I was shocked! My grandmother wanted me to pay for my own grandfather’s car! Really? That car had been parked, just sitting there in her garage, ever since Grandfather’s funeral several months before. It was unused and old now, so to me it didn’t seem right or fair that it wouldn’t just be given to me, her oldest grandchild. She was my grandmother, after all, and was well provided for financially, so why couldn’t it just be an inheritance or a gift? She didn’t even drive it, so wouldn’t I be doing her a favor taking it off her hands?
Adding insult to injury, my own grandmother decided to call a neighbor of hers—a retired judge—to come over to the house and write up a purchase and loan agreement for me to sign before she would let me buy the car. At first it made me angry—then very sad. I started to believe she didn’t love me, her first grandchild.
There were a few minutes when I thought about leaving in a huff of insulted pride, to never look back or talk with my grandmother again. But luckily I didn’t, for a few very important reasons:
I needed a car.
I knew I could trust that car because Grandfather always kept his cars in top condition.
I could afford it.
Most of all, I knew Grandmother was insisting upon her method of transferring the car to me for a good reason, even if I didn’t know what it was.
Besides, as I thought about it, I realized she wasn’t the kind of person who would intentionally hurt anyone, much less me. She’d loved me all my life, so why would I think conducting a business deal between us would ruin our relationship? She was probably also thinking that my siblings and cousins could have felt slighted if the car had been an outright gift.
When we came to a mutual understanding, we both signed the document, and the judge signed as a witness. According to an ancient Chinese proverb: “The weakest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.” Because we signed an agreement we had worked out together, I was able to keep my part of the bargain.
At the end of our meeting, with my copy of our contract in hand, I drove away in what was now my car, deeply assured that my grandmother really did still love me. Although she showed it in a way that at first caused me to doubt, I learned many other things from her that day. Most important to me was that if I wanted something in this life, there would ultimately be some kind of price I would have to pay for it, even things that seem to be offered for free—or that I think should be.
Perhaps the best part was that I was treated like an adult by a grandmother who expected me to be mature enough to understand that it was necessary to handle our transaction the way we did for my sake as much as for hers.

I was channeling my inner superspy. The problem was, I’d been doing that all week and it hadn’t worked out very well so far.
I stood with my friends on a grassy hillside far removed from civilization. Stretched between this hill and the next was a thick steel cable that ran 40 yards (37 meters). The cable hung 6 feet (2 meters) above the ground, spanned a small valley between the hills, and had a downward slant.
In other words, it was the perfect cable to slide down in spy-like glory. My friends and I had no idea why the cable was there in the first place. We only knew that a most manly destiny was calling loudly. We were there to heed the call.
And yet, that stubborn cable wasn’t cooperating. Turns out we needed more than blindingly awesome courage and determination to accomplish our goal. We needed something to help us slide down. Our first two attempts that week hadn’t resulted in our sliding more than a few feet before friction stopped us cold.
But that didn’t discourage us. My friend had an old 10-speed bike that he donated to the cause for our third attempt. His theory was that if we removed the front handlebars, spokes, and wheel from the rest of the frame, we could place the rim (tube and tire removed) on top of the cable. Then, wrench in hand, we could attach the handlebar and front spokes to the wheel by aiming them up around the underside of the cable. It was a giant pulley.
I was to be the guinea pig lucky person to try out our complex mechanism first. So there I stood, channeling my inner spy and poised and ready to earn some manly bragging points. I gripped the handlebars, took a deep breath, and howled in excitement while lifting my feet.
In milliseconds the other hillside started rushing toward me. Wind whipped through my hair as I flew across the gap between hills. I slammed into the far side with enough impact to steal the air from my lungs. I jumped to my feet, dusted myself off, and yelled to my friends, “You guys gotta try this thing!”
Only … most of my friends didn’t want to try the spy cable after seeing how my flight ended. Truth be told, nor did I after that excellent-but-wild ride. As exciting as the trip down had been, the jolting stop at the end was anything but fun.

Adam Martin, a ward Sunday School president in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, says he appreciates suggestions from the ward council. “The Relief Society president or the elders quorum president will say, ‘We’d like teachers to focus on this,’ so we bring that up in teacher council [meeting],” he says.
When teacher council meetings first started, teachers weren’t sure what to expect, so he extended lots of personal invitations and introduced training materials available at teaching.lds.org. “Now the ball is rolling,” he says. “They know it’s a place to discuss what’s going on.”
One recent meeting focused on following the Spirit. “We talked about preparing well but not worrying about covering everything,” he says. “One sister said she had always felt she needed to talk about every item in her lesson plan. You could see the light go on for her when we talked about following inspiration as you guide a discussion.”

Years ago, I arrived home from work and was startled to see white paint splattered everywhere—on the ground, the garage door, and our red-brick house. I inspected the scene more closely and discovered the paint was still wet. A trail of paint led toward the backyard, and so I followed it. There, I found my five-year-old son with a paintbrush in his hand, chasing our dog. Our beautiful black Labrador was splattered almost half white!
“What are you doing?” I asked in an animated voice.
My son stopped, looked at me, looked at the dog, looked at the paintbrush dripping with paint, and said, “I just want him to look like the black-spotted dogs in the movie—you know, the one with 101 Dalmatians.”
I loved our dog. I thought he was perfect, but that day my son had a different idea.
In the first story, our young son had a beautiful dog as a pet; notwithstanding, he grabbed a gallon of paint and, with paintbrush in hand, determined to create his own imagined reality.

As a seven-year-old boy living in the Arabian Peninsula, I was consistently told by my parents to always wear my shoes, and I understood why. I knew that shoes would protect my feet against the many threats to be found in the desert, such as snakes, scorpions, and thorns. One morning after a night’s camping in the desert, I wanted to go exploring, but I did not want to bother with putting on my shoes. I rationalized that I was only going for a little wander and I would stay close by the camp. So instead of shoes, I wore flip-flops. I told myself that flip-flops were shoes—of a sort. And anyway, what could possibly happen?
As I walked along the cool sand—in my flip-flops—I felt something like a thorn going into the arch of my foot. I looked down and saw not a thorn but a scorpion. As my mind registered the scorpion and I realized what had just happened, the pain of the sting began to rise from my foot and up my leg. I grabbed the top of my leg to try and stop the searing pain from moving farther, and I cried out for help. My parents came running from the camp.
As my father battered the scorpion with a shovel, an adult friend who was camping with us heroically tried to suck the venom from my foot. At this moment I thought that I was going to die. I sobbed while my parents loaded me into a car and set off across the desert at high speed toward the nearest hospital, which was over two hours away. The pain all through my leg was excruciating, and for that entire journey, I assumed that I was dying.
When we finally reached the hospital, however, the doctor was able to assure us that only small infants and the severely malnourished are threatened by the sting of that type of scorpion. He administered an anesthetic, which numbed my leg and took away any sensation of pain. Within 24 hours I no longer had any effects from the sting of the scorpion. But I had learned a powerful lesson.
I had known that when my parents told me to wear shoes, they did not mean flip-flops; I was old enough to know that flip-flops did not provide the same protection as a pair of shoes. But that morning in the desert, I disregarded what I knew to be right. I ignored what my parents had repeatedly taught me. I had been both lazy and a little rebellious, and I paid a price for it.
As I address you valiant young men, your fathers, teachers, leaders, and friends, I pay tribute to all who are diligently striving to become what the Lord needs and wants you to be. But I testify from my own experience as a boy and as a man that disregarding what we know to be right, whether through laziness or rebelliousness, always brings undesirable and spiritually damaging consequences. No, the scorpion did not in the end threaten my life, but it caused extreme pain and distress to both me and my parents. When it comes to how we live the gospel, we must not respond with laziness or rebelliousness.

“The challenge,” announced Brother Anderson to our institute class, “is to carry a copy of the Book of Mormon with you at all times while on campus. And hiding them in your purses and backpacks doesn’t count,” he added with a chuckle.
Piece of cake, I thought. How hard can it be to carry around a Book of Mormon?
Faithfully, I stacked the Book of Mormon on top of my books, hoping it would attract attention. It did. One look at the trumpeting angel sent most people running for cover. No one wanted to hear about my book or my religion. Not until Lifesaving 101, that is.
My lifesaving class was a small one, mostly competitive swimmers and divers. It was there that Chris*—tan, blond, and built like Mr. Atlas—asked to see my Book of Mormon. My heart thumped wildly as I handed him the book.
“Do you know what it says in this book?” he shouted, waving it over his head. Instantly, all eyes were on him. “It says that there are eight-foot-tall men on the moon who wear long black coats and stovepipe hats. And they all have 20 wives!”
Some missionary tool this is, I thought, as I considered trying to squeeze my 5-foot, 8-inch frame into the two-foot space beneath my desk. What would my teammates think of me? No sooner had that thought appeared when a scripture from the Bible forced it out:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Rom. 1:16).
I met Chris’s haughty stare with a challenge of my own. “If you can show me where in the Book of Mormon it says anything like that,” I said, “I will leave the LDS church.”
A united gasp rose from the class, followed by a deafening silence. Chris shuffled furiously back and forth through the pages of the Book of Mormon. Finally, thrusting the book back at me, he retreated to his seat, defeated.
I then bore fervent testimony of the Book of Mormon and of the prophet Joseph Smith to Chris and to the rest of the class. No one talked to me much that afternoon during swim practice, except for a quiet guy named Dorian. “May I see your book?” he asked.
Three years later, as Dorian and I knelt at the altar in the Washington D.C. Temple and were sealed for time and all eternity, I was grateful for the challenge of an inspired institute director, grateful too for a prophet of the Lord who challenged us to read daily from the Book of Mormon.

A true story from the USA.
Kevin shook the bishop’s hand and walked out of the office. He looked down at the little card he was holding. It was his very own temple recommend!
Dad was waiting for him in the hallway. “When can we go to the temple?” Kevin asked him.
Dad grinned. “We can set an appointment as soon as we get home.”
Kevin and Dad made an appointment to do baptisms for the dead. But when the day of the appointment came, Kevin was sick, so they rescheduled. And then they had to reschedule again because Dad had an emergency work trip.
Kevin began to wonder if he’d ever go to the temple.
When the day of the third appointment came, Kevin was ready! He and Dad planned to leave for the temple right after dinner.
Kevin smiled as he got ready for school. But his good mood disappeared when his math teacher announced a pop quiz. The quiz didn’t go well. Neither did the rest of the school day. And by the time Mom picked him up, he had a headache.
“Remember that you’re in charge for a bit at home while I run a quick errand?” Mom asked.
Kevin winced. He had not remembered.
The minute Mom left, Kevin’s brothers started arguing. When Kevin tried to help them solve the problem, they got mad at him. Could this day get any worse?
Yup! Just then, his little sister spilled milk all over the kitchen floor. As he mopped it up, Kevin’s heart was beating fast, and his muscles were tight.
Mom came back as he was putting the mop away. “Did your sister spill again?”
Kevin nodded and rolled his shoulders, trying to relax. “It’s been a bad day.”
“What happened?” Mom asked.
“It’s just been so stressful. It doesn’t seem like a good day to go to the temple.”
“We can choose a different day,” Mom said.
The thought of rescheduling again made Kevin feel even worse. “No,” he said. “I want to go. I just don’t feel very peaceful.”
“Heavenly Father will welcome you in His house whether or not you feel peace,” Mom said. “And Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. Lots of times you can find peace in the temple even if you’ve had a stressful day.”
Kevin sighed. “I’ll give it a try.”
During dinner and the drive to the temple, he kept thinking of all the bad things that had happened that day. He still felt tense when he and Dad got to the temple. But as soon as Kevin walked through the doors, he relaxed a little.
The temple was clean and quiet inside. Everyone wore white and spoke softly. As he changed into a white jumpsuit in the dressing room, Kevin noticed he was moving slower and speaking softer too. When it was his turn to do baptisms, he felt even better.
Dad baptized Kevin for four people who had died. Peace and happiness started to grow inside Kevin. It wasn’t just because he was in such a peaceful place, but also because he had helped people make covenants with God.
On the drive home, Kevin realized he wasn’t stressed anymore. And he was smiling again! He only had one question for Dad.
“When can I go back to the temple?”
Dad laughed. “Soon.”

In 1965 I headed to Vietnam for my third tour of duty with the U.S. Air Force. We were flying combat missions just about every day, with our squadron’s F-100 Super Sabers taking small arms hits regularly. In this environment, I easily developed faithful habits of prayer, and I found strength in knowing that my family back home was praying regularly for my safe and speedy return.
Looking back, I can see clearly that these prayers helped build a protective shield around me. I felt this protection especially on the morning of March 30, 1966. About halfway through a mission, I noticed that my fire warning light had lit up. I had been hit! I was in trouble, so I headed east toward the nearest friendly airfield.
I was feeling pretty good about things until my wingman told me that I was burning badly, with flames trailing several feet behind the aircraft. A moment later, the aircraft quit responding to the control stick. It was time to bail out. I squeezed the trigger, firing the ejection seat charge. It fired much more violently than I had expected, but at least I was separated from the burning F-100.
As soon as I ejected, things quickly went from bad to worse. The jolt of the ejection put me into a rapid, head-over-heels tumble. The tumble was so violent that I couldn’t think through the remainder of my memorized emergency procedures. My only clear thought at the time was that the human body was not built to withstand such violence. I expected an arm or a leg to be torn off at any minute!
I finally calmed down enough to recall a parachute free-fall training film I had seen just before my deployment to Vietnam. An image soon became crystal clear in my mind: Spread eagle to slow down and stabilize. As I responded to the image, which I knew was an answer to the many prayers that had been offered in my behalf, I immediately stopped spinning and tumbling. I was then able to concentrate on other pressing matters—like opening my parachute! If it had opened automatically, I wouldn’t have found myself tumbling with such violence.
My mind then cleared further, as if a small TV screen had appeared before me, outlining the rest of the critical emergency procedures I needed to remember. Check chute. I didn’t have one. If no chute, pull D-ring. The D-ring is the rip cord, which I quickly pulled. Immediately the parachute popped out and filled with air to break my fall. Deploy seat kit. I pulled the lanyard to release the heavy, hard-shelled survival kit that was strapped to my seat. No luck. The kit stayed attached, hanging dangerously behind my thighs.
Later, in my debrief of the ejection, a flight surgeon told me that in every case he knew of, an undeployed seat kit had resulted in a crushed pelvis. I was thankful I was not aware of this grim statistic as I floated toward the earth.
I hadn’t realized that Vietnam was in its dry season, and the soft rice field I expected when I landed was concrete hard. I hit my head on the ground and was briefly knocked unconscious. Fortunately, I had kept my helmet on throughout the ejection.
When I recovered, I unstrapped myself from my parachute and took a quick inventory. I had no broken bones and saw no enemy troops, but I knew I had landed in hostile territory controlled by the Vietcong. Within 30 minutes an Army helicopter arrived, picked me up, and flew me to my intended destination.
When I finally came down from my adrenalin high and could focus on all that had happened, I became immediately aware of the divine intervention that had occurred in my life. I had experienced major equipment problems: neither the automatic feature on my parachute nor the survival kit release system had worked. My spinning had prevented me from thinking clearly until mind-clearing images came to me. And I had landed safely and been rescued from hostile, Vietcong-held territory. In short, it was clear that my prayers and those of my family had been answered in a remarkable fashion.

As a young man of nineteen, experiencing my first contact with Latter-day Saints, I sat ready to put one dollar in the collection plate during Sunday School opening exercises. I would show my Mormon hosts that I was not stingy. After all, I was only earning thirty-five cents an hour, so one dollar was no small contribution. But Sunday School came and went, and there was no collection plate.
And again at sacrament meeting that Sunday evening, where I had decided to double my contribution to two dollars, there was no collection. The explanation must be, I was sure, that you contributed at the door on your way out. With my hand in my pocket, I was ready—but I had to switch pockets because everyone wanted to shake my hand.
Once outside the building, I casually asked my hosts, “When do they take up the collection?”
They smiled and answered, “We don’t pass the collection plate in our church.”
“Never?” I asked.
“Never,” they replied.
“Great!” I thought. “This is my kind of church.” Obviously, it was time for me to learn about tithing.
I had been praying long and hard about religion. An unrelenting feeling of uneasiness had come over me—a feeling that was driving me to find spiritual relief. On the following Wednesday night the missionaries gave me the lesson on tithing, and I found the relief I was looking for. Never will I forget the comfort that flowed into my system when those two elders began to instruct me about tithing. From their very first word until their last amen, I knew it was true. The very next Sunday I paid my first tithing, although it was six months before I was baptized.

Many faithful Latter-day Saints have been warned by the Spirit when they were faced with injury or possible death. Among these was President Wilford Woodruff, who said:
“When I got back to Winter Quarters from the pioneer journey [1847], President [Brigham Young] said to me, ‘Brother Woodruff, I want you to take your wife and children and go to Boston and stay there until you can gather every Saint of God in New England and Canada and send them up to Zion.’
“I did as he told me. It took me two years to gather up everybody, and I brought up the rear with a company (there were about one hundred of them). We arrived at Pittsburgh one day at sundown. We did not want to stay there, so I went to the first steamboat that was going to leave. I saw the captain and engaged passage for us on that steamer. I had only just done so when the spirit said to me, and that, too, very strongly, ‘Don’t go aboard that steamer, nor your company.’ Of course, I went and spoke to the captain, and told him I had made up my mind to wait.
“Well, that ship started, and had only got five miles down the river when it took fire, and three hundred persons were burned to death or drowned. If I had not obeyed that spirit, and had gone on that steamer with the rest of the company, you can see what the result would have been.”