Gospel Story Finder

One day I came home tired from work and threw myself on our lower bunk bed. Looking up, I saw a paper posted under the bed above me. It said: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives!” My brother Jonathan had put it there. How close children are to the heavens that even a Primary child can be an instrument in sending a message from God to comfort a troubled heart and mind!

Though the number of members is small, the Church continues to grow. Despite challenges of isolation, translation of Church materials, unfavorable weather, and cultural barriers, Church leaders have promised that one day Iceland will be a beacon to other countries. President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) visited Iceland and reminded members that they are “people of ‘strength and power and capacity’ to do great things” (“Wonderful to Have Sweet, Good Land,” Church News, Sept. 21, 2002, 10).

Do you remember being afraid of the dark when you were a child? When you became frightened, you probably turned on the light or lit a candle—in fact, you lit every light in the house! When your parents came home later in the evening, they would ask, “Why is every light in the house on?” And then they would proceed to give you a lecture, I am sure, about the family budget and the cost of electricity.

You have learned, however, that by turning on an electric light or by lighting a candle, there was no more darkness, no more fear. You learned a simple law of nature, which is also a spiritual law: Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Satan and his disciples cannot tolerate the spiritual light of the gospel; they must immediately depart. Satan cannot command you to do anything. With the priesthood, you can command him to depart in your thoughts and in your actions.

Clark was deeply touched when, on a typically marvelous Monson fishing experience, his father asked him to reel in his line for a moment. When the lines were in and the rods set aside in the boat, Brother Monson said, “In about five minutes your brother Tom will be sitting down to take the bar examination admitting him to the practice of law. He has worked hard through three years of law school for this and he will be a little nervous. Let’s just kneel here in the boat. I’ll offer a prayer for him, and then you offer one.”
“That was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” Clark later reported. He was also deeply touched years later when his father turned the car around and drove sixty-four kilometers out of his way to let Clark get a good look at a hawk’s nest. “I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that he would do that. It’s exactly the kind of thing he has done all his life for those he sees in need.”

On Sunday afternoon, 165 Church members from the different stakes of the island gathered in the Ponce I chapel for a special devotional for volunteers. They came spontaneously and in solidarity and with a large number of supplies that they collected to help those affected.

Letters the New Era has received from readers echo President Hinckley’s statement. Fifteen-year-old Lindy* writes, “When the parents of the kids I was baby-sitting got home, I was going to ask the wife to take me home, but the husband insisted. I knew right then that I was in trouble. On the way home he tried to molest me. No matter what I did, he kept right on.”

My brother Gary is a special person. When he was born, his brain was damaged by a lack of oxygen, and his mind never grew above the level of a six- or seven-year-old. For over 60 years I watched my parents take care of Gary—helping him brush his teeth, comb his hair, and tie his tie on Sunday. They took him to rodeos and western movies and performed countless acts of love and kindness.

More than fifty years ago, Ben Roberto was born on Angaur, a small island some three kilometers wide and four kilometers long near Palau (or Belau). “When I was young,” Ben says, “Angaur seemed like a large place, but when I started looking at magazines and seeing other places, I realized how small it was.” After two years in college on Guam, he joined the United States army, hoping to experience more of the world.
He found more than he expected during his tour of service in Vietnam. “I had never experienced anything like that,” Ben says. “It got me to wondering what life was all about.” After his service in the military, Ben worked at various jobs in the United States, finally ending up as an iron worker. He was looking for “something exciting.” But “after all the searching, there was still something missing. I felt there had to be more to life.”
One day he came across a Gideon Bible in a motel room. Reading it left him hungry for more and feeling that what he might be looking for was God. “So I started looking, going to different churches. Something started happening to me, troubling me, telling me to go to Palau. I was in Milwaukee when I decided to go home.”
After Ben returned to Palau, his long search for God remained fruitless—until one day in 1980, a year after his return home, he was approached by LDS missionaries. The Church was new in Palau, and at first he rejected their words as nonsense. But after reading the Book of Mormon and some other Church literature, he received a spiritual witness that he had found the truth.
Ben was baptized and turned his life over to the Lord. Despite his age (he was 41 at the time), he was prompted to serve a mission. It didn’t seem a likely possibility—but a mission president was inspired to call him on a district mission. Elder Roberto served in Palau for 16 months. Shortly after his release, he was married, then sealed in the Manila Philippines Temple.
Ben currently serves as a district president. He is also a member of Palau’s board of education and works for the legislature. “The Church has been the greatest education that I have had,” he says. “When I’m given a task, I use my church experience, the way the Church does things, to get it done.”
President Roberto praises the missionaries for helping redirect the tide of change in Micronesia. The gospel improves lives, and because the missionaries represent it so well, “many Palauans are accepting the Church. Every missionary who has come has left a good impression.”

Correction, hopefully gentle, can come from one’s spouse. Elder Richard G. Scott, who just addressed us, remembers a time early in his marriage when his wife, Jeanene, counseled him to look directly at people when he spoke to them. “You look at the floor, the ceiling, the window, anywhere but in their eyes,” she said. He took that gentle rebuke to heart, and it made him much more effective in counseling and working with people. As one who served as a full-time missionary under then President Scott’s direction, I can attest that he does look one squarely in the eye in his conversations. I can also add that when one needs correction, that look can be very penetrating.

One sister, a Relief Society instructor, was known for preparing flawless lessons. One time she decided to create a beautiful quilt that would serve as the perfect backdrop to the theme of her lesson. But life intervened—there were children to pick up from school, a neighbor who needed help moving, a husband who had a fever, and a friend who felt lonely. The day of the lesson approached, and the quilt was not completed. Finally, the night before her lesson, she did not sleep much as she worked all night on the quilt.

The next day she was exhausted and barely able to organize her thoughts, but she bravely stood and delivered her lesson.

And the quilt was stunning—the stitches were perfect, the colors vibrant, and the design intricate. And at the center of it all was a single word that triumphantly echoed the theme of her lesson: “Simplify.”

When I returned to the Czech Republic from Utah, I was the only member of the Church not just in my town, Chrastava (population 8,000), but also in Liberec (population 120,000), a city about six miles (10 km) from Chrastava. I worked as a hotel receptionist and taught English in a private high school. I was desperately seeking to find my new place at home. I was close to giving up. Nevertheless, I continued to kneel every night and pray for a miracle that would bring me out of my despair. I also tried very hard to stay away from my old habits and friends.
Finally my prayers were answered. The missionaries came to Liberec, where I was teaching. (I later learned that Brother Hodson had contacted the mission president for the Czech Republic and told him about me. Now there is a growing branch of about 40 Latter-day Saints in my hometown.)

The moon has fallen from the sky
Into a field that lies nearby.
Yet creeping there I slyly peer
And find the moon is nowhere near,
And searching for the fallen one,
I’m startled by the rising sun.

With the power of the priesthood, Elder Cannon and other elders performed many healings, including restoring the eyesight of a man who had been blind for thirty years.

And she tried to make pioneers out of us, too. The highlight of our class was the midsummer trek across the old gravel pit. We pulled covered red wagons, the girls wore long dresses and bonnets, and often there would be a borrowed Shetland pony or two. At the end of the trail, our own “this-is-the-place” came at sundown in Winnie’s back yard, where we ate salted pork and sourdough biscuits, and sang pioneer songs.

Kevin took the envelope Christi was waving and quickly tore it open. It read,
“Dear Kevin Richards,
Please forgive that I take so long to write. My name is Tuilolo Tuiaaga. I live with my wife and four children in Pago Pago on Samoan island called Tutuila. One day your missionaries came. I was busy in my bakery and had no time to listen. But my wife listen and keep your book and read it.
Then bad time came to my family. My bakery burn down. Our sick baby got sicker. Doctors try hard, but poor baby Sina die.
My wife say God loves Sina. God loves us. She say He cares. I get very angry. I yell, ‘If He love us, why bakery burn? Why Sina die?’
One night I hurt bad inside. I not sleep. I sit in darkness. By chair was your book. I want to burn book. I pick it up. I see your picture. I read what you write. Then I read and read and read in book. Is hard to read in English for me, but I read till morning. I read again what you write. The Spirit tells me what I read is true. I believe. I wake my wife. We cry and pray. I pray that God forgive my anger. Peace comes to my soul.
Soon will be our family baptism on 30 August. We are very happy. I thank you for sending Book of Mormon.
Peace to you, my brother,
Tuilolo Tuiaaga”

On vacations, Father would take us to historical sites that were prominent in Church history to build our knowledge and testimonies.
On one occasion, when I was a twelve-year-old deacon, Father asked if I would like to go to the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, and to the Hill Cumorah Pageant near Palmyra, New York. This is where Joseph Smith was led to the golden plates which were later translated into the Book of Mormon. Father also took me to the Sacred Grove, where Joseph Smith had prayed to Heavenly Father and was visited in a vision by God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. We prayed together in the grove and expressed our desire to be true and faithful to the priesthood which we held. Father later painted a picture of the place where we had prayed and gave it to me as a reminder of our promises made that day together. It hangs in my office today and serves as a reminder each day of my sacred experience and promises made with my earthly father as well as my Heavenly Father.

From a position of great influence and authority, all three witnesses fell, each in his own way. During 1837 there were intense financial and spiritual conflicts in Kirtland, Ohio. Martin Harris later said that he “lost confidence in Joseph Smith” and “his mind became darkened” (quoted in Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, 110). He was released from the high council in September 1837 and three months later was excommunicated.
Martin’s wife, Lucy, who had been involved in the loss of the manuscript pages, died in Palmyra in 1836. Within a year thereafter, Martin and his family located in Kirtland, and Martin married Caroline Young, a niece of Brigham Young.
When most of the Saints moved on—to Missouri, to Nauvoo, and to the West—Martin Harris remained in Kirtland. There he was rebaptized by a visiting missionary in 1842. In 1856 Caroline and their four children took the long journey to Utah, but Martin, then 73 years of age, remained on his property in Kirtland. In 1860 he told a census taker that he was a “Mormon preacher,” evidence of his continuing loyalty to the restored gospel. Later he would tell a visitor, “I never did leave the Church; the Church left me” (quoted in William H. Homer Jr., “‘Publish It Upon the Mountains’: The Story of Martin Harris,” Improvement Era, July 1955, 505), meaning of course that Brigham Young led the Church west and the aging Martin remained in Kirtland.
During part of his remaining years in Kirtland, Martin Harris acted as a self-appointed guide-caretaker of the deserted Kirtland Temple, which he loved. Visitors reported his alienation from the leaders of the Church in Utah but also his fervent reaffirmation of his published testimony of the Book of Mormon.
Finally, in 1870, Martin’s desire to be reunited with his family in Utah resulted in a warm invitation from Brigham Young, a ticket for his passage, and an official escort from one of the Presidents of Seventy. A Utah interviewer of the 87-year-old man described him as “remarkably vigorous for one of his years, … his memory being very good” (Deseret News, 31 Aug. 1870). He was rebaptized, a common practice at that time, and spoke twice to audiences in this Tabernacle. We have no official report of what he said, but we can be sure of his central message since over 35 persons left similar personal accounts of what he told them during this period. One reported Martin saying, “It is not a mere belief, but is a matter of knowledge. I saw the plates and the inscriptions thereon. I saw the angel, and he showed them unto me” (quoted in Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, 116).
When he reiterated his testimony of the Book of Mormon in the closing days of his life, Martin Harris declared, “I tell you of these things that you may tell others that what I have said is true, and I dare not deny it; I heard the voice of God commanding me to testify to the same” (quoted in Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, 118).
Martin Harris died in Clarkston, Utah, in 1875, at age 92. His life is commemorated in the memorable pageant, Martin Harris: The Man Who Knew, produced each summer in Clarkston, Utah.

“You were wonderful. I’m so proud of you,” my husband whispered after I delivered a talk in stake conference that took hours of preparation and over which I had much anxiety.

I was only 45 minutes late getting home with the Ford, and that was only because Darrell, who is my best friend, wanted to be dropped off at his girl friend’s house in Cupertino. If I had known what was going on at home, I would have hurried. What was going on at home was the end of my peace and happiness.
“Shhh,” said Anne, my younger sister who is 16 and had been driving for three wonderful months of parking tickets and running out of gas in odd places.
“What’s up? Somebody having a surprise party?” I asked.
“No,” said my brother Todd. “At least, we’re not. But Mom and Dad seem to be having some kind of party.”
“What’s wrong? Everybody looks so serious.”
“What’s wrong?” asked my older sister Val in tones of righteous indignation. “What’s wrong?”
“Yeah. I mean, what’s wrong?”
And then they told me. All at once, in loud whispers. When I had finally sorted out all the different stories, this is what I got:
When Anne got home with the Pinto, it had a new dent in the door from opening it hard into a light pole in a parking lot. But Mom and Dad weren’t angry—they just smiled and took the car keys from her and went into the bedroom and locked the door. When Todd got home with the car, it was nearly out of gas, and he didn’t have enough money to fill it up; but Mom and Dad didn’t complain, just took the keys and went back to their bedroom and locked the door. And when Val came home four hours late from a “quick trip to the store to get more shampoo,” Mom and Dad didn’t complain about the Volkswagen being gone so long—just took the car keys, and you know what happened then.
And no sooner had they finished telling me their stories than out of their bedroom came Mom and Dad, chortling and smiling. “Hi, Jerry,” said Dad.
“Hi,” I said. “Sorry I was late getting back, but I had to take Darrell to his girl friend’s house in Cupertino.”
“That’s fine,” said Mom.
“Is the car nearly out of gas?” asked Dad.
“I didn’t have any money to fill it up,” I said.
“Oh, fine, fine,” Mom said, giggling a little. “Could I have your car keys?”
“How come?” I asked.
Father just grinned a little broader. “We want to press them and put them in your baby book.”
I handed over the keys.
“Come into the living room, children, my loves,” sang Mother, and I swear it looked like they were prancing as they led the way.
As we followed them, Anne looked at me with a frightened expression on her face. “I think Mom and Dad are going crazy, Jerry,” she said. Her voice was trembling.
When we got into the living room, Mom and Dad were playing catch with the car keys.
“Definitely,” I told Anne. “Bonkers. Bananas. Out, so to speak, of their minds.”
When we had all settled down, looking at our once-stable parents with expressions that ranged from concern to near panic, Father began a little speech.
“Perhaps you children have never counted, but we, a middle income family, have four cars. Four cars is an unusually large number of automobiles for a middle income family, but then we have an unusually large number of drivers at home. Six, to be exact. Six drivers and four cars. One could reasonably suppose that this would be enough cars to go around, but not so. Today your mother had an appointment at the dentist’s. The appointment was at 2:00, but at 2:00, even though there were supposed to be three cars at home, there were none. Mother missed her dental appointment. Does your tooth hurt, Mother?”
Mother nodded, holding her jaw. “My tooth hurts, Father.” She laughed.
“And I today received three pieces of mail. One was the insurance bill. One was the bill from our gasoline credit card. And one was the monthly statement from the bank on the two cars we are still paying for. I added them up and reached a sobering conclusion.”
He did not look particularly somber.
“My dear children, I believe we are the largest single mainstay for the automobile and insurance and oil business in America today. If we did not use our cars for one week, Ford Motor Company stock would drop three points and there would be a coup in Saudi Arabia. If we did not use our cars for a year, our country would be plunged into a major depression. We are supporting the economy of the United States of America.
“We are honored. This is a privilege for us, and we don’t plan to shirk our responsibilities. However, some of this privilege ought to be shared. Mother, will you get the documents?”
Mother left the room. While she was gone, Father asked each of us in turn how much we made at our jobs. None of us was making a fortune, but we were doing surprisingly well. Even Anne, who worked in a hamburger drive-in after school, pulled down about a hundred a month. No wonder she always looked like she stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
And then Mother came back and handed each of us a piece of paper with the words LEASE AGREEMENT at the top of the page. I won’t give you the legal language. Boiled down, it went this way:
Each of us who planned to drive any car at all during a given month had to pay a basic fee of $8.00 to cover part of the insurance costs. If our grades fell below a B average, we had to pay $20.00 a month.
“That’s quite a jump,” said Anne, who often did not have a B average.
“So is the jump in insurance rates when your grades go down,” answered Mom.
The agreement also called for us to pay all traffic fines, the deductible on the insurance in case of collision, and all the gas we used.
“What?” asked Val, turning white. “All the gas?”
“The car is to be returned home with the tank full, every time,” Dad said.
There was also a mileage fee. For the LTD, 10¢ per mile. For the Pinto, 8¢ per mile. For the Volkswagen, because it was old, 6¢ per mile, and for the Galaxy, commonly known around the house as “the Ford,” 12¢ a mile.
“Twelve cents a mile!” I shouted. That was the car I preferred to drive.
“It’s the newest car. It has the greatest depreciation,” said my father, smiling.
“You will keep track of the mileage,” said Mother, “on these handy little Automobile Record sheets, which we will have printed up and placed in the glove compartment of every car. After every use of the car, you will write down your mileage and the number on the odometer. When you come home, you will give your Automobile Record sheet to the leasing company—your father or myself.”
And the final clause of the contract was the stinger. “Permission for use of the cars will automatically be suspended until all dues and remunerations are paid in full.”
“You mean we can’t even be late?”
“Not even by a day,” Father said, smiling.
Anne was outraged. “I thought we were a family, not a business!”
Mother only smiled her if-you-get-upset-it-will-only-make-it-worse smile. “Every family is a business, dear. There are income and expenses and cash flow. We just think it’s time that your father stopped supplying all the income and you stopped monopolizing the expenses. There’s the contract. You will all please sign.”
“And if we don’t?” asked Todd, already cringing because he knew the answer before he asked.
Father held up all the car keys—quite a bundle of them—and said, “The cars will no doubt miss you, and you will probably wear out your shoes faster, but the walking will be good for your health.”
Anne didn’t get it. “You mean if we don’t sign, we don’t drive?”
“That’s what he means,” said Val.
“Here are the pens,” said Mother.
“Sign or walk,” said Father. We signed.
“After all these years,” I said, “I never knew that my parents were so greedy.”
“Think of it this way,” Dad said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “By saving money on the cars, we can go on putting food on the table. It’s a fringe benefit that isn’t written into the contract. Your parents won’t go broke.”

These people are very hardworking and industrious, and honesty and integrity are fundamental traits of their character. While visiting a kibbutz, I asked for a key to my room. My host replied, “Nothing is locked up on a kibbutz. Everything is open to everybody. We have no reason to steal from each other.” The kibbutzim are probably the safest places is Israel.