Gospel Story Finder

Sitting in front of the group of people waiting to speak, Steve let his thoughts slide backward 12 years to a frosty winter evening when two small boys dragged snow shovels behind them, each clutching dollar bills in red right hands.
The house on the corner had a light on.
“There’s one,” Steve had said hopefully.
“Okay,” his brother Paul had answered, “you go ahead.”
Wearily he had trudged up the front walk and rung the bell. Two severe-looking brown eyes had stared down at him as he had forced his voice to ask, “Would you like your walk shoveled, ma’am?”
His voice had cracked and broken over the cold air that surrounded him as he realized that the old lady was Sarah Dunn. Sarah Dunn seemed ancient, and scary, and he thought of the rumor that she had once shot at someone for running across her lawn. Steve remembered being too scared to turn and run, and he could still feel the tingle that ran down his back as she had looked him in the face and asked, “Do you think my walk needs it?”
“Oh …”
He had begun to step backward when she said, “Why don’t you go ahead?”
The air seemed black and freezing as he turned to start shoveling. Looking up, he realized Paul had gone home or to find another house to shovel. He shivered, both from the cold and from his close contact with old Sarah. He wasn’t really sure what she had done to make some people afraid of her, but he was in no mood to find out. He decided he wouldn’t ask for any money for the shoveling; he would just do it and be glad to get home where it was warm and safe.
It took him longer than usual; he didn’t want to miss a spot. Once he looked up and saw her glancing out the window at him; he quickly bent over his work. Just before he pushed the shovel toward the porch for the last time, she opened her front door.
“Is it all right?” his voice faltered.
She leaned out from the porch, her eyes following the line of newly exposed pavement.
“Here,” she said, handing him three dollars and a Hershey bar, which he took gently from her.
“That’s too much,” he started to say, but she cut him off. “Next time it snows,” she said, “you come back.”
It snowed the next day. Steve watched the flakes fall and prayed for the sun to come out. Miss Dunn’s brown eyes haunted him throughout the afternoon as he and Paul played Ping-Pong. After losing three games because he kept watching flakes hit the windows outside, he left with the snow shovel.
It was the same that night—three dollars and a Hershey bar and she told him to come back. Opening the chocolate with red-cold hands, Steve realized he wasn’t quite so scared this time. Handing him the chocolate, she’d almost smiled.
It snowed a lot that winter, and Steve did lots of shoveling for many neighbors, but mostly for Miss Dunn. One night in February she asked him to come in when he had finished. His mouth almost said no before his brain could give the possibility any long thoughts. But his feet stepped right ahead until he was sitting in Miss Dunn’s front room and she was handing him a steaming cup of chocolate.
“It’s been getting harder for me to do my yard work,” she began, and before he left that night he had a summer job. He was hired to work Saturdays, but he usually found himself coming at least twice a week. He mowed the lawn while she pulled weeds and raked. She seemed strong for as old as she must be, he thought, feeling something like admiration as she leaned to pull a weed the size of a funny-stemmed carrot. She got as thirsty as he did, too, and she always seemed to have an ice-cold bottle of ginger ale waiting for both of them after the work was finished.
One day, when she finished her glass of ginger ale ahead of him, she looked at him suddenly. “Would you like to hear me play the piano?” she asked. He nodded, surprised, as she sat down and glided her hands across the keys. A smooth, many-noted melody drifted into his ears, and he began to relax, and she leaned her head back and started singing. It wasn’t a song he had ever heard, but she seemed to like it so much he couldn’t help listening. When she finished playing, he felt like he ought to clap his hands. Instead, he just looked at her.
“I used to sing for people,” she said. “I have pictures in my album. Would you like to see them?” She picked up a huge black book and patted a place beside her on the couch. He sat awkwardly next to her, expecting to be bored. Yet her voice added color to the tiredly fading newspaper clippings that clung desperately to the album’s pages. He found himself absorbed, reading along with her and looking when her finger pointed to pictures of herself in choral groups. He found it was late afternoon before he left her house.
After that, they talked regularly as they drank ginger ale and ate the oatmeal cookies she made. He brought his yearbook to show her, and she dug out pictures of herself when young. By noticing the year on one of the newspaper clippings she showed him, he figured that she was past 80. Yet she still pulled weeds.
His friends didn’t understand why he didn’t look for other work or why he stayed after the yard work was finished. He didn’t tell them much about his reasons; somehow his time with Miss Dunn wasn’t something he felt like sharing with everybody else.
For seven years he worked in Sarah Dunn’s yard, mowing in the summer and shoveling in the winter. Then, the summer he turned 19, he received a mission call. He wasn’t sure Miss Dunn knew what a mission was or how long it would last. Sometimes it was hard for him to tell himself he would really be gone two years. He knew he had to let her know so that she could find someone else to take care of her yard.
They were looking at a book together when he told her. She looked up into his eyes, and a look passed between them. “Two years,” she said softly, and the look said, “Maybe I won’t be here when you come home. Maybe this will be the last time.”
Steve looked down and pointed to something in the book she was holding. “Look at that,” he said, and his voice broke.
She wrote to him while he was gone, about how high her tomato plants were getting, and how last winter had seemed colder than all the others, and she asked was it cold where he was. He wrote back, glad when he was handed each new letter from her.
She was there when he came home. She walked a little slower, and he had to talk a little louder so she could hear, but she was definitely glad to see him. They sat on her front porch, and she looked at the pictures he had taken on his mission, holding each one out into the light and then close to her eyes so that she could see it.
“Beautiful,” she said quietly, studying one closely, “beautiful.”
It was hard for him to believe it when she died. He had thought it might happen while he was gone, and now that he was home, she had seemed safe somehow. Her niece telephoned him at home.
“Aunt Sarah had definite ideas about her funeral,” she said, “and she wanted you to be the main speaker.”
So here he sat, now, in front of the people who waited for his words. Getting up, he felt his knees shake, just the way they had that day when he asked, “Would you like me to shovel your walk, ma’am?” and he wondered if he could make his voice come out. He rested his hands on the podium edge. “How many of you,” he asked in a surprisingly clear voice, “how many of you really knew Sarah Dunn? I started to know her when she told me that she sang for people.”
His words came easily after that. He visualized the garden and Miss Dunn bent in half with her hands wrapped around a stubborn bit of morning glory weed. He saw in his mind the rounded shapes of her velvet living room furniture the color of rhubarb, and he saw himself seated on the edge of one of Miss Dunn’s chairs. (He never did quite trust himself while holding the gold-edged water goblet filled with ginger ale.) He could almost taste the ginger ale in the back of his throat as he talked.
“Do you know what Sarah Dunn gave me?” he asked the people in front of him. “She gave me my mission. I don’t mean she gave me the money to go, though a lot of what I saved came from working for her, but what she gave me was more important. She showed me how to love someone whose life was completely different from mine. She showed me that all people have some things in common. After a while, when we looked at the pictures in her album together, it seemed like we were seeing the same things—at least we could both appreciate what we saw.” Steve stopped, feeling a tear on his cheek. Would more people notice if he wiped it away, or if he left it? He left it, feeling the raw wetness descend his face.
“And on my mission, it was the same. Some people who answered the door gave me looks that made me feel like turning back, and then I would remember that 12-year-old boy standing in the snow on a bitter winter night. I would remember how the look on Sarah Dunn’s face scared me then, and think of how warm her ancient smile became that summer as we drank our ginger ale and tried not to think how many weeds we had pulled. I would think of Sarah Dunn, and I would begin to talk to the man whose frown seemed glued to his forehead, to the woman who looked as if she really wished she could be someplace else.” He stopped to breathe. His face felt really wet by now.
“I’m not saying it worked every time. I’m not saying the whole world suddenly became interested in me. But through Sarah Dunn, I suddenly became interested in the world. It wasn’t easy for me to like her. There was more than half a century between us, and at first I felt every one of those 60 years. Yet at the end of last summer, we might have been born on the same day. For showing me that loving your neighbor is really the most natural thing there is, I would like to thank Sarah Dunn now. Thank you, Sarah. What we shared will always be a part of me.”
He could talk no longer. He felt a hand on his shoulder and knew it belonged to his mother. It was funny, though. The hand felt exactly the same as Sarah Dunn’s had, the night she had said to him, “You know, I used to sing for people.”

I have always been interested in the background of President Eldon Tanner. At this University some years ago, President Tanner recalled his humble and difficult beginnings. Speaking of his parents, he said,
When they arrived in Southern Alberta, Father had no money, and he had to sell his team in order to finance. But the thing I have always been pleased about was that Father never thought of calling on the government. He went and worked for his neighbor, and he broke horses so they would have horses to use. He lived in a dugout on a homestead where I lived the first part of my life. He often said, “I bet ten dollars against a quarter section of land of the Dominion Government that I could make a go of it. I nearly succeeded.” He also said, “You know, when I came to this country [referring to Canada] I didn’t have a rag on my back; now I am all rags.”
[President Tanner continues,] We lived after that in a little hamlet. I don’t suppose this would be of interest to you, but in that little hamlet we didn’t even have a telephone. We didn’t have a daily paper; we didn’t have a weekly paper—regularly. We had no running water—hot or cold water. So you can imagine other things we didn’t have! We had no central heating, you can be sure of that. In fact, I often wondered if we had any heating in the house. [President Nathan Eldon Tanner, “My Experiences and Observations,” speech given at Brigham Young University, May 17, 1966]
From these difficult beginnings came the giant we know as Nathan Eldon Tanner. He was a speaker of the Alberta Legislature, Minister of Mines and Lands in the province, president of the Trans-Canadian Pipeline, branch president, bishop, stake president, Assistant to the Council of the Twelve, apostle, and counselor to four Presidents of the Church.

Colonel Thomas Kane, a special representative of James Polk, president of the United States, visited the Mormon pioneers in 1846 while they camped in Iowa, preparing to cross the Missouri River. He had read newspaper articles about the Saints, describing how they had frequently been persecuted and driven from their homes. As he walked through the woods near the outskirts of the camp, he came upon a lone pioneer who was secretly praying. Thomas stood quietly listening to the man humbly express thanks for the restored gospel and petition for the Saints’ protection during their travels.
Thomas was very moved by this experience, and he became a lifelong friend of the Mormons, although he never joined the Church.

For reasons known only to himself, my husband left our marriage with little or no explanation to his family and friends. Perhaps in an attempt to make sense of his decisions, many of my in-laws made assumptions without asking me any questions. They came to some incorrect conclusions. Usually I heard their comments indirectly, which was frustrating because I had no opportunity to respond with the truth. These comments hurt me, and I often felt my integrity was in question. I wondered if these people I had been so close to had ever really known me.
Two years after my divorce, I was told that one of my former spouse’s relatives had made a comment implying I was unforgiving. The remark began to fester inside me. I wanted to clear my name; I wanted to tell that man just how wrong he was. As I counseled with my bishop on the matter, I realized that what was important was that Heavenly Father and I both knew the truth about my relationship with my former husband and my contribution to the marriage. I suddenly felt at peace. I knew I could talk to this man about his comment if I chose to, but I no longer felt it mattered much. Because of the Atonement I could let the hurt feelings go. I did not need to suffer because of this man’s—or anyone’s—opinion of me.

I well remember a striking scene that gave me a dramatic perspective of agency and accountability. I was in a village hotel in Taiwan, several floors up, looking out the window at great numbers of the beautiful children of Taiwan on their way to school. From my vantage point I could see the school some distance away. The children knew the school was there, though they couldn’t see it yet, and, of course, they were unaware of my presence. They were charming in the official school uniform—short navy skirt or pant; clean, white starched shirt; and, on this rainy day, a canary-yellow slicker. Now, some of the children carelessly dragged their slickers behind them; a few let them fly open; others wore them tightly buttoned, like the whole armor of God.
The path they were taking through the rice paddy was well trampled, but there were big mud puddles, exciting places to hide between tall rushes, temptations behind a small shop across the way.
The children came around the corner of the hotel—wave after wave of these little people of Heavenly Father’s family—and according to their agency, they dawdled along, were detoured by the slightest distraction, or else pressed toward the mark—the school way up ahead. It was up to them now; parents weren’t around.
I was fascinated watching the children deal with their environment. Some deliberately plowed right through the deep mud puddles time and again and came forth filthy. Others automatically marched around the puddle, almost oblivious to it. Many absolutely couldn’t resist the temptation to gingerly touch a toe in the mire. One little girl, afterwards, stooped over and tried to wipe the mud from her shoe, then from her hand; then she brushed the spot on her clothes where she had wiped her hand. Mud is tough to erase.
Interesting, isn’t it? Life from a window. Agency and accountability. They made their choices, and so do we.

Gavin looked out the window. Big white snowflakes were falling softly to the ground. He grinned as he thought about all the fun he could have skiing and building snowmen. Gavin loved winter in Canada.
“Gavin?” Mom said.
Gavin blinked and turned back to the living room. It was family home evening, and the lesson was on service. But it was hard to pay attention!
Mom smiled. “I know you’re excited about the snow, but what are ways our family could help someone?”
Gavin looked out the window again. Snow was piling up on the driveways on his street. “Hey! What if we shoveled the Ramseys’ driveway?” he asked.
“Yeah!” Gavin’s big brother, Jensen, said. “They’d really like that.”
“That’s a great idea,” Dad said. “The Ramseys are getting older, and shoveling snow is hard for them.”
The next morning, Gavin’s family shoveled the Ramseys’ driveway. Gavin was glad they were doing it together. Even Gavin’s little sisters, Chloé and Kenzie, helped. The path Kenzie shoveled looked like a giant snake had slithered through the snow.
After scraping together the last pile of snow, Gavin gave his brother a high five. “We make a great team!” Jensen said.
“Yeah!” said Gavin. “We’re the Snow-Shovel Squad!”
After the next two snowstorms, the Snow-Shovel Squad happily shoveled both their driveway and the Ramseys’. One time, Mrs. Ramsey tried to pay them, but they politely said no.
“The Snow-Shovel Squad is a not-for-profit team,” Gavin explained.
That made Mrs. Ramsey laugh.
The snow kept coming. Shoveling two driveways got harder and harder. After a while, Mom and Dad had to remind the Snow-Shovel Squad how much they were needed.
One morning Gavin woke up especially excited. They were going skiing today! He looked outside and grinned. The snow looked perfect. He ran to find his skis. Soon everyone was packing the van for their trip.
Just as they buckled their seatbelts, Mom turned to look at them. “What about the Ramseys’ driveway?”
Gavin looked at Jensen. They had forgotten all about it.
“Can we do it later?” Jensen said. “We want to get to the mountain before it gets too busy!”
“OK,” Mom said, and Dad started the van.
But then Gavin glanced out his window. He could see Mr. Ramsey trying to clear his driveway. It looked like he could hardly lift his shovel.
“Wait, Dad,” Gavin said. “Mr. Ramsey needs the Snow-Shovel Squad right away!”
Everyone got out and grabbed their shovels.
“Sorry we’re late!” Gavin called out.
Mr. Ramsey smiled. “Thank you so much,” he said. “It would’ve taken me hours to shovel this driveway alone.” With the help of the Snow-Shovel Squad, the Ramseys’ driveway was snow-free in just a few minutes. After that, nobody had to remind Gavin about the Ramseys’ driveway. If it snowed, the Snow-Shovel Squad was out shoveling, sometimes even before breakfast. Sometimes it snowed so much they had to shovel two times in one day!
As the weeks went by, shoveling the driveways didn’t seem so hard. In fact, Gavin thought that helping the Ramseys was one of the best parts of winter. Then one day, he woke up and saw that the sun was warm and bright. The snow was melting down the driveway. How could he help others now that it was spring?

I served four and a half years in federal prison for real estate fraud. Most of the women there were quiet and respectful. Then 10 women moved into the cell across from mine.
They would stay up late at night laughing and listening to loud music. They didn’t seem to care how their behavior affected others. My roommates asked me to talk to them, but conversations like this usually don’t go well in prison. Instead, I prayed for these women to change their behavior and for peace to be restored, but things only got worse.
While praying one night, I realized I hadn’t made any effort to get to know my neighbors. I went to their cell the next day and talked with them. They showed me pictures of their families and loved ones. They apologized for being too loud. From then on, they waved and seemed happy when they saw me.
A few weeks before Christmas, they invited me to have Christmas Eve dinner with them. We also planned to share with one another spiritual experiences we’ve had. On Christmas Eve, we gathered together and hung a few paper decorations. We didn’t have a Christmas tree, but we all felt a peaceful spirit. After our simple dinner of tuna fish and potato chips, we shared our experiences. We all had different religious backgrounds and each of our stories were unique, but our hearts were connected and the Spirit was there.
After April shared her story, we all sat quietly with tears in our eyes.
During my time in prison, I poured out my heart in prayer asking our Father in Heaven to watch over and protect my family. But when I prayed for my neighbors in prison, I began to recognize their divine potential and felt more fully the love and mercy of our Savior.
That Christmas Eve in prison was beautiful.

Arriving at law school in Chicago with two little babies, we moved into a fifty-five-dollar-a-month apartment in a converted army barracks and proceeded to live a very meager but happy existence during the three years that followed. My scholarship paid my tuition, but all other living expenses were paid from my small earnings as an officer in an artillery battery in an Illinois National Guard and from borrowed funds. Like some of you, our parents had the means and the willingness to help us more than they did, but we wanted to make our own way. We rarely ate any kind of meat except liver and hot dogs, which we had no more than several times a week, but on special occasions we did get some of the less expensive cuts of chicken or hamburger. Our three-room apartment was heated by an oil-fired space heater whose small attached tank had to be filled manually several times each day from storage drums out on the street. When our two daughters were ages two and three, the old one dipped her little cup down into the oil tank on the back of the heater, took a large drink of clear fuel oil, and then shared in generously with her younger sister. Bad results followed, and June had to rush them to the local hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Several weeks later the little girls climbed up into our medicine cabinet and seized a bottle of candy-flavored cough syrup that included some sedative drug. Cooperatively alternating their draws at the bottle, the two finished its contents, with predictable results. June grabbed one child under each arm and rushed for the hospital again. After their stomachs had been pumped, the nurse told June that would be ten dollars each. The total of twenty dollars would be a terrible drain on our funds, and June argued with the nurse, pointing out that the last time she brought the girls in to have their stomachs pumped she had been charged only five dollars each. The nurse made appropriate record of that fact, and within a week we were visited by a Chicago public health nurse, who made some very pointed inquiries about the storage of our harmful substances and our fitness as parents. In the meantime, one of my playful law school classmates was heard to tell a group that Dallin and June Oaks wouldn’t drink anything but their daughters would drink everything.

Don Stout was drafted during World War II. In 1943 he wrote me a letter from Europe. The tank in which he was riding had turned upside down in a pond of water, and he and his comrades were there for several hours not knowing if they were going to drown or suffocate. He shared some of his experiences with me, and then in the last paragraph he said, “Vaughn, I want you to know I have never had a beer or a cigarette, never a drink of liquor or tea.” He said, “I have never had coffee or even a cola drink in spite of all the pressure from the boys in my company.” I told a friend about Don’s not drinking or smoking, and he said it was impossible; no man could do that. And I said, “If Don said he did it, he did it.”
I was 12 when I read his letter, and even then I wept as I thought about him, and I decided right then and there that I was going to walk in high places like Don Stout.

Until the white man came and explained that he was a collector of fossils, agates, and semiprecious stones for an eastern museum, Black Otter had not realized that these colorful rocks might have value. The man laid out many rock specimens to show the various stones he was seeking. “I have not come to cheat you,” he said. “These samples are not as valuable as diamonds and rubies, but I have brought brass and iron pots, good hunting knives, and metal fishhooks to trade.”

The man looked disappointed when nothing was offered. The tribe was very poor. The people wore many necklaces but they were fashioned of drilled bone, claws, or hard seeds, not colorful stones. The specimen hunter saw how the Indians admired the trade goods when he began to pack up. Their fishhooks were thick bone ones that allowed many fish to escape. Now he selected a large and small metal fishhook for each brave and presented them as gifts.

Black Otter had stayed back in the crowd, timid about approaching the white man. But he had watched his mother’s eyes that kept returning to the largest cooking pot. It was made of black iron with legs and a hook for hanging over a fire. Hesitantly, he stepped forward and laid the smallest of his three rocks near a similar specimen. Black Otter’s rock was clearer and gave off more colors in the sunlight.

The man examined the stone, then he smiled and offered a skinning knife and a small mound of fishhooks in trade. His smile faded and he sighed regretfully when Black Otter pointed to the iron pot. “I’m sorry, but your crystal is not worth that much,” he said. The youth felt that the man was being honest. He obviously wanted the rock.

The white man caught his breath when the Indian boy pulled out the two larger stones. When the deal was finished, Black Otter owned the pot, a razor-sharp hatchet, two fine knives, one for hunting and the other with many blades that folded into the handle, and a mound of fishhooks. Such sudden wealth stunned his parents. They’d never expected to own such things.

Black Otter was disturbed by the envious looks on the faces of his tribesmen. The youth did not want envy to set his family apart from the rest of the tribe. The price of jealousy could mean the loss of their friendship. “If I bring many stones, will you return with tools and utensils for all my people?” Black Otter quietly asked. The man agreed to return with a larger supply of trade goods, and so the youth had set out to search for the beautiful cavern.

On another occasion while recording a CD with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra I witnessed many somber and cautious Hungarians who I knew were well acquainted with tyranny and who, in most cases lived a meager existence. The thought flooded my mind that we in America are often spoiled-having too much and giving too little." Our blessings from God are too numerous to mention.

But, He will continue to bless us in abundance if we remember that 'Because we have been given much, we too, must give.'

Missionary work has been an important part of Sister Rinne’s life in many ways, although she did not at first expect that it would be. “When I returned home from the baptismal service, I thought, ‘Well, I have done the right thing in joining this church, but I will never tell anyone.’ But when we arrived home, Heikki changed his clothes and ran to tell all the neighbors that we were Mormons now,” Sister Rinne remembers, smiling.

President James E. Faust, Second Counselor in the First Presidency: “My grandparents have had a great influence on my life. Even though they have been dead for many years, I still feel their confirming love. One grandfather, James Akerley Faust, died before I was born. I knew him only through the stories my grandmother and my parents told about him. However, I feel a strong kinship with him because I am in part what he was. Among other things, he was a cowboy, a rancher, and a postmaster in a small town in central Utah. On one occasion Grandfather took a trip in the winter to Idaho, where he met an acquaintance who had fallen on hard times. It was cold, and Grandfather’s friend had no coat. Grandfather took off his coat and gave it to him.
“This evening I encourage you … to begin to unlock the knowledge of who you really are by learning more about your forebears.”

Consider another individual weighing the consequences of her pregnancy. She was beyond the normal age for bearing children. She announced to her doctor that her husband was an alcoholic with a syphilitic infection. One of her children had been born dead. Another child was blind. Another had tuberculosis. Her family had a history of deafness. Finally she confessed that she was living in abject poverty. If this true historical situation were posed today, many would recommend abortion. The child born from that pregnancy became the renowned composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

When he was assigned to home teach a sister (whom we shall call Ruth Elliott), she was relatively new in the ward and Jay Lyman did not know her. By talking with her daughter who lived in another ward, and with others who could give him information about her, Brother Lyman was able to learn a little about Sister Elliott before he first called at her home.
Sister Elliott lived in a small apartment in a nice neighborhood. The apartment had been fashioned from the bedroom of a home and had its own outside door. The closet was used as the kitchen and was fitted with a small stove and a sink. The room was furnished with a broken-down upholstered chair in which Sister Elliott spent most of her time when she was not in bed. She seldom left the apartment and had no outside interests. Her days were spent alone at home.
This sister smoked and depended heavily on medications. Through the years her doctors had prescribed a number of medicines, and she continued to take many of them. Moreover, her appearance, manner, and conversation reflected a bitter attitude toward her life and circumstances. She harbored deep resentment toward her father and others, and an unfortunate incident with a Church member had wounded her deeply. Altogether, her life did not appear to be a pleasant one. Brother Lyman prayed fervently to know how best to serve this troubled sister.
Shortly after his call as her home teacher, an opportunity came. Her landlady was having the apartment painted, but Sister Elliott was responsible to move her furniture out to the patio before the work could be done. Brother Lyman and the ward’s high priests group leader moved the furniture out and then back in after the paint had dried. In this way they were able to be of service, although it was sad to see how little Sister Elliott owned and how meager her circumstances were.
On one occasion, while Sister Elliott had gone for a few days to visit with family members, Brother Lyman and his wife, Virginia, went to her apartment and “confiscated” the broken-down chair. It had a good frame, but needed new padding and fabric. Virginia did an excellent upholstering job on the chair, and they had it back in the apartment before Sister Elliott returned from her trip.
Brother Lyman and his junior companion visited this woman regularly, and Brother and Sister Lyman also went of ten to visit, to talk about the gospel, and to offer a simple prayer. Gradually, Sister Elliott began to accept and return their friendship, and they became closely involved in each other’s lives.
One spring, just prior to a surgery which their new friend needed, the Lymans spent many hours with her, on the phone or in person, taking her to church, to the doctor’s office, or shopping. They kept in touch daily. For a time she would call each night before going to bed; she was lonely and needed a listening ear, and they were somehow able to fill part of the void and provide a needed close association.
The Lymans were vacationing when Sister Elliott had the surgery, but they called her at the hospital to offer words of encouragement and cheer. She had received a priesthood blessing and felt that the Lord would watch over her. Moreover, following the operation she determined to stop smoking, which she did successfully.
Prior to his entering the mission field, a grandson had asked her to give up smoking—and she was able to accomplish the task through the help of the Lord and her own strong desire to please her missionary grandson.
As the months passed, Sister Elliott made new friends and found outside interests. Her church attendance improved, and she began to pay tithing. Brother Lyman recalls accompanying her to tithing settlement: at first she protested that she was ill and did not want to go, but he asked her to be ready and he picked her up. Returning home afterward she radiated happiness. She paid a full tithing for the first time in her life.
By now, her attitude toward life had changed dramatically. The bitterness was gone, replaced by a humble and contrite spirit. Those who had offended her were forgiven. Relations with her children improved, and there were changes in their attitude and behavior toward their mother, prompted by her increased tolerance and love for them.
This good sister was eventually able to move to a new apartment, furnish it attractively, and make new friends in her apartment building. A new physician, determined to correct her dependency on medication, insisted that she rely on her own strength to cope with problems and would not allow her to use medication for that purpose. Through his diligence and the power of the priesthood to bless and strengthen, she was able to endure a difficult period of withdrawal.
The blessings which have come to the “new” Sister Elliott have been many, including participation in the sacred temple ceremonies with her family and friends. Brother Lyman reports: “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity which has been mine to serve as her home teacher. Indeed, I loved the ‘old’ Sister Elliott as much as the ‘new’ Sister Elliott—but now I need not feel sad because of her meager and dreary life. Today it is full and pleasant, enriched by the blessings of gospel living.”

One day it finally happened. Two young men stood at the front door of our little apartment.
“What is it?” I asked. After taking a quick look at them, I was ready to defend myself. No matter what it was, I wanted them to understand that I did not need anything and that I wanted to be left alone.
Then I took a second look at the two young men in front of me and found reason to question my first judgment. They were dressed with care. They were clean but not shiny or wealthy. Their eyes radiated dignity and peace. Their gestures were humble but not cheap. Their appearance represented politeness and readiness to listen, self-esteem, and willingness to respect my own right of privacy.
“We have an important message for you,” one of them said.
When I have tried to describe the appearance of the first missionaries at my door, I cannot help but say what they didn’t look like. They didn’t look like salesmen. Instead, they radiated something very different, something powerfully strong—the Spirit of the Lord. It became impossible for me to send them away.
Little did I know that from then on my life would never be the same—that I had already set my foot on a path that would eventually lead me toward becoming a member of the Lord’s Church.
I felt power and authority radiating from the missionaries during their visit to our home some thirty years ago. As I watch young members of the Church today, I think we have much reason to rejoice as we see many of them embracing this gift from Heavenly Father and standing firm in these days of challenge. I pray that we may all place our lives on the foundation of Christ through living close to the Spirit and following it always.

Becoming a hero was something of an accident for Andrew Scott, a 15-year-old from the Modesto First Ward, Modesto California North Stake. What wasn’t an accident, however, was knowing what to do in an emergency.
While Andrew was getting ready to jump into the pool at his school during his P.E. class, he saw something at the bottom and jokingly called out to his friends that he was going to dive down and make sure it wasn’t a body. When he got to the bottom, Andrew was shocked to find that it was a body. One of his classmates was unconscious at the bottom of the pool. Relying on life-saving techniques he learned in Boy Scouts, Andrew was able to pull the boy to the surface where his teacher and other students administered first aid.
Andrew says he was a little stunned by the experience but is glad he was prepared to do what needed to be done.

This is a story about the importance of following the prophet. It took place on the Spear Ranch in the Gila Valley of Arizona. My good friend, Jim Bryce, was foreman of the ranch. Along with his father, Ross Bryce, who was a counselor in the Pima, Arizona, stake presidency, and four Mexican vaqueros (cowboys)—Pula, José, Chino, and Javier—we began the fall roundup.
Early in the morning before sunup, at the ranch headquarters we loaded the horses into trailers and hauled them out to Nuttall Canyon. After unloading and saddling the horses, we began riding up the canyon. We spotted the first cattle as the sun lit up the east side of Stowe Knoll.
Carefully, we made our way up the rugged slope above the cattle and moved them down toward the canyon floor, letting them make their way by themselves. We went higher up the canyon until we reached a fence at the edge of a forest. Spreading out, we searched the gullies, draws, and bottom brush and began to herd the cattle down and out of the canyon. Our goal was to drive them to a corral on the other side of Left Hand Canyon, where we would earmark, brand, and vaccinate the new calves.
My friend Jim took the lead and was riding on higher ground than the rest of us so he could watch the herd of about 120 cows and calves we had gathered. Two vaqueros rode on each side, keeping the herd together, and President Bryce and I were bringing up the rear, keeping any stragglers from drifting away from the herd.
As we approached Left Hand Canyon, Jim rode up onto a knoll where he could look over the area and see what lay ahead. Since this was the first time these vaqueros had been in this part of the ranch, they did not know where the trail crossed the canyon. Jim kept motioning to move the herd of cattle towards him. The vaqueros didn’t notice his motioning, so Jim began to wave his hat and yell to move the herd towards the knoll where he was. These gestures also went unnoticed or ignored by those of us with the herd.
We soon found ourselves in a thicket of mesquite and catclaw trees amid the boulders along the edge of the canyon. The cattle were spreading out in all directions; it was impossible to keep them together. We had to get off our horses, tie them up, and crawl on our hands and knees through the brush, trees, and rocks in order to get the cattle out. At the edge of the canyon was a cliff that dropped off 15 to 20 feet to boulders below.
After losing some of the cattle in the thick brush and getting the rest of the herd out of the thicket and back together, we again heard Jim calling from on top of the knoll. He motioned to us to drive the herd towards him where we would find the trail that went down the canyon and up the other side to the corral.
Once the herd got to the trail, they followed it easily as it wound down the side of the canyon, across the creek, and up the other side, right into the corral. How easy it was to follow the trail and cross the treacherous canyon to the safety of the corral. Had we paid attention to Jim, we would not have lost any cattle and would have saved a lot of time and avoided having to crawl through the mesquite thickets and around rocks and catclaw trees to get the cattle out. It would have been easier to follow his directions and stay on the trail.

Another very important principle involved is that of service. When we speak of service, we speak of person-to-person type service, the kind of service that was experienced in the lives of a group of Mia Maids. These young ladies had determined that they were going to visit one of the homes for elderly folk. They spent hours baking, cooking, trying new recipes, planning a program, writing new songs, etc.

At the appointed time the girls arrived at the home a little nervous and somewhat less enthusiastic about their idea. (Every one of you who has ever visited an old folks home cannot help but have a vivid picture of lost souls.) After the bags of cookies had been placed on a nearby table to ease the strain of the first few moments, the girls began to sing. As they did so, one or two patients raised up from their slumped positions on beds, and a few in wheelchairs pushed closer to the group. At that moment a miracle was taking place as the elderly responded to the sweet voices of youth. The girls then hummed a familiar tune while a foreign exchange student sang the words in German. From a bed in the next room, in soft but audible tones, an elderly gentleman joined in the words of his native tongue. A few quiet words of appreciation were expressed, and a different group of girls walked almost reverently down the steps of the old building.

María stood in the slow-moving line at the carnícería (meat shop). She already had the fresh-baked loaves of bread from the panadería (bakery) in her shopping bag. She smiled as she heard a woman nearby talking about her.
“There aren’t very many young girls who can select meat for their family,” the woman was telling her companion. “But have you noticed how carefully María watches the butcher to make sure he cuts the meat just so!”
I enjoy shopping for Mamá, María thought to herself as she left the marketplace and hurried home with the meat and bread.
When María arrived home, Mamá was in the kitchen preparing and cooking soup for dinner that evening.
“Whew! It’s just ten o’clock and already it’s a hot day!” Papá exclaimed as he came in for a cool drink of water. Soon Papá, Mamá, and María were talking about María’s school, the hot weather, and other things. María loved Saturdays. It was good to be together as a family!
A loud clapping at their front gate announced company. María went to the window and called, “What do you want?”
Two blond young men neatly dressed in suits, white shirts, and ties stood at the gate. They said they wished to speak with her father.
“Papá,” María called. Papá and Mamá joined her at the window. Mamá explained that these young men had called yesterday and she had asked them to come back when Papá would be home.
“Come in, come in!” Papá called, opening the door to welcome the young men.
They asked Papá for permission to offer a prayer. He agreed, and tears came to María’s eyes as she listened, for their words were the same ones she used when she talked to Heavenly Father in her heart! She didn’t know people dared to pray like that out loud.
The visitors called themselves elders, and they told about a young man who had talked with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and afterward had organized a church. María’s heart pounded furiously as the elders said that they knew these things were true and that there was a living prophet on the earth today who was president of the church that the young man, Joseph Smith, had organized.
The family looked forward to each visit of the elders. María enjoyed going to Primary, and she was especially happy when her entire family attended Sunday School and other church meetings together. Now they had family prayer each morning and night, and María said her own prayers out loud. The elders taught them about temples, where they could be sealed together as a family forever!
On the day of their baptism María watched her father and then her mother go under the water in their beautiful white clothes. Then it was María’s turn. An elder took her by the hand, raised his other hand, and said a short prayer.
As María walked out of the water, she felt a warm glow of happiness. Now she was truly a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She could hardly wait to share the gospel with all of her friends.