Gospel Story Finder

When Brooks Haderlie worked as the university archivist at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, he learnt about the rarity of the Hawaiian-language Book of Mormon, “Ka Buke a Moramona.”
He thought it would be beneficial to know how many copies are still around, if only to honour the efforts of those who had worked so diligently to make the Book of Mormon accessible to native speakers of Hawaiian in the mid-1800s.
Before serving as Church History missionaries in Australia, Elder Haderlie and his wife, Sister Laurie Haderlie, worked to inventory all existing public copies of each edition of Ka Buke a Moramona, particularly the 1855 first edition.
Today, only 22 copies of the 1855 first edition Ka Buke a Moramona are held across fifteen libraries.

I was nervous when I began middle school this year because it was a new school and I didn’t know anybody. I decided to make friends by sitting next to people and talking to them in my homeroom and at lunch.
Ethan R., age 11, North Carolina, USA

Elder Christoffel Golden Jr. (South Africa): On Christmas Eve we enjoy a sit-down dinner, after which we read Luke’s account of the Savior’s birth. On Christmas morning, dressed in our Sunday best, we attend a short Christmas meeting. At this meeting we also have a number of nonmembers and less-active members attend. Later we visit with friends and other family members at family gatherings and there strengthen our family ties in the true spirit of Christmas.

The Saints continued to sacrifice in many ways in order that the work might continue. Around 1890, John Hafen and Lorus Pratt, two Utah landscape artists, approached George Q. Cannon, First Counselor in the First Presidency, about the possibility of the Church supporting their art study in Europe. In exchange, they agreed to labor in beautifying Church buildings upon their return. The First Presidency sent them, along with several others who had shown artistic promise, on “art missions” to Paris, France. The Brethren did not want them only to beautify Church buildings upon their return, but to paint murals in the temple endowment rooms to enhance the experience of the participants. Covenants and sacrifice were once again intertwined as the men left families and friends in the familiar valleys of Utah for the urbane life of an unknown France. Using sacred and increasingly limited funds, Church leaders sent these men to improve their talents to add to the special building in Salt Lake City.

One of those art missionaries who willingly left the comforts of home was John Fairbanks. He arose at 4:00 A.M., Monday, 24 June 1890, in preparation for the long journey to Europe. “At 6 o’clock I kissed our three youngest—Claud (the baby), Ortho, and Leroy while they slept. Then my wife, and bid her good bye.” Brother Fairbanks noted with some remorse: “She was very much affected by the parting, but part we must. The rest of our children beginning with the youngest Ervon, Vernon, Nettie, and Leo walked to the depot with me. When the train came I bid them good bye [and] got on the train leaving the darlings standing on the platform with sorrowful faces and tears standing in their eyes.”

The train sped south from Salt Lake Valley to Provo, where Brother Fairbanks met Lorus Pratt. At Springville, Utah, the next stop, the third missionary, John Hafen, was waiting “with tears in [his] eyes.”

Nothing seemed real
until I saw the sturdy brick and
the creeping river
and felt the humid warmth on
my skin.
I turned at a stirring,
but tall grasses merely bowed to
each other,
and fresh fences peaked their way
across the swaying fields.
Then out of a sunny glint on
the water,
a town moved toward me.
The air thickened with voices
shouting, laughing,
whispers from youth, wisdom from
aged,
all bustled by me, hurrying, hurrying.
A muddy hound ran and sat at my feet,
thumped his tail once, twice,
then bounded along.
A horse whinnied at my ear, and
shading my eyes,
I looked up into the face of Hyrum.
He smiled and waved and turned his
impatient mount away.
A woman approached,
children circled about her like a
patchwork skirt,
and before I could speak,
Emma smiled, nodded, and
hurried on.
I moved toward the river, away from
the crowded street,
into tranquil shade of wizened
branches.
I saw a man sitting,
gazing across the land,
barely breathing.
And Joseph stood, dear Joseph,
and smiled and gripped my hand.
And I wept as their lives flooded
through me.

My family was experiencing some challenges in prudently balancing our finances and meeting unexpected bills, despite all our efforts.
One Sabbath day, a sister shared her similar challenges and together we counselled with the self-reliance specialist. We signed up for the Self Reliance program on personal finances. We heeded Elder David A. Bednar’s call that “taking action is the exercise of faith”1 and that the most important step in self-reliance is to begin. President Russell M. Nelson taught that “the Lord loves effort.’’2 We know that “the Lord will magnify our small but consistent efforts.”3
Our journey had begun. My husband, our eldest son, and I joined the program together with nine other members. It was indeed a sacrifice. We held virtual meetings every Saturday at 6 a.m. and each member ensured that their action partner was present.
Members of our group were remarkably candid in their responses to actions taken during the week. Assignments on evaluation of our efforts and in keeping commitments were faithfully carried out and reported. The financial stewardship success map is a spiritual journey. Through honesty and openness in sharing of experiences in the group, friendship and positive relationships were established. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we faithfully ministered to each other’s temporal and spiritual needs, guided by the love of God.
As a family, we experienced miracles through this program, and our faith in the Savior Jesus Christ increased as we held regular family councils.
Here we counselled on our spiritual and temporal needs and our commitment to being wise and faithful stewards.

Helena C., age 9, from Costa Rica, felt immediately like she was a member of the Church after she was baptized by her father. She enjoys family home evening lessons about Jesus Christ. She also likes to go to school and play with her friends.

The Liahona blessed my life on other occasions, too. I have a friend who had tried to commit suicide and was confined to his bed. I took him a copy of the Liahona which contained an article about suicide and we talked about the Church. He was soon baptized.
I am now serving a mission in my homeland of Mexico and my friend is preparing for a mission. None of this would have happened if I had not continued to read the Liahona while I was not active in the Church. I am grateful to my Heavenly Father for the Church’s publications.

Over the course of six months, the Primary children of the Fuji Ward in Shizuoka, Japan, created a chigiri-e, a collage from hand-torn paper, illustrating President Thomas S. Monson. It took a lot of time and work, but everyone worked together while thinking and learning about President Monson.

“One day I remember I was injured and knocked almost unconscious. My father was the first to the scene. He just held me close for the longest time while I cried and cried. When we walk he holds my hand. I love to sit on his lap at home.”

This is the testimony of two wonderful young people I met recently in Mexico, Brother and Sister Alvarez. They told me that since they were baptized eight months ago, rather than the estrangement from family and friends they had feared, they were finding a new love and respect being given to them, besides all the wonderful new friends that they had found among their brothers and sisters in the Church. They had prospered materially, and above all they had found a peace and nearness to their Heavenly Father that they had never known before.

Eventually I started getting promptings to help other young women who are struggling with pornography. I felt a higher purpose. I decided to care more about what Heavenly Father thinks than what others around me might think, so I started speaking openly about my experiences.
Once you feel the undeniable joy of continual repentance, you want to share it with others! Now I continue to share this joy as I serve as a full-time missionary.
Madi was assigned to labor as a full-time missionary in the Singapore Mission, speaking Malay.

Cristina looked longingly at the red dress in the window. Four hundred cruzeiros! It might as well have been all the money in Brazil. Her father had to work a week to earn that much. Her mother earned even less, sewing in a shop in downtown Rio de Janeiro.
Her friend Angela was going to dance in the Carnaval (festival like Mardi Gras) parade this year, and Cristina wanted to be with her.
“Can’t you save up the money?” Angela asked hopefully as the two girls walked toward the beach. “Carnaval is still two months away.”
“Save what? I don’t get any pocket money. Anyway, Papa is far away, working in Curitiba, so I can’t ask him.”
“Maybe something will happen.”
“Maybe,” murmured Cristina. But she couldn’t imagine what could happen.
“Oh, look! There’s an old vulture.” Angela ran laughing down the beach to chase the big black bird. Soon she came running back. “Let’s go borrow Juca’s vulture kite.”
“I can’t, Angela. I’m sorry. I have to do my chores.”
At home, Cristina swept the one room, cleaned the ashes out of the stove, fetched water from the faucet in the street, then set rice and beans to cook over a new fire.
When Mama came home, she looked so tired that Cristina could not bring herself to speak of the costume. She thought about Carnaval a lot, though. It always began on a Saturday and ended on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. How she loved the costumes in the giant parade! And how she liked to dance to the fast samba drum music. There were always women in satin ball gowns of scarlet and glossy blue and dancers wearing splendid gold pantaloons or glittering silver skirts. Some wore wonderful hats topped with ostrich plumes. The thick, creamy plumes dipped and swayed with the dancers.
An idea popped into Cristina’s head: There might be a way I could get a costume!
After school the next day she rushed to the shop where her mother worked, and found Senhor Luis, the owner.
“Senhor Luis,” Cristina said, “could I work for you after school? I would work very hard.”
Senhor Luis thought a bit. “Well,” he said, “you could run errands and help keep the shop tidy. But I can only afford to pay you forty cruzeiros a week.”
In her head Cristina multiplied: forty cruzeiros times eight weeks are three hundred twenty cruzeiros. Perhaps Mama can lend me the rest.
“Thank you, Senhor Luis. I will do it.”
Week after week Cristina ran errands, swept the shop, folded shirts. She carefully put away her money. There was no time anymore to play with Angela, who would say, “Let’s watch television in the store window” or “Let’s pick green coconuts in Carlo’s backyard.”
One day Cristina stopped again to look at the red dress in the window. It was gone! Cristina rushed inside the store. Quickly she pushed aside the dresses on the racks; then she saw it. Will the shopkeeper sell it before I have all the money? she wondered. She had two hundred cruzeiros already. There were just three weeks left, and she still had to ask Mama to lend her eighty cruzeiros.
As Cristina helped at the shop, she noticed how her mother’s feet constantly rocked back and forth on the sewing machine treadle. All of Senhor Luis’s machines were operated that way, because he couldn’t afford to have electricity.
One day Clara, who worked beside Cristina’s mother, cried out, “My legs! Oh, my legs!” and she began to frantically rub them.
Cristina’s mother dropped her work and bent quickly to massage Clara’s legs. “Cristina,” she called, “help me.”
Cristina ran over and rubbed Clara’s legs, too, as hard as she could.
“Thank you,” Clara said a few minutes later. “I am better now.”
But Cristina was upset. She remembered the many times her mother rubbed her own legs when she got home from work. “Mama,” she whispered, “let’s invite Dona Clara to supper tonight.”
“What a good idea!” Her mother smiled, then suddenly looked worried. “But what will we have to eat?”
“I will think of something, Mama.”
At the butcher shop Cristina stood clutching her money in her pocket. “One pound of sausage, please,” she said, counting out sixty cruzeiros. Passing mounds of ripe yellow papayas and heaps of fragrant, purple mangoes at the grocer’s, she selected three beautiful, large oranges. Another ten cruzeiros gone! She bought some bananas and manioc meal too. All together she spent one hundred cruzeiros of her savings.
When her mother came home with Clara, there were marvelous smells coming from the stove. “What are you cooking, Cristina?”
“Sausage with beans, Mama. I bought it with some of my money. I got some fruit, too—see the lovely bananas and oranges?”
Mama smiled and hugged her. “Your father would be proud of you.”
“Come and sit, Mama and Dona Clara.” Cristina dished out the tasty beans, divided up the sausage, then added rice to each plate. The manioc meal went on top of the gravy. They had the fruit for dessert. Cristina saw how much her mother and Clara were enjoying their special supper, but she herself could hardly eat.
“It was delicious!” Clara said with a sigh when she had finished eating. “I feel much better now. Thank you, Cristina. You are a good girl.”
Clara lingered to chat with Mama, and Cristina heard their soft voices in front of the house as she washed the dishes. Soon afterward she went to bed and, despite her sadness, fell asleep quickly.
“Now you’ll never get your costume!” Angela cried the next day when she learned what Cristina had done.
“I felt sorry for Dona Clara, Angela. And my mother works so hard too.”
Her mother was waiting for her when Cristina went to work that afternoon. “Look!” she told Cristina excitedly.
Cristina saw a glowing, shimmering dress hanging on a rack. “A costume!” she whispered, not daring to speak louder for fear it would vanish.
Clara and Senhor Luis laughed. Clara said, “This morning I asked Senhor Luis for some remnants, and he gave me this beautiful material instead. Your mother and I made it into this costume for you.”
Senhor Luis beamed. “You have worked hard, child,” he said. “You deserve it.”
Cristina held the dress against herself. Its silky green material glinted and moved with her body, the rich skirt of many layers swirling about her knees. Soon, Cristina knew, it would be flashing among the other dancers’ costumes.

Heber gave so generously because of his love for his fellowman and because of his faith in the Lord’s promises. As a young man, he had attended a Church meeting and heard an appeal for donations. After the meeting, he handed his bishop $50. The bishop returned $45 to him and said that $5 was his fair share. Heber returned the entire $50 to the bishop, saying, “‘Bishop Woolley, didn’t you preach here today that the Lord would reward fourfold? My mother is a widow and she needs two hundred dollars.’ He said: ‘My boy, do you believe that if I take this other forty-five dollars you will get your two hundred dollars quicker?’ I said: ‘Certainly.’ Well, he took it.” As Heber walked from the meeting, he got an idea. He wired a man he didn’t know and completed a business transaction. Heber’s profit was $218.50. The next day he went to his bishop and said: “I have made two hundred eighteen dollars and fifty cents, after paying that fifty dollars donation the other day, and so I owe twenty-one dollars and eighty-five cents in tithing. I will have to dig up the difference between twenty-one dollars eighty-five cents and eighteen dollars fifty cents. The Lord did not quite give me the tithing in addition to his ‘four to one’ income.”

A group of 15 BYU Hawaii Campus students, representing nearly all the cultural heritages of their school, joined a three-month, 14,000-mile tour of Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines recently as the first Hawaiian collegiate group in the USO Far East entertainment circuit.
“Showcase Hawaii,” as the act is called, performed more than 100 USO shows for an estimated total audience of 80,000 and was also seen on television shows in several countries.
For 18 days of the tour, “Showcase Hawaii” was given special permission by the U.S. State Department to perform before general public groups and in churches, in addition to the performances on the USO schedule.
The goal of the group is to convey a “message of family unity and traditional Hawaiian good neighborliness” through comedy, international song and dance, and original music.

Randy D. Funk
(52) After hearing the account of Joseph Smith in a language she cannot understand, an investigator in India asks for baptism.

“I remember passing the sacrament for the first time as a deacon,” said Elder Kenneth Kolb of the Prosser (Washington) Ward and the Peru Lima North Mission. “It made me feel good inside, a feeling that continued as a teacher and a priest. As a priest, saying the sacrament prayer the first couple of times was hard. I wanted to make sure all the words were right. Then I started thinking about how sacred the prayers are and what I was doing. I was up there to bless the symbols of the Lord’s sacrifice, to give everyone an opportunity to renew the covenants they made when they were baptized. I was saying one of the most important prayers we say in the Church.”

I really don’t know how I let Sister Moffat talk me into it in the first place. Before I knew what was happening, I had agreed to give a five-minute talk in sacrament meeting about being reverent. All the other guys in my Primary class were pounding me on the back, saying they were glad it was me, not them.
“You really are a pal, Alan,” Will said. “You saved all the rest of us.”
Yeah, I thought, but who’s going to save me?
When I got home, I told Mom about it. “I don’t know why I said I’d do it. I can’t talk for five minutes.”
“It sounds like a great opportunity to me,” she said, smiling.
Somehow I knew she’d say that. That’s what mothers always say. “But five minutes,” I said. “That’s a long time to talk about ways to be reverent.”
Mom chuckled. “Five minutes isn’t nearly as long as it sounds to you. I’ll help you. Together I’m sure we can think of enough to take up five minutes.”
“I sure hope so,” I said. I was glad she had volunteered to help, though. It was kind of like she had picked up the other end of a heavy load that I had been trying to lift by myself.
Because this was a talk for sacrament meeting, and because Dad says that sacrament meeting is probably the most important of all our church meetings, I knew that I couldn’t put off preparing it until Saturday. So after school on Monday I asked Mom if she had time to write any of my talk.
She looked at me in surprise. “Now, wait a minute. I didn’t say that I would write your talk. I said that I would help you write one.”
“But you always wrote my talks before,” I said. “I thought that was what you meant when you said you’d help me.”
“You’re old enough now that I don’t have to do everything for you. Wasn’t it you who was telling me last week that a ten-year-old ought to have more privileges than his eight-year-old sister?”
“But I don’t even know how to begin,” I wailed. “You said you’d help me.”
“I will,” Mom answered. “But there’s a difference between helping you and doing it for you.”
Well, when Mom finally convinced me that she really wasn’t going to do it all, I pleaded for suggestions. She said we should start with prayer. Then, by asking questions, she helped me get a better idea of what I wanted to say. After that, she helped me decide in what order to say things.
I still had to sit down and write the talk out myself, but it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be, because I knew what I wanted to say. When I finished, Mom helped me correct some grammar mistakes.
Once the talk was written, I started feeling kind of glad that I was going to talk in sacrament meeting. I practiced giving it every day in front of a mirror. By the time Saturday rolled around, I felt pretty confident. As long as I had my paper there to remind me what came next, I could give most of the talk by just glancing down once in a while.
Sunday morning I made one last trial run with Dad as my audience. “Alan, that is a very fine talk,” he said. “You’ll do just great in sacrament meeting. But there is one thing that you don’t want to forget.”
“What’s that?” I asked, a little disappointed to think that something wasn’t just right.
Seeing my disappointment, he said, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with your talk. I just want to remind you to ask Heavenly Father to help you do your best.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling much better. “I will.”
Sitting up on the stand, I felt pretty important. I glanced at the clock—two minutes until the meeting started. I felt a nervous excitement as I reached into my pocket for my talk. It wasn’t there! I felt in my other pockets. I looked on the floor. It was gone! Just then the bishop got up and announced the opening song and prayer.
What was I going to do? I caught Mom’s eye and gave her a pleading look. She just smiled at me. I began praying fervently that the paper with my talk on it would miraculously appear. I felt in my pockets again—nothing. When I put the hymnbook under my seat, I felt around the entire area for my paper—still nothing.
When the deacons were just about finished passing the sacrament, I knew that my miracle was not going to happen. I began praying that I would be able to remember my talk or that I would at least know what to say.
Suddenly, I heard my name as the bishop announced me as the first speaker. With heavy feet I walked slowly to the pulpit. I could see my mother and father smiling at me. Will was pointing at me.
I was sure that everyone could see me shaking. Very slowly I announced the topic of my talk. There was Sister Moffat. She was smiling too. I just stood there quaking for a minute. Then something miraculous did happen: I remembered the first few sentences! As I began speaking, I remembered more and more. It was almost like I was standing in front of the mirror at home, except that I felt a warm, radiating glow around me.
I was finished before I knew it. The rest of the meeting was like a pleasant afterglow. I felt wonderful. That feeling was only intensified by all the compliments I received when the meeting was over.
“Alan,” Dad said, “you were great!”
“You really were,” Mom said as she gave me a kiss on the cheek. “We’re proud of you.”
“But you know,” I confessed, “I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it, because I lost the paper with my talk on it. When I discovered it was gone, it was too late to do anything else but pray for help. So I did. Heavenly Father really came through for me.”
“It sounds like you learned more than just how to give a good talk,” said Dad, giving my shoulders a squeeze.
“Yeah, I really did.”

The pelican is often called a walking fishnet because of a huge fish-catching pouch attached to the underside of its bill. Its appetite is enormous. Plunging into a school of fish, the pelican scoops them into its pouch. Oftentimes, because of the bird’s greediness, it does not stop to eat the first fish it catches but instead rushes on to gather up more fish until its bulging pouch will hold no more.

After his wife suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage during their first pregnancy, Solofo Ravelojaona felt that their prayers were answered a year later with their second pregnancy. He and his wife, Hary Martine, consider the birth of their daughter to be one of their greatest blessings. Solofo explains, “Because we asked God and He gave her to us, we gave her a name that, in Malagasy, means ‘God’s answer.’”