Gospel Story Finder

A young woman writes:
“A girl at school, not as popular, needs help in science. My friends in the higher group tell me to leave her alone or it would ruin my reputation. And then I remembered when I needed a friend and help in math. I put myself in her place. Not only did I help her out, I made a new friend.”

Andrew faces challenges in life, like a life-threatening peanut allergy. He has to be very careful to not eat any peanuts. “The hard part is that you have to read the labels for everything you eat,” he says. “I can’t eat things like birthday cake at parties, just to be safe. My mom brings another treat for me.” He has to carry medicine with him at all times in case he accidentally eats peanuts. But the challenge has helped to strengthen his faith. “Every year before school starts I receive a priesthood blessing, and we pray that I will be safe. I feel like the priesthood blessings have protected me.”

“The thing that brings me the most joy in life,” says Jeanette Morales, 15, Mia Maid president in the Trujillo Alto Ward, “is to live the gospel. All the teachings help me so much. Everything is just fine when you know that God lives, and that he loves us.”
Jeanette and her sisters Lidi, 18, and Dioni, 16, joined the Church with their parents about five and a half years ago. “We entered the Church at an important time,” says Lidi, who is currently serving as the first counselor in the Young Women presidency and teaches a Beehive class. “It was just when we were becoming teenagers—the age when temptations really start.”
By being obedient to the teachings of the Church, the Morales sisters say they have been able to set an example to their nonmember friends. Other LDS teens are leaders in their schools and in their communities. Belinda Berrios was named Miss Puerto Rico National Teenager in 1984, and the Morales sisters have served in many class offices. They are often asked by their friends and teachers, “What makes you so different?” Usually their friends’ interest is respectful and curious, but on occasion that gives way to derision and mockery.
“But that doesn’t embarrass us,” says Dioni, the first counselor in her Laurel class and seminary secretary. “We use it as an excuse to teach them the truth about the Church. When the people see we’re not ashamed of it, they want to hear more.”
The Morales sisters have watched an incredible chain being built as they’ve introduced their friends to the Church, and those friends have introduced other friends. The ranks of LDS youth have often been fortified this way.

My father was fortunate to marry a good woman who encouraged him to come back to the church of his youth and begin again to progress along the path. Their faithful lives have blessed all of their children, the next generation of grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren.

We see some of the same attitudes today. Some act as if a man’s highest goal should be his own pleasure. Permissive social mores have “let men off the hook” as it were, so that many think it acceptable to father children out of wedlock and to cohabit rather than marry. Dodging commitments is considered smart, but sacrificing for the good of others, naive. For some, a life of work and achievement is optional. A psychologist studying the growing phenomenon of what he calls “young men stuck in neutral” describes this scenario:
“Justin goes off to college for a year or two, wastes thousands of dollars of his parents’ money, then gets bored and comes home to take up residence in his old room, the same bedroom where he lived when he was in high school. Now he’s working 16 hours a week at Kinko’s or part time at Starbucks.
“His parents are pulling their hair out. ‘Justin, you’re 26 years old. You’re not in school. You don’t have a career. You don’t even have a girlfriend. What’s the plan? When are you going to get a life?’
“‘What’s the problem?’ Justin asks. ‘I haven’t gotten arrested for anything, I haven’t asked you guys for money. Why can’t you just chill?’”
How’s that for ambition?

I tried that once when I was riding my horse. I grabbed the limb of a tree, and my horse kept going. But then the limb broke and I fell to the ground. I suffered the consequence of that decision with a broken arm. It was very painful.
I gained a little wisdom from that experience. Even though we see other people do something, especially if it is wrong, it doesn’t mean that we should do it. We all have friends, and sometimes they do not always follow the teachings of the gospel.

It started when I was a devout, hardcore Calvinist. Though I’d returned to full activity a couple years before, questions I’d had since childhood lingered in the background of my mind. Over the previous months and years leading to meeting the missionaries, they grew and multiplied after receiving no satisfactory answer from asking or researching them. These endeavours to discover more truth left me with more confusion. They were corrosive to my faith. Its crescendo was when these queries led to a faith crisis. I doubted everything from the most minor of doctrines to the very existence of God.
One night, I earnestly and desperately prayed to know who He is, for help. By then, I was closer to agnosticism than Christianity. Mere days later, I met the missionaries when somebody I used to vaguely know from school (and hadn’t spoken to in over three years) added me to a group chat with Elders McIntosh and Beam. God sent me who I needed when I needed them.

In the April 2017 general conference, President Thomas S. Monson, the prophet at the time, asked Church members to study, not just read, the Book of Mormon daily. President Russell M. Nelson and President Henry B. Eyring both followed the prophet’s counsel and spoke about what happened.
President Eyring said: “I have read the Book of Mormon every day for more than 50 years. So perhaps I could have reasonably thought that President Monson’s words were for someone else. Yet, like many of you, I felt the prophet’s encouragement and his promise invite me to make a greater effort.”
President Eyring continued: “Heeding President Monson’s counsel has had two other wonderful effects on me: First, the Spirit he promised has produced a sense of optimism about what lies ahead, even as the commotion in the world seems to increase. And, second, the Lord has given me—and you—an even greater feeling of His love for those in distress.”2

In September 2004, lots of hurricanes hit Florida, where I live with my mom, dad, and sisters Morgie and Maddie. Our family had never been in a hurricane. We prepared to be inside for a few days and to maybe go without power for a few days. We also prayed that we would be kept safe during the storm. On September 5, church was cancelled because of Hurricane Frances. That Sunday was stormy and ugly outside, but inside we were safe. My mom and dad got permission from the bishop for us to have sacrament meeting at home. Mom and Morgie played the piano, and we sang. Dad blessed and passed the sacrament. Then everyone gave a talk. Morgie, Maddie, and I all gave our talks from the Friend. The storm was still blowing outside, but I felt peaceful inside.

When I was 30 years old, I began working for a retail group in France. One day the company president, a good man of another faith, called me into his office. His question startled me: “I just learned you are a priest in your church. Is that true?”
I replied, “Yes, that is correct. I hold the priesthood.”
Visibly intrigued by my response, he further inquired, “But did you study at a theological seminary?”
“Of course,” I answered, “between the ages of 14 and 18, and I studied seminary lessons nearly every day!” He almost fell off his chair.
To my great surprise, several weeks later he called me back to his office to offer me a managing director position in one of the group’s companies. I was astonished and expressed my concern that I was too young and inexperienced to hold such an important responsibility. With a benevolent smile, he said, “That may be true, but it doesn’t matter. I know your principles, and I know what you’ve learned in your church. I need you.”
He was right about what I had learned in the Church. The years that followed were challenging, and I don’t know if I could have had any success without the experience I acquired by serving in the Church from the time I was a young man.

As I was walking to the parking garage at the end of the last day of the fair, I noticed a family in the crowd in front of me talking animatedly about their experiences at our booth.
The words of President Russell M. Nelson came to my mind:
“I call upon you to help gather scattered Israel and to prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Lord. I call upon you to talk of Christ, testify of Christ, have faith in Christ, and rejoice in Christ!”
I am grateful for the many opportunities to do just that.

Contemplating the words of the scriptures, I was suddenly startled with the terrifying thought, “What if the clock were to be turned back on my life fifteen years, and I found myself again with a couple of teenagers and a small child living in the 1980 environment?” I found cold beads of perspiration standing out on my forehead as I considered the challenge of maintaining a traditional family during these troublesome years. It was then that I started to think of what I would do differently than I did in that first experience if I could repeat the process fifteen years later.

Four problem areas flashed through my mind which would require renewed determination and effort:
Family finances. To provide for a family would be much more difficult. Employment is not as secure. Change is occurring at an ever-increasing rate. It is much more of a problem to maintain our standard of living with inflation as it is today. Housing, utilities, food, clothing, and the gas-guzzling automobiles are all taking a larger share of the family income. The pressures on family finances would increase family tensions. How to cope with this new environment looms as a major challenge. But suddenly I was comforted by a voice that was heard to say:
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Prov. 3:5–6.)
I realized the Church had been preparing me for years for a time of stress and strain. Today a long-range family financial plan is clearly needed if children are to have the blessings of missions and education. It would need to be carefully worked out and prepared to meet these requirements. The avoidance of debt is essential; living within my income, fundamental. Much thought and understanding must be given to keep my family finances properly balanced. Expenditures must be challenged: Do I really need a giant house with the giant-size monthly mortgage payments? Is a second car required? Can my family-centered activities replace costly commercial entertainment? Can vacations be made exciting at home?
Having a one-year supply must be moved up on the family priority list. How it is obtained must be considered again. Can more of it be the result of our own labors in making our own clothes, increasing our garden yield, and preserving our own food?
How can I wisely invest my savings so that inflation will not rob me of them? Is my career income secure and able to keep pace with the needs of my family during the ever-changing decade of the eighties?
Yes, assuming the responsibilities of caring temporally for a family requires much more thought, preparation, and planning in the environment we live in today.

I think of a friend whom I knew when I was a missionary in London many years ago. He came to our door through the rain one night. I answered his knock and invited him in.
He said, as I remember, “I have to talk to someone. I’m all alone.”
I asked what the problem was.
He said, “When I joined the Church, my father told me to get out of his house and never come back. … Last month my boss fired me because I am a member of this Church. And last night the girl I love said she would never marry me because I’m a Mormon.”
I said, “If this has cost you so much, why don’t you leave the Church and go back to your father’s home, … to the job that meant so much to you, and marry the girl you think you love?”
He said nothing for what seemed a long time. Then, putting his head in his hands, he sobbed as if his heart would break. Finally he looked up through his tears and said, “I couldn’t do that. I know this is true, and if it were to cost me my life, I could not give it up.”
He picked up his wet hat and walked to the door and went out into the rain. …

President Joseph F. Smith described his experience with this mighty change: “The feeling that came upon me was that of pure peace, of love and of light. I felt in my soul that if I had sinned … it had been forgiven me; that I was indeed cleansed from sin; my heart was touched and I felt that I would not injure the smallest insect beneath my feet. I felt as though I wanted to do good everywhere to everybody and to everything. I felt a newness of life, a newness of desire to do that which was right. There was not one particle of desire for evil left in my soul. I was but a little boy, it is true, … but this was the influence that came upon me, and I know that it was from God, and was and ever has been a living witness to me of my acceptance of the Lord.”

2) At Brigham Young University a few years ago I attended a seminar to prepare faculty to teach the Book of Mormon classes for first year students. During that six-week period I read the Book of Mormon through twice, outlining and pondering meanings as I went, savoring especially beautiful passages and doctrines. That marked another step in my love for the book. I was able to get much closer to it and to pursue subjects and themes that attracted my interest. Again, I could not say that I had received any special manifestation or witness. That was not a part of my relation to the book. Rather I gained a heightened awareness of the beauty of its message and the importance of its warnings for people living in our time. This awareness was increased as I taught the Book of Mormon in the Gospel Doctrine class. I have come to identify with the problems that men like Alma and Mormon had and to understand their deep concerns for people like me. I have learned that many of the details that are objected to by critics of the book are of no importance when compared to the magnificent and intense love that Christ shows in the preservation of the book so that we could have it to help us.

One rainy day, my beloved wife Elisa, our little daughter Beatriz, and I were in our car, merging onto a highway, when we saw a small and frail elderly woman walking on the side of the road. The heavy rain had soaked through her thin clothes. We were too fast to stop, but we just looked at one another and turned our car around as quickly as possible. When we came back to the woman, we stopped the car, and my sweet wife ran to help the poor woman while I called the police. We gave her a seat in our car, dried her off, and wrapped her in a warm blanket. We promised her protection and safety. We stayed with her until a police patrol arrived and, after making some inquiries, the officers took her into their care. They expressed their appreciation for what we had done for this good woman who had been walking with a sad face in a dangerous place.
When we continued our journey, we were grateful to the Lord for allowing us to be His hands and to share the care and kindness He bestows upon us daily with this lonely woman.

Jane Allgood Bailey wasn’t about to give up the light of her new religion. She would not be defeated by the cold, starvation, and sickness on the plains of Wyoming. She grasped hands with other women to wade through icy streams. They came out on the other side with their clothes frozen to them, but they carried on. On the trek, her 18-year-old son, Langley, became ill and was so weak that he had to be pushed on the handcart much of the way. One morning he rose from his bed on the cart, which had frozen canvas for bedding, and he went ahead of the company and lay down under a sagebrush to die, feeling that he was too much of a burden. When his faithful mother found him, she scolded him and told him: “Get on the cart. I’ll help you, but you’re not giving up!” Then the family moved on with what was left of the Martin-Willey Handcart Company.

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Langley was still alive! He was 18 years old and he weighed only 60 pounds. That 18-year-old boy was my great-grandfather. I’m grateful for the preservation of his young life and for the fortitude and stamina of his noble, courageous mother, who was a light to her family and kept her son going in spite of deathly odds.

With it comes the right and the authority to govern in the Church of Christ. I recall the experiences I had long ago when I was a member of the Council of the Twelve. I attended a stake conference where the president was a man of wealth and affluence. He was very successful by the standards of the world. He lived in a magnificent home. He met me at the airport in a beautiful car. We had lunch at a first-class restaurant. And yet he was humble in his office, anxious to learn, and ever willing to do the right thing in administering the affairs of his stake.
I subsequently went to another conference. The president met me in a car that had seen many seasons. We stopped at a fast-food place for a bite to eat. His home was extremely modest—neat and clean and quiet but not richly furnished. He was a carpenter by trade. He had none of the fancy things of the world. He, too, was a wonderful stake president doing his duty in a remarkable way. He was excellent in every respect.

After Paulo came up out of the baptismal font, he and Dad got dressed in dry clothes. Then Dad and Grandpa and the bishop laid their hands on his head and confirmed him. Now he was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I feel so great,” Paulo said. He touched his heart. “In here.”
Mom hugged him tight. “That’s because you received the gift of the Holy Ghost when you were confirmed.”
Paulo nodded. He didn’t want to do anything to make that great feeling go away. He wanted to always follow Jesus.
But the very next day, his little brother Carlo broke Paulo’s toy plane. Paulo had saved up for months to buy it!
“Look what you did!” Paulo yelled. “Why can’t you leave my stuff alone?”
“I’m sorry,” Carlo said. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Maybe we can fix it.”
“It won’t be the same!”
Carlo ran out of the room crying.
Paulo sighed. He wished he hadn’t gotten so mad. Hadn’t he promised when he was baptized that he would always follow Jesus? He knew Jesus would have been kind.
“I promised I would try to be like Jesus,” he told Mom, his voice shaking. “But I’ve already messed up! How do I get back that good feeling from my baptism?”
Mom hugged him tight. “We all mess up. But Jesus gave us a way to have the Holy Ghost with us again after we do something wrong.”
Paulo could guess what she was going to say. “You mean repentance, right? I have to ask for forgiveness.”
Mom nodded. “And when you take the sacrament, you’ll renew the promise you made to follow Jesus. Then you’ll be just as clean as you were right after you were baptized and confirmed.”
Paulo went to find Carlo. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said. “Let’s fix the plane together.”
Carlo smiled, and Paulo felt like he had done what Jesus would do. When he said his prayer that night, he asked Heavenly Father to forgive him and to help him be nicer to Carlo. A warm feeling filled his heart.
That Sunday at church, Paulo paid extra attention to the sacrament prayers. He listened carefully to the words and remembered how he’d repented that week. As he took the bread and water, he felt Heavenly Father’s love for him. And it was such a great feeling!

On our present assignment, my wife and I live a long way away from our children. This means the letters go back and forth. I would like to read a paragraph from a letter one of our daughters recently sent:
“I’ve become a nurse. Four of the six kids have the flu. I’m changing my ambitions from psychiatrist to nurse. Anyway, nobody in this family is sick in the head; we are just all sick. I hate it when the kids are sick.” Then in capital letters, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK!”
When we read the letter, we gave each other a knowing smile. All of our children are caught up in a very busy life. It is what they call “the fast lane.”
But those last words, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK,” have stuck in my mind, and the more I have thought about them the more concerned I’ve become. This concern has persuaded me to say something about uncluttering our lives and getting back to basics.