Gospel Story Finder

Some years ago I attended one of our worship services in Toronto, Canada. A 14-year-old girl was the speaker. She said that she had been discussing religion with one of her friends at school. Her friend said to her, “What religion do you belong to?”
She replied, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.”
Her friend replied, “I know that church, and I know it’s not true.”
“How do you know?” came the reply.
“Because,” said her friend, “I have researched it.”
“Have you read the Book of Mormon?”
“No,” came the answer. “I haven’t.”
Then this sweet young girl responded, “Then you haven’t researched my church, because I have read every page of the Book of Mormon and I know it’s true.”

Alison knew it was going to be a bad day. The world outside was gray and drizzly. Mommy told her she had to clean her room. And—worst of all—there was a big bowl of cold oatmeal on the table that she still had to eat.
“I wish it was tomorrow already,” she mumbled.
Mommy looked up from the computer where she was working. “Oh, things aren’t that bad, are they?”
Alison nodded without saying anything more.
“Well, then,” Mommy said, “why don’t we play the Thank-You Game. Find a reason to be grateful for everything you can. No complaining is allowed. If you can do it the whole day, I’ll give you a surprise.”
“That’s a funny game,” said Alison.
“I’ll help you begin. Why are you grateful for oatmeal?”
Alison thought a moment. “I guess it’s better than a bowl full of bugs to eat.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Mommy chuckled.
Alison gobbled down her oatmeal, to get it over with. “I’m grateful I have orange juice to help wash the oatmeal down,” she said.
Then she went to her room. It was a mess! How can I be grateful for a messy room? she wondered. “I know—I’m grateful I have all these toys to play with.” She hummed as she put them all away.
The drizzle outside turned into a freezing rain that tap-tap-tapped against the window. Alison pressed her nose against the frosty glass.
I’m grateful the rain comes so that the flowers don’t get thirsty, she thought.
When her room was tidy, she got out her play dough. She made funny shapes with it and squished it through her fingers. “I’m grateful for things that feel good in my hands,” she giggled.
Alison was having a busy day. Soon her eyelids began to grow heavy.
“I think it’s nap time,” Mommy said.
Alison was going to complain, but she remembered that it wasn’t allowed. She climbed onto her bed and reached for her stuffed rabbit. “I’m grateful I have Charlie to snuggle with,” she told Mommy.
The Thank-You Game got easier and easier. It wasn’t turning out to be such a bad day, after all!
That night Mommy looked pleased. “You played the game really well, Alison,” she said, “Here’s your surprise,” She gave Alison a strip of bubble-gum-scented stickers along with her usual hug and kiss.
Alison smiled. “It turned out to be a really nice day,” she said. “I’m grateful for bubble-gum stickers and hugs and kisses and you!”

When I was about 10, we were on vacation in Mexico with another family. My friend and I made a lunch and took some games. Then we pushed ourselves out into the bay in a little rubber yellow raft. We ate lunch in the raft.
We finally looked up and realized we’d drifted a long way from shore. We were passing the edge of the bay. We thought, Oh no, the tide is going out! We knew we had to hurry and get back. We started rowing and rowing.
All of a sudden I saw a fin pop out of the water. Right away I knew it was a shark!
I thought, We need to tell Heavenly Father we’re in danger. So we said a prayer and kept rowing.
Soon two other fins popped up. But their shape was different, and their color was lighter. They were dolphin fins!
The dolphins swam around our boat until we reached shore. They kept the sharks from coming close. Then the dolphins drifted onto the sand, and we were able to get out of our raft. Our families hurried and helped the dolphins back into the water.
To me, the dolphins were Heavenly Father’s answer to my prayer. I’ve never forgotten that. It’s given me the courage to pray, no matter where I am.

Two such faithful members, James Ewudzie and Frederick Antwi, assisted me one day in the Accra Ghana Temple. Several years before Latter-day Saint missionaries arrived in Ghana, James had been part of a group of about 1,000 people who used the Book of Mormon and other Church materials in their church services. They prayed for the day that the Church would come to Ghana. He joined with other young men traveling around Ghana and teaching the gospel as found in our materials. Once missionaries arrived in 1978, he was baptized on the first day that Latter-day Saint baptisms were performed in Ghana.

Fred Antwi, a pioneer member of the Church in Ghana

Early in Fred’s time as a member, he attended the funeral of a relative who was a tribal chief. There he found out that the family plan was to make him the new chief. Knowing that such a position would cause him to do things contrary to his gospel beliefs, he sped away after the burial and turned his back on a position that would have brought him prominence and wealth.

Once the Accra Temple was dedicated, both James and Fred traveled over four hours, one way, every week so that they could be temple workers. As I performed ordinances with them, I was overcome with the sense of history that surrounded me. Realizing the Church history in Africa that the two of them represented, I felt like it was akin to having John Taylor or Wilford Woodruff or other early members of the Church with me doing those ordinances.

The view from the top of the mountain should have been breathtaking. But in a whiteout at 12,000 feet (3,600 m) above sea level, the only thing we saw was the faint silhouette of our disoriented guide catching his breath a few feet away. The blizzard winds had obscured our path down the mountainside, while all around us sheer cliffs dropped down to unknown depths. The stinging snow whipped our frozen faces, and the roaring storm muted the question escaping from my friend’s chapped lips: “Which way down?”

Lured by an advertisement placed in the student center at Brigham Young University, my friends and I had signed up for the Mt. Nebo expedition months earlier. The photograph, which featured climbers with crampons and ice picks, promised awe-inspiring scenery and unparalleled adventure. But upon reaching the summit of one of Utah’s tallest mountains, our picturesque fantasy gave way to a terrifying reality. A blind step in the wrong direction could be fatal.

Although the weather forecast had been favorable, the weather was getting worse. Beginning our descent a few yards at a time, neither we nor our guide knew the direction we should take. We trudged through waist-deep snow, searching frantically for some sign of familiarity. The thick whiteness had erased our landmarks, and our tracks made hiking up the slope had vanished. Our hopes of getting off that peak safely were disappearing. It was time to ask the Lord for help.

No vocal prayer could have been heard by mortal ears above the menacing winds that day. With strength expiring and morale turning cold, I offered my silent plea to God: “Please help us down this mountain. Please help us see the way.”

As I opened my eyes on that snowy slope, an unusual calmness filled the frosty air. The sky swirled above us. The clouds had lifted! I gazed heavenward in gratitude to an omnipotent Creator who knows and hears His children.

For 30 seconds, the storm clouds parted. A patch of blue appeared through the thinning mists, and the sun illuminated a fantastic landscape below and the path that would lead us home. Too exhausted to speak, we stood in stunned silence when we saw our location. The slope we had mistakenly descended led to an abrupt dropoff on three sides. We had barely corrected our course when the sky clouded over again.

President Hinckley works hard. I got a telephone call from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin early one Monday morning. I asked him where he was calling from. He said from his office. I asked, “Why are you calling from your office on a Monday, this is your day off, your Saturday. Besides, you were in Hong Kong yesterday helping to dedicate the temple there.” Elder Wirthlin said that he had returned to Salt Lake with the president late the night before, exhausted, but that he awoke with the thought, “President Hinckley will be at his office by 7!” So, he said, “I got up, dressed, and hurried to my office. I shouldn’t be outworked by President Hinckley!”

Permit me to share with you a more modern illustration of this principle. Sister Shumway’s parents, Josefina and Rufino Villanueva joined the Church as a young married couple in 1964 while teaching at a university in Manila, Philippines. Shortly after their baptism, they decided to move to the island of Negros in the central Philippines, where Rufino’s parents lived. The Church had no congregations on Negros at the time. The American missionary who taught the Villanueva's wrote in his journal that he had little hope that the Villanueva's would stay active in the Church when there was no organized Church there to be active in.

Josefina and Rufino had a choice. They could have said, “With no ward or branch here, we’ll just go back to our previous church.” Or “Once the Church comes to Negros, we’ll be active again.” Or “no one here even knows we joined the Church, so we can just pretend like we’re not members.” With little knowledge of Church organization and structure, but with firm albeit fledgling testimonies of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s First Vision, they courageously shouted “nevertheless” at all those reasons and moved forward with faith.

They wrote to the mission home in Manila for Church manuals and held Church in their home. They kept their tithing in a jar, and whenever a missionary visited them on his way to Manila, they gave him their tithing. They remained true to their covenants, and several years later, when a group was organized on Negros, the Villanueva's became stalwarts of the Church. Thousands of people have been blessed by their service. The impact of that “nevertheless” moment is multigenerational, and their children and grandchildren are the beneficiaries of that legacy of faith and devotion. I owe them more than I could ever say for raising such a glorious daughter.

One of those I would like to mention this morning was President David O. McKay, who came into my life as the first prophet to teach and influence me personally.
I was called to be a stake president in California just before President McKay was sustained in a solemn assembly as the President of the Church and as our prophet. My wife, Ruby, and I drove to Salt Lake to be in attendance at that conference. I felt of that spirit, of that leadership, and of the direction that President McKay gave to the Church at that time. Later on I invited him to come to California to dedicate a Church building that we had just finished. That was in the days when we would raise half the money to buy the land and half the money to pay for a building—not like it is today, but where we felt a real ownership in the Church property and in buildings. President McKay came as a result of my invitation, which surprised me. We met him at the train and were pleased to have him in our home. That gave me a new vision of the magnitude and the breadth and the importance of the mission that we have here upon the earth to fulfill.

My dad always stopped at the same convenience store near our house to buy gas. After filling up the car, Dad went in to pay. I followed him and was through the door before I heard Cort’s voice. He was working behind the counter.
Suddenly a wave of embarrassment washed over me. I wanted to sneak out, but the store wasn’t that big. In only a second, he would see that I was there.
Cort looked up from the cash register and said, “Hi.”
Dad glanced from Cort to me then back to Cort. “Oh, do you know my daughter Jill?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
He thinks so! my mind was screaming. Didn’t he remember how we were almost friends?
I was tongue tied. I wanted, more than anything, to say something clever and casual to cover up for the fact that I was blushing, but nothing would come out.
“That will be $15.75,” said Cort to my dad.
As Dad pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, he said, “I sure would like Jill to run the car down here and fill it up. She got her driver’s license three weeks ago, but she’s scared to drive the car. It’s a stick shift, and she panics every time she tries to drive it.”
I was mortified. I was standing there listening to my dad humiliate me.
“It’s not too hard to learn,” Cort said, looking at me. “I taught my sister and my girlfriend.”
“I’ve tried to teach her, but I guess there are some things you just can’t teach your own children,” my dad said, collecting his change.
“I’ll teach you,” Cort said. “I get off work at five tomorrow. Meet me here. It really isn’t that big a deal.”
Not a big deal, not a big deal! It was an incredibly big deal. Just wait until Laney heard about this.
“Okay,” I blurted out. Dad was halfway to the door before I made a move to follow him.
The next afternoon, I had changed my clothes three times and was working on my hair. I desperately wanted thick, smooth, straight blonde hair that would swing away from my face when I moved. What I had was no-color brown that kinked and twisted no matter how long I spent with the blow dryer. I was at the point of giving up when my mom stood in the door of the bathroom.
“What in the world are you doing, Jill?”
“Cort Tyler told Dad that he would help me learn to drive a stick shift this afternoon.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Mom said, distracted by the screams coming from the bedroom where my two little brothers were fighting over a video game. Then she suddenly reappeared in the doorway.
“Why are you getting all dressed up? This isn’t a date, is it?”
“No, this isn’t a date,” I said, on the verge of getting sarcastic. But actually I halfway thought it was. I had even told Laney at school that day that I had to get home because I had to meet Cort at five. I said meet but I knew she would think date, and that was just fine with me.
I walked the couple of blocks to the store. Cort was still behind the counter. He saw me coming and said something to the guy beside him and was out in front by the time I walked up.
“Where’s the car?” he asked.
“It’s home,” I had to admit. “I can’t get it into reverse.”
We walked to my house in virtual silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and Cort didn’t seem to notice.
“You drive,” he said abruptly as we walked up to the car.
“But I can’t get it into reverse.”
“Yeah, well, let’s fix that,” he said, opening the passenger door and getting in. I walked around and got into the driver’s seat.
I started the car, pushed in the clutch, and tried to slide the gear shift into reverse. It made a horrible sound.
“Okay, stop,” Cort didn’t seem greatly concerned. “Let up on the clutch. Push it in again, then slide the gear shift over and down. Here, like this.”
He put his hand over mine on the gear shift. I think I remembered to do what he instructed, but I was paying a lot of attention to the feel of his hand on mine.
It took five minutes for me to get out of the driveway and into first gear. I kept letting the clutch out too far and killing the engine. I was afraid Cort was going to get upset, but he stayed remarkably calm. I found that after the car got going in first gear, shifting was a lot easier. I had second down cold.
At the end of the neighborhood, I had to turn onto a busy street.
“Take a left here,” Cort said.
“I can’t. I’ll get stuck in the middle of the intersection.”
“But we need to go left.”
“I’ll get us there,” I said. Desperation made my mind work overtime.
I pulled straight through the intersection and made a right at the next corner. I made another right turn, and another. This time I was at the light again, ready to go straight through. I had skipped making a left turn by making three right-hand turns.
Cort started laughing. “Give me a break. You can’t drive like this. You have to learn to turn left.”
“I can’t,” I said, tears starting to form.
“Sure you can. If the car dies in the middle, I’ll trade you places and get us out of there.”
I took a deep breath, signaled to turn left. But I was done in by self- fulfilling prophecy. As soon as I tried to pull forward in first gear, the car got to the middle of the intersection, jerked, and died. I panicked.
“I can’t do this. I can’t. You do it.”
Cort didn’t move. “Just start the car. Put it in first, and give it a little more gas.”
“You promised. You said you’d drive.”
“You can do it. You have to learn how to get yourself out of this situation. Just try.”
It took me three tries to get the car started and moving forward. I just made the turn before the light changed.
“I knew you could do it,” Cort said. “Now drive me back to work. You’re okay now.”
Secretly, I was pleased with myself. I drove Cort back to work and made a left turn back onto the street. This time I didn’t kill the engine.

Later this month we shall dedicate a beautiful new building on the Brigham Young University campus to the memory of a woman, Caroline Hemenway Harman. You probably have never heard of her. I would like to tell you briefly her story.
At the age of twenty-two Caroline married George Harman. They had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Then, at the age of thirty-nine, her husband passed away and she was left a widow.
Her sister, Grace, had married her husband’s brother, David. In 1919, during the terrible influenza epidemic, David was seriously stricken, and then his wife, Grace, became ill. Caroline cared for them and their children as well as her own. In the midst of these afflictions, Grace gave birth to a son, and then she died within a few hours. Caroline took the tiny infant to her own home and there nurtured it and saved the child’s life. Three weeks later her own daughter, Annie, passed away.
By now Caroline had lost two of her own children, her husband, and her sister. The strain was too much. She collapsed. She came out of that collapse with a serious case of diabetes. But she did not slow down. She continued to care for her sister’s baby; and her brother-in-law, the child’s father, came each day to see the little boy. David Harman and Caroline were later married, and there were now thirteen children in their home.
Then five years later David suffered a catastrophe that tried to the very depths those who agonized with him. On one occasion he used a strong disinfectant in preparing seed for planting. This got on his body, and the effects were disastrous. The skin and flesh sloughed off his bones. His tongue and teeth dropped out. The caustic solution literally ate him alive.
Caroline nursed him in this terrible illness, and when he died she was left with five of her own and eight of her sister’s children, and a farm of 280 acres where she and the children plowed, sowed, irrigated, and harvested to bring in enough to provide for their needs. At this time she also was Relief Society president, a position she held for eighteen years.
While caring for her large family and in extending the hand of charity to others, she would bake eight loaves of bread a day and wash forty loads of clothes a week. She canned fruits and vegetables by the ton, and cared for a thousand laying hens to provide a little cash. Self-reliance was her standard. Idleness she regarded as sin. She cared for her own and reached out to others in a spirit of kindness that would permit no one of whom she was aware to go hungry, unclothed, or cold.
She later married Eugene Robison, who, not long afterward, suffered a stroke. For five years until his death she nursed him and cared for him in all his needs.
Finally, exhausted, her body racked by the effects of diabetes, she passed away at the age of sixty-seven. The habits of industry and hard work which she instilled in her children rewarded their efforts through the years. Her sister’s tiny baby, whom she nurtured from the hour of his birth, together with his brothers and sisters, all acting out of a sense of love and gratitude, have given to the university a substantial bequest to make possible the beautiful building which will carry her name.

I was actually asked this question by my best friend. I told him that my church advised me not to date until I was 16, but that it was also a family guideline and my decision. He was impressed by this response and told me that it was my morals that had originally impressed him. He was glad that I stuck so strongly to my beliefs. He waited over 200 days until I turned 16 to take me on a date, and we are still best friends.
Kristen L., 16, North Carolina

One Sunday I was substituting in a Primary class of particularly rambunctious five-year-olds. The lesson was about love. We began by singing the song “Jesus Said Love Everyone.”
Afterward I commented, “Jesus loves everyone, and we must do that, too.”
Robbie challenged me. “Oh, no, he doesn’t love everyone—he doesn’t love the bad people!”
“Yes, Robbie, he loves everyone.”
“He doesn’t love the robbers.”
“Even the robbers.”
Robbie thought a minute and said, “I know some people he didn’t love—he didn’t love the men who killed him!”
At that point I told Robbie about the Crucifixion.
“When Jesus hung on the cross,” Robbie interrupted me, “did they really put nails in his hands and feet?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that must have hurt.”
“Yes, it did. Even after that happened, as Jesus hung on the cross in great pain, he said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ (Luke 23:34.) Jesus was speaking about the men who had placed him on the cross. He asked Heavenly Father to forgive them. Yes, Robbie, Jesus even loved these people, and he forgave them.”
Robbie looked at me, furrowed his brow, and said, “I’m going to ask my dad if Jesus really did say that.”
After class was over, I was walking into sacrament meeting with my family, and I felt a tug on my dress. It was Robbie.
“Sister Wright, my dad says you’re right.”
The tenderness of this experience was that Robbie went from challenging the idea that Jesus could love everyone to a sweet trust of Christ’s unconditional love.

Not very many years ago in a Maori village in New Zealand, a baby boy was born. He soon received a blessing from his grandfather who said in the blessing that this boy would one day become an educational leader among his people. Some of the men in the village laughed at that blessing; it seemed so unrealistic. That boy, Barney Wihongi, earned his doctorate and is now president of the Church College of New Zealand. He became president of the Church College of New Zealand at age 35 and, increasingly, has influence among other educators in the country of New Zealand. The promises given to Brother Wihongi as a baby amused some. Today, Brother Barney Wihongi inspires many!

I remember the first time I encountered the Americans. We came through a dense pine forest, and we had to go across the street. We opened the branches and all of a sudden a huge tank was right in front, and the gun was aimed at us.
I was scared. I had never seen an American tank or an American. The top of the tank opened, and an American came out. Russian prisoners who had been freed by the Americans were sitting on top. They saw that we were shaking. The American asked me where we came from and where we wanted to go. I told him we wanted to go home. “No way,” he said. “You just jump on here, and we’ll take you along. At the next stop we’ll put you on a truck that will take you to a camp.”

The Russian soldiers seated on the tank made me think of a possible solution to our dilemma. During the war the feeling of love I had learned all my life in church was in my heart. I didn’t hate anyone. I thought about being my brother’s keeper.

The Russian soldiers imprisoned in our camp weren’t treated well. They went without much to eat and we had plenty, so we asked them to clean our mess kits, and they consented. We left food in them all the time just to feed them.

My commanding officer noticed, and he called me in. “What do you do with your mess kits?”
“The Russians clean them for us,” I replied.
“I checked and there was food in them.”
“We cannot eat it all. That’s why we leave it in there.”
“You know that’s strictly forbidden. I could report you and you would be in trouble. Don’t do it again,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder.

One of the Russians to whom we had given the food wrote me a note. He told me that whenever we lost the war or I needed help from the Russians to show them this note.

I had put it in my pocket, and at the moment that we were confronted with that tank I remembered it. I pulled it out and gave it to the Russians. They read it and then all of a sudden said, “Friend! Friend!” in German and talked to the American, telling him that I had given food to the Russians. He said, “I hear you have been good to the Russians. Instead of us taking you along, just go ahead.”

Photograph courtesy of Megan M.
When Megan M. of Utah, USA, was younger, she would often hear the same thing whenever her older brother and sister went to school dances. “They’d always go to the dances and then come home and complain about the music,” she says. “Dance after dance, I’d hear them complain.”
As she was approaching the age when she would be able to attend school dances, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go. One day, at a fireside where her stake president was talking about the influence of music, she “had a strong feeling that something had to be done about my high school dance music. I got straight to work.”
Megan, who plays alto saxophone in the school’s jazz band, noticed how much fun people had at their annual event featuring big-band music and dancing. The thought came to her, “What if the jazz band could play at the homecoming dance? Kids could then dance to an alternative choice of live music instead of disk jockey recordings. They could actually feel the influence of great music at a high school dance and have a great time!”
Her band instructor loved the idea and helped her get it approved through the school administration. Then Megan asked alumni band members to play so that current band members could enjoy the dance.
On the night of the dance, the DJ and the jazz band were set up in different areas. At first, only a few people wandered over to the jazz band, but eventually there was a huge crowd. Some of Megan’s Latter-day Saint friends came by to say hello and then went over to the area with the recorded music. But about five minutes later, they came back.
“I ran over to them and asked why they had come back,” says Megan. “They told me they couldn’t feel the Spirit listening to the DJ music, so they decided to return.”
They weren’t the only ones who had this experience. Megan says, “The next day, I got emails from some of my friends saying, ‘Can we please do that at every dance?? Please!!!’ I even heard that the administration said it was the best school dance they’d ever had.”

Below: Sixty members of the Church traveled to refugee camps in northern Karnataka State. They delivered blankets, tarps, and hygiene kits assembled by members of the Church. One young man exclaimed, “It was totally amazing to help with this flood relief project. I have always had a desire to help and serve others. I was so grateful to be able to serve. I had tears in my eyes as I was able to see those people who had lost everything in the flood. It was a great blessing to be able to help the people in my country.”

Will D. Lae was grossly overweight but was fascinated by the idea of becoming a mountain climber. Determined to master the skill he was able through hard work and continuous practice to develop his arm muscles so that they would support his obese body. He practiced on local slopes and then decided to try his skill on a mountain worthy of his ambitions. He picked the granite face of El Capitan. Halfway up the sheer rock he looked up and was startled to discover that his rope was fraying and in a second or two would break. He looked down and saw that there was no ledge or bush to break his fall. He made a quick decision—he decided to use a heavier rope.

William’s decision was right, but his timing was wrong. He had practiced and provided for the climb but had overlooked his most important need.

This devotional is just one more way to open some eyes, hearts, and minds—an opportunity to change and adjust our vision and not to overlook the most important need. If you don’t care for the word change, you may use the word repent, for it is the same, and to repent is to learn from God.

Two relevant memories for young fathers. When I was such, I had just received a phone call telling me of a friend’s death in an accident. I was sitting in the living room with tears streaking down my cheeks. Our young son, Cory, saw the tears as he passed in the hallway. I learned that he had anxiously assumed the tears were because he had disappointed me in some way. He didn’t know about the phone call. Brethren, we underestimate how genuinely and frequently our children want to please us.

Even though I was baptized when I was eight years old, I didn’t always do the right things. When I was a teenager, I started hanging out with a group of guys, and we started getting into things I knew weren’t good.
After my sister got married, she helped me come back to the Church. I learned about the importance of the Word of Wisdom and treating my body well.
But one day, I committed another serious sin. I felt that I couldn’t have the Spirit or the power of the priesthood with me. I felt very worthless and didn’t think I’d be able to complete my responsibilities at church, like blessing and passing the sacrament.
But the gospel taught me that we can always repent. It was hard to go see my bishop and confess my sin. It was hard to know people could see me walk into the bishop’s office. But I wanted the Lord’s peace, and I wanted to repent.
My bishop said a prayer with me and told me that the Lord is always merciful to those who seek to repent and that I’d be able to recover from my mistake. I’ve now started reading the scriptures and praying, and I know it helps me resist temptation.

A few years ago, I was one of a few Church members in my grade. People thought I was weird because I was dedicated to living all of the standards of the Church. So one day I decided that I could compromise my standards a little bit. When I did, I noticed that I had more attention from others. But after just a few weeks, I felt guilty and turned to the Lord for repentance. He did help me, and I had to make a lot of sacrifices, but it was worth it! I truly got to see the blessings of living the gospel at school. I did lose friends and attention, but I gained respect and happiness.
Sutton K., age 15, Texas, USA