Gospel Story Finder

“Hurry, Cathy,” Anne called over her shoulder to her sister as they ran along the road.
“I am hurrying!” Cathy yelled back, barely three steps behind her. Laughing, they turned into the parking lot of Mr. Parkins’s Plant Place. Breathing hard, they burst through the front door into the rich smell of potting soil and damp, growing things.
“Well, hello, girls.” Mr. Parkins smiled as he looked up. “Did you come to work?”
“Yes, please,” Anne said. “Today and tomorrow too, if you need us. We want to earn money to buy a present for Mum.”
In the early spring Mr. Parkins often paid the neighborhood children to help transplant seedlings. “Where is your cousin Emmy today?” he asked.
“She went to help Granny,” Cathy said.
“Well, come along.” Mr. Parkins led them into one of the long, low greenhouses. “We’re working on the petunias right now, and I need all the help I can get.”
In the greenhouse, long tables were covered with young petunia plants. Allen, Tom, and Lance were already working and laughing loudly.
Mr. Parkins stayed long enough to make sure the girls knew what to do and to check on the boys’ work. “I’m sure glad the five of you could come,” he said as he left.
The potting soil was crumbly and moist on Anne’s fingers as she carefully separated the plants. Cathy worked beside her, filling each of the small containers with soil and planting the seedlings. For a while no one said anything.
Then Lance elbowed Allen and whispered something in his ear. Allen laughed loudly, then whispered in Tom’s ear. Tom snorted. Then Lance stopped whispering and started saying nasty things out loud.
Anne’s fingers started to shake, and she felt slightly sick. “I wish Emmy was here,” she whispered to Cathy.
Cathy nodded. “So do I.” Emmy would know what to do. She was as brave as Nephi.
But Anne wasn’t Emmy, and she didn’t know what to do. She was afraid if she asked the boys to stop, they would just get worse. Now they were using words Anne knew were not right.
She looked over at Cathy. Cathy’s lips were pressed tightly together, and she was about to cry.
“Shall we leave?” Anne whispered.
“But I want to buy something nice for Mum,” Cathy said quietly.
“Me too,” Anne said. “Besides, Mr. Parkins said he needs all the help he can get.”
Cathy nodded and blinked as two tears slid down her cheeks. She hid her eyes so Lance, Allen, and Tom wouldn’t know she was crying.
Anne moved closer to her. She was angry now. If only Emmy was here! she thought. If only I knew what to do!
Suddenly she had an idea. Softly she started humming her favorite hymn. When Cathy heard the first few notes, she looked up at Anne in surprise. Then she smiled. By the end of the hymn, they were humming softly together.
The boys were still making ugly jokes, but Anne didn’t feel angry anymore. She and Cathy hummed “I Am a Child of God” a little louder, and by the end of that song, Lance was quieter. Anne, feeling braver, gave him a big smile as she started singing a Primary song. Cathy joined in, and their voices echoed sweetly through the greenhouse, while the boys gradually became silent.
Anne and Cathy were still singing Primary songs when Mr. Parkins poked his head in an hour later. “Sounds good, girls.” He came over to the long table. “Your work is good, too. But it’s almost dark—you’d better get home. I’m glad you’ll be coming back tomorrow—I can always use good, cheerful help.”
Rubbing the soil off their fingers, the children followed Mr. Parkins out of the greenhouse and into the early evening light. Lance, Allen, and Tom scooted past Anne and Cathy.
“Babies,” Lance hissed as he ran past. Anne just smiled at him again.
The air was cooler now, but the girls didn’t feel cold.
“I feel warm and happy,” Cathy said, looking up at the pink sky.
“Me, too,” Anne said. “Race you home!”

Naledi Mqokozo has been coming to the temple grounds since she was small. And now that she is older and often in the temple, you could say the temple is in her—in her heart and in her thoughts. “I have a picture in my room of the Johannesburg temple,” says Naledi, 17. “I put the picture up on my wall so I can always think clean thoughts and help keep the presence of the Spirit.”
It’s a little rainy on this morning in Johannesburg, South Africa. But the rain has not dampened the happy mood of Naledi and the other youth from the Ennerdale Branch, Johannesburg South Africa Stake, who have come to the temple to perform baptisms for the dead. Naledi is here because she “wanted an opportunity to see the temple again and to experience the Spirit of the Lord.” To Naledi, a day at the temple is not just another day. “This is a special occasion and a special moment,” she says, “so we should dress and act in a special way.”
Naledi understands that the temple is a sacred place: “We should be very reverent in the temple because it is the house of God and it has the Holy Spirit inside. So we should prepare ourselves and carry ourselves in a moral way and be very clean and respectful.”

The woodland was under a heavy shroud of cloud cover that weekend. Rain filtered through the air, and the cameramen waited patiently to expose their film. It rained, and they prayed. And it rained some more. If the filmmakers were unable to complete filming in that one week during the spring of 1975, the project would have to wait a year until the surroundings were right again. The season would soon change, and to add to the problems, the lead actor had to leave the following Friday. On Monday morning the crew awoke before dawn and and began to set up all their equipment, thinking somehow they could compensate for the weather. But suddenly it stopped raining. When the sun came up, they beheld the loveliest mist they had ever seen. The tall, wet grasses sparkled, and the birds burst forth in song, and they knew they had been blessed with a beauty they could never have produced themselves.
That morning the Brigham Young University Department of Film Production began filming scenes for the First Vision. Stewart Petersen, who played the Prophet Joseph, walked through those tall grasses with thoughts of that other “beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty” (JS—H 1:14) when Joseph Smith humbly prayed for an answer to his question, “Which of all the churches should I join?”
The First Vision is a historical film commissioned by the Church for release as a teaching aid and missionary tool. The script follows Joseph Smith’s own account of the spring of 1820 in Palmyra, New York, when, after reading and pondering James 1:5, he decided to ask of God which church was true.
The singular beauty of that first morning was followed by a week of busy filming. By Thursday renewed bad weather set in—more clouds and more rain. By the end of the day there was still one important scene that needed to be put on film—and that scene had to be filmed in bright sunlight. It was the scene where Joseph runs toward his home on a bright sunny day. So Friday morning they set up an 18-foot scaffold for their cameras in the center of the field that lay between the grove and Joseph’s home. They offered another special prayer and waited. After what seemed like hours the clouds parted. The cameras rolled. Just before the scene ended, the clouds closed in again, and darkness prevailed. “That’s all we got,” said David Jacobs, producer-director, “but that was all we needed—it’s the scene that opens the film.”
In Joseph’s own account of the First Vision he tells of entering the grove and kneeling to supplicate the Lord. Suddenly he felt a literal darkness—“some power which entirely overcame me … the power of some actual being from the unseen world.” (JS—H 1:15–16.) How to handle the feeling of such an evil influence was hard to conceptualize and then transfer onto the film. On the plane to New York the week before, David Jacobs had been studying some research material on a recently discovered account of the vision written by Joseph.
A couple of sentences jumped out at him as he read: Joseph said, “I heard a noise behind me like someone walking toward me. I strove again to pray, but could not; the noise of walking seemed to draw nearer. I sprang upon my feet and looked around, but saw no person or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking.” (As quoted in Dean Jesse, “Early Accounts of the First Vision,” BYU Studies, Spring 1969, p. 284.) “I knew instantly,” Dave said, “that this was how I wanted to get into the darkness scene. It was dramatic. It was true.”

After church was over, it seemed like everybody in the ward wanted to hang around and talk. The adults, in particular, kept coming up and congratulating Kitty. But all she wanted was to get away as fast as she could.
Without waiting for her mother, she slipped out the back door of the chapel and took the roundabout way home, so she wouldn’t run into any members walking in her direction.
She tried to get upstairs to her room without having her father hear, but just as she put her foot on the first step, he came out of the little room with the Sunday newspaper in his hand. Her mom called the room the “den,” but Kitty and her dad called it his “hideaway,” pretending he would hide out from home teachers and the bishopric and other Church members. Actually, Kitty had thought more than once that he was pretty good about all the people who came and went on Church business, and he was super-great to the missionaries. All the more reason she had to get away from him now before she exploded.
“Hey, Kitten!” he called. “How did things go? Your mother told me you were made Queen Bee or something today.”
“Oh, daddy! It was Beehive class president, not ‘Queen Bee’! Can’t you ever get anything right! Besides, I don’t want to hear any more about it!”
In her room, she flounced on her bed and let the hot tears come. But not more than a dozen had fallen when she heard a familiar voice on the front porch.
“Key? Hey, Ke-ey! Ke-ey!”
She went to her window, and sure enough, there was Tami, pushing herself in the porch swing and yelling for her.
“Tami, I can’t play now. Do you understand? Not now.” But her cousin continued to swing and smile and call, her large hands holding firmly to the arms of the swing, her stocky legs driving the swing back and forth. Exasperated, Kitty stamped downstairs and flung open the front door.
“Tami, I can’t play now. Go home. Go on home, and leave me alone, won’t you? Won’t anybody leave me alone?” The tears coming fast now, Kitty ran down the porch steps and into the yard. Turning, through the blur she saw Tami’s puzzled face. She ought to go back, but all she wanted was to get away. Then she saw her father come out onto the porch and put his arm around Tami, talking softly to her and patting her on the shoulder as he led her down the front walk and headed her home. Kitty turned and ran for the barn.
It was a barn in looks, at least from the outside. From the inside, it was clearly not a barn, and never had been. Her mother had a large studio on one end, with wonderful skylights, and along the west wall was a little gallery of paintings she was not ready to part with yet. Her dad had a neat workshop, smelling of cedar shavings and varnish. And best of all, Kitty had the Loft. She always thought of it like that, with a capital L: the Loft. Her Loft. Nobody ever had a better private place, a place to play house when she was little, or to read marvelous books like A Wrinkle in Time, which she read in a single day once, not even coming down for lunch, and her mom let her. A place to write in her journal and share secrets with her best friend. A place to be far away from everybody else and at the same time, at home.
Today, though, her Loft didn’t seem to welcome her. She looked over at the old desk her dad had refinished for her. There was her journal, neglected for who knew how long.
And there was that old copy of Don Quixote that she had made a solemn vow she would one day read—in Spanish. Ha! She walked up to one wall and squinted at a framed photograph. Four very skinny, grinny little girls, wet hair straggling down their necks, stood beside a swimming pool, all four holding a small trophy. Under the photo, written in ink were the words The Tadpoles’ First Victory.
Double ha!
Somebody had come into the barn, making a lot of noise by way of announcing his presence. Then Kitty heard the noise of a broom handle knocking politely on the door of the Loft. Her dad wouldn’t even put a foot on the Loft ladder without an invitation.
“Kitten, can I come up?”
“Dad, I can’t! I can’t talk to you about this. I’m … I’m sorry. Wish I could.” And she did, too. She had always been able to explain things to him, just as Jenny was able to talk about anything to their mother. But this was something she couldn’t—
His voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Listen, Kitten? You listening up there?” He waited for an answer.
“Well, of course!”
“Well, now, I don’t want to be a Mr. Buttinski or anything. Just tell me one thing.” He paused.
“What?”
“Well, is this … you know … women’s business?”
Kitty couldn’t help but giggle a little.
“Well? Is it?”
“No, daddy, it’s not women’s business.”
“Then we can talk about it. May I please come up?”
“We can’t talk about it. You don’t understand!”
“So make me understand. May I please come up?”
She knew he would stand there politely asking until the moon rose if she didn’t respond, so she jerked the Loft door open and said, “All right! But I don’t know what good it will do.” She went over to the daybed and sat down.
“Neither do I, Kitten.” He sat down in the old rickety rocker, folded his hands over his stomach, and sighed.
Nobody said anything for a while. One of the best things about Kitty and her dad was their silences. She figured they had the best silences any two people ever had, and she’d made up her mind years ago that she’d only marry a man with whom she could have those special silences.
Finally he spoke.
“It’s about church, isn’t it?”
She hesitated. “Well, not exact—”
“It’s about church, isn’t it?”
“YES!”
“And you don’t want to tell me because you don’t want to say anything bad about your church to your heretical old man, right?”
“Daddy, nobody thinks you’re a heretic. I’ve told—”
“Right?” He looked straight at her.
“Yes.” He rocked some more and smiled a little.
“Kitty, I’ve been married to your mother for 16 years. I’ve been your father for 13, and Jenny’s for 11. Your Uncle Ken and I have been as close as brothers, and he’s been a bishop twice. Don’t you think I know what fine things your church does for people? And don’t you think I also know that since people aren’t perfect, there will always be problems?”
There was another silence, not such a comfortable one this time, because Kitty knew it was up to her to break it.
“I just can’t do it all!” Her voice was louder than she meant it to be. “Dad, listen to this. I’m 13, and I’m supposed to get good grades, and practice my cello so I can be in orchestra, and stay on the swim team, and spend time with Tami and help her get ready for the Special Olympics plus work in the garden, ’cause we’re all supposed to have gardens, and keep up my journal, ’cause we’re all supposed to have journals—and I love all of it, don’t get me wrong—and we’ve been told to learn foreign languages so I’ve started Spanish this year, and I’m supposed to go to all my meetings and help needy people and support all the ward activities and stay close to my family—and now they make me Beehive class president, which will mean more meetings—
“Oh, daddy, I want to do it all! I really do. It all makes sense, and I know it’s all right. But 13’s too young to be booked solid for life. Because it’s just going to get worse. High school will just mean more work, plus a social life, if my body ever catches up with the rest of me and I look like something besides a tadpole at 16. Then there’s college and work and marriage and a family—dad, I don’t see any end to it till I’m an old, old woman sitting in that rocker between temple sessions!” Kitty flopped onto the pillow.
“The better job you do, the bigger job they give you the next time, hum?” said her father.
Kitty muffled something through the pillow.
“And the hurrieder you go, the behinder you get?”
The pillow grunted again.
“And even though you want to do everything just right, you never seem to do anything quite the way you want it?”
Kitty turned her head and stared at her father.
Kitty’s father had said more than once that he was like Henry David Thoreau: he needed a “wide margin” to his life. He worked very hard at his job and at taking care of their house and yard. But beyond that he was not, as he said, a “joiner.” He was not involved in the hundred and one things she and her mother and Jenny were. So how did he know?
They sat for a long time, saying nothing. Finally, Kitty said, “Mom?”
“Of course. That’s why you really ought to ask her how to solve this problem. She could—”
“Oh but dad, that’s just IT! She does everything! Everybody’s always telling me what a marvel she is. ‘How does your mother do it? How does your mother do it?’” Kitty’s voice mimicked her questioners. “I can never begin to be as organized and as capable as she is. I don’t even want to try! They ask me all the time, but I don’t know. I don’t know how she does it!”
“Have you ever asked her?”
“Oh, she’d just say, ‘Do your best,’ or ‘Make a schedule’ or something. It’s easy for her.”
“If it’s easy for her, how do you think I know about all the thoughts that are in your mind, all those things I told you just a minute ago?”
“Well, tell me, then. Tell me how to do it.” Kitty sat up on the bed and folded her arms across her chest. “Mom does it all. Tell me how to do it all.”
“She does it all, hum? She does, hum?” Suddenly her dad jumped out of the rocker, clattered down the ladder from the Loft, and was heard rummaging around in the storage room between his workshop and the studio.
“Daddy? Daddy, what are you doing? What’s going on?”
“Just a minute. Know it’s here someplace …” came the muffled answer. More rummaging and opening and closing of trunk lids. Then he was bounding up the ladder again, with something in his hand.
“Come here, over by the light.” Kitty joined him by the window. “Do you remember this?”
He held out to her a piece of white cloth. When she took it in her hand, she saw it was a dress, a tiny frothy dress, all white, with many tucks and flounces; and across the yoke in front were red and blue marching figures. It was beautiful, and somehow, she knew it had been hers.
“You looked like an angel,” her father said softly. “Your hair was blonde then, and you were all dolled up in this dress and little white shoes and white socks with—I’m almost certain—red and blue stripes matching the whatsit on the dress. It was a Primary thing, Easter, I think, and you stood right in the front row and sang every song without missing a word—three years old and you didn’t miss a word—and me sitting on the back row blubbering when you sang that one about ‘I Am a Child of God.’ I was embarrassed like the dickens until I noticed that both of the men beside me were sniffing and honking too. Oh, your mother was so proud of you, and that dress! I guess she took a whole roll of film of you in that dress. Still has ’em someplace.”
Kitty looked more closely at the dress. Tiny stitches, many of them handmade.
“Mother made this?” Her father nodded. “But she doesn’t sew.”
“She doesn’t now. Obviously, she couldn’t do it all. She loved sewing for you, Kitten. And for herself, and Jenny, and the house. But finally she said it took too much time from other things.” He took the dress from her and began folding it very carefully.
“But she didn’t give up painting.”
“Of course not. Didn’t give up breathing, either. Your mom’s like—well—like a well that people come to, to be refreshed. But she has to be filled herself, or she’ll have nothing to give. Her painting is one place she gets renewed. Those scriptures of yours are another place too. And have you ever heard your mother make an appointment for Saturday night?”
Kitty thought a long minute, then shook her head.
“Nope, because that’s our time, hers and mine. We go out, to a movie, or to dinner, or for a drive, or a walk, or sometimes she drags me to an art gallery and sometimes I drag her to a hockey game. But it’s strictly our time.”
“You think it’s okay for me to have some ‘me’ time, even though I’m not married?”
“Absolutely. You ought to be able to take off, oh, say after noon on Saturday, and not answer to anybody. Lie up here and watch the dust motes dance in the sunlight. Take your bike out in the rain. Spend the whole long afternoon getting acquainted with just what it feels like to be 13, so’s you’ll never forget. To kind of help you along with that, I hereby relieve you of your Saturday garden chores.”
“I guess mom gave up a lot of stuff besides sewing, didn’t she? I just never thought about it before.” Kitty looked again at the red and blue figures marching across the white dress.
“Sure. But she kept a lot, too. That’s what I’ve been saying. She never considered giving up painting, and you mustn’t ever consider giving up your music.”
How did he know, Kitty wondered. How did he know that of swimming and chorus and reading and all the other things, her cello was the one set apart, different, in its own special world?
“Look, Kitten, all your life you’ll be called on to do things because you have the brains and the talents and the unselfishness to do them. But you’ll have to use some of those brains to figure out how to give to others and still have something left for yourself. Now take Tami, for instance. You’ve been great with her. You’ve done things for her that her own parents didn’t seem able to do. But she takes a lot of your time. Still, she is your cousin, and she does need someone to love her and work with her, so she can be every bit as much as she possibly can be, whatever that is. Now what does that brain say about a solution to that?”
Kitty got up and walked over to the window. Down the street, she could see Tami’s house. She imagined Tami helping her mother set the table, and remembered how proud she’d been when, after hours of Kitty’s help, she’d managed to do it perfectly by herself. She didn’t want to desert Tami.
“Jenny!” she suddenly said. “Jenny’s old enough now, and she’s good with Tami. In fact, it would be good for her to get her nose out of that TV and start working with Tami. I could coach her in the things she’d need to know—”
“Sure you could,” her dad said. “She’s ready for that job now, just like you’re ready to take on a different leadership job.”
“The Beehive class?”
“Yep. That’s a totally different challenge—a whole bunch of girls your own age, instead of one retarded cousin. But you’ll handle it. Kitty, I really think you ought to talk with your mom. She can tell you a dozen hints about juggling these things. But never think it’s easy. It’s not, not for her, not for you. Some things you give up, some you keep, some you compromise. And sometimes you move from one thing to another because you’ve learned what you needed to learn, or given what was most important for you to give, like with Tami.”
Suddenly, from the house, Kitty heard her mom’s voice.
“Carlyle? Kitty? Where are you two? Dinner’s ready!”
“Come on, Kitten. Let’s not keep her waiting.”
“Sure thing, dad. And then after dinner, I’ve got to have a long talk with that woman. Oh, but wait—” She ran over to the window seat and picked up the neatly folded little white dress.
“I think I’ll just hang on to this for a while,” and she clambered down the stairs after her father, whistling softly “I Am a Child of God.”

The people of French Polynesia watched with dismay the damage and destruction in Tonga caused by the volcanic eruption and tsunami on 15 January.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout French Polynesia offered prayers and fasting on behalf of their fellow Saints in Tonga, sending messages of support through social media.
After other natural disasters around the world, many members and friends of the Church have responded by donating generously to the Church’s humanitarian fund or other charitable organizations.
“There were strong feelings among our leaders that we needed to help, but the question was what more could we do to help Tonga,” said Elder Frederic Riemer, Area Seventy.
“We asked everyone to pray earnestly to find the best way we could help our brothers and sisters in Tonga.”
The answer came with the announcement by the president of French Polynesia, Edouard Fritch, that the government would charter the ship Tahiti Nui to carry relief supplies to Tonga, the same ship that had taken supplies to Fiji when it was hit by a cyclone last year. He called on the people of Tahiti to again show their customary generosity for their Polynesian neighbours.
Elder Riemer said that this felt like an answer to their prayers. Meeting in an emergency council, he and the nine stake presidents of Tahiti unanimously made the decision to mobilize: the congregations were invited to collect donations of food, clothing, hygiene products and water. The Fariipiti Stake center, located in Papeete, would be the Church’s gathering point for everything.
Members of the Church responded spontaneously with generosity to Elder Riemer’s call for support in this token of love.
Under the supervision of the bishops of the respective wards, numerous volunteers collected, sorted, and packed the donations. Missionaries also joined in to collect the donations, label them and load them into trucks headed for the port.
Friends of other faiths, entire communities and local associations also took part and deposited their donations at the different chapels around the islands of Tahiti and Moorea and directly at the Fariipiti sorting center. Private companies also contributed goods and offered to transport Church donations free of charge due to the large volume of materials being collected.
All of the donations were joined with materials provided by the government and taken to the port of Motu Uta in Papeete.
In the end, more than 250 cubic meters of equipment and supplies weighing over 300 tons were loaded onto the ship. This included water tanks, tarpaulins, wood, sheets, chainsaws, dehydrated food, water bottles, clothing, cleaning and maintenance products, brooms, brushes, and diapers. It also included 30 tons of water.
As the final items were being loaded onto the ship, President Fritch thanked the entire population for their generosity and responsiveness.
“The spirit of unity that characterizes our peoples of the Pacific has lived up to its reputation for generosity in the most difficult situations. And it is in these moments that we see that despite the thousands of kilometers that separate us, the ties with Tonga are real and powerful. It’s because we belong to the same family, that of the great people of Oceania.”
President Fritch added: “There is much more than material in the hold of this ship; it also carries the token of our love and the expression of our solidarity.”
Elder Riemer said, “Just with what the Church has collected, we can see all the generosity and the benevolent love of the Polynesian people. We are grateful for every gesture made, every donation given, no matter how small, which responds to the exhortation of Jesus Christ: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me’ (Matthew 25:40).”

I had another exceptional teacher while attending Ricks College many years ago. I was preparing to serve a mission and thought it would be helpful to attend a missionary preparation class. What I experienced changed my life.
From the first day of class, I realized I was in the presence of a master teacher. The teacher was Brother F. Melvin Hammond. I knew Brother Hammond loved the Lord and he loved me. I could see it in his face and hear it in his voice. When he taught, the Spirit enlightened my mind. He taught doctrine, but he also invited me to learn it on my own. That invitation helped me clearly see my responsibility to learn the Lord’s doctrine for myself. That experience changed me forever. Thank you, Brother Hammond, for teaching in the Savior’s way.

As we face some of the harsh realities of life and the real obstacles that are there for us to overcome, we often make matters much worse by imagining difficulties that never materialize. We are afraid of what might happen in the future, but it is unproductive to spend time fretting and worrying about what "might" go wrong. I love the story of Abraham Lincoln and the Fox River. Abraham Lincoln, as a young lawyer, was traveling through Southern Illinois on the circuit. In his own words, he tells the story "Many years ago when I was a young lawyer and Illinois was little settled, I and other lawyers used to ride the circuit; from county seat to county seat in quest of business. Once after a long spell of pouring rain which had flooded the whole country, transforming small creeks into rivers, we were often stopped by the swollen streams which we with difficulty crossed. Still ahead of us was the Fox River, larger than all the rest, and we could not help saying to each other, if these streams give us so much trouble how shall we get over Fox River? Darkness fell before we had reached that stream and we all stopped at a log tavern, had our horses put out, and resolved to pass the night. Here we were right glad to fall in with Methodists' presiding elder of the circuit who rode it in all weather, knew all its' ways and could tell us about Fox River. So we all gathered around him and asked him if he knew about the crossing of Fox River. Oh yes he replied, I know all about Fox River. I have crossed it often and I understand it well. But, I have one fixed rule with regard to Fox River. I never cross it until I reach it."
Good advice.

Each Dominican youth has a cherished conversion story to tell. “I was invited to a church activity with some friends,” says Pedro Rodriguez, “and was really impressed. I began reading the scriptures on my own, and I knew I wanted to be a missionary and share what those books contained with everyone else. I was baptized soon after that, and I’m waiting my year before I can serve. I never knew I could feel so much.”

Well before his 19th birthday, Elder Duncan happened to meet a General Authority serving in the Missionary Department who challenged him to memorize the missionary discussions. He met that challenge and was later called to the Chile Santiago South Mission. His time as a missionary reconfirmed his love for serving the Lord. “I knew I wanted to be a missionary every day of the rest of my life,” says Elder Duncan.

Martin woke up slowly. His mom was shaking his shoulder.
“Martin,” she said, “it’s time to wake up.”
Martin rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. The sky was still dark, but he knew what time it was. His family woke up at 5:30 every morning to read the Book of Mormon together. It wasn’t always easy to get up so early.
Martin rolled out of bed and walked slowly to the front room. He stretched and yawned really wide. His brothers and sisters looked sleepy too, but they were all there.
Each person read for five minutes. At first Martin wanted to go back to bed. But he kept listening. Each verse seemed to make him feel better and better. By the time they were done reading, Martin felt spiritually strong.
And spiritual strength was something Martin needed every day. In Kenya, there were only a few Church members Martin’s age, and they all lived far away. After school Martin went to a boys’ club run by a Catholic church. One week the club went on a camping trip together.
Martin had a lot of fun. He sang camping songs. He chopped logs. He even helped build a campfire.
But on the second day, one of the leaders brought out a teapot. “We’re going to have tea now,” he said.
The other boys were excited. They drank tea at home for special occasions. They all grabbed their cups and waited for the leader to fill them.
Martin felt a little nervous. He knew that he shouldn’t drink tea. But he didn’t want to offend his friends.
Then he remembered how he felt when he kept the commandments. When his family followed the prophet and read the Book of Mormon together, he felt happy. When they didn’t, he didn’t feel as happy.
Martin knew what he had to do.
“No, thank you,” he told the leader when he came to fill Martin’s cup. “I don’t want to drink tea.”
The leader looked surprised, but he let Martin drink water while the rest of the boys drank tea. Some of the boys wanted to know why Martin didn’t drink tea, but none of them made fun of him. Martin felt happy. He knew the Word of Wisdom would make his body strong. And he was glad that he had been strong enough to do the right thing.

Years earlier I had a much smaller but no the less important experience. I was serving as a counselor in a Bishopric. I was looking for a better job then I currently had so I could support my family better. I went to a job interview and was chosen for one of two positions. There were two different schedules one that was from Sunday to Thursday and the second one Tuesday to Saturday. I was called back for a second interview and asked to take the schedule beginning on Sunday. I told the person hiring me that I could only take the job from Tuesday to Saturday and if the only opening was the Sunday schedule I would have to decline the offer. Two days later I received a phone call telling me that I had been offered the Tuesday schedule and when could I start? The Lord was testing me to see what I would do in that situation.
I could have rationalized like Laman and Lemuel taking the easier road. However I wouldn't have had the faith promoting experience if I hadn't kept my promises I made to the Lord at baptism to keep the commandments. The experience while small helped build my faith. Adversity can be a qualifier and bring blessings into our lives if we see them as opportunities and not wonder why me?

I had my eyes opened to “looking beyond what I could see” while serving as a mission president. A young elder arrived with apprehension in his eyes. As we met in an interview, he said dejectedly, “I want to go home.” I thought to myself, “Well, we can fix this.” I counseled him to work hard and to pray about it for a week and then call me. A week later, almost to the minute, he called. He still wanted to go home. I again counseled him to pray, to work hard, and to call me in a week. In our next interview, things had not changed. He insisted on going home.
I just wasn’t going to let that happen. I began teaching him about the sacred nature of his call. I encouraged him to “forget [himself] and go to work.”2 But no matter what formula I offered, his mind did not change. It finally occurred to me that I might not have the whole picture. It was then that I felt a prompting to ask him the question: “Elder, what is hard for you?” What he said pierced my heart: “President, I can’t read.”
The wise counsel which I thought was so important for him to hear was not at all relevant to his needs. What he needed most was for me to look beyond my hasty assessment and allow the Spirit to help me understand what was really on this elder’s mind. He needed me to see him correctly and offer a reason to hope. Instead, I acted like a giant demolition wrecking ball. This valiant elder did learn to read and became a very pure disciple of Jesus Christ. He opened my eyes to the Lord’s words: “For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Several years ago when we were living in California, our two oldest sons, ages 6 and 7, took one of their friends with them to church one Sunday. When we got there, it happened Fast and Testimony day. And so, of course this young friend watched everybody jump up and go to the stand and he soon got the Spirit and we saw him get up and go to the stand.
When his turn came, he stood and said a few things; we forget totally what he said, except when he finished, he had forgotten to listen carefully to learn how to finish his testimony. He paused there for a moment and stood at the pulpit and smiled brightly, our hearts were pounding for this little 7-year-old boy. And finally he put a big grin on his face and he said, "Holy Moses, Amen."
Whenever I get in a situation like this, of any kind, I think of this story because it reflects how I feel about standing here. This really is a "Holy Moses" situation, and I appreciate the chance to stand here.

David Whitmer learned during his very first meeting with Joseph that, by means of the seer stone, Joseph was able to see in detail actions many miles away. In late May of 1828, at the request of Oliver Cowdery and Joseph, David traveled from Fayette, New York, over one hundred miles to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to take the two men back to his father’s farmhouse so they could complete the translation. As he neared Harmony, he was surprised to meet Joseph and Oliver, who “were coming toward me, and met me some distance from the house.” David reported further:

"Oliver told me that Joseph had told him when I started from home, where I had stopped the first night, how I read the sign at the tavern, where I stopped the next night and that I would be there that day before dinner, and this was why they had come out to meet me, all of which was exactly as Joseph had told Oliver, at which I was greatly astonished."

Despite Františka’s diligent efforts and prayers, years passed without the return of Latter-day Saint missionaries. Despite such isolation, so thoroughly did the gospel permeate the Brodil home that Františka’s daughter Frances insisted she was raised in the Church.

After a decade of praying for missionaries to reenter the land, Františka felt impressed to write to the First Presidency of the Church. (This was prior to present-day policies, which encourage members to contact local leaders.) “An unseen power seemed to be pushing me to do it,” she said. “It was my last try in this matter. I thought the Lord would surely do the rest.”3

To Františka’s great joy, her letter to President Heber J. Grant got immediate results. On 24 July 1929, in the presence of the Brodils, Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve dedicated Czechoslovakia for the preaching of the gospel and opened the Czechoslovak Mission, with Arthur Gaeth as president.

Of that glorious event, Františka said, “Few people can realize the joy we experienced; we had been praying years for this day … We thank the Lord from the bottom of our hearts.”

I grew up in a home where my father was not a member of the Church and my mother was less active. That all changed later, and they spent much of their life as temple workers. With that background I didn’t know much about the Church, even though I thought I did. When I was about to graduate from the university, the Lord dropped an atomic bomb in my life. Her name was Jeanene Watkins. She was a beautiful girl. It took me a long time to date her because so many others recognized her wonderful qualities. As we began to date, I discovered that she was all I had ever dreamed of finding. I fell completely in love with her. I could tell she had deep feelings for me also. One night, when we were talking about the future, she carefully wove into the conversation an important comment. She said, “When I marry, it will be to a returned missionary in the temple.” I don’t remember anything else she said. I hadn’t thought much about a mission and didn’t understand much about temple marriage. I went home and couldn’t think of anything else. I was awake all night. I couldn’t do anything at the university the next day. Soon I was at the bishop’s office, having prayed about the importance of a mission. We both went on missions, and when we returned were sealed in the temple. Much later I came to realize that she would have left me had I not made the right choices. Jeanene’s courage in standing up for her dream of a temple marriage to a returned missionary, regardless of her love for me, has made all of the difference in our lives together. I will never be able to thank her adequately for not compromising her righteous dreams.

When my mother was young, her mother abandoned her. A few years later, her father passed away, and she was given to a family that was unkind to her. This experience made her believe she could not find happiness in a family.
When she joined the Church, however, her attitude changed as she came to understand the importance of family in God’s plan of happiness. She served a mission and eventually married my father. Together they formed a family full of faith in Jesus Christ and did their best to live according to their covenants with God. That’s the kind of family I grew up in in a small Argentinian town called Lima.

In the spring of 1945, I was on Okinawa as a frightened, barely adequate infantry replacement, concerned with victory to be sure, but very much concerned with selfish survival. Japanese artillery pieces had tried for several days without success to hit the little plateau our mortar squad was on. Then one evening they dropped three shells on us; they had finally found the range and we knew it, and they surely knew it. Since one of those shells fell just several feet from my foxhole, I was stimulated to intense prayer, full of promises. Strangely, no more shells fell near us that evening—at the very time when more shells should have been fired for effect. The Lord that night blessed me and others. But suppose He also told me to be of good cheer, for not only would I live, but one day (just a few ridges away) I would preach the gospel to an LDS chapel full of members! Could I have managed that perspective? Probably not. Yet that is what happened in 1973, 28 years later, as I was privileged to go back to that—for me—sacred spot. Sugar cane has since covered the little plateau but not my poignant memories of Okinawa, that bloodiest battle in the Pacific.

In 1975 my wife, Sabine, and I were a young married couple with a 16-month-old son. We lived in Celle, which was then part of the Germany Hamburg Mission.
The missionaries probably never would have found our home, which was hidden behind a gas station and an automobile repair shop. But they did find me—sitting on a bench at the train station one sunny June day. I was probably smoking a cigarette.
The two young Americans introduced themselves as representatives of a church. I don’t remember what we talked about, but it must have been interesting because I agreed to let them call at our home the following day.
They arrived on time and began discussing principles that most people believe. Both Sabine and I had a good feeling about them and enjoyed the conversation. But then the subject turned to God. I told them I did not believe in either God or Jesus Christ. The missionaries seemed somewhat dismayed and left us a pamphlet describing a visit by Jesus Christ to the Americas.
We didn’t make another appointment, but we read the pamphlet attentively and had the impression these Americans were crazy. Christ in America! Who ever heard of such a thing?
One Sunday in September we found ourselves near the home of some friends we hadn’t seen for several months. We decided to drop in. They were just getting ready to go to their new church, which they were very enthused about. Quite spontaneously, we decided to go with them. We too found the atmosphere of the branch enchanting, and everything we heard there was interesting and believable. We were eager to return the following Sunday.
Soon we were learning all about the Church from the full-time missionaries and from member missionaries. Brother Horst Klappert taught a class for investigators. Horst and his wife, Rotraud, had a lot in common with us. We became good friends, and soon we were being invited everywhere by Church members. We enjoyed many wonderful evenings that were different from anything we were used to.
One of the full-time missionaries was an elder named Max Fisher. When we got to the third or fourth discussion, Elder Fisher asked me—me, Jochen Beisert, someone who did not believe in God—to offer a prayer. At that moment I suddenly remembered something that had happened to me more than 10 years before.
Over the years my hectic lifestyle, combined with the trials of life, had caused me to forget this experience. But now when I started to pray, it came back to me, and I had a tender talk with my Father in Heaven. All those present—our recently converted friends and the missionaries—felt the Spirit and were close to tears. A few weeks later, on 18 October 1975, I was baptized by Elder Fisher. Sabine was baptized by one of our member missionaries.

One of my greatest weaknesses is struggling to trust others. I reason away compliments from others and struggle with negative self-talk. Only recently did I realized that my negative self-image also made me distrust the truth of Jesus Christ’s Atonement.
One night, I started listening to a podcast.
“We don’t believe Christ when He says, ‘I can change you,’” the guest, Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, stated. “We think our ability to sin can overpower the Atonement.”
In that moment, I realized that this was how I thought of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I knew Christ had the power to change and save, but I didn’t believe He could change and save me. I needed to accept and have faith that I don’t need to be perfect before I can seek the blessings of the Savior’s Atonement, no matter how imperfect I feel.
When I trust that Christ knows and loves me perfectly, I feel more positive about myself. I can accept compliments humbly, knowing I am a child of God. Here are some quotes from inspired leaders and others to encourage you to trust the Lord.