Gospel Story Finder

When I was nineteen years old, my husband and I had our first son, Michael. At birth, Michael’s bile ducts were damaged, which meant that the bile had no way to exit his liver. Instead, the backup of bile caused extensive liver damage. His damaged liver grew to twice its normal size, encroaching on his stomach and making it difficult for him to eat. His eyes and skin slowly turned yellow. He developed abscesses of infection throughout his liver. At eight weeks of age, Michael had his first surgery to try to correct the structure of his bile ducts. Then, at nine weeks of age, Michael had another surgery.

Months went by. Our son seemed perpetually stuck in the intensive care unit, completely dependent on the miracle of modern medicine. Then came the day when specialists told us Michael wouldn’t survive much longer if he didn’t receive a liver transplant. And so our request for a transplant went out to every hospital in the United States that was doing pediatric liver transplants at the time.

By the time Michael was nine months old, his future looked bleak. We received word that no hospital would accept Michael as a patient on the transplant waiting list because his portal vein, which is a major blood vessel to the liver, was too small and was unlikely to support the blood flow needed for a new liver.

My husband and I prayed constantly, asking Heavenly Father for a miracle—and I have to say that God was good. Seemingly from out of nowhere, the transplant team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center changed their mind and agreed to take Michael as a patient, but only under one condition: we needed to move to Omaha.

We didn’t know anyone in Omaha, but again we prayed for help. And again, another miracle came. God was good. My in-laws knew someone in their ward who used to go to church with another family who, they thought, was still somewhere in Omaha. And, as it turned out, the Halls (George and Ginny) were still in Omaha. They came to the rescue, allowing me to stay with them while my husband finished his military training.

We were in Omaha just over two months when another miracle happened: Michael received a liver transplant. Yet again, God was good. Most of the first year and a half of Michael’s life was spent in the intensive care unit, and I can testify that I witnessed one miracle right after another. It was a tough time, but I could also see that during that time my family was blessed on many occasions.

Then the bottom fell out. You see, I thought our family was already enduring suffering in the valley, but I then came to realize that the valley was much deeper than I had imagined it could be. Michael caught a severe infection. At the time, he was taking immune suppression medication, which kept his immune system from attacking his new liver. The tradeoff was that his immune system wasn’t able to protect itself from other infections. I watched in horror as, within less than twenty-four hours, he went from being an active eighteen-month-old who was running around and playing to lying unresponsive in a hospital bed. His blood pressure and heart rate dropped. He went into shock. He started seizing. He quit breathing.

The physicians frantically intubated him so that a respirator could breathe for him. They desperately tried to maintain his blood pressure by infusing IV fluids as quickly as they could. The fluid eventually found its way into Michael’s lungs, which then became stiff and difficult to inflate with oxygen. To overcome this issue, the pressure was turned up on the respirator, which, in turn, caused Michael’s lungs to collapse. There was one problem after another.

Again my husband and I prayed for a miracle. This time, however, the miracle did not come as I had expected. Michael was comatose for almost six months. Every day was a horrific roller-coaster ride. One day he would be stable; the next day he would almost die.

Then Michael’s condition took a dreadful turn for the worst, and this time he continued to steadily deteriorate. The transplant team requested a family meeting. As we walked into the consultation room, I thought, “This can’t be good.”

I remember them saying that they couldn’t do anything else to save Michael’s life. The only option left was to sustain him on a new and, at the time, experimental heart and lung bypass machine called ECMO. That meant that Michael would have to endure yet another surgery. There was no guarantee that this surgery would work and that Michael would live, but he would surely die if we took no action.

My husband and I looked at each other, took a deep breath, and told the physicians that we wanted to try the surgery. Then my husband asked if we could have a quiet moment in the room with Michael before the surgical team took him to the operating room.

We shut the door to Michael’s room, and my husband and I stood on either side of Michael’s crib, looking across at each other. I took one of Michael’s hands, tenderly held it in my own, and closed my eyes as my husband offered a priesthood blessing. The blessing was the most beautiful blessing I had ever heard. My husband spoke calmly and deliberately.

I patiently waited for the part of the blessing when my husband would bless Michael with the power to overcome his illness. I had the faith that Michael would survive if my husband would just speak the words in the blessing.

But toward the end of the blessing, my husband’s voice cracked with emotion. “Michael,” he said, “as your parents, we love you very much. But we also know that your Father in Heaven loves you and wants what is best for you. Michael, if it is Heavenly Father’s will that you return to Him at this time, know that we will always love you and we will be okay. We will, in time, heal. And we will, at some point, be together again as a family.”

I started to tremble and cry uncontrollably. I opened my eyes and looked at my husband. Now, I use the word look, but it probably looked a little more like a glare. I couldn’t believe what he had said. No! It was all wrong. He was supposed to have blessed Michael to get better. My husband had blessed him wrong. I wanted to call for a do-over, but I figured that wouldn’t be appropriate. But Heavenly Father couldn’t take my only child away from me. We had survived so much against all odds. Why? Why would Heavenly Father get us this far only to call Michael home? For a fleeting moment I couldn’t help but think, “If God lets Michael die, then I will know that God is, in fact, not good.”

My husband looked at me with a sad but determined expression and said, “It’s time we turn this over to Heavenly Father and His will. We need to have the faith to let Michael go, if that’s what God wants.”

I was angry. I was sad. I wanted to scream. But I also couldn’t deny how strong the Spirit was in the room. The two of us stood in silence for a few seconds with only the sound of the heart monitor bleeping in the room.

“Okay,” I finally said. “If it’s Heavenly Father’s will, I’ll accept it.”

I remember walking with the surgical team to the end of the hall. Michael lay in his crib, surrounded by a half dozen people who pushed him in his bed with all of the life-sustaining machinery and tubes that were attached to him. My husband and I kissed Michael, told him that we loved him, and went back to the waiting room, where the surgeon would be able to find us to report on Michael’s condition after attempting the surgery.

About thirty minutes later Michael was wheeled back to the ICU, right past the waiting room where my husband and I were seated. We were confused. We had been told that the surgery would take several hours. As we stood up to follow the entourage of medical professionals pushing Michael back into the ICU, the surgeon caught us.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said, “but before we started the surgery, Michael’s condition stabilized. At this point we don’t need to resort to surgery. We’ll wait and see if he continues to stabilize.”

And he did. That day was a major turning point in Michael’s recovery. Every day, he continued to improve. He never needed the surgery, and a few months later he came home for the first time in almost a year. It was another miracle, and God was good.

This story has a good ending. Today Michael is thirty years old and happily married with an adorable son, and he is sitting with my family in the front row.

The question remains though: If Michael had died that day in the ICU, would that have meant that God was somehow missing, that God didn’t care, or that God was not good? I testify that Heavenly Father remains all powerful, all knowing, and ever present. I learned, in a very painful way, a profound lesson that day: that I needed to have faith in God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I needed the faith to accept Heavenly Father’s will, regardless of what that entailed. And I needed the faith to maintain my testimony in times of happiness and in times of sorrow, during my time on the mountaintop and while in the valley.

That April when Dennis came to home teach, he brought Cameron. They left the wheelchair outside. Dennis “walked” Cameron in with his “walking hug”: Cameron’s feet on his and Dennis’s arms around Cameron’s chest. Dennis showed us a videotape he had made of Cameron. On the video, Cameron talked about his challenges and satisfactions. He bore his testimony; he spoke of the next life.
I left the room briefly, and when I returned, I noticed Cameron slumped in a corner on the couch. He looked weaker, somehow.
Dennis picked Cameron up and walked toward the door. While they paused in our entryway, Cameron sagging in his father’s arms, I pointed out the picture of the man born blind and explained to Cameron that the picture reminded me of him. I told him the works of God were manifest in his life.
“That’s neat, isn’t it, Cam?” Dennis asked, and then they left. I looked at my healthy baby, then back at the picture. Suddenly it occurred to me that that wasn’t my picture at all. It was Cameron’s. I almost ran after them to give it to them, but instead resolved to give them the picture the next time they visited.

During my early teenage years, I attended a youth leadership training camp. Throughout the week, one of my Young Men leaders, Bryan Thelin, found multiple notes written by his wife, Julie, that she had hidden away in his belongings. He shared some of those tender and faith-promoting notes with us. I was impressed and could sense the love that his wife’s simple and caring act fostered in their marriage. Although Bryan and Julie were not physically together during that week, their marriage was being strengthened.

Some years ago a friend of mine was called on a stake mission. His daily work was managing a sizable supermarket. One of his customers was an elderly woman of means and prestige in the community. My friend developed a genuine empathy for her, did everything he could to express his appreciation for her patronage, and tried to fill her every request; he made it a point to carry her groceries to her car, open the door for her, and see her homeward bound. He always smiled, spoke kind and gracious words, and gave her a friendly wave of the hand. She loved him for his friendly, helpful expressions of good will.
To his surprise, he happened to knock on her door one night while tracting with his stake missionary companion. She opened the door cautiously at first, then, seeing who was there, opened the door wider and happily exclaimed, “What a pleasant surprise!”
He explained that he was not wearing his groceryman’s hat that night but was calling on her as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said in response that she had her own religion, that for years she had refused to listen to the representatives of the Mormon church and had no interest in its message. But she exclaimed, “With you, it is different. Please come in. I want to hear what you, a splendid Christian gentleman, have to say.”
That was only the beginning. We don’t need to tell the whole story. It is enough to say that she joined the Church and loves it—because her heart was softened by this outstanding Latter-day Saint.

During the Korean War, Ensign Frank Blair served on a troop transport ship stationed in Japan.6 The ship wasn’t large enough to have a formal chaplain, so the captain asked Brother Blair to be the ship’s informal chaplain, having observed that the young man was a person of faith and principle, highly respected by the whole crew.

Ensign Blair wrote: “Our ship was caught in a huge typhoon. The waves were about 45 feet [14 m] high. I was on watch … during which time one of our three engines stopped working and a crack in the centerline of the ship was reported. We had two remaining engines, one of which was only functioning at half power. We were in serious trouble.”

Ensign Blair finished his watch and was getting into bed when the captain knocked on his door. He asked, “Would you please pray for this ship?” Of course, Ensign Blair agreed to do so.

At that point, Ensign Blair could have simply prayed, “Heavenly Father, please bless our ship and keep us safe,” and then gone to bed. Instead, he prayed to know if there was something he could do to help ensure the safety of the ship. In response to Brother Blair’s prayer, the Holy Ghost prompted him to go to the bridge, speak with the captain, and learn more. He found that the captain was trying to determine how fast to run the ship’s remaining engines. Ensign Blair returned to his cabin to pray again.

He prayed, “What can I do to help address the problem with the engines?”

In response, the Holy Ghost whispered that he needed to walk around the ship and observe to gather more information. He again returned to the captain and asked for permission to walk around the deck. Then, with a lifeline tied around his waist, he went out into the storm.

Standing on the stern, he observed the giant propellers as they came out of the water when the ship crested a wave. Only one was working fully, and it was spinning very fast. After these observations, Ensign Blair once again prayed. The clear answer he received was that the remaining good engine was under too much strain and needed to be slowed down. So he returned to the captain and made that recommendation. The captain was surprised, telling him that the ship’s engineer had just suggested the opposite—that they increase the speed of the good engine in order to outrun the storm. Nevertheless, the captain chose to follow Ensign Blair’s suggestion and slowed the engine down. By dawn the ship was safely in calm waters.

Only two hours later, the good engine stopped working altogether. With half power in the remaining engine, the ship was able to limp into port.

The captain said to Ensign Blair, “If we had not slowed that engine when we did, we would have lost it in the middle of the storm.”

Without that engine, there would have been no way to steer. The ship would have overturned and been sunk. The captain thanked the young LDS officer and said he believed that following Ensign Blair’s spiritual impressions had saved the ship and its crew.

More than a hundred years ago in a small remote place in Arizona lived a family sent there by President Brigham Young to make peace with the Indians.

The father of the family was away on Church business when an impression came to him that something was wrong at home. He responded to this feeling by heading there at once. He arrived at about four o’clock in the morning. His wife had cuddled in her arms their little baby daughter who had fallen into an open fireplace. She was severely burned. The mother, in grief, said, “Let her die. She will be so disfigured.”

The father took this little infant in his arms and gave her a blessing. He promised her that she would live, that she would not be disfigured, and that she would sing before the prominent of the earth.

This baby girl did live, she matured in life, was not disfigured, raised a family, and sang in the Tabernacle Choir. The powers of heaven gave life to that tiny child. That sweet baby girl, in maturity, gave me life. She was my mother.

I owe my very existence to the power of prayer.

The next year, Christmas was not so happy. We sat around solemn-faced after opening our presents. Finally Ron said, “Let’s go get wood.”
Nothing more needed to be said. We all got our coats, hats, and gloves and headed out the door. Again we were getting wood for a widow. But this time it was our mother. It wasn’t that we needed the wood; it meant something deeper. Two weeks before Christmas my dad had died. He left seven children to be raised by my mother.
I suppose because of one act of kindness and the lessons my dad taught his boys, he assured that his wife would never go without wood. We not only got wood for our mother, but often we would get it for other widows. On many Christmases, after we opened our presents, my brothers and I would go out and cut wood for one of the widows. Though it was never spoken openly between us, we were all doing it in memory of our father.

Tommy and Betsy were excited and happy about going out west. “It is just like going on a picnic,” said Betsy.
“It would be if it weren’t so cold,” replied Tommy, as he snuggled down into the featherbed that his father had thrown over the supplies in the bottom of the wagon. It was like settling down into a giant pillow. Its feathery softness kept Tommy and Betsy snug and warm, even though the wind was blowing, snow was falling, and ice was forming on the edges of the wagon cover.
The road was ice-covered. As they started down the steep slope to the river, Father called to Tommy and Betsy, “You had better get out of the wagon and walk. It will be safer that way.”
Tommy and Betsy hated to leave the cozy warmth of their featherbed, but they did not say so. Instead, they climbed out of the wagon and, lowering their heads into the wind, walked the remaining distance down the hill to the river. While they were waiting for their father and mother, it started to hail. The hailstones were big, and to Tommy and Betsy it felt as if it were raining bullets. Betsy was frightened; both she and Tommy were freezing. Tommy said, “Let’s jump up and down and laugh at the hailstones. At least that will help us get warm.” And that was the way their father and mother found them—laughing at the hailstorm.
When Tommy and Betsy saw Father leading the frightened oxen and Mother walking by his side, holding a pan to protect his head from the hailstones, they were glad that they were found laughing instead of crying. Happily they climbed into the back of the wagon and settled once more into the cozy warmth of their featherbed.
In a moment or two, Tommy raised a corner of the wagon cover and peeked out. To his amazement he saw wagons coming from every part of town. “How can they all cross the river?” he wondered aloud. “The ferry is locked in ice.”
His father, who at that moment was near the back of the wagon, heard Tommy and answered him. “We will go across the river on the bridge our Heavenly Father has provided—a bridge of ice a mile long.”
Tommy looked across the river. It was so far to the other side! Could a river so big freeze solid enough to hold up a heavy covered wagon? He was breathless with fear that when his father moved the oxen onto the ice it would crack, but it did not! Tommy and Betsy sighed with relief as one wagon after another followed until there was a whole train of them moving slowly across the river. The ice would hold!
For a moment all was quiet, and into their hearts came a feeling that their Heavenly Father really loved them and that he would watch over and protect them on their journey west. It was then that a woman started to sing, and soon others joined in. The singing continued until the wagon train arrived at Sugar Creek.
Sugar Creek was the place where the Saints expected to camp until the weather was warmer. The people who had arrived there the week before heard the singing, and they built campfires—many of them—to welcome the travelers and so that all could get warm when they arrived. Tommy and Besty were thankful for the campfires. They stood in front of the one nearest their wagon and turned first to one side and then to the other, until they were toasty warm. Tommy left the fire first to help his father feed the oxen and milk the cow.
“Betsy,” called her mother, “please bring a loaf of bread out of the bread box so we can have bread and milk for supper.”
The loaf of bread was frozen solid. Her mother tried to cut it with a knife. Then she tried to break it with a hammer, but she only succeeded in making Betsy laugh. When her father came with a pail of milk, he said, “I’ll get the saw,” and they all laughed when they saw him try to cut that little loaf of bread with his big saw. He succeeded in breaking off small pieces. Tommy and Betsy put these pieces into the warm milk.
That night when Tommy and Betsy snuggled down into their warm featherbed, they thought of all that had happened during the day. Betsy thought of her kitten, of the chair with the big round back, and of the clock they’d left back in Nauvoo. In her mind she could hear the clock saying “Sleep, Betsy. Sleep, Betsy,” just as it used to do. And Betsy was soon asleep.
With Tommy it was different. He thought about the wicked men who had driven them from Nauvoo, and he hoped these men would not follow them out west. The more he thought, the more wide awake he became. Because he was so wide awake, he heard all the noises of the camp. It sounded as if many people were going from one wagon to another. Then he heard the ice on the wagon cover crack as Father raised a corner and said, “Tommy, Betsy, wake up!”
Tommy was up in an instant. “Is something the matter?” he asked.
“Sister Johnson has a new baby girl,” replied his father. “Your featherbed would help the mother and the baby keep warm on this bitter cold night.”
By that time Betsy was awake, and both she and Tommy helped their father pull the featherbed out of the wagon. Afterwards, her father bundled Betsy up in some quilts and she went back to sleep.
Tommy was too excited to sleep. Instead, he stood by the fire, which was blazing brightly. He had been there just a minute or so when his mother came out of Sister Johnson’s wagon carrying the baby. “It will only be a minute before the featherbed is ready, and then we will tuck her in next to her mother, and she will be snug and warm,” she said. “In the meantime, it is much warmer here by the fire than it is in the wagon.” Tommy looked at the ice on the wagon cover and knew that this was true.
The next morning when he and Betsy asked about the baby, their mother said, “Instead of just one new baby, there were nine babies born last night.”
“Nine new babies!” Tommy and Betsy could hardly believe their ears.
Mother looked from one to the other and said softly, “I know of at least one of those babies who is doing well because two kind children gave up their precious featherbed so the baby could be warm.”
Tommy and Betsy smiled at each other, and a warm glow of happiness filled their hearts.

Indeed, sometime not long after 9/11, a missionary asked me in all honesty and full of faith, “Elder Holland, are these the last days?” I saw the earnestness in his face and some of the fear in his eyes. I said, “Yes, Elder, we are in the last days, but there is really nothing new about that. The promised Second Coming of the Savior began with the First Vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1820. We can be certain that we are in the last days—years and years of them.” I gave him a friendly shake of the hand and sent him on his way. He smiled, seemed more reassured to put all this in some context, and held his head a little higher as he left me.
I hasten to say that I do know what this young man was really asking. What he really meant was “Will I finish my mission? Is there any point in getting an education? Can I hope for a marriage? Do I have a future? Is there any happiness ahead for me?” And I say to you what I said to him, “Yes, certainly—to all those questions.”

From his early teens, Wilford Woodruff searched for the true church. Once he gained a testimony that Joseph Smith truly was a prophet of God, Wilford tried to do everything the Prophet asked. When Joseph counseled the Apostles to keep a history of their lives, Wilford wrote daily in his journal. “Whenever I heard Joseph Smith preach, teach, or prophesy,” Wilford said, “I always felt it my duty to write it.” In the Church Historian’s office are stored seven thousand pages of Wilford Woodruff’s journals. The record he kept was invaluable for himself, his family, and the Church.

Youth in Longview, Texas, had a blast last summer painting their community rodeo arena and corral—and each other! More than 250 young people from the Longview Stake and the Gilmer Texas Stake got the job done in just about four hours, to the amazement of city officials.
“When we got there it was really trashed. I couldn’t believe it. We never thought we could get it done, but it only took four hours. The people from the city were amazed,” says Amber Davis, a Laurel from the Longview Second Ward.
The job included painting a Texas flag on the north bleachers and an American flag on the south bleachers.
“The fun part was that there was a lot of team work, so if you weren’t finished with your project, other people came and helped you,” says Amber.
City officials were so pleased with the job the youth did that they mailed each of them a thank-you note with a picture of the newly painted arena.

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
“But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:10–12).
I related to my family how I had prepared myself for the banking profession. Dad was the bank attorney. From my newspaper delivery earnings, I saved enough to buy 10 shares of First National Bank stock. Dad insisted that I attend the stockholders’ meetings and vote my 10 shares. He thought that was a way of introducing me to the banking profession. A job offer came after graduation that was much more lucrative than banking. I thought I would accept the position for a few years and then return to banking. I never did become a banker. I tried to teach my grandchildren that choosing a major in college is not as important as developing integrity, ethics, and good study habits and building character as a person of faith, confidence, and industry.

The gospel came into my life at an opportune time. I was 14. It came at the hands of a senior missionary couple, Glenn and JoAnne Haws, who lived every single word they taught me. They took me under their wing.
My mother didn’t share with us that she was a member of the Church. I just remember seeing some extra scriptures on her lamp desk. When Elder and Sister Haws came to fellowship and teach her, they said, “Don’t you want your daughter to know what you know?” I was baptized on May 21, 2000.

I once had a visit from a young Catholic priest. I asked him why he had come, and he replied, “I came to see you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “I have been searching for certain concepts that I have not been able to find. But I think I am finding them now in the Mormon community.”
That led to a half-hour conversation. I told him, “Father, when your heart begins to tell you things that your mind does not, then you are getting the Spirit of the Lord.”
He smiled and said, “I think that’s happening to me already.”
“Then don’t wait too long,” I said to him.
A few weeks later I received a telephone call from him. He said, “Next Saturday I am going to be baptized a member of the Church, because my heart has told me things my mind did not know.”

At one point, my normally resilient self was rocked with depression. While not as bad as many people experience, it occasionally left me in a dark place, curled up on the floor wondering how I would be able to go on. I struggled for quite a while, with no one knowing—just carrying on as so many do. As I pled with the Lord to know what to do to combat the continual flow of mud in my brain, the thought came: “Listen to the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” So, I started. Every moment that I was not actively using all of my brain for something constructive, I listened to the Book of Mormon. As I drove, cleaned, folded laundry, and waited in lines, I let the teachings of Jesus Christ wash over me. This continual flow of sand was sufficient to provide a break in the darkness so that I could then begin to work on the other types of sand I mentioned today.

One day my sister told me about a young woman in her ward who had become pregnant. This young woman continued going to church and seemed happy and excited about the upcoming event in her life. The other young women were confused by what they perceived as her seemingly flippant attitude about the situation.
But my sister, who was a visiting teacher to the mother of the young woman, learned of the countless nights the young woman had cried herself to sleep, in misery over the choices that had led her to this predicament. After many weeks of torment, the young woman decided that she could continue to mourn over her actions, or she could move forward and be happy. Because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, she could accept the consequences of her decisions and once again become clean through repentance.

Like Ammon, eleven-year-old Katrina Dalton of Allen, Texas, has learned how to be a good example to those around her. One day while playing basketball at school, Katrina noticed that some of the kids in her class were saying mean things to a boy who is partially deaf. Katrina made sure that she was kind to him, and she became so concerned about him that she talked privately to the teacher to make her aware of the problem. The teacher was able to stop the bad behavior and later thanked Katrina.

Let me share an experience I had as I graduated from “that other school.” We were in the process of job interviews, and most of the people in my class had interviewed with a particular company and with a particular person. All of my associates had reported to each other all of the questions the interviewer would ask and also shared thoughts as to what answers he was looking for. Can you imagine? Talk about phoney!

I wasn’t myself in that interview. I answered with what someone else had said. I failed that interview so badly. I tried to tell that man what I thought he wanted to hear instead of what was in my heart and my true feelings.

Zachary found the shiny star the Sunday before Christmas. He asked Mommy, “Where does it go?”
“I think I know,” she said. “You see if you can find where it belongs.”
Zachary looked at the Christmas tree, but the star at the top was still there. “Do you know where this star goes?” he asked Daddy.
“I think I know,” Daddy said. “You see if you can find where it belongs.”
Zachary looked at Mommy’s ears, then said to himself, “It’s too big to be one of Mommy’s earrings.”
He asked his big brother, Keith, “Do you know where this star goes?”
“I think I know,” Keith told him. “You see if you can find where it belongs.”
“OK,” Zachary said. He closed his eyes tightly and thought. But he couldn’t think where the star belonged. He went to play with the nativity scene while he waited for family home evening to start. As he tried to stand the angel on top of the stable, he had an idea.
When family home evening started, Daddy asked, “Who has something to share with us?”
“I do,” said Zachary. He put the star on top of the stable in the nativity scene. “Here is where the star goes—above Baby Jesus.”

Fifteen-year-old Daniel Hunt has a hard time hanging on to a hairbrush. A few years ago when his older brother Lamar went on a mission to Mexico, Lamar “borrowed” Daniel’s new brush—for two years. When he returned, Daniel happened to have a new brush again. This time Lamar “borrowed” it when he went away to college.
“Now it’s turned into a joke,” says Daniel. “When Lamar comes home he’ll say, ‘Oh look! Daniel got me a new brush.’ It’s pretty funny. Lamar can always make me laugh.”