Gospel Story Finder

“The lesson this incident conveys is very significant! How many thousand instances there are in which inglorious defeat ends the career of the timid and desponding when the same perseverance would bring it triumphant success! Resolution is almost omnipotent. Sheridan (1751–1816, Irish dramatist and parliamentary orator) was at first timid and obliged to sit down in the midst of a speech. Convinced of, and mortified at, the cause of his failure, he said one day to a friend, ‘It is in me, and it shall come out.’”

“From that moment he arose, and shone, and triumphed in a consummate eloquence. Here was true moral courage. And it was well stated by a heathen moralist, that it is not because things are difficult that we dare not undertake them.

Elder Stolt’s grandfather was Vernon Carl Poulter II, who served a three-year, Mandarin-speaking mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1957. Elder Poulter’s first assignment in the Far East Asia Mission was in Taipei, Taiwan. It had only been open to missionaries for a few months, and because none of the Church’s Latter-day revelations had been translated into Chinese yet, teaching the gospel required an extensive 17 lessons before baptism and another 20 after.
Many of Elder Poulter’s contacts showed great potential, but he was always transferred to a new area before they progressed in their conversion. After one transfer, he and his junior companion decided to put their prayers to the test. Elder Poulter suggested: “Let’s pray specifically to be led to someone prepared to hear the gospel, then stay on our bikes until we receive the Spirit’s direction.”
An hour later, at a busy intersection in congested Taipei traffic, Elder Poulter had the distinct impression to turn right. When he caught up with his companion, the impression returned—stronger this time—that they should turn around.
Elder Poulter recorded: “We plunged back into traffic, made a ‘U-Turn’ across four lanes . . . back to the intersection, and turned left through another eight lanes of traffic.”
The elders eventually found themselves on a street that was too narrow even for bicycles. “As we continued on foot, I saw a man a few feet away watching us very intently through an open window. Our eyes met and I knew he was the person to whom we had been led.”
Mr. Hu invited the missionaries in and accepted, without question, their first lesson about the need for latter-day prophets. “Since Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ and is the most important person of our time,” Mr. Hu wondered aloud, “how should I honour him?”
At his request, the missionaries returned the next day to continue teaching Mr. Hu and his family. During the lesson, Elder Poulter recalls that a ‘pure white light’ emanated through the window, but from no apparent source. He writes: “It was clear to my mind that we were in the presence of the Holy Ghost, whose radiance could actually be seen as well as felt.”
After the elders repeated the story of Joseph Smith for his wife and children, Mr. Hu bore his testimony and gave his own lesson to his family based on his reading of a pamphlet the missionaries had left him the day before. “His understanding and sincerity were most impressive,” Elder Poulter recalled. Mr. Hu closed by stating that these elders were bearers of the truth, then asked for permission to translate the pamphlet so he could share it with his friends and neighbours.
“Not knowing better, I said OK . . . we were pleased to see Mr. and Mrs. Hu with their two girls at church the next Sunday.” Then, Elder Poulter was transferred again. Prepared to leave the area, he started to pack a set of books his father had given him for the mission. Along with the standard works, they included, Articles of Faith, Joseph Smith Tells His Own Story, and James E. Talmage’s, The Great Apostasy. “I had the strong impression to take them all to Mr. Hu the next day . . . the [books] were received with joy and gratitude. That was the last I heard of the Hu family on my mission.”

It was also filled with people reaching out to others, like the group of Romanian high school students singing “Oh, Suzanna” in broken English to make the Sounds feel welcome, or the nonmember in Massachusetts giving a large gift of money to the group to show her appreciation for the “uplifting, clean entertainment” she’d seen.

Wain was a big, strong ex-football player, an outgoing, caring, and helpful elder. Don was a wonderful complement—an example of quiet spiritual strength.
The first time they visited us as home teachers, we knew they cared. They stated it forthrightly and sincerely. As a less-active member, I had previously been skeptical of anything to do with the Church and frequently questioned the motives of ward members. But I knew these two were here for the right reason. I knew they weren’t visiting just to satisfy statistics. I knew they weren’t here just to check on us because the bishop had asked them to. I knew they came because they believed in modern-day prophets and they valued their home teaching call as an opportunity to magnify their calling in the priesthood.—Dennis Peacock, Kearns 34th Ward, Kearns Utah South Stake

At the top of a hill, the highway traffic on I-65 rushes right by a grove of trees. Few people even notice the cluster of 30 to 40 headstones nestled in the triangle between the main road and an off-ramp leading toward Vinemont and some other small towns. But the young men of the Cullman Ward, Huntsville Alabama Stake, pay attention to the spot whenever they go by. It’s the site of the Wilhite Cemetery, and without their efforts, including four Eagle Scout projects over the years, the graves of these settlers from the 1820s, and of others in additional cemeteries nearby, could quietly disappear.
Back in Cullman, the young men talk about the value of building a tradition. “We’ve cleaned a lot of the cemeteries up in the hills here,” says Amel Drake, 13. “It started with one Eagle project, and that led to another and another and another.” For example, five miles away in Falkville, members of this same Troop/Team 335 earlier cleaned up a cemetery of about 150 graves, including the resting places of both slaves and prominent citizens. These Scouts have learned to safely operate weed whackers, to properly glue broken headstones together, and to keep a journal of names and locations for people who wish to visit graves or do family history research.
“We don’t just do cemeteries; we do other Eagle projects too,” says Enoch Jones, 15. “And we do lots of community service, to benefit others and ourselves.” He pauses, then adds, “Traditions are a part of our heritage. Building a tradition of service helps us to remember who we are and where we come from. Keeping up the cemeteries is just a part of that.”

I was recently assigned to preside over a stake conference at the Salt Lake Granger West Stake in Utah. During this event, I met a stake president who has diligently developed his ability to discern the promptings of the Holy Ghost through righteous living and daily repentance. As part of our ministering efforts, we coordinated visits to three households. Upon completing our final visit, we found ourselves with approximately 30 minutes remaining before our next engagement. As we traveled back to the stake center, President Chesnut received an impression to visit one additional family. We both agreed to follow this prompting.
We proceeded to visit the Jones family, where we discovered Sister Jones confined to bed due to illness. It was apparent that she needed a priesthood blessing. With her permission, we administered to her. As we prepared to depart, Sister Jones asked how we knew of her urgent need for a blessing. The truth is, we didn’t know. However, our Heavenly Father, who was aware of her needs, did know and inspired President Chesnut to visit her home. When we are receptive to the guidance of the still, small voice, we are better equipped to more effectively minister to those in need.

Years later, I had a disagreement with a coworker. When he came by our house to apologize, he left a book titled Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In it, I read about the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. This story touched me deeply.
I also found a photo of two young men wearing white shirts, ties, and name tags. They shared the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. I wondered if there were such missionaries in my town.

Years ago, I was asked to meet with a man who, long before our visit, had had a period of riotous living. As a result of his bad choices, he lost his membership in the Church. He had long since returned to the Church and was faithfully keeping the commandments, but his previous actions haunted him. Meeting with him, I felt his shame and his deep remorse at having set his covenants aside. Following our interview, I placed my hands upon his head to give him a priesthood blessing. Before speaking a word, I felt an overpowering sense of the Savior’s love and forgiveness for him. Following the blessing, we embraced and the man wept openly.

I want to serve a mission! The only problem is, I’m not even old enough to drive, let alone leave my family for a year and a half.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to serve now—by volunteering during the Philadelphia temple open house! I participated in the youth cultural celebration, led tours, and even played the violin with my brother in the reception hall. I realized that I can be a missionary without even wearing a tag!
Katie L., 15, Pennsylvania, USA

While pondering the meaning of John 5:29, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon experienced a heavenly vision regarding the resurrection of God’s children and the kingdoms of glory that they receive based on their responses to Jesus Christ and His everlasting gospel.
Joseph and Sidney boldly testify of the reality and significance of Jesus Christ:
“He lives!
“For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father—
“That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (verses 22–24).

It wasn’t any big, formal, youth outing. It hadn’t been months in planning. It didn’t involve a long trip to an exotic location. In fact, it sort of came up on the spur of the moment.
Julie Johnstun, a member of the Centerville Fifth Ward Young Women presidency, has some relatives in Mendon, Utah, David and Bette Kotter, who live near open fields and a big, high hill. The Kotters, members of the Mendon Second Ward, invited the Centerville youth to come snowshoeing, and it didn’t take but a moment for the invitation to be accepted.
What resulted was a winter activity that could have been held by any ward anywhere in the Church, given enough snow. And that’s the point. Because even though it was just something to do on a Saturday afternoon, both the leaders and the youth learned they could have fun close to home, that it’s being together and sharing together that build memories that will last long after winter’s chill is gone.
For a week, moist, heavy air had been blowing north from Mexico and southern California. But the front had stalled when it slammed into the subzero slopes of the Cache Valley mountains. And there it had unloaded. Mendon and the surrounding hills were mounded in white—white deeper and softer than coconut cream pie.
The challenge was to learn how to walk on the cream.
“Don’t worry, the snowshoes will get you through,” said Rodney Brown, 14, ever the optimist.
“Yea,” said Kyle Owen, 14, sitting on a snowbank nearby. “But first you have to figure out how to put them on!”
The rubber strips and rawhide laces were a bit hard to untangle, and sometimes the laces were quite stiff. But that didn’t slow down Jerri Taylor, 16, and Becky Marcantelli, 17. They already had their shoes on and were taking their first wobbly, uncertain steps across the drifts.
“This isn’t so haaaaard … ,” Becky said as she lost her balance and tumbled, pulling Jerri with her into the snow.
“Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again,” became the motto of the day.
It wasn’t long before all of the young men and women in the ward were stretched out in a long line, waddling up the hill like some pack of abominable snowmen.
“You have to lift your feet just right,” Justin Browning, 14, said. “If you don’t, you’ll catch part of the shoe and fall over. But lifting just right means walking funny.”
“I finally got tired of the snowshoes, so I took them off,” said Laurie Jordan, 14. “The snow was crusty and I walked along okay for a minute. But then I hit the powder, and the next thing I knew, I was in up to my waist.”
While Scoutmaster Norm Beers and one of the deacons, David Kidd, helped dig Laurie out, fog started drifting back into the valley. Soon it was so thick that seeing became difficult. What had been a land of blue sky and white landscapes became a murky world of gray—gray air, gray snow, shadowy figures still hiking up the hill.
“Hey, who turned off the sun?” said Vincent McCorkle, 14.
“Are we gonna wander around in this stuff all day?” said Shane Curtis, 15.
It became apparent that the only way out of the fog was to walk out—or more accurately, to climb out. The faster snowshoers, like 17-year-old Bart Tingey, broke through the clouds and shouted back that it was clear up above.
“Hurry up,” Bart said. “This is neat.”
“Knowing there was something up there worth seeing made me keep climbing,” said Michele Wenzel, 14. “I was tired, but I was curious.”
Michele and her friend Appen Sill, 14, were in the last group to reach the summit. But the view was worth the hike.
All around, fog filled the valleys. But here and there mountain peaks poked through like purple islands in a white sea. And the sky was blue, the kind of crisp, clear blue that only hill climbers get to see.
“It was like that hill was our own little refuge, where we could climb up and see for miles,” said Troy Wenzel, 18. “I don’t know when we’d ever go there and have the exact same conditions to do that again.”
A quorum instructor or a Young Women teacher could have seized on the moment to paint an analogy, a comparison with the youth of the Church who sometimes wander in the fog of the world, but who will come to see the light of day if they’ll listen to the right voice and rise above the clouds.
It could have been said. But at the moment, nobody said a thing. There was total calm. Just for a moment. Then there was tubing, snowball throwing, tobogganing, skiing, and long hikes back to the Kotters’ house for lunch and then to the cars for the trip home.
It wasn’t until months later, when Young Men President Kim Wall was teaching the priests, that the lesson came full circle.
First he read the scripture:
“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).
Then he said, “Remember that afternoon up in Mendon? Think about wandering in the fog. Think about how you felt when somebody called down to you and told you the view was worth the hike.”
“Yea,” said Steve Dalrymple, 16, the newest member of the quorum. “I was there. This scripture is just like that.”

On September 23, 1995, at the Relief Society meeting of general conference, mere mortals experienced the magnificence of divinity. Indeed, on September 23, 1995, the world experienced a new era. From that moment on, nothing will ever be the same again! The will of the Father, in clear and precise terms, was revealed. No one can escape it!
On that day, the whole world watched, many with admiration, and others with amazement, as the floodgates of heaven opened through a living prophet. The voice of an omniscient and omnipotent Father could be heard speaking to His sons and daughters about what is to come and what He expects of them.
Indeed, knowing the moral tribulations that were going to befall the families of the earth, on this beautiful day in autumn, our God spoke to the daughters of Zion, and to the whole world. At the general Relief Society meeting, through his servant Gordon B. Hinckley (1910-2008), the will of the Father concerning all the families of the earth was clearly revealed. In a final cry of love, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” was revealed to us.

As a new member of the Church, Soren knew little about the Church or its teachings. For the first month, he did not even attend church meetings. Finally, feeling obligated to learn what the gospel was about, he read a pamphlet about the Book of Mormon. From that small pamphlet he gained a testimony that the Book of Mormon truly is the word of God. That realization forever changed the course of Soren Edsberg’s life.

This was well illustrated in my father’s patriarchal blessing. He was told in his blessing that he would be blessed with “many beautiful daughters.” He and my mother became the parents of five sons. There were no daughters born to them, but of course they treated the wives of their sons as daughters. Recently when we had a family reunion, I saw my father’s granddaughters moving about tending to the food and ministering to the young children and the elderly, and the realization came to me that father’s blessing had been literally fulfilled; he has, indeed, many beautiful daughters. The patriarch who gave my father his blessing had spiritual vision to see beyond my father’s mortal life. There was a disappearance of the dividing line between time and eternity.

When I was a teenager, I decided to invite the Savior into my life by being baptized and becoming a member of the Church. My friends were good examples to me. So was my grandmother. She was a temple worker in the Los Angeles California Temple. She would leave our house at 4:00 in the morning to serve the Lord in the temple.
Just two years after I was baptized, I decided I wanted to serve the Lord as a full-time missionary. On my mission, I helped many people learn about the Savior so that they could invite Him into their lives.

Football came to our country town later than most. The school board had neither the money for equipment nor a coach. Then the great day arrived. Our high school principal was able to buy twelve inexpensive football outfits, except the expensive cleated football shoes (we used our basketball shoes), and our coach was recruited from the faculty because he had witnessed a game.
We learned a few simple plays, how to tackle—or so we thought—and set off for our first game with Twin Falls, the previous year’s Idaho state champions.
We dressed and went out on the field to warm up. Their school band started to play (they had more students in the band than we had in our entire high school), and then through the gates came their team. The twelve of us—a full team of eleven plus one all-round substitute—watched in amazement as they kept coming through the gates—all thirty-nine of them in full uniform.
The game was most interesting! To say it was a learning experience is rather mild. After two plays we didn’t have any desire to have the ball—so we would kick it, and soon they would score. When they got the ball, they would run a baffling play and score. Our problem was to get rid of the ball—it was less punishing.
In the final minutes of the game they became a little reckless. A wild pass fell into the arms of Clifford Lee, who was playing halfback with me. He was startled, not knowing for sure what to do—until he saw the “Dallas Cowboys” thundering after him. Then he knew what to do. He was fast. He wasn’t running for points, but for his life! Clifford made a touchdown; six points went up on the board. The final score—106 to 6! We really didn’t deserve the six points, but with our torn shirts and socks and our bruises, we took them anyway.
A learning experience? Of course! An individual or a team must be prepared. In all things success depends upon previous preparation.

The curtain opens and the pageant begins: Entering stage left is David Paulsen, who plays Joseph at 14. He speaks: “Why all this confusion? Which church is right?” He seeks for the answer from his parents and from preachers of all faiths. Then he goes to the Sacred Grove to pray.
“I think the most spiritual part in the whole pageant to me is when I’m in the grove,” David said. “I just get tingles up and down my spine because I know what I’m saying is true. It’s one of the neatest experiences I’ve ever had. It’s helped me make up my mind to want to go on a mission and then get married in the temple.”

I recall the moral strength espoused by a Japanese government official who spoke during the dedication of the Church pavilion at the Expo ’70 world’s fair in Japan. He warmly complimented the Church on its participation in that exposition and deplored the waning influence of religion in the lives of the people of his own nation, with a consequent deterioration of standards and ideals.

One day, I was not very happy. My throat hurt, I was angry, and I wasn’t making very good choices. At breakfast, I yelled at my mom. She sent me to my bedroom to calm down.
I was sad and angry, but then I had a good idea about what I could do to feel better. I folded my arms, bowed my head, and said a prayer. My angry feelings left, and I started to feel happy inside. When I came out of my bedroom, I told my mom I was sorry and was going to make good choices for the rest of the day.

Illustration by G. Bjorn Thorkelson
Cara put down her pencil and stared at the piece of paper on her desk. It was blank except for her name and a big eraser smudge. What should I write? she thought.
Across the aisle her friend Lily was writing busily. Cara put her head down and rested it on her arm.
Cara really liked her new school. It was in a church building of another religion, and her new class was small enough that her teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, had time to help her with math. Every day after math, Mrs. Schmidt taught a lesson from the Bible. Usually the Bible lessons were a lot like what Cara had learned at home and in Primary.
But a few weeks ago, during a lesson about baptism, Mrs. Schmidt had told the class that babies who died before they were baptized couldn’t go to heaven. Then she said that one of her own children died right after he was born. When she said that, Mrs. Schmidt looked like she was going to cry.
“But babies who die do go to heaven,” Cara wanted to say. If only Mrs. Schmidt knew that, maybe she wouldn’t be so sad anymore. But Cara felt too shy to say anything.
After school Cara told Mom about what Mrs. Schmidt said. “Knowing that babies go to heaven is one of the blessings we have because of the Book of Mormon,” Mom said. Cara hoped that Mrs. Schmidt would read the Book of Mormon someday. She wished she had the courage to tell her about it.
Now in today’s lesson, Mrs. Schmidt had told the class that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are all one person. Cara thought about how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. She knew that They were two separate people and that each of Them had a body. She was glad she knew that for sure, even before talking to Mom or Dad about it.
But then Mrs. Schmidt had said, “Class, please take out a piece of paper and write about what we have been talking about.”
That’s when Cara got a worried feeling in her stomach. She wanted to do the assignment the way her teacher wanted her to. Could she be brave enough to write what she knew was true?
With her head down on her desk, Cara began to say a silent prayer. Please, dear Heavenly Father, what should I do?
Almost at once Cara began to feel calm and peaceful inside. The Holy Ghost whispered that if she wrote what was in her heart, everything would be OK.
Cara lifted her head, picked up her pencil, and began to write:
Heavenly Father and Jesus are two separate people. They have bodies of flesh and bone like we do. The Holy Ghost is a Spirit who can speak to us in our hearts.
After writing a few more sentences, Cara put her pencil down. She didn’t know what Mrs. Schmidt would think of what she had written, but she felt happy that she had been able to tell her teacher something important and true.