Gospel Story Finder

Each week, Betty logs on to the Church’s FamilySearch app to find a deceased relative for whom she can help provide temple blessings. She says, “It feels special to be taking a family name card to the temple, to think about that person and her life, and to pray and hope she will accept the gospel and the ordinances.”

It’d be nice to get the chance to do things over again, wouldn’t it? Well, some things. You might like to relive your happiest birthday or avoid your most embarrassing moment, but would you jump at the chance to repeat a project that involved around 100 hours of hard work?
Chanelle Cann of West Jordan, Utah, did. After finishing years of work to earn her Young Womanhood Award, she turned around and did it all over again. The revised Personal Progress book and new medallion were her inspiration.
The General Young Women presidency encouraged young women already working on the old program to transfer their hours and finish up with the new program. They didn’t expect young women to earn both awards. After doing all the work once, what was Chanelle thinking?
Actually, she was thinking ahead. She wanted the chance to grow with the right attitude, so she’d be more prepared for her future.
“When I was younger I worked on the Personal Progress program because it was there. When I got to be a Laurel, I did it because I wanted to,” she said. “I wanted to do the new program because I knew I would be doing it for the right reasons.”
Chanelle was proud of her first award, but she understood that personal progress isn’t something you need a book to do.
When her stake president introduced the changes to the Young Women program, Chanelle picked up a copy of the new Personal Progress book and headed straight home to plan.
Her mom, Evelyn, said Chanelle stayed up well past midnight that night mapping out how she could earn the new award and how many hours per week she could work on it, starting the next day.
“I told her you could just pay and get the other necklace instead,” Chanelle’s mom said, “but she said, ‘No, I want to really earn it.’”
Chanelle didn’t want another necklace, she wanted a chance for growth. She would be graduating from high school soon and wanted to be prepared for the future. But she didn’t need a book to get what she wanted.
“All the things I did were things I needed to learn for the future anyway. I used the new program because I knew something that came from the prophet could give me good direction,” she said.
Her projects included attending the temple several times a week to do baptisms for the dead, volunteering at an elementary school, writing poetry about the Savior, recording songs with her guitar, hand stitching a temple quilt, serving at a rest home, making family home evening files for her future family, and learning to cook.
Chanelle said the cooking project didn’t turn out so well. She made some pies that were more of a learning experience than a gourmet dessert. She’s going to keep trying anyway.
As it turns out, Chanelle makes a better writer than a chef. Her favorite project was writing poetry. She also loved writing about her experiences in her journal because it helped her realize how much she actually learned from doing the projects with the right attitude.
“Putting my feelings down on paper helps me recognize what I believe in and makes me more grateful,” she said.
To earn the second award, Chanelle did 70 hours of projects and completed 42 other value experiences, on top of school and work.
“It took a lot of time, but it was worth it,” she said.
It isn’t her two medallions hanging around her neck on the same gold chain that light up her face, though. Her glittering smile reveals how much she’s grown. She said doing both programs strengthened her testimony, helped her recognize her potential, made her aware of all her blessings, and prepared her for the future.
“I think I try harder now to keep the Spirit with me and recognize what I do in my life really does affect me,” she said.
Chanelle has a lot of goals for the future, including an education, a mission, and getting married in the Salt Lake Temple. She said she’s grateful for the chance she had to earn the Young Womanhood Award—twice, because it prepared her to accomplish those goals.
Perhaps one of Chanelle’s poems said it best:
“The simple things you do
Determine what the future will bring to you.”
Now, Chanelle is always looking for new ways to grow. Earning both awards helped set a pattern of personal progress that will last her a lifetime.

A respected business leader once encouraged Elder Stevenson to “learn, earn, and serve.” In 2004 the “serve” part of that equation was tested when Elder Stevenson and longtime business partner Scott Watterson were both called to serve as mission presidents. They felt they needed to explain to various stakeholders and customers why they were temporarily leaving their company. One by one they visited them.
“When we described our call and that we would serve for three years without compensation from the Church, they respected the goodness of that,” he says. They left the business in the hands of a trusted executive team, and it prospered.

Five: “I walked into a party where people were drinking and participating in other unacceptable activities. The Spirit told me to turn around and go home. I did, and yes, there were social consequences. However, that moment gave me the confidence I needed to know that I could live the gospel.”

Years later, Sister Nadauld and I were called to preside over the Switzerland Geneva Mission—also a French-speaking area. Many of our missionaries had musical talents, and we soon saw that music training and learning a foreign language, especially one as lyrical as French, were complementary skills. We shared with them my experience of singing before teaching and invited them to learn simple hymn duets that they could sing before beginning their gospel lessons. They reported back that it had the same wonderful impact on teaching with the Spirit that Elder Robertson and I had experienced some 40 years earlier.

Heavenly Father loves us very much, and so does his Son, Jesus Christ. Because of this love, Jesus is sometimes called the Good Shepherd. When I was a boy, I was a shepherd myself, and it was hard work. The sheep in my father’s herd seemed stubborn and hard to control. When I was grown up, I went to the Holy Land where I watched another shepherd with his sheep. He spoke to them and led them. They followed him because they knew his voice. We can trust and follow our leaders and our Savior, Jesus Christ, even as the sheep followed their shepherd’s voice.

Granny keeps a plastic pail
filled with colored chunks of chalk.
At her house she lets us draw
on the driveway, porch, and walk.
Sometimes it gets to be a mess,
but she says, “Never fear.
Just a whisk of water, and
it all will disappear.”
My brother drew a blue spaceship;
I filled in moon and stars.
Next I made yellow cats and dogs;
He drew green dinosaurs.
Granny traced around our shapes
from our head down to our toes.
Then we got up and colored in
our hair and eyes and clothes.
Granny loved our work and said,
“We’ll leave it for today.
This sidewalk art is much too nice
to simply wash away!”

“How many of you remember those school worksheets that would have you draw lines that matched the relationship between pictures, peoples, or objects listed across two columns? Maybe in one column you’d find a picture of a vase, and in the next column would be found an image of a flower. Drawing a line, connecting the two, illustrated the relationship between them.
“These activities were meant to help learners recognize a correspondence, affinity, or congruity between things. On a recent ministry assignment in Lithuania, this exercise from my early school days came to my mind when a thoughtful missionary serving there asked about how I prepare myself for general conference.
“I described that as general conference approached, I focused my study very closely on the messages given by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. And I feel quite confident doing so because I recognize that all the surrounding messages given by General Authorities and General Officers supported doctrines and truths taught by prophets, seers and revelators.
“As I studied those talks throughout the year, I felt as though I could figuratively draw lines from the messages from these Church leaders to those talks given by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve. And as general conference draws near, my narrowed study of the words of the prophets provides me with fertile ground on which to plant the additional teachings I will receive next.”

My boss, classmates, neighbors, and relatives thought it was absurd for me to abandon work, studies, and family to teach of Jesus Christ. They became even more concerned when they learned I would not be paid for doing this.

I asked the Lord for help. I began to ask people: “What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? Where are we going?” I bore my testimony of the plan of salvation. I explained that many children of God are waiting for answers to these questions.

Elder Carlos Eduardo Faria Boato,Brazil Maceió Mission

One day when I was younger, my stomach began to hurt. As the day went on, it got worse. It hurt so bad I couldn’t even walk. At night, I woke up crying because I just couldn’t handle the pain. My parents rushed me to the emergency room. The doctors there thought my intestines were twisted and that I would need an intensive surgery, so they sent me to a hospital where it could be taken care of.
My family was really worried, and before I left, my dad and grandpa gave me a priesthood blessing. At the hospital, I was prepped for a special kind of X-ray, but the doctors found out I was fine. The pain started going away too. I really believe that the priesthood blessing made everything OK.
Hearing about this story growing up has really helped my testimony to grow. I know that the Lord can perform miracles today and that He is always there when I need help. Even though this experience was hard, I am thankful for trials like this in my life because they have strengthened my faith and my testimony.
Kailyn S., Nevada, USA

Such was my experience as pertains to President George H. Watson, who today serves as first counselor in the Naperville Illinois Stake presidency.
Brother Watson wrote a letter to me, never mailed, dated 3 October 1978, which tells of his conversion to the Church and of his baptism, which took place in the summer of 1959 in eastern Canada, where I served as the mission president at that time. I did not receive this letter until this past year, when it was carried to me by Elder John E. Fowler, who discovered its existence while visiting with the Watson family following a stake conference in Naperville. Both Brother Watson and I have some modest reluctance in sharing with you his private letter, but feeling the impression that the account would help to encourage many of you brethren participating in this worldwide priesthood meeting this evening, we shall do so.
I will conclude by reading President Watson’s own words. He wrote:
“Dear Elder Monson:
“This is a letter out of the blue. Its purpose is to thank you for the letters you wrote some twenty years ago—one to me and the other about me—and to let you know the effect they had on my life.
“My name is George Watson. In 1957, at the age of twenty-one, I emigrated from Ireland, where I had grown up, to Canada. The main purpose of going to Canada was to put together sufficient money to do postgraduate work at London University.
“The firm for which I worked was in Niagara Falls, and I found a room at the ridiculously inexpensive cost of $6.00 per week. The only drawback was that I had to drive the landlady—age seventy-three—to church each Sunday in St. Catharines, Ontario.
“I soon found this chore to be very annoying, as she used the twenty-five-minute drive to try to get me to see the missionaries from her church. I resisted this very effectively for better than a year, until one day she told me that there were two young ladies coming to supper, and would I care to join them. It is very difficult to be rude to lady missionaries!
“I did a great deal of thinking over the next few months and decided that although what eleven sets of missionaries were telling me felt right, I would have to give up too much, besides which I was fed up running my landlady to church. In order to stop her asking for the ride, I decided to take her half an hour late on the next Sunday and to go in and sit with her in an open-neck shirt, sneakers, and sports slacks. I thought this would embarrass her and she would not ask me again.
“My plan worked perfectly, except that she was not annoyed at being late, and I made as much impact as a damp squid. We arrived just as the Sunday School was splitting for class. I would not go into class and spent my time talking to a very fine man who was crippled and who ‘understood’ me. As I was to return to Ireland eight days later (July 1959), he suggested that I should join the Church on the Saturday before I left. He was to call and confirm this during the week, but I effectively countered this by not answering the phone all week. On Sunday, after a sleepless night, I phoned him to apologize and was baptized in Hamilton virtually on the way to the airport—knowing that I would never meet any Mormons in Ireland and that the Church would lose track of me.
“I have no idea, President Monson, where you found my address in Ireland, but on the Friday after I returned, I had a letter from you welcoming me into the Church, and on Sunday at 9:00 a.m. there was a knock on the door and a President Lynn stood on the doorstep saying he had had a letter from President Monson in Toronto asking him to watch over me.
“The next few months or years were traumatic. Three meetings on a Sunday were entirely unreasonable; no way would I speak in front of that group; they can’t expect more than 10 percent. Even more traumatic, my girlfriend set out to show me how ridiculous I was. She ended up being baptized.
“We now live in Illinois with three wonderful children. I often sit and ponder why the Lord has blessed us so greatly. We have all had reason to feel His sustaining hand in difficult times.
“Although it is unlikely that we will ever meet, I would like to very sincerely thank you for taking the trouble to write those two letters. They have completely changed the course of our lives. I am grateful for the knowledge of the Savior’s purpose in coming to earth, my relationship to Him, and what He expects of me. The courage and steadfastness of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and the knowledge that he imparted to us will always be a source of inspiration to me. I am thrilled at the opportunity of serving in the Lord’s Church.
“May the Lord continue to bless you in His work, and thank you for the effect you have had on my life.”
“[signed] George Watson”
This past Christmas, when George Watson and his beloved Chloe came to Salt Lake City to visit two of their children and a son-in-law, they came to my office, that we might formally meet. They expressed their testimonies and again conveyed their thanks for all who had participated in this human drama, this miracle in our time. Tears flowed, prayers were offered, and gratitude conveyed.
It was an appropriate season of the year for our visit together, when all Christendom pauses for a brief moment and remembers Him—even Jesus Christ—who died that we might have eternal life. He who notes the fall of the sparrow surely orchestrated the search-and-rescue mission that brought the Watson family to His fold. May we ever be found in His service and on His errand is my humble prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

One night when Zina started to get ready for bed, she found some unexpected “friends” underneath it. Joseph Smith had purchased four Egyptian mummies and some Egyptian papyri from which the Book of Abraham was translated. To keep these important relics safe from some of the enemies of the Church, the Prophet had asked the Huntingtons to hide them, which they did—underneath Zina’s bed! Unperturbed, Zina finished undressing and went to bed as usual.

Our children learn by our example and our guidance. We should be their advocates and their supporters. Leaders of the Church are also tasked to look after the precious souls of our children. Let me share with you what Pasig Stake is doing to help Establish the Kingdom of God.

Since he was called in 2014, President Soquila and his counselors realized that the number of active primary children was high, but the numbers started to decrease when they reach the Youth ages, declined further at the YSA stage, and much further as adults. They wanted to set a goal from the root which is focusing on primary children. In their words, “as we ESTABLISH the Kingdom of God, we will: help all young men to receive the priesthood office appropriate to their age, serve missions, and become better husbands, fathers and Church leaders. This way they will help gather Israel on both sides of the veil.”

It was during the preparation meeting for their first Stake Primary Priesthood Preview that they asked themselves how they can fully prepare and assure themselves that these young boys would serve their missions and become better future leaders of the Church. President Soquila said “I got this prompting that as they turn 12, they should already prepare and look forward to the year that they will be included in the batch that would enter the Missionary Training Center. So, in that Stake Annual Priesthood Preview, as a newly called Stake Presidency, we met with the Stake Primary President and thought of an idea for them to wear neckties with the words ‘MTC Batch 2021’ and nametags which said ‘future missionary.’ Then, we followed the same pattern year after year until today. For the 2020 pandemic year, we tagged our 12-year-olds as MTC Batch 2027.

“Our vision is to see all those members of the MTC batches grow together, receive their appropriate Priesthood office together, and report to the MTC together. They will develop friendships and brotherhood in their batch and say, ‘we will help one another, no one will be left behind, because he is my brother, my MTC Batchmate.’”

What a vision from a Stake President.

For their Temple and Priesthood Preparation Meeting, each child is given a tie, and embroidered on the tie is the year when the young man turns 18 which becomes the year, he hoped, the primary child will enter the MTC. President Soquila knows them one by one, isa-isa, tagsa-tagsa, including those who have moved out of the stake. I know many of you stake presidents, bishops, and organization leaders are successfully doing wonderful things as you continue to receive revelation regarding your callings. Thank you. Maraming, maraming, salamat po.

When the Rabasto family joined the Church a little over three years ago, they jumped into the gospel with both feet. After moving to the Bahamas from the Philippines, their dad, Adolfo, was called to the branch presidency. They hold regular family home evening. Archie and Roselle, the two high schoolers in the family, both attend seminary every day. They read the scriptures daily as a family. Rinna, the oldest sister in the family, is a student at BYU.
But what the family loves about the gospel most is the Christmas present they received last year. During the holiday break, the family took a trip to the temple in Orlando, Florida, to be sealed.
“I felt really excited to be in the temple,” says Archie. “I remember my sisters crying, and I felt happy, and peaceful.”
From Orlando, the family said good-bye to Rinna, since she was leaving for college. They miss her terribly, of course, but they say they feel calm about her being so far away in Utah, since they feel a lasting peace from knowing they’ll always be sealed as a family, no matter where they go.
“Everyone in the temple kept telling us how great we looked with our white clothes and jet-black hair,” says Roselle. “We felt great too. You could feel the air-conditioning in the temple, but I felt a warmth from inside. The feelings that I had there were indescribable.”

As a member of the Church, Joshua was particularly impressed with a certain group of young adults. “At first, I wasn’t sure what an ‘RM’ was. But the more I watched returned missionaries, and whenever I spent time around one of them, I knew I wanted to be one too,” he recalls.
Year after year, the returned missionaries impressed him. When he came of age, Joshua met with his bishop, submitted his application, and waited to receive his mission call.
“The more I watched returned missionaries … I knew I wanted to be one too.”
That’s when, one Sunday, half a dozen refugees who are returned missionaries—and also friends with Joshua—gathered in the cultural hall after church to counsel with him.
One of them, Madelaine Lamah, who served in the New York New York South Mission, said her mission motto was “Forever Changed.” She reminded Joshua that joining the Church changed his family’s life and that he would be an instrument of change for others as he shared the gospel with them.
Jean-Pierre Benimana, who served in the California Los Angeles Mission, reminded Joshua that “the happiest people on earth are those who live the gospel of Jesus Christ with all their hearts.”
The returned missionaries were refugees from countries like Burundi and Rwanda, in Africa, and Burma, in Asia. They have served in places like Los Angeles, California, and Birmingham, Alabama, in the USA, and in western African countries like Benin and Côte d’Ivoire. They were blessed to receive the gospel, and they were equally blessed to share it. Now they explained to Joshua that he was about to become a part of that legacy.

As we recently left the temple together, following the marriage of some young friends, Rich, the groom, said he first met Kate when he was 14. “That’s when I first saw the vision,” he told us, smiling at Kate in her wedding dress. “But I wasn’t worthy of her, so she never knew how I admired her. Then after years of school, seminary, and a mission, I saw her again. And this time I was ready.”

The Primary children of the Old Hickory Ward, Nashville Tennessee Stake, want to do their best to defend their gospel standards! To show their commitment, they all signed a My Gospel Standards poster and presented it to their bishop. They know that by living these standards they are preparing for the temple.

President Brigham Young (1801–77) said he knew the gospel was true when he “saw a man without eloquence, or talents for public speaking, who could only say, ‘I know, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of the Lord.’” President Young said when he heard that humble testimony, “The Holy Ghost proceeding from that individual illuminate[d] my understanding, and light, glory, and immortality [were] before me.”2

I understand Joseph Smith’s need to pray. I had always prayed before I went to bed at night. When I became a teenager I didn’t stop believing, but I stopped taking the time to pray. One day that changed.
I had gone on a campout with some young men, and one of my good friends and I were in a tent together. I jumped into my sleeping bag, and I looked over to see my friend kneeling on his sleeping bag and praying. When he got into his sleeping bag, he said, “Lynn, don’t you pray?”
I answered, “Not as much as I should.” And I made up my mind then that no one would question again whether I prayed.

For the past 10 years, she, my son, and their family have lived hundreds of miles from us. I have prayed that others would love and care for them as I do, and I have pleaded tearfully with Heavenly Father that others would reach out to them as I would if they lived close by. From what Joann says, you are the answer to my prayers.