Gospel Story Finder

The same allegiance to tradition that makes missionary proselyting difficult also demands ingenuity in doing member-missionary work. About fourteen years ago, in Premia de Mar, a small suburb of Barcelona, Mari Carmen Clavet and Carol B. Rivero began holding home Relief Society. No branch existed in the town. The majority of the twenty-five women who attended were not members of the Church, but they still seemed to enjoy the prayerfully selected lessons prepared each week.

When four baptisms resulted from the Premia sisterhood, missionaries were sent to the small town and established the Premia de Mar Branch, although there were no priesthood holders at the time. For several years missionaries served as branch presidents, until a returned missionary, Javier Garriga—once a Primary student of Sister Rivero—moved to Premia de Mar. He now serves as branch president.

Desperate yet undaunted, Father continued to attend the temple daily. As I stood at the window and watched him leave for the temple early one morning, I remembered a day many years earlier, when my little brother was thrown from a horse. Thinking he had suffered only a little bruising and a bloody nose, I was devastated when he died late that night. My world caved in, and for months I mulled over the painful question, Why hadn’t Heavenly Father sent a miracle to save my brother’s life?

One evening as I conversed with President Harold B. Lee, I said to him, “President Lee, you seem different someway tonight.” He smiled and said, “You know what it is, don’t you?” I shook my head and said I really didn’t know what it was. Then he shared with me his remarkable experience saying:

“After I became the President of the Church, I thought a great deal about what the Lord wanted me to do. One night, while I was sleeping, President McKay came to me in a dream. He pointed his finger and looked at me with those piercing eyes of his as only President McKay could do, and he said, ‘If you would serve the Lord, you must love and serve his children.’ I awakened with a compelling desire to learn all I could about love that I might serve the Lord.”

He said, “After I had read everything the scriptures had to say about love, I began to put into practice all that I had gleaned from my study. That’s what you can feel. It is my newfound ability to truly love and serve his children.”

I watched President Lee even a little more closely that night and noted that not one person who came to the table to shake his hand left without receiving a special word of encouragement or an extra question that indicated the concern of the prophet. No one went away without seeing his smile or hearing his words of love.

“Why do dragons sleep during the day?” Wendy asked. And after a few seconds, the punch line: “Because they fight knights!”
I laughed as I paid for my lunch. Wendy, who ran the cash register, always told a joke of the day. This would be another great one to share with Melody, the eight-year-old in our family.
“And here’s one for you from Melody,” I said. “What kind of animal do you never want to play games with?” Pause for dramatic effect … “A cheetah!”
Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin (1917–2008) taught, “[Laughter] will extend your life and make the lives of all those around you more enjoyable.”1
Wendy’s jokes have certainly made my life more enjoyable, as well as the lives of my family as I’ve retold them. But do you know what else those jokes are, besides funny?
They’re a form of service.

Colby loves sports. Besides playing ball with Ben and T-ball on a local community team, he fishes when he can. He caught the only fish—a ten-to-twelve-inch bass—when his family went fishing at their grandparents’ home in Texas.

As a new General Authority Seventy of the Church eleven years ago, whenever I received my stake conference assignments to stakes in North America, all my inadequacies and fears came flooding into my mind. How could I teach people who were born in the Church, who had grown up with the gospel, and knew of Church government through a lifetime of observing their leaders, many of whom were their own parents? What could I possibly say that could make it worth their while to spend their time listening to me? Had they not heard it all before? Where was I to begin?
The preparation for each assignment became marked by one struggle after another, and one abandoned talk outline after another. I remember several times staying up the whole night trying to find a message that the saints would find meaningful during the Sunday general session of stake conference.
During this time of struggle, in a tender mercy that the Lord extended to me, one day I found myself alone with an Apostle. After some hesitation, I gathered the courage to seek his counsel. I was a great admirer of his talks, in which every sentence was to me like scripture. I asked him his secret for composing such compelling messages.
In my situation at the time, his response almost stunned me. He paused for some time and then said that he always felt the weight of the responsibility of his calling towards the Saints, and so he diligently sought the Lord’s help with each message that he prepared. If he felt that the message had been well received, he would go to the Lord with a prayer of thanksgiving. If he felt it had not, he would go to the Lord with a pleading to help him do better next time. He added that this was his experience during the period of over twenty years that he had served as an Apostle of the Lord.
His example and testimony reminded me of the sacred record about prophets such as Alma who “labored much in the spirit, wrestling with God in mighty prayer”5, and Enos who wrote about the “wrestle which [he] had before God”6. The lesson was taught to me again powerfully that striving to connect with the Spirit of God is the measure of true discipleship.

President Thomas S. Monson
A blind man seeks a priesthood blessing (89).

Now, some of you may not have a paper waiting for you. It may be a textbook with a math problem hidden in it. Let me tell you about a day in your future. You’ll have a teenage son or daughter who’ll say, “I hate school.” After some careful listening, you’ll find it is not school or even mathematics he or she hates—it’s the feeling of failure.

You’ll correctly discern those feelings, and you’ll be touched; you’ll want to freely give. So you’ll open the text and say, “Let’s look at one of the problems together.” Think of the shock you will feel when you see that the same rowboat is still going downstream in two hours and back in five hours, and the questions are still how fast the current is and how far the boat traveled. You might think, “Well, I’ll make my children feel better by showing them that I can’t do math either.” Let me give you some advice: they will see that as a poor gift.

You are reading a book when your brother asks if you want to hear about his day. You say,
“Not now. I’m in the middle of this chapter.”
“Sure! Just let me put this bookmark in.”

I was a boy during the Great Depression. I remember children wearing galoshes because they had no shoes and going hungry because they had no food. These were difficult times.
A bright light of hope shining amidst the gloom was Primary. I was 10 years old. I had a marvelous teacher. I look back upon that year as my finest in Primary, and I must say it was because of my wonderful teacher. It wasn’t because the boys in the class were particularly enlightened or unusually well behaved; on the contrary.
The laughter of the boys and the chatter of the girls at times must have been most disconcerting to our Primary leaders.
One day as we left the chapel for our classrooms, I noted that our Primary president remained behind. I paused and observed her. She sat all alone on the front row of the benches, took out her handkerchief, and began to weep. I walked up to her and said, “Sister Georgell, don’t cry.”
She said, “I’m sad.”
I responded, “What’s the matter?”
She said, “I can’t control the Trail Builders.* Will you help me?”
Of course I answered, “Yes.”
She said, “Oh, that would be wonderful, Tommy, if you would.”
What I didn’t know then is that I was one of those responsible for her tears. She had effectively enlisted me to aid in achieving reverence in our Primary. And we did.

In the years that followed, the Relief Society grew in numbers and in power to serve those in need. Under the leadership of women of great vision and capacity, the Relief Society took the lead in starting charitable services which did not exist on the frontier for those in need. They created a small hospital. They supported women in going to the East to get medical training to staff it. That was the beginning of one of the great hospital systems in the United States.

After a joyful time of service for the Relief Society, the Lord led them into another season, away from the fields they had planted so magnificently. It was hard for the faithful men who inherited, for instance, the hospital system they had expanded on the foundation the Relief Society had built. The Lord, through His prophets, made clear that His priesthood servants could hand the trust of maintaining and building that powerful instrument for good to others. And so the Church gave away its marvelous hospital system.

I know and admire the men who had felt the joy of service in that hospital system. And I saw their recognition that the joy had come from being at work with the Lord, not from their own accomplishments. So they smiled and gave away gladly what they had built. They had faith that the Lord saw a greater need for their service elsewhere, in other fields in another season.

Years ago when our youngest son, Clark, was attending a religion class at Brigham Young University, the instructor, during a lecture, asked Clark, “What is an example of life with your father that you best remember?”
The instructor later wrote to me and told me of the reply which Clark had given to the class. Said Clark: “When I was a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood, my dad and I went pheasant hunting near Malad, Idaho. The day was Monday—the last day of the season. We walked through countless fields in search of pheasants but only saw a few, and these we missed. Dad then said to me, ‘Clark, let’s unload our guns, and we’ll place them in this ditch. Then we’ll kneel down to pray.’ I thought Dad would pray for more pheasants, but I was wrong. He explained to me that Elder Richard L. Evans was gravely ill and that at 12 noon on that particular Monday the members of the Quorum of the Twelve—wherever they may be at the time—were to kneel and, in a way, together unite in a fervent prayer of faith for Elder Evans. Removing our caps, we knelt, we prayed.”
I well remember the occasion, but I never dreamed a son was watching, was learning, was building his own testimony.

Once home, we found that Abby seemed to respond more than the neurosurgeon had predicted. However, it wasn’t long before her head began to enlarge rapidly, and the neurosurgeon had to install a small tube device to drain excess fluid. He felt it was unnecessary surgery, but for us to stand by and do nothing would have meant watching her suffer a slow, agonizing death. We couldn’t have borne that. She had a heart murmur, and we despaired that she might not make it through the surgery, but we felt we had no alternative.
Abby withstood the operation valiantly, and we marveled. What kept her alive? Eventually her appetite improved and she began to gain weight.
I noticed almost immediately when she came home again that she could hear, and we were very encouraged. But it soon proved more of a problem than a blessing. She reacted violently to the slightest sound. More than once I walked into her room and spoke softly to her, only to have her turn purple with her screaming. She had no way of relating to the different noises around her, and they terrified her.
That was the beginning of the hardest summer of our lives. Abby Ruth was up all night long, night after night, crying until Randy and I thought we would lose our minds. Many times she screamed all night until 5:00 or 6:00 A.M., then finally went to sleep. By 10:30 or 11:00 A.M., I had to force myself to go check her. What if she was dead? What would I do? I knew that how I reacted to such a situation would deeply affect my other two daughters, and the pressure became more than I could handle.
Finally, I had reached the point where a complete breakdown for me was not far off. Near the end of September we made an appointment with the chief of staff at the state training school for the handicapped, hoping to get some kind of help.
The staff at the state school were very receptive. At last we found people who really understood what we had been going through. They offered to take her, to give us one week’s rest.
At the end of that week, the same pattern began again. She cried constantly, day and night, and many were the times that we stood next to her crib or held her and cried right along with her. I felt so helpless, and I could see no end in sight. “What kind of life is this?” I asked myself. My two older children were beginning to suffer from neglect, and so was my marriage.
Another major decision had to be made, but Randy and I disagreed. He felt that placing Abby at the state school would be the same as deserting her. I looked on it as our only chance to return to a normal life and continue with our family; it would be impossible for me to go on giving her the twenty-four-hour care that she needed.
I couldn’t help but feel that I had failed her, though, and in my grief I turned to Heavenly Father. He knew the whole story, but I repeated it all to him on my knees late one night. I prayed longer and more earnestly that night than ever before. When I was finally finished, I crawled into bed and, feeling completely drained, leaned back against my pillow, staring into the darkness that surrounded me.
It was then that I received my answer. It came clearly and distinctly, a soothing response to my prayers and heartache. Not only should we place Abby Ruth in the state training school, we need not worry about her. She would understand why we made the decision to place her in the school.
Perhaps other parents in a similar situation would have received different direction. I only know that our answer came from Heavenly Father, and we trusted that He knew our situation and had inspired us to act appropriately.
On 1 November 1980, Abby became a permanent resident at the state training school. We’ve never regretted having her home with us as long as we did. Because of that, she became an integral part of our family.

Recently in the small village of Ubon, Thailand, a member family by the name of Tan was beset with what seemed to be insurmountable problems. The father had lost his job, they had no money, the children were sick and malnourished. They were being forced to remove their humble home from the government land upon which it was built, and they had no place to go.
At this point a fine priesthood leader, who had been using welfare services missionaries as a resource, stepped in and averted what could otherwise have been a tragic situation. Under his guidance and with the assistance of all the branch members, a piece of land was obtained, and the Tan family home was dismantled, transported, and rebuilt. Brother Tan began farming the land and started a family produce business which is now flourishing. Some hard work, dedication, and love from local leaders and members, aided by the suggestions of welfare services missionaries, caused a miracle for one family and a great learning and growing experience for a whole branch.

About those dinosaurs that need painting. The Ogden Weber Heights Stake wanted service to the community to be part of their youth conference. The city had been building a parkway along the river. One of the attractions was a dinosaur park with full-size replicas of several species of dinosaurs as they must have looked when they roamed the area. The trouble is, replicas have to stay out in the sun and snow, weather that can destroy paint jobs. So paint colors like brontosaurus brown and pterodactyl tan were soon speckling the clothes, faces, and hands of some willing painters. It’s hard to feel down when you’re hanging around the neck of a dinosaur with a paintbrush.

Then the whole stake planned a day to plant trees along the parkway. Jeff Walker, 16, from the Skyline Ward, said, “It’s nice to do something to help make our community look better. After the service project, I drove by with one of my friends. He said, ‘Man, that sure has been cleaned up a lot.’ I told him I helped with that.”

When asked what she would tell other teens in her ward and stake who were wavering about making the decision to participate, Dieuwke Stohel, 17, of the Grandview Ward said, “I would tell them, When you get done, the day cannot go wrong. Once you’re there, you’ll be really glad you went.”

About this time, an important occurrence took place in his life. In his journal he wrote, “I felt an earnest desire to become a subject of Christianity.” For months he prayed for guidance, and his “mischievous life and shortcomings were laid aside.”

On a beautiful afternoon towards the end of August, my friend and I made a discovery. Along the old railway embankment at the back of a park were scores of blackberry bushes with the biggest, juiciest fruit we’d ever seen. We hurried home to collect containers and then returned to the park to pick the blackberries. We worked methodically in the warm afternoon sun, stripping the bushes bare of their treasures until we reached the end of the path.
As we made our way back, we were surprised to see more luscious berries we had not seen before. We stopped and continued to fill our containers, amazed that we could have missed those berries the first time. At last our containers were full, and we were ready to make blackberry pie.

I have a little sister,
Not much littler than me,
Who first thing summer mornings
Likes to play hide-and-seek.
She spots a chirping cricket
And stalks the bees that hum
To where the wild dandelions
Glisten in the sun.
She gathers pretty rocks
And cherries from the tree.
She finds four-leaf clovers,
But she never finds me.

On June 15, 1987, as a member of the area presidency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I flew to Asunción where I met with John J. Whetten, president of the Paraguay Asunción Mission. With a few other brethren, we loaded two small trucks with a pedal sewing machine, cloth to make shirts and dresses, rice, beans, salt, and a few other necessities. We also carried with us a copy of Gospel Principles, newly translated into Nivaclé. (The Nivaclé Indians do not speak Paraguay’s predominant languages of Spanish or Guarani, but their own dialect.)
From Asunción, we traveled about 480 kilometers to the city of Filadelfia, a drive of seven hours on a good road. The next day, we traveled the 250 kilometers to Mistolar going about 15 to 25 kilometers per hour over an extremely rutted, dusty road. Even a sprinkle of rain would have turned the road to mud, preventing us from reaching the settlement. This shorter section of our journey took almost nine hours.
When we arrived at Mistolar, we were warmly welcomed by mostly women and children. I asked where some of the men were and was told they were hunting. When I asked what the men were hunting the sisters said, “Anything.” (Some of the men walk the twenty-kilometer round trip to the river to fish.) The settlement’s surviving livestock included three sheep, a few chickens, a couple of goats and a scrawny dog. With little nourishing food or clothing saved from the floods, these Saints shivered in the 20 (C) degree winter weather of June. At night, their stick-and-reed homes offered little protection from freezing temperatures of 0 to 5 (C) degrees. The other eleven months of the year are extremely hot—often over 48 (C) degrees.
But in spite of all of the hardships they had endured for months, the Mistolar Saints were without one single complaint. There wasn’t one sad face. Not once did they do anything but smile.
They offered to kill one of the sheep for a meal that afternoon and we politely declined. Nevertheless, they insisted. We ate sparingly of the meat, knowing they would use anything we left.
I asked the young president of the Mistolar Branch, “Do you have any sick among your members?” (The people in this land die at an early age. Statistically, of 200 Nivaclé, only eleven will die of old age; the rest will die of disease.) He looked at me, paused, and said, “I don’t think so; let me ask the other brethren.” A few minutes later after conversing with two of the brethren, he said, “My brethren told me, ‘Of course we have no sick.’” He added, by way of simple explanation, “There are thirty-nine of us who hold the Melchizedek Priesthood. We watch over and bless our people.”
I asked, “Do you have any members who are not quite as active as the rest?” He said, “Elder Brewerton, of course not. We have accepted the Lord through baptism. We are all true Saints, totally active in our worship of the Lord.”
For the evening meeting, I asked the branch president to find some members to pray. One sister talked to the Lord in very a personal manner saying, “Father we have lost our beautiful chapel, we have lost our clothing, we no longer have homes, we have no food to eat, we don’t have any materials to build anything, we have to walk ten kilometers to get a drink of dirty river water and we don’t have a bucket. But we desire to express to you our gratitude for our good health, for our happiness, and for our Church membership. Father, we want you to know that under any conditions we will be true, strong and faithful to the covenants we made to thee when we were baptized.”
We visitors were very humbled by their example of faith. During the meeting, we dedicated their land to the Lord. We visited each family site and saw where they would plant their gardens when the rains would come.

I sit here on the beach
And watch the waves roll in.
The clouds silently scoot across the sky
As the sea gulls use them in a game of hide-and-seek.
A radio plays my favorite song,
While a group of children on down the beach
Cover themselves in sand.
The sun climbs to its high point in the sky,
And I feel the first tingle of sunburn.
Suddenly I remember—
A world of ringing telephones,
Bellowing teachers and taking exams,
Rushing and hurrying everywhere.
A world of heavy coats
And mufflers,
Sniffles and ice.
I shake my head a little
And shudder to myself trying to forget
What seems like a nightmare.
As the sun heads downward,
I walk along the water letting
The waves tickle my toes,
Content to remain
Here in reality.