Gospel Story Finder

Sister Shumway recalls a time when one guest antagonistically asked how Native Americans feel about the Book of Mormon. The sister missionary leading the tour responded, “Well, I’m part Blackfoot and Shoshone.” Then she shared her love for the Book of Mormon.

When I’ve had an argument, I have found that saying you are sorry and admitting that you are wrong, even if you think or know that you’re right, helps bring peace back in the room. Then walk away, stay silent, change the topic, or find something to agree about. It doesn’t take long for the Spirit to come back.
Dylan M., 15, California, USA

In our day, it might happen like this. Four people were fulfilling an assignment from their bishop to visit, at his home, a man who was sick with palsy. I can visualize one of them coming from the Relief Society, one from the elders quorum, one from the Aaronic Priesthood, and, last but not least, one full-time missionary. In the most recent ward council, after counseling together about the needs in the ward, the bishop had given out “rescuing” assignments. These four were assigned to help this man suffering with palsy. They could not wait for him to come to church by himself. They had to go to his home and visit him. They had to seek him out, and so they went. The man was being brought to Jesus.

“And they [came] unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four” (Mark 2:3).

However, the room was too crowded. They could not get in through the door. I am sure they tried everything they could think of, but they just could not get through. Things did not happen as smoothly as planned. There were obstacles along their way of “rescue.” But they did not give up. They did not leave the man with palsy by the door. They counseled together on what to do next—how they could bring the man unto Jesus Christ for healing. The work to assist Jesus Christ in saving souls, at least for them, was never too demanding. They came up with a plan—not an easy one, but they acted on it.

“And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay” (Mark 2:4).

They brought him up to the roof. Assuming there was no outside staircase for them to climb, it would have taken them quite some time to get everyone onto the roof. I think it might have happened this way: the young man from his ward would have climbed up to the roof first. As he was young and full of energy, it would not have been too difficult for him. His home teaching companion from the elders quorum and the tall and strong full-time missionary would have pushed really hard from below. The Relief Society sister would have reminded them to be careful and given them words of encouragement. The men would then uncover the roof while the sister continued to comfort the man as he waited to be healed—to be able to move by himself and to be free.

This rescue assignment needed everyone working together. At the crucial moment, it would take careful coordination to lower the man with palsy from the roof. The four people would have to work in unity and in harmony. There could not be any discord among the four. They would have to lower the man with palsy at the same pace. If someone released the rope faster than the other three, the man would fall out of his bed. He could not hold on by himself due to his weakened condition.

Finally, the sick, palsied man was laid before Jesus. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee” (Mark 2:5). Jesus showed mercy on him and healed him—not only physically but also spiritually: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” Isn’t that wonderful? Wouldn’t we like that to happen to all of us too? Certainly I would.

Whenever I heard the words “missionary work,” I used to think of giving away a Book of Mormon. While I had previously given away copies of the Book of Mormon, none of the people I gave them to seemed interested. But I didn’t know that for the past year and a half, I have been a missionary just by being who I am and sticking to my standards.
It began on the first day of school one year. I had arrived at my first class early, and so I sat down at a desk in the middle of the classroom. A girl named Alicia* came in and sat in the far back. Since I was alone, I invited her to sit with me. She had just moved from Mexico over the summer, so she didn’t have any friends yet. I was glad we had most of our classes together. That’s how we became friends.
But our lives were very different. Alicia wore outfits that differed from my standards and used bad language. In her old school, she talked back to her teachers, and grades weren’t important to her. She had a bad family life and would sneak out and go to parties.
As we have become good friends, I have noticed a good change in her. She no longer wears inappropriate clothing. She is careful to not use bad language. She has improved her grades, even competing for the highest scores. Her family life is getting a lot better too. She never sneaks out anymore or goes to bad parties.
We talk about her changes and improvements. Alicia told me that one night her boyfriend came over and wanted her to break the law of chastity. She was about to give in when she saw in her mind a flashback of all the improvements she’s made and how proud she is of herself. She wasn’t willing to throw it all away. So she said no and broke up with him. That was the greatest thing for me to hear from her, and I am so proud of her.
Missionary work truly can occur by example as we live the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was in the kitchen helping Mom make tuna sandwiches for 14 billion of Todd’s friends who had just happened to come over on a Saturday. We couldn’t help but overhear their conversation in the living room.
“How will we all get home after the game?” asked one of his friends. They were seniors in high school and didn’t have anything better to do than worry about getting home from the game.
“Maybe I could take you,” Todd said. “That’d be great,” said another friend.
“Wait a minute,” Todd said.
“We’d have to share the costs.”
“Costs?”
“The only car big enough is the LTD. That’s ten cents a mile. I figure that with the eight of you that’s got to be around 50 miles. Plus a pro rata share of my monthly insurance bill and the cost of gasoline, which at 69¢ a gallon and 11 miles to the gallon comes to $3.13, plus the mileage and share—that’s $9.13. And there are eight of us so it’s $1.14 each, with a penny left over. I’ll treat you to the penny.”
They were astounded. They were appalled. “A dollar each just to get home from the game?”
“A dollar and fourteen cents. And don’t forget the free penny.”
“I think my parents can take me.” Pretty soon all of them decided their parents could take them home.
“Too bad,” Todd said. “It probably costs your parents more than a buck to make a special trip there and back. You guys just don’t know how much it costs to keep cars running these days.”
I spread tuna on the last sandwich as Mother ran water in the bowl. “Do you hear what I hear?” I asked.
“I think my son Todd is beginning to get some sense about money,” she answered.
I didn’t say anything. I thought it sounded like my brother Todd wasn’t pulling a full train.

Seven-year-old Adam wanted to be a superhero. He’d seen superheroes on TV, and he’d read a lot of superhero adventures. He thought that he was qualified for the job. He knew exactly how to stop the bad guys and prevent wrongdoings.
One morning when Adam woke up, he decided that his time to be a superhero had come. He was going to save the day.
“Hurry up,” Mother called. “Breakfast is ready.”
Adam jumped out of bed, dressed in an instant, then ran into the kitchen.
“That was fast,” Mother noticed. “You must have big plans for the day.”
“Sort of,” he replied. He didn’t want to say too much. Every seven-year-old knows that superheroes don’t brag.
Adam gulped down his breakfast, thinking of the possible adventures ahead.
Mother’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Oh, my,” she sighed. “I almost forgot that I promised to pick a basket of raspberries for Mrs. Evans this morning. Adam, could you clear and wash these breakfast dishes so I can get started?”
At first, Adam was a little annoyed. After all, he had more important things to do. He had to save the day. Oh, well, he thought. It’s still early, and the day hasn’t needed saving yet. Besides, if Mrs. Evans was going to make jam with the raspberries, maybe she’d save a jar for him. He liked Mrs. Evans, and Mrs. Evans knew that he liked raspberry jam.
After the dishes were done, Adam practically flew out the front door. He stopped at the end of the driveway and surveyed the neighborhood with his eagle-like vision. It seemed pretty quiet, but every superhero knows well that quiet can be deceiving.
Suddenly the quiet was broken! His little brother, Aaron, was yelling from the front porch. “Adam, Mom wants you to tie my shoes.” Aaron was four and was just learning to tie his shoes.
Adam trudged up the stairs to the front porch and began to tie his younger brother’s shoes. Then a super idea came to him: If I teach Aaron how to tie his own shoes, I won’t have to do it anymore, and I’ll have more time to save the day! He sat patiently with his brother. It was frustrating at first, but pretty soon Aaron’s fingers did just what they were supposed to do. Now Aaron could tie his own shoes. Helping Aaron tie his shoes had taken longer than Adam had expected. He hoped that he hadn’t been needed for an emergency. He decided to take a walk around the neighborhood, keeping his eyes and ears open for any signs of trouble.
Except for two dogs chasing a cat up a tree, he didn’t see anything. He chased the dogs away and coaxed the cat out of the tree. It wasn’t his idea of a superhero’s job, even if the cat seemed happy. Discouraged, he went home.
“Hi,” Mother said. “I was just coming to find you. We need to go to the grocery store and buy a few things for dinner. Go jump in the car.”
Adam brightened a little. Maybe he could save the day at the store. Eager to get there, he helped Aaron and their younger sister, Jenna, put on their seat belts before he buckled his own. Once inside the store, he scanned the aisles in search of anything amiss.
Adam pushed the cart while Mother loaded it with groceries. With Jenna sitting in it, it was getting harder and harder to push. By the time they got to the checkout stand, he was very tired, but he was sure that all the pushing had made his muscles stronger. A superhero needed to be really strong. But he was disappointed that he hadn’t been needed to save the day.
Once they were home, he helped carry in the groceries and put them away. And while Mother fixed dinner, he set the table. After dinner, he decided he might as well clear the table, too.
The day was almost over. In just a couple more hours it would be time for bed, and he hadn’t saved the day yet. He decided to go out on the porch and take one last look around the neighborhood.
Just as he was going out the door, he heard Jenna crying. She was ready for bed and wanted to hear a story. Adam could hear Mother in the other room, helping Aaron get ready for bed. Adam was a good reader, and he figured that reading one story wouldn’t take too long. He settled Jenna in her bed and read her favorite story to her—then another and another. By the time she fell asleep, it was almost time for Adam to get ready for bed. I haven’t done one thing to save the day, he thought. Not one sinister plan has been stopped. No one has needed rescuing. I haven’t saved the day at all.
As he lay in bed, thinking about his wasted day, Mother came to find him. “Adam, you got ready for bed awfully early. Are you feeling all right?”
“Yeah—I guess I’m just tired.” Mother smiled. “I bet you are—you really saved the day for me today. Thank you.”
“What?” Adam sat upright in his bed. “What did you say?”
“I said that you saved the day for me today. I never could have finished all the things that needed to be done if it weren’t for your help.” And with a quick kiss on his forehead, Mother was gone.
“I saved the day!” Adam whispered excitedly. “I really did it!”
That night Adam the superhero fell asleep thinking of ways he could save the day tomorrow.

“It just doesn’t seem like Christmas this year,” Porter said. He dropped his backpack on a kitchen chair. “There’s no snow. And I don’t have any friends here.”
“Well, we can’t change the weather,” Mom said. She gave him a hug. “And I know moving has been hard for you.”
“I just wish I had some friends,” Porter said. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.
“What’s that?” Mom asked.
“It’s about a food drive at school.”
“Let me see,” she said, handing him a cup of hot chocolate. “Maybe if you help with the food drive, you can meet some new people and make friends.”
“Maybe.”
Porter grabbed a handful of marshmallows and started dropping them into his cup one by one.
“Really,” Mom said. “I bet there’s a way to make friends and help people feel the Christmas spirit.”
Porter wasn’t paying attention. He was thinking about his friends in his old neighborhood.
“Remember when we did the lemonade stand with Anne?” he said. “I wish we could do that again.” Plop. Plop. Plop. He added three more marshmallows. “But nobody wants to drink lemonade in December, even if there isn’t any snow.”
“Maybe they’d like to drink something warm instead.”
“Like hot chocolate …” Porter glanced at his cup. “I know! We could have a hot chocolate stand!”
Mom smiled. “Let’s do it.”
Porter looked at the food drive flyer.
“What if we asked people for a can of food instead of money?” Porter said. “Then we could donate the food to the food drive.”
“A cup of cocoa for a can of food,” Mom said. “I like it.”
They went right to work. Mom made sure they had plenty of hot chocolate, disposable cups, and marshmallows. Together they made flyers and gave them to all of their neighbors. On Saturday morning the Cup-for-a-Can Cocoa Stand was open. And it was busy.
“That man just handed me 10 cans of food for one cup of hot chocolate!” Porter said to Mom. “I’ve met lots of people, and they’re all really friendly.”
Soon he had stacked more than a hundred cans of food on a table next to the cocoa!
“I can’t wait to tell Anne about this,” Porter said. “This is even better than the lemonade stand. Maybe she’ll do hot chocolate too.”
“I’m proud of you,” Mom said. “You found a way to meet people and help others too.”
“It feels more like Christmas now,” Porter said. “Even without the snow.”

Not many young women set a turkey trot race as their goal—but Debbie and Lori Wright of the Orem 47th Ward, Orem Utah Windsor Stake, did. They decided to accept the challenge of running the 4.25-mile race with their Laurel adviser, Lorraine Gaufin. Since neither of the sisters had raced before, they set up their own jogging schedules, trained on their own, and even got matching T-shirts with “Lorraine’s Laurels” printed on the back. The race was long enough to discourage them. It wasn’t the easiest goal they’ve ever achieved, but they ran a good race, They both finished the course, and Debbie brought home a turkey she won in the post-race drawing.

1833 The Book of Commandments was published. Few copies survived a mob attack on the printing press. Two teens, Mary Elizabeth and Caroline Amelia Rollins, saved as many pages as they could and hid from the mob in a cornfield.

Many people have helped me arrive at the place where I am today, serving as a missionary in the India New Delhi Mission. I was not born a member of the Church or even a Christian. It was a childhood friend who introduced me to the gospel.
After I was baptized, I had an institute teacher who nourished me with the word of God every week and he helped me to always have a desire to go on a mission. Whenever I didn’t attend institute class, he came to my home to find out why and to be sure I was at the next class. I also had a bishop who always kept me busy with a calling and with Church activities. Back then, I felt they were little pushy, but because of them, today I am happy, gaining a lot of experience helping many people to come unto Christ as a missionary!
This was true in my life. I had all three of those things. It was very easy to stay active even though I was the only member in my family. I never felt alone. My ward members took care of me. It’s been six years since I started following Jesus Christ. He has always helped me very much through my ward members.

To explain why I was so stirred by our son’s response, I must share a story about his older brother, born shortly after my father’s death. We gave this older son his grandfather’s name as a middle name. He felt awkward about that old-fashioned name in his early years and didn’t use it. But when he took up debate in high school and learned that his grandfather had been a champion debater in the 1920s, he began feeling a tie to his namesake. My father had kept a personal journal during much of his adult life, and one day I showed my son an entry describing his grandfather’s big debate. I left that journal with him, hoping he would read it.
He was a good boy, but he wasn’t easy to rear. We prayed for patience. We prayed that the seeds of faith would take root in his heart, but we knew we couldn’t force that process. I thought during those days about my own older brother, who died in an accident during his turbulent adolescence. How my parents had prayed and grieved for him! Then one night my son left me a simple note: “I never want to do anything that would hurt you and Mom the way your brother’s problems hurt your parents.” I wondered how he could have known of something so personal from a generation ago. Then I remembered the journal, but I chose not to ask more.
A few weeks later, our son worked his way through a particularly trying experience and came to us late at night to tell us what had happened: “Dad, I never knew Grandpa Hafen, but I felt he was there, helping me.” I held him close that night, and I told him more about his grandfather.
Not long afterward, he was deciding how he should respond to a mission call. We were in southern Utah for a family reunion. One afternoon, with no explanation, he drove alone to the isolated little canyon where his grandfather had loved to ride his horse—the place, in fact, where he had passed away. Our son had read of this canyon in the journal and had seen it from a distance but had never been in it. In a secluded spot there, he knelt and asked the Lord’s help in sorting through his questions about his faith, his mission, and his life. At his missionary farewell, he alluded to the sacredness of that day and described the deep assurance and sense of direction he had carried from his grandfather’s canyon. Now, some years later, with children of his own, he reflects in his life that same assurance and direction, and I know the joy my father must feel.

A new girl moved into my ward when I was just starting fifth grade. Her name was Gilly (short for Gillian).
Gilly was in my Primary class. But she stopped coming to church for a while. One Sunday I called and told her that the other girls in my class and I missed her and hoped to see her at church again. And we did see her at church again!
Now I go to middle school and sit by Gilly in health class, along with two other girls from our Primary class. I really enjoy being a missionary now and a friend. I like helping people feel happy and fit in. I want people to feel the Spirit and the same warm happiness that I feel at church.

In November of 2015, from the comfort of my warm bed, I watched a video about the devastating refugee crisis going on in Greece. By the time the video was finished, my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. I knew what that familiar feeling meant. I’d had a prompting, and a few short weeks later, I found myself stepping into the eerie heart of the biggest refugee camp on the island of Lesbos.

“Every member a missionary” is the motto for youth of the Glendale California Stake.
Some 35 Laurels and priests spent their summer vacations knocking on doors and spreading the gospel, going on splits with the full-time missionaries.
David Smith, 16, said, “It was the best opportunity I’ve had so far to do missionary work, and it let me experience what it will be like when I go on my actual mission.”
Planting seeds by sharing the gospel is what prophets have asked every member to do. These young missionaries in Glendale, California, have learned to do so well and will continue to set great examples for everyone they meet.

I joined the Church in England in 1965, but the hostile reaction of my father and other pressures eventually led me to become less active.
Those were painful and unhappy times. On the outside it seemed easy to stay away, and I suppose I started to break the Word of Wisdom to fool myself that I didn’t care. Eventually I convinced myself Heavenly Father no longer loved or cared about me, and I felt completely rejected and alone.
Members still visited me occasionally, but it didn’t help. I both resented and envied them.
Then one evening a pair of senior sister missionaries dropped by. I was determined to give them a hard time so they wouldn’t make a return visit, but something inside me warmed to them. They had come as friends, not to preach to me or make me feel guilty.
They returned again and again to work in my garden and to strip paint from an old chest and help restore it—but above all to be friends to me. I began to be able to feel the Savior’s love through them as they filled my home with their obvious joy in living the gospel. They gained my trust, something that was so difficult for me to give.
All too soon their missions came to an end and they returned home.

It was Richard’s father who first thought of publishing the mazes in a book to earn money for his mission. “I promised the Lord that all the money would go into my mission fund,” Richard said. “The books weren’t selling too well to begin with, but then we got more orders than books and had to have some more printed.” They have now published more than 1,000 copies.
Now Richard is serving in the Texas San Antonio Mission, and mazes have become less important. “In the mission field,” he says, “I don’t have time to draw one, because it takes about two or three hours. Besides, there are more important things to do.” When he returns home, though, he’ll probably go back to the drawing board again.

While he was an apprentice, he used his spare time to study the Bible and to pray. He sometimes heard angelic choirs singing.
John: It says here that baptism by immersion is the only way.

It wasn’t until I was reading a book by Jeffrey R. Holland, then president of BYU, that I found understanding in a verbalized form. In However Long and Hard the Way, President Holland discussed the analogy of life being a board. Each time we sin we drive a nail through that board. Unfortunately, many people think that when we repent the nails are removed, but the nail holes remain. He stated that no holes remain because after repenting we have an entirely new board. I found this analogy even more beautiful after realizing that the only holes that do remain are the ones in Christ’s hands and feet. His sacrifice was complete.

When a friend of President George Albert Smith asked him what he thought of his friend’s personal plan to take what would have been tithing and donate his tenth in charitable donations of his own choice, President Smith’s counsel was:
“I think you are a very generous man with someone else’s property. …
“… You have told me what you have done with the Lord’s money but you have not told me that you have given anyone a penny of your own. He is the best partner you have in the world. He gives you everything you have, even the air you breathe. He has said you should take one-tenth of what comes to you and give it to the Church as directed by the Lord. You haven’t done that; you have taken your best partner’s money, and have given it away.”

I sat with President David O. McKay on one occasion when he talked about that statement in Genesis. His eyes flashed with anger as he spoke of despotic husbands and stated that they would have to make an accounting of their evil actions when they stand to be judged by the Lord. He indicated that the very essence of the spirit of the gospel demands that any governance in the home must be done only in righteousness.