Gospel Story Finder

Wilford Woodruff was a very influential missionary, bringing thousands of people into the Church. While serving in England in 1840, he met the Benbow family. After hearing his message, the Benbows talked with Elder Woodruff about the gospel until 2 a.m.
Brother Benbow: I thank the Lord that you have found us! We, and hundreds of our friends, have been searching for the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Mr. Benbow told his friends about the missionary who would be preaching at his house.
On the first day, six people—including the Benbows—were baptized. On the second day, Elder Woodruff baptized 600 people!
Among those baptized were 45 preachers, who owned chapels and houses that could be used for teaching the gospel.
Wilford Woodruff: The Lord has truly prepared this place to receive His word.

A few years ago I was assigned to the Tampa Stake conference in Florida. I had to change planes in Chicago. As I boarded the plane after making the change, I found that I had been assigned a seat next to a young lady who was very busily engaged in reading the newspaper. When I sat down, I did not disturb her. But all at once she said, “This is disgusting.”
I replied, “What is disgusting?”
She said, “The point of view that so many people have today that they should look to the government to satisfy every want and need.”
I responded, “You must be a Mormon.”
“No, I’m not a Mormon,” she replied, “but I have heard about the welfare program of the Mormon Church, and I think it is just wonderful.”
This too provided an opportunity to explain the gospel. Before I reached my destination, she had given me her name and address and permission to send her a copy of the Book of Mormon, some Church welfare pamphlets, and other Church literature.

I joined the Church when I was 16. Soon after, I became seriously ill and missed a month of school.
While I was sick, I decided to catch up on school assignments and read my history textbook. I was so excited when I saw there was a whole chapter on the Latter-day Saint contribution to the westward expansion of the United States!
But as I read, my heart sank. The history of my new church was twisted and ugly according to the textbook. How was I ever going to be tested on these falsehoods?
I finally went back to school, even though I still felt weak. Towards the end of my history class, my teacher suddenly stopped and asked, “Is anyone in this class a Mormon?”
The world seemed to stop. My heart pounded. I raised my hand and proclaimed to the entire class that I was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“So, Wendy, have you read the chapter about the Mormons?” the teacher asked. I told him I had. “Is it accurate?” I said it was not. “We’re not going to discuss this chapter in class,” he said. “Every Mormon student I’ve ever had has said the textbook is incorrect.” He then suggested that if anyone wanted to know the true history of the Church, they could ask me!
Although I may have been weak physically, with the support and guidance of the Holy Ghost, I was stronger than I ever imagined I could be.
Wendy Z., California, USA

Late in the day on June 7, 1990, mission companions Manuel Navarro and Guillermo Chuquimango were walking back to their house. They enjoyed being missionaries—working hard, visiting different regions of Peru, and bringing people to Jesus Christ.
Their current area, Huaraz, could be dangerous at night though. A revolutionary group called Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path, had been warring with the Peruvian government for more than a decade. Lately, their attacks had become more aggressive as rising inflation and economic strife beset the country.
To help keep the missionaries safe, the five missions in Peru set curfews and restricted missionary work to the daytime. But this evening, Elder Navarro and Elder Chuquimango were feeling happy and talkative. They had just taught a gospel lesson and had about 15 minutes to get home.
As they walked and chatted, Elder Navarro spotted two young men a block or so ahead of them. They were pushing a yellow car. Manuel thought about lending a hand, but the men soon started the car and drove off.
A short time later, the missionaries approached a park near their home. The yellow car was parked about five feet from where they walked. Nearby was a military base.
“It looks like a car bomb,” Elder Chuquimango said. Elder Navarro saw some people running away, and in that instant the car exploded.
The blast slammed into Elder Navarro, throwing him into the air as shrapnel whizzed around him. When he hit the ground, he was terrified. He thought of his companion. Had he taken the brunt of the explosion?
Just then he felt Elder Chuquimango pick him up off the ground. The park looked like a war zone as soldiers from the base—the bomb’s apparent target—fired their guns past the smoldering remains of the car. Leaning on his companion, Elder Navarro managed to walk the rest of the way home.
When they arrived, he went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. His face was bloody, but he could not find a wound on his head. He simply felt faint.
“Give me a blessing,” he told his companion. Elder Chuquimango, who had received only minor injuries, placed his trembling hands on Elder Navarro’s head and blessed him.
Not long after, at the hospital, Elder Navarro fainted from loss of blood. He urgently needed a transfusion. Saints from Huaraz came to the hospital, hoping to donate blood, but none of them had the right type. Doctors then tested Elder Chuquimango’s blood and found him to be a perfect match.
For a second time that night, Elder Chuquimango saved his companion’s life.

Devan DeWitt has come a long way since joining the cross-country team two years ago as a sophomore. He wasn’t a particularly fast runner when he began, but as time went by he improved. By his junior and senior years, he had earned the right to compete at the state cross-country championships.
“When I discovered I could succeed at running, it helped me in other areas,” he says. “My grade-point average went from a 2.6 to a 3.0, and I had the courage to try out singing. Now I’m in the a capella choir.”

On my second night of study abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia, I met with my friends downtown to play American football. After the game I decided to experiment with taking the bus home. I had never taken the bus in Russia, but my host mother had told me that bus 7 or bus 1 would take me home. So when bus 7 arrived, I climbed aboard.
As we drove along, I looked at the shops and watched the people mingling on the sidewalk. Slowly, the area began to grow unfamiliar. I checked my watch and realized that I had been riding for 30 minutes.
Suddenly the bus stopped, the lights went out, and everyone got off. Trying not to panic, I looked around for assistance. I knew that if I could locate the metro, I could arrive home safely. I spotted a young couple down the street and walked toward them.
“I am lost,” I said. “Do you know where the metro is?”
“The metro is very far from here,” the man said. “But there is a bus stop over there. Get on bus 5, and it will take you to the metro.”
I thanked him and walked quickly down the street. When a bus approached the stop, however, it was not a number 5 but a number 1. I thought back to my host mother’s words: “Get on bus 7 or bus 1, and it will take you home.”
I reluctantly got on, but once again we drove and drove. The passengers exited one by one until I was the only one left.
Finally, the bus pulled to the side of the road.
“You must get off,” the driver said. “This is the last stop.”
My whole body shook as I struggled to breathe and hold back tears. It was getting late, and if I couldn’t find the metro before it closed, I would have to spend the night on the streets of St. Petersburg.
“Help me, Father in Heaven,” I prayed quietly and began walking. Then, breaking into a run, I started waving at passing taxis. None stopped.
I soon came to another bus stop, which was crowded with people. The lights of an approaching bus—a number 7—shone down on us. I hesitated. Buses had only gotten me lost, but a strong force from behind pushed me up the steps and into the bus. I sat down heavily in a seat, glancing at my watch. It was 11:50 p.m. The metro would close in 10 minutes.
I closed my eyes, whispering again, “Help me.” When I opened my eyes, I saw the bright lights of a metro station as the bus came to a stop. I ran off the bus and into the metro to catch the last train of the night.
As I sat down, I thought of how our Father in Heaven numbers His sparrows (see Matthew 10:29–31), and I silently thanked Him. I knew on that dark night in that vast city, He had led me home.

Just three years ago, at this same time of year, I had this great principle demonstrated to me at the hands of the Lord in a very special way. The Portland Oregon East Stake has been developing a dairy farm over the past half dozen years or more. It is located on an island in the Columbia River and is one of the largest single-stake projects in the Church. This fact, coupled with the need to develop the project almost from scratch, has placed a heavy burden upon our people, both in time and in money.

With a new project, we had run in the red each year, but 1977 was to be our turnabout year. The final result depended upon harvesting about seventy-five acres of corn, which was to be made into silage for feed. Unseasonably, it had rained almost every day during the month of September, and by the first day of October, our scheduled harvest date, I knew the crop was in trouble. We have a very high water table on the island, and when the ground gets saturated with too much water we get so much mud our harvest equipment cannot get into the fields without sinking. Once the land is saturated, it takes about a month of dry weather to make the fields passable to vehicles. During the winter months and right up until June, the corn ground is entirely under water.

I visit the farm about once a week, so I keep a pair of rubber boots in my car. I drove to the farm that October day and decided to pull on my boots and walk down into the corn fields. I immediately found even the road turned to mud and puddles. In places the mud came near the top of my eighteen-inch-high boots, and I don’t really know why I continued walking. It was a dark gray, overcast day, and drops of rain were splashing in the open puddles everywhere. The farm crew told me they had taken a corn chopper down into the fields a few days earlier but had it down to the axles in mud somewhere in the long corn rows.

As I walked I noticed that the corn itself was a fine crop, with row after row ten to fourteen feet high. Now, I rarely get depressed, but I was feeling really low that day. I knew how hard everyone had worked and what it meant to lose that fine crop. I eventually came to the spot where the chopper had gone in, and looking way down the rows I saw it sunk deep into the mud. For some reason I decided to walk to the chopper, and as I entered the rows and splashed on through the mud and water, I was startled to hear a voice. I am sure that the voice came to me only in my mind, but I could hear the voice and admonition of President Kimball. He said softly, "Is any thing too hard for the Lord?" (Gen. 18:14.) Now, like you, I have heard him say that many times, but I did not fully focus upon it before this time. I smiled to myself as I walked and said, "Yes, President, I believe this mess may be too hard even for the Lord."

As I neared the chopper, I was impressed to climb up on it and upon doing so found my head was about two feet above seventy-five acres of that tall, splendid corn. As I looked about in discouragement, the voice seemed to come to me again, but this time in a more serious tone, "President, is there anything too hard for the Lord?" At once I felt ashamed of my attitude of depression, and soon I was no longer looking down but up into the sky. Before I realized it, I was talking, yes, pleading aloud with the Lord in faith. When I had finished, I had committed that crop and the harvesting of it into the hands of the Lord and had done so by the power of the priesthood of God. I recall that as I climbed down from the chopper, tears were still streaming from my eyes. I grew concerned as I slowly walked away considering what it was that I had just done. Yet I knew that I had done it in total faith, that there was a proper need, and that it was a righteous request of the Lord.

Because of the spiritual nature of my experience, I think I had decided not to tell anyone of it. But the very next Sunday I was sitting on the stand during one of our ward sacrament meetings. I was not scheduled to speak, but the bishop got up with about ten minutes remaining and said, "I feel President DeHaan has had a spiritual experience that he needs to share with us." I got up reluctantly, knowing what it was I had to relate. I did so and asked the congregation to join me with their faith. Now, we have Saints with great testimonies in our stake, and my experience spread rapidly throughout the wards. I learned several weeks later that members were even telling their nonmember friends to go ahead and plan picnics and outdoor activities, because even in Oregon it was not going to rain throughout October. On the day following my experience in the corn fields, the sun came out for the first time in nearly thirty days. Then the next day we had sun, and the day following that. Before long the temperature was back into the high seventies. Every day for the next three weeks the weather forecast called for rain, but each day no rain fell.

I recall that about two weeks later I flew to Seattle, about two hundred miles to the north, on business. It rained very hard there all day, and as I made the return trip to Portland it rained all the way until we reached the Columbia River, which surrounds our farm. Miraculously, the clouds parted and the rain ceased. That day I cut a little weather map from the newspaper showing the rain ending at the river and put it on our refrigerator as a reminder to keep my faith. Three weeks after my original experience in the fields, I drove to the farm once again. I put on my boots and went back into the corn. This time the ground was soft but firming. That was on a Friday, and our fine farm crew was already making plans to begin the harvest on the following Monday.

That same day an acquaintance of mine from a local television station called. He said, "I understand the Mormons are developing a fine dairy farm on Sauvies Island." I answered in the affirmative, and he inquired, "Is there a story there?" I told him there was, but I knew he could never capture the real story. That very Monday, as we began our harvest, we had a camera crew on the farm for several hours, and we did get some fine publicity for the Church.

With the loyal assistance of many of the members, we worked day and night for the next five days. By the following Saturday, all of the freshly chopped corn was safely in our silage pits, and we finished covering it over with plastic. At last we had the feed needed to get us through the winter. Within an hour after having covered the crop, the heavens just seemed to open and commenced one of the heaviest and longest downpours I can remember. The fields from which the corn had just been removed were flooded and remained under water from that day until the following June. As I stood in the rain with feelings of gratitude that I’ll never be able to adequately describe, it seemed to me that the Lord had just saved it up until our spiritual understanding had been fulfilled.

They finally asked Andy to be in the Third Street Tigers. His best friend, Michael, was already in the club. If only he wasn’t afraid to climb up to the tree house where they had the meetings! Wooden planks were nailed up the trunk like a ladder, but whenever Andy tried to climb anything, he got a funny feeling in his stomach.
One day he decided to try climbing while no one was looking. On the fourth step, his stomach did a double flip, and he dropped to the grass. Turning to go home, Andy found Montgomery blocking his way.
“You’re afraid! You’re afraid!” teased Montgomery.
“What do you mean?” Andy gulped.
“You chickened out. I saw you! You’ll never be a Tiger.”
“Leave me alone!”
Laughing, Montgomery pushed Andy. “Maybe you should join the preschoolers. They meet in the sandbox.”
In the morning, Andy told Michael what had happened. “It’s no use,” Andy sighed. “I’ll never get all the way up. Montgomery was right.”
“But you have to be a Tiger,” Michael said. “Best friends are always in the same club.”
“Yeah, but Montgomery …”
“Forget Montgomery. I know something that might help you build up your courage. Meet me at the gym after school,” Michael said as he headed back to class.
All day long, Andy wondered what Michael’s plan was and if it would work. He wanted to be in the Tigers more than anything.
The gym was crowded when Andy found Michael in a corner, watching a girl do a somersault on the balance beam.
“What’s the plan?” Andy asked.
“The balance beam.”
“You’re not getting me up there. I saw what that girl was doing.”
“Not the high beam,” said Michael. “There’s a lower beam over there.” As he talked, Michael pulled Andy across the room.
Andy put one foot on the beam, then jerked it down again. He hoped the Tigers were worth all this trouble. With Michael guiding him, Andy finally walked to the other end. Then he saw Montgomery watching him.
Andy stepped down to the floor. “What do you want?”
“I came to see if you’re still afraid.”
“Let’s go,” Michael said to Andy. “We’re done here, anyway.”
As they left, Montgomery shouted, “Hey, Andy, maybe you can join the Tigers when you grow up.”
On Friday, Michael talked Andy into trying to climb the tree again. As he got close to it, Andy felt a familiar flutter in his stomach. Hitching up his pants and crossing his fingers once for luck, he started up the tree.
First step, no problem. Second step, fine. By the third step, Andy felt as if he could make it. Then the plank pulled away from the trunk, and Andy tumbled to the ground.
Andy and Michael were both thinking the same thing: Montgomery must have loosened the step. “I’m going to find him,” Andy raged. He headed for Montgomery’s favorite hangout, the city park. By the time he got there, he’d cooled off. What’s the use? he thought. No matter what I say, Montgomery will never leave me alone.
He turned to go back to Michael, when he heard yelling and a dog barking. Andy ran toward the sound and found Montgomery backed up against a fence, his arms covering his face. In front of him stood a large, barking dog.
Wow! Tough Montgomery is afraid of dogs! Andy wanted to run and tell Michael, but then he remembered how he had felt halfway up the tree. I guess everybody’s afraid of something.
Andy grabbed the dog’s collar. “Calm down, Montgomery! Don’t you recognize Mr. Henry’s dog, Skipper? He only wants you to play with him.”
“Keep him away from me!” cried Montgomery.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Andy told him. “Let him smell your hand.”
“No way! I’m getting out of here.”
“Watch me.” Andy bent down and held out his hand. The dog sniffed, then licked it. “Now you try,” Andy said.
Cautiously Montgomery put out his hand while Andy held the dog. When Skipper licked it, too, both boys began to laugh.
“It tickles,” said Montgomery.
The boys heard someone calling Skipper, and the dog ran off.
Montgomery jammed his hands into his pockets and played in the dirt with his shoe. “Thanks for saving me. Are you going to tell?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know,” Andy said. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“I’m sorry for picking on you,” Montgomery apologized. “If you want, I’ll help you climb the tree tomorrow—no tricks, I promise.”
“How come?”
“Isn’t that what friends are supposed to do?”
In the morning, Andy and Montgomery went to the giant tree early. Andy took a deep breath, then looked up. The Third Street Tigers clubhouse was up high!
“You can do it,” Montgomery said. “I’ll be right behind you. If you get scared, stop and rest.”
Andy swallowed hard. With shaky hands he grabbed the bottom plank. Nervously he pulled himself up. Counting to three, he moved on to the second step, then the third, which had been nailed on tight again. He bit his bottom lip and stopped to gather his courage.
Andy forced himself to continue from each step to the next. When he saw the opening of the tree house, he heard Montgomery say, “I knew you’d make it!”
They pulled themselves inside to wait for the rest of their friends. Andy could hardly believe that he’d done it. When Michael arrived, he asked, “What happened? How’d you do it?”
Andy and Montgomery just looked at each other and grinned.

Several years ago I installed a stake president in England. In another calling, he is here in the audience today. He had an unusual sense of direction. He was like a mariner with a sextant who took his bearings from the stars. I met with him each time he came to conference and was impressed that he kept himself and his stake on course.

Fortunately for me, when it was time for his release, I was assigned to reorganize the stake. It was then that I discovered what that sextant was and how he adjusted it to check his position and get a bearing for himself and for his members.

He accepted his release, and said, “I was happy to accept the call to serve as stake president, and I am equally happy to accept my release. I did not serve just because I was under call. I served because I am under covenant. And I can keep my covenants quite as well as a home teacher as I can serving as stake president.”

We can let the light within us show in many different ways. It may be as simple as a smile. I recently read the account of a man in the northwest United States who used to drive past a bus stop on his way to work. He began to notice a young girl among some children waiting for the school bus. Even when it was raining, she would smile and wave as he drove by. He said: “The young girl was tall and slim and about 13 years old. She wore a mouthful of braces and I could see them glisten in the glare of my car lights.” Her effort to be friendly gave his day a good start and was something he looked forward to.
This man’s name was Hankins, and he had a daughter, Cheryl, who was about the same age as the girl at the bus stop. One day Cheryl asked her parents’ permission to attend an activity at a local church. A neighbor girl, Vicki, had invited her to attend. The activity was MIA, the forerunner to the Young Women program! Cheryl enjoyed MIA and after a while told her parents that Vicki was a Mormon. It wasn’t long before Cheryl came home from school and said that Vicki was sending two young men over—missionaries—to tell the family about her Church.
The elders arrived, taught them about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, and bore their testimonies of the Restoration of the gospel. As a family they began to read these new scriptures and were soon captivated by them. Mr. Hankins finally met Vicki. She was the smiling girl he had seen so many times at the bus stop. She was present when he and two other members of his family were baptized.
Looking back on Vicki’s actions and those of other young people, Brother and Sister Hankins became convinced that “the greatest potential for missionary work lies in the youth of the Church.” Brother and Sister Hankins have since served as missionaries themselves. They relied upon the referrals and good example that the youth supplied. Vicki—the girl at the bus stop who smiled every day, even when it was raining—changed their lives forever.
Each one of you can be a friend to someone, even if it is only by smiling. Like Vicki, you can let the sunshine that is in your heart show in your face.

An experience which remains vivid in my mind when I felt the Savior yoked up with me, was during the October 2010 general conference. A missionary who had struggled for over six months with homesickness and wanting to go home was really weighing me down. As we approached general conference, I asked for inspiration on how to deal with this challenge. I also asked the missionaries to identify personal issues they were struggling with, then to listen carefully for what would be said in the general conference. Missionaries were asked to listen to both spoken and unspoken words.

We had just watched the Saturday afternoon session, and we were waiting for the priesthood session. Since we were watching the sessions live, it was past midnight in Harare. Some of us were outside, and this missionary who had been struggling with homesickness came and stood next to me. He simply said, “President, I have decided to stay.”

I could hardly believe what he had said. I asked him, “Why have you decided to stay and serve your mission?”

He said that he felt it was the right thing to do. Then he added, “I decided to stay not for myself, but for my children and grandchildren.”

We embraced and rejoiced together.

This missionary became one of our strongest elders. He inspired other missionaries to look to the Lord and to serve with humility, faith, and power.

Now he and his sweetheart have been sealed in the temple, and they are noble, righteous parents. His decision to stay on his mission surely has brought blessings to his family and it will continue to do so forever.

I felt the Lord’s love in taking upon me his yoke as we listened to general conference and sensed this missionary felt the same way. As I now reflect on what transpired, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s words come to mind: “If we teach by the Spirit and you listen by the Spirit, some one of us will touch on your circumstance, sending a personal prophetic epistle just to you.”1

From the time I was a small boy in Lima, Perú, I had an inclination to seek the things of God. In my childhood, I faithfully attended my family’s church. I spent part of my youth singing in the church choir.
But when I was 17 years old, as I was praying in church, a feeling of uncertainty came into my mind. A particular point of doctrine caused me to wonder if I was in the right place.
That very night, I looked through much of the New Testament. I also went to see a neighbor who was a member of another church, and together we read from the Bible and found answers to some of the doctrinal questions that had begun troubling me.
It wasn’t hard for me to see that I had been on the wrong road. But it wasn’t easy to find the truth. I attended various religious meetings. I read several articles that discussed God, but none of them aroused any great interest in me. Meanwhile I continued to read the New Testament. I was very interested in finding out about the sheep “not of this fold” that Jesus mentioned in John 10:16.
For almost a year I identified myself as a Christian but did not affiliate with any specific denomination. I was studying at a technology center, and religion was a frequent topic of conversation. One day I overheard a discussion between a young Latter-day Saint and a member of another church. The assurance in the Latter-day Saint’s voice and the power of his words made an impression on me. The only thing I had heard about Mormons was that they were a group of cowboys. I didn’t know any Mormons well, and there was no LDS Church building nearby.
About that time I was waiting in a doctor’s office, and I noticed that the young lady seated next to me had opened a book with a blue cover. The book’s text was written in columns like the Bible. I was curious to know if it was the Bible, but I also wanted to get back to the comic book I had been reading.
I directed my eyes to the blue book and read a word at the top of the page: Alma. I made an effort to remember that name from my Bible reading, then went back to my comic book. But the blue book continued to attract me, and once again I directed my eyes to that mysterious book.
When the young lady noticed my interest, I asked if the book was the Bible. She answered no and asked me what church I belonged to. I told her none, because I didn’t know which one was true.
That night I couldn’t stop thinking about that strange book. I didn’t know its name, because the young lady had said only that it belonged to the Mormon Church. I told my friend Ghersi about it, and he offered to get me a copy. Several weeks went by, and then one afternoon he handed me a book without a cover and with worn pages. All he said was, “Here’s the book.”
That afternoon I opened the book and read the testimony of Joseph Smith. I felt that it was what I had wanted to know; the feeling became stronger when I read about the visit of the angel Moroni. Unable to contain my excitement, I arose from my chair and shouted, “This is what I was looking for! Here is the truth!” I read the first chapters of 1 Nephi very slowly. I felt that I understood them as I had never understood a book before.
Despite my efforts, I couldn’t locate an LDS meetinghouse. Ghersi offered to help, but I never did find the address of the building closest to where I lived. In the meantime, he loaned me some pamphlets that he had.
Finally, while walking not far from my house, I saw a building under construction. The sign read, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” I recognized the name from the pamphlets.
Months later, when construction was finished, my sister Haydee and I went together to that building. Two missionaries greeted us, and I told them about my experience with the Book of Mormon and my desire to be a member of the Church.
During the discussions, I told the missionaries of my concern about the sheep of the other fold. They asked me to read of the Savior’s visit to the Americas—particularly His words in 3 Nephi 15:16–21—and I knew I had found my answer at last. Two weeks after finishing the missionary discussions, my sister and I were baptized into the Church I had sought for so long.
I then prepared myself to be a missionary, and one year later I received a call to serve full time in the Perú Lima North Mission. The testimony I bore on my mission was that what I had received was not revealed to me by “flesh and blood” but by “my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17).
Today, many years later, I long to share my testimony with the world, because I know this is the Lord’s true Church. He has blessed me and my wife with a temple marriage and with three beautiful children. We are all happily serving in His Church. My gratitude to the Lord will never equal His mercy to me.

I learned to swim in the swift-running currents of the Provo River in beautiful Provo Canyon. The “old swimming hole” was in a deep portion of the river, formed by a large rock which had fallen into the river, I assume, when the workmen constructing the railroad were blasting through the canyon. The pool was dangerous, what with its depth of sixteen feet, its current, which moved swiftly against the large rock, and the sucking action of the whirlpools below the rock. It was not a place for a novice or the inexperienced swimmer.
One warm summer afternoon when I was about twelve or thirteen, I took a large, inflated inner tube from a tractor tire, slung it over my shoulder, and walked barefoot up the railroad track which followed the course of the river. I entered the water about a mile above the swimming hole, sat comfortably in the tube, and enjoyed a leisurely float down the river. The river held no fear for me, for I knew its secrets.
That day the Greek-speaking people in Utah held a reunion at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon, as they did every year. Native food, games, and dances were the order of the day. But some left the party to try swimming in the river. When they arrived at the swimming hole, it was deserted, for afternoon shadows were beginning to envelop it.
As my inflated tube bobbed up and down, I was about to enter the swiftest portion of the river just at the head of the swimming hole when I heard frantic cries, “Save her! Save her!” A young lady swimmer, accustomed to the still waters of a gymnasium swimming pool, had fallen from the rock into the treacherous whirlpools. None of the party could swim to save her. Suddenly I appeared on the potentially tragic scene. I saw the top of her head disappearing under the water for the third time, there to descend to a watery grave. I stretched forth my hand, grasped her hair, and lifted her over the side of the tube and into my arms. At the pool’s lower end, the water was slower as I paddled the tube, with my precious cargo, to her waiting relatives and friends. They threw their arms around the water-soaked girl and kissed her, crying, “Thank God! Thank God you are safe!” Then they hugged and kissed me. I was embarrassed and quickly returned to the tube and continued my float down to the Vivian Park bridge. The water was frigid, but I was not cold, for I was filled with a warm feeling. I realized that I had participated in the saving of a life. Heavenly Father had heard the cries, “Save her! Save her,” and permitted me, a deacon, to float by at precisely the time I was needed. That day I learned that the sweetest feeling in mortality is to realize that God, our Heavenly Father, knows each one of us and generously permits us to see and to share His divine power to save.

Back to Mormon Corner. It’s wherever one or more of the LDS kids happen to have assigned lockers in a convenient spot, so the location changes from year to year. Sometimes there are two Mormon corners. What goes on there? The usual kidding around, making plans for after school, keeping track of friends, and a fair amount of sharing the gospel and fellowshipping. One young woman can tell you about that.
She noticed the LDS youth at Lathrop and liked what she saw. “One thing I noticed when I first met these kids is that they all smile. It’s like they know something you don’t. They walk through the halls with a grin on their faces, most of them. It makes you kind of wonder, why are they so happy all the time?”
She began to find her answer when Courtney Hull, her best friend, invited her to early-morning seminary. “It was just a going-with-my-buddy sort of thing,” she explains. “Then I started going to Young Women and to church and everything else, and everyone was really friendly. Then I started listening to the things the teachers were teaching. And one day it just came to me that this is the thing you need to do.” So she did it. Got baptized.
“I still have my friends that I had before I joined the Church,” she goes on, “and I have a lot of friends that aren’t in the Church. But I know when I’m with the LDS kids that there’s no peer pressure, no gossiping going on, no name calling, no drinking.” Now she knows why the LDS kids seem so happy all the time: “I guess the gospel kind of does that to you.”

One day my companion and I were teaching a couple, and we told them that the Father and the Son had appeared to Joseph Smith in answer to his prayer. The man said that no one could see God. Immediately the alarm on my watch went off, letting us know that we needed to head home. We left their home that day without answering that statement.
The next day I read a scripture in the Bible that says, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision” (Numbers 12:6). I knew this scripture would help this brother believe.
The time of the next visit arrived, and we spoke about prophets. I showed him this scripture, and his countenance changed. His eyes filled with tears, and he said, “This is true. There are people prepared to see God.” Later we taught him about Book of Mormon prophets who have seen God, and he knew it was true.
Elder Diaz, 25, Mexico Mérida Mission

Let me tell you about one shining example named Hillary, a Beehive living in Lagos, Nigeria. Some of her classmates were mocking her standards, particularly her modest clothing. She made the decision to always carry two small copies of For the Strength of Youth with her. When someone gives her a bad time, she hands them one of the copies to keep and explains the standards and why she follows them. The other copy she keeps as her personal reminder to be obedient to the standards.

My mother was born in Poprad, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). Her father served in the Czech army during World War II, and his was one of many military families that fled into nearby woods for safety from German occupiers. For five days, my grandparents huddled under a blanket with my mother and her sister, ages one and five, eating a ration of sugar cubes.
My grandparents were not members of the Church at this time, nor did they pray often. However, during this ordeal, their hearts were softened. My grandmother wrote in her journal, “This very night I felt a longing for kneeling down to ask for help from someone who had a higher authority. So I went a little ways into the forest, knelt down, and prayed with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I pleaded for help.”
Her prayer was answered. Some families in the woods were killed upon discovery, but my grandparents and their two daughters were miraculously protected. Through this exhausting and trying experience, the Lord planted a seed of faith and trust in my grandparents’ hearts.

Our youngest daughter, Abby, saw a unique opportunity to stand as a defender of the role of mother. One day she got a notice from her children’s school that they were having Career Day presentations at the school. Parents were invited to send in an application if they wanted to come to school to teach the children about their jobs, and Abby felt impressed to apply to come and speak about motherhood. She didn’t hear back from the school, and when Career Day was getting close, she finally called the school, thinking they may have lost her application. The organizers scrambled around and found two teachers who agreed to have Abby come talk to their classes at the end of Career Day.
In her very fun presentation to the children, Abby taught them, among other things, that as a mother she needed to be somewhat of an expert in medicine, psychology, religion, teaching, music, literature, art, finance, decorating, hair styling, chauffeuring, sports, culinary arts, and so much more. The children were impressed. She finished by having the children remember their mothers by writing thank-you notes expressing gratitude for the many loving acts of service they received daily. Abby felt that the children saw their mothers in a whole new light and that being a mother or father was something of great worth. She applied to share again this year at Career Day and was invited to present to six classes.
Abby has said of her experience: “I feel like it could be easy in this world for a child to get the sense that being a parent is a secondary job or even sometimes a necessary inconvenience. I want every child to feel like they are the most important priority to their parent, and maybe telling them how important being a parent is to me will help them realize all that their parents do for them and why.”

At the end of my second year playing college football, we had a coach who was not a member of the Church. He didn’t understand why young men served missions, and he discouraged us from going. But a certain number of players committed to serve missions anyway. Thanks to the good examples around me, I was one of them.
Looking back, deciding to serve a mission turned out to be a wonderful blessing. It was one of the greatest decisions I’ve made in my life, and it contributed so much to the blessings and the testimony that I have now. I know that the Lord’s hand was in all of the decisions I made throughout my life that allowed me to be influenced for good.

Though Sig had never denied the existence of God or committed grave sins, religion was not a significant part of his life. But he couldn’t accept the philosophies of his atheistic and agnostic friends. Once, Sig had pressed one of the agnostics with the question, “If you were to join any church, which one would it be?” The man answered, “I would become a Mormon,” and cited the goodness of the Latter-day Saints as his reason.
In fact, it was the good example of the only Latter-day Saint he had ever known—“an example of a good man”—that persuaded Sig Verano to listen to the Latter-day Saint missionaries for the first time. What they taught sounded like the truth to him. The Word of Wisdom made enough of an impression that the young mechanic gave up his cigarettes and liquor and began to pray on his own. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy for him to go to church because he had long since broken the habit of attendance. Soon, he stopped listening to the missionary lessons.
But the Verano children enjoyed Primary, which then was held one afternoon a week. Sig or Ana would drive them to the chapel for the meeting. One afternoon, the car wouldn’t start. “Well, it isn’t my fault,” Sig told them. “I guess you won’t be able to go.”
Back in the house, six-year-old Edison wouldn’t give up. “Let’s pray,” he pleaded. So they knelt in prayer, then went back out to the car. To Sig Verano’s surprise, it started immediately.
After this experience, the Veranos attended Church meetings for a time, but quit after a few weeks. During this period there were several “coincidences” that helped to keep the Church in their thoughts. Sig’s mother-in-law, visiting from Colombia, spoke favorably of the clean-cut young American missionaries whose meetinghouse was near her home. An old friend from Colombia, now a sailor in the merchant marine, came for a visit. At dinnertime, he asked if he could say a blessing on the food—and Sig Verano recognized from his prayer that he was a Latter-day Saint. The friend, a convert who studied the scriptures ardently during his long voyages, bore his testimony to the Veranos, not knowing they had been investigating the Church.
Earlier, Sig Verano had told one pair of missionaries that they could come to visit as friends, but not as teachers. Before one of them went home at the end of his mission, he and his companion stopped by to visit and to invite the Veranos to meet his parents at a small farewell gathering hosted by friends. The Veranos were so impressed with the loving Latter-day Saints they met that they began taking the missionary lessons again.
But Ana Verano, faithful to the traditions of her forefathers’ church, became stubborn when she realized her husband was serious about joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She felt she didn’t need to be baptized again. So they reached an agreement: since the children liked the Church, he would take them there after his baptism. She would continue to go to her church.
But repeatedly during the week preceding Sig’s baptism, Ana dreamed of the Savior’s baptism by John in the River Jordan. She concluded that it was an indication, meant just for her, of the right thing to do.
Sigifredo and Ana were baptized in January of 1974. Their son Edison was baptized later that year, after his eighth birthday.
The Veranos’ struggles with faithfulness were not yet over, however, and neither was the loving work of others in fellowshipping them.
A fine home teacher, George Baker, helped keep them active in the Church, Brother Verano recalls. Unused to attending church meetings three times a day, beginning with priesthood at seven A.M., Brother Verano was ready to quit. The early meetings were difficult because he was working from midnight to six A.M. But Brother Baker, who could not go himself, arranged for someone to drive the Veranos to ward meetings, and kept them coming.
The Veranos’ spirituality grew as they faithfully attended meetings and obeyed gospel principles.
He was called as president of his stake’s Spanish-speaking branch, created in 1978, and was made bishop when, after five years, it became a ward.
The creation of that branch was a blessing also for Ana Verano. What little English she knew had made it difficult for her to participate in an English-speaking ward. In the Spanish-speaking branch, she could hold callings and grow in service as her husband had.
“My real testimony has come through working in the Church,” Brother Verano says. “Constant service is one of the things that strengthens one’s testimony.”
The first Spanish-speaking ward in their stake was divided shortly after its creation, and Sig was called to the high council. He now serves as stake executive secretary for the three Spanish-speaking wards in the Los Angeles California North Hollywood Stake. Ana serves in the stake’s English-language name extraction program.
Among the vocational courses Sig Verano completed in his wide-ranging studies was one in real estate sales. It led to a profitable new career—and to further strengthening of his testimony.
His sales career didn’t begin well. He was fired after only one week when the owner of the real estate agency learned the new salesman’s religion following Brother Verano’s refusal to work on Sunday.
“The gospel is so important in our lives that Sunday is empty if we can’t go to Church meetings,” he explains. But the owner of the real estate company said that the Mormons put too much time into Church service to be successful. Go work for a small agency where the owner will not care so much about sales success, he told Sig Verano.
Brother Verano took the dismissal as a challenge. He found a job with a larger agency, and, working only part-time in 1979, was its top salesman. He has consistently refused to work on Sundays; as branch president and bishop, he also devoted part of his Saturdays to Church service. Yet for several years he has been among the company’s top five salespeople.
In Church service, Brother Verano says humbly, he has gained knowledge that the Lord lives, that through him we can be redeemed, and that he has placed prophets on earth to help guide us. Those who only tentatively believe that the gospel is true can come to know of its truth with certainty as he has—by testing it in obedience and in service to others.
“When I was baptized into the Church,” he reflects, “I believed. But now I know.”