Gospel Story Finder

Now the third story, if I might skip another four years. At age sixteen, I began trying to decide what kind of career I would pursue. Two of my friends had fathers who were university professors—one of them, a physicist. I thought maybe I wanted to become a physicist or a research bacteriologist.

I was active in music, but I didn’t want to become a musician because I had noticed that very few musicians made much money. However, after prayerfully investigating a number of professions, I came to a conviction within my heart—a burning within my bosom that—after all, I was to make my contribution to the world as a musician.

When I had made that decision, I told my father and my mother. My father, who was a businessman, had little sympathy for music as a career. But when I told him I wanted to go into music, he said, “All right, son, but don’t be a second-rater.”

Those words have rung in my ears many times since then, and they have encouraged me to try to go one step higher in my creative endeavors.

Several years later, I enrolled at a college near my home that had a good music school, My first year, I entered a music composition contest and won first prize. Part of the award was that my composition would be played by the the Stockton California Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, however, my composition was written for a larger orchestra than the Stockton Symphony Orchestra.

I wanted so badly for my composition to be performed that I transferred to a university that had a large symphony orchestra with over 100 pieces. The first day after I had arrived there, I went to the office of the director of the symphony orchestra and asked him if the college symphony orchestra would play my piece. He said, “Leave it here; I’m busy right now, but come back next week.”

When I returned the following week, he said, “Well, it isn’t too bad. We rehearse on Monday nights. Next Monday I will let the orchestra play through it.”

Then he asked me an unexpected question: “Would you like to conduct it?” Now, if he had said, “Can you conduct it?” I would have had to answer differently, but he said, “Would you like to conduct it?” Well, who wouldn’t like to conduct a 100-piece orchestra playing his own piece?

I went home and the whole next week I checked the orchestral parts over to make sure they would really sound right. I had imagined my piece, but I had never heard it played.

All day Monday I fidgeted through my classes. I couldn’t eat my lunch. That night I sat in the front row of the auditorium and waited while the symphony orchestra rehearsed.

Finally the conductor turned around and said, “Do you have your music with you? Well, pass it out.” He introduced me to the orchestra and said, “I’m going to let him conduct.”

I waved the baton very shakily, and the music stumbled along. Players don’t like to play from handwritten music manuscript, and my manuscript was horrible. The orchestra droned and grunted along. It was a frightful experience.

Then something happened. Suddenly everything seemed to work well during the last few minutes of the piece. Instead of saying, or looking like, “How can we bear this?” the orchestra players seemed to be saying, “Not bad! Not bad!”

During the last few moments I felt as if I was raised about a meter or two off the podium—I conducted sort of instinctively, feeling that “This is why I’m alive! This is my contribution to the world!” I felt that “men are that they might have joy” was no longer just a statement in the Book of Mormon (2 Ne. 2:25), but a reality for me at that very moment.

At the end they started to applaud, and the conductor came running down the aisle, saying, “Well, the first part was quite terrible but the last part wasn’t so bad!”

On the way home that night I kept hearing that wonderful big sound of the ending, and I forgot the terror of the first part. I thought, this is how the Lord must have felt when he said that “it was good,” (See Gen. 1:4.) What a remarkable understatement the Lord made about his own work. And one reason God exists is to have joy, and what does he have joy in? In the creative act—in the act of creating a galaxy or in creating a human soul.

Sonora Dodd devoted her life to honoring fathers, and her strong feelings about fatherhood were passed to her son, Jack. In 1952 one of Sonora Dodd’s proudest moments came when Jack was named “Father of the Year.” Nineteen years later, an even prouder moment came. Sonora Louise Dodd, the woman known as “the mother of Father’s Day,” became the first and only woman ever to be named “Father of the Year!”

During their missions they saw each other quite often at conferences and activities. They enjoyed catching up and sharing news from their separate areas. They never dreamed that in November 2003 they would be assigned as companions. Their friendship bloomed into a relationship that will last forever. They have gone from being friends to sisters in the gospel to missionary companions.
Sister Valeria Pontelli says, “At first I was afraid that working together might damage our friendship, but that fear faded the first day. This chance to work together has only strengthened our relationship, and our friendship has helped us in the work.”
Others agree. One woman, who used to be less active but has come back to church because of the efforts of these two missionaries, says, “You can’t help but love them because you can see the love they feel for each other and for everyone around them. They are my angels.”

One returned missionary found himself stressed with a very heavy schedule. He was trying to find time for work, studies, family, and a Church calling. He asked the Lord for counsel: “How can I feel at peace with all that I need to do?” The answer was not what he expected; he received the impression that he should more carefully observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy. He decided to dedicate Sunday to God’s service—to lay aside his school courses on that day and study the gospel instead. This small adjustment brought the peace and balance that he was seeking.

Massimo and Daniela Lo Monaco
Massimo Lo Monaco confided to his young wife that he had doubts about the existence of God. If there was a God, why didn’t he make himself known to man?
But a recent experience, an answer to prayer, had left Daniela Lo Monaco certain of the existence of God. She had been responsible for a serious error at her place of employment and feared the consequences. She had prayed to God for help, and when she reported the problem to her supervisor, the situation had been resolved surprisingly easily. So she prayed again in gratitude, and asked her Heavenly Father, “What would you have me do?”
Not long afterward, two young missionaries knocked on their door. As the missionaries taught them, the Lo Monacos discovered that the gospel answered both his question and hers, and they were soon baptized. He is first counselor in the presidency of the Pisa Branch and she is the Primary president.

When George Albert Smith was in his later years he had the following experience:
“I became so weak as to be scarcely able to move. It was a slow and exhausting effort for me even to turn over in bed.
“One day, under these conditions, I lost consciousness of my surroundings and thought I had passed to the Other Side. …
“… I saw a man coming towards me … and I hurried my steps to reach him, because I recognized him as my grandfather. … I remember how happy I was to see him coming. I had been given his name and had always been proud of it.
“When Grandfather came within a few feet of me, he stopped. His stopping was an invitation for me to stop. Then—and this I would like the … young people never to forget—he looked at me … and said:
“‘I would like to know what you have done with my name.’
“Everything I had ever done passed before me as though it were a flying picture on a screen—everything I had done. Quickly this vivid retrospect came down to the very time I was standing there. My whole life had passed before me. I smiled and looked at my grandfather and said:
“‘I have never done anything with your name of which you need be ashamed.’
“He stepped forward and took me in his arms, and as he did so, I became conscious again of my earthly surroundings. My pillow was as wet as though water had been poured on it—wet with tears of gratitude that I could answer unashamed” (George Albert Smith, Sharing the Gospel with Others, 1948, p. 111).

The experiences of Herbert Schreiter typify those of many German Latter-day Saint men. Brother Schreiter had given up a good job to serve a two-year mission in the economically depressed years of 1929–1930. He returned to serve as branch president in Chemnitz (later Karl-Marx-Stadt) from 1937 to 1941, when he was called into the German army. While in the army, he served as Sunday School president in the Salzburg (Austria) Branch. Soon after the war, in 1946, Brother Schreiter was called to leave his family and serve another mission. His answer: “Of course! I am ready and am pleased to have this privilege” (Schutze, page 46).

It was dough balls and stink bait
mixed days before,
then we had to wait for
the night of the full moon.
We’d go at dusk to Lake Afton,
spread out Grandma’s old quilt,
bait the hooks, loft them out,
set the tensions, and wait.
In the darkening night,
with the water-cooled breeze
chattering the cottonwood leaves,
we would listen for the whine of a reel
or the flop of a giant cat,
as the cicadas packed seventeen years of buzz
into one blitz.
And later we would eat
white bread sandwiches
of cheddar cheese and mustard,
and I would squint
at the moon-rippled water
from my spot between Mom and Dad
and imagine my life.

As I looked back on my earliest experiences growing up in Cuba, one memory always stood out. I could vividly picture my beloved little brother Raúl being sick. I could see my mother caring for him, periodically crying desperately, and my grandmother frantically seeking help. I could see the whole family bending over his bed, weeping. I always seemed to witness my brother’s pain and my family’s tears from some high perch. For some reason, that scene remained in my memory, but I never talked about it.
When I turned 16 I began looking for my brothers and sisters. I found only three of them because Orlando had moved with my aunt to the United States. Then, not long after I had located him, Raúl was electrocuted while learning to work as an electrician.
Shaken by the loss, I confided to my grandmother my memory of Raúl’s sickness. My grandmother asked, “What are you talking about? Raúl was not ill. That was you. One night you became so sick the doctor gave you up for dead. We were in despair and wept over your bed. We never knew why your heart started beating again.”
I was so shocked I didn’t ask my grandmother for more information, but questions about the meaning of life began to torment me: Why had my life been preserved? What was I to do? What did it all mean?

One day a man in the ward stopped by to sell Spencer’s father a load of pumpkins for pig feed.
Man: Do I hear Spencer singing? Your boy must be happy.
Spencer’s father: Yes, he is happy, clean, and obedient. He will become a mighty man in the Church.
Spencer liked to learn hymns and memorize scriptures as he milked the cows each day.
He also liked to practice aiming streams of milk into the barn cats’ mouths.

I am thrilled when I hear the many stories of deacons quorum presidents who have caught the vision and occasionally are teaching all or part of the lesson in their quorum meetings. Several weeks ago I attended a deacons quorum class. A 12-year-old boy gave a 25-minute lesson on the Atonement. He commenced by asking his fellow deacons what they thought the Atonement was. Then he shared some meaningful scriptures and asked thoughtful questions, to which they responded. Realizing, however, there was more time than remaining lesson material, he had enough presence of mind and perhaps some forewarning from his father to ask the leaders who were present what questions they had been asked about the Atonement on their missions and their responses. He then concluded with his testimony. I listened in awe. I thought to myself, “I don’t recall ever giving a significant part of a lesson when I was an Aaronic Priesthood youth.” We can raise the bar and vision for these young men, and they will respond.

At about that same time, I was invited to a lunch for all of the Relief Society sisters in my ward who had read either the Book of Mormon or a short Church history book. I had become casual in my scripture reading, so I qualified to attend the luncheon by reading the short book because it was easier and took less time. As I was eating my lunch, I had a powerful feeling that though the history book was a good one, I should have read the Book of Mormon. The Holy Ghost was prompting me to change my scripture reading habits. That very day I began to read the Book of Mormon, and I have never stopped reading it. Though I do not consider myself to be an expert, I truly love reading all the scriptures, and I am grateful I started the lifetime habit of reading them. It would be impossible to learn the lessons the scriptures contain by reading them only one time through or studying selected verses in a class.

President Thomas S. Monson recalls the important role Marion G. Romney played in helping him, as a young bishop, learn principles of Church welfare: “Brother Romney was a frequent visitor to our stake and region. … As he taught welfare precepts from the handbook and responded to questions, one brother asked him, ‘Brother Romney, why do you seem to know whatever’s in that handbook?’ to which Brother Romney, with that twinkle in his eye and smile upon his lips, responded, ‘I wrote it!’” (Tambuli, April 1981.)

From then on it was more a matter of time. Slowly, with all of us pulling, we became closer, a family again. Together my father and new mother brought two more spirits into the world and into our family, making a grand total of 12 children. If nothing else made us a family, it was those two little spirits. Their presence created an unbreakable bond between two families that needed each other.
We were a family by our own special definition.

The Kenyan government accepted Church aid after a dispute following the country’s presidential election left 1,500 people dead and displaced 600,000. The Church sent 20 40-foot (12-m) containers packed with blankets, hygiene and school supplies, dry milk, and nutritional food as well as kits for use in orphanages and for newborn care. The supplies were distributed by partner agencies within the African country to families seeking assistance to return to their homes.

Shiloh is always willing to play with everyone, even children he doesn’t know yet. He loves to make new friends. One time when his family went to visit the Manila Philippines Temple, he noticed a girl in the waiting room who had no one to play with. He went over and began to play with her. He even shared his tablet with her.

“When Virginia was 16 she wanted to spend a weekend in Orlando with five friends,” recalls her mother, Barbara Smith. “I was very much against it, but there was no reason not to allow her to go. She had never done anything to show we couldn’t trust her. It turned out that she had a wonderful time and didn’t do anything she wouldn’t have done if we had been there.”

Once your parents realize they can trust you to do what’s right, they will allow you to make more and more decisions on your own. As Virginia’s mother pointed out, how could she say no to a daughter who was so responsible?

I worked for a manager who I felt was rude and who hated me also. I, too, wanted to be Christian and have love for everyone, but there are some people that no matter what you do, they will still try to knock you down. In my case, I tried and tried to be as nice as possible. I did everything my manager asked and more, but she never was any nicer to me. Finally, I realized that it was impossible to make her happy, so I quit. Now that I am away from her, I am able to forgive her and genuinely feel sorry for her.
James Yoder, 20Belleville, Illinois

In my class at school there are two members of the Church—my best friend and me. We asked our teacher if we could show her a Book of Mormon. She said yes, and the next day we took a Book of Mormon to school and showed it to our teacher. I told her about Joseph Smith, and I even showed her a picture of him. Afterward I felt good because I knew I had been a good missionary.
Clara V., age 8, Denmark

Five years ago my husband, Bruce, became seriously ill when we were serving with the consecrated Saints in the Europe East Area. We returned home, and he passed away only a few weeks later. My life changed overnight. I was grieving and felt weak and vulnerable. I pled with the Lord to direct my path: “What would Thou have me do?”
A few weeks later, I was going through my mail when a small picture in a catalog caught my eye. As I looked closer, I realized it was an artist’s rendition of the Samaritan woman with Jesus at the well. At that moment the Spirit spoke clearly to me: “That is what you are supposed to do.” A loving Heavenly Father was inviting me to come to the Savior and learn.