Gospel Story Finder

One week after a recent assignment to create the first stake in Moscow, Russia,1 I attended a district conference in St. Petersburg. While speaking about my gratitude for early missionaries and local leaders who brought strength to the Church in Russia, I mentioned the name of Vyacheslav Efimov. He was the first Russian convert to become a mission president. He and his wife did wonderfully well in that assignment. Not long after they had completed their mission, and much to our sorrow, President Efimov suddenly passed away.2 He was only 52 years of age.
While speaking of this pioneering couple, I felt impressed to ask the congregation if Sister Efimov might be present. Far in the rear of the room, a woman stood. I invited her to come to the microphone. Yes, it was Sister Galina Efimov. She spoke with conviction and bore a powerful testimony of the Lord, of His gospel, and of His restored Church. She and her husband had been sealed in the holy temple. She said they were united forever. They were still missionary companions, she on this side of the veil and he on the other side.3 With tears of joy, she thanked God for sacred temple covenants. I wept too, with full realization that the everlasting unity exemplified by this faithful couple was the righteous result of making, keeping, and honoring sacred covenants.

Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve talked about this struggle when he compared your mind to a theater, and your thoughts to performers in a play.
“Have you ever noticed that without any real intent on your part … a shady little thought may creep in … and attract your attention? These delinquent thoughts will try to upstage everybody.
“If you permit them to go on, … because you consented to it … they will enact for you … anything to the limits of your toleration. …
“… They can make it interesting all right, even convince you that it is innocent—for they are but thoughts.
“What do you do at a time like that, when the stage of your mind is commandeered by the imps of unclean thinking? …
“Choose … a favorite hymn, … perhaps “I Am a Child of God” would do. …
“Now, use this hymn as the place for your thoughts to go. … Whenever you find these shady actors have slipped from the sidelines of your thinking onto the stage of your mind, put on this record, as it were.
“As the music begins and as the words form in your thoughts, the unworthy ones will slip shamefully away. It will change the whole mood on the stage of your mind. Because it is uplifting and clean, the baser thoughts will disappear” (Ensign, Jan. 1974, p. 28).

One day around Christmas, I was with my dad at the store. My favorite singer’s new album had just come out, and I begged him to buy it for me. Dad explained that he and Mom had already bought presents and didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend. Still, I was upset I couldn’t get the album.
When we reached the check-out line, I noticed a mother in front of us trying to buy some sparkly shoes for her little girl. She didn’t have enough money to pay for them, and she left looking very sad as her daughter began to cry.
When it was our turn to check out, I was surprised when Dad picked up the sparkly shoes and bought them. He ran to the parking lot to give them to the mother. Through her tears, she thanked him and said the shoes would be her daughter’s only Christmas present that year. She had prayed she might find a way to buy them.
The album suddenly didn’t seem so important to me. I was glad my dad followed the Spirit and helped someone else, even though it was a sacrifice. That day, I learned that giving is better than receiving.
Makenna L., Utah, USA

A few days later, I opened the door to see two fine-looking young men. They introduced themselves as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the conversation that followed, they asked, “Do you believe that the church of Jesus Christ is on the earth today?” My wife and I had already considered this question while studying the Bible. We concluded that if there were a true church, it would have to have all the doctrines Jesus taught. The churches we knew, including our own, were not complete. “If it exists,” I said, “it must have all the things Jesus taught. But it does not exist.”
The missionaries said that the church they represented was organized in the same way as the church at Christ’s time. They added that this church had continuing revelation from Jesus Christ.
I felt sorry for them; they had been so misled. I told them, “I’m sure that just as our church has errors in its doctrine, so does yours. Someone has added, changed, or taken something away.” Again they testified that their church was Christ’s own church, organized with his authority and directed by him.
Soon after, I told my mother about the missionaries. She smiled and went into her bedroom, then returned with a copy of the Book of Mormon. She told me I could have it.
I began reading the Book of Mormon with a curious, but negative attitude. As I read the first page, I thought angrily, this was written by a man with a vivid imagination who knew the Bible well. I read two more pages, slammed the book shut, threw it on the table, and exclaimed, “What a fake!” During the missionaries’ next visit, I told them that I thought the Book of Mormon was a hoax. It was like the Bible, I said, except it referred to the American continent. But, undeterred, the missionaries easily handled the questions my wife and I had then, and in subsequent visits. I could find nothing wrong with what they taught us, but I could not accept the Book of Mormon.
However, the missionaries testified that I could know that the Book of Mormon was true if I followed the admonition of Moroni and sincerely sought for divine guidance. (See Moro. 10:4.) Having prayed, and while reading the words of Moroni, I received a spiritual witness that I have never been able to describe. A realization that the Book of Mormon and the Church were true penetrated every fiber of my being. Happily I exclaimed to my wife, “Margrit, Margrit, I know that it is true!”
Margrit continued to seek her own witness, and within a few weeks she also knew the truth. We set our baptismal date.

Three years later, I met two missionaries at a railway station in Tokyo. They invited me to listen to their message. I brought my Book of Mormon to our next meeting.
They began the conversation by saying, “We would like to share an important book with you.”
I took the Book of Mormon from my bag and asked, “Is it this book? I’ve already read it.”
They were stunned. Eventually, I was taught the gospel, and the missionaries encouraged me to ask God with a sincere heart if the Book of Mormon is true (see Moroni 10:4–5).
One night I thought about God, the Church, the Book of Mormon, and how I could be happy and felt something warm inside. Then I decided to be baptized.

Members of the Bangalore Second Branch have loved almost all less-active families back to church. Branch president Raja Doraiswamy says, “Like Lehi, who wanted to give the fruit of the tree of life to his entire family, we desire that everybody be baptized and active.”

I came to understand more fully the relationship between the “priesthood” rocket and the “opportunity to benefit from Christ’s atoning power” payload several years ago. During a weekend, I had two assignments. One was to create the first stake in a country, and the other was to interview a young man and, if all was in order, restore his priesthood and temple blessings. This 30-year-old man had joined the Church in his late teens. He served an honorable mission. But when he returned home, he lost his way, and he lost his membership in the Church. After some years, “he came to himself,”22 and with the help of loving priesthood leaders and kind members, he repented and was readmitted by baptism into the Church.

Later, he applied to have his priesthood and temple blessings restored. We set an appointment for Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at the meetinghouse. When I arrived for the earlier interviews, he was already there. He was so anxious to have the priesthood once again, he just could not wait.

During our interview, I showed him the letter explaining that President Thomas S. Monson had personally reviewed his application and authorized the interview. This otherwise stoic young man wept. I then told him that the date of our interview would have no official meaning in his life. He looked puzzled. I informed him that after I restored his blessings, his membership record would show only his original baptism, confirmation, priesthood ordination, and endowment dates. He choked up again.

I asked him to read from the Doctrine and Covenants:
“Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.
“By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them.”23

Tears filled his eyes a third time. Then I placed my hands on his head, and in the name of Jesus Christ and by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, and with the authorization of the President of the Church, I restored his priesthood and temple blessings.

The joy that came over us was profound. He knew he was once again authorized to hold and exercise the priesthood of God. He knew that his temple blessings were again fully operative. He had a bounce in his step and a radiant light about him. I was so proud of him, and I sensed how proud Heavenly Father was of him too.

Thereafter, the stake was organized. The meetings were well attended by enthusiastic, faithful Saints, and a wonderful stake presidency was sustained. However, for me, the historic occasion of organizing this first stake in a country was overshadowed by the joy I felt in restoring the blessings to this young man.

Not long ago, Sister Gong and I became acquainted with a father and family blessed by a faithful priesthood brother who came to their bishop and asked if he (the priesthood brother) could be a home teaching companion with the father. The father was not active and not interested in home teaching. But as the father’s heart changed, he and this loving priesthood brother began visiting “their” families. After one such visit, his wife—herself not then attending church—asked her husband how things had gone. The father admitted, “I may have felt something”—then he went to the kitchen to get a beer.
But one thing followed another: tender experiences, ministering service, changing hearts, temple preparation class, coming to church, being sealed as a family in the holy temple. Imagine how grateful the children and grandchildren are to their father and mother and to the ministering brother who came as a friend and companion with their father to minister to and love others.

Andrew pulled out a pen and opened his journal. Today, I am coming home from my mission, he wrote.
He smiled and looked out the train window. He had spent the last two years in Denmark, the country where he was born. It was also where his family was baptized. They moved to Utah, USA, when he was a teenager. And soon he would be with them!
Andrew turned the page and kept writing. He liked to write. He also liked learning about Church history. He had read all he could about Joseph Smith. He even memorized all the important dates in Joseph Smith’s life.
Soon Andrew was home with his family. Every day he helped them work on the farm. He plowed. He planted. But he wanted to do more. He wanted to read and write and travel.
So Andrew prayed. He thought a lot about what he should do. Then he had an idea! He started to translate some of Joseph Smith’s history into Danish.
And that was just the start. Andrew kept writing, reading, and translating. He started working for the Church as a historian. He went to different places in the United States. He gathered stories and important papers.
One day, Church leaders asked Andrew to do something even more exciting. They asked him to go to different countries. He would write stories about the Church members he met. Andrew could not wait!
Andrew said goodbye to his family. Then, with his passport in hand, Andrew was off! He traveled by ship. He traveled by train. Sometimes he traveled by carriage or even by horse or camel.
Wherever he went, Andrew talked to Church members about their lives. He talked to them about their faith. He wrote their stories down so other people could read them. To Andrew, everyone’s story was important.
When Andrew came home from his trip, he put the stories into a book. He taught others about writing things down and keeping them in a safe place.
Andrew was happy doing the work he loved. But sometimes he wondered if he was really making a difference. He decided to pray about it.
“Heavenly Father, why haven’t I been asked to do more important things?” A clear answer came to Andrew’s mind. God has inspired you to do the work you have done.
Andrew smiled. He knew he was doing what God wanted him to do. And he would not stop!
Andrew saved the stories of more than 15,000 people. We can follow his example by writing down our own family stories. Everyone’s story is important—including yours!

In a recent visit to Curitiba, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles promised members, “If you prepare to go to the temple and do the ordinances for yourselves and for your ancestors, you will build a testimony of this work, which you would not achieve otherwise.” He also said, “It is perhaps easier to build a temple than it is to prepare the people for a temple.”

One preparatory event happened when I was in an auto accident while visiting France. Moments after I was strongly prompted to fasten my seat belt, the car skidded and plummeted down a 20-foot (6-m) embankment. Because of the warning voice and because I regained use of my feet and legs while others with similar injuries are often left permanently paralyzed, I began to understand that a divine power much greater than I was in control.

A week later the fire was still burning when Latter-day Saints gathered to hear President Boyd K. Packer, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, speak. He pronounced an apostolic blessing upon them. After the meeting, he shook hands with every person, including 16-year-old Tori Gross.
“President Packer reminded us that we lost our houses, not our homes,” Tori says. “When a boy at school said he was homeless, I said, ‘You’re not homeless, you’re houseless.’ Our house burned to the ground and so did part of the new house we are building. But our family survived. Since the fire, I feel closer to Heavenly Father, and I rely on the gospel more.”

Twelve years ago, in company with the mission president from Hong Kong, it was my opportunity to initiate the work in the Philippines. On April 28, 1961, we held a meeting that will never be forgotten by those of us who were present. We had no hall then in which to meet. We made a request of the United States Embassy for permission to meet on the beautiful porch of the marble memorial in the American military cemetery at Fort McKinley on the outskirts of Manila. We convened at 6:30 in the morning. In that hallowed and sacred place, where are remembered the tragedies of war, we commenced the work of teaching the gospel of peace.
We called upon the only native Filipino member we had been able to locate. He recounted a story which I have never forgotten.
When he was a boy he found in a garbage can an old tattered copy of the Reader’s Digest. It contained a condensation of a book giving the story of the Mormon people. It spoke of Joseph Smith and described him as a prophet. The word prophet did something to that boy. Could there actually be a prophet upon the earth? he wondered. The magazine was lost, but concern over the presence of a living prophet never left him during the long, dark years of war and oppression when the Philippines were occupied. Finally the forces of liberation came, and with them the reopening of Clark Air Base. David Lagman found employment there. His supervisor, he learned, was a Mormon, an Air Force officer. He wanted to ask him if he believed in a prophet, but was afraid to do so. Finally, after much inner turmoil, he mustered the courage to inquire.
“Are you a Mormon, sir?” the young man asked. “Yes, I am,” was the forthright reply. “Do you believe in a prophet, do you have a prophet in your church?” came the anxious question.
“We do have a prophet, a living prophet, who presides in this church and who teaches the will of the Lord.”
David asked the officer to tell him more, and out of that teaching came his baptism. He was the first native elder ordained in the Philippines and today serves as president of the Northern Luzon District of the Church, now knowing for himself that there is indeed a living prophet on the earth.

Prior to entering Salt Lake City, he remarks that his stage stopped at a station run by a Destroying Angel, whom he defined as a Latter-day Saint “set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious citizens.”
Twain wrote that he had “heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and the dark and bloody deeds they had done,” and he had his shudder ready. But he was unimpressed by the man, who turned out to be “nothing but a loud, profane, offensive old blackguard!” Twain plays on the “angel” aspect of the title and asserts that no one can abide “an Angel in an unclean shirt and no suspenders,” an Angel “with a horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer.”

Prison warden Kenyon J. Scudder related this experience:
A friend of his happened to be sitting in a railroad coach next to a young man who was obviously depressed. Finally the man revealed that he was a paroled convict returning from a distant prison. His imprisonment had brought shame to his family, and they had neither visited him nor written often. He hoped, however, that this was only because they were too poor to travel and too uneducated to write. He hoped, despite the evidence, that they had forgiven him.
To make it easy for them, however, he had written them to put up a signal for him when the train passed their little farm on the outskirts of town. If his family had forgiven him, they were to put a white ribbon in the big apple tree which stood near the tracks. If they didn’t want him to return, they were to do nothing; and he would remain on the train as it traveled west.
As the train neared his home town, the suspense became so great he couldn’t bear to look out of his window. He exclaimed, “In just five minutes the engineer will sound the whistle indicating our approach to the long bend which opens into the valley I know as home. Will you watch for the apple tree at the side of the track?” His companion changed places with him and said he would. The minutes seemed like hours, but then there came the shrill sound of the train whistle. The young man asked, “Can you see the tree? Is there a white ribbon?”
Came the reply: “I see the tree. I see not one white ribbon, but many. There is a white ribbon on every branch. Son, someone surely does love you.”
In that instant all the bitterness that had poisoned a life was dispelled. “I felt as if I had witnessed a miracle,” the other man said. Indeed, he had witnessed a miracle. We too can experience this same miracle when we, with hand and heart, as did the Savior, lift and love our neighbor to a newness of life.

“I was in a new culture full of new vocabulary and traditions. I felt like an outsider in most conversations and questioned my worth.”

Amy Faragher, shown with her husband, Nathan, and their children

Amy Faragher knew the Church was true the moment she stepped through the church door. “I could not deny the witness I had received from the Holy Ghost,” she says, “so I chose to be baptized.”

About a year after joining the Church as a 19-year-old, she received a calling to serve in Relief Society. A year later she was called to serve as Relief Society president of her young single adult ward. “Those experiences really enriched my life,” she says. “I was all in.”

Serving in this calling as a relatively new member of the Church had its challenges. “I was in a new culture full of new vocabulary and traditions,” she says. “I felt like an outsider in most conversations and questioned my worth as a member.”

Despite the difficulties, Church members received her with warmth and open arms, like one sister who asked to be her friend. “Such associations softened the challenge of learning a new life,” Sister Faragher says. “I felt part of a community. Ward members didn’t judge me for not understanding Church culture or doctrine.”

Five years after joining the Church, she got married. She and her husband lived in various wards over the years. One in particular was accepting of her convert experience, even inviting her to share her story as a member of a panel at a ward activity.

In other wards she attended, Amy was eager to participate but didn’t feel included. She began to doubt her place in the Church. “At times, the loneliness was unbearable,” she remembers. “I continued to attend sacrament meeting and fill my calling in the nursery but suffered from a high level of anxiety.”

When her efforts to seek support from her ward during a challenging time didn’t bear fruit, she sought counsel from her stake president. As she spoke with him on one occasion, she divulged the ache of her heart. He responded quickly and asked to hear more. They talked at length and committed to meet regularly. “The stake president was genuinely interested and listened to all I had to say,” she recalls. “He was the first to ask the hard question about what was going on.”

Her counseling with the stake president and receiving other professional counseling helped her feel Heavenly Father’s love, an important step in her healing. “Everything changed for me. I’m finding my place,” she says. “I’ve learned I don’t need to be ashamed of being a convert.”

“It’s important for leaders to acknowledge and care for new members,” she suggests. “Ask the hard questions and learn how they are really doing. A calling or responsibility suited to the new member’s capacity is also important to the confidence of a new member. It’s not a burden to serve, as some leaders believe.”

Amy recently earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling, and she conducts stake workshops on mental health and assists with the Church’s addiction recovery program.

It was the girls themselves who decided that Mormons ought to be involved in doing something for people in underdeveloped lands. So after discussing it with their MIA teacher, the girls of San Jose (California) Ward wrote to a nonprofit foundation that specializes in collecting medical discards, packaging them, and sending them all over the world. The girls decided to make Johnny coats (hospital gowns) and torn-sheet bandages, and to gather soap to send to those in need. They asked two motels in their area to save soap for them. One motel also volunteered to save old sheets from which the girls could make bandages. The first load of soap from one motel weighed 500 pounds. Then one Saturday nineteen girls got together and knitted, made bandages, and boxed soap. Their own ward Relief Society donated dozens of men’s shirts for Johnny coats. Now they want to learn how to make leper bandages …

I would like to begin by painting a word picture of a setting in east-central Arizona. Here there are some high and often snow-packed mountains. We refer to them as the White Mountains. From this fountainhead stem most of the major water-producing streams that fill the agricultural and domestic needs of central Arizona. From these mountains comes the water supply for the home in the city of Phoenix. In the wintertime the mountains are covered with snow, ofttimes many feet in depth. The streams, as they begin here, run cool and clear, filled with delicious, life-giving water. The streams run many miles in this unpolluted condition as they move down the mountains, through the valleys, eventually to empty into great reservoirs built to store the liquid during periods of drought.

There are also in eastern Arizona many high-grade ore deposits which are and have been mined for many years, copper being one of the principal metals. Some of the streams that originate in the White Mountains run through the mining towns, and their water is used by the smelters in the processing of the ore. The waste from this process, in some cases, finds its way back into the streams, causing discoloration and the addition of harmful elements that make the water unfit for human consumption. These streams also empty into the great reservoirs.

There are seasons of the year when there are cloudbursts in the mountains upstream from the dam. The heavens literally open up and discharge their contents. When water comes in such great quantities as it does on these occasions, large amounts of soil are eroded; brush, and sometimes trees, are also washed down the rivers into the reservoirs.

These reservoirs have the unusual capacity of holding all that is put in them—the cool and clean, clear, and delicious water coming from the glistening snowpack, as well as the polluted water from the industries, and the brown, silt-filled waters resulting from the summer thunderstorms. All of it accumulates behind the huge rock and concrete dams. As we’ve said, part of the water that is held behind these dams is used as the domestic water supply for over a million people.

The water, of course, in the condition in which it is stored behind the dams, is now undrinkable because of the impurities that have been dumped into it. And so there must be a filtering system that prepares it for use.

First, there are large grates and nets of coarse screens that filter out leaves, branches, and dead animal life. The filtering system gets finer and finer as it removes other harmful impurities. Finally, after much careful attention and cleansing, it is released into the pipelines of the cities in a now-purified condition, ready to be used by the people of the valley.

When an eighteen-month-old Bolivian boy, Danny, was flown to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City for corrective surgery on his feet and hips, Relief Society sisters devotedly cared for him during his three-month recovery period.

Holladay Utah North Stake Relief Society president Sharon Kasteler reports, “The sisters who cared for Danny have the heart of the gospel in their lives today because they have shared and given.”

Get to know President Oaks
Before he was 16, he obtained a radio operator’s license. He worked as a radio announcer.
Became interested in radio while working his first job sweeping out a radio repair shop.