Gospel Story Finder

He loved the youth of the Church, as is evidenced by the experience of Heber J. Grant. Nine days after Heber’s birth, his father, Jedediah M. Grant, who was Second Counselor to President Brigham Young, died. For the next 21 years, Brigham Young took special interest in the boy Heber J. Grant.

Heber J. Grant wrote:
“I was almost as familiar in the homes of President Brigham Young as I was in the home of my own mother. In one home … if I was hungry I felt as free to go in and ask for something to eat there as in my own home. … I knelt down time and time again in his home in the Lion House at family prayers, as a child and as a young man.”

Christmas was coming, and it was obvious that my wife and I, who were newlyweds, were not going to have any money to buy a Christmas tree, ornaments, decorations, or a fine dinner.
We had started with no home, no jobs, and very little money. But God helped us. We found a small apartment, and I started looking for a job. I hadn’t finished my degree, so I took various sales jobs. My income was modest, just enough to pay for food and rent. I would leave home early; sometimes I would come back successful, sometimes not. If I was not, I would feel defeated, but my wife, who was pregnant, would greet me with a smile. Then the difficulties would seem less challenging.
In Mexico, Christmas Eve is celebrated even more than Christmas Day. When I was single, I celebrated by eating codfish and a salad that included beets, oranges, and peanuts. But this Christmas Eve we didn’t know what we would be having for dinner. We had a little money and a small gas stove fueled by a borrowed tank of gas. We didn’t have a refrigerator or furniture for the living room or dining room—just a little wooden table my grandmother had given me and a couple of chairs we had received from a friend.
As I thought about our situation, I became depressed. But I remembered that God never forsakes us, and I humbled myself like a child and went to Him in prayer.
My prayer was answered. I had peace in my heart and felt that all would be well. I opened the trunk of my car, and in one corner I found a small piece of dried fish. I remembered that several months before, I had helped my father move some fish, and this piece must have been left behind. Because of the salt it hadn’t gone bad.
I showed it to my wife, and she said she would cook it. We went to buy tomatoes and other ingredients. We washed the fish and soaked it to get the salt out.
That night, by the light of a small bulb, we sat at our little unpainted wooden table and remembered the birth of Jesus Christ and how He was born with even less than we had. We enjoyed the most delicious dinner I had ever eaten and went to bed early. The next morning we stayed in bed and watched Christmas movies. It was a very happy day. In our poverty the spirit of Christmas brightened our little home and gave us hope and courage.
In January our daughter was born, bringing more happiness into our home.
Many Christmases have come and gone since then, and we no longer lack decorations or a Christmas tree or the fragrance of pine. We have had many fine dinners with succulent dishes. But I cherish most the memory of our first Christmas together. It was the poorest in material things but the richest in things spiritual and eternal: just the two of us with our unborn daughter and the spirit of Christmas.

Please go talk with your bishop. He should be one of your best friends. He wants to help you in your life and help you return to our Father in Heaven.

I know because I kept delaying a visit to my bishop. I was scared that he would laugh at me and tell me that I was stupid for doing the things that I had done. To my surprise, as I told him what I had done, I could see a tear in his eye and I knew he was hurting for me. After telling him, he asked me a few questions and we talked for several hours.

My life changed—for two years I had felt ashamed, guilty, and unwanted. After talking with my bishop, I knew the Lord loved me and wanted me to do what is right.

Later, my bishop gave me a temple recommend and was at the temple the day that I was married for time and all eternity. Because of my Savior’s love, I was now worthy to enter our Father’s house and be married.

Your life will change if you talk with your bishop and have the strength to change it. It may not be easy because Satan will always be there telling you, “You’ve done it once—it won’t hurt to do it again.” But it does hurt.

Fast and pray. The Lord will help you.

Name withheld.

Illustration by Katie Payne
This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. I’d been willing enough to help treat my great-grandma’s fence with linseed oil to help protect it. But as the day wore on, sweat trickled down my face and my willingness turned to fatigue in the heat.
My mom suggested a break and a drink before going back to work, but I pouted, determined to be miserable.
“Dallin, there’s no real reward for having a good attitude when everything in life is going great,” she said. “The real test of character and the true reward comes when you can have a good attitude even when everything seems miserable.”
A week later, my grandpa asked if I could treat his fence with linseed oil. His fence was longer, and we’d have to treat both sides.
This time, I determined to work on my attitude even if the job got tough. We started early, but sure enough, we were soon baking in the sun. The work seemed endless as we carried those heavy buckets of sticky, stinky oil. Thorny bushes along the fence pricked our legs. As I remembered what my mom had said, though, I didn’t complain. I didn’t quit. I worked carefully and tried to keep up a good attitude.
When we finished, I looked at the newly treated fence and felt proud of what we’d done. I was tired and sticky, but I knew I’d also passed an important test of character. I learned that I could have a good attitude even when everything seems miserable.
Dallin H., Oklahoma, USA

An illustration may help. Many of you will face a decision my wife and I once faced: Which career path is right for us? Specifically, we were trying to decide whether I should go to medical school or return to graduate school to pursue another academic program. To us, this loomed as a large decision in our lives, one that might impact our family significantly for years to come. At the time we had three little boys and I had already been in school at the college level for five years. We were anxious to resolve this great uncertainty in our lives in a way that would let us be serviceable in the kingdom and have a good family life.

We applied the familiar pattern spelled out in the 9th section of the Doctrine and Covenants: "...study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right."5 We made lists of pros and cons, we talked to people in both fields, we talked to family members who knew us best, we talked to our bishop, we talked a lot to each other, and we prayed often. Finally, we felt we had accumulated all the information we could. We realized that doing our homework was a vital part of the process--we could not fairly expect heaven to answer our prayers if we didn't do our part first. We then made a tentative decision based on our best judgment. Then we set a time for us to fast together. During our fast, we prayed earnestly, asking Heavenly Father for divine confirmation of our tentative decision. We sincerely wanted to do what Heavenly Father wanted us to do. After our fast, after our prayers, after our best work, we talked about the promptings we felt that Sunday afternoon. Interestingly, both of us felt a "stupor of thought", a darkness, about the tentative decision we had made. It seemed unsettling, the wrong direction for our family. As we considered the alternative decision, we felt a clearness of thought and a peaceful assurance that the alternative decision was the right one for us.

Heavenly Father requires us to do our part. It was never His plan to do work for us that we can possibly do for ourselves. If He did, He would be robbing us of our chance to grow and develop our own decision-making skills.

My second experience is quite recent—it actually occurred while I was writing this talk. But, by way of background, we first need to go back thirty-six years. My companion and I were some of the very first missionaries to work in a town called Chunan. There was no branch of the Church there; there were no members there. Over a series of weeks we knocked on hundreds of doors in that town, without any visible success. At that point, to me the only memorable thing about the town was that at night, after tracting all day, as we trudged in the dark with our bikes through the rice fields back to our apartment, we would often stop and admire those rice fields filled with fireflies.

One day, after weeks of no success, we came to a house. A teenage boy answered the door and said, “????,” which literally means “nobody is here.” He had been coached by his mother to say that.

We looked at him, and I said, “Well, you are home. Can we talk with you?”

He turned out to be a wonderful young man, and he quickly developed a strong testimony of the gospel and of the reality of his Heavenly Father, and he entered the waters of baptism. Brother Wu very soon thereafter went on to serve a mission himself and then married and raised a righteous family.

Now, fast-forward to just four weeks ago in early May of this year. I was accompanying the BYU Ballroom Dance Company on their tour of China and Hong Kong. Shortly before we left I learned we would be in the city where Brother Wu’s son, Wilford, was living. I emailed ahead and asked if we could meet. My wife and I spent a wonderful evening together with him and his wife, Alice, and talked at length about what a blessing that day thirty-six years ago had been in both of their lives as well as in ours.

The next morning, on Sunday, we attended a local branch meeting with them and afterward were taking pictures together to remember the occasion.

At that moment someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I know you. I used to be your missionary companion.”

I looked up to see Elder John Vance and remembered we had been companions when Brother Wu was baptized so many years ago. We had had no contact since the mission field.

I pointed to Wilford and asked, “John, do you know who this is?”
He did not. Imagine his surprise when I told him that Wilford was the son of our very own Brother Wu from so many years ago.

There we were, on separate business trips to a third country in which none of us had ever had any contact and in a city of twenty-four million people, and we just happened to run into one another—and at the same time I had located Brother Wu’s son, Wilford. I knew it was an answer to my own prayers, but, as with my previous experience, it blessed everyone involved and was not just for me.

When President Kimball died, we were living in Arizona. President Kimball had been in our home. We had knelt with him in family prayer, and he had eaten bread and milk with us. We knew he was a prophet of God.
I wanted a witness of the Spirit that President Benson was God’s chosen prophet. I wanted to know more than that he was just a good person and next in line after President Kimball. The Lord was kind to me, and, after fasting and prayer, I received, by the Spirit, the witness that President Benson was indeed God’s chosen prophet for this time, with a special calling and a special message for our day.

Such a call of duty—a much less dramatic call but one which nonetheless helped to save a soul—came to me in 1950 when I was a newly called bishop. My responsibilities as a bishop were many and varied, and I tried to the best of my ability to do all that was required of me. The United States was engaged in a different war by then. Because many of our members were serving in the armed services, an assignment came from Church headquarters for all bishops to provide each serviceman a subscription to the Church News and the Improvement Era, the Church’s magazine at that time. In addition, each bishop was asked to write a personal, monthly letter to each serviceman from his ward. Our ward had 23 men in uniform. The priesthood quorums, with effort, supplied the funds for the subscriptions to the publications. I undertook the task, even the duty, to write 23 personal letters each month. After all these years I still have copies of many of my letters and the responses received. Tears come easily when these letters are reread. It is a joy to learn again of a soldier’s pledge to live the gospel, a sailor’s decision to keep faith with his family.

One evening I handed to a sister in the ward the stack of 23 letters for the current month. Her assignment was to handle the mailing and to maintain the constantly changing address list. She glanced at one envelope and, with a smile, asked, “Bishop, don’t you ever get discouraged? Here is another letter to Brother Bryson. This is the 17th letter you have sent to him without a reply.”

I responded, “Well, maybe this will be the month.” As it turned out, that was the month. For the first time, he responded to my letter. His reply is a keepsake, a treasure. He was serving far away on a distant shore, isolated, homesick, alone. He wrote, “Dear Bishop, I ain’t much at writin’ letters.” (I could have told him that several months earlier.) His letter continued, “Thank you for the Church News and magazines, but most of all thank you for the personal letters. I have turned over a new leaf. I have been ordained a priest in the Aaronic Priesthood. My heart is full. I am a happy man.”

Brother Bryson was no happier than was his bishop. I had learned the practical application of the adage “Do [your] duty; that is best; leave unto [the] Lord the rest.”13

Years later, while attending the Salt Lake Cottonwood Stake when James E. Faust served as its president, I related that account in an effort to encourage attention to our servicemen. After the meeting, a fine-looking young man came forward. He took my hand in his and asked, “Bishop Monson, do you remember me?”

I suddenly realized who he was. “Brother Bryson!” I exclaimed. “How are you? What are you doing in the Church?”

With warmth and obvious pride, he responded, “I’m fine. I serve in the presidency of my elders quorum. Thank you again for your concern for me and the personal letters which you sent and which I treasure.”

Susan woke with a start. What was that noise? She listened carefully. The wind howled through the eucalyptus trees and knocked seedpods onto the roof above her bedroom. The noise of their falling sounded like heavy rain, and it had awakened her.

Susan sighed. Her family had just moved into this house, and she wasn’t used to all the new sounds. It didn’t help that Susan now slept alone. In their old house she had shared a bedroom with her older sister.

She pulled her blankets up under her chin as another shower of pods hit the roof. She was scared, lonely, and, she realized, missing her dad. Susan’s dad was an officer in the military. He was away on training. Although he wasn’t in danger, Susan suddenly grew frightened. What if someday her dad was sent to war and got killed? She didn’t want to grow up without her father. She needed him.

Tears pricked her eyes, and Susan knew she needed help to calm her growing fears. Her sister wasn’t nearby, but she knew that Jesus and Heavenly Father were always close.

Gathering her courage, Susan slipped out from under her blankets and knelt by the side of her bed. She prayed to Heavenly Father to help her, to take away her fear.

And then Susan heard something. It was softer than the clatter on the roof. It was her mother’s voice, and she was singing. As her mother walked through the house, finishing up her chores and getting ready for bed, she sang.

Susan’s mother had a beautiful voice and sang often, but this was the most wonderful song Susan had ever heard her sing. Though Susan didn’t recognize the tune, the words were about Jesus. The song filled her with peace.

Susan thanked Heavenly Father, then climbed back into bed, and listened to her mother’s song. Tears came to her eyes again, this time tears of gratitude and relief. She felt that all was well. She knew she had a loving family. She knew that Heavenly Father cared about her. She believed that no matter what happened, there would always be a reason to hope. Susan knew that whenever fears threatened to overcome her, she could find peace by remembering the night her mother’s song was stronger than fear.

A father gets home tired after a long day at work and finds the rest of his family struggling with similar grumpy feelings. It’s Monday night, and holding family home evening seems impossible. After saying a prayer for help, the father and mother decide to keep things simple. They call their family together, sing a hymn, and pray together. They give each member a small candle to light as they tell about something that inspired them recently. In a darkened room, the light of the candles represents inspiration and focuses the children’s attention. As testimonies are shared, a feeling of sweet peace and love enters the home. The family ends the night grateful they held home evening.

“Wake up, partner,” Daddy whispered. “It’s time to get ready.” I looked out my window and saw stars twinkling in the dark sky. Inside, our house was as quiet as could be. Mom, Grandma, Robby, Paul, and Jonathan were all fast asleep.
“But, Daddy, it’s still nighttime,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Not really,” he said, laying my clothes on the bed. “It’s just very early in the morning, and according to the fishing forecast, that’s when the fish are supposed to bite best today. So hurry and get dressed while I make our lunch.”
When I got to the kitchen, Daddy was putting our lunch into the cooler. “All ready, Lucille?” he asked, closing the cooler and grabbing his camera.
“All ready,” I said. “I’m going to catch the biggest fish in the ocean.”
Daddy laughed. “That’s what all the fishermen say.”
By the time we stopped for breakfast, I was starved. I had eggs, sausages, milk, and a yummy doughnut that dripped grape jelly all over my new white jacket.
“But, Daddy,” I said as he rubbed and rubbed the purple spots with a wet napkin, “aren’t you glad I ate all my breakfast?”
“Very glad,” he said. “You have to be strong to catch fish. Early, too, so let’s go.”
It was almost light when we got to the marina and carried our fishing rods, the cooler, and Daddy’s camera down the long wooden dock.
Our boat’s name is Fish Tales, and it’s printed on the side in bright blue letters. Fish Tales is seven years old, the same as me, and Daddy has taken our whole family for rides in it lots of times. But today he was just taking me.
Daddy unsnapped the canvas cover on Fish Tales and folded it neatly. Then he lifted me into the boat, tucked the fishing rods and camera inside a compartment, and put the cooler beside them. Finally he slipped the key into the ignition.
“Here we go,” he said as he turned the key. But nothing happened. Daddy tried and tried, but Fish Tales just wouldn’t start. Daddy lifted the engine cover and sighed a big sigh. I sat in the driver’s seat and pretended to steer. While Daddy worked on the engine, I pushed some buttons. Maybe I can get the boat to work, I thought.
“Don’t play with the controls, Lucille,” Daddy said. But there was a black box with knobs that I hadn’t tried, so I turned one of the knobs and heard crackling noises. I turned it some more and heard voices talking about the weather out on the ocean. I remembered what the black box was for and pushed the button next to the knob.
“Hello,” I said into the box. “This is Lucille, and my father’s real mad ’cause our boat’s broke.”
“LUCILLE! Please don’t help!”
I turned off the radio and didn’t push any more buttons or turn any more knobs.
“I’m hungry,” I said after a while, “and thirsty too.”
“Help yourself,” Daddy said. “But choose something nutritious. It’s still pretty early.”
I picked chocolate cookies and cream soda, and I really didn’t mean to spill the whole can of soda all over the boat.
“Lucille,” Daddy said when we finished wiping up the mess, “I’ll get out a blanket, and you can catch up on your sleep while I fix the boat.”
I didn’t want to sleep, but the blanket felt soft and Fish Tales rocked so gently. I dreamed I caught the biggest fish in the ocean.
A loud noise woke me. Fish Tales was fixed and ready to go.
“It’s almost nine o’clock,” Daddy said. “Let’s hurry before all the fish are gone.”
He unhooked the ropes that held us to the dock, and we went slowly past the other boats at the marina. Then we went fast. Then faster. I sat very still and watched the foamy path that Fish Tales left in the water. It was a wonderful, bouncy ride as we cut through the waves, looking for just the right place to fish.
Finally we slowed down and stopped where other boats had stopped too. But the waves didn’t stop, and it was hard to stand while the boat swayed from side to side.
“You’ll get used to it,” Daddy said. But I wasn’t at all sure of that. I looked up and tried to find the sun, but all I saw were big, dark clouds.
Daddy put a piece of slippery, white fish on the end of my line and dropped it over the side of the boat. Down, down it went until it hit the ocean’s bottom. Daddy handed me the rod and told me, “Hold on tight.”
“You’ll know when a fish is nibbling, Lucille,” he said. “You’ll feel a little tug on your line. Tell me when you do, and we’ll catch the first one together.” Then he put bait on his own line and fished from the other side of the boat.
I waited and waited and waited and waited.
Then I waited some more.
Not even a little fish tugged on my line. But raindrops sure dribbled on my head.
“Come on, Lucille,” Daddy said. “Let’s eat lunch. We’ll try again when the rain stops.”
I wasn’t too hungry, but it was dry inside Fish Tales’s cabin, so I sat and tore the crust off my bologna sandwich and tossed it through a porthole into the water. Then I pressed my sandwich flat and tried to eat it. But the boat rocked and rolled, and so did my stomach. Even the green grapes and cream soda didn’t taste too good.
“Daddy,” I said, “my stomach feels funny.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “The water is getting a bit choppy. Forget about lunch, partner. We’ll eat later.”
“Are you sure there’re fish in this ocean?” I asked.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Look. It’s only drizzling. Let’s fish again. If we don’t catch anything in ten minutes, we’ll go. Sometimes, Lucille, they just don’t bite.”
My stomach felt awful as I stood in the rain and lowered my line again. I yanked on it, but just a little, to get the fishes’ attention. Suddenly it felt heavy, so I pulled harder—and harder. Something really gigantic was on the end of my line. I just knew it was the biggest fish in the ocean.
“I got one!” I yelled, and Daddy dropped his rod and hurried over to help me. Together we reeled and pulled and reeled and pulled. I was glad I’d eaten such a good breakfast, because it took all our strength to land that rusty old kitchen chair.
“Can we keep it?” I asked.
“Well … Sure, why not?” Daddy muttered. “It’s the only thing we’ve caught all day.” He unhooked the old chair, and my line fell back into the water. “Let’s go home,” he said. “We’re both soaked. I guess today is just not our day. We’ll come back another time.”
I began to reel my line in, but I didn’t think I would ever want to go fishing again. And my stomach felt worse than ever.
Suddenly my line went taut, and my rod bent into an arch.
“I think I caught another chair,” I said.
When Daddy saw my rod bend almost in half, he scrambled over to help. “Something is definitely on there,” he said, “and it’s not a chair.”
“Oh, boy!” I said. “I’ve finally got a fish. Maybe the biggest—”
“I don’t know,” Daddy interrupted. “It’s not tugging on your line like a fish would. But I’ll tell you this, Lucille: It’s big!”
Slowly we reeled and pulled. I was so excited I could hardly wait.
The people on the boats around us stopped to watch Daddy and me reel in our catch.
I forgot the pouring rain.
I forgot the rocking and rolling of Fish Tales.
I almost forgot my terrible stomach.
I could think of only one thing: I had probably caught the biggest fish in the ocean.
Then I saw it. It wasn’t a chair. Or a fish. It looked like a dinosaur!
“Huh!” Daddy said. “Quick, Lucille. Get my camera.” He pulled the creature close to the surface. It was green and scaly, and it had dark eyes and a huge, round body.
“Hold the rod tightly, Lucille,” Daddy said, letting go. “It’s only snagged under its shell, and I want to take a picture before it breaks free.”
I held the rod steady. “It’s a dinosaur!” I called to the other boaters.
“It’s not a dinosaur,” Daddy said, and he laughed as he snapped an instant picture. “It’s a big sea turtle, and it came up to see who was on the other end of the line.”
The turtle must have seen my bologna sandwich crust floating on the water, because with one, quick move it was free, and, snatching that soggy crust, it dove back to the bottom of the ocean.
“You’re quite a fisherman, Lucille,” Daddy said, hugging me. “You’ve caught the biggest turtle that I’ve ever seen, and we have the picture to prove it. Let’s go home and tell everyone. They’ll be so surprised.”
Well, today I caught the biggest chair and the biggest turtle, and next time I’m going to catch the biggest fish in the ocean. But then, that’s what all the fisherman say.

The refining process in my life that led to my testimony of this principle began unexpectedly when in my mid-30s, I received my patriarchal blessing. I had fasted and prayed in preparation, wondering in my heart, “What does the Lord want me to do?” Full of happy anticipation and with our four young children in tow, my husband and I went to the elderly patriarch’s home. The blessing he gave me emphasized missionary work—over and over again.
I hate to admit it, but I was disappointed and troubled. At that point in my life, I had barely read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover. Without question, I was unprepared to serve a mission. So I put my patriarchal blessing in a drawer. I did, however, begin a serious regimen of scripture study each day as I focused on rearing my growing family.
The years passed, and my husband and I concentrated on preparing our children to serve missions. In sending our sons to many lands, I honestly believed I had fulfilled my missionary duty.
Then my husband was called to be a mission president in an unsettled, chaotic country in the developing world. It was 10,000 miles from home and light-years away from the culture and communication I knew. But, in the instant of my call as a full-time missionary, I felt a little like Alma and the sons of Mosiah—that I was called to be an “[instrument] in the hands of God to bring about this great work.” I also felt something I am not sure they did—overwhelming fear!
Over subsequent days I pulled out my patriarchal blessing and read it again and again, searching for deeper understanding. Even knowing I was going to live out a promise I had received from a patriarch decades earlier did not alleviate my concerns. Could I leave my married and unmarried children and my aging father and mother-in-law behind? Would I know the right things to do and say? What would my husband and I eat? Would I be safe in a country that was politically unstable and dangerous? I felt inadequate on every level.
In my quest for peace, I redoubled my efforts to attend the temple. I pondered the meaning of my covenants in a way I had never done before. For me, at this defining crossroads in my life, my temple covenants served as a foundation and catalyst. Yes, I feared, but I realized I had chosen to make personal, binding, sacred commitments I meant to keep. When all was said and done, this wasn’t someone else’s service to perform. This was my mission call, and I determined to serve.
Joseph Smith’s father pronounced this blessing upon his son’s head: “The Lord thy God has called thee by name out of the heavens. Thou hast been called … to the great work of the Lord: to do a work in this generation which no other … would do as thyself, in all things according to the will of the Lord.” The Prophet Joseph was called to his unique part of “the great work of the Lord,” and as overwhelmed and unprepared as I felt, I knew I was called to my portion of the work, too. This insight was helpful and gave me courage.
In my constant prayers I continued to ask, “Father, how can I do what Thou hast called me to do?” One morning shortly before leaving for our mission field, two friends brought a gift—a small hymnal to take with me. Later, on that same day, the answer to my months of prayerful pleadings came from that hymnal. As I sought solace in a quiet place, these words came clearly into my mind:
Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
Realizing in a most personal manner that the Lord would be with me and help me was just the beginning. I had much more to learn about becoming an instrument in God’s hands.
Far from home in a strange land, my husband and I embarked on our service, much as pioneers, with faith in every footstep. We were quite literally alone much of the time—finding our way within a culture we didn’t understand—expressed in dozens of languages we could not speak. The sentiment of Sarah Cleveland, one of our early Relief Society leaders in Nauvoo, described our feelings: “We have entered into this work in the name of the Lord. Let us boldly go forward.”
My first lesson in the process of becoming an instrument in God’s hand had been to search the scriptures, fast, pray, attend the temple, and live faithful to the covenants I had made in the house of the Lord. My second lesson was that in order to “boldly go forward,” I needed to rely completely on the Lord and seek earnestly for personal revelation. In order to receive that revelation, I would have to live worthily to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost with me.
My last lesson was precisely what Elder Maxwell explained. In even the smallest details of each day, I submitted my will to the Lord’s, for I so needed His help, His guidance, and His protection. As I did, gradually my relationship with my Father in Heaven changed—in profound ways—that continue to bless me and my family.
My life’s journey is different from yours. Each of you could teach me much from your experiences of submitting your will to the Lord’s as you earnestly seek to know His will for you. We can rejoice together in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, gratefully acknowledging the blessing of having a testimony of the Savior and His Atonement for each of us. This I know—our individual efforts to become instruments in the hands of God have not been easy and have stretched us spiritually, enriching our mortal journeys in the most personal, glorious ways.
Dear sisters, may the Lord bless each of you in your personal quest to know His will for you and to submit your will to His. I testify that our individual will “is the only possession which is truly ours to give.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I love the parables used by Jesus Christ to teach gospel principles. I would like to share a real-life parable of sorts with you this morning.
One day I walked into the cafeteria at Church headquarters to have some lunch. After getting a tray of food, I entered the dining area and noticed a table at which all three members of the First Presidency were seated, along with one empty chair. My insecurities caused me to make a quick detour away from that table, and then I heard the voice of our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, saying, “Allen, there’s an empty chair right here. Come and sit down with us.” And so I did.
Near the end of the lunch, I was surprised to hear a loud crunching noise, and when I looked up, I saw that President Nelson had stood his plastic water bottle straight up and then flattened it and replaced the lid.
President Dallin H. Oaks then asked the question I wanted to ask, “President Nelson, why did you flatten your plastic water bottle?”
He replied, “It makes it easier for those who are handling recyclable materials because it doesn’t take up as much space in the recycling container.”
While pondering that response, I heard the same crunching sound again. I looked to my right, and President Oaks had flattened his plastic water bottle just like President Nelson. I then heard some noise to my left, and President Henry B. Eyring was flattening his plastic water bottle, although he had adopted a different strategy by doing it while the bottle was horizontal, which took more effort than with the bottle straight up. Noticing this, President Nelson kindly showed him the bottle-straight-up technique to more easily flatten the bottle.
At that point, I leaned over to President Oaks and quietly asked, “Is flattening your plastic water bottle a new recycling requirement of the cafeteria?”
President Oaks responded, with a smile on his face, “Well, Allen, you need to follow the prophet.”
I’m confident that President Nelson was not declaring some new recycling-based doctrine in the cafeteria that day. But we can learn from the prompt response of President Oaks and President Eyring to President Nelson’s example and President Nelson’s attentiveness to help teach those involved a better way.

“My earliest recollection of my mother is of her teaching me to pray. She always made sure I got to church on time, and she started me off in life with good habits. I remember a precious teaching moment between the two of us. A neighbor lady had passed away. She had been a very dear friend of mine, even though I was but a little boy. I could not understand why Heavenly Father had taken my friend away. I was peering out through the curtains as the mortician placed her body in his big car. My mother took me on her knee and talked to me about the Resurrection and life eternal, things I needed to know right then. Even though I was only five years old, the message really got through because it was a teaching moment that satisfied my need.

So some years ago, when I was a graduate student in Berkley, California, my husband, who was not yet my husband at the time, he and I went to see a movie at a theater in Palo Alto, California not far from the Stanford campus. It was a movie called 35 Up and this movie was actually the most recent iteration in a series, a documentary series that had been made by British filmmakers beginning many years earlier.

The first film in the series was called 7 Up which has nothing to do with the soda pop, but was instead this group of film makers who went and gathered this array of seven-year-old British school children. They filmed them and interviewed them and talked to them about their lives. They took children from a great variety, very many different walks of life; kids who were bound for Eaton and Oxford and other children who had very different futures in line for them.

I had never heard of this series, until we went to see 35 Up. We sat through the interviews and the conversations with this array of people who had been interviewed every seven years of their lives ever since they had been seven. Some had dropped out and ceased to be a part of the project, others were still very much involved with the project.

The final individual, who was featured in this film, was a man whose life was troubled at best. He was actually doing apparently quite a lot better at thirty-five than he had been doing at twenty-eight. My future brother-in-law's wife, my future sister-in-law turned to me and said, "In 28 Up he was homeless and living in a trailer." He was a man who clearly had some issues and I, as I said, was living in Berkeley at the time not far from campus. I would walk to and from campus every day for course work and then back to my apartment. The walk to and from campus would take me along a not very clean street in Berkeley that was filled with panhandlers and drug addicts. When I saw this man in the film, the first thought that occurred to me was, if I saw him in Berkeley, I would cross the street to avoid him. That's the kind of individual I would tend to shy away from.

But in 35 Up this hadn't been the case, you didn't just see the man at 35. They showed clips from all of the earlier movies from 7 Up, from 14 Up, from 21, 28. And so instead of just seeing this deeply troubled, disturbing figure at thirty-five, I also saw the boy. And this boy was beautiful, bright-eyed, vibrant, intelligent, articulate, little lad-completely loveable. Because I had seen the child, I found myself perfectly capable of loving the man because I had some idea of who he really was: of that innocence, of that beauty, of that energy that had characterized him as a seven-year-old. And it completely transformed my perception of him as an adult. Instead of thinking, "I would run from that person," I felt drawn to him. I felt great compassion and great and quite real love for him.

It occurred to me then and it has occurred to me many times in the years since, that this is how and why parents are perfectly capable of loving us as teenagers. I have some teenagers and they're great and I love them. I mean they're quite adorable and pleasant now as they were as small children. But it occurred to me, too, that this gave me at least a little glimpse in to how our Heavenly Father can see us. He doesn't just know the flawed mortal you. He knows who you really are and He can see that and He loves it. If we can see something of that in one another, if we can just see a glimpse of that, how it can transform our sense of one another.

One day I got a call in Boston from a reporter from the Boston Globe; he said, "I'd like to follow some of your missionaries around and see what you do." I said, "You want to follow them around during the day?" He said, "Actually, we'd like to have a photographer follow them all day and be there in the evening with them and really do the story and we'd like to go to some of your meetings. Not some of your regular Sunday meetings but some of your meetings during the week with the missionaries." I got a little nervous about it.

We didn't have very many reporters show up to our zone conferences. I called our area president, Elder Marlin Jensen, and I asked him what he thought. He said, "Invite him to everything that we're going to do" he was getting ready to tour our mission. I said, "Okay, I'll have him come." He [the reporter] followed the missionaries as they talked to people throughout the day in Boston and was there in the evenings when they had companionship prayer. The next day he came to zone conference. As you know, zone conference isn't like your typical Sunday meetings. We get into the nuts and bolts of how missionary work is to be improved and how we can do better. I'll never forget what Elder Jensen said to this reporter after our zone conference was over. He walked up to him [the reporter] and said, "Now you know what we do, and you'll probably have an interesting story. But when you find out why we do it, you're going to really have yourself some kind of story then."

My testimony of the gospel, of missionary work, and why we do what we do was certainly enhanced by the faith and dedication of the young missionaries and the missionary couples that served in the Massachusetts Boston Mission with us. It was a tremendous experience. We're thankful for it.

This has proven good counsel for our family. As my wife and I have made our children’s activities outside the home a matter of pondering and prayer, some of the things we had thought to be important turned out to be unnecessary. I was especially surprised when I asked our children if they wanted to participate on a basketball team with me as their coach. Their reply was, “I don’t think so,” along with, “Dad, we have a basket in the front yard, and we like when you play with us and we have games with the neighbors. We get the ball a lot more!”

Lately I have been thinking of a time in my life when the weight of worry and concern over an uncertain future seemed ever present. I was 11 years old and living with my family in the attic of a farmhouse near Frankfurt, Germany. We were refugees for the second time in a period of only a few years, and we were struggling to establish ourselves in a new place far away from our previous home. I could say that we were poor, but that would be an understatement. We all slept in one room that was so tiny there was scarcely space to walk around the beds. In the other small room, we had a few pieces of modest furniture and a stove that Mother used to cook meals on. To get from one room to the other, we had to pass through a storage area where the farmer kept his equipment and tools, along with assorted meats and sausages hanging from the rafters. The aroma always made me very hungry. We had no bathroom, but we did have an outhouse—down the stairs and some 50 feet (15 m) away, though it seemed much farther during wintertime.
Because I was a refugee and because of my East German accent, other children often made fun of me and called me names that deeply hurt. Of all the times of my youth, I believe this may have been the most discouraging.
Now, decades later, I can look back on those days through the softening filter of experience. Even though I still remember the hurt and despair, I can see now what I was unable to see then: this was a period of great personal growth. During this time, our family bonded together. I watched and learned from my parents. I admired their determination and optimism. From them I learned that adversity, when confronted with faith, courage, and tenacity, could be overcome.
Brethren, I think back on that 11-year-old boy in Frankfurt, Germany, who worried about his future and felt the lasting sting of unkind remarks. I remember this time with a sort of sad fondness. While I would not be eager to relive those days of trial and trouble, I have little doubt that the lessons I learned were a necessary preparation for future opportunity. Now, many years later, I know this for a certainty: it is often in the trial of adversity that we learn those most critical lessons that form our character and shape our destiny.

On Saturday Stephanie was happy because her grandma had come to visit. They had fun making round cookies, square cookies, and heart-shaped cookies.
On Sunday Stephanie and Grandma bundled into warm coats, furry hats, and warm gloves. They walked to church together. Grandma liked the talk Stephanie gave in Primary.
On Monday Stephanie put on a puppet show for Grandma and Rex the cat. Grandma laughed and clapped her hands. Rex licked his paw and went to sleep.
On Tuesday Grandma and Stephanie rode the bus to town for lunch. Stephanie was happy to see a fancy toothpick in her chicken sandwich.
Wednesday was Valentine Day, but Stephanie was sad. Grandma was going home today. Grandma handed Stephanie a long white envelope.
Stephanie opened the envelope. It was empty! “It’s a hide-and-seek valentine,” Grandma explained. “If you look in the kitchen, the living room, and your bedroom, you will have a valentine.”
“What fun!” Stephanie began searching in the living room. First she looked on the couch; then she ran to the bookcase. There she found a piece of red paper with lace on its edge.
Next Stephanie went to the kitchen. She looked and looked but couldn’t find anything on the counters or table. Then she looked in the silverware drawer and found another piece of the valentine.
Stephanie ran to her bedroom. A piece of shiny red paper with lace was hiding under her pillow.
“Now put the pieces together,” suggested Grandma. Stephanie laid the pieces on her bed and made a lacy heart-shaped valentine.
“The best part is still missing,” said Grandma. She gave Stephanie a big hug and said, “I love you.”

Sister Ivy Morris, Corporal Morris’ wife, submitted a series of her husband’s letters to The Millennial Star for publication. He relates how happy the Norwegians are “to be free from Nazi control. Branch President Strang has told me of the imprisonments, ’grilling’ and punishments that he and his sons have had to endure and I know that the others have also had to suffer much. Yet all seemed to want to say: God had cared for us here in Norway.”
The Church members did not wallow in their recent sorrows. In fact, Alex Morris declares, “I have just had one of the outstanding experiences of my army career here in Oslo, Norway … To just sit in an LDS meeting and not understand a word of what is being spoken and yet be thrilled by the power of the spirit in the building.” He speaks highly of the members in the Oslo Branch who treated him well and who wanted to hear all about the British Mission. He asks his wife if she could send him something that he could give to the children of the kind members who gave him respite in their home. He suggests, “Do you think you could send a little cake or something, soap would be very useful, in fact any small thing like that, a tin of Ovaltine or anything for a treat for them. You should have seen their eyes when they tasted chocolate for the first time. My it’s good to meet so many Saints, they are just the same, stand around the aisle talking before and after the meeting shaking hands all round.”