Gospel Story Finder

I was in Idaho Falls and was the guest in a home of a typical Church family. There were a dedicated set of parents and many children. The oldest was in military duty in the dreaded South Pacific, and the hearts of the family followed him from place to place. They handed me his latest letter from the war zone. I read this:

“There have been times when we were so scared, we would tremble, but the fear was out of our minds with prayer and the knowledge that we were being guided by the Lord.
“Dad, I love my religion and I am proud that I had someone like you and Mother to teach me to pray. Then I also know that you are praying for me each morning and night. …”

5
Because of prairie fires, forded river to safety of island (9 miles)
6
Rain put out most of the prairie fires; little grass left for cattle (15 miles)

August 10
Dear Sarah,
Nothing has been worse so far than picking beans. Mr. Trujillo can’t bend over now, so I picked all the beans, my rows and his. Your back aches, and the leaves make your skin itch, and the sun is beating down on you. Mrs. Trujillo gave me an old straw hat to wear. We got three bushels! Mr. Trujillo smiled and said, “There’ll be this many again in about ten days.” I could have cried. But by then it was cooler, and Mrs. Trujillo brought out ice cream with fresh peaches sliced on it. Then you’ll never guess what happened—Mr, and Mrs. Trujillo took me into their garage and gave me one of their kids’ old bicycles. It was all clean and shiny, with new paint and new tires and the chain all oiled. I gave them both a hug.
I took a big, juicy peach home to Lindsay, and she ate it all!
Have you found any new people to teach?
Love,Angela the Cyclist

5. Freeing of prisoners from Noah’s day does not include a celestial reward. In what is probably the greatest of all recorded visions, given February 16, 1832, the Prophet saw that those to whom Noah offered the gospel and who were then destroyed in the flood, assuming they repent and accept the gospel in their spirit prison, shall not obtain celestial rest. Theirs is an everlasting terrestrial inheritance because they rejected the truth when it was offered to them in mortality. (See D&C 76:71, 73–74.)

My eleven-year-old daughter, Kristen, expressed a concern to me a few days ago that I believe is felt by many who are seeking to find a better, more righteous way of life. She said, “Dad, I’ve been challenged to live just one day as Jesus would live, but I’ve tried for a week now and I just can’t do it. Every day I think this will be that day. Then I make a mistake, and I have to wait for another day before I can try again.”
Kristen and all of us should remember that while we are commanded to love God, he has a perfect love for us. All the world needs to be taught of the great redeeming power of the Savior’s love. He loves us so much he has promised to forgive us of those things we do that are wrong and remember them no more if we will only repent and come unto him (see D&C 58:42). He loves us so much that he was willing to pay the price for those sins. He suffered for us. He died for us. He said, Come follow me; cast your burdens on the Lord. His desire is to lift us, to help us, to guide us, to save us.

Sarah and George Benson were excited when they learned that Sarah was to have a baby. This would be their first child.
When Sarah’s labor started on 4 August 1899, both her mother and George’s mother were there with the doctor to help. Sarah was grateful for their support.
It wasn’t an easy delivery. The baby boy weighed more than eleven pounds! He wasn’t breathing when he was born, and the doctor didn’t think that the infant would live.
But the grandmothers refused to give up. They each offered a silent prayer. Over and over, they dipped the baby in cold water, then in warm water.
Imagine how excited they were when the baby gulped his first breath of air and let out a cry! Their prayers had been answered.
The infant was named Ezra Taft Benson, and he grew up to be a great man. When he was eighty-six years old, he became the thirteenth President of the Church.

During my lifetime, I have been a farmer and a father of a large family. Even though personal and family prayer have always been a daily part of our lives, on occasion I have felt an overwhelming need to go into the field at night or kneel by the haystack, look up into the heavens, and speak aloud to my Father in Heaven. I have always felt His warmth and knew then, as I know now, that He is listening to me and will answer my prayers in His wisdom, for my best good.

“When I was 18, as I was preparing to serve a mission, my bishop called me to teach the Sunbeams. I had never before learned to love others more than myself until I had served those children in such a simple assignment. …

“One day I invited Mike to come to church and sit in my class. Mike was my age but had stopped attending church completely by the time he was 12. … Once in a while Mike would accept my invitations to come to an activity. It always surprised me when he did, so I kept inviting him.

“At that time, Mike had long, black hair and a beard. His complexion was dark and pleasant. I don’t remember when I invited him to my Primary class, but one day he showed up.

“Class, I would like to introduce you to my friend Mike,” is how I began my lesson. “He is visiting us today.”
Read the rest of “The Visitor,” by Ken Merrell, in the May 2000 New Era.

Born December 19, 1967, to Klaus-Peter and Doris Elke Klebingat, Elder Klebingat grew up in Zweibrücken, Germany, without the influence of the gospel. As a teenager, he met a member of the Church at a music concert, and the two became friends.
“When I visited my new friend, I was impressed by his family,” he recalls. “I felt the Spirit in his home and wanted to attend church.”
It was at that first Church meeting that he heard of the Book of Mormon. His friend gave him a copy with his testimony that it was true, and Elder Klebingat left the meetings determined to find out for himself.
“I was somewhere in 1 Nephi when I got my witness that the book was true,” Elder Klebingat said. “Gaining a witness of the Prophet Joseph Smith was also a defining moment for me. On my mission, I always asked my companions if I could tell that part of the story.”

For the first time in eight years,
my father sat by my side
in church last Sunday.
As he stroked my four-year-old sister’s hair
and gently squeezed my hand,
memories blurred my eyes
and trickled down my hot cheeks.
I didn’t wipe them away.

One of the hardest decisions Zane ever had to face was whether or not to go on a mission. Colleges all over the United States were recruiting him. Although he had always planned on a mission, the final decision was really hard. “But I decided I had to go on a mission to try to pay the Lord back for some of the many blessings I have received,” he said.
Zane wrote home from his mission and said, “I’ve learned many things. I’ve changed a lot. I thought riding three times at each rodeo all summer long was tough, but it wasn’t anything as tough as serving a mission; nevertheless, it has been good for me.”

A convert from less-active parents, he was baptized at age 16 with the rest of his siblings. His parents later returned to activity.

A medical doctor in a village in Nigeria had a dream in which he saw his good friend speaking to a congregation. Intrigued, he traveled to his friend’s village on a Sunday and was astonished to find exactly what he had seen in his dream—a congregation called a ward being taught by his friend, who was their bishop. Impressed with what he heard in repeated visits, he and his wife were taught and baptized. Two months later over 30 others in their village had also joined the Church, and their clinic had become the meeting place.

Flooding on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, USA, on December 11, 2008, damaged homes in Laie, Waianae, and Mililani, as well as several Church-owned buildings. Up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain fell in about four hours, shutting down major roads and causing a rockslide. No evacuation orders were given but several schools closed. No Church members or missionaries were harmed.
Brigham Young University–Hawaii officials estimated $1.5 million in damages to the campus was caused by the flood. Several buildings flooded—the General Classroom Building, the Social Sciences Building, and 36 married-student housing apartments.
The Polynesian Cultural Center’s Gateway Building and several other on-campus buildings were also damaged.
The temple and Church meetinghouses were not affected, but the temple’s visitors’ center sustained minor damages.
Church members teamed with the Red Cross to provide shelter and food on the BYU–Hawaii campus for those displaced by the flood. University students and Church members helped to clean up after the flooding.

Boy:Aurelia Spencer Rogers was one of the mothers in the Farmington Ward. When Aurelia was twelve, her mother died. Aurelia and her older sister, Ellen, cared for their four younger brothers and sisters when they fled Nauvoo. At Winter Quarters their father was called to serve a mission. Aurelia and Ellen brought the younger children west with the pioneers.

Girl:Aurelia married Thomas Rogers, a young man she’d met while crossing the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. Five of the twelve children who were born to them died as babies. Aurelia loved children and wanted them to live the gospel. She thought about the things Bishop Hess had said.

Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested on false charges and put in jail in Carthage, Illinois. On June 27, 1844, while Joseph and Hyrum waited for their trial, a mob attacked the jail where they were imprisoned. After Hyrum was killed, Joseph ran to the window. He cried, “O Lord, my God!” as he was martyred and fell. Joseph was 38 years old. He and his brother were buried in Nauvoo.

From the sheds come rustlings and flutterings and soft cooing sounds. Jeff opens the door of one shed and you quickly step inside. In the half-light, winged shapes blur through the air at the sudden disturbance, then settle back into their boxlike perches.
Pigeons. But not the ordinary kind. Among them are Jeff’s West of England tumblers, named for their place of origin and for a midflight maneuver they perform. Beautiful, with amber eyes and feather-duster feet, these birds are champions and have won national awards for their owner.
Raising pigeons is not Jeff’s whole life, then. It’s a hobby, one he began with his dad’s help when he was about seven years old. At first they were just pets to him. But then he became more serious about raising birds for competition and got some West of England tumblers. When he was ten, a young bird he had raised was judged champion of all breeds at the two-state Oklahoma-Arkansas fair, and Jeff came home with a two-foot-tall trophy. When he was 11, Jeff went with his parents to the national show in Peoria, Illinois. There, competing among thousands of entries, against breeders far older and more experienced, Jeff took first place in his category with one of his birds. He was by far the youngest national winner ever. Another trophy and stories in the hometown papers.
You find yourself wondering how all of this fits together—school, priesthood, basketball, pigeons. Then you remember something Jeff’s dad told you:
The judges at competitions have a list of standards that they compare each bird against. They look at things like coloring, markings, the way the wings lie, the length of the muffs on the feet, etc. “Jeff has a copy of those standards,” says his father, James Vines, “and I’ve tried to teach him what to look for. He’s picked it up very well, compares his birds to the standard, and keeps the birds with the qualities he wants passed along to their offspring. Jeff has brought them a long way in a brief time.” In other words, Jeff has learned to recognize the ideal and to work toward it.

The last high school basketball tournament gave our family a rallying point for a common activity. My brother’s boy participated on one of the teams. They had lost their first game, and his personal production for that game was 12 points. This was about average for what he had been doing during the regular season. Then tragedy struck the team in the second game. Their big center, who was their high scorer, was injured and was out for the balance of the tournament. The team realized that another loss meant elimination.
My nephew was placed under the pressure of having to make up for that loss. He was moved from his regular position of forward to replace the center. He met the challenge by scoring 32 points that game. Then in the final two games he led the team to victory and finished second in total scoring in the state tournament. His scoring was twice what he had normally been producing.
Bearing his testimony the following week in meeting, he remarked that when the pressure became great and the burden difficult to bear, he would hear the encouraging cries of his family above the roar of the crowd and would be inspired to try harder.
The courage of this young man taught us all a lesson that day. One of the gifts of a loving family is the encouragement and confidence we receive to magnify ourselves.

We learned a third lesson as the missionaries were in our home teaching Jack, a colleague of Clayton’s. One elder was newly arrived on his mission, and his senior companion from Argentina was still struggling with English. As a result, when questions arose, Jack would instinctively ask Clayton, who answered—confident that he could answer more clearly and convincingly than these elders could. We got into a rhythm in which the elders would teach a concept, Jack would ask a question, Clayton would answer it, and then the elders would teach the next concept. Jack then asked a difficult question for which Clayton had no ready answer. And as Clayton paused, the Argentine elder offered a profound answer, given by the Spirit. When Jack asked the next question, Clayton waited to see if this elder could do it again—and he did. We learned an important lesson about sharing the gospel. Despite their inexperience, we can trust the missionaries to teach the gospel well, because whom the Lord calls, He qualifies.

“And during school,” I’ll say, “a king came into our room. He said he wanted me to slay a dragon. Then he made me a knight.”
“Really?” she’ll say.
“Well,” I’ll say, “it was really the principal. He wanted me to take a note to Mrs. Smith’s room. Then he told me I could be his messenger and take notes all over the school. But he looked like a king to me for just a minute.