Gospel Story Finder

Another example: Years ago in one of our Church schools, a teacher was summarily dismissed. The general explanation given did not satisfy his colleagues.
A delegation went to the office of the principal and demanded that he be reinstated. The principal refused. He offered no further explanation.
The delegation concluded, therefore, that the principal had acted for “political reasons,” for he was known to have some deep philosophical differences with that teacher.
The teacher (and this is frequently the case) took the part of a mistreated soul. His actions encouraged his colleagues in their protest.
The truth, known to the members of the Church Board of Education, was that the teacher had been dismissed for some very serious misconduct. Should all be made public, it would be doubtful that he could be reemployed as a teacher.
The principal, however, had some faith. If things were not noised about, the teacher might, through repentance and restitution, make himself again worthy to teach—perhaps even in the Church school system.
This principal generously took much criticism, even abuse, over a long period of time. He felt that the good of a family and the rehabilitation of a teacher was more important than his own professional reputation for the moment.
I was inspired by his example. It has been repeated a thousand times or more in the wards and stakes of the Church.

One summer many, many years ago, my mother decided it would be a great project for her children to refinish the dining room chairs. The chairs were painted a dark cherry color, and my mother had discovered that underneath that paint was good, hard maple wood.
I will never forget that experience. We began by applying a nasty solvent called toluene to all the painted surfaces, and then we scraped the paint off.
Once the paint was removed, we had to sand the wood with several grades of sandpaper in order to remove the very last bits of paint and to prepare the wood for a new finish.
When the sanding was finally done, we applied a finish to highlight the grain and enhance the wood's natural color. In the final step we sealed the new hardwood finish with two coats of varnish. Those chairs were transformed!

One couple said:

“Serving a senior couple mission was our righteous desire, but we [faced] many challenges. We exercised our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to have the Holy Ghost guide us in every step. Despite our challenges, we were blessed with peace and confidence to move forward. We were able to save sufficient funds for our mission, paid off debts, and organised our family. We are blessed to have a better relationship as husband and wife, as well as [with] each of our children.”

One such athlete is 25-year-old Milton Queiro da Paixao—affectionately known to his fans as Tita—a member of the Brazilian national soccer team. Tita says he owes a great deal of his success and ability to observing the Word of Wisdom.

“Since I was baptized,” he says, “I have diligently followed the principles of the Word of Wisdom. A good diet and a morally clean life have been of great value to me in keeping in excellent physical condition.”

Being in top physical condition is necessary for Tita and his teammates as they participate in soccer matches in various temperatures and climates and at various altitudes. Known for his diligence and concentration in practice and training—he is always one of the last to quit—Tita lives his religion comfortably, and he never misses an opportunity to explain why he doesn’t join others in smoking or drinking alcoholic beverages or tea and coffee.

Luiz Ziwi Pires, a reporter with the publication Zero Hora has commented that Tita is a “well-mannered, clean-cut young man. He treats people courteously and he is always willing to respond to questions about his religion.”

In February 1986 Vice President George Bush shared this inspiring story at the national meetings of the Boy Scouts of America:
“Way back in 401 B.C., a young Persian prince named Cyrus hired an army of 10,000 Greek soldiers to help him take the Persian throne away from his brother. Cyrus and his Greek companions marched 1500 miles overland from the western edge of Turkey, through the deserts of Syria, and onto the plains of Iraq. They met the Persian king and the army near what is now Baghdad. The Greeks won the battle, but they lost the war when Cyrus was killed in the day’s action, and that left the Greeks and their army in a terrible fix. They no longer had any cause to proceed further; they couldn’t retreat eastward, for no food remained on the land, and to the north, mountains, which we know today as the wilds of Kurdistan, and the highlands of Georgia and Armenia were all inhabited by savage mountain tribes. And to make things worse, the Greek commanding general and his entire staff of officers had gone to a conference with the Persians under safe conduct, and they had been assassinated. And that seemed to leave absolutely no alternative to the Greeks but to surrender and throw themselves on the mercy of the Persians. Some of you will remember this. One of the Greeks, a private in the ranks named Xenephon, had a different idea, and he voiced it to his Greek comrades: ‘Notice that our enemies lacked the courage to fight us until they seized our general. They think that we are defeated because our officers are dead, but we’ll show them that they turned us all into generals. Instead of one general, they’ll have 10,000 generals against them.’ The Greeks’ spirits rallied and they resolved to fight their way through the mountains. Xenephon turned out to be a brilliant strategist and his army of 10,000 generals did reach safety, 2500 miles and four months later. Perhaps the most celebrated march of that time, celebrated escape, if you will, in western history” (comments at the 75th Anniversary Dinner of the Boy Scouts of America, 7 Feb. 1985, Washington, D.C.).

Shanon Graber of Virginia Beach is the type of person who dives right into things with energy and enthusiasm. That’s why she was so successful with the fund-raising projects the youth in her ward sponsored all year long.
They did pizza sales and Valentine cookie sales and doughnut sales and garage sales. The girls in the ward needed money for girls’ camp and youth conference, as well as the mother-daughter encampment, and it was taking an awful lot of work.
But Shanon shined. She put her shoulder and her heart to it and ended up making more than enough to cover her expenses. So what did she do with the excess? “Sister Murdock?” she asked her adviser, “do any of the other girls need any help?” Shanon, a Mia Maid, ended up donating enough money for two more girls to come to the encampment.
Those good works help her add a brilliant yellow to the rainbow.

During the summer of 2012, Vili and Josh attended an Aaronic Priesthood camp sponsored by their stake. The twins’ cousin, a young deacon, started teasing one of the older young men, which led to a scuffle. Vili quickly ran over and pulled them apart.
“I didn’t know the whole story,” Vili says. “I had a hardness in my heart. I was so mad.”
He nearly lost his temper and hit the other young man, but one of the adult leaders intervened. Vili recalls, “He said to me, ‘You hold the priesthood. You are an example. What happens if you hit him? You won’t feel the same and the others won’t look at you the same.’”
Vili had been asked to be a leader at the camp, where the theme was missionary preparation. Vili had prayed that the young men in his ward would feel the Spirit and want to serve missions. To help them commit, Vili had encouraged them to sign their names on a banner testifying that they would serve missions. All of them, including Vili, had signed it. Because of his commitment, he knew he had a responsibility to uphold.
“That night I prayed about [how I had reacted to the older young man] for a long time,” he says. “I realized that if I had gotten in a fight, I would have been kicked out of camp, and my life would have gone down from there. I didn’t want that. I repented. The next day, I was side-by-side with that boy—as friends.”

Elder Dale G. Renlund shared a story in general conference back in 2015 about a young man he cared for in his capacity as a cardiologist. I would like us to listen to it now.

In 1986 a young man named Chad developed heart failure and received a heart transplant. He did very well for a decade and a half. Chad did all he could to stay healthy and live as normal a life as possible. He served a mission, worked, and was a devoted son to his parents. The last few years of his life, though, were challenging, and he was in and out of the hospital frequently.

One evening, he was brought to the hospital’s emergency department in full cardiac arrest. My associates and I worked for a long time to restore his circulation. Finally, it became clear that Chad could not be revived. We stopped our futile efforts, and I declared him dead. Although sad and disappointed, I maintained a professional attitude. I thought to myself, “Chad has had good care. He has had many more years of life than he otherwise would have had.” That emotional distance soon shattered as his parents came into the emergency room bay and saw their deceased son lying on a stretcher. In that moment, I saw Chad through his mother’s and father’s eyes. I saw the great hopes and expectations they had had for him, the desire they had had that he would live just a little bit longer and a little bit better. With this realization, I began to weep. In an ironic reversal of roles and in an act of kindness I will never forget, Chad’s parents comforted me.

I now realize that in the Church, to effectively serve others we must see them through a parent’s eyes, through Heavenly Father’s eyes. Only then can we begin to comprehend the true worth of a soul. Only then can we sense the love that Heavenly Father has for all of His children. Only then can we sense the Savior’s caring concern for them. We cannot completely fulfill our covenant obligation to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort unless we see them through God’s eyes. This expanded perspective will open our hearts to the disappointments, fears, and heartaches of others. But Heavenly Father will aid and comfort us, just as Chad’s parents comforted me years ago.

Sierra Leone was a sad place during my teenage years, but it was my home. For much of my life, my small West African country was torn by a civil war. The war affected everything. My family and I were constantly on the run, trying to escape the rebel soldiers. It was terrifying every time the rebels came through a city. Someone would see their torches approaching in the night, warn the others, and we would all run for the bush, grabbing whatever we could along the way.
About seven years after the war began, the rebels came to our city. My whole family was running to escape, but my parents, who were just a few steps behind me, were shot and killed. I was so sad to lose them, but I had to keep moving.
My brother, sister, and I moved to a safer place, and for a short while we were all right, but the rebels eventually hit that town, too. This time we didn’t have time to run away. My brother was taken and later killed. My sister and I were lined up outside with all the other women. The rebel soldiers were chopping limbs off of all the women in the line. We were all so frightened. Everyone was crying and praying—even people who had never believed in God before. I was not a member of the Church at the time, but I believed in God and prayed that His will would be done and hoped that He would find a way to save me.
My dear sister, who was several places ahead of me in line, had both of her legs cut off. But as the rebels reached the woman in front of me, our army came rushing in and the rebels ran away. I know that I was not better than the people who were in front of me or behind me, but I thanked God that I had been spared and prayed that I might understand His plan for me.

Let us jump over to Australia, just to relate another story about the spirit of the gospel in this great continent of the southern hemisphere. Sister Simpson and I were traveling from north to south in Australia and our next stop was Mount Isa. If you have not been to Mount Isa, you have not lived. Mount Isa is tucked away—and I really mean tucked away—and as this airplane came in for its landing to pick up some passengers the pilot said, “We’ll have about a twenty-minute stop here.” And so, wanting to stretch our legs, we stepped off the airplane. We do not know how the word got there, but here were all the Primary children and a band of forty or fifty members of the Church, and they rallied around us. We were just overwhelmed, and they embraced us and tears were in their eyes.

They said, “Let’s have a meeting,” so we had a ten-minute meeting, and the children sang “I Am a Child of God,” and we bore a few testimonies right there at the airport, right there in front on the grass. People were watching and listening and we were glad that they were. Then, as we finished our little meeting and went back to our airplane, we had that feeling—where else in all the world can you have that feeling?—of heart meeting heart. We had never seen these people before in all our lives, but automatically and instantly we had everything in common. We were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and everything that is worth anything was in common and we were one.

Things were going great. I finally felt I was with the program: I attended Sunday meetings regularly, read my scriptures every day, had prayer morning and night, regularly fasted, paid a full tithe. I had even shared the Book of Mormon with one of my neighbors and was well on my way to completing the Young Womanhood Recognition requirements.
Just one problem.
It nagged at me, constantly in the back of my mind.
I wasn’t baptized yet.
Sweet 16, here I come, and the only thing I wanted for my birthday was to be baptized. I had asked my dad several times, and we had compromised. Yes, I could go to church more often now, but I still wouldn’t step into a font until I turned 18. That was that.
This was some birthday. I flopped on the couch, realizing two years had passed since I first read the Book of Mormon and wanted to be baptized. I sighed. Two years down, two to go.
The doorbell rang. A salesman, I thought.
Ready for disappointment, I turned the corner and saw two silhouettes in the frosted glass. The missionaries!
“Hi, Liz, how are you?”
“Great! How are you? Come in!” They had no idea how glad I was to see them. They stopped by sometimes to see how I was doing and were always ecstatic when I made it to sacrament meetings.
“So what’s happening?” asked Elder Rizutto.
“Oh, not much,” I said. “Well … it’s my birthday.”
“Really? How old are you? Eighteen?”
“I wish.”
My testimony was strong, I felt the Spirit often, and I knew Heavenly Father was watching over me. But I was tired of being patient. I wanted to be a Latter-day Saint, a real member with a certificate. When people asked me about my religion, I wanted to shout from the top of the hills, “I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Can’t you tell? Can’t you see the miraculous changes in my life?”
“We should go, it’s getting late,” said the elders after a short conversation. “We just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Wait. I just have one question. What do you call people like me? When people ask me what religion I am, I’m not sure what to say.”
“You haven’t been baptized, so you’re a nonmember,” one elder said.
“How do I tell a nonmember that I’m a nonmember?” I asked. “I believe in the Church. I have a testimony.”
A pause.
“Liz, you are a daughter of God,” said Elder Rizutto. “And to be a Saint is to be a follower of Christ. If you believe Jesus Christ is your Savior, Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and the Book of Mormon is true, then you are a Latter-day Saint.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. He was right. Why had I been so worried about a title? Heavenly Father knew the intent of my heart. He knew I was doing my best to be a good member of the Church—even as a nonmember. The gospel was not stamped on a certificate but in my heart. I still needed to be baptized for a remission of my sins and to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, but I knew who I was.
Two more years passed. I was baptized and received the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by those in authority. Thinking back on the years of waiting, I wondered again why I had to wait so long to become an official member of the Church. Then I remembered what the missionaries told me, and I realized it didn’t matter how long I had to wait or why. The baptism sealed in my heart the knowledge of what had been true all along: I am a daughter of God, a Latter-day Saint.

One day in the summer of 1969, a young missionary in Chuncheon, Republic of Korea, handed a pamphlet on the purpose of life to the man at the post office who distributed the foreign mail. The young elder probably had no idea what a chain of conversions he had begun.
Neither did the postal worker who accepted the pamphlet. Cho Joong Hyun did not know why his civil service job had taken him so far from his home in Suncheon, near the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. Only later would he come to understand that he had to be in that place at that time to receive the pamphlet.
This small incident would lead to the conversion of his entire family, as well as many others they would later influence. But those conversions would not come easily. “It took more than 20 years to get all of my family baptized,” he says. Through his efforts, his parents and his brothers and sisters and their spouses and children have come to enjoy the blessings of the gospel.
Cho Joong Hyun’s own conversion was difficult. The pamphlet given to him by the missionary was “really good,” he says, in that it provided answers about the purpose of life that he had never been able to find in the Christian church he formerly attended. Still, he did not think an unknown American church could be taken seriously, so he tossed the pamphlet into a drawer and forgot it for a time.
He forgot it until early one morning when, awakening after another evening of drinking and billiards with friends, he lay thinking that he ought to change his life. Then he remembered the pamphlet that gave him answers.
The first Sunday he attended a Latter-day Saint meeting, he was not impressed. The rented building was small, and the congregation at Sunday School, he recalls, consisted of the missionaries, their cook, a grandmother and two children, and a couple of college students.
But the answers supplied by that pamphlet, along with the humility and testimony of the young elders, kept him talking to the missionaries, even though he was wary of their Church. He remembers arguing with them about religion. When they quoted scriptures from the Book of Mormon, he thought to himself, “These guys are really good at making this up. It sounds like the Bible.” They gave him a Book of Mormon with Moroni 10:3–5 printed by hand in the front of it, carrying the promise that the reader would learn of the truth of the book through the Holy Ghost. Remembering the story of Joseph Smith, Cho Joong Hyun went to his favorite spot in the mountains to offer his personal prayer. But he received no immediate answer.
Then one day as he sat in a library reading the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, he clearly heard a voice speak to him saying, “These are true, and they are mine.” He looked around to see if anyone else had heard the voice. Tears streamed down his face as he realized the message had been for him alone.
After his baptism and confirmation in 1969, the world changed for Joong Hyun. People and things that had seemed disagreeable before no longer did. He saw beauty around him, even though nothing was different. He spent time going door-to-door with the missionaries sharing his testimony.
He had to put his missionary work aside for a time while he served in the military during the Vietnam War. But he began trying to share the gospel again when he returned home to Suncheon in the mid-1970s.
There were no other Church members in the city. One way he tried to change that was to give copies of the Book of Mormon to people he met. “I thought I needed to share this true and precious book,” he says. Little came of that, however. His greatest impact as a missionary would be with his own brothers and sisters.
His youngest sister, Cho Sungja (Korean women retain their birth family name after marriage), recalls that at first her brother simply held family home evenings with his brothers and sisters and taught gospel principles. But eventually he introduced them to missionaries.
His youngest sister accepted the gospel readily. She felt the Holy Ghost testify to her of the truth of Joseph Smith’s First Vision. Members of another faith had shown her a scripture in the book of Revelation that they said warned against adding to the words of that book (see Revelation 22:18–19). But as she opened the Book of Mormon one day to read in 2 Nephi 29, some of the verses in that chapter told her of the need for additional revelation (see vv. 11–14), and again she felt the Spirit testify that it was true.
Her father was against her joining the Church, but finally, in answer to her prayers, he gave his consent. She was baptized and confirmed in 1976, at age 16.
Like her pioneering elder brother, Joong Hyun, Sungja wanted to share the gospel she had found. She shared it freely with friends at school, and eventually five of them were also baptized and confirmed.
Sungja’s next oldest brother, Cho Yong Hyun, had listened to the missionaries with his siblings. Their parents were busy running the family restaurant, and Joong Hyun, the second son, was frequently charged with caring for his younger brothers and sisters. His siblings all learned to love him and trust his judgment. “I really respected my older brother, so when he first introduced the gospel to me, I could accept it,” Yong Hyun says.
But Yong Hyun’s conversion was not based on his brother’s testimony alone; he received his own strong witness of the truth, and once a member, he dedicated himself to serving faithfully.
That dedication led him, while he was a college student, to want to serve a mission—a choice his father opposed. But Yong Hyun won his father’s consent by promising to be a better student when he returned, and he kept that promise.
Father and son would clash over the Church again some years later when Yong Hyun was offered a position with the Church Educational System. He was doing well in his job with an oil refining firm at the time, but he accepted the Church position and has served as CES coordinator in the Gwangju area of southern Korea since 1986. His father opposed the change, considering it unwise for his son to leave a good position with a prestigious firm to work for a relatively unknown church that had started in America. His father said later that he had cried bitterly over Yong Hyun’s decision and had come close to disowning him. Fortunately, the rift was healed.
All of the Cho brothers and sisters will say that their father was the hardest opponent to their studying and living the gospel. He could be demanding and, in his traditional role as head of the family, expected obedience.
But some of the siblings also had their own reservations about the Church. The second daughter, Cho Gil Ja, had doubts centered in part on why her older brother was asked to give so much service to his church without being paid, as ministers were in other churches. She dated, married, and was raising her own young children before she finally heeded her brother’s request to listen to the missionaries.
When they asked her to read the Book of Mormon, she became absorbed in the reading and finished the book in three days. She heeded Moroni’s admonition to pray about its teachings and received a strong confirmation that they are true. At that point, she says, “I felt there must be something I could do for God.” The impression she received in answer to this desire was that she too should attend church and serve.
Gil Ja had learned service by example. Her mother always lived by that principle, serving Church members even before she became one herself.
Her mother had come to love the members of the Church and the sister missionaries who wanted to teach her. But it was difficult to give up her traditional religion. In her closet she had a small statue of Buddha to which she prayed each day. The turning point in her conversion came after she dreamed that she was praying to her Buddha when it began to cry tears from its painted eyes and slowly turned its back on her. She understood that the dream meant it was time for her to follow a new religious path.
Three years after her baptism and confirmation, her husband—by then the lone member of the family who was still outside the Church—finally consented to listen to the gospel and was converted. After he joined the Church, he became a changed man, his children say—sweeter, kinder, more tolerant.
Some 26 years after Cho Joong Hyun’s baptism, all of his family were at last members of the Church. It was a high point for the family when their mother and father were sealed in the Seoul Korea Temple. A touching moment for the entire family came at a later gathering when the Cho children sang to their father the lullaby he had sung to them when they were small.
Their mother served faithfully in the Church until the end of her life. Even in the hospital, suffering from stomach cancer, she was a missionary to the young woman in the next bed, introducing her to the gospel.
Her sons and daughters carry on the tradition of service. There are two President Chos in the family. Yong Hyun, the CES coordinator, has served in a variety of priesthood leadership callings through the years and is currently president of the stake in Gwangju. Cho Joong Hyun, who led the way into the Church for his family, has also served in a variety of leadership roles in Suncheon, including district president. He is currently president of the Suncheon Branch. Cho Gil Ja has served for more than 16 years as president of the Relief Society in the ward and stake. Other brothers and sisters in the family are active in their own areas as well, and all are married to active members.
Seven of the Cho children and grandchildren have served as missionaries so far, and still others are preparing to serve. Several of the children and grandchildren have married returned missionaries. Now the fourth generation of Chos is beginning to be reared in the Church. Their days have not been free of life’s difficulties, but blessings have come through their obedience.
The missionary who handed that pamphlet to a young postal worker nearly four decades ago could not have known what would grow from the small seed he planted. But the harvest has been plentiful—and it may be only beginning.

My seminary teacher began my very first seminary class by passing out small booklets to all the students. I was ready to really dig into the gospel at seminary, so I was excited to find out what wisdom these little books held. When I received my book and flipped through it, however, I realized it was full of blank pages.
My teacher explained that these blank books were for us to record our own spiritual impressions. He then shared a quote from Elder Richard G. Scott (1928–2015) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:
“Write down in a secure place the important things you learn from the Spirit. You will find that as you write down precious impressions, often more will come. Also, the knowledge you gain will be available throughout your life.”1
My teacher bore testimony of Elder Scott’s words and encouraged us to write down insights we received as we studied the scriptures that year.
I was touched by Elder Scott’s promise that the Lord will give us more direction when we write down what we receive, and I wanted to show Heavenly Father that I valued His guidance. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure I even knew how to receive personal revelation. I couldn’t think of anything I should write down. There was no way I could ever fill up my book with insights!
But Elder Scott’s words stuck with me throughout the day, and by the next morning I had decided that I would trust the counsel of a living prophet and try to write down impressions.
Within a couple of weeks my daily scripture study changed. Before, I would read a few verses every day just to be able to check “read my scriptures” off my to-do list. Now I was looking for answers. I was looking for something that the Lord wanted me to write down.
Soon I found out that Elder Scott’s promises were true. I started to recognize the Spirit’s voice as I studied, first helping me feel God’s love, then testifying of truth as I read, and finally giving specific direction for my life. Not only did I have things to write in my study journal, but also—and much more importantly—I was learning how to recognize personal revelation.
Blessings continue to come. The act of writing things down helps me remember them later more easily, and I also now have a record to reference if I can’t quite remember the details of a lesson I learned. When I’m discouraged or struggling with a gospel question, I go back and read about specific experiences where I received undeniable confirmation of the basic truths of the gospel. These experiences are the backbone of my testimony, and my study journal is a way to always keep them fresh in my mind.
I will always be grateful that I decided to take an Apostle’s advice and write things down, even though at first I thought I had nothing to write. Keeping a study journal has shown me how to recognize when God speaks to me.

Years ago a family home evening manual told the story of 17-year-old Karen, who received for her birthday a beautiful lamp in the shape of a parasol. When the light was lit, the parasol also turned. As she placed it on her dresser, she told her nine-year-old sister, Lisa, who shared her bedroom, “Never touch this lamp.” One night while Karen was out on a date, Lisa thought that it would be fun to have the special lamp on while she waited for her older sister to come home. Excitedly she ran across the room, and just as she reached for the lamp, she tripped on the shoes she had left on the floor. Down went Lisa, and down went the lamp, which broke into pieces on the floor.
When Karen later quietly tiptoed into the room, she was greeted by the sudden sight of the broken lamp and the equally sudden attempt by Lisa to quickly explain what had happened. Karen became furious. In her anger she hurled cruel, hurtful words at Lisa for what she had done. In quick, angry movements she got ready for bed. Then, because it was her practice—her good habit—before she climbed into bed, she knelt down for her evening prayer. Have you ever tried to pray when you’re angry?
As she knelt there, this daughter of God wrestled in the spirit against the forces of the evil one. In the background she could hear the sobs of her little sister. In a situation that defines one of the most important battles of mortality for all of us, Karen prayed for help. Finally she was able to rise from her knees and go the bed of her little sister, where she told Lisa that she loved her and that she was far more important than any lamp.
Karen was helped because she had the good habit of regular spiritual feasting. Before she even recognized Satan’s attack, her wise habit was providing protection. We all need that kind of protection.

One Sunday when leaving for church, our car would not start. We lived in Germany, far from our chapel and other members. My wife and I each offered a prayer for help, but still the car wouldn’t start. I suggested that perhaps we should rely on the faith of a child. We asked our three-year old son, David, if he would say a prayer.
“Heavenly Father, please bless the car to start,” he said simply but firmly.
We turned the key, and the engine started right up! We were grateful that day for David’s faith. It was pure, simple, and true.

Two experiences from my life—when I wasn’t sure what to do—illustrate the importance of obeying the commandments and following the living prophets. In college I ran out of money, so I found a part-time job. When I received my first check, I did not know whether it would be enough to get me through to the next paycheck. But I remembered the Lord’s promise regarding tithing: “Prove me now herewith … if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing” (Malachi 3:10).
I decided to prove the Lord. I paid my tithing first, and He blessed me to survive. In the process I learned to trust in His promises.

Related to this, I remember a supernal learning experience when in my role as university president I was offended and angered by a person who seemed to cultivate a knack for offending people. “This was the last straw,” I said to myself, “he can’t get away with this.” In my so-called justified indignation, I crafted a stinging reprimand, which I practiced in my mind, and made an appointment to see the man in his office. Fortunately, I knelt down in my office just before the fateful appointment and pleaded for the Lord’s spirit to be with me as I delivered my prepared speech. The prayer was answered in a way I wasn’t expecting. Shortly, I faced my adversary, but when I opened my mouth, totally different words came out from the ones I had practiced - words of apology for my feelings toward him, words of love and appreciation for his contribution to the University, words that asked forgiveness of my own attitude, words that requested a respectful conversation in working out his issues. The man was as shocked, I believe, as I was by these words for he too was expecting a tongue lashing. So instead of an angry confrontation and perhaps a permanent breach in our personal and professional relationship, there were tears of reconciliation and an affirmation of friendship and cooperation. In the months that followed this man performed a major service that had immediate ramifications for good in strengthening the University, something that probably could not have happened if the Lord had not rescued me from destroying a relationship and in this case complicating the progress of the University.

It must be close to freezing this morning. David can tell, even though the apartment is still draped in shadow, and he is still lying in a tangle of bedding on the sofa that passes for his bed. It must be 20 degrees outside, David is thinking. He can imagine flowers of ice spreading on the window panes. His mother snuffles and shifts in her sleep. She is nearly always cold, so yesterday David helped her shove her bed closer to the radiator, beneath the window at the front of the studio apartment that the two of them share. It is already late January, but today is the first day it has dipped below freezing. It’s an unusual winter for New York City.
“Morning, Lobo,” David whispers to the warm nose nuzzling his neck. “You ready for your walk?” He scratches his Siberian husky under his chin, then slides out of bed and kneels in his sweat pants at the side of the sofa. While Lobo paces the floor, his toenails clicking on the hardwood, David says his prayers. He prays silently, so as not to disturb his mother, and he prays for what he has been praying for ever since he joined the Church over a year ago. The words are familiar by now. They tumble together in his head like a well-rehearsed hymn.
“Please,” he murmurs into his pillow, “please, let me be able to go.”
It can’t hurt, David figures, to ask for something he doesn’t need for five more years. This ought to give Heavenly Father enough time to work something out.
“David?” his mother’s voice is barely a rasp.
“I’m here, Mom.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking the dog out in a minute. Why? You need something? Some breakfast, maybe? I could make oatmeal—oatmeal with butter and brown sugar.”
His mother’s eyelids are swollen. She rubs her palm over her forehead and clutches her quilt tighter. “No, baby,” she whispers. “No, that’s all right. You go on.” She waves him away with a flick of her fingers.
On regular mornings, David walks his dog Lobo all the way to Riverside Park. But this is not a regular morning. This is Sunday, and it is not even a regular Sunday because David still has some finishing touches to do on the talk Bishop Wendall asked him to give in sacrament meeting today. Light is just beginning to creep over the horizon, but cars and people are already bustling along the streets. Steam boils from manhole covers as David makes his way up the street, sidestepping the potholes that yawn in the sidewalk. He waves to old Mr. Gerard, who is busy stocking Snickers bars in his newsstand on the corner.
“Whoa, boy,” David says to his dog, which is straining at his leash, wanting to go all the way to the park. David feels bad he has to pull him back. Finally, though, Lobo seems to catch on that they are only walking around the block this morning. Lobo stops and David carefully attends to his needs.
Mr. Gerard is watching. “You know,” he calls from his newsstand, “it’s refreshing to see a young man clean up after himself.” He hobbles over and slips a Snickers bar into David’s hand, grinning his gap-toothed grin at him.
David shrugs. “Thanks, Mr. Gerard, but it’s no big deal. It’s the law.”
Mr. Gerard lets out a half snort, half laugh. “Maybe you haven’t noticed,” he says, shaking his knobby finger at the cement walls surrounding them, “but a lot of people around here don’t care about the law.” The walls are smeared with paint, red and blue and green, pictures and words with sharp angles.
“Seems like a good boy is harder to find than a three-headed rooster these days.” Mr. Gerard chuckles to himself.
David nods, then clears his throat and says, “I’m a Latter-day Saint, you know.”
“Is that so?” Mr. Gerard is shuffling away. “Good for you,” he calls over his shoulder. “I’ve seen those Mormon missionaries riding around here on their bikes. They look like good boys, those missionaries. You going to do that someday?”
“I hope so,” David says, but Mr. Gerard is now handing his first customer a newspaper and doesn’t hear. “I hope so,” David says again.
Back at the apartment David shakes dry food into his dog’s bowl and fills the water dish. He sprinkles plant food on the potted geraniums growing on the window sill. He toasts two pieces of bread and pours a glass of milk. Then he puts on his dress shirt. It is short-sleeved, and David knows he looks funny wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt in the dead of winter, but it’s his only one.
After he’s dressed, David goes around the apartment picking up empty liquor bottles and stuffing them into a trash bag so he can dump them down the chute in the hallway. Before he goes, he places the plate of toast and the milk next to his mother’s bed. “I’ll be back by lunchtime,” David says to the dog, who whines and rubs against his legs. Then he scoots out the open door but pauses when his mother starts making small hiccuping noises. He waits until she rolls onto her side, then pulls the door closed gently behind him.
Lobo is the reason David started going to church in the first place. He was out one morning when some boys from the neighborhood ran up and asked if they could pet his dog. They were three brothers, all younger than David, and they weren’t allowed to have a dog themselves. So David let them pet his dog. After that, the boys started coming around all the time to see Lobo, and eventually they told him they were LDS. Did David want to come to church with them some time?
That’s how it happened. The rest was simple. David prayed about it, and he gained a testimony of the gospel. Unfortunately, those three boys moved away.
Now David goes to church by himself. He takes the 7:45 one train to Lincoln Center, then walks across the street, skirting the construction at the corner of 65th and Columbus. It’s the seven-story building with the gold lettering above the door that says “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” “Visitors Welcome” is the sign on the corner, but David is not a visitor.
Two missionaries are relaxing in overstuffed armchairs when David pushes open the lobby doors. One, Elder Hindmarsh, is from Florida, and Elder Simmons is from California. Even though they are indoors now, they still have their trench coats buttoned up and their scarves wound tightly around their necks. They glance up from their worn copies of the Book of Mormon. “Hey, man,” Elder Hindmarsh says. He stands to slap David on the shoulder. “We heard you got roped into speaking today. Good luck.”
“Yeah,” Elder Simmons says. “Don’t choke.” He grabs his own throat with both hands and pretends that he can’t breathe.
“Cut it out,” David says, but he’s laughing. He fingers the two sheets of notebook paper that are folded neatly in his jacket. Please help me not to trip over my words, he pleads silently.
“Seriously, though, good luck,” Elder Hindmarsh says. He squeezes David’s arm for reassurance.
David steps into the elevator at the far end of the lobby and punches the button for level four. Level two is the Family History Library, and level three is the Relief Society room and the cultural hall and some classrooms. Level four is the chapel.
“Well, good morning,” Bishop Wendall greets as he puts his arm around David when he enters the chapel. “Nervous?” he asks. The chapel is nearly empty because David has arrived 45 minutes early to help prepare the sacrament.
David gives the “just a little bit” sign with his thumb and forefinger, and the bishop smiles and pats him on the back. Bishop Wendall says he will do fine, just fine.
After the sacrament is passed, and the bishop excuses the Aaronic Priesthood members to sit with their families, David slides into a seat next to Sister Greene on the stand. Sister Greene used to be a school teacher before she retired. She wears glasses and bright scarves with tropical birds printed on them, and she paints pictures in the air when she talks. David likes Sister Greene. She is one of the first people he ever heard speak in sacrament meeting after he was baptized. She talked about what it means to make a leap of faith.
David looks down and sees Sister Logan smiling up at him from where she’s sitting with her husband and two children. She wants to take David in as a foster child. “You’re only 14,” she told him the other day when he dropped in after school for some snickerdoodles and a glass of milk. David has stayed with Sister Logan and her family off and on for days at a time, when his mother has had to go to the hospital for treatment for her depression. Even when he’s not crashing on the Logans’ sofa, David likes to drop in every now and again.
But the other day, while he was munching his snickerdoodle and sipping his milk, Sister Logan had stood over him, her face a tight mask of concern. She had jiggled her baby on her hip and she said, “That neighborhood of yours …”
She had let her voice trail off, but David knew what she was thinking. She was scared David would never have a chance.
What Sister Logan doesn’t know is how very much David would like to be her foster son. He can picture himself tromping home from school in the afternoon and pushing open the slick glass doors of her building’s lobby. He’d stop and visit with the doorman for a while, then zip up to the 12th floor, where he’d sit at the spotless Formica table in Brother and Sister Logan’s white kitchen. He’d work on his math problems until it was time to help with dinner.
But this, David knows, is only a dream. It is like the dream he used to have about his father coming back to live with him and his mom. It is like the dream that one morning he will wake up and his mother will have stopped drinking. She will be standing in the kitchen, whipping up a batch of blueberry waffles and telling him it’s time to get ready for school. It is only a dream.
David returns Sister Logan’s smile.
Five years, David is thinking while the bishop announces who today’s youth speaker will be. A lot can change in five years. But, then again, a lot can stay the same. Before he knows it, it is time for him to speak. Sister Greene pats him on the knee as he stands up. A leap of faith, Sister Greene said in her last sacrament talk, is when the Lord asks you to walk to the edge of the light and step into the darkness, trusting that He will guide your steps.
While David walks to the microphone, he slips his talk out of his pocket. He spreads the wrinkled sheets of paper on the pulpit and stares at them. His own words, scrawled in a blue ballpoint pen, stare back at him. Please, David prays silently, I’m afraid I’ll never have a chance.
But then he looks out at the hodgepodge of faces in the audience. Dark and light, wrinkled and rosy. Pairs of eyes gaze back at him, young eyes and tired eyes and eyes with crow’s feet. Familiar eyes. You can do it, these eyes say. You can do anything. We’ll help you.
So David clears his throat. He grips the sides of the podium, and he opens his mouth. “I’d like to speak to you today,” he begins, “about what I am doing now to prepare to serve a mission.”

My first real job was with a computer company in my native New Zealand. It afforded me all the opportunity I needed. The company would pay all my training expenses while providing me with an admirable salary.
I had worked in the clerical division for some months when the management announced they were to admit a female operator to the main computer room, until now a bastion of male dominance. All interested women were invited to sit the exam necessary, and one would be chosen for this honour.
My name was subsequently announced as the successful applicant. I was excited and determined to amaze the senior operators with my wonderful work.
How surprised I was to find that I was to be the main source of entertainment for the males in the computer room. It was great sport to tell off-colour jokes in my presence, put obscene pictures in the tape cupboards, and send me to those cupboards to fetch tapes. I had torn some of the offending pictures up, only to be given some form of punishment in the form of a task not desired by the other operators. Thus I spent a lot of time on menial tasks rather than furthering my computer education as I had hoped.
There was a shift diary in the room intended for leaving messages between shifts. However, this book contained primarily obscenities and very little pertaining to work. For this reason I decided not to read it.
Then came the day I arrived for the four o’clock shift.
“Why didn’t you come to the meeting?” asked the senior operator.
“What meeting?” I asked anxiously.
“The one the manager called for three this afternoon.” I knew he was enjoying this. They had caught me this time. “It was in the diary,” he finished almost sneeringly.
I felt ill. This time I was in real trouble. It wasn’t long before I was summoned to the manager’s office. My mind was in turmoil. What would I say? If I told the truth the teasing would likely become worse, and the others would declare all out war on this Mormon and her old-fashioned ideas. If I didn’t, I would have to lie and take the blame. Either way I felt my career was in jeopardy.
“Why didn’t you attend the meeting?” came the stern voice of the manager.
I had said a prayer on the way to the office, and my mind recalled the sticker on my bedroom mirror: “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly.” These were my standards and I had to adhere to them, whatever the consequence. I explained to the manager my standards and why I hadn’t read the diary. I also told him about the pictures in the tape cupboard. He understood and appreciated my values.
The manager cleaned out the tape cupboard, the diary, and anything else offensive. He then spoke to the operators and turned their behavior around.
I enjoyed many happy years with the company and progressed to head operator. The most thrilling thing, though, was the fact that the manager began hiring other LDS employees. During the interview prior to starting their job he would say, “Stick to your church standards and you’ll be the sort of worker I want.”
It was a matter of standards, and my decision regarding my stand did matter, as does any decision we make concerning our relationship with our Father in Heaven and the world in which we live.

Many years ago my husband, Ken, and I moved to Provo, Utah, so he could attend Brigham Young University. Before our move, Ken had traveled there, bought a mobile home, and arranged for water, gas, and electricity to be turned on when we moved in.
We arrived in Provo on a cold December night. All our belongings were packed in the back of a rental truck. We were tired and tense from the long trip. Six months pregnant, I was feeling the effects of cleaning, packing, and traveling. Shawna, our 15-month-old daughter, was tired and crying.
As we opened the door to our home, a blast of cold air greeted us. The electricity and water had been turned on, but for some reason the gas had not. Too exhausted to do anything else, we put a mattress on the floor and plugged in an electric blanket to keep us warm. We tried to sleep with our daughter between us, but she cried most of the night. When morning came we were almost as tired as when we had gone to bed.
After we unloaded the truck, Ken left to return it, check with the gas company, and arrange for a phone to be installed. I dressed Shawna in her snowsuit. Then I placed her in her highchair to play with a few toys while I started to unpack the boxes.
When I unpacked our electric frying pan, I decided to heat water in it to wash out the cupboards. As I turned on the kitchen sink, the faucet came off and water shot up into the air. I tried to turn off the water valve under the sink but could not get it to turn. Frantically, I searched for the water shutoff valve for the house. By the time I found it, the kitchen and living room were flooded.
As I desperately started moving boxes out of the water, Shawna sensed panic and began to scream. Carrying her with one of my arms, I continued trying to lift boxes with the other arm.
At that moment I started into premature labor. Now I was truly panicked. I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood, and I didn’t have a phone to call for help. Desperately I prayed, “Heavenly Father, please help me!”
I’ll never forget the knock that came at the door minutes later. The woman standing there was shivering, with soapsuds up to her elbows. She introduced herself as Amalia Van Tassel, the branch Relief Society president, and told me the Spirit had sent her.
I would later learn that Amalia had been standing at her sink washing dishes when she felt prompted to check on the new family who had just moved in. Sensing that it was urgent, she called to her oldest daughter to watch her other children and, without even stopping to dry her hands or grab her coat, ran to my door.
Amalia had me lie down, comforted Shawna, cleaned up all she could, and invited our family to dinner. She brought light, safety, and comfort into that dark December day. Rest stopped my premature labor, Ken fixed the sink, the gas man turned the gas on, and portable electric heaters dried the soaked carpet.
I have always been grateful to Heavenly Father for answering my prayer that day and for the loving Relief Society president who quickly followed the promptings of the Holy Spirit.