Gospel Story Finder

I met one such young man not long ago while I was attending a stake conference in another country. We were about to conclude a Saturday afternoon meeting with the stake presidency when a knock came at the office door. The president opened it, and I saw a hand give an envelope to him. It had my name on it. The letter inside introduced me to a young man who needed an interview in order to be accepted as a missionary.

As soon as our meeting with the stake presidency was concluded, I excused them and invited the young man in. His initial appearance shocked me. I couldn’t believe he was being recommended to go out and serve as a missionary. His clothes were somewhat wrinkled; he needed a shave; he reeked with tobacco smoke; he even had some sort of paperback book rolled up in his hands. What could he offer in the service of the Master, I thought.

And then it happened—he walked over and shook hands with me. As I looked into his eyes, I was electrified. He was different. He was special, in spite of his outward appearance. As we sat down he told me his story. He first excused himself for appearing to be untidy and in a hurry. He said he had just gotten off the bus after a 13-hour ride from his home and, if I didn’t mind, he hoped he would be able to be back on the bus in another hour for another 13-hour ride to his home.

I then began to put two and two together. I knew now why his clothes were wrinkled and why he needed a shave. I knew the tobacco smoke was not of his choosing, but from the close confinement in the bus. I made another observation. That paperback book in his hand was the Book of Mormon—well read, well used, a priceless possession. He went on to say that three years ago he had joined the Church because of his association with our young people. He said they were different. His parents had given him permission if he wanted to, but warned that if he did, he would no longer have a bed in their home. He could no longer live with them as their son.

When he was baptized, his father kept his word and opened the back door, telling him never to return. The young man didn’t. He moved in with friends. He told me that for the past three years he had been working and going to school. He said he had saved over $2,000 to keep himself on a mission. Please, could he go, he said; he wanted to more than anything in the world. The impression of the Spirit said yes, and he’s now part of the army of 18,000 stalwarts who are out covering the earth as servants of the Master.

Sometimes even those of us who think we practice inclusion can be unintentionally exclusionary. For example, when I served as a nursery leader, I often missed announcements that were shared during the second hour of Church meetings. When I told a leader about this concern, he said, “But doesn’t your wife hear the announcements in Relief Society?”

At the time, I just laughed. But this good man’s response represented a mindset that excluded me. Do we view our fellow Church members as part of a “family ward,” made up of married men and women with children? Or do we view one another as part of a “ward family,” made up of individuals who care for and strengthen one another? Both views are important. While remaining aware of families in our ward, we can also get to know people individually—their circumstances, interests, needs—and perhaps prevent unintentional exclusion.

When Andrew Pugh, 16, of the Chewelah Ward, Colville Washington Stake, was the freshman class president at his high school, his principal taught him about the importance of delegating to others. He said that if you don’t do anything, no one else will; if you do everything, no one else will; but if you work with people, everyone will work. “As long as you are being a true leader, everyone who wants to help will help,” says Andrew.

My little sister, Omega, and I love to see the temple. When our ward visits the Monterrey Mexico Temple, we leave at midnight and travel for six hours to get there. I know that the temple is where families can become eternal. Soon we will move to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. There is a temple there, and we will be able to visit more often. I am thankful for temples.
Helem N., age 4, Mexico

This past March, our second daughter, Emma, like many missionaries in the Church, went into mandatory isolation. Many missionaries came home. Many missionaries awaited reassignment. Many did not receive their temple blessings before departing to a field of labor. Thank you, elders and sisters. We love you.
Emma and her companion in the Netherlands were stretched in those first several weeks—stretched to tears in many instances. With only brief opportunities for in-person interaction and limited outdoor exposure, Emma’s reliance on God increased. We prayed with her online and asked how we could help. She asked us to connect with friends she was teaching online!
Our family began to connect online, one by one, with Emma’s friends in the Netherlands. We invited them to join our weekly, online, extended-family Come, Follow Me study. Floor, Laura, Renske, Freek, Benjamin, Stal, and Muhammad all have become our friends. Some of our friends from the Netherlands have entered “in at the strait gate” (3 Nephi 14:13). Others are being shown “the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter” (2 Nephi 31:9). They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Each week we “count it all joy” as we work together in our progress on the covenant path.

Two years ago, the Lord touched my dear mother’s heart, which helped her decide to receive the ordinance of baptism. I had waited for that day to take place for almost 35 years. In order for her to make that decision, many members of the Church truly ministered to her as Christ would. One Sunday, she felt she should go to church. She followed the prompting. While she sat on the front row and waited for the sacrament service to begin, a four-year-old boy stood in front of her and looked at her. She greeted him with a smile. The little boy left her presence abruptly and walked back to his own seat, which was on the other side of the row where my mother was seated. This little boy picked up something from his seat and came back and handed my mother a hymnbook and walked back to his seat. My mother noticed a hymnbook was placed on every other chair in the chapel. She could have easily picked one up from the chair next to her. However, she was very impressed with the boy’s innocent act of kindness, which he had learned in his home and at church. It was a tender moment for her. She had a strong impression that God was inviting her to come and follow the Savior. She felt she should be baptized. This little boy did not seek recognition for what he did, but he simply did his best to live the word of God and to love his neighbor. His kindness created an important change of heart in my mother.

I’d just like to say how thankful I am to you for including “The Perfect Pattern” in the September 2005 New Era. I want to become a fashion designer when I’m older and I, too, would like to create modest designs that Heavenly Father would be pleased with. This article encouraged me more to pursue my dream career because I don’t feel alone in wanting to create modest designs.Lydia J., Wales

When general conference came, Brother Porter gave us an assignment to watch at least one session. I put off the assignment until Sunday morning. When the session started, I rolled over in my bed and turned on the TV. As I watched President Thomas S. Monson, then the Second Counselor in the First Presidency, talk about the history of the Church in the German Democratic Republic, I felt that same feeling of peace. I recognized it as the Spirit testifying that I was listening to prophets. That afternoon my mom and brothers went grocery shopping. I stayed home to watch another session.

The New Era is really an instrument for answering prayers. After hearing an inspirational talk on missionary work and how to prepare young men to serve, I desired to know how I could help my own two brothers develop the desire to serve. My thoughts of them were restless, so I decided to take my mind off the subject and flip through the pages of the August New Era. My eyes fell on the article “Tree Houses for Birds and Humans,” and there I saw my own “unknown tree house” with my younger brother waving at the window (my sister Kjirstin took the picture). I knew then the Lord’s comforting assurance that all was well—that although I was on my mission many miles away, all was fine at home. Thank you so much. The New Era is always a grateful surprise each zone conference.
Sister Jill RasmussenAlabama Birmingham Mission

Arms pumping hard, Mark and Brian Chapell race up the hillside on a concrete stairway. Their long legs devour two and three steps at a time. Neckties flap as they struggle for the lead, competing as only brothers can. Two hundred steps to go. One hundred. Fifty. With a final lunge, they crash against the missionaries’ door in a dead heat.
A few minutes later they’re walking up and down the streets of Welch, West Virginia, with the full-time missionaries, sharing the light at the center of their lives.

Samu, a ten-year-old African boy, walked slowly down the village farm road. He smacked at the hedge with every step, trying to spear a leaf on the pointed tip of his msasa stick.
When he finally reached the gate in the hedge, he paused hopefully. Then he reached out and swung the gate open and shut, open and shut. The gate was badly in need of oil and squeaked loudly as Samu swung it backward and forward.
Soon Samu heard the same loud squeak come from the old woman’s front porch. It was the bird—the clever talking bird!
“Squeeeeeeeeek, squeeeeeeeeek! Naughty boy! Who’s there?” called the bird in the yellow cage. Then it barked shrilly like the old lady’s Pekinese dog.
Samu clutched the gate and giggled. “Hello, hello!” called Samu.
“Hello, hello!” replied the bird.
Samu felt very clever. He ran to his home in the village and told his mother that he was teaching a bird to speak. His mother laughed, because she knew nothing of talking birds.
“I will show you, Mother,” Samu said excitedly. “As soon as I get a bird of my own, I will teach it to talk!”
Mother was busy pounding corn into mealie, and she just laughed at Samu’s promise and told him to run away and play.
Samu asked some of his friends to help him catch a bird. “I will teach it to talk,” he told them. But his friends only laughed, for they had never heard of a talking bird.
Next Samu spoke to Old Mwanza, who sat all day by his hut warming his old bones in the sun.
“Birds do not talk. Men talk—and they talk too much,” said the old man, shaking his grizzled head at Samu. “Why teach birds to add to the chatter?”
Samu wandered off into the bush by himself, wondering how he could catch a bird and train it to talk as the old woman’s bird did. He had almost given up hope when he saw a black crow sitting in the branches of a msasa tree hoarsely croaking about nothing in particular.
Why don’t I try to make friends with this bird by feeding it? he thought. I will bring it some of mother’s cooked mealie every day at the same time until it knows me.
Samu quickly ran home and begged for some hard-cooked porridge. His mother gave him a handful, and back he ran to the msasa tree and spread lumps of mealie on the ground. Then he hid in the bushes. After a lot of surprised scraaaking, the crow hopped down and began to peck at the mealie.
Every day for three weeks Samu took a handful of porridge and fed the crow. It no longer flew up into the tree with a scraaaaak of fright when Samu arrived. Now it hopped up close to him and jumped up and down in the dust, waiting for Samu to spread the porridge.
At first when Samu tried touching its feathered back, it hopped out of reach and looked at him with bright beady eyes as it scolded, “Quraaaaaaack?”
But in another week Samu could stroke the crow’s back gently while it pecked up the food.
Now! he decided triumphantly. Now I can teach it to talk.
“Say hello,” Samu told the crow. “Hello, hello, hello.”
“Scraaaaaaaak!” replied the crow.
“You will have to do better than that,” Samu said patiently. “Now try again. Say hello. Hello, hello, hello.”
“Scraaaaaaaaak?” repeated the crow, putting its head to one side and blinking at Samu with curious eyes.
“Look,” scolded Samu. “If the other bird can say it, so can you. You’re not trying.”
“Crraasquk,” squawked the crow as it flew up to the lowest branch of the msasa tree.
Samu walked home through the bush, dragging his bare feet and feeling miserable. Why wouldn’t his bird even try to talk?
He went back to see Old Mwanza and told him that the crow refused to learn to talk.
“This bird that talks with many voices and barks like a dog and squeaks like a gate,” said the old man, “must have two tongues. Perhaps your bird only has one tongue.”
I guess my crow does have only one tongue Samu thought sadly. But I will try once more! So back he went to the msasa tree with a handful of mealie. He fed his crow and then squatted down in the dust beside it. “Hello!” he said loudly. The crow danced sideways for a moment and then hopped on to Samu’s knee.
“Squaaaaako!” said the crow, and again it flew up into the tree.
Samu felt quite sorry for himself. All of his work for nothing!
Behind him the old man chuckled. He had followed Samu to see how he was getting along with teaching his bird to talk. “Samu,” he said, “it’s good to try hard to do something. But it is foolish to try to do the impossible. Would you try to teach a hen to swim like a duck or a dog to crow like a rooster?”
“No,” said Samu sheepishly. “But the old woman’s bird talks. Why shouldn’t mine?”
“I have found out about the old woman’s bird,” explained Old Mwanza. “It is a parrot—a talking bird. Your crow will make a fine pet. Why don’t you teach it to come when you call and to hop after you when you go for walks. Then you will be teaching it something it is able to learn.”
“One day I will get a talking bird,” said Samu. Then he started to laugh. “Teaching a crow to talk is like teaching a dog to crow!” he said.
The crow looked at him with its bright beady eyes and said, “Squarrrrrrrrk!”

We teach all young men and young women to prepare to go to the temple so they can “receive the blessings of [the] fathers that [they] may be entitled to the highest blessings of the priesthood.” When one of my nieces received her temple endowment a few months ago, she exclaimed with joy: “I made it! All of my life I have been taught about preparing for the temple, and I made it!”

A ministering plea from his children helps a father forgive and return to the Church, bringing blessings to his family.

The children of the Calderón family started a great transition for their family. Jared, age 15, was the first to join the Church, followed a year later by his sister, Angie, 13. Their parents joined the Church three years after Angie’s baptism.
At first this family from Costa Rica had no idea how much the gospel of Jesus Christ would change their lives. They were introduced to the Church by a family member in 2002, and for many months afterward the Calderóns regularly invited the missionaries to their home so they could learn more. As they did so, the family experienced a transformation—a true conversion.
Before the family joined the Church, the Calderóns were concerned that Jared and Angie were having a hard time getting a moral and spiritual education in a world that downplays religion.
The gospel, the Calderóns found, had answers to the problems they were facing. “When we came to understand the gospel and started applying its teachings, that knowledge changed the way we lived,” says Brother Calderón. “We learned who we are and how we can return to our Heavenly Father. Because of what we found, we have lived a richer spiritual life.”
It wasn’t always easy to accept readily what they were learning from the missionaries, but as they tested gospel principles, they gained a testimony of them. “As we learned about gospel standards,” says Sister Calderón, “we tried to stay within the boundaries of worthiness. I gave up drinking coffee. (And I drank plenty of coffee before then!) We made goals as a family to not swear, to speak kindly to each other, and to keep other good principles.
“The main sacrifice we made was our pride,” she continues. “We had to learn to be humble, but as we’ve tried to learn and live with humility, we’ve received many blessings and experienced great progress as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.”
Jared Calderón was the first of his family to join the Church; he was baptized in June 2003. Angie followed in July 2004. Their parents were baptized in April 2007. And finally, shortly after the youngest member of the Calderón family, James, turned eight in 2007, he was baptized.

During the final phases of World War II, I turned eighteen and was ordained an elder—one week before I departed for active duty with the Navy. A member of my ward bishopric was at the train station to bid me farewell. Just before train time, he placed in my hand a book which I hold before you tonight. Its title, the Missionary Handbook. I laughed and commented, “I’m not going on a mission.” He answered, “Take it anyway. It may come in handy.”

It did. During basic training our company commander instructed us concerning how we might best pack our clothing in a large sea bag. He advised, “If you have a hard, rectangular object you can place in the bottom of the bag, your clothes will stay more firm.” I suddenly remembered just the right rectangular object—the Missionary Handbook. Thus it served for twelve weeks.

The night preceding our Christmas leave our thoughts were, as always, on home. The barracks were quiet. Suddenly I became aware that my buddy in the adjoining bunk—a Mormon boy, Leland Merrill—was moaning with pain. I asked, “What’s the matter, Merrill?”

He replied, “I’m sick. I’m really sick.”

I advised him to go to the base dispensary, but he answered knowingly that such a course would prevent him from being home for Christmas.

The hours lengthened; his groans grew louder. Then, in desperation, he whispered, “Monson, Monson, aren’t you an elder?” I acknowledged this to be so; whereupon he asked, “Give me a blessing.”

I became very much aware that I had never given a blessing. I had never received such a blessing; I had never witnessed a blessing being given. My prayer to God was a plea for help. The answer came: “Look in the bottom of the sea bag.” Thus, at 2 a.m. I emptied on the deck the contents of the bag. I then took to the night-light that hard, rectangular object, the Missionary Handbook, and read how one blesses the sick. With about sixty curious sailors looking on, I proceeded with the blessing. Before I could stow my gear, Leland Merrill was sleeping like a child.

The next morning Merrill smilingly turned to me and said, “Monson, I’m glad you hold the priesthood.” His gladness was only surpassed by my gratitude.

A holier-than-thou attitude is not becoming to us. I am in receipt of a letter from a man in our community who is not a member of the Church. In it he says that his little daughter has been ostracized by her schoolmates who are Latter-day Saints. He sets forth another instance of a child who, it is alleged, had a religious medal ripped from his neck by an LDS child. I hope this is not true. If it is, I apologize to those who have been offended.

I explained, and asked, “How did you get home?”
My son said, “We couldn’t understand why you didn’t come to pick us up, but we thought you might be late from work, so we walked home. It started to get dark, but we couldn’t get in because we haven’t got a key.
“I didn’t know what to do, but all of a sudden I thought we should pray about it. So we knelt on the doormat while I said a prayer. We sat without talking for a little while after the prayer, as you taught us to do, and then a nice thing happened to me.
“I felt a big, warm hand touching the top of my head, and I heard a friendly voice saying, ‘Your mother is well, she has been taken care of. It will be a while before she comes home, and it will be all dark outside, but just stay calm. Take your little sister by the hand and stay near the apartment and play peacefully. If you do, the time will go by quickly until your mother is with you again.’
“When I looked up to see who was talking to me, I couldn’t see anybody, and no more was said. I felt calm.”

Todd, a little boy just two years old, recently went with his mother to an art museum that was showing a special exhibit of beautiful paintings of the Savior. As they walked past these sacred images, she heard her little boy reverently saying the name “Jesus.” She looked down to see him folding his arms and bowing his head as he viewed the paintings. Could we learn from Todd something about an attitude of humility, of reverence, and of love for the Lord?

“At Summer Quarters we read the scriptures every night,” explains counselor Dan Kolilis. “Just last night we went out to the tents where the boys stay and had pop and chips with them. Then we read in the Book of Mormon about Jesus Christ blessing the little children. All of this year’s male counselors are returned missionaries, so we talked about our missions. Then we read the verse that says: ‘Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand’ (3 Ne. 17:3). It was the last night of the camp. We wanted them to go home, as we will go home, to think about how, with the gospel in their lives, the Lord will help them and guide them.”

I know of at least two people listening today who want that blessing with all their hearts. They will try earnestly to draw nearer to the Lord during this conference. They each wrote to me—their letters arriving at my office in the same week—pleading for the same kind of help.

Both of them are converts to the Church and have previously received clear testimonies of the love of God the Father and of His Son, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. They knew that the Prophet Joseph Smith organized the Church by direct revelation from God and that the keys of the holy priesthood were restored. Each felt a witness that keys are in place in the Church today. They bore to me their solemn testimony in writing.

Yet both lamented that feelings of love for the Lord and His love for them were lessening. They both wanted, with full heart, for me to help them regain the joy and the feeling of being loved that was theirs as they came into the kingdom of God. Both expressed a fear that if they could not regain in full those feelings of love for the Savior and His Church, the trials and tests they faced would finally overcome their faith.