Gospel Story Finder

When I was a boy, I used to ride my bicycle home from basketball practice at night. I would connect a small pear-shaped generator to my bicycle tire. Then as I pedaled, the tire would turn a tiny rotor, which produced electricity and emitted a single, welcome beam of light. It was a simple but effective mechanism. But I had to pedal to make it work! I learned quickly that if I stopped pedaling my bicycle, the light would go out. I also learned that when I was “anxiously engaged” in pedaling, the light would become brighter and the darkness in front of me would be dispelled.

It took gallons of chicken stew, plus mass quantities of bread and fresh fruit to feed the needy at a park in California, but the youth of the Bakersfield Stake were more than eager to provide it.
“This project was entirely the brainchild of the youth council,” said Marcus Asay, high council coordinator of the activity. “Helping the poor and homeless was something they really wanted to do.”
Over 100 Young Men and Young Women, plus their leaders, prepared and distributed the meal to the needy and collected clothing and canned goods for them as well.

Jeffrey sat on the front steps of his new house. It was a hot summer day.
He watched the children speed by on their skates. He wondered how he could be their friend.
“I need a stop sign,” Jeffrey told his mom. “Let’s stir one up,” Mom said.
They went inside the house and found a pitcher.
Jeffrey put water, lemon juice, sugar, and ice in the pitcher. Then he stirred everything together.
Mom got a big piece of paper. She helped him write “Free Lemonade” on it.
They put a little table on the driveway. Jeffrey poured lemonade in the cups. Mom hung up the sign.
When the thirsty children skated by, they stopped for a cool drink.
Jeffrey smiled and said, “Hello, I’m Jeffrey.” Now he had lots of new friends.

1 It was a happy day for me when my family and friends gathered at Temple Beach to share a big moment in my life. The beach is just across from the temple in Laie, Hawaii.
2 The tradewinds were blowing, the sun was hanging low on the horizon, and the waves were lapping gently as we listened to a talk on the importance of baptism.
3 We sang “I Am a Child of God,” and then, after a special prayer was said, I walked into the warm sea to be baptized.
4 My father, Leslie Forester, performed the baptism while my uncle, Chuck Rivers, stood closeby.
5 After the baptism, the three of us headed back to the beach for my confirmation.
6 I was glad to wear the flower leis given to me, for they showed everyone’s aloha, or love, for me.
7 On the beach, with the sound of the surf in the background, I was encircled by members of the priesthood and confirmed a member of the Church.
8 Here I am with my missionary friends. When I grow up, I will go on a mission and perhaps baptize new members into the Church. I am grateful to be a member of the true Church.

My parents have taught my little brother and sisters and me about what President Hinckley said about pornography. He said we should avoid it like the plague. On my way home from school one day, two of my friends sat by me on the bus. One boy had his phone, and he got on the Internet to find pictures of girls who were not dressed. I told him I would not look at the pictures. He tried to sneak the phone in front of my face. I said, “No!” and closed my eyes. The rest of the way home I looked out the window. I know I did the right thing that day.
Cade M., age 8, Arizona

I skipped up the sidewalk to my home, overflowing with excitement. My friend had invited me to spend the weekend at a cabin.
I came bursting through the front door and announced my plans to my mother.
“Don’t you have baptisms for the dead tomorrow?” she said.
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, but I can do it another time.”
She looked at me with concern. “You went in for your recommend interview and everything. You said you would go.”
My thoughts of a weekend at a cabin began to slowly fade away. The cabin sounded like so much fun. “Well, I already told my friends I would go with them.”
“You also told your Young Women leader that you would do baptisms. You made that promise first,” my mother reminded me.
“I don’t care! I’m not going!” I snapped back.
She looked on me with disappointment and then walked away.
“Great!” I said to myself, feeling even more guilty. Finally I went into the living room by myself, knelt down, and asked Heavenly Father to help me make the right decision.
When I finished, I just knelt there for a moment. I paid attention to my thoughts. They were directed now toward being in the temple and getting baptized for people who had been waiting for so long. I stood and walked into the kitchen. As I walked past the fridge, I saw a quote from President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008):
“If we are a temple-going people, we will be a better people, we will be better fathers and husbands, we will be better wives and mothers. I know your lives are busy. I know that you have much to do. But I make you a promise that if you will go to the house of the Lord, you will be blessed, life will be better for you” (“Excerpts from Recent Addresses of President Gordon B. Hinckley,” Ensign, July 1997, 73).
I stood there transfixed as I read the quote over and over again. My prayers had been answered. I went back into my living room and knelt a second time, only this time I thanked my Heavenly Father for answering my prayer and for teaching me a lesson about sacrifice.
The next day when I went to the temple, I remember feeling so good. I knew I had made the right decision, thanks to Heavenly Father. I know if we truly want to do what is right, sacrifice is a blessing rather than a setback.

I close with the example of a new friend, someone we met a few weeks ago while visiting the Zambia Lusaka Mission.
Elder Joseph Ssengooba is from Uganda. His father died when he was seven. At age nine, with his mother and relatives unable to care for him, he was on his own. At age 12, he met the missionaries and was baptized.
Joseph told me of his first day at church: “After sacrament meeting, I thought it was time to go home, but the missionaries introduced me to Joshua Walusimbi. Joshua told me that he was going to be my friend, and he handed me a Children’s Songbook so I wouldn’t have to go into Primary empty-handed. In Primary, Joshua put an extra chair right next to his. The Primary president invited me to the front and asked the whole Primary to sing for me ‘I Am a Child of God.’ I felt very special.”
The branch president took Joseph to the Pierre Mungoza family, and that became his home for the next four years.
Eight years later when Elder Joseph Ssengooba began his mission, to his great surprise his trainer was Elder Joshua Walusimbi, the boy who had made him feel so welcome on his first day in Primary. And his mission president? He is President Leif Erickson, the little boy who stayed away from Primary because he was terrified about giving a talk. God loves His children.

When I was very young, my father moved our family to Provo, Utah, where he operated a dental laboratory. After school, I would run to his lab and watch him make special false teeth. Often I would take a piece of wax and try to mold a tooth or a full denture. My efforts were awful! In my early teenage years, he would have me work by his side to learn each part of his trade. He was a perfectionist, and he constantly taught me how to remake the delicate, detailed work without any criticism from him but with continued explanations and demonstrations of how to improve. Each time I made a correction, he would tell me how much he appreciated my work and my effort. This gave me self-confidence, and my work improved.
Our time together, his constant encouragement and listening ear, and the many thousands of corrective counseling moments in the dental lab led to many discussions about God, the gospel, the plan of happiness, and the various aspects of life. This was how he guided me into a framework—a template, if you will—for me to try to order my own life.

Searching for a great idea for a youth conference? The Aurora Colorado Stake has a suggestion.
Work.
Hard work.
Like shoveling gravel, digging dirt, weeding, painting, washing cars.
Mixed with fun and fellowship.
There’s an explanation. The young people from Aurora wanted to do something different for their youth conference, something special. So they spent three days cleaning up a city.
“We asked the stake youth committee what they wanted to do,” explained Richard C. Humpherys, second counselor in the stake presidency. “They said, ‘something to help someone else,’ and ‘something to build our testimonies.’ Since they asked for it, we encouraged them to go ahead.”
Inspired by a story on service in the Tambuli (see “Building a House Helped Build Testimonies,” February 1988, page 47), the youth committee looked around for a community they could help. They settled on Granby for three reasons: it was close to Aurora; economically the community wasn’t doing very well; and the mayor, town council, and chamber of commerce seemed genuinely interested in providing projects for the youth to work on.
There was an added benefit, too. The small Latter-day Saint branch in Granby, with a total of five active families, had youth who would welcome some company and fellowship with other Church youth. And, while the young people from Aurora were there, it was decided, they could help paint the Granby chapel.
Buses left Aurora at 7:00 on a Thursday morning. By 10:30 A.M., eighty-four young people divided into eight teams were busy all over Granby. Since they were all wearing identical T-shirts, they were fairly conspicuous. And a local radio station advertising the Latter-day Saint youth’s free car wash also let people know who they were and what they were doing.
Besides cleaning up the main street of Granby, washing cars, tidying the cemetery, spreading gravel at the train depot, and chopping weeds at a main intersection on the highway into town, the youth painted the city’s historic log church, landscaped its grounds, and polished the benches and the organ inside.
And of course, that’s very much what the youth were saying over at the chapel.
The Granby youth and the youth from Aurora did everything at the conference together, not only the service projects, but the other activities as well. They played volleyball together. They played football together. They even played soccer with an oversized ball.
Activities included a Hawaiian-style dinner with a floor show, a swimming party, and a dance. But the main activity was conversation, a sharing of ideals and fellowship.
Over the three-day period, the youth from Granby and the youth from Aurora grew comfortable discussing common goals—missionary work, reading and sharing the Book of Mormon, morality and standards, maintaining faith when the world’s full of doubt. That closeness was also reinforced at nightly devotionals, where leaders stressed themes such as “Little Decisions Made Now Have Big Consequences Later,” “Gospel Suggestions on How to Be Happy,” and “Your Most Important Possession is Your Testimony.”
But of course, as it always is, the final meeting of the conference was the highlight. In a sunlit room, the Latter-day Saint youth met Granby’s mayor, Jerry Roberts. The presented him with framed historical photographs of Granby, which now hang in the train station, and with a Book of Mormon, which they hope he will read. They listened while he expressed the community’s gratitude.
Then the youth and their leaders spent an hour or two talking to each other, speaking from the heart.
Of course, as they talked, the youth also offered an evaluation of their three days of service.
Then the president of the Granby Branch, Gary M. Cooper, spoke.
“The branch was formed fifteen years ago, he said, “and I can honestly say that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to us. We appreciate that you took the time to come here and bring us into the limelight in our Community. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. You did a lot of work and you cleaned up the community, and that’s important. But what I really hope is that because of your example, someone will accept the gospel. That would be the greatest service of all.”

My fingers clenched the steering wheel as I stared anxiously at the red light. When it finally changed to green, I sped forward only to wait at another seemingly endless stoplight. I was still 10 minutes away from the lesson with the sister missionaries that was supposed to have started 5 minutes ago. If I had been a wiser mother, I would have predicted the 15-minute tantrum my almost-three-year-old daughter erupted into as we headed out the door, but I hadn’t. Yes, the world would go on if I was late, but since I was trying to do something good, didn’t I deserve at least some of the traffic lights to work in my favor? As I waited impatiently at yet another stoplight, I could feel my frustration tightening into anger. “I’m trying to do something good; trying my best! Where is the help I need?”
Eight months after my fourth miscarriage and just several weeks after my stressful drive to meet the sister missionaries, I was peacefully waiting at a stoplight on my way home when my answers came. As I watched the cars stopped next to me and the cars making their way down the road ahead of me, I caught an eternal perspective of my life. I suddenly realized that all that mattered in my journey was that I stay on the path that would take me back to my heavenly home. How many “stoplights” I waited at would have no effect on my destination. How I responded to them would.
I began to cherish every stoplight in my life, both metaphorical and literal. Instead of wasted time, each became an opportunity to acquire patience and to gain perspective that comes only through waiting. Just as every red traffic light is paired with a green light in a different direction, I found that every stoplight in my life opened an avenue for growth, just not necessarily in the way I had been planning to grow right then. Instead of dwelling on the disappointments, I began to delight in the opportunity for progress that every unexpected turn of events provided.

Due in great part, I am sure, to their ethnic diversity, the Living Legends had the remarkable yet challenging opportunity to take part in numerous activities during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. In addition to performances at the Olympic Village and the Medals Plaza, they were featured in the opening ceremonies and, of course, the glorious production of Light of the World at the Conference Center.
It sounds glamorous, but in fact it meant months of long rehearsals and long bus rides between Provo and the Olympic venues in Salt Lake City. The last few weeks the students boarded buses at the Richards Building each school day at 4 p.m., returning at midnight. Saturdays started at 8 a.m. and lasted far into the evening as well.
Along with this sacrifice came many miracles and blessings, but perhaps the sweetest to me came just after the close of our last Olympic performance.
One of our greatest concerns with our schedule was that Light of the World would close just one week before our campus performance of Seasons, our 90-minute show. That meant just one week to rehearse and polish a show that we had quickly learned back in September before the Olympic rehearsals began. You can imagine then our shock and concern when Elder Robert D. Hales stood before an audience of 22,000 at our closing Saturday night performance to announce a one-week extension of the show, which would then close the following Saturday afternoon.
Shock turned to panic as we realized the implications for our campus show. Not only would we have to cancel our Friday night performance, but any rehearsal time during the following week was now gone as well. I still remember the Living Legends racing through the long underground tunnels in the vast Conference Center following that last Saturday afternoon show, gathering hundreds of costumes and props and climbing onto the buses for the journey down to Provo, and unloading right here in the de Jong Concert Hall fewer than 90 minutes before our show was to begin.
As we were making final show preparations, I noticed six Native American girls out in the tunnel rehearsing a particularly difficult dance called the Jingle Dance. It is a sacred dance requiring intricate footwork and formations while adjusting to the sound made by 350 jingles per dress that sway in a rhythm different from the drumbeat. Families and friends had traveled from reservations in other states to watch, and tradition dictated that it should be done perfectly.
Repeated rehearsals of the dance made it evident that the task was beyond their ability to accomplish, and suggestions were offered as to how disaster could be averted. Not doing the dance was discussed but could not be an option since lighting and music cues and costume changes depended on that time slot being filled. Simply going out and “freestyling” was another option to consider. But at 7:15, with only 15 minutes until the performance was to begin, the section leader quietly stood up and said:

We have fulfilled every request made of us these past months, we have represented our culture in a positive way to the entire world. We have been obedient to the prophet’s request to extend the blessings of Light of the World to thousands more people this week. We have done all that we can do, and now we must trust in the Lord. We will do the dance as we have rehearsed it.

As the show progressed that evening into the “Season of Plenty,” where the Jingle Dance is performed, every other member of the group lined up in the wings to watch as these six Native American girls walked out onto the stage. The entire company wept together three and a half minutes later as the girls walked offstage, having performed a perfect Jingle Dance. It was certainly a miracle preceded by great faith. These same girls rehearsed that dance for a full two weeks following that show before ever performing it that well again.

In Mom’s last days, the men in the family surrounded her with their hands on her head, pronouncing a priesthood blessing. I peered in as well. She opened her eyes at the conclusion, looking at each one of us. The only word that she could muster was soft but clear: “love”. Her final word in mortality was the “greatest of these” – love -- giving us strength to press forward with steadfastness in Christ. . . and a love of God and of all men,” knowing that if we do, “[we] shall have eternal life.”

Their final words, their “last lectures,” sealed a lifetime of teaching that the love of God is “most desirable above all things. . . Yea, and the most joyous to the soul,” And that of all the spiritual gifts the “greatest of these is charity.”

We can let the light within us show in many different ways. It may be as simple as a smile. I recently read the account of a man in the northwest United States who used to drive past a bus stop on his way to work. He began to notice a young girl among some children waiting for the school bus. Even when it was raining, she would smile and wave as he drove by. He said: “The young girl was tall and slim and about 13 years old. She wore a mouthful of braces and I could see them glisten in the glare of my car lights.” Her effort to be friendly gave his day a good start and was something he looked forward to.
This man’s name was Hankins, and he had a daughter, Cheryl, who was about the same age as the girl at the bus stop. One day Cheryl asked her parents’ permission to attend an activity at a local church. A neighbor girl, Vicki, had invited her to attend. The activity was MIA, the forerunner to the Young Women program! Cheryl enjoyed MIA and after a while told her parents that Vicki was a Mormon. It wasn’t long before Cheryl came home from school and said that Vicki was sending two young men over—missionaries—to tell the family about her Church.
The elders arrived, taught them about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, and bore their testimonies of the Restoration of the gospel. As a family they began to read these new scriptures and were soon captivated by them. Mr. Hankins finally met Vicki. She was the smiling girl he had seen so many times at the bus stop. She was present when he and two other members of his family were baptized.
Looking back on Vicki’s actions and those of other young people, Brother and Sister Hankins became convinced that “the greatest potential for missionary work lies in the youth of the Church.” Brother and Sister Hankins have since served as missionaries themselves. They relied upon the referrals and good example that the youth supplied. Vicki—the girl at the bus stop who smiled every day, even when it was raining—changed their lives forever.
Each one of you can be a friend to someone, even if it is only by smiling. Like Vicki, you can let the sunshine that is in your heart show in your face.

At twenty-nine, Ransom Stevens was president of the Samoa Mission when stricken with typhoid fever, which was complicated by a heart problem. He died on April 23, 1894.
His widow, Sister Annie D. Stevens, started for home by steamer on May 23. She reached Ogden on Sunday, June 10, where she was met by President Joseph F. Smith and Elder Franklin D. Richards. On June 11, she had an interview with the First Presidency in Salt Lake City and then went on to her home in Fairview, Sanpete County, arriving at 6:00 p.m.
The history states, “The greetings by her friends were necessarily brief for Sister Stevens was ill and had to retire to bed early, and at 11 p.m., five hours after her arrival home, she gave birth to a nice boy.” She had gone through the whole ordeal in the advance stages of pregnancy.

Photograph provided by the author
When President Russell M. Nelson described a home-centered Church during general conference in 2018, and when the Children and Youth program was announced in 2019, our family was excited.
As 2020 approached, however, we met a significant obstacle. Beginning in January, I had to leave home for a six-month deployment. I knew that my wife and I had a sacred responsibility to center gospel learning in our home for our five children, but I wondered how I could do my part while away from home.
Our children began brainstorming goals that would help them increase “in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52), just as the Savior did. My eight-year-old daughter told me one of her goals was to learn to cook with Daddy. With a broken heart, I had to redirect her goal toward something she could do for a while without my help. My sons wanted to become better at basketball and running—two things we love to do together. I encouraged them in their goal, knowing I would miss opportunities to help them. As a family, we prepared the best we could.
Family separation is always a trial, but the combination of technology and the direction of a living prophet allowed me to take part in our family’s gospel learning after all.
We felt united, even when we were 10 time zones apart, as we studied Come, Follow Me. When time allowed, I would get on an early-morning video chat during my family’s evening scripture study and talk about the Book of Mormon chapters we had been studying. Over the phone, I would talk to my children about the Book of Mormon videos, and my wife and I would discuss ideas for family home evening.
Wanting to help my children with Children and Youth, I set my own goals and sent the children handwritten notes every week sharing my progress and asking them about their goals. Through regular phone calls, I could even join in family prayer at times.
During my separation from my family, I quickly saw the blessings of following the guidance of the prophet. I also found that creating a home of gospel learning is possible even when I was half a world away!

Scheduling is the third principle of building. Achieving the goal of a schedule can only be accomplished through establishing goals, great coordination, strategizing, planning, collaborating financing and working to accomplish our goals. One of the remarkable stories about building to a schedule is the story of Prayer Rock near Cody, Wyoming. On a recent trip to the area with our Scoutmaster who grew up in Cody we went to the visitors’ center in that same city and learned the story of the early saints that settled in 1900. When the saints first arrived in the valley it became obvious that a canal needed to be dug and built in order for the saints to bring water to their new farms. They went to work immediately building the canal. The work was led by Byron Sessions, he would become the Stake President the following year. The work was backbreaking and they soon realized the work couldn’t be finished in a year; no food could be raised until they had water for irrigation. Serious discouragement plagued the camp. A special prayer was offered and soon a modern manna from heaven came to the saints in the form of an $80,000 contract to construct 23 miles of railroad. Half of the saints worked on the canal, the other half worked on the railroad making enough money to buy food for the saints. As the saints worked on the canal they came to a cliff with a very large rock directly in the canal right of way. President Sessions, who was superintendent of the canal construction, strategized that a large hole would be dug at the base of this rock and then with the help of explosions at the rocks base this would cause the rock to crumble and collapse into the hole. Safety began to be a major concern. Morning and evening prayers were held in camp for the safety of the men and the horses. The digging continued. It didn’t seem to be working. “One afternoon as President Sessions discussed the matter with the men working there,” his own son, Biney, expressed the discouragement that several of them were feeling: ‘We’ll never get this down. We just as well give it up.’ This seemed to anger his father, who said, ‘I prophecy in the name of Israel’s God that that rock will be in there tomorrow at this time.’ Jim George, one of the men working there, turned his back to President Sessions , pulled out his watch and said, ‘Let’s test him out.’ He said, ‘It’s just four P.M.’” The work continued the next day. They took their usual fifteen-minute break at 3:30 and had just begun working again when President Sessions called them up for another rest break, an unprecedented but quickly obeyed order. Then, without a powder blast, without so much as a tap from a hammer, “that rock began to split from top to bottom and landed right where we had all been busy working five minutes before. George, with the same watch, dumbfounded, said, ‘Five minutes to four.’” The standing half of the rock is still visible; the fallen half was buried in the outside bank of the canal which flows smoothly between the two halves. This was considered a miracle by the Wyoming saints – it was a miracle. As we set goals and work to meet schedules we need to do all we can to meet these commitments.

Many years ago two colleagues of mine—a nurse and her doctor husband—asked me why I lived the way I did. I answered, “Because I know the Book of Mormon is true.” I let them borrow my copy of the book, inviting them to read it. A week later they returned my book with a polite “thanks a lot.”

I responded, “What do you mean, thanks a lot? That’s a totally inappropriate response for one who has read this book. You didn’t read it, did you! Please take it back and read it; then I would like my book back.”

Admitting that they had only turned its pages, they accepted my invitation. When they returned, they said tearfully, “We have read the Book of Mormon. We know it is true! We want to know more.” They learned more, and it was my privilege to baptize both of them.

On a visit to London, Stephens first stumbled over his future in the form of Descriptions of an Ancient City, by a Capitán Del Rio, who had visited a strange, ruined city in Mexico called Palenque. He later learned of a second lost Mexican city, Uxmal. In 1835, he eagerly pounced upon a professional journal describing a ruined Honduran city, Copan.
Palenque, Copan, Uxmal. His mind now stirred with visions of nebulous civilization that had existed in Central America. Amazingly enough, he seemed the only one interested. “Instead of electrifying the public,” he wrote, “little notice was taken [of the Copan article].” Nonetheless, he announced his intention to search for those lost cities.
“Nonsense!” roared scientists and public alike. Indians had never progressed beyond savagery. Americans of that age could believe in almost anything other than an “Indian” civilization, in spite of evidence from the conquest. Such proofs were either ignored or downgraded as Spanish public-relations puffery. Scholars and historians held fast to their antiquated beliefs and scorned Stephens’ efforts.
There was, in truth, little documentary evidence to counter what scholars supposed. Joseph Smith’s detractors would vilify him for plagiarism, for example, when there was nothing to plagiarize. Even in 1839, the very well-educated—and rich—Mr. Stephens had great difficulty scraping up any real evidence of an ancient American culture. His meager references were poor in detail. And in Joseph Smith’s time, records were even poorer—or nonexistent.
This dearth of information made even the irrepressible Stephens a bit skeptical, but he had high hopes. In company with a kindred spirit—and accomplished artist—Frederic Catherwood, he set sail for Central America.
Their first goal, Copan, was a sickly village of mud-walled huts. But discovery loomed near. A native guide led them through the jungle to a riverbank. Opposite reared a hundred-foot-high stone wall—the edge of ancient Copan and of a new era in history. Quickly crossing the river and scaling the wall, they found themselves amid the fallen relics of a forgotten civilization.
“Working our way through the thick woods,” Stephens wrote. “we came upon a square stone column, about fourteen feet high … sculptured on all four … sides … in very bold relief … they were works of art … some equal to the finest monuments of the Egyptians.
“America [said historians of the 1830’s] was peopled by savages; but savages never built these structures, savages never carved these stones. When we asked the Indians if they knew who made them, their dull answer was ‘Quién sabe? [Who knows?]’”
The scholars and historians of the Western world could not have answered any better. Copan—and the Mayas—surged to their lofty level of art and culture while Europe descended into the gloom of the dark ages. They conquered the jungles and strung their cities through Yucatan like sparkling gems on a jeweled collar. But for the Old World, their deeds and histories were as quiet as the silent jungle they lived in.
Sometime before A.D. 900, however, the Mayas abruptly and mysteriously stepped off the stage of history. For a thousand years, Copan lay buried by the thick, heavy Honduran jungle until disturbed in 1839 by Stephens and Catherwood.
The pair could not see it all—the jungle was too thick. They concentrated on the unburied “idols,” or stelae. These were huge, thirty-ton monoliths carved with an incredible profusion of figures, flowers, and animals. Erected on set dates to commemorate events unknown to us, they climaxed the Mayan genius.
In a two-year journey, Stephens and Catherwood discovered and rediscovered Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, and forty other ruined Mayan sites. The mystery deepened, and Stephens’ reactions were rhapsodic. At Palenque, he said:
“Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages of the rise and fall of nations; reached their golden age, and perished entirely unknown. The links which connected them with the human family were severed and lost, and these were the only memorials of their footsteps upon earth … In the romance of the world’s history, nothing ever impressed me more forcibly than the spectacle of this once great and lovely city, overturned, desolate, and lost; discovered by accident, overgrown with trees for miles around, and without even a name to distinguish it.”
The dedication of the two explorers in uncovering these mysteries baffles the modern mind. In an age when gentlemen stayed at home, these two suffered hunger, malaria, myriads of insect attacks, extreme physical discomfort, and near brushes with death. To accomplish what?
History judges Stephens among the great. His contribution is rated equal to Jean Francois Champollion (1790–1832), French Egyptologist who discovered a stone that had writing in three languages. From the stone, he was able to decipher ancient Egyptian writing; or to Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), German archeologist, who excavated the city of Troy in Anatolia, proving this legendary Greek city actually existed.
From our point of view. Stephens’ importance is momentous: John Lloyd Stephens and Joseph Smith never met, but the Book of Mormon’s cry in the wilderness was now reinforced as Stephens’ physical testimony of Lehi’s people swept over the world.

When Monika Fullmer served in a Relief Society presidency in Germany, she became acquainted with Anne, a less-active sister. (The name has been changed.) Anne’s visiting teachers encouraged her to come to church, but she was hesitant to come back after being away so long. The sisters finally convinced her that she would be welcomed with open arms.
At first, Anne sat in the back of the meetinghouse. But gradually, as the women in the ward drew her in, she became comfortable. The Relief Society presidency soon felt impressed that they should request that Anne be called as Relief Society music leader. Even though she knew very little about music, Anne accepted the assignment. With the support of the sisters in Relief Society, Anne learned to fulfill her calling, then accepted other leadership positions in the ward. In time, Anne’s husband was baptized, and her family was sealed in the temple.
“Whenever I think of sisterhood, I think of Anne,” says Sister Fullmer. “The Relief Society sisters’ love and acceptance made her feel welcome—and then needed.”

Some of you may be familiar with Thornton Wilder’s classic drama Our Town. If you are, you will remember the town of Grover’s Corners, where the story takes place. In the play Emily Webb dies in childbirth, and we read of the lonely grief of her young husband, George, left with their four-year-old son. Emily does not wish to rest in peace; she wants to experience again the joys of her life. She is granted the privilege of returning to earth and reliving her 12th birthday. At first it is exciting to be young again, but the excitement wears off quickly. The day holds no joy now that Emily knows what is in store for the future. It is unbearably painful to realize how unaware she had been of the meaning and wonder of life while she was alive. Before returning to her resting place, Emily laments, “Do … human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?”