Gospel Story Finder

At age 54, before he was called as a General Authority, President Russell M. Nelson attended a meeting in which President Spencer W. Kimball challenged attendees to “be of service to the Chinese” and “learn their language.”

Although he was a busy heart surgeon at the time, President Nelson took this counsel to heart. He found a tutor to help him learn the Mandarin language.

It wasn’t long before President Nelson found himself sitting next to a distinguished Chinese surgeon, Dr. Wu Yingkai, at a medical convention. Because of his Chinese language studies, President Nelson was able to have a conversation with Dr. Wu. From there, the two doctors formed a lasting friendship and even visited each other’s countries.

President Nelson’s goal to learn Mandarin led to positive exchanges with China, as President Kimball had hoped for. After he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, President Nelson even performed his last heart surgery on China’s most famous opera singer by special request.

I wanted to join the Church, but I also didn’t want to make my mom mad. My mom played a big role in my decisions while I was growing up. She was a minister, so I constantly listened to her instead of going to church and learning for myself.
I was a little hesitant when we set a date for my baptism. The missionaries came over, and we talked about it.
Finally, I asked my daughter, Aryanna, “Do you want to be baptized?”
She said, “Mom, I’m ready whenever you are.”
She told me that when she went to church, all the girls ran and greeted her. They took her to Primary classes and were always friendly. They wanted her to be part of things. She became really good friends with one of the girls. That’s what she enjoyed about it.
At Aryanna’s baptism, she cried tears of joy. When I saw her, I thought, I’m where I need to be.

On June 10, 1953, my wife and I had the privilege of being married in the Salt Lake Temple. After President Harold B. Lee, then an apostle, concluded the beautiful ceremony, he had us stand in the center of the sealing room. Looking to the left into the mirrors that reflect off one another to show hundreds of images, he said, “On the left are the eternities you came from, and on the right the eternities to which you are going.” We looked and could see our images. Then he brought our thoughts back to the sealing room where we were and said, “This is like the world. It is but one step to all the eternities.” We were lovingly advised to stay true to the commitments of chastity, to obey the law of sacrifice and the law of consecration whereby we give all of our time, talents, and everything with which we are blessed to the service of the Lord. Then he said, “Make sure you understand that an argument never solves problems. As you stand here today, commit yourselves to having and expressing love and appreciation for each other.” It was a great teaching moment in our lives that we have never forgotten.

I also learned a lot from living around animals. My father was a veterinarian, and we had some fifty or sixty head of sheep when we lived in Lindon, Utah. One spring, just when the sheep were ready to lamb, there was a freak blizzard. My father was away on a business trip, and my grandfather was at work. Nobody else was around, and all of a sudden the sheep started birthing lambs. I was called home from school by my mom.
Grandfather took a few minutes off work to show me how to rub down the lambs with gunnysacks. That would keep their blood flowing to keep them warm. Then he had to leave because he had an emergency of his own at work.
I was alone with all the sheep, most of them having lambs. I was almost in tears, thinking that I couldn’t take care of them all and that we were going to lose the lambs. Still, I went to work, and after all the sheep had given birth, I was surprised to find out that we hadn’t lost one lamb! That experience taught me the value of persistence and self-reliance. Sometimes you just have to do the job because nobody else is available. It’s tough, and there are many challenges, and you may want to give up. You may think that you’re not strong enough or that you don’t know enough, but just do your best and keep going.

The young man walked through the door, then stopped, not quite sure what to do next. He had an important question to ask, but he didn’t know who to talk to.
Marion Peterson, the education vice-president of the Utah office of the American Cancer Society, went into the hall to help him.
“He asked me,” said Marion, “if I would look in his mouth and see if he needed to be worried. He had been using chewing tobacco for a while. He pulled down his lip, and it looked horrible, suspiciously like cancer. I told him he had to get help immediately. But he said his mother didn’t know about his habit, and she would find out if he went to the doctor because of their insurance. I begged him to go to a clinic. But he left, and I never knew his name.” Marion still worries about this boy and wonders if he got help in time.

My great-great-grandmother Hannah Maria Eagles Harris was one of the first to listen to Wilford Woodruff. She informed her husband, Robert Harris Jr., that she had heard the word of God and that she intended to be baptized. Robert was not pleased to hear his wife’s report. He told her he would accompany her to the next sermon given by the Mormon missionary, and he would straighten him out.

Sitting near the front of the assembly, with a firm resolve to not be swayed, and perhaps to heckle the visiting preacher, Robert was immediately touched by the Spirit, just as his wife had been. He knew the message of the Restoration was true, and he and his wife were baptized.

Their story of faith and devotion is similar to thousands of others: when they heard the gospel message, they knew it was true!

One Sunday I was so sick that I had to stay home from church so I wouldn’t get everybody there sick. Before my mom and my brothers went to church, they gave me a short lesson on the Word of Wisdom.
My dad stayed home from church with me, and we had our own lessons from the Friend. We read the stories to each other, and I did the activities. Even though I missed church, I still learned about Jesus with my dad. It felt good to have a lesson and do the reverent activities.
I think that by doing these things I learned to choose the right even when I was sick and missed church.Rachel Lyn Cox, age 8Hyde Park, Utah

Young members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their Muslim friends in Queensland are helping an Australian charity to bring light into communities in Vanuatu impacted by energy poverty.
Last October, 186 young single adult volunteers, including friends from the Ahmadiyyah Muslim community, Church members and friends, gathered to assemble 1,000 solar lights.
The workers also wrote a greeting or message of encouragement on the instruction sheet that accompanies each light.
One volunteer said, “Not only are we building the lights, but we are also writing a letter to send with the lights, and it really makes it personal, and it really feels good to help others.”
Billie Murphy, SolarBuddy representative, said, “These lights will be used for children to study at nighttime and to move about their community safely and hopefully give them a really good opportunity as they move forward.”
Carl Maurer, self-reliance manager and Area Seventy, said, “I see this as an opportunity to relieve suffering, to increase the capacity for education to be a profile in somebody’s home, to offer better health opportunities in their homes, where they can become more self-reliant.”
Volunteers registered on JustServe, a free community service platform for building unity through community service, where the service project was posted.
The lights were purchased as a humanitarian project, by Latter-day Saint Charities, the service arm of the Church, from Solar Buddy, which is an Australian charity with the goal of ending energy poverty for all children.
After assembling the lights, which took about five minutes each, the young adults continued to mingle with games, activities, and, of course, food.
Carl Maurer said, “I hope that this will be a significant opportunity for families and individuals to see not just the light from the light, but see the Light of their lives, Jesus Christ.”

Although there were a lot of meetings, and a lot of speakers, and a lot of reports at the Tucson, Arizona, regional conference last June, there were even more dancers. More than 300 square dancers do-si-doed and allemanded their partners in the colorful opening cultural event of the conference.
And even though none of the young men and women who participated had ever before performed in a Church dance festival, they enthusiastically accepted the challenge. Gathering from the entire southwestern area of Arizona, the dancers met regularly to learn the intricate patterns involved in executing grand squares, grand parades, airplane spins, and intertwining stars.
“Making instructors out of people who had never danced before and then sending them off to teach all the other beginners in their stakes gave me chills,” admitted Brother Dave Walker, a professional square dance caller who choreographed and called each of the eight dances performed in the festival. He is a convert of three years and had never seen a Church dance festival.
“It normally takes 36 weeks to instruct the basic movements in square dancing and then another year of dancing before one even begins to instruct or call. But these stake dance directors did a fantastic job!”
Opening night saw 38 squares from four different stakes colorfully attired in matching costumes. The swirling movements, accentuated by the skillful lighting techniques playing off the bright and vivid patterns, made the festival even more breathtaking to watch.
Brother Walker remembers being choked up near the end of the performance. “That has never happened to me in calling before,” he said. “There just isn’t much to get choked up about in square dancing. But during these last two dances the kids were flying higher than kites, and when they looked up at me and smiled so enthusiastically, I could tell that they felt all the effort had been worth it!”
Produced by the regional activities committee, the show was performed to 3,000 persons and involved more than 300 dancers.

When my father was a boy, he lived in a small town in central Utah near Utah Lake. In the days before the pioneers, Native Americans hunted and fished in the area. Certain locations around the lake became popular for those looking for arrowheads.
At a fathers-and-sons activity when my father was five years old, his ward went to Utah Lake to look for arrowheads. After the group had spent the day searching, my grandfather asked my father whether he had found any arrowheads.
“No, I didn’t find any,” my father replied. Then he reached into his pocket and said, “But I did find this nice rock that is shaped just like a Christmas tree.”
My father had found an arrowhead after all, but he didn’t know it. He held the real thing in his hand, but he didn’t recognize it.

“We hear some these days who say that because of economic pressures they cannot afford to pay their tithing. I recall an experience I had as a stake president some years ago. A man came to get his temple recommend signed. I questioned him in the usual way and asked, among other things, whether he was paying an honest tithing. He candidly replied that he was not, that he could not afford to because of his many debts. I felt impressed to tell him that he would not pay his debts until he paid his tithing.

“He went along for a year or two in his normal way, and then made a decision. He talked about it sometime later, telling me: ‘What you told me has proved to be true. I felt I could not pay my tithing because of my debts. I discovered that no matter how hard I tried, somehow I could not manage to reduce my debt. Finally my wife and I sat down together and talked about it and concluded we would try the promise of the Lord. We have done so. And somehow in a way we can’t quite understand, the Lord has blessed us. We have not missed that which we have given to him, and for the first time in many years we are reducing our debt. We have come to the wisdom of budgeting our expenditures and of determining where our funds have been going. Because we now have a higher objective, we are able to curtail some of our appetites and desires. And above all of this, we feel we can now go to the house of the Lord with those deserving of this wonderful blessing.’

“We can pay our tithing. It is not so much a matter of money as it is a matter of faith. I have yet to find a faithful tithe payer who cannot testify that in a very literal and wonderful way the windows of heaven have been opened and blessings have been poured out upon him or her.”3

Nellie’s father died on October 22, 1856, from hunger and exposure to the cold. Five days later her mother died too. Graves could be dug only in the snow because the early winter had frozen the ground. Nellie and Maggie wearily and sadly walked on alone. They watched as more of the company died and the weather’s cold fierceness strengthened.
One day as Nellie and her sister made their way at the head of the group, two men appeared and motioned for them to come closer. At first the girls refused but soon decided that the men meant no harm. The men gave Nellie some money and instructed her to buy something to put on her feet at the trappers’ trading post they were nearing. Nellie gratefully accepted the money and the chance to cover her bare feet, which had long since grown numb with cold.
In Salt Lake City, President Brigham Young had called for volunteers to meet the handcart company on the plains. When the volunteers finally reached the company, near Laramie, Wyoming, they found the pitiful group nearly buried by the snow. Nellie’s feet were badly frozen. The rescue party gathered her and the remaining members of the company into their wagons and returned to Salt Lake, arriving on November 30.
Nearly everyone in the handcart company had endured painfully frozen feet, hands, and ears and had witnessed the deaths of family members and friends. The doctor had to amputate Nellie’s feet. There was no skin to cushion the bone, so she was left with throbbing sores that never healed.
Nellie and her sister eventually moved south from the Salt Lake Valley to Cedar City. Here Nellie married William Unthank and reared their six children. With a leather apron slid under her damaged legs, Nellie crawled about their small home on her knees, keeping it spotless.
Nellie willingly worked at whatever she could to help provide for her family. Along with other jobs, she took in other people’s clothes to wash, and made articles to sell to add to the family income. If anyone offered food or assistance, she insisted on repaying the favor. As a way of showing gratitude, she gathered her children once a year to clean the church meetinghouse. While the boys carried water, the girls washed windows, and Nellie scrubbed the floors.
William carved wooden “cup feet” for Nellie, but they only irritated her never-healing stumps. Later, through donations, wooden legs were given to Nellie, but these she only wore on special occasions, because they added to her constant pain.
Despite poverty and pain, Nellie rarely complained. She had come to know her Heavenly Father in her sufferings. From the shoes provided for her bare feet, the carriage sent when she couldn’t go on, help given to her through a lifetime of affliction, Nellie Pucell Unthank knew she could count on the Lord.

My sister Rylee is allergic to nuts. If she eats any, they can make her stop breathing. One night we ate some salt water taffy, not knowing that some of the pieces had nuts in them. Rylee’s mouth started burning. Mom gave her some medicine, but it didn’t help. Next, Rylee’s throat started to burn, and she couldn’t swallow. Then her chest started to burn. It soon became hard for her to breathe.
Dad was out of town, so he wasn’t around to give her a blessing. Mom decided to call 911. The operator told her to stay on the phone until the paramedics arrived.
My sisters Kelsey and Haley and I were really worried about Rylee. We knelt on the kitchen floor and said a prayer asking Heavenly Father not to let Rylee die. Soon the paramedics arrived, but Rylee was already doing better. Mom was really surprised at her recovery.
Later, after everyone had left, we told Mom about our prayer and asked if she thought it had helped. She told us that it was probably the reason why Rylee was all right. I am grateful that Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers.Mason Cate, age 4, with help from his familyLayton, Utah

When Jamie learned of her husband’s pornography use, she reacted with an understandable desire to control whatever she could. She thought she could arrange the life of her husband, Jon, so he wouldn’t seek instant gratification through pornography, and he would, therefore, have no other option but to choose righteousness. She wrote daily lists for him: what he could do for fun and what chores he needed to complete.
A pivotal moment in Jamie’s journey came when her bishop was inspired to emphasize, “Jamie, this is not your fault. Nothing you are doing is making him look at pornography. He is choosing.” And just as she was not the cause of his looking at pornography, she also could not be the cause of his stopping. Intellectually, she already knew what the bishop told her, but Jamie says that after the bishop’s reminder, “the lists stopped. I gave up trying to control his behavior and trying to force him into righteousness—and I focused on myself.” In effect, Jamie gave herself permission to feel her own hurt and to work on her own recovery.
After Jamie’s realization, Jon struggled and relapsed often, but he took responsibility for his own actions. And as they each worked on their own healing, Jon and Jamie found that they could heal better as individuals and as a couple.
Another turning point for Jamie and Jon came when one of their children needed a blessing. They called their home teacher, who bravely explained that he was seeking help to deal with his own struggles with pornography. He offered to find someone else to give the blessing. That openness lessened the shame Jon and Jamie felt about their own situation, and Jon finally felt safe enough to discuss his addiction with someone besides Jamie.
When the home teacher’s wife offered to talk with Jamie, Jamie didn’t see the point since her talking wouldn’t fix Jon—and at that point, fixing him was her goal. Yet after she and the home teacher’s wife visited, Jamie felt lighter. Nothing had changed. Jon still struggled, but she was relieved that someone else knew what she was going through and her world hadn’t come crashing down.
Well into their journey of overcoming pornography, Jon and Jamie discovered how helpful it was to set boundaries, and they still have them today—even after a good amount of sobriety—because of the peace of mind that boundaries provide. Jamie says that when she was most vulnerable, setting boundaries “protected my heart.”
She and Jon agreed that there were appropriate times and ways to discuss issues surrounding a relapse. They agreed not to have “text wars” but to speak in person. They also agreed that if a discussion was turning into an argument, they could take a break and talk later.
Many of Jon and Jamie’s boundaries relate to how they communicate, but some of their other boundaries take the form of if/then statements in which they agree that certain actions will lead to certain consequences. That, Jamie says, allows them both to feel that life isn’t quite so chaotic.
So do Jamie and Jon, who actively help other couples find the healing they have found through the Savior and His Atonement.

With the agility and energy of a six-year-old, I climbed to the stool and perched myself expectantly at the kitchen counter beside my four-year old sister, Kristy. This was the moment we had been waiting for all evening. In bright-eyed anticipation, I tossed back my long, sun-bleached curls and looked over at Kristy, giving her a knowing, dimpled grin. With her thick, brown pigtails and soft, brown eyes that were as big as pennies, she looked at me and burst into a stream of excited giggles.
You see, Mom was gone to a meeting, and we were fortunate enough to have our favorite baby-sitter—the Sugar Cookie Baby-sitter. Some baby-sitters just watch TV or talk on the phone the whole time; others are mean and bop you if you spill your soup. Some baby-sitters are nice enough to read you stories and play games with you. Some will even let you stay up late past your bedtime. But the best kind of baby-sitter is the kind that bakes you cookies. Our baby-sitter made us sugar cookies, and he always let us help. He was our dad.
So it was with a great deal of enthusiasm that we peered over the counter as Dad assembled the necessary ingredients and equipment. Making the dough was a team effort. Dad was in charge of measuring, and Kristy and I took turns dumping and pouring. As it came time to add the eggs, Dad took over. This was a job requiring a lot of talent, so we were told. With reverent awe, Kristy and I watched as Dad’s large, skillful hands precisely cracked each egg with a tremendous “whack” on the edge of the bowl and carefully pulled the shell apart as the liquid oozed out, cascading into the bowl with splendid ease. Stirring the dough with great vigor was also a job for Dad.
Kristy and I watched with eager intent as the dough was mixed. Finally it was time for the most important part—“testing” the dough. The ritual began with Dad eating a heaping spoonful of the soft, white dough. This first test was never quite accurate enough, so he would ask for second and third opinions. This is where we could help, and we completed our task with expert competence. The ritual was repeated several times, each taste followed by an “ooh” or an “ah.”
After the dough had successfully passed all the tests, Dad rolled it out and we helped him cut it into circles for baking. The problem came when we had only one cookie cutter. Since this was a team effort, something had to be done; and Dad was creative and resourceful. Bright-colored aluminum drinking cups became elegant and stylish cookie cutters. Putting the circles of dough onto the cookie sheet and sprinkling them with sugar was a job which was given exclusively to Kristy and me. Of course Dad pretended not to notice when some of the circles never quite made it to the cookie sheet.
While the surviving cookies baked, Kristy and I raced to get ready for bed and climbed onto Dad’s lap for stories. The stories were followed by “horseback” rides and eating warm cookies. Then off to bed we went, content with the evening’s festivities.
Such are my memories of my Sugar Cookie Baby-sitter. It was several years later, as a college student, that I became aware of the sacrifice my father had made to spend that time with his two little girls. Along with working full-time, he was going to school at the university. Instead of doing his homework in the evenings, he would spend that time with us. Mom tells of scolding him when she came home after meetings and found him just beginning his school assignments. He often had to stay up until the early hours of the morning to finish them. Parents make a lot of sacrifices for their children. As a recipient of those sacrifices, I will always be grateful for those sugar cookie nights and times spent with my dad.

One night when the elders came to the Cantos home, Pedrito was unusually ill. The elders felt prompted to discuss the principle of priesthood administrations. The family eagerly sought a blessing for Pedrito, who was so thin you could see the bones under his skin. Up until then, he had been unable to tolerate any food except milk. He could neither walk nor talk, and he rarely slept more than an hour or two at a time.

The elders administered to the child and left the house with a strong feeling that he would recover.

From that time on, Pedrito began to improve. The Cantos family were baptized, and the welfare services missionaries helped Sister Cantos get Pedrito started on solid foods. He began to gain weight, and for the first time in his life, he slept through the night. He also learned to walk and talk. The frequent, costly trips to Guayaquil were no longer necessary.

One month later, Nese urged me to come to Brigham Young University. I jumped at the chance and rushed to Provo for a whirlwind visit. She described her school as if it were part of her. As we walked around campus, all we talked about was religion. My mind was overflowing with questions again, as it had been in the high school library. I still didn’t see how everything fit together.
The thing that held me back was the principle of eternal progression. “It just can’t be right.” I said, “How can man, who was created by God, ever hope to be a god?”
We were standing in front of the Joseph Smith Building. Nese paused for a moment.
“Dave,” she said, “before we were ever created physically, we were created spiritually as God’s sons and daughters. A part of us, our spirit, comes directly from him as our Father.”
I finally understood! It all fell into place. My grin spread to a smile and erupted as a laugh. I couldn’t stop grinning. My mind jumped from doctrine to doctrine. “Yes, yes, it all fits!” I wanted to dance or sing or run.
There, on the steps of the Joseph Smith Building, the Spirit bore witness to me of the gospel plan. I knew in my heart I would join the Church.
I still had to read the Book of Mormon, learn to pray, and take the missionary discussions. But my life was changed from that moment on. I had found truth, purpose, and a life to fulfill. Five weeks later I was baptized.

We are also told that while science deals with experiment, religion deals with faith—and faith is supposed to be an intellectual process unknown to the scientist. This is obviously not true. Galileo (1564–1642), the great Italian astronomer and physicist who is often called the founder of experimental science, is a good example of a scientist who had faith. He invented telescopes that could see farther than had been seen before. His first important observations in astronomy concerned the moon. He discovered that the moon was not a smooth sphere shining by its own light; rather, its surface was marked with mountains and valleys, and its light was only reflected light. Galileo agreed with the theory of Copernicus that the earth moves around the sun, rather than the earth being the center of the universe with everything turning around it.
These observations did not agree with the teachings of Aristotle and of the Catholic Church, so Galileo was dragged before the Inquisition, forced to endure a long trial, and punished. But he never lost faith in his finding. I believe that his confident belief in the things he had discovered was the same mental process in religion we would call faith. He stood by his beliefs even when he was treated cruelly.

Let me tell you another story. We are assigned to the BYUH 6th Ward. We love that Ward - so many great young people. One fine young couple were the Bauros . They are great kids. Brother Bauro was the secretary in the Elders quorum Elder Monson worked with, so we had some extra association with them. We knew he wanted to go to Fiji to medical school. As the year went on, his scholarship funding became shakey. Then it became questionable. It was at this time we traveled to Fiji to meet with our missionaries there. One evening we returned to the hotel for dinner and Pres. Ardern, Pres of the Fiji mission, his wife, and some of their missionaries were eating dinner with Elder Winkel and his wife. Elder Winkle is a member of the Seventy, and at that time was a counselor in the Area Presidency. We knew Elder and Sister Winkel because he had been one of our sons Mission President in Spain. They greeted us so warmly and invited us to eat with them. We were seated right next to Pres. Winkle. As we chatted, Pres. Winkel said they had just been to Kiribati, so we mentioned we had been there several times and we knew such wonderful people there. We told him about Brother Bauro, and his desire to go to medical school, but that he was having problems with his scholarship funding. Pres. Winkel was very interested. He said to contact him in New Zealand in a couple of days and somehow, this funding problem would be solved.

So make a long and complicated story short, through Pres. Winkel, Vice President Kongiaka, President Shumway and a wonderful donor, Brother Bauro is now in medical school in Fiji.

How did that happen? Why were we in Fiji that very night? Why were Winkels at the same restaurant, why were they there at that same hour? Why did Brother Bauro's chance for medical school come together in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I think it's amazing, don't you?

In the article "Tommy and the Gumball Machine," Jean Ashby tells the story of her son, Tommy. Her little boy was following her into a store and was allowed a penny to get a gumball out of a machine. His mother continued into the store to get a cart, and the automatic door closed behind her. When Tommy struggled to turn the handle on the gumball machine, he became distressed. His mother noticed, but couldn't get back through the automatic doors. She indicated that he should take a step towards her, so the doors would open, but he clung to the gumball machine, afraid he wouldn't get his treasured gumball if he stepped away from it.[2]
It seems like some of us are like Tommy by the gumball machine. We feel that God has deprived us of something we really want, when he might actually ask us to step away from it for a time so that he can reward us with it at a later time.
When I was at Ricks College, I worked part-time and lived at home so that I could save money to go on a study abroad at the Jerusalem Center in Israel. I worked for years to save up enough money to go on this trip, depriving myself of a lot of things and opportunities that I would otherwise have enjoyed. Finally, the time came...I was accepted to the program and ready to go. Unfortunately, the first Gulf War began on the day we were to have left, in January 1991. I was devastated. I had looked forward to this for years, and now it felt like all of my hard work was for nothing. But things took an interesting turn. Although going to Israel was my main goal, I also had dreams of traveling through Europe and seeing many of the famous cultural sights of the world. As weeks passed by, they said that I could attend Fall semester in Israel, which was less expensive and left me with enough money to also go to Europe on a tour with the Humanities department at Ricks College. Like Tommy by the gumball machine, it had seemed like I was being deprived of something I really wanted, when later I got that plus so much more.