Gospel Story Finder

My older brother and sister are 12 and 13, and we love working together to find names for them to take to the temple. My sister is a youth temple and family history consultant. She has helped me learn a lot about FamilySearch.org. Sometimes I help her with indexing. It’s a great activity to do together on Sundays.

Our translation drawing to a close, we went to Palmyra, Wayne county, New York, secured the copyright, and agreed with Mr. Egbert B. Grandin to print five thousand copies for the sum of three thousand dollars.

Oliver Cowdery made a copy of the entire manuscript for the printer so that the original translation could be kept safe. The printer was given only a small number of pages at a time. When manuscript pages were delivered to the printer, whoever was taking them was accompanied by a guard. The guard also guarded the house where the manuscript was kept. All these precautions were taken so that the manuscript wouldn’t be lost or tampered with again. In March 1830 the printing was completed and copies of the book were available for sale.

For Spencer, dogsledding came about in an unexpected way. “I was born with a birth defect in my left leg that causes the veins in my leg to be atrophied, so not enough blood goes to that leg,” he explains. “There’s not a lot of growth and muscle mass, so my left leg is shorter and skinnier than the right.”
Growing up, he could walk and run, but some things were still difficult for him. “I grew up in a family and community of athletes. My two older brothers, Chase and Brandon, are both big football players, which led me to want to pursue football too.”
However, after playing football for two years in elementary school, Spencer soon realized the other kids were just too fast and it was too difficult for him to keep up. “I was sad. I struggled because I felt like I couldn’t have something to work toward.”
Then one day as he was reading The Call of the Wild by Jack London, an idea popped into his mind—what about dogsledding? “I was fascinated by the idea of dogsledding. I was with my mom after school one day when I piped up and said, ‘We should start dogsledding!’ My mom stopped dead in her tracks and retorted, ‘You’ve been talking to your dad!’ It turned out that my dad had been thinking about getting a dogsled team too! It was destiny.”
Spencer’s family held a meeting and agreed that dogsledding would be the perfect sport for Spencer. He says, “I figured it would be good for me because it doesn’t involve a lot of leg strength and speed, but it does require endurance, both physically and mentally.”
Pulling everything together for a team took a lot of work, though. “My dad and I researched the sport and talked to several mushers who helped us get started,” Spencer says. “We got our Alaskan Huskies a few at a time until we had enough for two teams—one for me and one for my dad.” They affectionately named their team of dogs the “Skinny Leg Sled Dogs,” after Spencer’s skinny leg.

On the way, there’s a perfect chance to talk about life as a Latter-day Saint.
“I love living in Florida,” says Erin Mitchell, 13, one of three Beehives in the Panama City First Ward. “It hardly ever gets cold. And because it’s a tourist area, we get lots of visitors at church.”
Erin was “born and raised here. I’ve been a member for four years. Baptized April 27.” She rolls off the date like a great anniversary or a birthday, because for her it is both.
“I was in third grade. Our baby-sitter’s son’s friend, Lisa, started talking to me about the Church, and she asked me to go with her. I introduced my mom to her mom, and my mom joined the Church.” That was April 6. Then Erin was baptized. Then her father on June 21, and her brother James on February 25 the following year.
“I’m sure glad Lisa talked to me,” Erin says. “She brought our whole family into the Church.”

Perhaps Dick and Mary Headlee were thinking back to the day that the doctors gave Dick the pessimistic report following a heart attack. The prognosis was simply stated, “Your heart is beyond rescue. To live, you must have a new heart.” There followed abiding faith and earnest prayer, and the miracle came—a new heart, a restored life, a thankful soul filled with gratitude for the goodness of God.

I’ve never written to a magazine before, but I would feel guilty if I didn’t write and tell you how much I enjoy your Photos of the Month and Mormonisms. My friend and I share a locker at school, and we decided to put some of our favorite New Era photos in it. They really start our day off in a good way.
Sandy MartiniLivermore, California

We experienced a special day in our family on January 4, 1997. My brother organized a party honoring the 200th birthday of Gustavus Adolphus Perry. He was an important member of our family tree. He was baptized in 1832 and became the first of our family to embrace the gospel. The Perry family history records this remarkable event:
As a part of the birthday celebration, my brother spent a year searching for the descendants of Gustavus Adolphus Perry. We were amazed at the record he had on the table before us as we celebrated. He had found more than 10,000 descendants of this good man. The number overwhelmed me. Suddenly I realized the value of a good name. In seven to eight generations, his family had sufficient numbers to organize three stakes of Zion.

The Punta Arenas Chile Stake is the Church’s southernmost stake anywhere on this planet, its outermost borders stretching toward Antarctica. Any stake farther south would have to be staffed by penguins. For the Punta Arenas Saints it is a 4,200-mile round-trip bus ride to the Santiago temple. For a husband and wife it can take up to 20 percent of an annual local income just for the transportation alone. Only 50 people can be accommodated on the bus, but for every excursion 250 others come out to hold a brief service with them the morning of their departure.

Pause for a minute and ask yourself when was the last time you stood on a cold, windswept parking lot adjacent to the Strait of Magellan just to sing with, pray for, and cheer on their way those who were going to the temple, hoping your savings would allow you to go next time? One hundred ten hours, 70 of those on dusty, bumpy, unfinished roads looping out through Argentina’s wild Patagonia. What does 110 hours on a bus feel like? I honestly don’t know, but I do know that some of us get nervous if we live more than 110 miles from a temple or if the services there take more than 110 minutes. While we are teaching the principle of tithing to, praying with, and building ever more temples for just such distant Latter-day Saints, perhaps the rest of us can do more to enjoy the blessings and wonder of the temple regularly when so many temples are increasingly within our reach.

Your courage must be equal to, if not greater than, the courage of young women like Mary Goble Pay. From her journal we read: “We arrived in Salt Lake City nine o’clock at night the 11th of December 1856. Three out of four that were living were frozen. My mother was dead in the wagon. …
“Early next morning Bro. Brigham Young … came. … When he saw our condition—our feet frozen and our mother dead—tears rolled down his cheeks.
“The doctor amputated my toes. … The sisters were dressing Mother for [her grave. When my feet were fixed, they carried us in to see our mother for the last time.] That afternoon she was buried. …
“I [have] thought of [my mother’s] words [before we left England], ‘Polly, I want to go to Zion while my children are small, so they can be raised in the Gospel of Christ. For I know this is the true Church.’” (In A Believing People, Richard H. Cracroft and Neal E. Lambert, comp., Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1979, pp. 107, 111.)

When my family went to the Los Angeles California Temple, I was thinking about all I’ve been taught about the temple. “Always look to the temple” kept coming to my mind. I came up with this camera angle and took a picture of the temple reflected in my sunglasses. I looked up and thought again how we must enter the temple with a pure heart and a burning testimony of and love for the gospel of Jesus Christ. This picture describes what we must do—always look to the temple.

Ferron Combs, 14, teachers quorum president of the Pacific Branch in the Canal Zone received a special honor from the Canal Zone Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He was recognized at the annual business meeting of the council’s executive board for designing a new shoulder patch that is now being worn by all Cubs, Scouts, Venturers, Explorers, and adult Scouters in the Canal Zone. It depicts a ship coming through the locks of the Panama Canal. With its nine colors it is a particularly beautiful council patch.

When Gerald Lund returned from his missionary service, he had determined that he would rather work than go to college.
“I went to work in the construction business,” he explains. “After spending one week cleaning cement forms with a power brush, I realized this was not how I wanted to spend my life.”
He promptly enrolled in Brigham Young University, where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. His decision to go to college not only changed his life but also resulted in many years of teaching the gospel.
Gerald Lund started teaching seminary in Salt Lake City in 1965, beginning a 34-year career with the Church Educational System. In addition to his early years teaching seminary, he taught institute, served as an institute director, worked as a curriculum writer, and fulfilled a number of administrative assignments. He is also the author of many popular books and articles.

I discovered as our visits continued that Hasty had been a sheepherder. Once he had had a wife and children, but they had gotten a terrible fever and died of it.
Feeling in his grief that his life had been shattered, Hasty wandered the whole country as a vagabond. A diseased growth on the side of his face made one eye blind. And the teasing and practical joking had begun.

One cold day years ago, two missionaries spent hours contacting people on the streets of Nagano, Japan. They talked to a few people, made even fewer teaching appointments, and saw all those appointments fall through.
At the end of this tough day, the missionaries met a young man, only 15 years old, who was interested in learning about the Church.
That young man was me.
I met one of the missionaries that day on my way home from school. He taught me about the First Vision and testified that it was true. I did not understand everything at the time, but I wanted to learn more.

I grew up attending Sunday School at a church next door to my childhood home in Michigan, USA. I had a wonderful teacher who filled me with a love for Jesus Christ.
Each week she passed out cards illustrating events from the Savior’s mortal ministry, including principles He taught and miracles He performed. Each week I pasted the cards into a scrapbook and reread the stories in the Bible. As I grew older, I continued to study the Gospels in the New Testament.

Years ago when Sister Nelson and I had several teenaged daughters, we took our family on a vacation far away from telephones and boyfriends. We went on a raft trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. As we started our journey, we had no idea how dangerous this trip could be.
The first day was beautiful. But on the second day, when we approached Horn Creek rapids and saw that precipitous drop ahead, I was terrified. Floating on a rubber raft, our precious family was about to plunge over a waterfall! Instinctively I put one arm around my wife and the other around our youngest daughter. To protect them, I tried to hold them close to me. But as we reached the precipice, the bended raft became a giant sling and shot me into the air. I landed into the roiling rapids of the river. I had a hard time coming up. Each time I tried to find air, I hit the underside of the raft. My family couldn’t see me, but I could hear them shouting, “Daddy! Where’s Daddy?”
I finally found the side of the raft and rose to the surface. The family pulled my nearly drowned body out of the water. We were thankful to be safely reunited.
The next several days were pleasant and delightful. Then came the last day, when we were to go over Lava Falls, known as the most dangerous drop of the journey. When I saw what was ahead, I immediately asked to beach the raft and hold an emergency family council meeting, knowing that if we were to survive this experience, we needed to plan carefully. I reasoned with our family: “No matter what happens, the rubber raft will remain on top of the water. If we cling with all our might to ropes secured to the raft, we can make it. Even if the raft should capsize, we will be all right if we hang tightly to the ropes.”
I turned to our little seven-year-old daughter and said, “All of the others will cling to a rope. But you will need to hold on to your daddy. Sit behind me. Put your arms around me and hold me tightly while I hold the rope.”
That we did. We crossed those steep, rough rapids—hanging on for dear life—and all of us made it safely.

As I neared my 12th birthday, there were several requirements to be completed before I could graduate from Primary. One was to recite the thirteen Articles of Faith in the prescribed order. The first twelve articles were relatively easy, but the thirteenth was much more difficult. It was remembering the order of the virtues that presented the challenge. Thanks to a Primary teacher who was patient and persistent, I finally completed the memorization.
Years later my wife and children and I moved into our first home. We were surprised to learn that my former Primary teacher would be our neighbor. For the 40 years we have lived in the same neighborhood, she has kept our little secret concerning my learning disability.

In 1973 I was the seminary teacher for our ward. Since we did not live in a heavily church-populated area, we had early morning seminary, beginning at 6:10 A.M. Every morning 35 to 40 choice young people would get up and come to the church in order to attend our New Testament class, and every morning it was like a small miracle to me. To study the gospel that early in the morning took a special dedication, and I admired my students as they daily appeared for more gospel instruction.

For several years it had been the policy of our stake to have a scripture chase tournament in which teams from the eight wards competed, and the two top teams would then go to a regional competition with four other stakes.

That year we had a great team of seven people, five girls and two young men. They had worked hard all year, spending a great deal of their own time outside of class studying for the competition, and the excitement began to increase as the day for the stake play-off approached. Of course, our team had scouted the other wards and knew that the team to beat was our neighboring Fourteenth Ward.

The night of the stake competition came, and after several closely contested matches, we completed the contest in second place, losing to Fourteenth Ward. Our team had done well, and I was satisfied that the real purpose of the competition, to learn the scriptures, had been accomplished. And we had qualified for the regional contest coming up the next weekend.

During that week the team worked even harder studying and reciting the scriptures back to each other. They also set their goal of beating the first-place team from our stake, feeling sure that we would be matched with them during the regionals.

Regional competition was a total day where the ten top teams from the five stakes competed in a double elimination tournament, and as the day progressed, so did the excitement and pressure. As in all competition, elation for one team meant great disappointment for another, and as our team competed, we too experienced high and low moments. We lost our first round, which meant we had only one more chance. However, we rallied and won the next two games, which put us in an excellent position. Four of the ten teams had already been eliminated, and we felt that we could at least take a second or third. Of course, each of us nurtured a hope of first place, although it was never openly talked about.

As we sat and talked about our next game, Steve got up and ambled over to the board to see who our next game would be with. He was back in a minute with an excited look on his face.

“Hey, Fourteenth Ward lost to North Third Ward! It’s their first loss, and guess who they play next!”

Well, here it was. I could feel the excitement go up a notch, and every member of the team was thinking the same thing when Steve voiced it aloud:

“We can beat those guys! If we beat them in regionals, that’ll show we’re really the best in our stake. The pressure’s greater here, but I know we can beat those guys! And that’s really why we came here.”

We had about two minutes before the game, and we hurriedly discussed last-minute strategy. As we were about to get up, I said something I hadn’t said all year, because I knew l didn’t have to. Still, it came out.

“Okay, just one more thing. Whatever happens, remember that the most important thing is to be fair. If the judge makes a bad call, don’t argue. Be honest in everything you do.” I could tell from the seven looks I got back that l had insulted their integrity, and I wished I could stuff the words back in my mouth.

“Seattle Ninth and Seattle Fourteenth Wards, would you please take your places?” Both teams moved into place, and l grabbed an empty seat on the front row of spectator seats. The cultural hall was about three-fourths full, complete with parents and friends to cheer each team.

I slumped in my chair and said funny things to myself like, “Remember, you’re the teacher. Don’t get excited. Present a good image. You’re not supposed to be nervous. It’s only a game. No matter what happens, they’ve done a great job.” Brother Stock reached over and slapped me on the back. “This is it! We’ve got to win this one.” Thanks, I needed that.

In our scripture chase, we had three types of questions. The first was an individual question, where the first person on either team to find the correct scripture from the clue given received a point for his or her team. The second was a team-help question, where all members of the team had to have the same scripture, but they could help each other. The first team to get it received two points. The third type was a team-no-help, where all the team had to have the scripture, but they couldn’t help each other. The first team to get it received three points. There was a total of seven clues given, and the team with the most points won that game. The loser of this match would be eliminated from the tournament.

I don’t remember the sequence of events or questions, but at the end of six questions, the score was tied six to six. I was no longer able to pretend I was not excited but was sitting on the very edge of my chair, cheering for our team with the rest of the parents and friends.

Now! Now was the time for a home run, a hole in one, a 50-yard field goal, a 30-foot jump shot, a 4-minute mile, a whatever is great in any sport—now was the time when a competitor put full dedication into one last supreme effort, knowing there would be no more chances.

“Okay, teams, here we go for the final question. A team-help, worth two points, and everybody on the team must have it. Remember, you can help each other, and the judge for each team will check your Bible to make sure you have it right. When you get the correct scripture, put your finger in the page, close your Bible, and turn on your switch. Ready? Situation: Where does it say that a man cannot take the priesthood upon himself? Chase!”

Hands and books flew, and I knew they were going to have to be fast. Hebrews 5:4—it was so easy; they’ve got to have it by now! There! The lights came on almost at the same time, but our team was first! I could tell from the looks on their faces that they all had the right scripture.

“Okay, Ninth Ward, does everyone have Hebrews 5:4?” [Heb. 5:4] Everybody nodded. “Judge, would you check each Bible to make sure they have the correct page?” Everyone opened their books as the judge passed slowly down the row to make sure everything was right. He looked at the moderator, nodded, and said, “Everybody has it.”

Explosion behind me and all around. Parents and friends were cheering, and the team was grinning from ear to ear—all except Steve. He quietly motioned to the judge and pointed to something in his Bible. After a few seconds of whispering, the judge returned to the moderator and explained the situation. I knew immediately what had happened. In his haste, Steve had gotten one page off when he marked his Bible with his finger. As sometimes happened, the judge didn’t catch it since it was only one page away from the correct answer.

I didn’t need to listen to know that the other team’s members all had the correct scripture and that we had lost. I didn’t care, because all I could think about was an 18-year-old priest who taught me more in less than a minute about honor and integrity than I had ever read or heard. To say nothing would have been the easy thing to do. No one knew, no one questioned, and our team had already been declared the winner. I quickly reviewed in my mind the quiet manner in which Steve had corrected the mistake, with no expectation of recognition or honor, just the sure knowledge that there was only one right thing to do. And through the misty eyes and the lump in my throat, I silently thanked my Father in Heaven for allowing me to associate with spirits as choice as Steve.

When four Aaronic Priesthood youths went looking for a service project, they didn’t expect to discover a “radio star.”
But 81-year-old Florence Sperry turned out to be as big a sports enthusiast as Mark Reeves, John Myers, Bruce Bennett, and Jeff Proctor when the four took her to a Utah Stars basketball game.
Sister Sperry has been a Stars fan since their birth in 1970 and has followed their play on radio for the past five seasons. She keeps a scrapbook of their newspaper clippings, a notebook tabulating each game’s score by quarters, and she has even been known to take her phone off the hook during game broadcasts. She had, however, never seen the Stars in live action.
The boys decided that no one better deserved to see the acclaimed hoopsters than Sister Sperry.
They took her to the game and really got “Stars” treatment from the players, one of whom commented, “You really are 81 years young!” She was even interviewed over the station she had listened to all those Stars’ games on.
After the game the whole group dropped into a nearby drive-in for a hamburger with Sister Sperry saying, “I’ll never forget this night.”
Bruce added that the four would be back to have a family home evening with her, and John concluded, “We’re going to remember this night for a long, long time.”

These seminary students have discovered that family histories don’t stop with their parents. The stories continue in their own lives as recorded in their journals. “For example,” Lisa said, standing proudly beside her yellow jeep, “this is now sort of my car. It caught fire once, and the police had to come to put out the fire. I keep thinking how my kids will laugh when they read about that experience in my journal.”