Gospel Story Finder

Noah N., 8, Idaho, read the Book of Mormon before he was baptized. He has learned a lot and has a testimony and love for Jesus Christ. He is now reading the Doctrine and Covenants.

I came upon a bird’s nest
When I climbed my favorite branch.
Nobody seemed to be at home,
Though there could be a chance
That it was some bird’s brand-new place.
A family might move in!
And baby birds need lots of warmth
When they are young and thin.

“I was a hard kid,” U. Soyolmaa says, looking back on the period in high school after her parents died. She became involved in drinking and partying while at a university in Russia. After returning to Mongolia, she was surprised when a friend from those party days invited her to visit a church. Her friend seemed so changed.

Soyolmaa was not unfamiliar with teachings of Christianity, but at first she resisted her friend’s invitation. When she finally said yes, she felt excited but did not understand why. At the Church meetings, she was captivated immediately by feelings of peace, of belonging, of knowing where her life should go. Soyolmaa joined her friend’s church, and in 1995, they were the first two missionaries called from Mongolia. Soyolmaa served in Utah.

Currently, she is director of Materials Management for the Church in Mongolia. She is also public affairs director for the country, a counselor in the district Relief Society presidency, and a Gospel Doctrine teacher in her branch.

“It is a privilege to be a member of the Church,” she says. “Because I am in the Church, my life keeps climbing upward.”

The Church is not well-known in Mongolia, and there is more negative information available about Latter-day Saints than positive. There must be constant efforts to spread truth.

Members are the best ambassadors for the Church. They stand out, she explains, because of “that light, that happiness” seen in their faces. They feel a confidence, a joy through the gospel that many others do not have.

Like Latter-day Saints elsewhere, she says, Church members in Mongolia “have the same beliefs, so in the gospel we belong to one big family.”

President Woodruff described how Joseph Smith found this particular seer stone named Gazelem buried underground: “The seer stone known as ‘Gazelem’ … was shown of the Lord to the Prophet Joseph to be some thirty feet under ground, and which he obtained by digging under the pretense of excavating for a well.”6 Though that separate seer stone is less well known by many members than the stones found in the box with the gold plates, President Woodruff revered it as sacred. The day after he dedicated the Manti Utah Temple, he wrote in his journal that he “consecrated upon the Altar the Seers Stone that Joseph Smith found by Revelation some 30 feet under the Earth.”7

We grew to love him. He was a kind, loving, and cheerful child. It was not until I was in the sixth grade that David’s difference caused any concern to me at all. It was at the end of that school year that my class was visited by the principal. She asked those of us who had brothers or sisters who were or would be five years old next fall to raise our hands. I raised mine, and just as she counted it, I was prompted to ask something. I hesitated a split second, thinking that I should not even bother her with such a question. But, as she counted my hand, I asked, “Does this school allow mongoloids?” When I heard the words, “No, I’m sorry,” I took my hand down, wondering numbly why they would not let my brother come to their school. My naiveté about David had been shattered.

I have taught it to my daughters, ages seven and nine, and they are using it to help them memorize the Articles of Faith. Two years ago they memorized the Ten Commandments using a similar system.

Thanks for the articles about how you can get along better with peers. I talked with my Young Women leaders and my bishop, and slowly but surely the problem began to resolve itself. I used to live in a military ward, and I noticed as we all faced moving time, we started pulling together and actually meaning it when we said we loved each other. Thanks again.
Veronica JonesJacksonville, North Carolina

May I share with you an account of an opportunity of service which came to me unexpectedly and in an unusual manner. I received a telephone call from a granddaughter of an old friend. She asked, “Do you remember Francis Brems, who was your Sunday School teacher?” I told her that I did. She continued, “He is now 105 years of age. He lives in a small care center but meets with the entire family each Sunday, where he delivers a Sunday School lesson. Last Sunday, Grandpa announced to us, ‘My dears, I am going to die this week. Will you please call Tommy Monson and tell him this. He’ll know what to do.’”
I visited Brother Brems the very next evening. I could not speak to him, for he was deaf. I could not write a message for him to read, for he was blind. What was I to do? I was told that his family communicated with him by taking the finger of his right hand and then tracing on the palm of his left hand the name of the person visiting and then any message. I followed the procedure and took his finger and spelled on the palm of his hand T-O-M-M-Y M-O-N-S-O-N. Brother Brems became excited and, taking my hands, placed them on his head. I knew his desire was to receive a priesthood blessing. The driver who had taken me to the care center joined me as we placed our hands on the head of Brother Brems and provided the desired blessing. Afterward, tears streamed from his sightless eyes. He grasped our hands, and we read the movement of his lips. The message: “Thank you so much.”
Within that very week, just as Brother Brems had predicted, he passed away. I received the telephone call and then met with the family as funeral arrangements were made. How thankful I am that a response to render service was not delayed.
The bridge of service invites us to cross over it frequently.

To commemorate the 50th year of the rededication of the Philippines for the preaching of the gospel, thousands of Saints gathered in Quezon City to participate in a Jubilee cultural show on April 30 and an area conference on May 1.
Nineteen stakes came together on Saturday to celebrate the rich cultural heritage and the growth of the Church in the Philippines through song and dance. On Sunday, May 8, members gathered for a nationwide conference with local leaders and with General Authorities via satellite.

The following month, district and branch presidencies in St. Vincent and the Grenadines encouraged members to refocus their efforts toward being self-reliant both temporally and spiritually. Members took this counsel to heart and did what they could to increase their food and water storage despite their limited financial resources. Some even planted their own gardens. Since then, there have been many reminders to start preparing, even in small ways. Some sisters began purchasing water bottles and sharing them with others who showed interest. Others planted gardens and added to their food supply.
These preparations have been very beneficial as they have been used since the La Soufriere volcano began erupting on April 9, spewing ash into the air.

Mom laughed. “Well, we don’t have any of those. But we do have other awesome ancestors who did pioneering things. Like your Great-Grandma Luisa.”
Gabby smiled. “I love hearing stories about your grandma! She grew up on a farm in Spain, right?”
Mom nodded. “Then she moved to Argentina and started her own business. Even though she never had a chance to finish school, she made sure her children got a good education.”
As the sauce simmered, they sat at the kitchen table, and Mom told Gabby more stories about Grandma Luisa. She was a gardener and talked to her flowers. Whenever she went on a trip, the flowers would wilt a little, just because they missed her.
“And the most important thing to remember about Grandma Luisa is her faith,” Mom said. “She would pray out loud as she did dishes, as she cooked, as she gardened … she loved talking to God!”

“On the first day we asked our reading and writing students what they wanted to study after they had completed the course, and they all said they wanted to read the scriptures. One of my students in Cacalotepec also said she wanted to learn how to read so she could lead the singing better. In fact, there were three other song leaders from Cacalotepec who had all come to learn so they could better fill their Church callings.
“At our farewell party each of us bore testimony to our thankfulness and love for the people. One girl got up and with almost uncontrollable tears thanked us for the work we were doing. She told us that we were making her branch better. She said that you can’t progress if you can’t read the scriptures and the words of the prophets. Then she expressed her amazement that we would come here on our vacations and work with the people when we could stay home and have an enjoyable time. Words just couldn’t express to her how much we had learned and gained from her village and that it was the best summer vacation I have ever spent.”
Betty LeiningerGreenbrae, California

When I was a stake president, there was a women’s conference by satellite broadcast. As it started, we had the video, but all we could hear was Korean.

And so, as a stake president, I pondered what we should do. As I thought about it, I noticed that under the Korean voice, there was a quiet English voice in the background. So I went to the pulpit and said, “Until we solve the problem, if you will listen carefully for the quiet English voice, you will be able to understand the conference talks. If you get distracted even for a minute, you will lose the message.” For 10 or 15 minutes, until we solved the technical problem, we were able to enjoy that message by listening to the quiet voice.

It was June 12, 1895, the most important day of David Scott’s life he thought. It was his twelfth birthday and Mr. Ragan, an engineer, had promised to let him ride the train all the way to Benton, over sixty miles away. He had been in the cab of Mr. Ragan’s locomotive many times, but switching or creeping out of the rail yards wasn’t really riding on a train—not like today!
Tiptoeing downstairs, David slipped out the backdoor and into the misty chill of the morning air. If he could finish his chores early enough, maybe he could hitch a ride into town on one of the farm wagons going to market.
Hurrying to the woodpile, he carried two big armloads of kindling into the kitchen and placed them in the woodbox beside his mother’s black cookstove. As he entered the barn old Bessie, the black cow, bawled in complaint as he poured cracked corn into a pan to carry to the chicken yard. The barn cats tumbled about his feet, then followed him to the door, mewing. Like Bessie, they seemed surprised that he wasn’t milking first, but this was no ordinary morning.
By the time he finished the milking and had carried the pail of warm, sudsy milk to the springhouse, his mother had breakfast ready and a lunch packed for him. Racing down the lane, he heard Mr. Jule’s wagon coming over the steep hill. “Hop on, David,” Mr. Jule shouted as he saw the tall blond youth standing beside the roadside mailbox. After tossing his jacket and lunch into the back of the moving wagon, David leaped in, held on to the swaying side, and eased himself down, legs swinging as they traveled over the deep yellow ruts of the dirt road. I’ll make it in plenty of time, he thought happily.
At the depot he swung down from the wagon bed and thanked Mr. Jule for the ride.
“Are you ready for the big trip, David?” Mr. Ragan asked, leaping down from the cab of the steam-hissing locomotive. Such a giant of a man, David thought. He moves as easily as a cat.
“I sure am,” David answered, his face flushed with excitement. Then, stroking one of the big wheels, David asked, “Can I help you and Mr. Ellis check her over and oil her, Mr. Ragan?”
“Sure, I guess you can. My fireman will probably appreciate a little help—won’t you, Ellis?” Reaching up into the cab, Mr. Ellis handed down a large copper oilcan with a long spout. “But mind you do a good job,” he told David.
Grinning, the stationmaster said, “He ought to know how to do it, as many times as he’s watched. He heads straight here from school every afternoon. I don’t think that boy’s missed meeting the 4 P.M. train from Benton once in two years.” Turning, the stationmaster walked back into the depot with the engineer following.
Later as he perched on a box and leaned out the engineer’s window of the speeding train, David watched an approaching water tower. A moment ago it had only been a dark speck in the distance. He couldn’t believe they had already reached it. Such speed! It was almost like flying. If only I can be an engineer when I grow up, he thought, and by then trains will probably travel even faster.
Of course, it was a lot more complicated than David had thought when he first decided he’d be an engineer. You had to be pretty smart to know about all the levers and gauges and the air brakes that Mr. Ragan handled so easily. Then there were hand, flag, and lamp signals and the block signals and semaphores that tell the engineer to stop or to move ahead. These all had to be learned, besides the fixed signals along the track that told him the proper speed to maintain, the approach of a station crossing, and the whistle posts to let the engineer know when to start blowing a warning whistle. David sighed and wondered how long it had taken Mr. Ragan to learn everything.
“An engineer talks with his whistle,” Mr. Ragan had told him. “It’s like a code. Two long toots means to release brakes and one short toot means to stop. The whistle tells my crew exactly what to do—hop back on the train, protect front of train, or protect rear of train. Each series of short and long toots means something. And a number of short toots is an alarm for persons or livestock on the track.”
Eyes burning from the wind, David drew his head back inside and glanced across the cab at Mr. Ellis, the fireman. The gray-haired man seemed asleep, all scrunched down in his seat, swaying with the motion of the train. No, he looked sick! Tugging on Mr. Ragan’s jacket sleeve, David pointed at the slumped fireman.
“Can you shovel coal into that boiler, David?” Mr. Ragan shouted into his ear, above the deafening noise of the engine. “We’ve got to highball this train into Benton and get Ellis to a doctor. He looks mighty sick to me.”
Hastily David grabbed the shovel and began to toss coal into the cylindrical box of steel with its furnace at one end and smokebox at the other. “I wish we had Locomotive 999,” David mumbled, thinking of the engine that had broken all records by traveling 100 miles per hour two years before. Sweat streamed down his face as he stopped to toss more coal onto the searing fire. He had to keep it blazing to keep plenty of steam up for Mr. Ragan.
Numb with fatigue when the train finally came to a stop, David watched as the men lifted Mr. Ellis down from the locomotive and laid him on the Benton station platform. His face looked so pale that David wondered if he were still alive.
“Just leave him there a minute, boys,” the young doctor said, kneeling beside Mr. Ellis and taking a bottle from his open bag. Pouring some liquid onto a wad of cotton, he passed it back and forth under the nose of the unconscious man. Coughing, Mr. Ellis turned his head away and opened his eyes.
“How is he, doctor?” Mr. Ragan asked after a few moments. “Will he be all right?”
“Yes, I think he’ll be fine. There’s a nasty lump on the side of his head though. He must have hit it while he was firing the boiler. May be a concussion. It’s a good thing you got him here so fast. I’ll want to keep an eye on him today so you’ll have to send for another fireman for your trip back.”
“I have one,” Mr. Ragan said, smiling at David. “That is, if this young man thinks he can still handle that shovel half as well as he did coming in. What do you say, David?”
“Sure. Sure, I can, sir. Soon as I get her oiled,” David answered proudly, teeth gleaming through a layer of coal dust.
“Wait a minute,” protested Mr. Ellis, as the men started to help him into a wagon. “That boy’s a born railroader if I ever saw one, but he needs to borrow my red bandanna handkerchief to keep the sweat from running down his backbone, and my cap, too. Firing’s hot work.”
Turning to the engineer, he said, “Ragan, I predict this lad will be through school and ready to fire for you about the time I’m ready to retire. With a couple of years of study, he’ll make a first-rate engineer and have a locomotive of his own.”
Then shaking the boy’s hand, the firemen smiled. “Thanks a lot, son,” he said. And the men all grinned as David awkwardly knotted the big handkerchief around his neck and placed the high-crowned billed cap on his head.

It was impossible to look off to where the horizon met the sky because there was no horizon. Storm clouds hovered so low and thick and were so close to the same color as the snow that the sky and the earth seemed frozen into a single sheet of ice. Even the shadows disappeared because the sun couldn’t break through to form them. The whole world was white—white on white on white—except for the occasional faded-charcoal spot of a fence post or the ghostly outline of a distant tree.
Luckily for the group of snowmobilers, they were with an experienced guide. Not only did he know the trails, he also knew the group wasn’t far from town and that they could afford to wait awhile for the weather to clear. He’d seen whiteout before, and he knew it wasn’t the best condition to travel in because anyone straying from the trail could slam unaware into holes, rivers, or buried stumps.
For the young men on the trail, LDS Explorer Scouts heading home after a full day of scenic delights and races out in open meadows, the lesson of the moment wasn’t lost. They were tired and eager to move on, but their guide and their leaders were also priesthood holders, and the young men were used to obeying their counsel. Soon the clouds thinned, and the path appeared clearly. The group moved on.

In Springs, east of Johannesburg in South Africa, four large local malls agreed to house Light the World giving boxes to receive donations for specially identified nonprofit organisations needing support.

Members of the Church donated their time manning the stalls at the malls and received secondhand clothing, toiletries, stationery and cleaning products for the homes in need. Then, volunteers gathered at the centres to donate the goods. One of the beneficiaries was Vita Nova Centre, a centre that caters for persons with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism and the physically and mentally challenged.

I just wanted to express my appreciation for your wonderful magazine. It brings so much warmth and love into my life. Last year I was unable to receive the New Era because of certain circumstances, and I missed the positive spirit that accompanies each issue. Luckily for Christmas I was able to receive a renewal of my subscription. Yesterday, I found my New Era in the mail and was ecstatic. Thank you for your inspiring articles and clever and uplifting Mormonads.
Amanda TerryFresno, California

The young men and women from the Honshu Japan Servicemen’s district held their annual youth conference in Tokyo. For many of the youth who came long distances, it was the first time they had seen Tokyo. In addition to discussion workshops held on a variety of subjects, the youth went to the Tokyo Temple to do baptisms for the dead. After three days of sightseeing and enjoying each other’s company, the highlight of the conference was the testimony meeting where the participants were able to express their feelings about the gospel.

I recently went with priesthood leaders to visit the homes of four women in Honduras. These sisters and their families were in need of priesthood keys and authority, priesthood ordinances and covenants, and priesthood power and blessings.
We visited a dear sister who is married and has two beautiful children. She is faithful and active in the Church, and she is teaching her children to choose the right. Her husband supports her Church activity, but he is not a member. Their family is strong, but to enjoy greater strength, they need additional priesthood blessings. They need the father to receive the ordinances of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and to have the priesthood conferred upon him. They need the priesthood power that can come through the endowment and sealing.
In each of the three homes we visited, a wise priesthood leader asked each sister if she had received a priesthood blessing. Each time the answer was no. Each sister asked for and received a priesthood blessing that day. Each wept as she expressed gratitude for the comfort, direction, encouragement, and inspiration that came from her Heavenly Father through a worthy priesthood holder.
These sisters inspired me. They showed reverence for God and His power and authority. I was also grateful for the priesthood leaders who visited these homes with me. When we left each home, we counseled together about how to help these families receive the ordinances they needed to progress on the covenant path and strengthen their homes.

Blow and bluster, do your worst!
Rattle windows till they burst.
Frost the air and make me shiver,
Freeze the current in the river.
Naught can chill my heart to stay;
There’s a hint of spring today.
Saw a crocus peeping through,
And a violet bud’s first blue.
Then I heard a robin call,
Pecking seeds from garden wall.
I don’t mind your blustering,
Now I know there will be spring.