Gospel Story Finder

We can seldom foresee how the Lord will make us instruments in his hands. One year when my companion was out of town, my daughter Elizabeth went with me on my visits. It was Christmastime, so we baked cookies, wrapped them in cellophane, and tied them with red ribbon and a pine branch. Then we put all these little gifts in a bag and had a prayer together. At the last minute I felt a strong prompting and slipped in an extra package.
After visiting several houses, we reached the home of a sister who lived with her married son and his family, all of whom were members. Another older woman, looking very tired, was there delivering clothing. Her name was Margarita, and she earned her living doing laundry by hand. Knowing what hard work that is, I handed her the other little package of cookies and wished her a Merry Christmas. With tears in her eyes, she told me that she was completely alone and that this would be her only gift.
I spoke to her then about the Lord Jesus Christ and told her that if he is with us, we will not be lonely. I assured her that she was a daughter of God who loved her just as an earthly father loves his children and that if she sought after him, he would receive her with open arms. I told her many more things. Her face lighted up, and she agreed to receive the missionaries.
The next month when we went to visit that house, Margarita was there again. She hugged us and said, “Now I can really call you sisters. I was baptized last week.”

Ítalo was excited for the ward temple trip. They were going to the Recife Brazil Temple. It was 15 hours away!
Ítalo, his older brother, Henrique, and their parents left early in the morning. As they rode along, Ítalo kept thinking about something Mom had told him. “This year, you can see how beautiful the temple is from the outside,” she said. “Next year, you’ll be old enough to see how beautiful it is on the inside.”
Ítalo hadn’t been to any temple before. But he had been watching the new temple being built in Fortaleza, where his family lived. It was amazing!
They stopped for lunch. Ítalo had his favorite, feijoada, black bean stew with rice. While he ate, he kept thinking about the temple. When the temple in Fortaleza was finally dedicated, it would be a temple his family could visit over and over again. They wouldn’t have to drive so far.
The sun was setting when Ítalo and his family arrived at the temple in Recife. “Que bonito!” Ítalo said. “How beautiful!” He couldn’t stop smiling.
The next morning, Mom showed Ítalo where he would be waiting with his friends from the ward. “Even though you can’t go inside the temple yet,” she said, “pay attention to the special spirit you can feel while you’re on the temple grounds.” Then the rest of Ítalo’s family went inside the temple.
Members of the ward sat with Ítalo and the other children on the grass near the temple. They read stories from O Livro de Mórmon (the Book of Mormon) together. Reading scriptures is a good way to get ready for the temple, Ítalo thought. He felt calm and safe. Mom’s right, he thought. There is a special feeling here.
Then the adults took Ítalo and the other children for a walk around the temple grounds. That’s when Ítalo noticed the words over the entrance to the temple. “Santidade ao Senhor. A casa do Senhor,” they said. “Holiness to the Lord: the House of the Lord.”
No wonder I feel so peaceful here, he thought. This is God’s house.
When the temple trip was over, Ítalo and his family returned home. He wanted to remember how he had felt at the temple. What could he do?
Sometimes Ítalo felt he could draw his feelings better than he could write about them. So he drew a picture of the temple. Then he showed it to Mom and Dad.
“This will remind me of where I want to go,” he said. He kept the picture in his room where he could look at it each day.
“I want to be ready,” he said. “Because I want to go inside someday!”

Renee was born in Haiti, a small country on an island in the Caribbean Sea. When she was eight years old, she and her mother moved to Utah to be closer to Renee’s aunts, uncles, and cousins.
After the move, Renee’s family and friends told her and her mother about the gospel. Soon the missionaries started teaching them.
At first, Renee wasn’t sure that she wanted to be baptized. Then one day the missionaries read something special from the Book of Mormon—words of the prophet Nephi. He said that baptism is like a gate to a path that leads to Heavenly Father. He also talked about the blessings of the gift of the Holy Ghost that come after baptism.
Renee felt a warm, happy feeling in her heart. She knew that she wanted to return to Heavenly Father. And she wanted the gift of the Holy Ghost. She thought that the Holy Ghost would be a good friend and companion to help her throughout her life. She and her mother were soon baptized.

I was baptized in April 1992, the first member of my family to join the Church. As a single mother, I found that it was not always easy to face people’s negative reaction to my conversion. But my baptism was a glorious experience, and I have never regretted my decision to join the Church. It is wonderful to have the opportunity to help my four-year-old daughter develop her testimony.
I find spiritual support in a wonderful magazine, Lys over Norge (Norwegian). I read it from cover to cover. My daughter loves the children’s section. Whenever we go to our mailbox, she asks if the children’s magazine has arrived for her.
I share the magazine with my mother and sister, who are now members of the Church, and with my nonmember friends; they all enjoy it very much. I also place copies wherever I can—at my doctor’s office, on passenger ferry boats, and so on—so that others may read it.
Eldrid Helén AntonesenBergen 1st Branch, Stavanger Norway District

Several stakes chose to serve the older members of their areas. In the Salt Lake Holladay North Stake, each Young Women class adopted a “grandmother” or “grandfather” to help throughout the year. They took turns helping with transportation and home cleaning. In addition, the girls arranged to tape record the older members’ personal histories. They transcribed the tapes and made a typewritten copy for each grandmother and grandfather to keep, with enough extra copies to give to their children.

Rubí’s necklace. It started out as an ordinary day. But the routine of Rubí’s daily trip to high school was shattered in an instant. Before she realized what was happening, someone in the crowd grabbed the Young Women necklace she was wearing, tore it off her neck, and disappeared into the crowd.
Rubí found herself trembling with fright. How could someone have invaded her privacy and ripped away something so precious? Although the thief had snatched her necklace, he hadn’t taken away what was even more precious—the standards and values the necklace represented. Soon after the incident, Rubí got another Young Women necklace. “I always wear it,” she says. “If someone steals it again … I’ll buy another one!”

As I began studying the Book of Mormon for seminary, I experienced the feelings Elder Parley P. Pratt (1807–57) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles described when he first found the Book of Mormon. “I opened it with eagerness, and read its title page,” he wrote. “I then read the testimony of several witnesses in relation to the manner of its being found and translated. After this I commenced its contents by course. I read all day; eating was a burden, I had no desire for food; sleep was a burden when the night came, for I preferred reading to sleep” (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt [1985], 18).
As I read, the Spirit of the Lord bore witness that the Book of Mormon is truly another testament of Jesus Christ. Through seminary the Book of Mormon became much easier to read. Whenever it was hard to follow, my teacher helped me understand. I received a testimony that the Book of Mormon is “the most correct of any book on earth, … and a man [will] get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book” (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 194).
I was baptized on 5 March 1995. By the time I was 21 I was a seminary teacher myself, helping others know of the divinity and truthfulness of the book that changed my life.

I had always procrastinated doing my genealogy. But my desire to serve a mission led me to set goals to help prepare myself to be a better missionary. With the help of an inspired bishop, I decided to begin working on Personal Progress. In order to accomplish certain goals and good works projects, I needed to become involved in genealogy. So I went to work.
I know the Spirit guided me, because one Sunday night, after only three hours of work, something amazing happened.
As soon as I began, I remembered that my great-great-grandfather had been the governor of the state of Amazonas, Brazil. So I typed his name into an online search engine, and to my surprise, I found a Wikipedia page about both my great-great-grandfather and my great-great-grandmother! I immediately recognized in them talents and gifts I have, and emotion began to well up inside me. But there was still much more to discover.
Looking through the links on the page, I noticed one of them said “family tree.” I clicked on it, and I found branches of my family I’d had no idea even existed. But what most caught my attention was the name of my great-aunt, Rosalina Meireles, who apparently lived in Utah.
I was astonished. I thought only my brother and I were members of the Church. Could there really be other Church members in my family? When I clicked on her name, I saw a link to a Facebook page, so I contacted her. Within two days I received a message from her, confirming that we were related and that she too was a member of the Church.
I felt immensely grateful to Heavenly Father for allowing me to feel such great joy as I felt in that moment.
I continued searching for my deceased ancestors, and Heavenly Father blessed me with so many family names that I could take to the temple. But He also helped me find living family members who are faithful in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. And I owe it all to Personal Progress, family history work, and my desire to serve a mission.

With covenants, obedience to gospel principles becomes rooted in our very soul. I am familiar with a couple where, at the time of their marriage, the wife was not active in the Church and the husband had never been a member of the Church. I will refer to them as Mary and John, not their real names. As children began to enter the picture, Mary felt keenly the need to raise them, as the scripture says, “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” John was supportive. Mary made some important sacrifices to be at home to teach the gospel on a consistent basis. She ensured that the family took full advantage of Church worship and activity. Mary and John became exemplary parents, and their children (all energetic boys) grew in faith and devotion to gospel principles and standards.

John’s parents, the boys’ grandparents, were pleased with the wholesome lives and achievements of their grandsons, but because of some antagonism toward the Church, they wanted to attribute this success exclusively to the parenting skills of John and Mary. John, although not a member of the Church, did not let that assessment go unchallenged. He insisted that they were witnessing the fruits of gospel teachings—what his sons were experiencing in church as well as what was happening at home.

John himself was being influenced by the Spirit, by the love and example of his wife, and by the urgings of his sons. In due course, he was baptized, much to the joy of ward members and friends.

While life has not been without challenges for them and their sons, Mary and John wholeheartedly affirm that it is in fact the gospel covenant that is at the root of their blessings. They have seen the Lord’s words to Jeremiah fulfilled in the lives of their children as well as their own: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

For some, there will come the temptation to dishonor a personal standard of honesty. In a business law class at the university I attended, I remember that one particular classmate never prepared for the class discussions. I thought to myself, How is he going to pass the final examination?

I discovered the answer when he came to the classroom for the final examination, on a winter’s day, wearing on his bare feet only a pair of sandals. I was surprised and watched him as the class began. All of his books had been placed upon the floor. He slipped the sandals from his feet; and then, with toes that he had trained and had prepared with glycerine, he skillfully turned the pages of one of the books which he had placed on the floor, thereby viewing the answers to the examination questions.

He received one of the highest grades in that course on business law. But the day of reckoning came. Later, as he prepared to take his comprehensive examination, for the first time the dean of his particular discipline said, “This year I shall depart from tradition and shall conduct an oral, rather than a written, test.” Our favorite, trained-toe expert found that he had his foot in his mouth on that occasion and failed the examination.

I had prepared long and hard for the entrance exams for a special school in my city of Chiclayo, Peru. I hoped to enter the elementary education program and learn to use my musical and dancing abilities to teach children. In fact, I was so determined, that I had spent my three-month vacation after high school graduation preparing for the exams.
Like all the best schools in Chiclayo, the school I was interested in was affiliated with the Catholic church. But this school, which offers courses from kindergarten through university age, had earlier accepted my five-year-old brother. So my mother and I assumed that I wouldn’t have a problem being accepted, even though I was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Finally, the day of the entrance exams arrived, and I took the talent portion of the exam—in which we sang, played, and danced with children.
Later, when the time came for my personal interview with a panel of judges, I prayed before going into the room. The three judges began asking about my talents and background. I told them that I belonged to the Municipal Ballet of Chiclayo, that I had finished twelve cycles on the piano, and that I had placed first in the Marinera and Huayno—folkloric dances.
Then they asked me what church I belonged to. I answered, “I am a Mormon.” The judges looked very surprised, but I felt peaceful inside. They asked me if I knew that no one outside of the Catholic religion could be admitted. I replied that I knew God and Jesus Christ lived—therefore, I was a Christian. I concluded by saying that I believed in free agency and knew that I had chosen the truth.
Looking me in the eyes, they told me that I could definitely not be admitted because of my religion, and they asked me if I wasn’t embarrassed for what I had said. Words of the Apostle Paul came into my mind: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 1:16). Then they told me that I could leave the room.
All my dreams seemed to have shattered in front of me. I thought of how long I had waited for this opportunity and of all that my mother had sacrificed to help me achieve it. But still, my testimony of the Church was strong. I knew that it was worth far more than my entrance into a school.
When I arrived home and told my mother what had happened, she left for the school. There, she asked the assistant director why I was disqualified when my little brother had been allowed to enroll. The woman replied that five-year-old Luis Enrique wasn’t responsible for what he believed, but that I, a sixteen-year-old, was.
My mother then spoke to the judges. She told them about the Church and about our beliefs in God and in his Son, Jesus Christ. She told them some of our experiences since becoming members in 1983—and about the changes that had occurred in our home as a result. The judges told her, “Don’t worry. We will follow up on this.” Then my mother returned home.
She told me that we should trust in the Lord and that everything would be fine. She also suggested that we both begin a fast.
Later that afternoon, we discovered that I had passed the talent portion of the exams! Now I needed to pass the knowledge test the next day.
I stayed up all night studying. Before starting the test early the next morning, I prayed with great faith. The exam seemed easy. I was one of the first students to finish it, and I quickly went home to be with my mother and aunt. We waited all afternoon for the hours to pass—and for the results to be posted.
That evening, I left for school to see the results, praying all the way there. When I got to the office, I read through the acceptance list. My name was on it! The Lord had answered our fasting and prayers.
Now busy at my new school, I carry my scriptures with me all the time. One of my favorite verses is Matthew 5:16: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” [Matt. 5:16]
I know more than ever that I must never hide my testimony. I must always be proud to say “I am a Mormon.”

In the old museum on Temple Square there used to be a statue of two pioneers, husband and wife, their cloaks windswept, standing together beside a small grave. My seminary class once took a tour of Temple Square. We stopped and looked at the statue, and one girl said, “Isn’t that so sad?” and the girl next to her solemnly agreed, “It’s awful. How did they ever stand it?” Then we continued on to the Assembly Hall to exclaim over how beautiful the stained glass windows are.

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!

Robert learned an important principle while serving in the military. Each unit in his squadron had a motto that had been chosen to inspire the pilots in their efforts. “Our unit motto (displayed on the side of our aircraft) was Return with Honor,” says Elder Hales. “This motto was a constant reminder to us of our determination to return to our home base with honor after we had expended all of our efforts to successfully complete every aspect of our mission.” This motto has served as a reminder of the importance of honesty and integrity in his personal and professional life. As a father, he put his arms around each of his two sons before they left to serve their missions—Stephen to England and David to Germany—and whispered, “Return with honor.” He still refers to this motto today.

“Please, somebody, open the door,” Jeff called.
Mother placed a casserole in the microwave, turned on the timer, then hurried to the back door and opened it. “You’re late,” she said.
Jeff came into the kitchen and set down a big brass horn.
Father turned from rinsing salad greens in the sink. “What,” he asked, “is that?”
“It’s a sousaphone,” Jeff said proudly.
“What’s a sousaphone?” His little brother, Ben, looked up from setting the table. “Wow!” he said, staring at the enormous horn.
“It’s like a tuba, only its bell is turned so that you can carry it in the marching band.” Jeff wriggled into the center of the circular tubing and let the horn with its flaring brass bell rest on his left shoulder. “Like this, see?”
“I see,” his mother said. “But what about your trumpet? I thought that you were going to play trumpet in the school orchestra again this year.”
“What I really want to do is play in the marching band,” Jeff explained. “But they have too many trumpets already. So Mr. Gunderson said that he could teach me to play the sousaphone. He’s been looking for someone to play it.”
“And he found you,” Father said, putting the salad greens to drain. “Isn’t that a lot of horn for a boy?”
Jeff drew himself up straight and shifted the sousaphone carefully. “Mr. Gunderson says that I have good posture and the best breath control in the brass section. That’s what’s important.”
“Blow on it!” Ben shouted, dancing around Jeff and the big horn. “Blow on it!”
Jeff put the large mouthpiece to his lips and blew—baroomph! braphoom!
“I’ll need to practice,” Jeff said quickly. “Mr. Gunderson is going to give me lessons every week.”
The microwave pinged, and Mother took out the casserole. Father tossed the salad while Jeff washed up for dinner.
Afterward, while Ben and Father watched TV, Jeff helped Mother with the dishes. “Do you really want to play the sousaphone?” she asked.
“Oh yes!”
“You realize that you’ll need to practice a lot, just as you had to when you learned to play the trumpet?”
“I know. Mr. Gunderson thinks that I should be good enough to march with the band in the Thanksgiving Day parade.”
“In just three months?”
“They’ll be simple pieces, Mom. Mr. Gunderson is going to make some of the sousaphone parts simpler this year. And by next year …”
“This means a lot to you, doesn’t it, Jeff?”
“Oh yes, Mom!”
Mother put her hand on his shoulder and smiled, “Well, then, you work hard at it, Jeff.”
And Jeff did. Mr. Gunderson gave him a private lesson once a week, and he practiced at least half an hour every day. He learned to hold the big mouthpiece correctly against his lips to get a proper tone. He was careful not to puff his cheeks out too much when he blew into the instrument. It didn’t take as much breath as he had thought it would, only about as much as when he blew up a balloon.
“Why do they call it a sousaphone?” Ben asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the family room while Jeff practiced.
“It’s named after John Philip Sousa. He was a famous bandleader and composer. They call him the ‘March King.’ He’s the one who wrote ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’”
“Oh, I love ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Can you play that?”
“Not yet.” Jeff took a deep breath and went back to his practicing.
“Jeff wants to play the sousaphone in the worst way,” Father joked to Mother, coming in from the garden. “And that’s the way it sounds.”
“Now, John,” Mother said, “remember those first weeks with the trumpet?”
“I remember,” Father said. “And I’m sure that he’ll soon be as good on the sousaphone as he became on the trumpet.”
Jeff polished the sousaphone carefully with cheesecloth, making the coiled tubing and the flaring bell shine. It’s the most beautiful instrument I’ve ever seen, he thought.
By the end of October he had learned how to press the valves just right. He had learned how to move his lips and control his breathing for a steady supply of air.
“You’ve made real progress, Jeff,” Mr. Gunderson told him.
“You’re beginning to sound a lot better,” his father said.
“I’m proud of you,” Mother said and smiled.
“Will you be in the Thanksgiving Day parade?” Ben asked.
“I sure hope so!” Jeff replied.
The band began to practice for the parade the first week in November. It wasn’t hard to do the marching part, but making the square turns with the big instrument on his shoulder was a bit tricky to learn. Jeff didn’t have to play anything really difficult—just some deep, satisfying bass notes to mark the beat of the tunes.
At last it was Thanksgiving Day. Jeff’s family drove him to where the parade was to begin. His mother kissed him. Father clapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Good luck, Son.” Ben yelled, “I’ll wave to you, Jeff!”
The band marched along Main Street, sounding loud and clear. Soon they reached the reviewing stand, where the mayor and other officials watched. Jeff carried himself proudly in his red and blue uniform with its white trim and with the big sousaphone resting on his shoulder.
“Hey, Jeff! Jeff!” Ben was jumping up and down and waving. “That’s my brother!” he told everyone.
“Way to go, Son!” Father called.
Mother smiled and waved.
Jeff tilted the bell of his sousaphone toward them ever so slightly and made a little bow. Then he marched on, blowing strong, true tones: Oompah! Oompah!

One of my nieces recently shared with me four notebooks my mother had filled with notes as she prepared to teach her class in Relief Society. I would imagine these notebooks—and there are others I have not yet examined—represent hundreds of hours of preparation by my mother.
Mother was a great teacher who was diligent and thorough in her preparation. I have distinct memories of the days preceding her lessons. The dining room table would be covered with reference materials and the notes she was preparing for her lesson. There was so much material prepared that I’m sure only a small portion of it was ever used during the class, but I’m just as sure that none of her preparation was ever wasted. How can I be sure about this? As I flipped through the pages of her notebooks, it was as if I were hearing my mother teach me one more time. Again, there was too much in her notebooks on any single topic to ever share in a single class session, but what she didn’t use in her class she used to teach her children.
I believe it is even safe to say that while my mother was an enormously effective teacher among the sisters at Relief Society, her best teaching occurred with her children in the home. Of course, this was largely due to the greater amount of time she had to teach her children compared to teaching the Relief Society sisters, but I also like to think she prepared so thoroughly, first, to be an example to her children of diligent Church service and, second, because she recognized that what she learned from preparing her lessons could be used repeatedly for a higher purpose—teaching her sons and her daughters.

• In Otavalo, you step off a dirt road at the edge of town and walk through a patch of corn to a tiny, two-room home. Juan José Muñoz, second counselor in the presidency of the Otavalo Ecuador Stake, lives here with his wife, Laura, and their four children. Sister Muñoz is Relief Society president in their ward.
In 1986, the Muñoz family traveled to the Lima Peru Temple to be sealed. They could not have made it without the Lord’s help, President Muñoz says. For more than a year, they had put aside half of his earnings to help pay the cost; they sold some of their meager possessions and borrowed twenty dollars to scrape together the last of the money. In 1988, they repeated the trip, after the same kind of struggle.
Latter-day Saints must go to the temple to understand the full blessings of the gospel, President Muñoz says: “That’s why we are looking forward so much to having a temple in Ecuador.”

Even though it was a hot July day, Mary Elizabeth Rollins and her sister Caroline lay shivering on top of several large pieces of paper. The thick rows of 150- to 180-centimeters-high corn hid the two girls from the angry men who were hunting for them. The girls held their breath, praying for the men to stop their search and leave the cornfield.
It was 1833, and there was a lot of unrest in Independence, Missouri. More and more converts had settled in the area, and nonmember neighbors wanted the Saints to leave Jackson County, Missouri. Instead, the little community was growing. There was even a printing press in Brother William Phelps’s house, and the whole town knew that he was printing revelations received by the Prophet Joseph Smith and preparing them for publication.
It was some of those same revelations that the girls were lying on. A mob of angry men had become outraged at an editorial written by Brother Phelps that was printed in the Church newspaper. Fifteen-year-old Mary Elizabeth and thirteen-year-old Caroline had watched as the men broke into the Phelps’s home and threw the printing press and the printed revelations from the second-story window to the ground below. When Mary Elizabeth saw the papers hit the street, she knew what had to be done. She knew that those revelations and commandments came from the Lord and that it was important that the Saints have copies of them.
Even though they were frightened, both girls ran and gathered up as many of the large papers as they could carry. When members of the mob spotted them from the window and yelled at them to stop, the girls ran to the nearby cornfield, lay down on the sheets of paper, and prayed for protection.
It seemed like hours before the men grew tired of looking for the girls, but finally they left. Mary Elizabeth and Caroline waited longer before gathering up the sacred papers and creeping out of their hiding place.
The revelations were returned to Brother Phelps. Shortly afterward, those salvaged pages were combined with other pages that had been saved, and a tiny book called the Book of Commandments was printed. Two years later those same commandments and revelations were combined with additional revelations from the Lord and printed in a new book. Whenever they read the Doctrine and Covenants, Mary Elizabeth and Caroline remembered the part that they played in the coming forth of this sacred book of scripture.

Two weeks later, however, my mother was back in the hospital. She had started to hemorrhage and was hospitalized for another two weeks.
Like most fifteen-year-old girls, I had had my share of thoughts about romance, marriage, and babies. But nothing I had ever dreamed of had prepared me for what I then faced. Not only did I have my father to cook for, but I had the four other children as well—breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. There was also the laundry to wash and, to top the list, a two-week-old baby to care for.
At times I thought I wouldn’t make it. But that new little girl and I developed a very close bond; I felt as though she were mine. I recall one day when a few sisters from our ward came by to help out by offering to take the baby for a while. But after all we had gone through to get this little one, I told them they couldn’t have her and ordered them out of the house. (I had a hard time explaining my actions!) My mother called all of the ladies later to explain how very tired I was, and that I didn’t mean to be so rude.
How happy we were when mother came home! She found a very fat little baby girl (and why not? I had thought if the baby cried she must be hungry, so I fed her constantly), and in spite of me, everyone had survived.

Mary’s boy Joseph was born at a time when her husband was snatched away by the mob militia then terrorizing Far West. Hyrum and the Prophet Joseph were taken to Liberty, Missouri, where they were imprisoned. Under the compulsion of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’s extermination order, she left Missouri with the stepchildren for whom she had taken responsibility, as well as her own son. Her sister Mercy placed Mary, who was seriously ill, on a bed in a wagon box with her infant boy cradled at her side.

In February 1839, when winter was still upon the land, they traveled east across the state and then across the Mississippi to Quincy, Illinois, bumping along in a springless wagon where every jolt brought pain.

When her husband and the Prophet escaped from Liberty Jail and came to Quincy, life again improved. The Saints moved to what became Nauvoo and established their beautiful city on the Mississippi. But their peace was short-lived. Her little boy was less than six years old when a knock came at night on her window and a man said, “Sister Smith, your husband has been killed!”
Joseph F. never forgot his mother’s weeping through the night.
Her world was shattered. She was on her own now with a large family to care for. In the summer of 1846, they bade their comfortable home good-bye and rode a flatboat across the Mississippi. Taking matters into her own hands, she was able to trade, borrow, and barter for ox teams and wagons.
While living in Winter Quarters, she and her brother went down the Missouri River to purchase provisions and clothing. They had two wagons, each having two yoke of oxen. Camping for the night, they discovered in the morning that their two best oxen were gone. Young Joseph and his uncle spent the entire morning looking for the lost animals. They found nothing. Disheartened, he returned to tell his mother. Their situation was desperate, terribly so. As he approached, he saw her on her knees praying fervently, speaking with the Lord about their problem. When she arose to her feet, there was a smile on her face. She told her son and her brother to get their breakfast and she would look around. Following a little stream of water, and disregarding the words of a man who was in the area, she went directly along the bank of the river.
Pausing, she called to her son and brother. She pointed to their oxen, which had been tied to a clump of willows growing in the bottom of a deep gulch. The thief, who had tried to misdirect her, lost his prize and they were saved.
Mary’s faith imprinted itself in her son’s boyish heart. He never forgot it. He never doubted her closeness to the Lord.
All of you are familiar with her experience when one of her oxen, exhausted and worn, lay down to die while they were en route to these valleys in the West. In a mixture of utter desperation and simple faith, she secured consecrated oil and asked her brother and an associate to administer to the ox. They did so. It rose to its feet with a renewal of strength and carried them for the remainder of their long journey.
Such was the faith, sweet and simple and beautiful, which graced this woman’s life. She walked in the light of the Lord. She lived by that light. It guided her in all of her actions. It became the lodestar of her life. She exemplified the tremendous faith of the women of this Church—the women of the Relief Society, who today on a thousand fronts carry on the dedicated work of this remarkable organization.