Gospel Story Finder

We had met that Christmas day in Portugal with the other missionaries in our zone, exchanging gifts and enjoying the time together. The rain outside had done nothing to dampen the spirit within the Porto chapel where we met. Still, something seemed to be missing. My companion and I finally decided that what we needed was to visit our investigators and sing Christmas songs to them. Everyone liked the idea, and soon we all were gathering our raincoats, umbrellas, scriptures, and hymnbooks.
The first group of people we visited lived close to the center of the city in an abandoned monastery. These were Portuguese families who had lived in Africa, but the civil wars there had forced them to flee to Portugal. They had been wealthy in Africa, but now they had almost nothing.
At the monastery we started to climb the steps to the rooms where the people lived. But the wood was old and creaked, and we were afraid the sound would alert the people and spoil the surprise. So we positioned ourselves in the middle of the center court, where the roof leaked big drops of water on us.
As we began to sing, bright eyes and happy faces started to appear. The children, as usual, came out first, followed shortly by their parents. Soon all the inhabitants of the monastery were outside their rooms. Some tried to sing along with us but didn’t know all the words. The rain seemed to accompany the songs as background music, and then our tears began mingling with the rain drops as the Spirit bore witness to us that we were all truly brothers and sisters in Christ. We stopped when we could no longer see our hymnbooks through our tears.
We went up to meet the people. We left some Church pamphlets, encouraged our investigators to continue with the discussions, and invited all to attend our church meetings.

Now I would like to tell you of a little experience I had in the mission field that illustrates what I think the Lord meant when he indicated that not only would the Prophet bring forth His word, but he would bring men to a conviction of His word that had already gone forth among them.

When I was in Holland, I was invited to talk to a Bible class of businessmen. We met in the home of a prominent furniture dealer. There were about twenty men; each had his Bible. The only woman there was the daughter of the man of the house. They gave me an hour and a half to discuss universal salvation, which includes our work for the dead, preaching in the spirit world, and baptism of the living for the dead. I just gave them chapter and verse and let them read the passages in their own Bibles. Then when I was through, I closed my Bible and waited for comments.

The first comment came from the daughter of the man of the house. She said: “Father, I just can’t understand it. I have never attended one of these Bible classes in my life that you haven’t had the last word to say on everything. And tonight you haven’t said a word.”

The man shook his head and said: “My daughter, there isn’t anything to say. This man has been teaching us things we have never heard of, and he has been teaching them to us out of our own Bibles.”

I could tell you many more stories like that!

Where ocean comes to meet the land
And washes all the white, white sand,
I shaped with care
A castle fair
With turrets fit for Fairyland.
The tide came in to meet the land
And covered up my work of sand;
So now bright fish,
With silver swish,
May swim and float through Fairyland.

One time when Trevor had some extra time after taking a biology test in a class, he got on a computer and started indexing. Other students were on the computers playing games although the teacher told them not to. “The kids who were playing games got in trouble,” Trevor says, “but the teacher just told me to finish up my batch.”

One day my friend gave me a lollipop. It was my favorite flavor, and I really wanted to eat it. I was starting to unwrap it when my little brother, Steven, saw me and asked me for it. I thought about it for a minute, and then I gave it to him.
Although I wanted the lollipop, I felt very happy when my brother said, “Thanks, Leaney,” and gave me a big hug. When I do something good, I feel very happy. I know that Jesus Christ wants me to be like Him.

Joseph and Mary make their way into the crowded city of Bethlehem, trying to find a place to stay. On the other side of the world, Helam can hardly contain his excitement when he sees a new star and remembers the many prophecies of the birth of Jesus Christ. Now flash forward 33 years. Helam has lived his life in expectation of Christ’s coming. His son Jacob, however, is more concerned with his wealthy employer’s beautiful daughter than with the traditions of his father.
While Jacob grows further and further away from the faith of his fathers, his employer’s daughter, Laneah, learns more of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And through her experiences with the scriptures she learns of Christ’s life in Jerusalem. Laneah tries to convince Jacob to seek God, but it seems as if it is too late for him.
The earth starts to quake, darkness covers both the Old World and the New, and death and destruction cover the earth. The three days of darkness end, and the Savior appears to the Nephites at the Temple in the land of Bountiful and … well, you don’t want to know the end before you see the movie, do you?
You probably don’t remember reading about a 14-year-old boy named Helam in the Book of Mormon. That’s because he did not really exist. Neither did Laneah, nor Jacob, nor any of the other Nephite characters in the new movie The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd. But the fictional characters are real in the sense that they could have existed in their time, and their stories are not very different from accounts in the Book of Mormon or from our own lives.

Elder Shumway noted that the diligence and the spirit felt among members made an impact on leaders in the communities. He cited as an example a visit by the mayor of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second largest city, to Latter-day Saint church services on Sunday, April 10, the day following the service projects. The mayor had been so impressed by the LDS young people involved in the projects that he said in a Sunday School class, “I congratulate your youth for having principles that help them maintain their moral cleanliness and purity. As you continue to uphold these standards, you will continue to build our community.”

Football player Tom Brown was in line to be the starting quarterback, but went to the Canada Winnipeg Mission instead. After returning from the mission field, he filled in when the starter was injured, and led the Falcons to an upset against Brigham Young University, earning a share of the 1995 conference championship.
“Before my mission, I tried to justify all the good I could do as a football star,” Tom says. “But I had always planned on a mission. I finally told [the coach] I’d love to start, but it would have to be when I returned. It’s been good to come back and play again. But no athletic experience could ever overshadow what you learn on a mission.”

Our son Dan got very sick on his mission in Africa and was taken to a medical facility with limited resources. As we read his first letter to us after his illness, we expected that he would be discouraged, but instead he wrote, “Even as I lay in the emergency room, I felt peace. I have never been so consistently and resiliently happy in my life.”
As my wife and I read these words, we were overcome with emotion. Consistently and resiliently happy. We had never heard happiness described that way, but his words rang true. We knew that the happiness he described was not simply pleasure or an elevated mood but a peace and joy that come when we surrender ourselves to God and put our trust in Him in all things. We too had had those times in our lives when God spoke peace to our souls and caused us to have hope in Christ even when life was hard and uncertain.

Running was one of my favorite activities when I was young. I was on the track and field team, and my specialty was the 800-meter dash. That meant I ran two laps around the track.
My dream was to be in the Olympics. My trainer had been an Olympic athlete. He thought I was talented enough to go to the Olympics if I practiced hard.
I practiced a lot and ran in many races. When I was 15, I was the second-place champion for my category in the whole country of Argentina. I hoped that if I continued working, perhaps I could go to the Olympics.
But there was a problem. Often our races were on Sunday. Soon I realized that I could not continue competing. So I chose to stop running.
The choice was hard. I had to give up my dream of being in the Olympics. My trainer didn’t understand why I stopped. But I knew I had made a good decision. Even though sports are a good thing, choosing to follow the Lord and His Church is better.

When Robb Thomas, a 14-year-old teacher in the Bangor Ward, Augusta Maine Stake, decided to start a genealogy club in his school, Garland Street Junior High, he got a lot more than he bargained for. The club rapidly became one of the more popular clubs in the school.
“It was hard at first, because a lot of people didn’t understand the word genealogy, and they wanted to make fun of it,” Robb said. But when the club started bringing in films and guest speakers and taking trips to the state archives, interest grew quickly.
“One of the fellows who made fun of the club to begin with eventually ended up joining,” Robb said.
Other students now share an interest in discovering their ancestry. “It’s something I didn’t have before,” said 15-year-old Mary England, a member of the club. “I discovered my great-aunt had worked on tracing a family tree, but her records were misplaced.”
“I went to my grandmother, and she talked about my great-grandparents—who they were, and where they were born. I used that as a starting point,” said Holly Sands, 15, another member of the club.
Robb worked with the student council to obtain permission for forming the club, which meant finding a supervisor, making a presentation to the student council, and convincing the council to vote in favor of his proposal. “Robbie got the ball rolling, and then we got in and pushed beside him,” Holly said. A bake sale was used to generate finances.
Robb says he’s had a lot of opportunities to explain Church beliefs because of his work with the club. “Some people in the club asked me informally to make a presentation to them about temples and why we have them,” he said. “I showed them pictures of the interior rooms and the outsides of several temples, and we talked about baptism for the dead, endowments, and why genealogy is so important. We talked about temple marriage, too.”
Robb also spends a lot of time at the public library doing research and thinks about a career in genealogy. “I get a lot of help and encouragement from people in the ward, from missionaries, and from my parents,” Robb said. “I have some relatives in Salt Lake City who have helped out, too.”
This fall, Robb starts high school at Bangor High. There’s already a genealogy club there, and you can bet he’s got plans (along with many of his friends) to be active in it.

Will Spurlock, Jr., is a real whiz when it comes to electronics. His determination and excellence paid off when he was awarded a first-place trophy and medal, along with a tool kit, in the North Carolina State Electrical Trades competition.
Because of his first-place finish, Will went on to represent North Carolina in the Electrical Trades International competition. His project placed fourth.
For his hard work and achievements, Will was awarded a scholarship to a technical institute to continue his schooling. He is a priest in the Dunn Branch of the Fayetteville North Carolina Stake.

My marine battalion is currently deployed in the Mediterranean Sea; consequently the New Era keeps me in contact with the Church and all its activities. It is a great magazine.
Congratulations to Debbie Carr for her story “Not All That’s Gold Glitters.” I passed it around to several fellow servicemen and they really enjoyed it. It brought back memories.
George DunniganUSS Trenton

I jumped from the high dive
board into a painted blue
chlorined pool
which was so far below my
heart began to
scream that
the water was gone,
or not real,
and I would fall until
I felt a great
concrete hurt I could not imagine.
But it did end,
and I looked up through
stung eyes and water drops
still living,
wondering,
Was this the way I
left a life behind
to be born—
Did I jump as frightened
before,
so frightened that
my heart began to beat
and I was here?

José Gonçalves da Silva suddenly awoke to people calling his name. It was dark, and he had no idea where he was.

“I was asleep when the bus rolled,” José recalls of the early-morning accident in January 2008. “Nobody could find me because I was in the back of the bus covered with luggage. Some of the brethren finally located me as they began to gather up the suitcases.”

When the bus driver lost control on a narrow stretch of winding road in southern Venezuela’s dense rain forest, José and other Latter-day Saints from Manaus, Brazil, were approximately halfway through their three-day trip to the Caracas Venezuela Temple. José suffered only minor injuries, but several brothers and sisters had to be hospitalized.

“It’s time you quit going to the temple,” concerned family members told José, who was 80 when the accident occurred. Undeterred, however, he declared: “I need to go to the temple. If the Lord allows it, I will return.”

He immediately began saving money for his fourth trip to Caracas, which he made in early 2009. For Brother Gonçalves da Silva, the 40-hour bus ride is easy compared to the three trips he previously made to the São Paulo Brazil Temple. For many years, the São Paulo Temple, located thousands of miles southeast of Manaus, was the closest temple to this city of two million people in the northern state of Amazonas. Then, in 2005, Manaus became part of the Caracas Venezuela Temple District.

During the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967, a midnight patrol of Israeli soldiers along the shore of the Sinai Peninsula spotted a faint green light hovering in the waters of the Red Sea just beyond a coral reef. Thinking that they had surprised a team of enemy frogmen, they fired explosive shells into the glowing area. The result, however, was not a spoiled enemy mission, but a beach strewn with the bodies of many small dark fish, from whose heads shone pairs of strange green lights.
What had fooled the Israeli soldiers was a school of flashlight fish, little known inhabitants of dark underwater caves and crevices that come to the surface of the sea on dark, moonless nights to forage for small organisms on the reef’s edge. Their sources of light are packets of a very unusual type of bacteria, billions of them in each packet, that give off a steady green glow. Located just under their eyes, they are used quite effectively by the fish as “headlights.” In fact, the fish can even turn them on and off by either blinking to cover them with an “eyelid” or by rotating them into protective pockets like the headlights of some automobiles.

Mary Jane took a deep breath and smiled as she hurried along the muddy path on the way home from school. It was springtime in the year 1852, and a soft, cool breeze was blowing over the Irish Sea.
She was remembering that warm feeling when a gust of wind blew a strand of her long black hair across her face. Mary Jane pushed it back. “I wish I had a pretty blue ribbon to tie my hair back,” she thought.
Just then, Mary Jane almost stepped in a puddle on the path. As she started to walk around it, she saw something bright in the water. She stopped and looked closely. It looked like a coin.
Finding a long stick, Mary Jane carefully raked out the coin. And it was a valuable one. “Lucky me!” she thought. “What should I buy with it?” Then the wind reminded her. “A long blue ribbon,” she thought. “That is what I will buy.” Slipping the coin into her pocket, she hurried home.
When she opened the front door, Mary Jane saw that the missionaries were visiting her family. The younger children were sitting quietly, and a reverent feeling filled the room. Mary Jane’s family loved the missionaries, who had come all the way to Ireland to bring them the gospel. Father said the missionaries came without purse or scrip. That meant they came without money and with only the clothes they were wearing. Today they had brought good news. Some other families in the village were going to join the Church!
Mary Jane’s father invited the elders to stay for supper. As they gathered around the table, everyone was smiling. Mary Jane liked to hear the elders ask for a blessing on the food. It gave her a “Sunday feeling.”
After dinner, Mama served dessert in the parlor. She had baked a cake and made candy frosting. As one of the elders sat down and stretched out his long legs with his shoes turned upward, Mary Jane and her father looked at each other in surprise. The soles of the elder’s shoes were worn through with large holes.
Father went to the kitchen, and Mary Jane followed him. Father reached to the top shelf of the cupboard where they kept money. But as he looked at the coins in his hand, he had a sad face. It was not enough to buy a new pair of shoes for the elder.
Mary Jane reached her hand into her pocket and placed her coin in Father’s hand. “Now is there enough?” she asked softly.
Father looked surprised. He was silent for a long moment. Then in a husky voice he answered, “Yes, dear. That is just right.” Father put his arm around Mary Jane, and she had the same warm feeling she had felt at her baptism.

Many years later as a university student, I worked hard and enjoyed my education. When I was baptized a member of the Naples Centro Branch, Naples Italy District, my joy became complete. I had found the truth I’d always searched for. I spent happy hours reading the Book of Mormon, other scriptures, and the Liahona (Italian). The more I studied such inspired works, the greater was my desire to learn. What joy I found studying the gospel! I loved to put the commandments into practice and enjoyed visiting teaching and working with the missionaries.
But as my attention to spiritual learning increased, my university studies slipped. I even missed exams because I had not studied enough. When my nonmember mother found out about my changed habits, she said, “Enough of this Church! Enough with these Mormons!”
Her words stung me. My behavior was not the Church’s fault; the guilt was mine. I felt ashamed for setting a bad example for my mother.
I knew my college studies were important, but I couldn’t give up the studying that was so delicious to my soul. What could I do? I went to God in prayer. Finally, after many prayers, I had my answer.
Today there are two stacks of books on my desk. On the right are the scriptures and the most recent issue of the Liahona; on the left are the books for my next exam. Each day, I start and end my studies with a scripture. I have restricted myself to a firm schedule in which I reward myself during study breaks with an article from the magazine or a chapter in the Book of Mormon.
From this experience I’ve learned a great lesson. We should develop ourselves in all good things so we can be positive examples and serve others. Jesus Himself “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52).
I continue with my study plan, always trying to stay close to the Lord and find ways to serve Him in all my activities—spiritual and secular.

You can’t be timid for long as a missionary. Street meetings were a very popular form of our missionary work. We’d set up a stand in the marketplace or town square, sing a few hymns, then bear our testimonies and answer questions.
The second day I was in England, I attended my first street meeting at Hyde Park in London. Six missionaries and our mission president, Selvoy J. Boyer, were there. President Boyer called on two missionaries to speak, and I was one of them.
On my way up to the stand, he said to me, “Elder Ballard, you preach the gospel.” I quickly picked the principle of baptism and said everything I knew about it in about thirty seconds. That was a good experience because it made me realize very quickly how much I did not know. I realized that I had a lot of studying to do.

The first thing you can do is talk to them. It may not be easy at first, but it will be worth it. “My dad and I talked,” says a high school student I know, “but we never really sat down and had serious talks about what’s going on in my life, about problems I had, or things I wanted to accomplish. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever had a serious talk with my dad was when he was bishop and had to interview me on my birthday.
“That interview really helped me see that I could improve our communication if I met him halfway. Things didn’t change overnight, but since then, he and I both have tried harder to find the time to sit down together once in a while and talk.”