Gospel Story Finder

“At a time when we as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are unable to attend the temple, it would seem easy to let our recommends lapse. Why? We’re not using them, are we? For me, my recommend was approaching out of date, I needed to have my accountability interview with my Saviour through appointed representatives, a member of the bishopric and then a member of the stake presidency. At the time, we were in lockdown, no sacrament meetings, no temple attendance, no visiting the sick and vulnerable. To do the Lord’s work in these times, an interview was over the phone with my bishopric member. This was just as spiritual as sitting in the office. We had a friendly chat, then an opening prayer and then the worthiness questions. It was humbling and very special. I could answer with a pure heart and mind answers that would see if I was able to enter the house of the Lord. I could feel the Spirit of the Lord just the same. Then an appointment was made to have the next interview with a member of the stake presidency via Zoom. I was so blest to have a face to face interview. I am so blest to have technology that enables this. Again, the Spirit was involved with the interview and again, I felt grateful that I could be held accountable to the Lord. So, I have peace in my heart and at a moment’s notice can attend the temple. In the meantime, we have more time with family and opportunities to discover names that we can add to TempleReady and Family File. Yes, my ancestors are waiting, and I know that the time will come that they too, can enter the holy temple, so I hold a current temple recommend, the link between me and my ancestors.” —Ellen Ender, Perth, Australia

Now I can hear the young deacons saying, “Well, now, that may be fine for you, but surely you don’t think that’s going to help me in my assignment down here in this deacons quorum.” Oh yes, I do. Between being a high councilor and a member of the General Board of the Sunday School, I was a deacons quorum adviser. A boy, the president, presided in the meetings, and I taught the lessons out of the scriptures and out of the manual. I stayed very close to the lessons as they were outlined.
I remember one boy in the quorum had to miss a few meetings, and so he sent his brother to the class with a tape recorder. His brother recorded our meeting and took it home. It happened more than once. When the deacon came back, I asked him why. I don’t remember his words, but I remember that it was clear he knew what I knew. God was trying to speak to that deacons quorum. The boy wasn’t anxious to have a tape recording to hear me; he was trying to hear God. He knew where to listen and how to hear.
He’d read the scriptures for us in class, and I knew he knew them and loved them. And so, even when I wasn’t teaching very well, by the power of the Holy Ghost and from knowing the Master’s voice in the scriptures, he could hear what he needed to hear. The memory of that black recorder with its tape turning will always remind me of the scripture which says, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matt. 11:15.)
I spoke at his funeral just a few years later. He lived about as many years as the Prophet Joseph had lived when he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ in the grove. My deacon hadn’t seen a vision, but he had heard the voice of God through his servants in a deacons quorum. He wanted to hear, he knew how, and he had the faith he could. Like the boy prophet Joseph, he knew the heavens were open.

“While of these emblems we partake,”1 we began to sing. I wished we were singing a little faster, but I focused on the ordinance.
A calm came over me, settling my soul. The tone and meter of the organ were exactly appropriate to prepare us for the sacrament.
I looked with gratitude at our organist as he reverently swayed with the music. I thought back to our first meeting eight years earlier. Just a few months before we met, wildfires had destroyed Ed Bravenec’s home, along with most of his family’s possessions. As the missionaries and I shared a gospel discussion in his new mobile home, Brother Bravenec told us he played the organ.
“I play to express my testimony and love of God,” he said. Then we talked about whether he might play for our ward should he join the Church.
I looked at the ends of his fingers. A couple of them had been amputated. I was inspired by his faith, but I wondered about his capacity to play.
“I know that the Church would be grateful for you to share your gifts,” I said.
Brother Bravenec was satisfied with my response, and we went on to enjoy a good lesson and the beginning of a firm friendship. He was soon baptized and, as he had desired, became our ward organist.
Over the years since his baptism, I have watched as his health challenges led to the amputation of one of his toes. Not long after that, Sister Bravenec, who returned to Church activity when her husband became a member, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Then Brother Bravenec lost another toe.
We missed him for a few weeks as he cared for his wife and struggled through his ordeal. But soon he returned to church, sharing his testimony through the beautiful strains of the organ.
In 2019, Brother Bravenec learned that he would lose one of his legs. I was sad for him, thinking that his years at the organ had come to an end. But a few weeks after the surgery, Brother Bravenec hobbled into church on his new prosthetic leg.
Using canes to keep his balance, he slowly made his way to the organ. There, he sat on the organ bench, removed his prosthetic limb, and began playing the prelude music. A few minutes later, he played the opening hymn. Now it was time for the sacrament.
“In Jesus’ name and for his sake,” we sang—tone and meter perfect.

On one occasion I took to the Genealogical Society eight large volumes, manuscript family history work, consisting of 6,000 family group records of very professional family history work, all on the Packer family. All of it was compiled by Warren Packer, originally from Ohio, a schoolteacher, a Lutheran. He has spent 30 years doing this work, not really knowing why. There are two more volumes now added to the others. He senses now why he has been involved in this work over the years and very much has the spirit of the work.

In January 1976, I received a telephone call from a friend who worked for social services. He asked if my wife and I would be willing to take in a foster child. At the time we had two young children of our own, but we agreed to open up our home to 17-year-old Kathy.
Soon after arriving in our home, Kathy asked if she could attend church with us. Of course we said yes, and soon Kathy was attending church regularly. Many of Kathy’s friends from her former congregation noticed her absence, and they were unhappy to find out that she was attending the LDS Church.
One day after school, Kathy told us that her former church was planning to stage a “Save Kathy” night for their youth ministry meeting. Kathy asked if I would accompany her to that meeting and help her defend the Church. I reluctantly agreed because although I didn’t want to argue with her friends about doctrinal differences, I knew that she didn’t yet know enough about the Church to defend it. I decided to bring another guest, Richard Jones, who had just returned from his mission.
The day of “Save Kathy” night was a day of fasting and prayer for all of us. I prayed that the Spirit would be present at the meeting and that there would be no contention.
When we arrived at the church that evening, we sensed some animosity, but the youth minister welcomed us warmly and invited us to tell the group about the Church and our beliefs. As Richard shared what was then the first missionary discussion and taught about the Restoration, the 15 or so young people in the room listened carefully. Even the youth minister was captivated.
We then spent the rest of the evening answering questions and having a wonderful discussion about the gospel. The animosity we had felt at first quickly subsided as we calmly explained our beliefs. There was respect on both sides. The Holy Ghost filled the room as we shared our testimonies and responded to questions.
At the end of the discussion, the minister thanked us for coming. Then, as we turned to leave, a young woman rose and said she wanted to tell us something. She said that before we came, she didn’t think Mormons were Christians, but now she believed we might have been better Christians than she was.
We could not have scripted a better ending to our discussion. I know the meeting would never have gone so well if we had not fasted and prayed, pleaded for the Spirit to be present, and petitioned the Lord that there be no contention. Only with the Holy Spirit present can we be effective in sharing the gospel message.

Just a couple of weeks before, I had had the privilege of taking my family downtown as Santa Claus made his appearance. It was interesting. Crowds gathered. One little girl had been standing on the side of the curb for what seemed to her like many minutes, waiting for this cherished event. Just as Santa Claus was to make his entry, great throngs of people crowded in front of her, blocking her view, and she began to cry.
A six-foot-three man who stood by her asked, “What’s the matter, dear?”
She said, “I have been waiting to see Santa, and now I can’t see him.”
He picked her up and placed her on his shoulders, providing her a commanding view. As Santa Claus came by, she waved her little hand toward him. He smiled and waved back to her and to everyone else in the crowd.
The little girl grabbed the hair of that big fellow and exclaimed, “He saw me! He saw me and smiled at me! I’m so glad it’s Christmas!” That little girl had the Christmas spirit.

“My father had a truck dealership in Winslow. When World War II came along, Dad couldn’t get any vehicles to sell, so he decided to leave his business and find new work. He found a welding job in Monrovia, California, and we moved there. When he was offered a job as master-mechanic for the harbor that the government was building in Moro Bay, California, we moved there for a year. Later we moved up to the San Francisco Bay Area to a walnut ranch until the war was over. Dad worked for a machine shop in Oakland.
“After the war, Dad decided that he wanted to move to a small community and open a machine shop. We moved to San Luis Obispo, California, where I went to high school. Later we moved to Santa Barbara. Living in so many different locations in California helps give me a love for my new assignment in the Church as second counselor in the North America West area presidency. It doesn’t make any difference where I go in California—I have some connection there!”

In the summer of 1975 I was 25, and my father had just passed away. He was a well-to-do businessman in oil and gas in Canada. I had traveled to Denmark to settle his business dealings for my mother, selling his mining company there and a lot of oil and mineral rights he had in Greenland. I wound up being in Copenhagen alone for quite some time.
After spending hours each day in business meetings discussing the arrangements of the deal, my business companions would take me downtown to the Stroet, a famous walking area lined with shops, in the busiest part of Copenhagen.
It was one of the hottest summers on record for northern Europe. The Europeans were traveling more than the Americans. On that street, you could sit in one spot and see some English, Israelis, Arabs, and Scandinavians strolling by, sometimes in native costume or scantily dressed because of the heat. The Stroet is lined with remarkable stores selling furs and expensive things. Some of the seamier side of the city was obvious there as well, with pornographic theaters, adult bookstores, and taverns offering their wares. And I noticed, in the middle of all this, four Mormon missionaries working a street display.
I was so astonished. Here on this one street, the whole world seemed represented. The degradations of humanity beside rampant materialism and in the midst of all this, an island of spirituality.
I was with my business companions still discussing the deal we were working on, so I was not able to go talk with the missionaries, but I watched them. I noticed that none of the young men followed the young ladies down the street with their eyes no matter how scantily dressed the girls were. I was quite impressed with that. I resolved that I would go back and meet them in the evening when I was free, but every time I went to find them, their display was folded up and put away. I could never seem to catch up with them.
I left Copenhagen on a business trip and returned a few days later. On this trip I had only a light overnight bag, so instead of taking a taxi, I started walking to my hotel. As I was walking down the Stroet, lo and behold, there were two missionaries on what I later learned would have been their preparation day.
Since the pair was not working by the street display, I set out to follow them. As they walked down the street, they would look in the shop windows. I would follow and look in the windows that they looked into to see what they were looking at. They would look at shoes or coats, and when they did look into a bookstore, it was a store that sold Danish history books. They did not stare into the wine shops or other shops that offered questionable literature or art.
I resolved to meet the missionaries at their street display, but suddenly the business deal was completed, and I was on my way back to Canada.
When I got home to Edmonton, I forgot some of the feelings I had experienced watching the missionaries in Copenhagen. However, through the referral of an acquaintance, some missionaries made an appointment with me.
I let the two missionaries into my apartment. I looked into the face of one of the elders, and it seemed as though I had known him all my life. I had immediately the feelings I had felt on the Stroet in Copenhagen. I sat down and listened to the first discussion. I looked into the eyes of the elders and saw the sincerity of the testimony they bore. After several weeks of being taught by the missionaries, I joined the Church.
I have often thought about those missionaries that I watched during those afternoons in Copenhagen. If the two missionaries I followed had stopped in front of a pub and had been laughing and joking about beer, or if they had gone into some of the stores that you might expect young people to be curious about, the impact of their example on me would have disappeared. If they were anything but what they were, representing precisely what they did, the testimony expressed by their actions would have been lost.
The world walked by those missionaries that summer on the Stroet in Denmark. They never knew I was watching and that their presence bore testimony to me. They never knew that their example was what touched me and made me receptive to the gospel message. Although they never spoke to many of the people on that street, I wonder how many others were influenced as I was just by their example.

“Every summer, for many years, Dad would drive us to Utah as soon as school was out. The trip would take two or three days, and we would usually stop in Scipio where my Grandma and Grandpa Peterson lived. Then we’d come up to Taylorsville to visit my cousins, whom we were very fond of. Dad would go back to Phoenix, and at the end of summer he’d come back to get us for school. While we were away, Dad wrote letters to us regularly.”

As another example, I remember my beloved grandmother, Mary Caroline Roper Finlinson, making homemade soap on the farm. Her recipe for homemade soap included rendered animal fat and wood ashes. The soap had a very pungent aroma and was almost as hard as a brick. There was no money to buy soft, sweet-smelling soap. On the farm there were many dusty, sweat-laden clothes to be washed and many bodies that desperately needed a Saturday night bath. If you had to bathe with that homemade soap, you could become wonderfully clean, but you smelled worse after bathing than before. Since I use soap more now than I did as a child, I have developed a daily appreciation for mild, sweet-scented soap.

Christopher found his job using another technique he learned in the workshops at the fair. He applied for a job, but at the time there were no openings. When he followed up a few days later he said, “I know that it costs you something to train new employees. I will volunteer to come in and learn whatever you would like me to learn on my own time and then if you think I can do the job to your satisfaction I will be trained and ready to go to work when you have an opening.” This initiative impressed his employer enough that he interviewed him and hired him on the spot. Although the restaurant is open on Sunday, Christopher’s employer respects his beliefs and has not required that he come in and work on that day.

She explained that she had met B. J. her first semester. They were in the same branch. She helped him run for freshman class president. They went steady until he went on his mission.
"Once he asked me to marry him before he left. I said I would. I waited for two years until he got back. I even changed my major twice so I would not be ahead of him in school when he returned. We dated some after he got back, and then he got interested in campus politics again. He’s forgotten I’m around now. It’s like I’m not really here."

Years ago I served on a stake high council with Emery Wight. For 10 years Emery had served as bishop of rural Harper Ward. His wife, Lucille, became our stake Relief Society president.
Lucille told me that one spring morning a neighbor called at her door and asked for Emery. She told him that he was out plowing. The neighbor then spoke with great concern. Earlier that morning he had passed the field and noticed Emery’s team of horses standing in a half-finished furrow with the reins draped over the plow. Emery was nowhere in sight. The neighbor thought nothing of it until much later when he passed the field again, and the team had not moved. He climbed the fence and crossed the field to the horses. Emery was nowhere to be found. He hurried to the house to check with Lucille.
Lucille calmly replied, “Oh, don’t be alarmed. No doubt someone is in trouble and came to get the bishop.”
The image of that team of horses standing for hours in the field symbolizes the dedication of the bishops in the Church and of the counselors who stand by their side. Every bishop and every counselor, figuratively speaking, leaves his team standing in an unfinished furrow when someone needs help.
I have passed that field many times over the years. It is a reminder of the sacrifice and the service of those called to serve in bishoprics of wards and of their wives and families, without whose help they could not serve.

As an introduction may I tell of two experiences. The first happened many years ago when I was at the new Washington D.C. Temple. A number of reporters were present on that occasion. They were curious concerning this beautiful building, different from other church buildings—different in concept, different in purpose, different concerning those who will be permitted within its sacred precincts.
I explained that, after the building is dedicated as the house of the Lord, only members of the Church in good standing will be authorized to enter, but that prior to its dedication, for a period of from a month to six weeks, visitors will be made welcome to tour the entire structure; that we are not disposed to hide it from the world, but that following the dedication, we shall regard it as being of so sacred a nature that purity of life and strict adherence to standards of the Church become qualifications for admittance.
We talked of the purposes for which temples are built. I explained those purposes, particularly emphasizing that purpose which appeals to all thoughtful men and women, namely, marriage for eternity. As I did so, I reflected on an experience at the time of the prededication showing of the London England Temple in 1958.
On that occasion thousands of curious but earnest people stood in long lines to gain entry to the building. A policeman stationed to direct traffic observed that it was the first time he had ever seen the English eager to get into a church.
Those who inspected the building were asked to defer any questions until they had completed the tour. In the evenings I joined the missionaries in talking with those who had questions. As a young couple came down the front steps of the temple, I inquired whether I could help them in any way. The young woman spoke up and said, “Yes. What about this ‘marriage for eternity’ to which reference was made in one of the rooms?” We sat on a bench under the ancient oak that stood near the gate. The wedding band on her finger indicated that they were married, and the manner in which she gripped her husband’s hand evidenced their affection one for another.
“Now to your question,” I said. “I suppose you were married by the vicar.”
“Yes,” she responded, “just three months ago.”
“Did you realize that when the vicar pronounced your marriage he also decreed your separation?”
“What do you mean?” she quickly retorted.
“You believe that life is eternal, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied.
I continued, “Can you conceive of eternal life without eternal love? Can either of you envision eternal happiness without the companionship of one another?”
“Of course not,” came the ready response.
“But what did the vicar say when he pronounced your marriage? If I remember the language correctly, he said, among other things, ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, till death do ye part.’ He went as far as he felt his authority would permit him and that was till death separates you. In fact, I think that if you were to question him, he would emphatically deny the existence of marriage and family beyond the grave.
“But,” I continued, “the Father of us all, who loves His children and wants the best for them, has provided for a continuation, under proper circumstances, of this most sacred and ennobling of all human relationships, the relationships of marriage and family.
“In that great and moving conversation between the Savior and His Apostles, Peter declared, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and the Lord responded, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.’ The Lord then went on to say to Peter and his associates, ‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (see Matt. 16:13–19).
“In that marvelous bestowal of authority, the Lord gave to His Apostles the keys of the holy priesthood, whose power reaches beyond life and death into eternity. This same authority has been restored to the earth by those same Apostles who held it anciently, even Peter, James, and John.” I continued by saying that following the dedication of the temple on the following Sunday, those same keys of the holy priesthood would be exercised in behalf of the men and women who come into this sacred house to solemnize their marriage. They will be joined in a union which death cannot dissolve and time cannot destroy.
Such was my testimony to this young couple in England. Such it is to you today and such it is to all the world. Our Father in Heaven, who loves His children, desires for them that which will bring them happiness now and in the eternities to come, and there is no greater happiness than is found in the most meaningful of all human relationships—the companionships of husband and wife, parents and children.
A number of years ago I was called to the hospital bedside of a mother in the terminal stages of a serious illness. She passed away a short time later, leaving her husband and four children, including a little boy of six. There was sorrow, deep and poignant and tragic. But shining through their tears was a faith beautiful and certain that as surely as there was now a sorrowful separation, there would someday be a glad reunion, for that marriage had begun with a sealing for time and eternity in the house of the Lord, under the authority of the holy priesthood.
Every man who truly loves a woman and every woman who truly loves a man hopes and dreams that their companionship will last forever. But marriage is a covenant sealed by authority. If that authority is of the state alone, it will endure only while the state has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction ends with death. But add to the authority of the state the power of the endowment given by Him who overcame death, and that companionship will endure beyond life if the parties to the marriage live worthy of the promise.
When I was much younger and less brittle, we danced to a song whose words went something like this:
Is love like a rose
That blossoms and grows,
Then withers and goes
When summer is gone?
It was only a dance ballad, but it was a question that has been asked through the centuries by men and women who loved one another and looked beyond today into the future of eternity.
To that question we answer no and reaffirm that love and marriage under the revealed plan of the Lord are not like the rose that withers with the passing of summer. Rather, they are eternal, as surely as the God of heaven is eternal.
But this gift, precious beyond all others, comes only with a price—with self-discipline, with virtue, with obedience to the commandments of God. These may be difficult, but they are possible under the motivation that comes of an understanding of truth.
President Brigham Young (1801–77) once declared: “There is not a young man in our community who would not be willing to travel from here to England to be married right, if he understood things as they are; there is not a young woman in our community, who loves the Gospel and wishes its blessings, that would be married in any other way.”
Many have traveled that far and even farther to receive the blessings of temple marriage. I have seen a group of Latter-day Saints from Japan who—before the construction of a temple in their homeland—had denied themselves food to make possible the long journey to the Laie Hawaii Temple. Before we had a temple in Johannesburg, we met those who had gone without necessities to afford the 7,000-mile (11,000-km) flight from South Africa to the temple in Surrey, England. There was a light in their eyes and smiles on their faces and testimonies from their lips that it was worth infinitely more than all it had cost.
And I remember hearing in New Zealand many years ago the testimony of a man from the far side of Australia who, having been previously sealed by civil authority and then joined the Church with his wife and children, had traveled all the way across that wide continent, then across the Tasman Sea to Auckland, and down to the temple in the beautiful valley of the Waikato. As I remember his words, he said, “We could not afford to come. Our worldly possessions consisted of an old car, our furniture, and our dishes. I said to my family, ‘We cannot afford to go.’ Then I looked into the faces of my beautiful wife and our beautiful children, and I said, ‘We cannot afford not to go. If the Lord will give me strength, I can work and earn enough for another car and furniture and dishes, but if I should lose these my loved ones, I would be poor indeed in both life and in eternity.’”
How shortsighted so many of us are, how prone to look only at today without thought for the morrow. But the morrow will surely come, as will also come death and separation. How sweet is the assurance, how comforting is the peace that come from the knowledge that if we marry right and live right, our relationship will continue, notwithstanding the certainty of death and the passage of time. Men may write love songs and sing them. They may yearn and hope and dream. But all of this will be only a romantic longing unless there is an exercise of authority that transcends the powers of time and death.
Speaking many years ago, President Joseph F. Smith (1838–1918) said: “The house of the Lord is a house of order and not a house of confusion; and that means … that there is no union for time and eternity that can be perfected outside of the law of God, and the order of his house. Men may desire it, they may go through the form of it, in this life, but it will be of no effect except it be done and sanctioned by divine authority, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”
In conclusion may I leave you a story. It is fiction, but in principle it is true. Can you imagine two young people at a time when the moon is full and the roses are in bloom and a sacred love has matured between them? Johnny says to Mary, “Mary, I love you. I want you for my wife and the mother of our children. But I don’t want you or them forever. Just for a season and then good-bye.” And she, looking at him through tears in the moonlight, says, “Johnny, you’re wonderful. There’s nobody else in all the world like you. I love you, and I want you for my husband and the father of our children, but only for a time and then farewell.”
That sounds foolish, doesn’t it? And yet isn’t that in effect what a man says to a woman and a woman says to a man in a proposal of marriage when given the opportunity of eternal union under “the new and everlasting covenant” (D&C 132:19), but, rather, they choose to set it aside for a substitute that can last only until death comes?
Life is eternal. The God of heaven has also made possible eternal love and eternal family relationships.
God bless you, that as you look forward to or contemplate your marriage, you may look not only for rewarding companionship and rich and fruitful family relationships through all of your mortal days, but to an even better estate where love and treasured associations may be felt and known under a promise given of God.
I bear witness of the living reality of the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom this authority has come. I bear witness that His power, His priesthood, is among us and is exercised in His holy houses. Do not spurn that which He has offered. Live worthy of it and partake of it, and let the sanctifying power of His holy priesthood seal your companionship.

“Today is the happiest morning in this year. Today is the first [day of] morning seminary,” wrote a Church member in Russia. “How and when [did this thought] originate about daily morning seminary? I remember there was a lesson for our CES teachers that mentioned about the daily seminary program in the United States and Europe and that got stuck in my mind. At that lesson I felt the power of the Holy Ghost which brought a thought unto me that we should have seminary here. Then I felt that the Lord endows everything for this job: possibility, strength and help. We have to have just willingness to accept such a gift.
“After that meeting I felt great inspiration. Some mothers got frightened a little with the idea because children will have to get up early in the morning and in school, they are overloaded, and some finish the school this year and will be entering higher educational institutions. But fathers, who have the priesthood, completely supported me, having said that daily studying of the scriptures is so needed for youth, will teach them discipline, and also will help them gain the Holy Ghost which during the day time and school lessons will help to withstand the temptations of Satan” (comments from Maria Rupysheva, Vyborg, Russia, fall 1996).

When I was in Primary, my brother was a toddler, and my sister was a baby. My mother was very busy taking care of them during the day, so when I came home from school, I helped her. I put my brother in the stroller and walked around the block with him, again and again. We talked about the beautiful world together and looked at the birds, bugs, and our neighbors’ pets. It was a small thing, but it made a big difference! It helped my mom feel happy and rested. It helped my whole family. It was a way of helping like Jesus wants us to help.

During her time as a missionary in the Pacific area, Sister Rinne experienced many miraculous testimonies of the nearness of Heavenly Father. When she arrived in Tonga, hardly knowing the language at all, she was sent to speak in a certain village. In her pocket she had a ten-minute talk written on paper. But when she arrived, she learned that she was to be the only speaker for an hour-long meeting. “I was horrified in the face of this assignment. As I was sitting there afraid, I heard clearly the words: ‘But I am here.’ All fear vanished, and I spoke for the whole hour.”

“Last summer I complained to a non–Latter-day Saint friend that I was exhausted, having no fun, living like an automaton. Nonsympathetically, she countered, ‘What do you think this is? A dress rehearsal? This is your life, Carol. Fix it.’ I expected a pat and a kind word. Instead, I got a splash of reality square in the face. She was, of course, quite right. I wasn’t giving my life value, so I didn’t feel it had value. I went home, reread the parables of the sower and of the talents, and regrouped” (A Singular Life, ed. Carol L. Clark and Blythe Darlyn Thatcher [1987], 35–36).

My family and I moved to the island of Dominica in the Caribbean in August 2016. We immediately fell in love with the island’s beauty, culture, and people. We attended the local branch and learned much from the members there.
On Monday, September 18, 2017, a Category 5 hurricane, Maria, hit our small island. My husband and I watched as homes and vehicles were thrown down the street by the powerful storm. The fury of Hurricane Maria passed directly over the island, and the destruction was devastating. The day after the storm, we walked through the streets and found that the lush and vibrant rainforest of Dominica now looked like a wasteland.
That same morning, we walked to our fellow branch members’ homes. Only two homes were unscathed and livable. Six of the eight member families who lived on the northern side of the island lost everything. Eighty percent of the homes and buildings on Dominica were declared uninhabitable. Despite this tragedy, many families still smiled. When we asked how they were doing, they responded, “We are blessed to be alive.”
Because our family heeded the prophet’s counsel to be self-reliant, we had food storage. We were able to feed many neighbors, missionaries, and members of our branch. At each meal, we fed an average of 20 people. As we used our food storage to serve and care for those around us, our own burdens felt lighter.
This experience reminded me of Alma and his people, whose “burdens … were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease” (Mosiah 24:15).
Even though we still lived without running water, electricity, and day-to-day comforts, we were strengthened to overcome and to lift others. In the months since Hurricane Maria, I have realized that while it is important to be temporally prepared, we need to be spiritually prepared as well. As we obey and build our testimonies on faith in Jesus Christ, we will have a solid foundation that will not fail when the winds and tempests of life blow around us.

Katie loved singing. She loved dancing. But most of all, she loved Sundays! That’s when she saw her friend Quincy.
Katie had Down syndrome. Sometimes at church she got confused and didn’t know what to do. But she knew Quincy would be there to help her.
Quincy would hold Katie’s hand and help her walk to Primary. Sometimes Katie felt wiggly during sharing time, and Quincy would give her a hug. It always helped Katie calm down. After sharing time, Quincy helped Katie find her class. Katie loved Quincy.
One day Katie learned that something terrible had happened to Quincy’s family. Quincy’s older brother Cory had died! Katie knew her friend would be so sad. She knew Quincy loved her big brother very much.
Mom told Katie that tonight people were going to the church building to show Quincy’s family that they were loved. Then tomorrow would be Cory’s funeral.
“Would you like to go to the church with Dad and me tonight?” Mom asked Katie.
Katie nodded. She wanted to tell Quincy that she loved her!
Mom helped Katie put on nice clothes. Then they drove to the church.
When they got there, Katie could see lots of people. She knew some of them from church. She saw her bishop. She saw her Primary teacher. But she couldn’t see her friend.
“Mom, where’s Quincy?” Katie asked.
Mom didn’t know.
“Why don’t we ask someone?” Mom said.
Usually Katie didn’t like talking around lots of people. But tonight she needed to find Quincy. Katie felt brave. She marched up to the bishop.
“Quincy is sad. I need to find Quincy!”
The bishop smiled. “Then let’s go find Quincy.”
Together, the bishop, Mom, and Katie walked around the church building. Finally they found her! Quincy was sitting in a corner. She looked really, really sad.
Katie walked over to her friend and wrapped her arms around her. She thought of how much Quincy missed her brother.
“It’s OK, Quincy. Jesus will take care of Cory,” Katie said. She carefully patted Quincy’s hair, making sure to be gentle.
Quincy started crying. Katie hugged her tighter.
“It’s OK,” Katie said. “Jesus will take care of Cory.”
Quincy cried and cried. Katie just kept hugging her friend. After a while, Quincy got quieter. She was still sniffling, but not crying so much. She looked at Katie.
“Thank you, Katie,” she said. “You’re right. Jesus will take care of my brother.”
Katie was happy that she could help her friend feel better. She loved Quincy!