Gospel Story Finder

Around the turn of the previous century, two missionaries were laboring in the mountains of the southern United States. One day, from a hilltop, they saw people gathering in a clearing far below. The missionaries did not often have many people to whom they might preach, so they made their way down to the clearing.
A little boy had drowned, and there was to be a funeral. His parents had sent for the minister to “say words” over their son. The missionaries stood back as the itinerant minister faced the grieving father and mother and began his sermon. If the parents expected to receive comfort from this man of the cloth, they would be disappointed.
He scolded them severely for not having had the little boy baptized. They had put it off because of one thing or another, and now it was too late. He told them very bluntly that their little boy had gone to hell. It was their fault. They were to blame for his endless torment.
After the sermon was over and the grave was covered, the elders approached the grieving parents. “We are servants of the Lord,” they told the mother, “and we have come with a message for you.” As the sobbing parents listened, the two elders read from the revelations and bore their testimony of the restoration of the keys for the redemption of both the living and the dead.
I have some sympathy for that preacher. He was doing the best he could with such light and knowledge as he had. But there is more that he should have been able to offer. There is the fulness of the gospel.
The elders came as comforters, as teachers, as servants of the Lord, as authorized ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Other couples are doing the same. Bishop Chan Yue Sang and his wife, Kit Fong, have four children and are deeply grateful for the gospel and the difference it has made in their lives.

Seventeen years ago, Bishop Chan, then a twenty-four-year-old police constable, first heard about the gospel when he attended English classes taught by LDS missionaries.

“The gospel was beautiful to me,” he remembers. “At the time, I didn’t even believe in a God. But when they taught of being with your family forever, I thought I would give up anything in order to have that.”

His life changed a lot after his baptism. Within six months he had received a promotion at work. He also spent time that summer working with the full-time missionaries and teaching the gospel to others. One of the investigators he taught wrote him a letter two years later, asking for a contribution to the chapel they were building in her ward. He sent some money, renewed his acquaintance with her, and married her a year later.

“The biggest reward the gospel has given me is my family,” Bishop Chan says.

One of Bishop Chan’s goals is to share that reward with others. Last year, he invited the missionaries to a monthly police training meeting to give a family-focused presentation. The training included instruction on family education, welfare services, family council meetings, and one-on-one interviews with children. The family home evening program was also introduced. As a result, one of Bishop Chan’s colleagues joined the Church, and others have shown interest.

When the Civil War erupted, Louisa felt a need to do her part. In 1862, she moved to Washington, D.C., and served as a nurse in the Union Army. She worked hard and got very little sleep because of her concern for the wounded soldiers. She became a trusted friend of many of the young patients. However, after only a few weeks at the hospital, Louisa became very ill with typhoid fever. Her father arrived in time to take her back home, where fresh air, rest, and her mother’s care helped her to recover. Later Louisa compiled the letters that she had written to her family from Washington about the suffering soldiers into a book called Hospital Sketches.

This group was successful in winning battles in Argentina, and then José began to plan to free Chile. In order to do so, it was necessary to take his army of 3,500 men across the rugged snow-topped mountain ranges of the Andes. The Andes have an average width of 150 miles and an average height of 12,000 feet. The only roads were narrow, steep, and dangerous paths that wound around deep gorges and over jagged peaks.
Even the women and children in and around Mendoza, Argentina, where the march began, participated in the final preparations. The women brought their precious jewels to José to be exchanged for food and equipment. The children went from door to door collecting blankets, clean rags, and whatever could be used for bandages or for protection against the intense below-zero cold of the Andes.
One man had room in his saddlebags for nothing but the medical supplies for José, who was almost always ill with asthma, rheumatism, stomach ulcers, and various other ailments. But neither impassable mountains, severe illness, lack of money, lonely separation from his young wife and little daughter, nor other obstacles could stop this man whose dream was to free the people of South America from what he believed was the unfair government of Spain.
Finally all was in readiness. The night before the army left Mendoza, mule packs and oxcarts went through streets that had been strewn with flowers, as everyone gathered to hold special prayers and to pledge again their dedication to freedom.
The army made an unbelievable crossing of the Andes despite storm, cold, illness, and other hardships. This march prepared the way for the establishment of independence for both Chile and Peru.

When I was five years old, I became very ill. It turned out that I had polio, a disease that was completely unknown to the small-town doctor. I lay for several weeks on a World War I army cot in our front room beside a coal stove. Afterward, I could not walk. I remember very clearly sliding around on the linoleum floor and pulling myself up on chairs, learning to walk again. I was more fortunate than some. A friend walked with crutches and steel leg braces all of his life.
As I moved into school, I found that my muscles were weak. I was very self-conscious. I knew that I could never be an athlete.
It did not help a lot when I read about the man who went to a doctor to find a cure for his inferiority complex. After a careful examination, the doctor told him, “You don’t have a complex. You really are inferior!”
With that for encouragement, I set about through life and determined to compensate in other ways.
I found hope in my patriarchal blessing. The patriarch, whom I had never met before, confirmed to me that patriarchs do have prophetic insight. He said that I had a desire to come to earth life and was willing to meet the tests that would accompany life in a mortal body. He said that I had been given a body of such physical proportion and fitness to enable my spirit to function through it unhampered by physical impediment. That encouraged me.
I learned that you should always take care of your body. Take nothing into your body that will harm it, such as we are counseled in the Word of Wisdom: tea, coffee, liquor, tobacco, or anything else that is habit-forming, addictive, or harmful.
Read section 89 in the Doctrine and Covenants. You will find great promises:
“All saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;
“And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;
“And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.”
And then this promise: “And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them.”10

In December 2023, leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Togo felt prompted to donate food to the community of Notse as part of the Africa West Area’s Light the World program. Notsé was chosen because of its historical significance in Togo. It is the cradle of the Ewe people and still has a king who is recognized as such by the Ewe people and their diasporas in the south of three countries: Benin, Togo, and Ghana. The current king is Togbe Agokoli IV.
On 9 December, a food donation was handed over to the king and his assistant and spokesperson, Togbe Afanwubo III. The spokesperson said of the offering, “This is the first time that I have seen a church which was not yet established in our community, making such a donation to the people.”
He expressed his appreciation for the Light the World initiative and thanked the Church for bringing the light of Christ to the widows and orphans at Christmas. “I also strongly encourage and invite your Church to be established in Notsé in the near future. I would ask your Church leaders to begin looking for land for a church building,” said Togbe Afanwubo III.
At the time there was no official congregation of the Church, but the community was already being prepared.

In social studies, we were talking about different kinds of religions and churches. It seemed like everybody was really mixed up about Christian beliefs. A boy asked the teacher how a Mormon can be a Christian. The teacher asked if there were any Mormons in the class who could answer the question. I wasn’t afraid to raise my hand, even though I knew that I was the only Church member in the class. I said, “A Mormon is a type of Christian.”
Then a girl asked, “Did Jesus die for our sins, or for something else?”
I said, “Jesus suffered for our sins before He was crucified, and He died so that we could be resurrected.”
Another boy said, “My priest told me that Mormons don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”
I said, “That isn’t true. We do believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is the Savior.”
Then all the other kids had questions. The teacher did say that LDS stands for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That was the first time that I was able to answer all the questions with ease. I was happy to have had a chance to share the gospel with others. I hope that someday they will feel the Holy Ghost near and understand what I told them.

I kept getting the feeling that I should try using conference talks for family home evening lessons. At first I resisted. My kids are young, the talks are hard for them to understand, and I wasn’t sure there would be any kid-friendly subjects. But I knew I had to at least try.
Using general conference talks has not only completely transformed our family home evenings for my children, but we’ve had some great gospel discussions. Interspersed within total chaos, there have been small miraculous moments of family bliss.
Jessie Christensen, Utah, USA

“Don’t you think that ice ax is really more than you need for a little snow hike?” Steve chided. “Where do you think we are—on Mount Everest?”
Billy looked at his ax and shrugged. “How do we know what’s ahead?”
Steve and Billy were up early on the Saturday morning of their outing. Every year they went on a winter camp-out in the mountains.
The boys gradually snowshoed upward. It had snowed heavily overnight, and they watched the sun come up, glistening now on the fresh powder. Every few minutes they stopped to catch their breath because of the steep ascent.
“Boy!” panted Steve. “It’s easy to get winded at this altitude.”
The ski slope lay within yards of the route the boys had chosen through the trees, but no skiers were up yet. Stopping to rest, they heard the ski patrol fire several shots. If the snowpack were unstable, the rifle shots would cause an avalanche, then the snow could settle before the skiers started their runs. Usually it was only a precautionary measure, as the snowfall was most often wet enough to pack down. So the shots ordinarily just signalled the start of the skiing day.
But today was unusual.
The boys sensed the avalanche before they heard it. Then its low rumble reached their ears, and they looked up before they’d even had time to think what it was. When they saw it above them—rolling, tumbling, and spraying like a tide—their minds went blank. Soon they were running—Billy to the left toward a dense group of trees and Steve back down their upward trail.
The avalanche reached the trees just a second before Billy did. He sucked the white, snow-filled air into his lungs and dived against a tree trunk, barely able to see it. The weight and pressure of the tumult pulled his legs out from under him, and desperately he swung his ax toward the tree—it caught!
Another wave hit him. Swallowing snow with each breath, he slowly pulled himself up and grasped the trunk with one arm. Then he grabbed at the branches above him and pulled with all his strength. Waves of snow engulfed him and he had to bury his nose against his sleeve to breathe.
Climbing higher into the tree, he was soon out of the worst of the cascading snow. But Steve! Where’s Steve? he wondered frantically. Looking down from the tree was like looking through dense, white snow rapids.
Thirty feet downhill, Steve had plunged into an air pocket and fallen just as the avalanche overtook him. Like a giant fist, it had punched the air out of his lungs, tumbling him feetfirst, headfirst, and then sideways. Finally he tried swimming motions and managed to stay near the top of the engulfing snow.
His face burned and ached, and in panic he stopped swimming and put his gloves over his face for protection. Now he was tumbling faster, like a feather in a tidal wave. Then the speed of the advancing snow slowly decreased … And finally there was nothing but a deathly silence.
Steve tried to push the snow away from his face, but it was too heavy to move. All he could see was darkness, and all he could feel was a tremendous weight pressing in from all sides.
When the last of the flying snow had sifted down, the air cleared and Billy could distinguish between the snow mass and the air. He stared below him at the clean, brilliant snow that measured five or six feet higher on the tree trunks now than it had before. There was no sign of Steve. “Oh, Heavenly Father … ,” he started to pray, but then decided there was not time for that.
Billy dropped his ax and saw the heavy end disappear into the powder. Then he climbed down the tree and sank up to his shins in the freshly churned snow.
He’d stumbled twenty yards when a ski patrolman came gliding slowly through the trees, stopping in amazement when he saw Billy. “You mean you were on this hill all through that avalanche?” he asked incredulously.
“I was up in a tree back there. But my friend, Steve … he’s lost in it somewhere.”
Instantly the patrolman was unclasping his skis. “Where did you see him last?” he asked.
“By those trees. He tried to outrun it.”
The patrolman shook his head and spoke angrily, as though Steve should have known better. “No one can outrun an avalanche. That snow moves 200 miles an hour!” He leaned one ski against a tree and took up the other to use as a probe. “You use the handle of that ax. Push it into the snow and call out if you hit anything. It just might be your buddy.”
“How long could he live buried in this?”
The patrolman was driving his ski into the snow every two feet. “Maybe an hour … maybe not … there’s not time to discuss it.” His voice was gruff, and he didn’t raise his eyes from the snow.
“Oh, please, Heavenly Father, let Steve be alive and help us find him.” Suddenly Billy realized that he was praying aloud and had been praying aloud all along. In a flash he understood that there is always time to pray.
A short time later the patrolman stopped to rest for a moment to catch his breath. Then in a rough voice he ordered: “Let’s keep going. There’s still a chance.”
With the next thrust, Billy drove his ax handle into the snow and stumbled sideways. Struggling to his feet, he pulled on the axhead. But it held fast. He pulled harder and still the ax stayed in the snow. “Hey!” he shouted to the patrolman.
Together they pulled the axhead, and when it surfaced, Steve’s bare hands were holding tightly to the spike.
Falling to their knees, they dug furiously, forcing the mountain to release its victim! The snow was bloodied. Steve’s face and hands were cut, scraped, and bleeding. But he was alive! He gasped the cool, fresh air, and his bluish face flushed red.
Billy trembled now as the realization of the near-disaster washed over him. He slipped down to sit in the snow next to Steve, and as he did, he saw the tight-lipped patrolman start to grin.
“What’s the matter, kid? Didn’t you know about the power of prayer? In my job, we use it all the time.”

Margaret sat on the front veranda and eagerly watched the shimmering blue sky for signs of a small silver plane with The Kookaburra written in red letters on each side. She knew that Kaye would be watching from the plane just as eagerly, straining to see the solitary house and stockyards belonging to Margaret’s family in the vast outback of Western Australia. Margaret had heard Kaye’s voice many times on the two-way radio set that brought the School of the Air into their homes. They had also exchanged letters and pictures. But she had never seen Kaye, and now Father was bringing her from her family’s neighboring station (ranch) over a hundred miles away.
Margaret heard the hum of the plane before she spotted it in the sky. She jumped and ran to their small runway, waving her white handkerchief. Then, when she finally saw Kaye, she felt overcome with shyness and hugged her lean, sun-browned father tightly.
"Well, Marg, I’ve brought you a friend," he said. "This is Kaye." He pulled both girls close to him, one on each side. "I reckon you two can be real mates (friends)."
Margaret and Kaye smiled shyly at each other as the three of them walked to the house. It wasn’t until they lay in bed that night that they began to really talk to each other and make plans for their week together. They decided to go on a walkabout (walking tour) the following afternoon down the dry riverbed.
Right after lunch the next day, the two girls set out on their walkabout. Margaret’s mother had put fruit and biscuits (cookies) into a dilly (mesh fiber) bag. "You’d better take jumpers (sweaters)," she called as they stepped off the veranda. Margaret looked up at the hot November sky and sighed. "It can change," Mother said, handing them each a jumper. "Besides, you can sit on them to eat."
The girls tied the jumpers around their waists and started off. The sun was stifling, and they were glad to walk in the shade of the giant eucalyptus trees that lined the riverbed. Peeling bark hung from the trees, leaving smooth white trunks exposed.
"Look at that," Margaret said. They stopped and looked at a dead gum tree full of galahs. Suddenly the birds took flight, a pink and gray cloud rising and fluttering into the sky.
Kaye stared at the birds. "That was beautiful," she said. "Do you like living in the outback, Margaret?"
"I’ve lived here all my life, so I don’t really know what it’s like anywhere else. It’s very lonely here at times, but there’s a lot to do. Do you like it?"
"We lived in Adelaide until last year, and I miss my friends and all. I get lonely, too, but when I see beautiful things like those birds, then I like it—or when I can be with a friend like you."
The girls smiled at each other and clasped hands as they skipped through the rocks and sand.
Suddenly Margaret stopped. "Listen, I know a place that you’d really like. It has a pool and big red cliffs where lots of swallows have their nests."
"Is it far?"
"Not too far. I went there in the plane with my father, but we were just up and down again. As we came down, we could still see our house. Let’s see …" Margaret looked back to where their house stood among the trees. "I think that if we walk straight north toward that hilly area, we’ll come to it."
"Let’s do it!" Kaye exclaimed happily.
They left the riverbed and struck out across the sand. The afternoon sun beat down on them, and the hills were still quite far away.
"It’s farther than I thought," Margaret said.
"It always is," Kaye answered, "but let’s go on. It can’t be too much farther if you could still see your house."
Just as their search seemed hopeless, they came to the top of a hill and saw the red cliffs. "This is it!" Margaret cried. They ran down the hill and into the small canyon formed by the cliffs, sat down in the pleasant shade of a gum tree, and quickly removed their shoes and stockings. Soon they were dangling their feet in the cool water of the pool. Margaret opened the dilly bag and handed a juicy orange to Kaye.
"It’s as beautiful as you said," Kaye declared, as a busy swallow darted in and out of rock crevices, dipping toward the water and soaring up again.
After they had eaten and rested, they climbed through the rocks and explored the small canyon. Suddenly Margaret looked at the sky and felt her heart lurch within her. "Kaye, look! It’s getting dark."
The girls scrambled quickly and silently over the rocks, both knowing how rapidly night could come. But before they reached the pool, total darkness had fallen—without any dusk at all! With no moon, only the white trunks of the gum trees were visible. Margaret shivered with fear. She had hardly been outside her house after dark, much less alone in the bush.
"What should we do?" Kaye asked.
"Let’s put our jumpers on," Margaret said, trying to sound calm. They pulled on the wool jumpers, grateful for the warmth against the night’s chill.
"Can we make it home in this darkness?" Kaye asked.
"I don’t think so. We could lose our sense of direction in the hills and wander far off or step into a rabbit hole and sprain an ankle." Margaret’s heart pounded harder as she talked. She knew that Kaye expected her to know what to do, and every minute she felt more terrified.
"If we climbed a hill, maybe we could see the lights of your house. You said you could see it from here."
"That was from up in the air. No, the gum trees in the riverbed would block them out," Margaret said.
The girls sat close together on a rock in the dark wilderness. Eerie sounds of night birds sent chills down Margaret’s spine. She didn’t know what to say or do. It surprised her when Kaye spoke.
"The first thing that we should do," Kaye said firmly, "is pray."
"Pray?" Margaret asked. She had never prayed. Her family had never prayed.
"Let’s kneel down," Kaye said.
Margaret felt a little awkward, but she knelt in the sand and listened while Kaye said a prayer. Talking to Heavenly Father the way Margaret talked to her earthly father, Kaye explained how they couldn’t get home, asked for protection, and asked what they should do. When she finished, they both knelt there very quietly for a time. Margaret started to shiver, her teeth chattering, but her friend seemed to be waiting and thinking.
Kaye pushed her hand into the sand. "Feel how warm it is from the hot sun during the day," she said. "Let’s take a rock and dig out a shallow hole. We can lie in it and sleep. In the morning your father will come looking for us in his plane."
Margaret was amazed that Kaye could sound so calm and confident about spending the night in the bush. And it did sound like a good plan.
They felt around for flat stones and dug out their bed. Then they lay down together, their jumpers pulled close around them. Margaret stopped shivering, and she felt rather warm and cozy. Her fear began to leave her too. She was puzzled about Kaye, a city girl rather new in the outback. Yet she had known what to do when Margaret herself had felt paralyzed with fear. She would have to ask Kaye more about prayer. Margaret looked up once more into the dense, star-filled sky, then fell sound asleep.
A loud chorus of hysterical laughter awakened both girls in the morning. When they opened their eyes to the gray light, they saw that the gum trees were filled with kookaburras greeting the day with their strange laughter.
Suddenly, above the sound of the birds, Margaret heard the drone of an engine. They looked at each other and smiled. Then they jumped out of their bed in the sand and waved their jumpers at the silver plane with red letters, circling above them.

Born in Ixelles, Belgium, 5 October 1935, Charles Didier recalls that his father, Andre, a Belgian Army officer, was captured at the beginning of World War II. After escaping, he stayed hidden and saw his family only during occasional surprise visits. Elder Didier looks back on a time after his own ninth birthday:
“Because the secret police were looking for him [his father], we were searched—and barely escaped. We went to where he was hiding in Antwerp Province, and from there to live with my great-grandmother in Flanders.” Then Belgium was liberated. “I vividly remember the soldiers trying to get away on bicycles, the airplanes coming, the shooting, and the Allied troops coming into the village.”

Sister Whang’s work in the camps led her to change her career from nursing to teaching. But after six years, in November 1958, she decided that if she wanted to fulfill her goal to help the poor, she needed more education. Her minister encouraged her to apply for an exchange program at the University of California at Berkeley. She was accepted. Taking the money she had saved from teaching and the promise of a paid sabbatical from her school, she enrolled.
Soon after she arrived in the U.S., Whang Keun-Ok met two Korean students from Brigham Young University who were working at Berkeley for the summer. They encouraged her to go to Provo, Utah. When she visited the BYU campus in the fall of 1959, she fell in love with the mountains and was impressed by the Latter-day Saints’ faith. She spent the next three years there, studying social work. Shortly after she returned to Korea in June 1962, she located the missionaries and was baptized.

Another man said that he would not go to church but that his family could go. The missionaries told him that they would always save him a seat right by the door in case he changed his mind. One Sunday he was prompted to go to church even though his family had left without him. From the foyer he could see his family seated with the missionaries and a space at the end of the pew vacant and easily accessible. He entered the little chapel, and his footsteps were heard. The missionaries turned their heads, and when they saw him, tears came to their eyes. After baptism the husband would say, “Never in my life had anyone ever cried out of happiness just to see me enter a room.”

In September 2004 I traveled to the Netherlands with two of my grandchildren, Jim and Arianne, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Dutch liberation during World War II. We had been invited by the Dutch Historical Group to participate in the commemoration because my brother Evan, a co-pilot of a B-24 bomber, had died while helping with the liberation in 1944.
While there we traveled to Hommersum, just over the border into Germany, to attend a ceremony dedicating a plaque where my brother’s plane had crashed. Father Gerard Thuring, one of the event organizers, and I spoke during the ceremony, after which 17-year-old Arianne sang the U.S. national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and Jim, 15, helped raise the U.S. flag.
Afterward I told Father Thuring that we would like to attend the special liberation Mass the following day at his church in Oosterhaus. He welcomed our interest and invited us to attend. I then summoned the courage to suggest that Arianne, with whom I had consulted earlier, would be willing to sing at the meeting.
Surprised, he asked, “What will she sing?”
“ ‘I Am a Child of God,’ ” I told him.
This good and kind man thought for a moment and then said, “We are all children of God. Let’s do it.”
When we arrived for the liberation Mass early the next morning, the church was full. Partway through the program, Father Thuring invited Arianne to come up and sing. After escorting her to the front, he said, “We will now hear a song from a Mormon girl from Utah.”
Without the benefit of music or accompaniment, Arianne began. As her voice echoed from the church’s high ceilings, tears began to flow as parishioners comprehended the hymn’s comforting message.
At the close of the meeting, many in the congregation expressed appreciation and love to Arianne for singing the hymn. The experience was a powerful reminder that all of us—regardless of race, religion, or language—are children of God.

A short while ago, a pair of doves began building a nest in a tree in my garden. I watched as they gathered small branches to create what would eventually become their home.
A few days later, I saw empty eggshells on the grass. Two beautiful chicks had hatched. They grew so fast that soon they were almost as big as their mother.
One morning I watched as one of the chicks, standing at the edge of the nest, made several attempts to fly. Finally, the baby dove took off, flying to the roof of our home. Within a few days, this brave dove was taking flight with its mother.
The other chick, meanwhile, would watch from the nest. Perhaps thinking that one day it would join them. I had my doubts. This baby dove didn’t seem to have a desire to fly.
To my surprise, however, a few days later I found the chick walking in the grass below the nest. Apparently, it had tried to fly. For several days afterward, the chick made many clumsy attempts to fly. Finally, it succeeded, flying back to the nest and from there into the sky.

I had gone to a certain house several times and had been rejected and warned not to come back again, but I was prompted to go again and again. And then as I was attempting to walk past that house, I was prompted to go in and try again to make contact. I used the big brass knocker on the English door without any response. I could see a lady in the front room knitting, and I made considerable noise with that knocker. She did not come out, and I went around to the back door. There was no knocker on that door so I used my walking stick, and I knocked with considerable vigor; in fact, it echoed through all the house.

Very soon the lady came out, and her coming out reminded me of my early days on the farm when I teased a sitting hen off the nest. (I see some of you have had farm experience.) You know that a setting hen when she is teased off the nest comes off with her feathers going in the wrong direction, with her beak in perpetual motion, and this woman reminded me of that.

I apologized and said, “I am sorry to have interrupted you and have insisted upon an interview, but, my dear sister, I have come over six thousand miles to bring you a message which the Lord wants you to have. He sent me here to give you that message. I am going back to Canada in a few days, and I must tell you what the Lord wants you to know.”

She said, “You mean the Lord sent a message to me!”

I said, “That is right, he did.”

I told her of the restoration of the gospel, the organization of the Church, and the message of the restoration. She was quite impressed by what I told her. And I said when I left, “I am sorry to have disturbed you, but I could not refuse to carry out the message and the mission that was given to me when I came here. When we meet again, and we will meet again, you are going to say, ‘Thank you for coming to my back door. Thank you for loving me enough to carry the message of the Lord to me. When you left I could hardly contain myself. I was worried, disturbed, and wondered what it was all about. I finally went to the mission home, got some literature, studied, and became a member of the Church with my family.’”

Ten years later I was in England again, this time as a soldier, and at the end of the meeting a lady came up with two grown daughters. She said, “I do thank God and thank you that you came to my door with that message many years ago. I and my daughters joined the Church and we are going to Utah in a short time, and we thank God that you had the courage, the fortitude, and the faith to come to me with that divine message and to leave it with me in the name of the Lord.”Elder Hugh B. BrownOf the Council of the Twelve

Sister Asay shared other experiences that strengthened her early commitment. “You know,” she said, “when I was a Beehive girl, just 12 years old, a young man from our ward returned from a mission. That was really something in those days. There weren’t so many missionaries then. He spoke in our sacrament meeting and had the most wonderful spirit. I could actually feel it. I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to marry someone just like him some day.’” She quickly added, with a twinkle in her eye, “And of course I married someone even better.
“Carlos and I were childhood sweethearts. I can’t remember when I didn’t know him.” Her countenance and tone of voice revealed much more in this beautiful relationship than was being spoken. “When we decided to get married,” she said, “Carlos was very much involved in athletics at the University of Utah. He had been offered a contract to pitch for a professional baseball team, and a lot of other opportunities came his way. I believe they came as a test at that time, because those things have high priority in a young man’s life.” And then she said, “Like a flashback to years before, I could see that young returned missionary standing at the pulpit in our little church in Monroe. I remembered my feeling then. I had committed myself to marrying someone who had the spirit of a returned missionary, and Carlos wasn’t a returned missionary.” Then in a matter-of-fact tone, she explained: “I just went to the Lord. ‘Please call Carlos on a mission,’ was my simple request. Do you know,” her smile broadened, “Carlos called two days later and said that the bishop wanted to see him. Then I became anxious again. I went back to the Lord, and this time I fervently requested, ‘Please touch Carlos so he’ll want to go on a mission.’”
She was concerned because of Elder Asay’s desire to get started in school; he had just gotten out of the service, and most boys weren’t that committed to a mission in those days. But Elder Asay accepted his first mission call to Palestine-Syria, trusting in the admonition to “seek first the kingdom of God.” When he came back Sister Asay married her returned missionary.

by Casey Null
Sharon Dangl, 16, of Huntington Beach, California, has always been interested in police work. One day her mother walked into the local police station to report a stolen wallet and walked out with an application for the Police Explorers, which she promptly gave to Sharon.
After passing the rigorous requirements and an oral review, Sharon attended the Police Academy at Camp Pendleton, California. She was trained to search for clues and has assisted police teams working on major crimes in her area. She feels that her experience with the Police Explorers has helped her consider what kind of career she would like to pursue in the future.
Sharon is a member of the Huntington Beach Sixth Ward, Huntington Beach California North Stake.

Age 17. From Texas, USA. Likes playing tennis and basketball, running track, and listening to music.
Recently, I organized a clothing drive with some youth from my stake and high school. We collected boxes of gently used clothes to send to clothing closets in the area to help families in need and kids with special needs or disabilities. My younger brother has an autoimmune disease, so I have a special place in my heart for kids going through similar challenges.
While the outcome of this service project was important to me, it was also about bringing people together and creating a sense of community and purpose. By working together, we were able to make new friendships and connections. I felt a sense of accomplishment from doing something good for others.
This experience reminded me of how important it is to love God by serving others. It’s easy to get caught up in our own lives and problems, but when we put others first and follow the Spirit’s promptings to serve, we can bring joy and love into the world.
“We can bring joy and love into the world.”

Let us first examine the sense of hearing. For example, I picked up the phone one day to hear a voice say, “Would you hold the phone a moment? President Kimball would like to speak to you.” After extending a call to serve as a mission president, he asked that I keep the call confidential until it appeared in the Church News. I anxiously waited for the news. Three or four weeks passed without any confirmation of the telephone conversation. I honestly began to wonder if I had actually heard the prophet’s voice. Without some verification, I learned, I did not completely trust my hearing.