Gospel Story Finder

1. That morning for breakfast, each family member had only a half-piece of bread. Six-year-old Elizabeth noticed Mother’s worried expression.
2. Mother gave Father the last piece of bread, spread with lard, for his lunch. “I’m sorry, Joseph,” she said, “that I can’t give you more. But food is scarce, and people haven’t enough for themselves, let alone for the temple workers.”
Father smiled and said, “I know that whatever you fix is done with love, and I appreciate you.”
3. Although Elizabeth was hungry, she didn’t want Father to have to stop his carpentry work on the Manti Temple to earn money for food. She knew how important temples were to the Lord’s work.
4. Elizabeth rocked Baby Sina while Mother mended clothes with neat, fast stitches. When the baby fussed, Elizabeth bounced her gently and sang “Come, Come, Ye Saints” to her.
5. There was only enough flour for one more batch of bread, so Elizabeth and Mother knelt down together to ask Heavenly Father for help.
6. That night, after having only one small piece of bread each for supper, they went to bed early before the hunger pangs started again. Elizabeth thought that her stomach was resting on her backbone, but pioneer girls were too brave to complain.
7. Sunbeams were already resting on her quilt when Elizabeth awoke the next morning. Just as she finished dressing, Aunt Matilda came.
8. “Last night,” Aunt Matilda said, “I dreamed that you were hungry and desperate for something to eat. So I got up early to bring you some fresh eggs and milk, flour, and dried apples and berries from my farm.”
9. “Thank you, Heavenly Father,” Elizabeth whispered, as her grateful father hugged his sister.

These activities culminated in a big event during Interfaith Week in November 2019. (The organisation of this was personally stressful, due to the chair having resigned just three weeks earlier.) The choir sang at our chapel in Cardiff at the end of a wonderful torchlit walk between three other places of worship, supported by around 150 people of different faiths and including an MP, a Welsh Assembly member and its deputy minister. I had spent a lot of time praying for the success of the event and was powerfully reminded that this was His Church and work, and not mine—and I should not worry quite as much.

One historical event not well known in the Church is the voyage of a courageous band of Saints who sailed from New York City to San Francisco on the ship Brooklyn. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the journey of the Brooklyn, as it arrived in San Francisco Bay on July 31, 1846.

The voyage of the Brooklyn was, perhaps, the longest continuous sea journey of any religious organization in history. It took six months and covered 24,000 miles. The Israelites crossed the Red Sea on their way to Canaan. The Pilgrims of 1620 crossed the Atlantic, a voyage of about 3,000 miles, and were on the water 63 days. The Saints on the Brooklyn crossed the equator on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, went from the icy Antarctic to the tropical Hawaiian Islands and then to California. There were 120 Puritan Pilgrims, whereas the Brooklyn Saints numbered approximately 240. The two groups were alike in many respects in that they were predominately young people with small children. They had dauntless courage, matchless faith, and an abiding trust in God.

After the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1844, the persecution of the Saints continued and so did the plans of Church authorities to leave Nauvoo and to move west, there to establish themselves in the wilderness of what they referred to as “The Upper California,” which at that time included the Great Basin.

About the same time, Church authorities decided that members living in New England and the Atlantic seaboard who didn’t have the finances to go overland should pool their money and charter a ship. Orson Pratt of the Council of the Twelve went to New York to help organize the expedition.

Samuel Brannan, who was a printer from New York, was chosen as leader of the group, and he was also authorized to charter the sailing vessel. By combining their resources, the Saints were able to secure the 370-ton vessel Brooklyn under the command of Captain Richardson. The charge for the ship was $1,200 per month if they would furnish all their own provisions and if the men would handle the cargo. The captain of the ship ordered the space between decks converted into living quarters. A long table, backless benches, and sleeping cubicles with bunks were built, and all were securely bolted to the deck.

They sailed on February 4, 1846, which also happened to be the same day that the Saints began leaving Nauvoo. There were approximately 70 men, 68 women, and 100 children living in cramped quarters with low ceilings where only the children could stand upright. Most everyone suffered from seasickness. Storms in the Atlantic blew them almost to the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa. Storms battered them around the Horn. Scurvy was prevalent, and the water supply dwindled as they made their way north toward Valparaiso, Chile. Gale winds actually blew them back into Antarctic waters and out into the Juan Fernández Islands, made famous by Defoe in Robinson Crusoe. Here a young mother of seven was buried in what could have been the first LDS service held in the Southern Hemisphere. She had been thrown down a hatchway in a storm and died of her injuries. After five days’ rest, the little group of pioneers sailed for Hawaii.

The Brooklyn stopped in Honolulu long enough to unload its cargo from New York. The passengers attended church services with missionaries who were serving there. They met Commodore Stockton, who informed them that the United States and Mexico were at war. He advised them to buy guns and ammunition and that Brannan should organize his men into military companies and drill them. They drilled all the way to California.

It took the Saints six weeks to travel from Honolulu to California. When they entered the Bay of San Francisco, which then was Yerba Buena, it was shrouded in fog, which, of course, is characteristic of San Francisco Bay even to this day. When the fog lifted, they were happy to see the Stars and Stripes flying. They would not have to fight. The passengers of the Brooklyn were the first colonists under the American flag. It was July 31, 1846. They had been at sea for nearly six months. Twelve deaths had occurred on the long trip. One boy, John Atlantic Burr, and one girl, Georgiana Pacific Robbins, were born at sea.

Yerba Buena was composed of nine dwellings and lay in the sand hills. The Saints faced the hardships of settlement in a raw, undeveloped land. The landing of the Brooklyn Saints doubled the population of Yerba Buena, which was renamed San Francisco six months later.

This band of pioneers established a number of firsts. The first school in California, where English was taught, was opened by Angelina Lovitt in an outbuilding of the deserted Mission Dolores. The California Star was the first newspaper in San Francisco, and Sam Brannan was its publisher. Twenty pioneers from the Brooklyn founded the first known agricultural colony in the San Joaquin Valley, called it New Hope, and planted the first wheat. Many went to work for John Sutter on his lands in the Sacramento Valley. Some of them were present when gold was discovered, and many went to the goldfields. Some of the Brooklyn Saints joined forces with the Mormon Battalion men who had been released from their service and were making their way back to Utah. Some remained in the Bay Area. They built the first public school in California. They established a ferry that served Fremont, San Francisco, and Sacramento. They founded a township named Brooklyn, which was later incorporated into the city of Oakland. Others began farming near Mission San Jose and in southern Alameda County. Some settled as far away as San Bernardino.

It is certainly proper for us to recognize and salute the Saints of the Brooklyn who came to California. Theirs was a journey that probably contained as many hardships as were encountered by most of the pioneers who came overland.

Switch channels with me to a scene on a Saturday night in a ranch home, where a boy who has just answered the telephone nervously approaches his mother. “Mom,” he says, “Bob is on the phone. He and his dad and Tom and his dad are going snowmobiling and shooting tomorrow morning, and they want to know if I can go with them.”

The mother seems startled and uncertain. She is strongly tempted to respond sharply, reminding her boy that he has duties on Sunday morning, that in their family they go to church together, and that when Dad returns later that night he will not consider such a thing. But, instead, she says, “Richard, you are twelve years old. You hold the priesthood. I am sure Dad would want you to make up your own mind and answer Bob yourself.”

The boy goes back to the telephone, and the mother goes to her room and prays their son will give the right answer. Nothing more is said. On Sunday morning the boy and his parents go into town to church, park in the lot across the street, and are crossing, arm-in-arm, when a pickup truck passes. Two men and two boys wave to Richard as they pass. He pauses a moment and says, “Gee, I wish …” The mother catches her breath; then Richard finishes: “I wish I had been able to talk Bob and Tom into coming to priesthood meeting this morning.”

The mother, telling the story, thanks the Lord for this choice boy and his personal decision to do the right thing. Then she weeps as she explains how important that was to all of them. You see, their son was killed in a farm accident that week.

The example Belle set for her family has made a big impression on her youngest sister, Wong Cho Ho—who goes by the English name of Rambo—and her younger brother, Wong Wah Kan (Simon), both of whom are now teenagers.
“Before I was a member, I’d always notice Belle,” says Simon, who was baptized in 1992. “She wasn’t lazy. Every Sunday she’d get up and go to church. When Belle was a missionary, she was a good example to my family and she helped us.”
Rambo also talked about the gospel with Simon and helped him with his decision to be baptized.
And so the sharing went: Two missionaries talked to Belle. Belle joined the Church and began fellowshipping Rambo. Rambo was baptized and began talking about the gospel with Agnes and Simon. Agnes and Simon were baptized, and they were followed by Mandy, the Wongs’ oldest daughter, and May, Angela, and their parents.
Simon likes to think back to the time when he began seriously investigating the gospel. He remembers praying for the first time. “I didn’t know how to pray or what I should say,” he remembers. “But I always felt good when I prayed.”
Before Simon joined the Church, Sundays were reserved for rest and relaxation. He would generally sleep in, then get up and play soccer with his friends. These days, his friends don’t even bother asking him to play games on the Sabbath. “I’ve already told them I don’t do that, and they understand why I don’t and what I do instead,” he says. Sundays for Simon generally consist of attending church meetings and reading the scriptures. “I love studying in the Book of Mormon—especially about Lehi and the faith he had. My own faith isn’t great, so it’s good for me to read about someone who was so strong.”

“We do try to have some fun with it. The other day, Sonny told me to go say hi to a man because he looked like a former member of our branch. When I walked up to him, I discovered that Sonny was teasing me. The man was a stranger. There was this awkward moment, and then I just said, ‘You look like a friend I once knew. He was a member of my church. Have you ever heard of the Mormon Church?’ It turns out he used to be a member. We got into a discussion about faith, and I invited him to church. And then he said, ‘You know, I just got out of the hospital, and here you are, this angel, inviting me back to church.’ If I hadn’t opened my mouth, I wouldn’t have known he’d been in the hospital and needed to reconnect with the Church.”

My mid-teens were years when there was a confluence of conditions that tried and vexed me. Those are years when peer approval weighs so heavily. I found myself contending with shortness of stature, shyness, a home with outdoor plumbing, and a 4-H pig project, each of which had by then become an embarrassment. The periodic pain can be smiled at now but was real enough then. Programmed by doting uncles (and myself) in early childhood to love basketball and to aspire to be all-state, I had (until this period) been more adept at basketball than most peers. Soon I started not making the first string, then the second, and then the squad. It was a bitter pill. This failure (for the first time in athletic affairs) cruelly combined with other indications that I was for the first time outside that hard to define but real inner circle. It was a time of long thoughts. Somehow being at home feeding the pigs was not like working out with the team, especially when the boy down the block (whom I had helped somewhat to learn to play basketball) was where I wanted to be: he went on to be all-state, which he deserved.
During this time, I noticed that recycling regrets didn’t change reality. Pawing through the past was not productive. (This period was the time when my aspirations got diverted to the world of words, where there was a teacher who would not let me pass without genuine achievement.) Thus an insight dawned—not all at once—showing me that too much attention to what might have been actually gets in the way of what still can be.

“My story is very short. I settled on Mrs. Canfield. She’s an old friend of our family. She baby-sat us when we were little, and now she’s teaching me embroidery. She’s so warm and happy! I’d love to have her join the Church.
“It was tough deciding how to approach her. She’s very old and wise, and I didn’t want to sound like a smart-aleck.
“I stewed and fretted and finally just came right out and asked her. ‘Mrs. Canfield,’ I said, ‘would you like to learn about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?’
“She smiled kindly. ‘No, Michaelene. Churches—any church—aren’t important to me. But thank you for asking.’
“And that was that.”
“We can’t force the gospel on people,” Sister Searle said. “But you’ve given her the opportunity to choose.”
“She knows where I am, if she changes her mind,” Michaelene mused.

The story is told of a man who simply would not work. He wanted to be taken care of in every need. To his way of thinking, the Church or the government, or both, owed him a living because he had paid his taxes and his tithing. He had nothing to eat but refused to work to care for himself. Out of desperation and disgust, those who had tried to help him decided that since he would not lift a finger to sustain himself, they might as well just take him to the cemetery and let him pass on. On the way to the cemetery, one man said, “We can’t do this. I have some corn I will give him.”
So they explained this to the man, and he asked, “Have the husks been removed?”
They responded, “No.”
“Well, then,” he said, “drive on.”

When Israel and Elizabeth Haven Barlow left Nauvoo, Illinois, for the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, they left behind a baby boy buried in a small Nauvoo cemetery. Little James Nathaniel Barlow, their first child, had died shortly after birth in May 1841.
Israel and Elizabeth likely never expected to gaze again upon their son’s grave. But when Israel was called on a mission to England a few years later, he passed through Nauvoo. At Elizabeth’s request, he stopped to locate their son’s grave and move it to the main cemetery.
After Israel found the grave, he saw that it was decayed and broken. In a letter to his wife, Israel wrote that he decided to leave the grave and return in the future.
He had not walked more than a few feet from the grave when he heard a voice in his mind say, “Daddy, do not leave me here.” Israel returned to the grave, concluding to move his little boy after all.
As Israel lingered at the graveside, he told Elizabeth, “I felt a desire to dedicate myself and all that I might call mine into the hands of the Lord that I might be counted worthy to come forth with [James] in the morning of the First Resurrection.”
Israel’s devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ and honoring sacred covenants make eternal life—that grandest of all blessings—possible for him and bless his family—both ancestors and posterity.

The ringing went on and on, and Jamie finally opened his eyes. He rolled over and shut off the noisy alarm. He wanted to stay in bed, but he knew that if he didn’t get up, his mother would come get him. He needed to clean his room this morning. He swung his legs out of bed and jumped on the floor.
“Ouch!” He had banged one of his big toes on a red racing car that was on the floor. He looked around at the clothes on the floor, his train and blocks by the door, and the books on the floor of his closet.
“It just isn’t fair,” Jamie thought. “My room is always messy.” He felt frustrated. “Why can’t I keep my room clean?”
He knew that his big sister, Jill, would ask him the same question. Jill was nine, and it seemed like her room was always clean, her clothes were never on the floor, and her toys were always neatly put away on her shelves and in her toy box. Jamie couldn’t figure out how she did it.
Last week in family home evening, Mom and Dad had talked to the family about goal-setting and asked each person to set some goals for the new year. Jamie decided that his goal would be to keep his room clean. Well, it was the first week of the new year, and already he was failing. He tried and tried to keep his room clean, but it got messed up every time he played in it.
After breakfast, Jamie went back to his bedroom to clean. He decided to drive the toy train around the room to help pick up some toys. He added some blocks and toy cars to the train’s load, then he stopped by the toy box and dumped them all off. Then he stacked up a few books to make a bridge for the train to cross. Before he knew it, he was busy creating new bridges and pathways for the train. By the time Mom called him for lunch, he still hadn’t finished cleaning his room. In fact, it looked worse than it had before! There were even more toys out, and his pajamas had joined the other clothes on the floor.
Jamie walked slowly into the kitchen, dragging his feet and sighing. Mom looked at him. “Jamie, is something bothering you?”
“Mom, I can’t keep my New Year’s goal,” Jamie admitted. “I can’t keep my room clean. I guess I am just too little.”
“Do you mean that your toys are too heavy for you to put away, or that your dresser drawers are too hard to open?” Mom asked.
“No,” Jamie answered, “I’m just too young to keep my room clean. I don’t know how Jill keeps hers clean. She must not play in it very much.”
“I don’t think that’s it.” Mom thought for a minute. “Jamie, I think you need to learn a little bit about how goals work.” She got out a box of graham crackers and a bunch of grapes, then sat down at the table next to him.
“Jamie, what things need to be done to have a clean room?”
He thought for a minute. “Well, my toys need to be put away, and my books should be on the bookshelf. My bed should be made, and my clothes should be in the closet.”
As Jamie named each item, his mom placed a graham cracker on the table. The crackers formed a line.
“And when all of these things are done, your room is clean. Right?”
“Right.” Jamie answered. Mom placed a grape at the top of the line of graham crackers. The graham crackers looked like a pathway leading to the grape.
“OK, Jamie, pretend that the grape is your goal—keeping your room clean—and the graham crackers are things you have to do to reach your goal.” She took one of the crackers away. “What happens if one of these things isn’t done?”
“The crackers don’t reach the grape anymore.” Jamie thought for a minute more. “And I can’t reach my goal.”
“That’s right. See, all it takes to reach a big goal is doing a bunch of little tasks all together. But it’s hard to accomplish your goal if you don’t know what little steps you have to take.” Mom picked up all of the graham crackers and handed them to Jamie. Then she helped him decide what he needed to do to keep his room clean.
“I can make my bed as soon as I get up in the morning,” Jamie said. He put down one cracker. “I can put my books away after I read them.” He put down another cracker. “I can put my toys away after I finish playing with them.” He added another cracker to the line. “And I can put my clothes away after I take them off.” The graham crackers now reached the grape.
“If I do each of these things, one at a time, soon I will reach my goal!” Jamie said excitedly. He grabbed the grape and tossed it into his mouth.
After lunch, Mom and Jamie made pictures of the things he had to do to keep his room clean. They hung the pictures on the back of his bedroom door to remind him. Then Mom helped Jamie clean his room.
The next day, the pictures helped Jamie remember to make his bed before breakfast and to put away his pajamas instead of leaving them on the floor. Jamie smiled. It was nice to have a clean room, but it was even better to know that he could keep it clean all by himself.

On Christmas Eve last year, my family went to church early. I asked my dad if I could play the piano before sacrament meeting started. I played every Christmas song I could. When I was done, everyone thanked me for the music I played. I felt good inside my heart throughout the whole meeting. I was happy to do service on Christmas Eve and make so many people happy.
Audrey W., age 10, New Mexico, USA

A wise first step is to guide each deacon to a spiritual awareness of the sacredness of his ordained calling. In one ward, this lesson was effectively taught pertaining to the collection of fast offerings.

On fast day the ward members were visited by deacons and teachers so that each family could make a contribution. The deacons were a bit disgruntled, having to arise earlier than usual to fulfill this assignment.

The inspiration came for the bishopric to take a busload of the deacons and teachers to Welfare Square here in Salt Lake City. Here they saw needy children receiving new shoes and other items of clothing. Here they witnessed empty baskets being filled with groceries. There was no money exchanged. One brief comment was made: “Young men, this is what the money you collect on fast day provides—even food, clothing, and shelter.” The Aaronic Priesthood young men smiled more, stepped higher, and served with a willing mind in the filling of their assignments.

From her bedroom window, Sandra spied a robin tugging at a worm. She ran to the kitchen and told her mother, “There’s a robin in the yard, and I’m going to catch it!”
Sandra scurried out the door and bounded toward the robin. The bird flew away. Sandra thought, I didn’t go fast enough. So when the robin landed in the yard again, Sandra raced as fast as her legs would go. But the robin was in the air before Sandra got halfway to it.
Sandra pushed her hands into her pockets. If I could fly, I could catch that robin, she thought.
Seeing it perched in the tree, she called, “Here, birdie. Here, robin.”
But the robin just flew to a higher branch, where Sandra couldn’t see it at all. Sandra was disappointed. She sat under the tree and squeezed her eyes shut and said, “Heavenly Father, please help me. I just want to see the pretty robin up close. I won’t hurt it, I promise.
Opening her eyes again, Sandra thought, Maybe if I had a worm, that robin would come to get it.
Sandra used her sandbox shovel to dig in the dirt near the porch steps. She turned the dirt over, as she’d seen Daddy do, and found a small, wriggly worm. Sandra picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand. Then she went over to the tree and held out her hand and called, “Here’s a worm, robin! Come and get it.”
But the robin didn’t come.
Sandra sat down on the porch step. She tossed the worm to the ground. A tear ran down her cheek.
Just then the robin landed in the yard. Sandra just sat there. She knew that if she moved, it would fly away again.
The robin hopped closer. Sandra held her breath as it hopped very close to her, snatched the worm, and flew away.
Sandra clapped her hands and laughed out loud. Heavenly Father had answered her prayer. She couldn’t catch a bird, but she could watch it up close if she sat very still and was very quiet. She laughed again and went inside to tell her mother.

At another baptism, a young girl of 14, with tears in her eyes, hugs the sister missionary who has taught her the gospel. Even though this missionary had to leave her home thousands of miles away to serve a mission, it has been worth it.
Two missionary stories with the same emotion and the same sacrifice. It may be surprising to learn they took place 150 years and an ocean apart. The first missionary was Addison Pratt, who baptized in 1844 the first members of the Church in the Pacific not far from Tahiti. The second missionary was Barbara Nauta, a native Tahitian, who left her island home to serve a mission in Canada in 1993.
Just like those missionaries 150 years ago, young Tahitians look to the Lord to guide them as they serve. For example, Barbara Nauta, who grew up in Tahiti, served in the Canada Toronto Mission. She said investigators in Canada were amazed that she had left her warm Pacific island to learn another language (Barbara, who speaks French and Tahitian, had to learn English) and suffer in cold and snow. They asked her why. “I told them the Lord sent me here,” she says.

“What we wanted,” said President Michael Moulton of the Heber City Utah East Stake, “was some kind of meaningful project which would unite the youth of the stake for a few days of dedicated, all-consuming service.” Then he made it even tougher. “It should not only benefit the community, but teach our youth some basic skill.”
So should we have them construct log cabins, do plumbing, or lay brick? Or should we call in the Peace Corps?
The answer came when one of the leaders contacted Uinta National Forest officials, who suggested we organize a Touch America Project, which allows volunteers to learn about America’s natural resources by working under the direction of rangers on public lands. Ranger Roy H. Daniels said that to help with flood control, a rock wall needed to be built at Whiskey Springs picnic area in Daniels Canyon, before spring runoff began.
Youth leaders were called from each of the six wards in the stake. Footings were poured with donated concrete. Sand was hauled to the site, rocks were gathered, and soon portable mixers were stirring cement. With the help of a professional stone mason and a seminary teacher with previous cement experience, the youth began building the wall.
Work progressed over a number of successive Saturdays. The Forest Service was so pleased they asked us to extend the wall an extra hundred feet. Thanks to dry weather, the runoff was lower and later than usual, and we continued working through the end of May. On May 30 the final stones were laid, a cement cap was smoothed in place, and the project was completed.
I asked Kenneth Critchfield, of the Daniel Ward, how he felt about working on the project.
“I graduated from high school last night,” Ken said, looking a little bleary-eyed. “But I wouldn’t have slept in and missed this. I got here at 7:00 A.M. I just love the way this wall looks.”
If constructed professionally, the wall would have cost more than $15,000. Instead, it cost only time and labor. And it is now a monument to the youth of our stake. Imagine how they will feel when they bring their children here and tell them, “I helped build the wall.”

Nicholas Ofosu-Hene was a young policeman assigned to guard an LDS meetinghouse during the freeze. His duty was to watch over the building at night. When Nicholas first arrived at the meetinghouse, he saw that things had been scattered around, with papers, books, and furniture in disarray. In the midst of this disorder, he saw a copy of the Book of Mormon. He tried ignoring the book because he had been told that it was evil. But he felt strangely attracted to it. Finally, Nicholas could ignore the book no longer. He picked it up. He felt impelled to start reading it. He read through the night, tears running down his cheeks as he read.
The first time he picked it up, he read all of 1 Nephi. The second time, he read all of 2 Nephi. When he got to 2 Nephi chapter 25, he read the following: “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.”
At that point, Nicholas felt the Spirit so strongly that he started sobbing. He realized that in the course of his reading he had received several spiritual promptings that this book was scripture, the most correct he had ever read. He realized that the Latter-day Saints, contrary to what he had heard, strongly believe in Jesus Christ. After the freeze ended and missionaries returned to Ghana, Nicholas, his wife, and his children joined the Church. When I saw him last year, he was a police commander and was serving as the president of the Tamale Ghana District of the Church. He says: “The Church has transformed my life. … I thank the Almighty God for leading me into this gospel.”

The boy you are encouraging may seem too timid to be a powerful priesthood servant. Another one of my sons was so shy as a little boy that he wouldn’t walk into a store and talk to a clerk. He was too afraid. I worried as I prayed over his priesthood future. I thought of him in the mission field—that didn’t sound promising. I was led to a scripture in Proverbs: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.”2

I carved “Bold as a Lion” on his board, beneath an image of a large lion’s head roaring. On his mission and in the years that followed, he fulfilled the hope in my carving. My once-shy son preached the gospel with great conviction and faced dangers with bravery. He was magnified in his responsibilities to represent the Lord.

President David O. McKay and President Harold B. Lee used to relate an incident from the life of Bishop John Wells that is instructive to all of us. Bishop Wells was responsible for many Church reports and so had to devote a great deal of his time to details and statistics.
A son of Bishop and Sister Wells was killed in a railroad accident in Salt Lake canyon. He was run over by a freight train. Sister Wells could not be comforted at the loss. She felt no relief from her sorrow during the funeral and continued her mourning after her son’s burial. Bishop Wells was concerned for her health, as she was in a state of deep anguish.
One day, soon after the funeral, Sister Wells was lying on her bed in a state of mourning. The son appeared to her and said, “Mother, do not mourn, do not cry. I am all right.”
He then told her how the accident took place. Apparently there had been some question about how the accident had happened because the young man was an experienced railroad man. But he told his mother that it was clearly an accident.
Now note this: He also told her that as soon as he realized that he was beyond the mortal world, he had tried to reach his father but could not. His father was so busy with the details of his work that he could not respond to the promptings of the Spirit. Therefore, the son had come to his mother.
He then said, “Tell Father that all is well with me, and I want you not to mourn any more.” (See David O. McKay, Gospel Ideals, Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953, pages 525–26.)
President McKay and President Lee used this experience to teach that we must always be responsive to the whisperings of the Spirit. These promptings most often come when we are not under the pressure of appointments and when we are not caught up in the worries of day-to-day life.

One evening when it was raining, the family sat around the fireside when suddenly a thought came to me. “Father,” I said, a bit boldly for a young boy, “tell us about our grandparents on your side of the family. We have seen our grandparents on Mam’s side but we have not heard anything about our other grandparents.”

Father stared into the fire for a few moments before answering. “Thomas,” he said, “that’s a good question, but I don’t know much about my father. My mother, who died a few years ago, told me that he died just after I was born, and I have never visited his grave. Someday I must do that.” Sometime later Father announced he was taking a day to go visiting out in the country. There was nothing unusual about this as he had relatives who lived in a little cottage in a village a few kilometers away.

When he returned home that night, we could tell by his actions that something was wrong. A few days later, he called the family together and told us what he had learned.

He had visited an old church in a village called Llanviangel and there he had found the record of his father and of his own birth. This was the story that our father told us:

In a little coal mining village up the valley a girl was born to his grandparents. They named her Rhonwen. When she was sixteen years old, she was sent to work as a servant for a rich family. Before a year had passed, she returned home expecting a baby. Her wealthy employer had taken advantage of her innocence. When he found she was pregnant he paid her two months’ salary and sent her home.

Rhonwen married one of the young men of the village before the baby was born. She failed to have him christened or his birth recorded, and he grew up with the name of Rhonwen’s husband who was killed in a coal mine disaster just after the child was born.

The discovery of the circumstances of his birth, which had later been recorded by the minister of the church, changed our father’s life. He lost interest in his garden and in his personal appearance. Instead of being his happy self, he became morose and moody.

Then one day, Mam, who normally was as gentle as an angel, made Father sit down in his favorite chair. Her gentleness was gone and in her eyes there was a bit of fire. “Gwyllam [William],” she said, “you are acting like a fool. Just because a wicked man took advantage of a young girl and a child was born, you are cursing yourself and putting the curse on all your family. It was God that gave you birth and I saw in you a fine man whom I loved dearly and married.”

The fire was still in her eyes as she spoke again. “Now I will not stand by and see you destroy yourself and us.”

She put her arms around his neck and in a voice that was now touched with love she said, “Oh my Gwyllam, we cannot live in the past. We have each other, our children and our love. Someone sinned but it was not you. Besides, we have the gospel and you hold the priesthood of God. Can we ask for more?”

It was then the agony in his heart burst forth and the tears came—tears that washed away the bitterness and cleansed his mind. From that day on he became our beloved father again. We resumed our walks in the hills and he tended his garden and flowers.