Gospel Story Finder

In Italy there lives a Brother Luigi Pittino, who, with other European Saints, attended the Munich conference. For 17 years Brother Pittino had met on Sunday with one or two other Saints. They would have an opening prayer, read and discuss the scriptures, and partake of the sacrament. In these last few years they were all in their 70s and 80s. There was loneliness and a feeling of isolation. Imagine the thrill for Brother Pittino to sit with 14,000 other Saints at the Munich conference!

One winter evening when I was about five or six years old, my father took me for a walk downtown. This was during the depression, when jobs were few and many homeless, hungry people were on the streets. My father and I were looking at all the store windows as we walked, and soon we found ourselves standing in front of the window of a sporting goods store. It was full of bright things that would catch every boy’s fancy—things like fishing lures and pocketknives for whittling.
A shabbily dressed boy was standing near us, looking longingly into the window. I didn’t pay much attention to him, but my father went over and spoke with him briefly, then put his hand on his shoulder and led him inside the store. I watched as he took the boy to a showcase of pocketknives, told him to pick one out, then paid the shopkeeper for the knife.
I didn’t get a pocketknife that day, but I did get a lesson. At the time, I felt let down, as a little boy would feel when the gift he thinks is his goes to someone else. But as my father and I walked away from the store, he said, “You have me. He doesn’t have anybody.” Later I realized how generous and how sensitive to the needs of others my father was.

He has to laugh a little when he recalls one of his camping experiences as Scoutmaster of the Spring Lake (Utah) Troop. “We enjoyed a very nice overnight camp by the shores of Utah Lake. Our transportation on that occasion was a wagon and two horses provided by a local farmer. Not being a farmer myself, I left the details to the assistant Scoutmaster. The result was fine for the Scouts, but not so good for the horses—we forgot to provide any hay for them!”

Illustration by Roger Motzkus
I stared out the window as I washed my hands in the kitchen sink. It was a very warm summer day and the birds were singing. The sun was bright and the grass was green. I could see the little dirt road that ran down the hill past our house to the fields, which were flooded again. This happened all the time when the water was let into the canal so the farmers could water.
I was just about to return to my afternoon hideout in my room when I got a sudden feeling that I should go play with my brothers. And even though I couldn’t hear them and I hadn’t seen them for hours, somehow I knew they were outside playing in the water.
Now, I really like my brothers. Blake was 5, and Morgan was almost 4. And even though I enjoyed spending time with them, I didn’t usually seek them out to play. But this time, I knew I needed to.
As I left the house, heading toward the flooded road and the ditch beyond, my main concern was that I didn’t want to get wet. A small children’s tricycle was sitting next to the road, so I used it like a scooter to begin my journey through the water.
The dirt road that led to the neighbor’s field ran on top of a culvert, a drainage pipe that carried water underneath the road and let the water out into the ditch on the other side. As I was making my way toward the culvert, I heard yelling and instantly knew I had to get there fast! Abandoning the tricycle, I ran through the water to the ditch. As the water drained through the culvert, it made a whirlpool. It was an impressive sight. But when I saw my brothers, I gasped.
Morgan had been sucked in! Blake was standing on one side of the culvert’s opening and Travis, our cousin who was the same age as Blake, was standing on the other side. The water was swirling around their legs and each of them was grasping one of Morgan’s hands. Only Morgan’s head and arms were above water. Only the desperate grips of two small boys were keeping him from being swept into the culvert.
Morgan went under the water. Blake and Travis pulled with all their might and were able to bring him up just far enough that his head came out of the water again. Thoughts of confusion and panic were rushing through my head. The one thing I remember thinking was that it was going to be hard to pull Morgan out of the water, like pulling your foot out of mud that’s halfway to your knees. But when I grabbed him and pulled, it was more like pulling a hot knife out of butter. He just slid out of the water.
The current from the whirlpool was so strong that it had pulled off Morgan’s shoes and socks. I bundled him up in the other boys’ shirts and laid him in a wagon and took him home.
After we got home and told Mom what happened, I went back down to the ditch to get Morgan’s stuff. What I saw there made my heart stop. On the other end of the culvert was a grate that had been welded on. It was there to keep anything other than water from leaving the culvert. The grate was full of garbage, and nothing bigger than a leaf was getting through. Had Morgan been pulled into the culvert, he wouldn’t have come out. He would have been stopped by that grate and drowned.
I know it was the Holy Ghost who gave me the impression to go play with my brothers that day, and it was because of the Holy Ghost that I knew where my brothers were. I’m thankful I have the Holy Ghost with me to help protect me and those I love. And I’m thankful I listened when I was inspired to go play with my brothers.

I walked into the house, exhausted. It had been a long day, and I was starving. I sat at the table while my mom made dinner, telling her everything I had done that day. All of a sudden my little sister, Cherri, was at my side. She twisted her hands together nervously and didn’t quite look at me.
“What happened?” I asked, not feeling very sympathetic.
“You know your pearl necklace?” she replied in a small voice. “Well, I was playing with it, and it broke.”
A million thoughts raced through my head. How many times had I told her not to play in my room or with my things? The necklace was hardly important, but that was beside the point. She had ignored my warnings one too many times.
Somehow I managed to bite my tongue, and an exasperated sigh escaped my lips. “Come on, show me where it is,” I said.
She took my hand and led me to my room. Pearls littered the floor, which wasn’t exactly clean to begin with.
“What have I told you about playing in my room, Cherri?”
“Not to,” she mumbled.
“Okay, then, why did you?” I pressed.
She just shrugged her little shoulders and looked at the floor. “I’m really sorry,” she said.
“Help me clean them up, and don’t play in here again,” I said. She did so and left the room, and I put the incident behind me.
The next day, I came home to an ecstatic Cherri. She grabbed my hand, jumping up and down. “I have something for you!” she said. “Sit here on the couch and I’ll be right back.”
She raced downstairs and returned a few minutes later cradling something in her hands. “Here, I made it for you all by myself,” she said proudly. “Mom didn’t even help me at all!”
She held out her little arms so I could see what she had made. Laying in her hands was a scrap of frayed black ribbon strung with meticulously arranged yellow and white plastic beads.
“It’s a necklace!” she said, jumping up and down again. “I made it for you because I broke your other one. Do you like it?”
I smiled. The necklace was a bit tacky, and yet it was beautiful. “Yes, Cherri, I love it.” I put it on and wore it the rest of the day to show my appreciation. I was so glad that I hadn’t yelled at my sister in anger and made her feel like I didn’t love her.
I kept her little token of restitution in my drawer, a constant reminder that a pearl necklace could never be as special or beautiful as my frayed black ribbon with yellow and white plastic beads from a precious younger sister.

More than a year after Nancy and I were baptized, she began dating a young man named Luke. He had a bubbly personality and seemed to radiate love and excitement. At the time Nancy met him, he was looking for direction in his life. When Nancy told him about the gospel, he was eager to take the missionary discussions. His sister, Leonarda, also was interested in being taught.
Although Luke and Leonarda agreed with most of what the missionaries taught them, they had trouble accepting that Joseph Smith was a prophet. The missionaries told them that once they gained a testimony of Joseph Smith, then everything else—the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the gospel, and the gospel principles taught by the prophets—would fall into place.
When Luke and Leonarda met with the elders again, the discussion centered on Joseph Smith. One of the elders suggested that we should each take a turn asking Heavenly Father if Joseph Smith was a prophet and then listen silently for a minute for the answer.
I won’t forget the feeling of peace that came into that room and touched each of our hearts as the Spirit bore witness to each of us that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord. Luke accepted baptism, and Leonarda was baptized a few years later with her parents’ approval.

Let me share a personal example. My parents regularly lived and taught the gospel in our home. I knew that they would stand for the Lord in any situation. I knew that my mother was comfortable with talking to our Heavenly Father through prayer and in listening to promptings from the Holy Ghost. I knew that my dad was a righteous priesthood holder. In addition to him leading family gospel discussions and teaching important lessons, I often saw him as he took time for his personal scripture study.

I grew up on a farm that was just large enough to teach us how to work hard but small enough that my dad didn't farm full time, even though, at times, it seemed as though we did. One summer, when I was in my early teens, we were having a problem with some of our cows crossing the river to a neighbor's field. My dad decided to build a fence in the river bottoms. He borrowed a small bulldozer from a neighbor. My brother and I took our tractor and we all went across one channel of the river to clear a path for the fence.

At one point, the tractor had been left behind and my brother and I were both standing on a little platform on the back of the bulldozer as my dad was operating it. We would periodically jump off the bulldozer and clear off what remained on the fence path. As my dad was backing up to go at a tree at a different angle, I swung around to look back. As I did, the bulldozer track caught my leg and flipped me to the ground with the track rolling up my leg. Fortunately, my dad stopped the bulldozer quickly and moved it forward. He quickly sent my brother for the tractor and came down to pick me up. Now, can you imagine what must have been his thoughts? It wasn't his fault, but I can imagine him feeling terrible. He asked me how I was and I immediately asked, "Dad, can you give me a blessing?" My dad immediately put his hands on my head and gave me a priesthood blessing.

My brother got there shortly thereafter with the tractor. My dad cradled me in his arms and drove the tractor back across the channel. Back home, my mother had been working on things around the house. She felt something had gone wrong and immediately jumped in a vehicle to drive to the edge of the river bottom and was there when we got out of the trees. I won't take the time to talk about the broken bones, the skin graft, etc. but the point is that I saw and knew from my parents' example to call upon the Lord.

As a young man, Brother Vern Crowley said he learned something of the crucial lesson the Prophet Joseph had taught the early Saints in Nauvoo when he told them to “love others, even our enemies as well as friends.” This is a good lesson for each of us.

After his father became ill, Vern Crowley took responsibility for running the family wrecking yard although he was only fifteen years of age. Some customers occasionally took unfair advantage of the young man, and parts were disappearing from the lot overnight. Vern was angry and vowed to catch someone and make an example of him. Vengeance would be his.

Just after his father had started to recover from his illness, Vern was making his rounds of the yard one night at closing time. It was nearly dark. In a distant corner of the property, he caught sight of someone carrying a large piece of machinery toward the back fence. He ran like a champion athlete and caught the young thief. His first thought was to take out his frustrations with his fists and then drag the boy to the front office and call the police. His heart was full of anger and vengeance. He had caught his thief, and he intended to get his just dues.

Out of nowhere, Vern’s father came along, put his weak and infirm hand on his son’s shoulder, and said, “I see you’re a bit upset, Vern. Can I handle this?” He then walked over to the young would-be thief and put his arm around his shoulder, looked him in the eye for a moment, and said, “Son, tell me, why are you doing this? Why were you trying to steal that transmission?” Then Mr. Crowley started walking toward the office with his arm around the boy, asking questions about the young man’s car problems as they walked. By the time they had arrived at the office, the father said, “Well, I think your clutch is gone and that’s causing your problem.”

In the meantime, Vern was fuming. “Who cares about his clutch?” he thought. “Let’s call the police and get this over with.” But his father just kept talking. “Vern, get him a clutch. Get him a throwout bearing too. And get him a pressure plate. That should take care of it.” The father handed all of the parts to the young man who had attempted robbery and said, “Take these. And here’s the transmission, too. You don’t have to steal, young man. Just ask for it. There’s a way out of every problem. People are willing to help.”

Brother Vern Crowley said he learned an everlasting lesson in love that day. The young man came back to the lot often. Voluntarily, month by month, he paid for all of the parts Vic Crowley had given him, including the transmission. During those visits he asked Vern why his dad was the way he was and why he did what he did. Vern told him something of their Latter-day Saint beliefs and how much his father loved the Lord and loved people. Eventually the would-be thief was baptized. Vern later said, “It’s hard now to describe the feelings I had and what I went through in that experience. I, too, was young. I had caught my crook. I was going to extract the utmost penalty. But my father taught me a different way.”

When disaster struck in Oklahoma City last April, rescue workers were on the scene almost immediately. Many workers, who gave up regard for personal safety, made one request. They wanted some candy—it helped to keep their energy up while they were working.
Laurels in the Choctaw Ward, Oklahoma South Stake, went to work, stringing candy “leis” together for the workers to wear around their necks. Other leis were given to bomb victim’s families as a symbol of the love and prayers the Laurels were sending to all the people involved.
“We took the leis to the hospital and met a man whose wife and two sons had been hurt in the bombing. Our leis let them know they were loved and we were behind them,” says Laurel Rebecca Nevin.

Recently in the small village of Ubon, Thailand, a member family by the name of Tan was beset with what seemed to be insurmountable problems. The father had lost his job, they had no money, the children were sick and malnourished. They were being forced to remove their humble home from the government land upon which it was built, and they had no place to go.
At this point a fine priesthood leader, who had been using welfare services missionaries as a resource, stepped in and averted what could otherwise have been a tragic situation. Under his guidance and with the assistance of all the branch members, a piece of land was obtained, and the Tan family home was dismantled, transported, and rebuilt. Brother Tan began farming the land and started a family produce business which is now flourishing. Some hard work, dedication, and love from local leaders and members, aided by the suggestions of welfare services missionaries, caused a miracle for one family and a great learning and growing experience for a whole branch.

When our youngest daughter was about four years of age, I came home from hospital duties quite late one evening. I found my dear wife to be very weary. I don’t know why. She only had nine children underfoot all day. So I offered to get our four-year-old ready for bed. I began to give the orders: “Take off your clothes; hang them up; put on your pajamas; brush your teeth; say your prayers” and so on, commanding in a manner befitting a tough sergeant in the army. Suddenly she cocked her head to one side, looked at me with a wistful eye, and said, “Daddy, do you own me?”

She taught me an important lesson. I was using coercive methods on this sweet soul. To rule children by force is the technique of Satan, not of the Savior. No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

A few years ago following general conference, our four-year-old grandson Andrew asked his mother, “Mommy, is Jesus counting on me?” His mother answered, “Oh, yes, Andrew, Jesus is counting on you. He wants you to obey Mom and Dad, to do what is right, and especially to be kind to your little brother, Benny.” This four-year-old thought about that for a few moments and said, “Mommy, tell Him not to count on me!”
Fortunately, by the time Andrew receives the Aaronic Priesthood, he will have come to know that Jesus is counting on him.

During my final two years of schooling to become a dentist, I had the privilege of being taught weekly by one of the world’s foremost maxillary-facial surgeons. His personal preparation and training had been long and intense. After receiving his dental degree, he had received additional degrees in orthodontics, oral surgery, plastic surgery, and pathology. Because of his renowned ability, he was sought after by people from many parts of the world to repair mouths and faces following traumatic accidents, or to remove destructive tumors that left faces deformed and in need of his talents at facial reconstruction.
We had weekly seminars with this noted surgeon. They were held in the medical theater, where the dental students could view a patient’s particular disorder and see the results achieved following the surgical correction. In the sessions before the treatment, the clinical and laboratory findings were presented, and the possible cause or causative agents that might have contributed to the malady were discussed.
It was interesting how often the causative agent would be one of the harmful substances that the Lord had revealed to mankind through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The fact that the Lord had revealed the Word of Wisdom—with all its important counsel on the various substances that are beneficial, as well as those that are harmful to our bodies—long before that knowledge was taught by the medical community, has been a great testimony to me of the calling of Joseph Smith as the Lord’s prophet of the Restoration.
During those lecture sessions, I could have closed my eyes and imagined that I was seated in one of our Church meetings being taught about the blessings of living the Word of Wisdom. At almost every session this noted surgeon would vigorously denounce tobacco because of its harmful effects, and we witnessed it before our very eyes.
At that time evidence identifying smoking as a major cause of lung cancer was being documented. However, little was published about tobacco as a major cause of mouth and throat cancer. There in that theater as a dental student, I saw the devastating effects of cancer of the mouth and face, which were attributed not only to smoking but also to chewing tobacco. Keeping that powerful irritant in contact with the mouth tissue resulted many times in disfiguring types of facial tumors.
“And again, tobacco is Not for the Body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man” (D&C 89:8).
Alcohol was also condemned during those sessions as an irritant to the delicate tissues of the mouth and throat, causing other types of tumors.
“And, again, strong drinks are not for the belly, but for the washing of your bodies” (D&C 89:7).
Tea and coffee were discussed, not only because of their adverse chemical effects on the body, but also because of the temperature of the drinks. The drinks were often taken so hot that, without realizing it, many individuals were drinking liquids close to the boiling temperature. Those detrimental effects were observed.
“And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly” (D&C 89:9).
But why do these substances act as they do? Why does one person contract an infirmity, and another in the same situation and environment never have a problem?
Our renowned instructor explained that under normal conditions, the cells behave in a normal manner; however, certain factors can trigger the cells to go out of control. These cells then become fast-growing and destructive tumors that can disfigure and threaten life. The sensitivity level at which the cells respond to the triggering factor, or T-Factor as he called it, depends on the inherent nature of the individual. Some people are very sensitive, so just a small stimulus would cause the change, while other individuals appear to be more resistant. This inherent level at which the cells can be triggered to change could explain why some people live long and seemingly trouble free, while others are affected easily and early in life.
With this understanding, perhaps we might understand better the meaning of the words from the Word of Wisdom, “adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints” (D&C 89:3). For a person with a low level of resistance to a harmful substance, just one encounter may trigger unwanted and dangerous cellular changes.
It is interesting how far the medical community has come in vindicating the words of a prophet who revealed that great health law, the Word of Wisdom, when its principles were not very popular.
As a young dental student, I was extremely impressed with the knowledge of this outstanding maxillary-facial surgeon. He seemed to have great knowledge, and I was amazed with his skill. However, in reality, his knowledge was just a mite in comparison with the knowledge of the Great Physician—the one who healed the lepers, raised Lazarus from the dead, and made the blind to see. The Word of Wisdom is from Him, and medical science is just barely catching up.

The comforting bear was the result of a project organized by Micki Adams, West Point Stake Young Women president, and Annice Nixon, her second counselor. After reading in a newspaper of a similar project in another community, they talked with Captain K. D. Simpson of their local sheriff’s department with the idea of placing teddy bears with the sheriff’s paramedic and patrol units.
The bears would be helpful, Captain Simpson told them, because children are involved in approximately 45 percent of all the calls for services by his department.
Knowing how anxious children are when confronting a policeman or a paramedic, the young women of the stake decided, “to give the children something to focus on beside their pain,” Sister Adams said. “We wanted to give them something to hold on to and to love.”
Consequently, at a stake Young Women meeting, work began on cutting out, sewing, stuffing, and hand finishing more than 200 bears.
Lori Ellsworth, a Beehive said, “The first bear I did was hard to make until I got used to doing it. But it was worth it because it might help someone forget their pain.”
Ninety bears were actually completed that evening. The girls took home the unfinished bears to complete in their own time.
The bears are twenty centimeters tall and made from scraps of fabric donated by some stake members. Other members donated the stuffing for the bears.
The sheriff’s department received 100 of the teddy bears. Another 100 were donated to the local hospital where they were hung on a Christmas tree so young patients could choose one for themselves.
When the paramedics or sheriffs respond to a call involving anyone under the age of ten years, they give the child a teddy bear. That’s become department policy.
Captain Simpson said, “It took two or three times for the paramedics to hand out the bears before they realized how effective they were in calming the children. Now the paramedics and sheriffs rely on the bears whenever they work with children.”

As you exercise your agency, remember, you are not alone. In addition to a kind and wise Heavenly Father, there are others who are praying for you to make wise choices. As a youth, when I would go out on a date or with my friends, I would always check in with my parents when I came home. Usually I would just knock on their door, open it and say, “I’m home,” and then go to bed. One night I came home from a date, knocked as usual, and then opened the door. As I did so, the light from the hall fell on my angel mother on her knees in prayer. And as I saw her there, I knew whom she was praying for. I have never forgotten that experience. And the knowledge that my mother still prays for me today bears me up and reminds me who I am and that I am not alone.

Abby: Hayley was 10 and I was 6 when we started.
Hayley: At first it was kind of scary because we had to audition. McKay started a little while after Abby and I began recording. Then came our brother Jacob, who still just reads for the Friend because he’s 10.
When my voice was younger I only used to read the Friend. Now I read both the Friend and New Era. We’ve all gotten better over time at enunciating things well and at making our voices go up and down to keep the sentences from all sounding the same.

Do you remember the story of him reaching out as a young bishop to someone who was not attending church?

President Monson said:

When I was called as a bishop, I recognized I was the president of the priests quorum, and I wanted to get every boy out. There was one boy that never came, and I thought to myself: “I’m sitting here with the priests. They’ve got an adviser. I’ll leave them to get the lesson from the adviser. I’m going to go find Richard Casto.” And I went over to his home. His mother and dad were home, and they said he was working over at the West Temple Garage.

I went over to Fifth South and West Temple, and the door was open but nobody [was] there. And so I started looking around, you know, and nobody. So I went around the back, and there was one of these old-fashioned grease pits.

And I looked down into the darkness, and I could see two eyes looking at me. He said, “You got me, Bishop. I’ll come up.” And he came up out of the grease pit.

And we had a nice little visit there together. And I said, “Richard, we need you. You have a way with people. And I want to have every priest in attendance. Will you come?” He said, “I’ll come.” And he came.

Years later, Richard Casto shared what happened after that incident:

After that I served a mission. I was sealed to my wife in the temple. We have five great children—two of them have served missions. I’ve served as a bishop twice. My children have a great love for him, and my wife has a great love for him because of what he did for me. It’s probably one of the greatest blessings that I had ever received in my life.14

The bugle blared, and Elizabeth knew it was time for morning prayers. The night had seemed so short, and her weary little body shook in the chilly autumn air. She quickly pulled her long ragged dress over her head and tugged her worn boots over her tired feet. Mother met her with little John, and together they walked to the center of the handcart circle where her father, John, stood with his bugle.
Father was the bugler for the company. Each morning he called the company to prayer. Afterward, his bugle call started the carts on the trail. At night he called them to a halt. It was also his job to ration out the flour.
How sad he looks today, Elizabeth thought as she longed for the time when things would be nice again. Her body was always tired now, and her stomach was never full.
Everyone had been happy that day in August when Edward Martin had led this band of 576 handcart-pulling Saints on the first leg of their overland journey to Zion. They were so confident the Lord would protect them that they ignored President Brigham Young’s advice to start their journey early in the warm season with carts made of well-seasoned wood.
Because of a misunderstanding between English and American agents, the handcarts for the last two companies, headed by Captains Martin and Willie, had not been ready when the immigrants arrived in Iowa City from England. Ignoring warnings from experienced frontiersmen, the enthusiastic Saints stocked their small boxlike carts with flour, bedding, cooking utensils, and clothing for the long journey. Only seventeen pounds of personal belongings were allowed for each person; even that would be difficult to push and pull up steep hills and through cold rivers.
The green wood the carts were made from soon dried out on the long, hot journey and fell apart. When supplies were shifted to other carts, badly needed clothing and bedding were discarded.
The sound of sobs and sighs brought Elizabeth’s thoughts back to the present. Elizabeth could see tears running down her father’s face, too, as he reported to the company that he had just rationed out the last of the flour. Elizabeth knew that the Lord had always taken care of them before, and she prayed that somehow they would be taken care of now.
Gathering their strength, the pioneers pushed forward, and the faint strains of a familiar hymn could be heard above the creaking wheels of the carts. The snow that had begun to fall as they crossed the partially frozen North Platte River had turned into a blizzard. Father took Elizabeth and John into his arms and explained to them that the exhausted Saints could no longer go on. They would rest here until the Lord found a way to take care of them.
Father and Mother took out their battered tin plates and dug away at the deep snow to make a clearing for their tent. With great effort Father pounded the tent pegs into the frozen ground. Here the family waited with uncertainty.
As the days dragged on, a number of the Saints died from hunger, cold, and exhaustion. The food supply was now completely gone. Elizabeth and the other children had begun to scavenge the area for anything they could find to eat.
One day the children wandered among the willows, eating the bark from young trees to take the edge off their hunger. Suddenly a group of horsemen appeared at the top of a nearby hill. Indians! was Elizabeth’s first thought, but the frightened children were too weak to scamper off. As the horsemen approached, Elizabeth saw that the riders were members of a rescue party. The children were happy to see them and happier still to taste the crackers they had brought. The crackers weren’t a feast, but they were enough to keep the emigrant company alive until wagons loaded with more nourishing provisions arrived four days later.
Finally Elizabeth’s tired and ragged family, together with the rest of their company, straggled into Salt Lake Valley. Word of their arrival preceded them, and Brigham Young had sent the local members home from worship meeting early. After announcing that the afternoon meeting would be omitted, President Young said, “I wish the sisters to go home and prepare to give those who have just arrived a mouthful of something to eat, and to wash them and nurse them up. You know that I would give more for a dish of pudding and milk or a baked potato and salt, were I in the situation of those persons who have just come in, than I would for all your prayers, though you were to stay here all afternoon and pray. Prayer is good, but when baked potatoes and milk are needed, prayer will not supply their place.” (Deseret News, December 10, 1856, p. 320.)
That night as Elizabeth snuggled down in a cozy warm bed at the home of one of the kind sisters, she dreamed of the delicious dinner she had just eaten. Her stomach was full for the first time in months. The aroma of warm food still clung to the air, and her eyes began to close. Elizabeth knew that prayer had seen her family safely across the long frozen plains. She thanked the Lord now for baked potatoes and milk!

My husband and I recently completed a project which to us serves as a kind of analogy for celestial family building—we built a house.
From the time when both of us were young and we didn’t even know each other, we had dream houses in mind. Mine was full of loved ones, sunshine, warmth, creativity, smells of good things cooking, and was surrounded by trees and flowers. His was a peaceful haven from the world, warm and cozy—with a fire in the fireplace, a bookcase full of books, his favorite music playing, and the smell of good things cooking. When we met and married, the building of that house came high on our list of priorities. We felt that creating our physical environment here on earth would be a wise use of our stewardship. (It was also the only way we could afford a house like we wanted.) We believed in Winston Churchill’s statement: “First we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” We spent years studying homes by the master designers and architects and looking at homes. Finally we found the ideal location for the house—and then our planning began in earnest. As we paid for the property, we drew house plans and collected ideas from books, magazines, and other homes. We kept our ideas in a folder, then a box, then several boxes.
We tried to draw our own house plans, but our drawings never quite matched the ideal in our minds, so we searched for a designer to help us. We found one who shared our ideas of what a home should be and was willing to help us plan the kind of home we wanted. In fact, because of his own special abilities, he added dimensions we could not have conceived of. Throughout the planning and building, we prayed for help and guidance, and our prayers were answered often in surprising ways.
Some builders told us we could not build the home we had in mind for the money we could afford to spend. Some told us to throw away our dreams. “A standard plan is easier and cheaper to build,” they said. But we were not interested in the easiest thing to do; we had a dream. So we decided to build it ourselves.
The time of building was exciting—and discouraging. It seemed to take forever, but finally there was a footing, a foundation, a wall. One small step at a time, the house took shape. Sometimes we made mistakes and had to do things over. Other times we had to compromise and settle for less than the ideal. Often we went back to the designer and the blueprints for clarification and help. We worked very hard day after day—sometimes doing big, impressive things like putting up a wall or nailing down a floor, but more often doing chores that didn’t show but were still important. We did much of the work ourselves, but occasionally it was necessary to hire experts who possessed skills or tools we did not have.
At last the big day arrived. We packed up our belongings and moved into our dream home. It is not quite perfect, but it is warm, full of people we love, sunshine, creativity, books, music, and the smell of good things cooking. And sometimes it is even peaceful and quiet—after midnight and before 6:00 A.M.

A few years ago, a Presbyterian minister moved into my community wanting to serve all her neighbors, not just her church congregation. As she reached out in our predominantly LDS neighborhood with friendliness, offers to help, and invitations to neighborhood parties, ward members began participating in her congregation’s service projects; together, she and neighbors of various faiths held a fundraiser that significantly helped an LDS family with dire medical expenses.
Apostle Orson F. Whitney (1855–1931) stated, “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. … It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.”3 Great things can be accomplished when good people band together. Our neighborhood minister’s efforts led to the formation of a community interfaith committee that, along with our stake Relief Society, put on a women’s conference supplying hygiene kits and books to refugee agencies. These interfaith connections then enabled stake members to help a congregation feed a large refugee gathering and to step in when another church needed additional volunteers at a homeless shelter.