Gospel Story Finder

Martin Harris had one of the finest farms in Palmyra, New York. When the time came for the Book of Mormon to be published, Martin considered mortgaging his farm to pay the printer. But there was a huge risk involved.
If Martin helped publish the Book of Mormon and it did not sell well, he would lose his farm. Martin had a hard choice to make.
Joseph Smith received a revelation telling Martin not to covet his property but to give it freely for the printing of the Book of Mormon (see Doctrine and Covenants 19:26).
This would be a sacrifice, but the Lord reminded Martin that no one has sacrificed more for God’s children than He has (see Doctrine and Covenants 19:18).
Martin mortgaged his farm, allowing the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon to be printed. President Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the First Presidency, has said, “One of Martin Harris’s greatest contributions to the Church, for which he should be honored for all time, was his financing the publication of the Book of Mormon” (“The Witness: Martin Harris,” Ensign, May 1999, 36).

I was born into a Latter-day Saint family and grew up following the Church standards as outlined in the pamphlet For the Strength of Youth. I didn’t drink, smoke, or swear; I dressed modestly, and I tried to keep the Sabbath day holy. This made me something of an oddity in my small New England town.
Though I did have a few friends who had similar standards, I had many more friends who did not. In my high school I was frequently teased about my standards and the fact that I was a Mormon. I was also the only person in my high school who could boast of living on a dairy farm, which didn’t add to my popularity. I was known as “the good Mormon farm girl,” wholesome to the core.
When I was 16 I had the opportunity to go to Ecuador for the summer as an exchange student. I looked forward to this opportunity to live in an exotic location, but some of my excitement was reserved for meeting new people who wouldn’t know I was a Mormon. I decided that it wasn’t necessary for the people of Ecuador to know that I was LDS. I could still live the standards—but quietly and unobtrusively.
In Ecuador I attended an orientation with other exchange students from all over the United States. I quickly made friends, some that I would see almost every day that summer because we were staying with host families in the same city. Others I saw throughout the summer at parties and field trips. It felt wonderfully liberating to meet people who didn’t know my family’s entire history. They didn’t know I was a farm girl or that I was Miss Squeaky-clean. For the first time in my life I felt popular and accepted.
After orientation I met my host family. The very first thing we did, before I even unpacked, was to walk to a liquor store. My host sisters informed me that they were giving a big party that night in honor of my arrival, and they wanted me to pick out the booze. They were surprised to learn that I didn’t drink and pressured me about it. I finally had to admit that I was Mormon.
My stay in Ecuador marked the beginning of the most intense test of living Church standards I had ever faced. I was frequently pressured to drink alcohol. I met several handsome, fun young men who were anxious to get to know me a little too well. The other exchange students quickly learned that I was a Mormon, and they had quite a bit to say about it, much of it negative. One girl, who was known for her partying, teased me frequently about my moral standards. She suggested that I thought I was better than others because of these standards.
Though I never seriously considered abandoning my standards, I did begin to question why I was making these choices. I felt like it wasn’t good enough anymore to say, “Because of my religion, I don’t do such-and-such” or “That’s how I was raised.” I knew I needed a testimony of my standards if I was going to continue to uphold them. I wanted a stronger testimony of the restored Church.
I started reading the Book of Mormon on my own for the first time, and I finished it in 13 days. The Spirit testified to me that the powerful testimonies of those ancient prophets were true. I was filled with joy and gratitude that I had the privilege of being a member of Christ’s Church. This precipitated a complete change in my attitude toward Church standards. My newfound testimony of the Book of Mormon gave power and substance to my beliefs. I felt proud of my standards, and it became easier to live them.
Nothing had really changed as far as how I lived, but my feelings were different. Nothing about me had outwardly changed, and yet I was a new person. I even noticed that my new friends responded to this change in me, perhaps without realizing it. They seemed to have greater respect for me.
One day I was alone with the girl who had been making fun of me in front of the other exchange students. She confided that she wished she had been raised to have the same standards I had. She said she wished she had never had a drink and had never been unchaste. She was not the only one to tell me that.
When I was a senior in high school, a good friend who had gone on to college was visiting at Christmas break. She told me that she wished she had been taught my standards as a child because it would have been much easier to keep from getting into trouble. She told me to hold on to my standards no matter what because they would keep me safe.
A couple of years later when I was in college a girl I had known in Ecuador came to visit. She told me she wished she had been raised a Mormon because then she might have avoided the burdensome sins she’d committed. I felt very sad for my classmates, and on both occasions I cried with them over the pain they’d suffered. They’d had to learn the hard way that “while you are free to choose for yourself, you are not free to choose the consequences of your actions” (For the Strength of Youth [2001], 4.)
At first it surprised me a little to think that other teens were envious of my standards. Hadn’t so many of them made fun of me in high school? Didn’t teens want fewer restrictions instead of more? However, it soon began to make sense. My standards did keep me safe, and everyone wants to feel safe. Living the standards as outlined in For the Strength of Youth had spared me a great deal of pain. Also, more importantly, because I was exercising faith by living those standards and reading the Book of Mormon, I was worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. It was through the Holy Ghost that I was able to obtain one of my most valued possessions: my testimony of the Book of Mormon and the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let me close with a simple—but, for me, ­powerful—example of what can happen when students view themselves not just as isolated individuals pursuing their own individual career goals but as part of a covenant community gathered together in a compact society to realize their full potential as children of God.

As many of you know, law school can be very competitive. At most law schools, including BYU’s, students are literally ranked in order by their grades, and employers often make the initial hiring decisions based primarily on that ranking. It is an environment rife with competition—which, as C. S. Lewis taught, is at the core of the sin of pride. To add to the tension, in most law-school courses the seemingly all-important grade is determined solely on the basis of the final examination. As you might imagine, the stress levels at the law schools are quite high during finals.

A few years ago, after finals but before grades had come out—before students knew how they had done—I was involved in a discussion with a group of law students about how to avoid pride and animosity toward their fellow students in that kind of highly competitive, zero-sum setting. During that discussion, a first-year law student—who had recently been through the soul-trying experience of the first set of law-school finals but who still did not know how he had done—related the following experience, which I share with his permission:

When I came to BYU Law School, I immediately developed a big, fat crush on my entire 1L class: they were the nicest, smartest, most interesting people that I had ever been around. . . . [Even though] I realized right away that I was outgunned, outsmarted, and outpaced in every class . . . , I didn’t resent the successes of my peers; they were . . . my friends, and I liked them. . . .

As classes ended, [however,] and our 1L class threw all its weight, collectively and individually . . . , toward finals, I was anxious. The anxiety grew and turned black. I studied hard and long, but I felt more insecure the more I studied.

The student went on to say that he began to stay away from his classmates because each interaction with them increasingly convinced him that they knew more about the subject than he did and that he was, therefore, destined to fail. He became isolated and alone. He then related:

I was praying early one morning about finals, asking for help to do my best [or even to just pass the class], and I began describing the bleak feelings I harbored, and I asked for help. After a few minutes, I [suddenly] found myself [praying] not [just] for myself but for my classmates, and not just for those few that I knew . . . struggled [with the material,] as I did, but for the gifted and the talented as well. I prayed that they would do their best, that they would have peace and clarity. As I prayed for them . . . , I felt a surge of love for the classmates I had admired and had liked so much in the beginning.

He then began to reengage with his fellow students, not just to learn from them but with the thought that he might actually have something he could offer to them. At that point his stress level dropped dramatically, his learning increased considerably, and his view of law school—and of the true purpose of a BYU education—was transformed. He was no longer involved in an individual contest against every one of his classmates. He was part of a loving, caring compact society that had been gathered together to help each member succeed.

When Karen and I were married we began the “race” of life together. Over the years that followed we were blessed with four beautiful sons. Eventually we reached a stage where we felt we could finally go out on a date and leave our eldest son to watch over his three younger brothers.

We had just arrived at dinner when the phone rang. It was our eldest son, and in the background, we could hear the fear-filled cries of his younger brother. He was terrified of the dark, and without his mum there, they couldn’t console him. Our eldest son pleaded, "Please come home. I don't know what to do." We told him, "Say a family prayer together, ask for help, and we will be home as soon as we can."

We rushed home, expecting to hear his cries from the street. Instead, we found a quiet home. We walked into the bedroom, and there was our little boy, fast asleep on the floor. At his feet were two small boxes, and carefully placed on top was a picture of Jesus Christ. Our older boys didn’t know how to fix the fear, but they knew how to invite Light into that dark room. They remembered the verse “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” [24]

That son who placed the picture of Christ in front of the eyes of his fear-filled little brother is now serving a mission in Tahiti, continuing his efforts to lift the sights of others to the Saviour.

The first time I walked into my new Relief Society, I wanted to turn around and run! I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t see anyone my age. And I definitely didn’t feel like I belonged.
Just a few months earlier, I was in a married student ward in Hawaii, USA, with my husband, Johnny, where most of us were newly married, navigating school, and thinking about starting families. Before that, I was in a student YSA ward that felt like an extension of Young Women. We were all unmarried, childless students, so it was easy to relate, make friends, and serve.
But that season of comfort and similarity didn’t last forever.
After graduating, Johnny and I moved back to the mainland and began attending a family ward. And wow—did Relief Society feel like a culture shock! Suddenly I was surrounded by sisters ages 18 to 98: single, married, divorced, widowed; some with children, some without; some working, studying, raising kids, or retired, and everything in between.
I wasn’t sure where I fit in.
A few weeks in, I got a ministering assignment, and I didn’t feel I had much in common with the sisters I was asked to serve or serve with.
Still, I tried to show up. At first I would send them quick texts or have some post-church chats, mostly just so I could say that I’d contacted them. But my ministering companion was intentional and kind. One day, she suggested we take each of our sisters out for ice cream. I was hesitant. I’m introverted and tend to be quiet around people I don’t know well. But I do love ice cream, so I agreed.
That weekend, my van broke down. The repairs would cost more than the van was worth. It was time to buy a new car. Johnny and I had been saving and were prepared, but it still felt like a lot. So, after a 10-hour workday and a stressful evening of test-driving cars, I really didn’t feel like meeting anyone, even for ice cream.
But I showed up anyway, late and exhausted.
To my surprise, the sisters were thrilled to see me. We ended up talking for hours. I couldn’t relate to their toddler potty-training stories, but I realized we had more in common than I thought. One sister had also been dealing with car trouble, and we bonded over the frustration.
That night wasn’t just about ministering. It showed me what Relief Society is meant to be: a spiritual community where covenant women lift, strengthen, and love each other as disciples of Christ.

The desire to support the priesthood in this great latter-day work, first seen in the Nauvoo sisters, has led Relief Society women over many years to establish health facilities, store grain, serve adoptive parents, and meet other critical needs. This same desire motivates the Relief Society today. Teaching is one means of helping the sisters and their families realize the great promise declared by President Kimball:

“As givers gain control of their desires and properly see other needs in light of their own wants, then the powers of the gospel are released in their lives. They learn that by living the great law of consecration they insure not only temporal salvation but also spiritual sanctification” (Ensign, Nov. 1977, p. 77).

That we may each fulfill our stewardship and earn this great reward I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Recently, we met a young woman who had learned to make these principles operative in her life. Bringing Sister Smith a beautiful rose, she came to express her love and her gratitude for the blessings of the gospel. She is handicapped, and so is the more grateful for blessings because she knows so well pain and difficulty. When telling of how she is able to keep a house and care for a husband, she said it does take her longer, but a friend goes to the store to get what she needs, and she has learned to do almost everything else for herself. Cutting carrot strips for a ward dinner is a challenge, but she does it and in accepting such opportunities enjoys the fulfillment of service.

Youth in the Roswell Georgia Stake wanted to have a fancy stake dance, too. So they proposed the idea to their leaders, but were disappointed to find that there wasn’t a free day on the stake calendar or any money in the stake budget. Still, they knew there must be a way to have a fun activity that wouldn’t compromise their standards.
So instead of giving up, the youth and their leaders put their heads together. They decided that, even if they couldn’t have a stake event, there was no reason they couldn’t throw a Church-standards dance on their own at one of the church buildings in the stake. They were careful to invite all the youth in the stake so no one was left out. They also left the door open for youth to bring nonmember friends if they were willing to agree to keep Church standards of dress and behavior. With the help of their parents and using several of the techniques listed in this article, they had great success.
“I have never had so much fun,” says Lindsay Menden, a Laurel. “It was a great chance for us to have fun and keep our standards.”

“Hey, look at this.” Jack pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “I found it in a magazine this morning.” He unfolded it and held it out to Taran.
But Taran could see right off it wasn’t something he wanted to look at. He turned away and said, “I don’t want to look at that.”
Jack shrugged and put the paper back in his pocket. “Baby.”
Taran didn’t really care.
When Taran got home, he helped Mom make flatbread for dinner. He dragged a chair over to the counter, and Mom tied his apron.
“Mom,” he said, “when I was at Ian’s house, his friend tried to show me a picture of a person without clothes. I turned away and walked away.”
Mom set down the bowl of dough and gave Taran a hug. “That was a really good choice. Thank you for telling me about it.”
“In family night that’s what you said to do,” Taran said as he patted his hands with flour and lifted the dough onto the counter.
“I’m glad you remembered. Is that the first time someone’s shown you a bad picture?”
Taran nodded.
“Well, I’m really glad you told me. You know you can ask me about anything or tell me anything, right? Even if you made a bad choice, I’d still want to know so I could help. I wouldn’t be mad.” She dabbed a bit of flour onto his nose.
Taran smiled and wrinkled his floury nose. “Yup. I know.”
After dinner that night, Dad said, “Today someone tried to show Taran a bad picture, the kind we’ve talked about in family night.”
Reena’s hand shot up in the air. “I remember talking about that!” Dhara wasn’t old enough to remember much, but she nodded too.
“So what did you do?” Sonia asked Taran.
“I didn’t look at it, and I walked away,” said Taran.
Mom nodded. “We’re really happy Taran made such a good choice. And we’re so proud of him for letting me know what happened.”
Dad reached across the table to give Taran a high five. “Way to go, bud.” Reena and Dhara clapped, and Sonia gave Taran a big smile.
“So to celebrate we have a special treat!” said Dad. That made everybody cheer.
Mom got up to pull the ice cream out of the freezer, and Taran and Sonia ran over to grab bowls and spoons.
“OK, bud,” said Dad, pointing the ice cream scoop at Taran. “Which flavor do you want?”
As they all dug into their ice cream, Mom said, “Dad and I just want you kids to remember that if you’re worried or have questions, you can always come and talk to us, no matter what. It makes us happy.”
“And gets us ice cream?” Sonia asked as she held up a spoonful of chocolate.
Mom laughed. “Sometimes. But mostly it just makes us happy. And that is enough.”
Taran nodded as he finished his last bite. Telling Mom had made him happy too.

“Mom, guess what?” Nathan said as he climbed into the car after church. “The Primary president asked me to give a talk in Primary next Sunday.”
“Great!” Mom exclaimed. “What are you supposed to talk about?”
“I’m supposed to talk about all the blessings that I have from being a member of the Church.”
“Well, I think that you can give a talk about that. First, you should think about all the things that you are thankful for; then we can write them down on a blessings list,” Mom said.
“Mom,” said Nathan, “I want to be able to give my talk all by myself, with no one helping me this time, just like the big kids do.”
“OK, we’ll work on it,” Mom said encouragingly. “You keep thinking about the things that you’re grateful for.”
During the week, Nathan told his mom the things that he thought should be on his blessings list and Mom wrote them down. Every night before he went to bed, he and Mom sat down with the list and he tried to memorize it. But try as he might, he just couldn’t remember it all.
When Saturday morning came, Nathan was worried. “Mom, I still can’t remember my talk. What am I going to do?”
“Maybe if we say a prayer together, Heavenly Father will give us an idea.”
They knelt in the living room, and Nathan thanked Heavenly Father for all the things on his blessings list. Then he asked Him for help to find a way to give his talk all by himself.
After the prayer, Nathan and Mom sat quietly to listen for Heavenly Father’s answer.
Nathan’s mom jumped up. “I think that Heavenly Father gave me an answer. You sit right here, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Nathan sat very still, anxiously awaiting her return. When she came back, she had a big smile on her face and she was holding a big piece of paper. “Here are your talk ‘notes.’ Do you think you can read it all by yourself now?”
Nathan looked down at the paper. This is what he saw:
I am happy to be a member of the Church. I get blessings from Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. The blessings are: my family, food, sunshine, my home, flowers, and my teachers. I am happy I can give my talk all by myself. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
“When you see the pictures, say their names,” Mom explained. “You know the word my. The cloud with the sunlight coming through it stands for blessings, and you’ve already memorized the first part and the last two sentences. Do you think that you can give your talk now?”
On Sunday Mom and Dad came to listen to Nathan give his talk. He gave it perfectly. But before he said the last sentence, he looked up from his notes and said, “And I’m glad that Heavenly Father answers our prayers.”

Commissioner Eyring, who was also an Apostle at the time, spent much of the summer of 2001 writing and rewriting the talk President Hinckley had assigned him to give. By early September, he had the Prophet’s approval of his text.
But then the unthinkable happened. On Tuesday, September 11, terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, and more than 6,000 were injured.
Like so many others, I will never forget where I was when the awful news came. I lived in Utah at the time and was driving to Church headquarters for a meeting with the seven members of the Presidency of the Seventy. Upon entering their conference room in the Church Administration Building, I felt great gratitude for the peace that prevailed there, notwithstanding our limited knowledge of what was going on in New York and Washington. I will never forget the comfort of Elder Christofferson’s prayer to begin our meeting, which was blessed by the Spirit even in that hour of terrible uncertainty.
Upon returning home, I learned more about the devastation in New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania, as well as the cessation of all air traffic in the United States. My first thought was to call my father. By coincidence, we were both scheduled to give talks to college students the next Tuesday. I expected him to confirm my feeling that we should both cancel our addresses. My talk, on the subject of succeeding in college, seemed trivial and inappropriate under the tragic circumstances of 9/11.
But my father’s reaction was entirely different. He felt that the remarks he had prepared at President Hinckley’s direction would be perfectly appropriate at BYU-Idaho, perhaps even providentially so.
In hindsight, Commissioner Eyring couldn’t have been more right. But, to his credit, he made things work out, in several ways. First, he recognized the connection between the sweeping changes occurring at BYU-Idaho and the great uncertainty that hung over the world in consequence of the apocalyptic terrorist attacks, which seemed repeatable and even unpreventable. He optimistically decided to make the theme of change central to the address that had been in the works for months.
Though there wasn’t time to get President Hinckley’s approval of a new draft, Commissioner Eyring significantly expanded his emphasis on responding productively to change. You can hear that emphasis in this clip from his talk:
Now the other thing I was impressed with is that you were asked to raise your scriptures. I felt as you did that to make a promise to you that I know will be fulfilled because it has been fulfilled for me in the last few days. We live in a time of increasing difficulty and change. Many of us have felt some things that led us to the scriptures. In the last few days, I have found things I had never seen there before because, in my extremity, the Lord showed me things that He had prepared long ago to help me. I’ll make you a promise: If you will, in the next few hours and days, go to the scriptures, you will, as you read them (pick them anywhere that you’re led to read) see scriptures speaking to you as if it was the voice of God, as if He knew your needs and your concerns; and He will tailor that to you, and it will be a witness to you that He knows you and that in that set of scriptures that you lifted above your head is a means by which He can guide you and comfort you. I promise you, you’ll have that experience—and it will be very personal—in the next few days.
In fact, the talk “A Steady, Upward Course” uses some form of the word “change” 44 times. Ironically, not all of those references to change were planned. As if it were a dose of his own medicine, Commissioner Eyring started his talk with a change in his expectations. In those days, teleprompters were still rare. But, in an effort to be on the cutting edge of technology, BYU-Idaho audio/visual specialists Jim Croasmun, Arlen Wilcock, and Alan Young had rigged up a system using laptop computers and cables, the first-ever use of a teleprompter on this campus.
Jim, Arlen, and Alan knew that their prototype system might not work perfectly. But they had spent many days rigging and testing it. And, in the hour leading up to the devotional address, it was working well.
You can guess what happened. Minutes before the talk was to begin, the teleprompter screens went blank. Jim, Arlen, and Alan’s professional lives flashed before their eyes. Yet Commissioner Eyring didn’t miss a beat. In fact, he seemed to feel liberated by the blank teleprompter screens.
President Eyring’s teleprompter never came back on—until a few minutes after he finished speaking. To this day, Brothers Croasmun, Wilcock, and Young can’t explain why. Yet, in hindsight, it was meant to be. President Eyring ended up speaking—mostly off the cuff—for nearly an hour. And the things he said, in the spirit of prophecy, have proven invaluable to generations of BYU-Idaho students and employees.

I grew up in Northern California with a brother who is just a year older than me. We got along the way brothers do except for one major disturbing difference between us: he is a genius. He really is. He grew up to become a Ph.D. physicist. He has helped build scientific devices that are today doing experiments on the planet Mars, but even as a child, he was brilliant and curious.

One day, when we were about 12 and 13, he came home from a used bookstore very excited about a dusty old book he had found. I wasn’t all that excited about dusty old books until he explained, “This is a ‘Formulary.”

I had no reaction.

“I was flipping through the index, and there is a formula in here for rocket fuel.”

“Ok?”

“Steve, I’ve got all this stuff. We can make a rocket.”

So, he had me. We went off and measured and stirred the ingredients together, but the final step was to use a mortar and pestle to grind the chemicals into a perfectly fine powder so the blended chemicals would react with each other when we lit it on fire. We didn’t have a mortar or a pestle. We were 12, and it’s not like we were going to ask our parents for help—building explosives.

Incidentally, there were warnings in the book about how volatile, and how toxic, and how these combinations of chemicals needed ventilation… all written for lesser mortals. We had this.

So, he took the powder to the back porch and pounded it with a brick and with a hammer but could never get the right consistency for it to actually burn. We would try to light some of it, and it would just smolder and sputter, so I gave up and walked away.

But Mark was a genius. It occurred to him that all of those ingredients were water-soluble. If he dissolved them together, the chemical molecules would become perfectly inter-mixed. He got a glass mason jar and filled it halfway full with water, stirred in the powder, and put it on a shelf in our room, reasoning that in a few days the water would evaporate away, and he would be left with a perfectly blended pellet of rocket fuel.

A few nights later, I was slumped on a couch in our family room watching Star Trek on television. My parents were not home. I was pretty absorbed in the program. The lights were off. The Klingons were threatening somehow, and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were engaging the dilithium crystals or whatever. I was vaguely aware that Mark had stepped into the room and fallen into a chair near the door and was watching, too. The Enterprise was taking enemy fire, losing its shields. I was concerned.

Suddenly, a tremendous sound erupted from the kitchen for which I could find no explanation in the natural world. It was a deep menacing, rumble. My muddled teenage mind wondered for a moment, “Really? Klingons?—but in our kitchen?” I jumped up and ran toward the noise, crashing into Mark as we tried to squeeze through the doorway together. As I rushed into the kitchen, I was astonished at what was going on.

The sound was deafening. I could see nothing but dense smoke. I followed the sound, and there was a brilliant red column of flame over the stove, blasting upward out of a steel soup can. It was like a welding torch that had already burned a hole through the stove’s steel cooking-exhaust hood and was working on the ceiling.

I gasped, “What is that?”

Mark knocked me out of the way, grabbing the edge of the glowing can with a pair of pliers, and then he ran and flung it through the front door onto the lawn where it blasted and smoked and spun and sputtered like Chinese New Year.

I was slack jawed. “What was that?”

“That,” he said, “was… rocket fuel.”

“Rocket fuel?!!! Are you nuts? You put rocket fuel on a hot stove?”

Now, remember, my brother’s a genius, right? In the most condescending way, he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. It was perfectly safe. The water in the jar wasn’t evaporating, so, I decided to boil some of it off.”

“On a stove?”

“Yes. It should have been safe. The boiling of the water won’t let it get hotter than 212 degrees–you should know this. Everything was under control, but it boiled dry… and got too hot. Now, dad’s going to kill us.”

He was a genius.

Stuff like rocket fuel is pretty exciting. It is powerful—it can push us into space—but it requires judgment because it also has the power to destroy our homes, our lives, and everything that matters to us.

4. Another element that leads to success and happiness is to discover early in life that those things of most importance in life you cannot buy for money. They are priceless. To illustrate, let me tell you about an elder from Austria whom I met at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.

I noticed that he seemed to be a little older than the average elder. He and his mother had joined the Church when he was sixteen. His father, who was a successful banker, was not interested in religion, but he did not care if his wife and son joined the Church.

This elder’s problems began occurring, however, when he would be studying his seminary materials. He would have his scriptures and papers out on his desk, and his father would come in and say something like: “Don’t waste your time studying those things. Get back into your regular school studies so that you can be admitted to the university.” At times, his father would become so upset he would pick up his son’s scriptures or papers and throw them across the room.

At age eighteen, this young man began thinking more about a mission. In fact, one night he even dreamed that he had been called on a mission to Japan. It was such a warm and good feeling; but when he talked to his parents about it, his father said, “Oh no. You are not going to waste two years of your life in the mission field. You must go to the university.” The father wanted the son to become a banker and follow in his footsteps.

Realizing that he had better do what his father wished at that point, he chose to go to the university. I am not sure he made his father totally happy because he chose to come to the United States and enroll at Brigham Young University. He went through his program in business, received his bachelor’s degree, and then received a master of business administration degree. He was soon hired as a junior executive in an international banking firm in Munich, Germany.

By this time he was twenty-five years old, obviously old enough to make his own decisions. He still had a great desire to serve a mission. He went to his stake president and informed him of his desires. He even told him of his dream. The stake president laughed and said, “Well, I don’t think you will be called to Japan. Nobody is called to Japan from here. They may be called to other countries in Europe, but not to Japan.”

His father was very upset when he learned his son was thinking of leaving his position at the bank for two years. He came over from Vienna and did everything he could to convince his son not to go. His boss flew down from Frankfurt, Germany, and spent time with him, attempting to convince him that he should not leave his work for two years.

“My boy,” he said, “do you realize what this will cost you professionally in terms of salary loss as well as opportunity loss? Sit down and calculate what these two years will cost you.” The young elder did, and found that the mission would cost him a great sum of money.

But tears came to his eyes when he told me, “If it would have cost several times that amount, I would still be here, because I know this is where the Lord wants me to be.”

Well, he was called to Japan. He served a very successful mission, and I suppose there are many international banking firms that would be pleased to hire a well-trained junior executive who speaks German, English, and Japanese—the three major languages of the economic free world. But even if he didn’t earn any extra money as the result of this additional experience, it still would have been worth it. If you want to be happy and successful, you will come to a realization that there are some values in life you cannot purchase with money.

Many people have been able to change their drug habits. A mother of three, Susan used drugs only on the weekends in an effort to hide her problem from her children. But the children found out anyway and begged her to stop. After three years, with some special help and the support of her children, particularly her seven-year-old son, she did stop. Looking back she recognized that Heavenly Father had pulled her through this and had prepared her for hearing the gospel. She said:
“The gospel changed my heart, my appearance, my attitude, and my feelings. And I learned to pray. Whenever I have a problem, I go to Heavenly Father and say, ‘Help me.’ And he sees me through it. … Now when I walk, I walk with my head high because I know Heavenly Father’s beside me every step of the way. …
“Oh, it’s a new day. I lost a lot of things by wanting to be in this drug world—I lost my apartment, my son almost died in a fire, I lost my marriage, I lost happiness completely. But I got it back. Heavenly Father gave me another chance to start again. I’m new now—brand new all inside and out.”

Many years ago, before leaving to become president of the Canadian Mission, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, I had developed a friendship with a man by the name of Shelley, who lived in my ward but did not embrace the gospel, irrespective of the fact that his wife and children had done so. Shelley had been known as the toughest man in town when he was young. He was quite a pugilist. His fights were rarely in the ring but rather elsewhere. Try as I might, I could not bring about a change in Shelley’s attitude. The task appeared hopeless. In time, Shelley and his family moved from our ward.

After I had returned from Canada and was called to the Twelve, I received a telephone call from Shelley. He said, “Will you seal my wife and me and our family in the Salt Lake Temple?”

I answered hesitatingly, “Shelley, you first must be a baptized member of the Church.”

He laughed and responded, “Oh, I took care of that while you were in Canada. My home teacher was a school crossing guard, and every weekday as he and I would visit at the crossing, we would discuss the gospel.”

The sealings were performed; a family was united; joy followed.

While my husband, Brandon, was in Orlando, Florida, on business, he woke up one night with a high fever and difficulty breathing. He called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital, where he learned that he had a serious case of pneumonia.

Because Brandon and I have toddler-age sons, I couldn’t immediately travel from our home in Pennsylvania to Florida. I called Brandon daily, hoping for his improvement so that he could return to us.

However, Brandon’s condition worsened. When a nurse at the hospital urged me to come to the hospital as soon as possible, I started thinking about who might be able to take care of our boys.

My mother agreed to take time off from work and said she would come as soon as she could, but the flight I needed to take left before she would arrive. I called a few friends to see if they could watch the boys until my mother arrived. A friend from Relief Society, Jackie Olds, said she’d be happy to watch them.

“Just bring their clothes and diapers,” she said, “and I’ll keep them for however many days you need to be gone.”

I started to refuse because this sister, with three children of her own, had a busy life, but she insisted. When I dropped our boys off a short while later, she comforted me by saying, “Don’t worry about them. Worry about getting Brandon better and getting him home. I’ve taken care of toddlers before.”

I knew then that the boys would be safe, happy, and well taken care of, which they were. I was able to be with my husband, who was seriously ill by the time I arrived at the hospital. But after a few days, he was well enough to return home.

I am grateful for a good friend who responded—far beyond what I would have asked of her—and ministered to us in a time of need.

Kelly Parks, Pennsylvania, USA

Several years ago I was a PhD student at Stanford University and was teaching in the MBA program at the University of Santa Clara, a Jesuit school. The leaders of the school were Jesuit priests, and I can honestly tell you they were some of the most insightful people I have ever met. At the same time there was a national controversy going on about the feminist movement. A very outspoken feminist in the Church—Sonia Johnson, for those of you who may have heard her name—was bitterly attacking the Church and its leaders. She went through an excommunication hearing. All of the national news media were gathered around the Church building where the bishop had asked her to come in for the hearing and were upset that they weren’t allowed into the hearing with the bishopric. The National Organization of Women wanted to provide lawyers to help her argue her case with the bishop. She was ultimately excommunicated.

Soon after the excommunication she went around the country giving speeches. She came to the University of Santa Clara, gave a speech, and had a question-and-answer period following the speech. One of the young students in the audience stood and said, “It must be hard to leave your Church.” (Remember, this university is roughly a Catholic equivalent of BYU.) He then asked, “How did it feel?”

Sonia gave a fascinating response. She said she reacted differently than she expected—she felt free.

Huh?

See, before, she had to believe God was a man; now she was free to believe God was a woman. Before, she had to believe her salvation depended on a man—Christ. Now she was free to believe anything she wanted to believe. She was exhilarated! She felt free!

I thought about that response a long time. I had trouble reconciling it with Christ’s concept of truth making us free. And then a thought hit me. Truth is terribly constraining. You see, if 2 + 2 = 4, then we are not free to believe that the total is 5 or 10 or 103. Only one right answer is constraining. You can believe anything you want, but on the other hand, if you want to be free to build a rocket that is capable of flying to the moon, then you had better believe 2 + 2 = 4. Without the terribly constraining nature of truth, we could not be free to do anything!

One of the stake presidents in Phoenix, Arizona, made the following report that really touched me:

I was humbled to learn that last quarter 100 percent of our single adults and single parents were visited. It is humbling, while also sad, to realize that in many homes the home teacher is considered the father by the children who reside there.

This past month I met two families in the stake who shared the same home teacher. They had just learned that their home teacher was moving because of a job transfer.

During the last sacrament meeting the home teacher attended prior to his move, several children from the homes he taught sang “Lord, I Would Follow Thee”(Hymns, 1985, no. 220). At the halfway mark in the third verse, the children began to cry and could not continue singing. As a quiet began to rush over the congregation, the words of the song began to be heard from the back of the chapel. It was the remainder of the family members singing from their hearts. As they sang, they stood—a single mother with her other children and another sister and her nonmember husband. It was one of the most moving things I have ever witnessed. As the music stopped, it was as if everyone could still hear a heavenly choir.

I later learned that this wonderful home teacher had, for years, visited each of his families once a week. Though he had never held a ward position viewed by others as significant, I had a witness that his work in his call as a home teacher had dwarfed any accomplishment of any leader in his ward or our stake. I came away from that meeting with a better understanding of the Lord’s feelings regarding the call of a home teacher than from any talk I have ever heard.

The Lord also helped me to push myself and grow when I was encouraged to attend a three-year program at the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics (CSPO). I was unsure I could join the program because no one in a wheelchair had ever applied. However, circumstances ultimately allowed me to be able to attend the CSPO in Cambodia. I graduated there as the first student with a disability in the program’s history.

Atsede Demissie Arega had dreams 20 years ago that brought her to the Church. Before joining, she used to regularly ask herself, “where is God?”
She found God in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said that before April 2024, she used to only be able to see general conference sessions weeks later at her branch meetinghouse, now she can watch general conference live in her home. “I am so grateful,” she said, “I feel that God is looking after Ethiopia.”
She invited the full-time missionaries in her branch to come to her home to watch general conference. She also invited all her neighbors to come and watch or to watch it in their own homes.
“I feel that God is looking after Ethiopia,” remarked Atsede Demissie Arega, when talking about the historic broadcast of general conference in Ethiopia.

Elder Lawrence says that just as his life seemed to be winding down, with their six children grown and on their own, he and his wife were called to preside over the Russia Novosibirsk Mission in Siberia in 2001. Elder and Sister Lawrence were required to exercise complete faith as they left their home and family behind to serve in a land where the language, people, and climate were completely unfamiliar.

“It was a great test for us in just putting our trust in the Lord,” Sister Lawrence says. “Everything we worried about fell into place, and [the experience] changed our lives.”

A sign in the kitchen of the mission home provided a constant reminder to “look unto [the Savior] in every thought; doubt not, fear not” (D&C 6:36).

Elder and Sister Lawrence count their mission experience as among the greatest in their lives and feel it prepared them for their new responsibilities with Elder Lawrence’s call to the Seventy.

“We don’t know what’s ahead, but we know it will be good,” Elder Lawrence says.