Gospel Story Finder

Once, when my mom was tucking me into bed, I told her I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go on a mission. I said that I would miss her, Daddy, and my sisters too much. My mom said that we should pray about it and see what Heavenly Father wanted me to do. We knelt by the side of my bed, and I asked Heavenly Father if He wanted me to serve a mission. As soon as I asked the question, a really warm feeling filled my whole heart, and a really big smile came to my face. After the prayer, Mom asked me how I felt. I told her I knew that Heavenly Father wanted me to serve a mission and that I was excited to go and serve. I know that Heavenly Father hears our prayers and answers them. I am excited to share this with everybody when I go on my mission.

I remember a faithful and devoted member of the Church who was always in a good mood and always smiling. But one day I saw him crying. He told me the reason he was sad was because, at the age of seventy, he saw himself as a failure for having never been able to give his family the material comforts he felt they deserved.

I asked him, “How many children do you have?” He answered, “Four.” I continued, “How many are members of the Church?” He said, “Four.” I asked further, “How many are faithful members of the Church?” His answer: “Four.” “How many are sealed to you?” “Four.” “How many have married in the temple?” Again his answer was “Four.” Then, moved by the Spirit, I told him that the success he had achieved in his life was one of the greatest success stories I had ever heard.

I was a well-known journalist who had written for some good magazines and newspapers in Lima, Peru, but my way of life—far from God—was tormenting me more each day. Because of this, I accepted a job as a proofreader for a magazine in the Ventanilla District, located far from my home. I was desperately seeking a way to get away from my current circle of friends. In Ventanilla, I felt in my heart that my life would change.
I was occasionally attending church with my girlfriend, María Cristina, when two good, stubborn missionaries convinced me to ask Heavenly Father in prayer if the Church was true. I did so, and what I experienced was indescribable. I had never felt the Spirit so strong as on that unforgettable day.
Married and baptized a short time later, María Cristina and I rented a small, uncomfortable room in Ventanilla. Because of my hard work, I was advanced from proofreader to editor at the company’s magazine and newspaper. I had never been an editor before, and I was happy with the position. Even so, things started to change when our publications began to lower their standards, publishing items of questionable morality. These changes, ordered by our directors, opposed Church principles and values.
I had always wanted to be an editor, but the situation made me uncomfortable. Our bishop suggested that if we did things that pleased our Heavenly Father, He would bless us. After my wife and I thought it over and prayed about it, we felt prompted that I should quit my job.
A few days later I was beginning to feel stressed out and wondered if I had done the right thing. After resigning, I had sent résumés to several companies but had heard nothing back. María Cristina suggested that we pray again, and we did so. We prayed that everything would turn out well and that we would not lose faith even though the bills were piling up.
A few hours later my wife encouraged me to call one of the companies. Somewhat unbelieving, I called. I was astounded when an official there said he was just about to call me. He wanted to know if I could start the next day!
We wept for joy. Our Heavenly Father had answered our prayers.
We had to leave our ward and many good friends for my new job, but we left with stronger testimonies. I now have respectable work and a good salary, and we have a nice place to live. Above all, we have been blessed with the certainty that when we do the things that please God, we receive His blessings.

Pia Hentsen slowly walks down the hall and sits down in the living room of her home. A visitor has stopped by, and his Danish leaves a lot to be desired. So two missionaries are there to translate for him. As she begins talking, she realizes there is some confusion and it has nothing to do with language. Instead, it’s math that’s the problem.
So she turns to the missionaries to try to help her visitor understand.
Pia is a 16-year-old Laurel in the Frederiksberg Ward in a Copenhagen suburb, her mom is a life-long member of the Church, Pia can remember going to Primary when she was younger, yet Pia has only been a Church member for—are you ready?—exactly one year.
The visitor still looks puzzled, as if he’s trying to do the math in his head without a satisfactory result. Pia senses this and clarifies.
“My mom and dad are Church members, so when I was young, I went to Primary. But I never was baptized,” Pia says.
After Pia’s parents divorced, Pia’s mother, Pia, and her two brothers stopped going to church. Pia turned eight but wasn’t baptized after her birthday. She turned 12 and didn’t join Young Women. For about 10 years there was very little church involvement in her life. Home teachers still came, and visiting teachers called on her mom, yet the Hentsens stayed home on Sundays.
But when a Young Women leader called Pia and invited her to start attending activities, Pia’s life began changing. “My leader would write me letters inviting me to go to church. So I went once and thought it was so boring. I didn’t want to go back. But the missionaries changed my mind about church,” she says, laughing.
Those missionaries had already determined that Pia had never been baptized, so they scheduled an appointment to visit her. At that first appointment, the missionaries brought a short spiritual message. That pattern continued for several weeks until one day they tried something different, bringing with them something every missionary has: a flipchart.
“They asked me if they could give me the first discussion, and I said, ‘Okay.’ It didn’t take long—probably a few weeks—before I finished all the discussions and agreed to be baptized.” At about this same time, Pia’s mother started becoming active again, as did her two brothers.
Today, in the small group that makes up the Young Men and Young Women program of the Frederiksberg Ward, Pia is right at home. Making the change to join the Church and then becoming active took some getting used to. Now it’s a way of life. “I’m the only Laurel in the ward. We also have two Mia Maids and two Beehives. That’s our Young Women,” she says before she stops and thinks further about how the Church has changed her life. “I think my life is better now. I have something to believe and something I know is true.”

Shortly after finishing my mission, I met a friend who had grown up in the same ward and attended the same schools I had. We had shared many experiences through the years. However, he chose not to answer the Lord’s call to serve a mission. At the time of our reunion he was on a 30-day leave from the army and was on his way to the combat zone of Vietnam.
He told me, “The dumbest three things I ever did in my life were quitting college, joining the army, and getting married (his wife had divorced him within the first year of their marriage). Not only that, but I did them all in the same week!”
“Why?” I asked.
“I was mad at my mother,” he answered. We looked at each other for a few moments and then began to laugh. “I sure fixed her, didn’t I?” he said. “I sure fixed her.”
Now that it was too late, he realized that his spiritual blind spot came in the form of anger. His eagerness to show his mother that he was in charge of his own life led him to pursue a course that he later regretted and that led him away from Church activity.

Lorenzo Snow was a great early missionary. He had been a member of the Church for less than a year when he set out on his first mission in 1837. He tells about his first experiences preaching the gospel in the following words:
“I … traveled about thirty miles [48 kilometers], and just as the sun was setting I made my first call for a night’s lodging, as a ‘Mormon’ Elder, and was refused; then another, and so on, until the eighth call, when I was admitted to a night’s lodging—going to bed supperless, and leaving in the morning, minus a breakfast.
“The first meeting I held was in the neighborhood of my uncle, by the name of Goddard, near the county seat of Medina County, Ohio. The people were notified and a respectable congregation assembled. It was a sore trial to face that audience in the capacity of a preacher, but I believed and felt an assurance that a Spirit of inspiration would prompt and give me utterance. … [It did, for] I baptized and confirmed into the Church my uncle, aunt and several of my cousins” (quoted in Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow [1884], 16).

Some years ago while I was serving as an Area Seventy we lost a dear friend who served as the Relief Society President in our stake when I was serving as the Stake President.
The energy and strong faith of this sister was evident everywhere she went as she blessed the sisters in our Stake by helping them to see the importance of living the gospel.
Then one day she was diagnosed with liver cancer and was told that recovery from this type of cancer would be very difficult. Her family and the entire stake were devastated and over the next many months countless prayers were offered on her behalf. Then after more than two years of treatment, she found out she was cured. It was a miracle.
However, just a few months later the cancer came back, this time effecting her pancreas. The doctors tried everything possible but with no positive results.
Several months went past and then one morning while I was traveling in my car her husband called me and asked me if I could come to see them since he felt his wife did not have much time left. I immediately turned the car around and drove to their home.
While there I visited with their sons. The youngest son was in his room where he sat quietly not understanding what was happening. The oldest son understood the situation and was taking good care of his mother in her final hours. As she lay on her bed in the living room I noticed that there was not much left of this once so energetic sister. After some time she noticed me. She opened her eyes and smiled at me and inquired about my family. Then later she silently took her journey into the spirit world.
Before she died She had asked me to speak at her funeral and to help lowering her body into the grave (Belgium Tradition).
I will never forget standing there with the end of one of the four rope ends in my hands looking into a dark hole in the ground and slowly lowering the casket. There were so many thoughts in my mind and some of them were frightening like “What if there were no resurrection?” “What if this were the end?” Without the resurrection there is no hope and no meaning to this life. All would be lost and the sting of death would have no end.

Twelve-year-old Heber J. Grant stood up to give a talk he’d memorized. He saw President Brigham Young sitting in the third row of the audience. President Young was the most famous speaker in the Utah Territory!
Heber shook like a leaf. He was so nervous, he forgot his talk. He stammered and stuttered again and again. Finally he started his talk over. This time, he remembered what to say.
After the meeting, President Young put his arms around Heber and told him, “Heber, you demonstrated a true spirit of determination to accomplish the task given to you. Your father would have been proud.”

Sister Kearon and I have a particular sensitivity and great compassion for Israel and Elizabeth. Our first child, a boy named Sean, died during heart surgery when he was just three weeks old. This was an earth-shattering loss for us. At the time, we wondered if we could survive. We buried him in a painfully small grave in England. Fifteen years later, our family was asked to move from our home in the United Kingdom to serve full time in the Church, and we left that little grave behind.
We didn’t lose our baby on the trek west, and we didn’t suffer the incomprehensible hardships of the Barlows, but we have the beginning of an understanding of what they went through. Our baby boy’s grave is very far away, yet like the Barlows, we have abiding faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the eternal nature of our family through the holy sealing covenant.

My brother gave me his old cell phone. It was red and shiny. A few days later my mom said that my sister who was going to college had just called. She had forgotten to take her cell phone out of her pocket and ran it through the wash. It wasn’t working, and she couldn’t afford a new one. I wrapped up my cell phone and we went to see her. I will never forget her face when she opened it. I know Heavenly Father was happy with me because of the good feeling I had inside.

We have met many other consecrated Church members who exemplify dedication and faithfulness. Some time ago a group of Saints from Punta Arenas, Chile, went to the Santiago Chile Temple. This trip requires some 80 hours by bus and often uses up the only vacation time people have during the year. One member of the group was a woman named Hermana Álvarez, who is less than four feet (1.2 m) tall and has difficulty walking. She carried with her some 27 family names for whom she wanted to do the vicarious work. What a thrill it was to be able to help her fulfill her worthy dream and to realize the extent to which so many Saints dedicate themselves to living and defending the principles of the gospel as a reflection of the law of consecration.

The woodland was under a heavy shroud of cloud cover that weekend. Rain filtered through the air, and the cameramen waited patiently to expose their film. It rained, and they prayed. And it rained some more. If the filmmakers were unable to complete filming in that one week during the spring of 1975, the project would have to wait a year until the surroundings were right again. The season would soon change, and to add to the problems, the lead actor had to leave the following Friday. On Monday morning the crew awoke before dawn and and began to set up all their equipment, thinking somehow they could compensate for the weather. But suddenly it stopped raining. When the sun came up, they beheld the loveliest mist they had ever seen. The tall, wet grasses sparkled, and the birds burst forth in song, and they knew they had been blessed with a beauty they could never have produced themselves.
That morning the Brigham Young University Department of Film Production began filming scenes for the First Vision. Stewart Petersen, who played the Prophet Joseph, walked through those tall grasses with thoughts of that other “beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty” (JS—H 1:14) when Joseph Smith humbly prayed for an answer to his question, “Which of all the churches should I join?”
The First Vision is a historical film commissioned by the Church for release as a teaching aid and missionary tool. The script follows Joseph Smith’s own account of the spring of 1820 in Palmyra, New York, when, after reading and pondering James 1:5, he decided to ask of God which church was true.
The singular beauty of that first morning was followed by a week of busy filming. By Thursday renewed bad weather set in—more clouds and more rain. By the end of the day there was still one important scene that needed to be put on film—and that scene had to be filmed in bright sunlight. It was the scene where Joseph runs toward his home on a bright sunny day. So Friday morning they set up an 18-foot scaffold for their cameras in the center of the field that lay between the grove and Joseph’s home. They offered another special prayer and waited. After what seemed like hours the clouds parted. The cameras rolled. Just before the scene ended, the clouds closed in again, and darkness prevailed. “That’s all we got,” said David Jacobs, producer-director, “but that was all we needed—it’s the scene that opens the film.”
In Joseph’s own account of the First Vision he tells of entering the grove and kneeling to supplicate the Lord. Suddenly he felt a literal darkness—“some power which entirely overcame me … the power of some actual being from the unseen world.” (JS—H 1:15–16.) How to handle the feeling of such an evil influence was hard to conceptualize and then transfer onto the film. On the plane to New York the week before, David Jacobs had been studying some research material on a recently discovered account of the vision written by Joseph.
A couple of sentences jumped out at him as he read: Joseph said, “I heard a noise behind me like someone walking toward me. I strove again to pray, but could not; the noise of walking seemed to draw nearer. I sprang upon my feet and looked around, but saw no person or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking.” (As quoted in Dean Jesse, “Early Accounts of the First Vision,” BYU Studies, Spring 1969, p. 284.) “I knew instantly,” Dave said, “that this was how I wanted to get into the darkness scene. It was dramatic. It was true.”

Once we choose faith, we make a discovery: that miracles are real and happen all the time. We just need to look for them. Miracles can occur on a grand scale but are also happening daily in the most common of circumstances. We simply need "eyes to see" and "ears to hear," as proclaimed by both Moses and Ezekiel.[2]

Becky and I recently had a flat tire to teach us just this lesson. A flat tire after midnight over three hundred miles from home did not seem like a very good miracle, until we realized that only a few minutes before this happened, we had left the high-speed interstate highway and were now on a much safer road close to our destination.

Also, just a week earlier, after first having a vehicle safety inspection, we had taken the same car full of young people over a dangerous high-mountain pass, where a flat tire would have been disastrous.

Miracles occur every day, if we look for them. When we see the smallest miracle in our lives, it is proof that God is still there; we are not alone or forgotten.

When Joseph was about six or seven years old, he and his brothers and sisters were stricken with typhus fever. Although the others recovered readily, Joseph was left with a painful sore on his leg. The doctors, using the best medicine they had, treated him, and yet the sore persisted. In order to save Joseph’s life, they said, he would have to lose his leg. Thankfully, however, soon after that diagnosis, the doctors returned to the Smith home and reported that there was a new procedure which might save Joseph’s leg. They wanted to operate immediately and had brought some cord with which to tie little Joseph to the bed so that he wouldn’t thrash about, since they had nothing with which to dull the pain. Young Joseph, however, told them, “You won’t need to tie me.”

The doctors suggested he take some brandy or wine so that the pain might not be so severe. “No,” young Joseph replied. “If my father will sit on the bed and hold me in his arms, I will do whatever is necessary.” Joseph Smith Sr. held in his arms his small child, and the doctors removed the diseased piece of bone. Although young Joseph was lame for some time afterward, he was healed. At such a young age and countless other times throughout his life, Joseph Smith taught us courage—by example.

Trevor’s absence from football didn’t help his skills, and didn’t help his size either. “I left at about 235 pounds, and I came back at about 207,” he said. “Most guys have their mothers greeting them at the airport saying, ‘Great to have you back, son,’ but all my mother said was ‘Oh Trevor, you look so thin.’ To be honest with you, the coaches were worried. But when I got home, I lifted a lot of weights and ate everything that was slower than me—lots of pizza and chocolate chip cookies. It helps to have a mom who has a master’s degree in nutrition.”

During World War II, my widowed mother supported her three young children on a schoolteacher’s salary that was meager. When I became conscious that we went without some desirable things because we didn’t have enough money, I asked my mother why she paid so much of her salary as tithing. I have never forgotten her explanation: “Dallin, there might be some people who can get along without paying tithing, but we can’t. The Lord has chosen to take your father and leave me to raise you children. I cannot do that without the blessings of the Lord, and I obtain those blessings by paying an honest tithing. When I pay my tithing, I have the Lord’s promise that he will bless us, and we must have those blessings if we are to get along.” … The law of tithing and the promise of blessings to those who live it apply to the people of the Lord in every nation. I hope our members will qualify for the blessings of the Lord by paying a full tithing.

It had been an aggravating, irritating day—one in which I felt that nobody appreciated my efforts in behalf of the family. All the packing, planning, and preparation for our family’s annual camping trip had been left to me. My husband, David, a surgeon in training, had taken it for granted that I would attend to every detail of the trip. He had stayed at the hospital long past our planned departure time.
Before we had even driven out of the city, the children were restless and bored with the confinement of the car’s back seat. When David said I hadn’t packed enough activities to keep the children entertained in the car, I made some angry remark back at him.
“She’s just angry at Dad,” explained ten-year-old Owen to his little sister. It was then that I switched on a cassette tape of Primary songs for children and sat in bad-tempered silence.
But the joy of the Primary songs was contagious. One by one each family member began to sing along, until even my own anger melted, and I couldn’t resist joining in the chorus of “Listen, Listen.” The Holy Ghost will whisper. Listen, listen to the still small voice” (Children’s Songbook, 1989, page 107). How quickly the music changed the mood of our little family on that long stretch of highway. How quickly and how timely.
“We need to turn the car around,” David said as the sound of the chorus faded.
“What for?” I asked. “What did I forget?”
“Nothing,” he laughed. “I just have this compelling feeling that we need to turn around.”
Just as we had been in harmony in our song—suddenly we all felt the need to turn around. And as crazy as it seemed at the time, we followed the prompting, turned the car around, and started back along the way we had come. Shortly afterward, we reached a parked vehicle, and its driver stood by the side of the road motioning us to stop. As we slowed the car by him, he frantically called out:
“There’s been an accident,” he said. “A young woman was driving a motorcycle, and it rolled over off the highway. I think she’s dying.” He motioned to a still body in the grass at the side of the highway—a wrecked motorcycle beside her. We parked the car, and my husband got out.
We had never carried a first-aid kit in the car, but this time we happened to have an emergency kit with us consisting of medical supplies David had picked up at a hospital sale just three weeks earlier. For the first time in our lives, we had it in the car! Feeling helpless and scared, I held the children close to me as David grabbed the kit and headed for the accident victim.
As he reached the body, my daughter said, “We should pray.” Thankful for her suggestion, we bowed our heads. “Heavenly Father,” we pleaded, “please help Daddy. Help him to know what to do to save this girl’s life. …”
As I watched my husband kneel beside the young woman and assess her condition, I was humbled. The girl was indeed dying—unconscious and not breathing. David took out the last two items he had added to the emergency kit: a tube-like device called an oral airway that opens up the air passage to the lungs, and a bag that pumps in air and allows the doctor to “breathe” for the patient. He used them both. Along with his medical skills, they probably saved her life.
When the ambulance arrived, my husband rode to the hospital with the patient. In the ambulance, he was able to talk over the two-way radio to medical personnel at the hospital, preparing everyone for their arrival.
As I drove the car behind the ambulance, my mind was filled with questions. What if we hadn’t had the first-aid kit? What if David hadn’t gone to the hospital sale? What if he hadn’t been trained for such an emergency? And most of all, what if we had continued to argue instead of sing? Would we have then heard the “still small voice” prompting us to turn the car around? Would we have recognized it?
The cassette tape in the car had continued to play throughout the entire drama. Silent and in wonder, the children and I listened:
“For all his creations, of which I’m a part[,] Yes, I know Heavenly Father loves me” (Children’s Songbook, 1989, page 229).

Myra clicked the mouse as fast as she could. Her character, Galina the elf queen, was trying to defeat the huge ice dragon. Her friends from school were online too. They were playing elves and fairies in the game.
Flashes of color burst all over the computer screen. This dragon was tough!
“Almost there, almost … Yes!” She jumped up and pumped her fist in the air.
The chat box on her screen lit up with messages.
“Awesome job!”
“Let’s do it again!”
Myra smiled. She loved playing Quest Planet with her friends. “Just need to drop off this treasure first,” Myra typed.
Ping. A new message popped up. “Pancake1000 would like to be your friend,” she read.
Myra frowned. She was only supposed to play online with friends from school. But maybe this was someone else she knew. She clicked “Accept.”
Ping. “Hi! I’m Ethan. What’s your name?”
I don’t know any Ethans, Myra thought. But maybe it would be OK to talk to him.
She bit her bottom lip. “I’m Myra,” she typed.
For the next few days, Myra played and chatted with Ethan online. He was really good at the game and showed her where to buy supplies for her character.
“Where do you go to school? I go to Jefferson,” Ethan said.
Myra paused. That was a school near hers. Maybe he knew some people from her school. She started to type “Woodberry.” But then she got a sick feeling in her stomach. She remembered how her parents always said not to share any personal information with people she didn’t know—like her full name, address, or school. She also knew to never send pictures of herself.
Ethan said he was her age and lived nearby, so maybe it was OK to talk with him. She still wasn’t sure, though.
So instead she typed, “Do you want to visit the Enchanted River? I need some vanishing stones.”
Pretty soon Myra noticed a pattern. Whenever she chatted with Ethan, he’d start out talking about the game, but then he’d ask questions about her real life. He always asked her for more information.
One day Ethan wrote something that made Myra really uncomfortable. She tried to change the subject. “I’m going to the Fairy Realm for some unicorn hair.”
Ping. A message popped up. Then another. And another. Myra ran out of the room to find Dad.
“Dad?” Myra said.
Dad looked up from a book. “What’s up?”
“I was playing my game …” Myra gulped and looked down. “Someone is sending me bad messages.”
Dad looked at the messages while Myra tried to look anywhere but the screen. Her insides felt like they were being squeezed. She wished she had never accepted Ethan’s friend request.
“I’m glad you told me. I’ll report him to the website and block him from your account. I’ll call his parents too. Is he in your class?”
Myra’s voice was soft. “I don’t know him … I’m sorry.”
Dad hugged her. “Do you remember why you should only play online with friends you know in person?”
Myra nodded. “To stay safe.”
“That’s right. It’s easy for people to lie about who they are online. I’m sure there are lots of nice kids on Quest Planet. But it’s safer to only play with kids you know.”
Myra was quiet for a few moments. “OK. I’m sorry.”
Dad gave her another hug. “I’m proud of you for telling me when something made you uncomfortable. That took courage. And it’s always a good choice.”
Now Myra really felt brave, just like Galina the elf queen!

The morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kichitaro Ikegami and his family waited for Sunday School to begin at a small chapel in Honolulu. Kichitaro, known as “Kay,” had begun attending Sunday School with other Japanese-Americans soon after he, his wife Matsuye and his family moved to Hawaii in 1933. In the beginning, the congregation was small. But by 1941, the Japanese Mission had been operating in Hawaii for over four years. There were now five Japanese Sunday Schools in Honolulu, and Kay was the Superintendent of one.

Just as the meeting was about to begin, Jay Jensen, president of the Japanese Mission, and his wife, Eva, rushed through the door. “The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor!” President Jensen exclaimed.

Kay’s face went ashen. “Oh no,” he said. “It can’t be true.”

Kay had been confirmed a member of the Church by President Grant in 1935. Although he was relatively new to Hawaii, he had lived in the United States since he was eleven years old and his children had been born in America. He was dismayed at the thought of war between the country of his birth and the nation he called home.

President Jensen told Kay and the rest of the group what he had seen that morning. At eight o’clock, he had gathered with another Japanese Sunday School that met near Pearl Harbor. Outside, planes were flying back and forth in formation. Some of them were dropping artillery shells, but President Jensen decided it was the U.S. military conducting maneuvers. As soon as he returned home, his wife rushed outside and told him Pearl Harbor was under attack. He did not believe it could be true until he heard the urgent radio broadcast for himself.

“Keep off the streets!” the radio announcer had warned. But President and Sister Jensen felt they needed to make sure the Saints knew they were in danger. Now, President Jensen told Kay and the other Saints to “Hurry home and take cover.” Not long after they exited the chapel, a bomb landed just one hundred yards away, setting several buildings on fire.

In the days that followed, Hawaii was placed under martial law. Schools were closed and the government censored newspapers and individual citizens’ letters. All Hawaiians were subject to a curfew, but those of Japanese descent were required to be home by 8:00, one hour earlier than other residents.

Kay’s son, 15-year-old David, felt unsettled by the sudden changes. “The days are all dead,” he wrote in his journal on December 11. “I wish there was school once again.” He went to his school hoping to get a library book out of his locker, but soldiers were blocking the road.

As Christmas approached, David worked alongside his mother and father to dig a trench for an air raid shelter in their backyard. The labor was hard and slow. David tried to enjoy some of the holiday season by singing a few carols with a choir of Saints for the Sunday School Christmas program, but the performance did not go as well as he had hoped. “You can’t get into the spirit because of the war,” he lamented in his journal.

Now, for our next scene:

Later that summer in Hawaii, David Ikegami, seen in this photograph, squeezed into his family car, trying to make room for himself alongside the six other young people his father was driving to the Japanese Mission conference at the new O’ahu Stake Tabernacle. Kay Ikegami was happy to give his children’s friends a ride to church—members and non-members both. The Japanese Mission in Hawaii was seeing a great deal of growth, especially among young people.

For David, this Sunday meeting was different from most. Not only would he be ordained to the office of a teacher, but he had been asked to speak. The expected crowd of over two hundred people was much larger than the gatherings he was accustomed to.

David had chosen to use the words of Elder John A. Widtsoe, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, from general conference that April as the basis for his talk. Elder Widtsoe had spoken about the scripture from D&C 38:30, “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.” Ideas about how to find peace and purpose during frightening times felt like an appropriate subject for the Saints of the Japanese Mission.

Although there had been no further attacks on Hawaii, tension and uncertainty was now part of everyday life. The military had taken over the hotels in Waikiki and beaches were fenced with barbed wire. Citizens were fingerprinted and had to carry a special identification card. School had started again, but David had to carry a gas mask and there were often drills for air raids and gas attacks.

Now, standing at the pulpit, David read the words of Elder Widtsoe: “Fear is the chief weapon of Satan in making mankind unhappy. He who fears loses strength for the combat of life, for the fight against evil.” But those who strive to live righteously and become a Zion people need not fear, the apostle continued. “There is safety wherever the people of the Lord live so worthily as to claim the sacred title of citizens of the Zion of our Lord.”

As President Grant had hoped, David and other Japanese-American Saints in Hawaii later served critical roles in reestablishing the Church in Japan. Three generations of the Ikegami family have now served missions in Japan; David served three himself, including two with his wife Elsie.

I remember an experience that a young man went through during the years when he was in college. This young man was a good member of the Church. He told me that he was once invited to a costume party in the house of one of his classmates. Everyone was very excited to go to that particular party. The friend claimed that his college professors were also invited to attend, especially some of them who were very nice and friendly toward the students. All of this seemed very inviting and secure. So the young man accepted the invitation to go to the party. When he arrived there, he realized that the atmosphere was not exactly what he had expected. There were students drinking, smoking, using drugs, and doing other horrible things in every corner of the house. He said that he became very concerned about what was happening and began to think about how he could leave the situation.

The party was at a location far from his own home. He had gotten a ride with friends, and so he had no way to return home on his own. At that very moment he prayed silently unto the Lord, asking for help. After some pondering, he felt that he should walk outside the house. He followed his feelings and stayed outside the house until the party ended. That decision went unnoticed by his friends, who were all involved in that atmosphere and only regrouped when it was time to leave. During the ride home his friends talked about all the horrible things that had happened during the party.

This young man felt very uncomfortable with the whole situation. It was not easy for him to bear it, but the next day he went to sacrament meeting and partook of the sacrament. In that moment he felt calm, peaceful, and certain that he had made the correct decision. In that moment he realized what it means to grasp the iron rod and not let go, even in the midst of the mists of darkness. He understood clearly what Nephi taught his brothers when he said that “whoso would hearken unto the word of God, and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish; neither could the temptations and the fiery darts of the adversary overpower them unto blindness, to lead them away to destruction” (1 Nephi 15:24).

Imagine what might have happened if that young man, simply out of shame, had not been strong enough to continue holding onto the iron rod. As a result of this and other decisions in his life, that young man married a wonderful young woman in the temple, formed a special family, and went on to be very successful in his life in everything he has done. He serves faithfully in the Church and seeks to be a good example to his children.