Gospel Story Finder

When Babe was about eight years old, she earned money for a harmonica by cutting some neighbors’ grass. It was so high that she had to cut it with a sickle before she could mow it. When she got the harmonica, she practiced for hours and hours. Her brothers played the drums, two of her sisters played the piano, her other sister and her father played the violin, her mother sang, and Babe played her harmonica. Even when she was older and famous for her athletic prowess, she was good enough to play her harmonica in public.

A few months after I returned home from my mission, someone who I knew well and who was older and more educated than I was at the time took me aside and tried for hours to fill me with doubts about my faith. The experience left me in a place of spiritual darkness for a period. Though I felt as if I were in a spiritual cloud, I continued my habit of reading the Book of Mormon and praying daily. Though I was struggling spiritually, it didn’t feel right to me to stop these daily habits—even if during this period it was harder to feel heaven’s light—because I knew they had brought answers and blessings to me in the past.

A few weeks after this experience, while reading the Book of Mormon, I had a strong impression to open my mission journal and read some of my mission experiences. This had a profound impact on me during this difficult time. I read about multiple experiences when I had felt enveloped in God’s love during especially difficult times; when I had experienced significant increases in my ability to learn the language of Cantonese; when I had had impressions about where to go and what to say that proved to be inspired after the fact; when I had felt an overwhelming calmness while being threatened with danger; and when I had experienced the powerful spiritual light that flooded the room each time my companion and I testified of the First Vision.

As I read through my record of these past experiences, I felt the spiritual cloud begin to lift. The cumulative effect of reliving these very real experiences was resounding evidence of the hand of a loving God in my life. Great peace and clarity returned as the power of my own witness from my own experiences reaffirmed the truth of the restored gospel as I allowed the Spirit to teach me from what Elder Neal A. Maxwell called “the pulpit of memory.”15

Let me give you an example from my own life. I have been blessed to have such dear friend-mentor relationships in my life with Elder Jon M. Huntsman—Area Seventy, philanthropist, benefactor, founder of the Huntsman group of companies, and my friend.

I first met Jon Huntsman in 1975, when I was 24 years old. I was an elders quorum president for a University of Utah married-student ward, and Jon Huntsman was my high council adviser. We became friends, and in my senior year, as I was preparing to conclude my education at the university, Brother Huntsman recruited me as a sales representative in his plastics company.

One of my very first assigned accounts was Avon, the cosmetic giant headquartered in New York City. To get me started with that important client, Brother Huntsman personally accompanied me to New York City for my initial introduction. Excited to be entering into a new career and anxious to make a good impression, I wore my best brown college suit with a brown tie and brown loafers. When we met at the airport, I noticed that Mr. Huntsman gave me a peculiar look. But he didn’t say anything!

When we arrived in New York City, he told me there was a stop we needed to make before calling upon Avon. We went directly to a famous men’s clothing store known as Brooks Brothers on swanky Madison Avenue. On the way, I recall him saying to me, “Now, Ron, if you are going to be a salesman in my company, and if you are going to represent me to Avon, you are going to learn how to dress, how to act, and how to serve in this new role.” And then he added, “You don’t wear brown suits in a business environment in New York City!” Not representing Jon Huntsman at least!

Jon knew the people at Brooks Brothers, and he watched as they fitted me with a beautiful, dark gray, pin-striped suit—the nicest I had ever seen and certainly the nicest I had ever owned. After it was taken away to be tailored for a perfect fit, we picked out a shirt, some ties, a belt, and all the accessories. Next we went to the shoe department, where Jon introduced me to my very first pair of black wingtip dress shoes.

I guess Brother Huntsman’s account at Brooks Brothers gave him special privileges because after we had had lunch, we returned to the store, where my new business wardrobe was ready, courtesy of Jon M. Huntsman.

I remember my gratitude to Jon for sparing me the needless embarrassment of showing up in my college clothes. As I stuffed—and that’s exactly what I did—my brown outfit into a bag, I realized he had made sure I was properly dressed! Then it was off to Avon, where he introduced me as their new account representative from his company. Jon was teaching me much more than the importance of looking the part. He was introducing me into a whole new way of thinking, of doing things, of representing myself to others. He was mentoring me. This was the first of many such valuable lessons I learned from him.

Years later, while serving as an executive in Brother Huntsman’s company, I was very involved in my duties, which took me around the globe. Returning from one of these business trips, Brother Huntsman, a stake president at this time, asked me what I was doing in the Church. I told him I was happily teaching a gospel doctrine class in Sunday School. He asked me what kinds of experiences I had had in Church leadership. I told him I had enjoyed serving in several presidencies, but most of my Church service, very happily, had been in teaching.

After I explained this to Brother Huntsman, he told me of a similar time in his life when he had been called to serve in a student stake, first as a high councilor and later as a bishop. He found it ideal for his busy schedule. In fact, as I mentioned earlier in this message, that was where I first met Jon Huntsman.

He said he knew a brother at the University of Utah who was serving as the stake president of one of the university married stakes who could fill Church-service positions with brethren from across the Salt Lake Valley. Brother Huntsman asked if he might phone this stake president and let him know of my name. I agreed and really did not think of it again, knowing how busy he was.

Sometime later I received a call from Robert Fotheringham, the president of what was then the University of Utah First Stake. He asked if he and his counselors might come to our home and visit with Sister Rasband and me. Not many days later all three of the stake presidency were sitting on the couch in our living room, inquiring about our situation and feeling our testimonies. After a searching interview with each of us, the three men looked at each other knowingly, and the stake president then extended a call to me to serve as a member of the University of Utah First Stake high council. They said they had already talked to my resident stake president and that he felt fine about the call—if they should want to move forward.

I accepted that call and began my service in the University of Utah First Stake. As a part of my assignment, Sister Rasband and our young family enjoyed a wonderful opportunity to develop choice Christ-centered relationships with the young married students. After serving for a period of time on the high council, I was called as the bishop of the 10th Ward in that stake.

I later found out that Brother Huntsman did call President Fotheringham and simply suggested that he knew someone who might do well in a university campus setting. Hence, my dear friend and mentor Jon Huntsman, merely by mentioning my name for a possible interview, provided another kind of experience for me in Church service.

I think of the wonderful young people I met in that university ward setting and the opportunity I had to assist several of them in finding employment themselves, one who is here with us tonight. Most importantly, I had the privilege of bearing witness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and establishing righteous friendships in a way similar to what Brother Huntsman did for me.

In the space of only a few years, my life turned inside out. When people would talk about the young adult years as being an exciting time of life, I felt more than discouraged. Everything was falling apart for me, and things seemed to be coming to an end rather than joyfully beginning.
After years of struggling (to put it very lightly), I came across an address by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf where he said: “When we step back and take an eternal perspective, when we look at our lives in the frame of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can begin to see how the various dots in our lives interconnect. We may not be able to see the entire picture just yet, but we’ll see enough to trust that there is a beautiful, grand design. And as we strive to trust God and follow His Son, Jesus Christ, one day we will see the finished product, and we will know that the very hand of God was directing and guiding our steps.”9
I desperately wanted to have the dots connect for my life, and so in the midst of my very chaotic circumstances, I held on to what Elder Uchtdorf promised.
And in some ways, after a couple of years, the dots did start to finally connect! Nothing is perfect by any means, but there have been things that have connected enough for me to see that Elder Uchtdorf was right.
So although my story isn’t complete and is still a little scary at times, God has given me enough to not give up!
Jessica Anne Lawrence, Intern for YA Weekly

I stared at the folded bill in my hand as I realized I still needed to pay tithing on money I had earned during the last week of my summer job. I owed 90 rands in tithing, and I had one R100 bill.
I had just started my final year of medical school and had many school expenses. I sat there fiddling with the R100 bill, thinking about paying tithing. My summer job had ended, and it was unlikely I’d find a job that would fit into my busy schedule. However, my parents had taught me to pay a full tithe. This money belonged to the Lord, and I knew it. With that thought, I placed the money in the envelope and paid my tithing.
In the days following, as I searched for a job, I prayed that the windows of heaven would open for me. I needed a job that would fit my schedule, pay well for low hours, and still allow me time to study. In short, I needed a miracle.
Two weeks later a friend suggested that I apply for a job at the hospital where our medical school had just opened a new education floor. I walked to the office and knocked on the door. The woman inside, who had taught our class two years before, remembered me.
“I was wondering if you were looking to hire any tutors for your new program,” I said. “If you are, I would like to be hired.”
“We are indeed,” she replied. “We are looking for someone to tutor a group of second-year medical students for an hour in the afternoons. It’s a flexible start time and will require you to study a different patient each day and then to teach the students. Can you do that?” she asked.
The Lord had helped me find a job that was exactly what I needed! It was the answer to my prayer.
After working a month, I found out just how much I had been blessed. My paycheck showed that I was being paid a monthly salary three times higher than I had thought. In addition, I received vacation pay.
The Lord had opened the windows of heaven and showered me with blessings far greater than I had ever expected. As a result, my faith was strengthened in the principle of tithing.

They became involved in this work in an unusual way.

“My friend and I were assigned to perform some vicarious ordinances in the Brisbane Australia Temple,” Michael said. “I had driven to the temple in my business van, and when I was returning to it after the completion of my assignment, a fellow approached me in the car park and said he was the facilities manager for the Church in the area.

“He asked if I would be interested in doing some work for the Church.”

Michael says, “We were asked if we would be willing to do some gilding (painting with special gold paint) on a statue of the angel Moroni. We told him that we were willing, submitted a bid, and we did that very interesting work and have since been fortunate enough to work on many other projects.”

Sister Berry enthused about her Hong Kong mission saying, “Serving in Hong Kong was one of the best experiences and held a special place in my heart. I loved every part: the people, food, culture, members, companions, and mission. I was always amazed by the beautiful Hong Kong scenery and weather.”
Soon after arriving in Hong Kong, civil protests began, but the mission understood the importance of the work at hand and, with hopeful hearts, “soldiered on and worked hard.”
China wanted to bring Hong Kong under Chinese law, rather than the democracy it had inherited from British rule. The Hong Kong people were protesting that they would be brought under Chinese rules and regulations when it came to types of crime and sentencing.
Sister Berry recalls, “We learnt to simply adapt and change our schedules to fit curfews, and our approach to ensure it would still allow us to share the gospel and bring happiness to those around us. We loved and trusted our mission president and his wife dearly; we knew that they were inspired, and as long as we were obedient to their word, we were safe and protected.” She explained, “As a mission, we came together, and during that gathering, our mission president presented a plan, reminding us that it is necessary to be prepared within Church culture.”
“The plan was to cover us in the case of an evacuation, or a need to stay within our apartments for a few days, or to report to a particular area if Hong Kong went into social unrest.
“We stocked up on food, were given individual telephone SIM cards, directions on how an evacuation would occur and, most importantly, a unique code word that only our missionaries and our mission president knew: ‘Jell-O-nation’.
“This code word was put in place to be used only if the evacuation was to occur, and we would know that it was not a false alarm or a disturbance from an outsider at the time. The protests continued, resulting in us missionaries having to spend certain days indoors spring cleaning or randomly heading to the nearest sister or elder missionary apartments, when instructed, to spend the night while it calmed down. It was decided that no new missionaries were to report to the China Hong Kong Mission until it had calmed down. We had around 80 missionaries in the field, and this figure was capped at 100 for about three transfers.
“Although we were short on missionaries, we were never short on blessings and miracles, and continued to help even more people learn of the gospel and our Saviour Jesus Christ. We truly felt the love, support and encouragement from our leaders and members during the process.
“During that time, we had a zone conference with half the missionaries, where we were astonished and delighted to be told that we were teaching more than ever and finding souls and introducing baptism to just as many as in the years before, when there were twice as many missionaries.
“President Phillips loved to set us challenges and always encouraged us to enhance and strengthen our testimonies, such as by prayerfully studying the Book of Mormon front to back in 80 days, following the Spirit and setting a minimum of ten ‘windows of heaven’ each week. We loved it.
“The ‘windows of heaven’, or as we liked to call them, windows, were a unique finding technique that we loved to do.
“In Hong Kong, we were limited when it came to the traditional door knocking. People lived in apartments with guards who knew the missionaries very well and could keep us away. Most parks had rangers that would keep an eye on us in case we were handing out flyers. So, we would just have to hit the streets every day and do windows.
“Besides regular finding or district finding with other groups of missionaries, we would take some time each week to pray as a companionship, specifically about a time and place that we feel we should go to find someone ready to hear the gospel. We would look at our planners and the map of our area and listen to the Spirit. Once we figured out the time and place, we would slot it into our diaries, which was considered an appointment with God. We would have to show up around 15 minutes early, pray to open the window and talk to everyone we could find. The idea of windows was to promise to God that you would go to the place you felt the Spirit told you to go, and that He would guide someone ready to hear the gospel to find you.
“When we did come across someone interested, we were to find a spot and teach them about the gospel there and then for 10–15 minutes or even longer. Each window was usually an hour or hour and a half long, and we would try our hardest to speak with everyone. We would have around two of these each day and made them priority above all appointments because that was an appointment with God.”

I had joined with a few other brothers in my ward to help a sister move. But as we arrived at her apartment, a van that had been parked improperly prevented us from accessing her place with our van.
I called the phone number on the side of the van to ask that someone come and move the van. A man answered and promised he would come soon.
After 15 minutes, I called again, but he didn’t answer. Finally, after one more call, he appeared with two children. He was angry and said something that got under my skin. I tried to forget about it as we proceeded with the move.
That evening I thought about the experience. I prayed that Heavenly Father would help me forget my feelings and forgive the man. He answered my prayer.
A little while later, however, I was reading a local newspaper and noticed an article about this man. It included his picture. My negative feelings toward him returned. So, I again went through the same process. I asked the Lord that this insignificant matter not bother me any longer and that He help me forgive the man. A good feeling came.
It wasn’t long before I happened to meet this same man in a store. My bad feelings returned yet again. I was amazed. I asked the Lord why I wasn’t able to get over this experience. A few days later, He taught me a lesson.
I was pulling away from the grounds of the Helsinki Finland Temple when I noticed this same man working in the temple gardens. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My mind opened and I understood that he, like me, was serving the Lord and that he, like me, has frustrating days when things don’t work out. I was then able to see this man as my brother. With new eyes, I felt respect and love toward him. After that, all the earlier feelings left, never to return.
When we see others as the Lord sees us, we can follow His commandment to forgive completely (see Matthew 6:14–15; Doctrine and Covenants 64:9–10). This experience was a memorable, tender mercy of the Lord, which I still ponder in my heart.

Tyler’s example inspired Sarah to start thinking about serving her own mission. “I realized how many people my brother helped come unto Christ, and I also saw how much he had come unto Christ himself. I wanted to have similar experiences,” Hermana Christensen says. “I started to seriously study the gospel and found that the more my testimony and my relationship with my Savior grew, the more I wanted to share what I had.”
Sarah made the choice to put her construction business on hold and serve the Lord. This decision has given her powerful new insights.
“The number one thing my mission has taught me is that the gospel completely changes lives,” Hermana Christensen says. “Growing up in the Church made it hard for me to see how significant the gospel was in my life.
“Here on my mission, I am surrounded by people who do not know about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. When they learn that they are children of God and He has a plan for them, it changes their lives. It is the coolest thing to witness and be a part of. I had an understanding of that before my mission, but now I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is crucial for joy in this world and in the world to come.”
Hermana Christensen (right) and her companion Hermana Taylor (left) love to serve any way they can.
Photograph courtesy of Sarah Christensen
Though she misses being able to build houses while she serves, Hermana Christensen doesn’t regret her choice. “Of course, there is potential growth that my business could have made while I’m a full-time missionary,” she says. “But I know the Lord will bless my sacrifice of leaving it behind for a bit. My business can wait, but the Lord’s work cannot!”

Sister Bingham told the story of a girl who saw a home with shining golden windows. Her own home seemed shabby in comparison. One day, the girl rode her bike across the valley to visit the house. When she got closer, she saw it was abandoned and falling apart. When she turned around, she was surprised to see a house with golden windows across the valley. It was her own house! The sun on the windows made the difference. When we count our blessings instead of comparing ourselves with others, we’ll see the goodness of God in our lives.

This is the world Mike Lee stepped into at age 16, when his father sent him out to learn about work.
Now, before you start picturing Mike’s father as some sort of hardhearted Captain Bligh, let’s set the record straight. His father’s act may have seemed at the time almost cruel, but in truth it was an act of love.
It was 1979. “I’d been having a lot of trouble in school, a lot of trouble in everything,” Mike explained. “I wasn’t a bad kid. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
Mike’s father, W. Boyd Lee, was serving at the time as president of the Norfolk Virginia Stake. He loved his son and worried about him a lot. “Mike’s mother and I prayed constantly. I kept feeling that Mike should work on Spencers’ boat.”
Ira Spencer, Jr., a good friend of Brother Lee, was the branch president of the Manteo (North Carolina) Branch. Ira owned a fishing trawler that his son Duke piloted out of Wanchese, a little town near Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers first flew a plane. Ira and his wife Shirley also ran a seafood restaurant in Nags Head, and maybe Mike could help out in the kitchen when the ship was in port. Ira and Duke enjoyed having LDS crew members, because they had proven to be honest and dependable, and they didn’t use foul language or smoke on the ship.
“Still, he was only 16, and I didn’t want to impose on the Spencers,” Brother Lee explained. He talked the idea over with Ira.
“Mike seemed like a good boy,” Ira said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to give a boy incentive, and on his own he’ll move from where he is to where he should be.”
So Mike became a fisherman on the War Cry, a boat named after a line in the hymn “Hope of Israel”: “Sound the war cry, ‘Watch and pray!’” (Hymns, no. 64).
“It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done,” Mike said. “It’s not only skill that’s involved, but also a strong stomach and a desire to keep going. A lot of people can work hard for eight hours, but when you’re working almost twenty-four hours a day over a long period of time, you learn about endurance.”
At first Mike was in charge of small but important details. He had to make sure tools were always returned to the right place. He helped push trash fish overboard when the sorting was done. When the boat went after scallops, he learned how to cut the shells open and slice out the edible muscle.
“He was kind of timid at first, but pretty quick he showed us all what a good worker he was,” Duke said. “It got to where we’d trust him to run anything. He knew the gear and could do anything the rest of us could do.”
The basic crew included three returned missionaries, two others just getting ready to leave, a recent convert, captain Duke (who served a mission in Brazil), and an inactive prospective elder. “Working together, we developed quite a camaraderie,” Mike said. By the end of the summer the inactive member wasn’t inactive anymore, and Mike was ready for school again.
“Working on the boat gave me a chance to sort out my life,” Mike explained. “Even though you’re working, you’ve got plenty of time to think, and I thought a lot about the future. I thought about college, about a mission, about my family.”
He also said that being out at sea “made me love the ocean, made me respect its power. It helped me appreciate what God has created, the same way that getting out in nature helps you. It’s just a different kind of nature. The sea makes you appreciate the world that you’re a part of.”

I think of dear Sister Amy Gent, who I was privileged to visit for fifteen years as a branch president, home teacher, and friend. The first time I visited her, she was eighty-seven years of age, and I was later honored to speak at the funeral of this wonderful lady who stepped from this life at age one hundred and two. Widowed twice, she was the only member of the Church in her extended family. Was she lonely? Never!

She read the scriptures every day and once asked me to take her some missionary tracts, which I thought were to vary her reading. I gave them to her, saying, “You will enjoy reading these, Sister Gent.”

“Oh, they are not for me,” she replied. “I visit an old lady and I want to share the gospel with her!”

Reaching out, helping, serving—this is the way we overcome the fear of loneliness.

After graduating with honors from high school, Bien studied political science at the Christian College of the Philippines. “We were talking in class about earthquakes,” Bien remembers, “laughing about getting caught in one.” Suddenly, the whole classroom swayed. It was an earthquake.
Terrified, everyone scrambled to escape. The building was dancing madly. Just as Bien was about to dash to safety through an open door, he was pinned by an avalanche of concrete.
“A broken chair jabbed at my stomach, one of my legs was in a half-kneeling posture, and I was face down,” he remembers. His fractured right arm bled profusely under a block of collapsed flooring. Yet, incredibly, a huge chunk of fallen concrete had barely missed his head. “Classmates were crying for help, but I couldn’t budge,” Bien recalls. One by one they died, including three lying on Bien. The quake struck in late afternoon, and by evening it was pitch dark. Everything was silent.
“I cried,” Bien admits. But as he wept, a Primary song crossed his mind. He started singing “I Am a Child of God.” As each word pierced the silence, a feeling of peace came, a feeling that he was no longer alone. “I prayed, saying, ‘Father, if I still need to live, then please let me live.’” As he prayed, Bien remembered the Savior. “He suffered a lot more than I did,” Bien realized. The cave-in became a tremendous spiritual experience.
As the sun rose the following morning, so did Bien’s hopes. Rescue workers pried him from the rubble and carried him to safety. His relieved family was notified. Bien was rushed to a hospital. Doctors immediately amputated his right arm. “I woke up, looked at my right side and cried out, ‘What’s happening here?’ I thought I was dreaming.” Shock turned to sorrow. “I felt so lonely because I might not be able to do what I used to do.”
After three bedridden months, Bien went home. Nearly all of his 50 classmates had perished. It seemed the same thing happened to Bien’s will to live. How could he, a right-handed person, manage with just his left hand?
While tutoring his nephews one day, Bien felt prompted to practice writing the alphabet. At first it was pure frustration. “My mind knew the shapes, but my hand had difficulty following.” However, practice makes perfect; less than a year after that fateful day, Bien was not only writing with ease but also back to his oil-painting hobby. And he resumed college.
After a year, he felt it was time to make use of his newfound strength to serve a mission. His family was aghast. “We’d really worry about you,” his mother protested.
“I know this is what the Lord wants,” Bien reassured her.
Months later, as a missionary, Bien received a family letter. “Don’t worry about us,” they wrote. “We’re boasting about you already.”
Bien’s personality affects just about everybody. At the Manila Missionary Training Center he was an inspiration, and his dedication has touched the Santa Maria branch. But Bien admits there are still some challenges, like forgoing basketball and service projects like harvesting rice.
One of Bien’s favorite scriptures says God “will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will … also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). It’s a scripture that helps Bien see everything as a learning experience.
Mission life, he says, “is like a school where I learn much, not only about the gospel but also about myself.” He hastens to add that it was in the rubble of another school where he learned to trust Heavenly Father.
Ask Bien to sum up his blessings and he’ll share his motto: “I asked God for health that I might do great things, and I was given an infirmity that I might do greater things.”
Then he’ll smile and extend his friendship to you—with a warm, left-handed handshake.

As I was growing up, my mother insisted that I read regularly. She would take me down to the public library and check out about a one-foot length of books from the shelves. She typically chose biographies of great men and women. Sometimes it was painful to stay inside and read when I would rather be doing other things. But then each day I would see my mother reading, and I noted that she finished a book almost every day. That habit has stayed with her throughout her life and has blessed not only her children but her grandchildren, extended family, former students, and friends.

Today at the age of 87, my mother has grown blind, but she still “reads” constantly. She now reads by listening to audiotapes of books. Just a few days ago I asked her what books she had read recently. The list she gave me was impressive. She told me that she was rereading several of the classics, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Moby Dick, Walden, etc., all intermingled with scripture and gospel study. She has made the quest for knowledge a lifelong pursuit.

Like so many other young married couples, Jeff and Pat struggled through their student years at Brigham Young University. Nearing graduation in 1965, he was not eager to become a teacher of English, his academic major. Then came an opportunity to teach religion half-time at BYU while he worked on a master’s degree in religious instruction. He regarded it as an answer to prayer and felt privileged to be hired as an institute teacher in the Church Educational System on completion of his graduate work in 1966.

After a year in Hayward, California, teaching at several institutes in the area, he was appointed director of the institute in Seattle. Seattle Temple President Brent Nash, who was called as stake president during that time, says Jeffrey Holland reached out to many young members who might otherwise have faded into anonymity on campus. “Youth were drawn to him. If he was able to bring some of those young people into the institute, the gospel changed them.”

It was a time when uninformed comments about the Church had generated controversy on campus, but the young institute director’s ability to make friends and touch hearts helped erase ill feeling among students and organizations allied with other faiths. He became a sought-after speaker for firesides and other Church programs, and his wife frequently spoke along with him.

But anticipating a lifelong career in the field of education, Jeff knew he would need more schooling, including a doctoral degree. Years earlier, at BYU, he had opened a Yale University catalog and felt prompted that one day he would go there. A Yale-educated professor at the University of Washington recommended him for Yale’s American Studies program, and the Hollands moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1970.

When Jennifer and I were newly married and attending school in Logan, Utah we were faced with a choice. We could attend the resident ward based on where we lived or we could attend a married student ward. Honestly, I can't tell you now any of the items we discussed as we considered our choice. But in hindsight, we made the right decision for us.

In our married student ward we had a bishopric and a stake presidency who were focused on providing experiences to us as young married students that would shape the rest of our lives. We received service opportunities accompanied by excellent training. Our bishop emphasized planting our roots and being in the ward on Sunday fulfilling our callings rather than looking for chances to be other places. Sure, there are appropriate reasons to be away occasionally. But as we took the challenge we realized this principle doesn't only apply to our Sundays and our church meetings, but also to our family and home life.

This and similar patterns of behavior, where we are regularly found where we should be and doing what we should be doing, speak to commitment, diligence, and being "steadfast and immovable."[8] Establishing these patterns can provide an anchor in a harbor when the winds of life blow.

As a young husband and father, David Haight attended Church meetings regularly, served in callings as requested, and enjoyed them. But there came a moment, during World War II, that was a critical turning point in his life as far as serving in the Church was concerned.
One chilly evening he left his wife and three small children standing on a landing dock off Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay, as he flew out in a seaplane bound for Hawaii. Lieutenant Commander Haight spent a sleepless night over the dark Pacific in the noisy, vibrating airplane, thinking about what was important in his life. He realized that all that was of real value to him he had left back on the dock, and he wanted his family to be with him for eternity.
He felt his commitment to Church service had not been all that it could have been. He promised the Lord that if his life was spared through the war, he would accept whatever call came to him and do whatever it required. It represented, says his son Bruce, a new look at his life’s goals—the closing of one door, in a way, and the opening of another.

A mission had been a great desire of mine since I was a child. But since I married young, I put the dream aside while we raised our children, hoping that my husband, Ben, and I might be called later in our lives.
That lifelong hope appeared to be crushed when Ben suffered a stroke at the age of fifty-four which took away his ability to speak, write, or read and paralyzed his left side. In spite of a miraculous recovery through the power of the priesthood, he was still handicapped in many ways when our bishop called us in twelve years later to interview us for a mission. The stroke had left Ben unable to speak properly, so that he had difficulty communicating with anyone except family members. Words just did not come out right, and he had not been able to pray vocally or even ask a blessing on our meals. His left arm had been amputated; his right leg was swollen and painful much of the time; and he was likely to get a heart attack when under tension.
Furthermore, our financial income was small—about as small and inadequate as we felt. But we had no misgivings about accepting the call. Ben felt that if the Lord needed him or wanted him, that was it.
Our stake president was not too sure about submitting the application to Church headquarters. However, the Missionary Department’s advice was, “Send in the papers, and we’ll let the Brethren make the decision.” I prayed fervently that there might be a place suited to us where we could help in building up the kingdom. A few weeks later, when our call came to serve in the southeastern United States, my joy was full. I knew without a doubt that my prayers had been answered.

Some years ago, I was consulted by a woman who desired a divorce from her husband on grounds which, in my opinion, were justified. After the divorce was concluded, I did not see her again for many years. A chance meeting with her on the street was very surprising. The years of loneliness and discouragement were evident in her once beautiful face.
After passing a few pleasantries, she was quick to say that life had not been rich and rewarding for her and that she was tired of facing the struggle alone. Then came a most startling disclosure, which, with her permission, I share. She said, “Bad as it was, if I had to do it over again, knowing what I do now, I would not have sought the divorce. This is worse.”

Sometime ago I overheard what I am confident is an oft-repeated conversation. Three very young boys were discussing the relative virtues of their fathers. One spoke out: "My dad is bigger than your dad," to which another replied, "Well, my dad is smarter than your dad." The third boy countered, "My dad is a doctor"; then, turning to one boy, he taunted in derision, "and your dad is only a teacher."

The call of a mother terminated the conversation, but the words continued to echo in my ears. Only a teacher. Only a teacher. Only a teacher. One day, each of those small boys will come to appreciate the true worth of inspired teachers and will acknowledge with sincere gratitude the lasting imprint such teachers will leave on their personal lives.