Gospel Story Finder

“It was a nice prayer.” This was my thought immediately following my patriarchal blessing. My patriarch had said some great words, and I had felt the Spirit, but I thought it was just a nice prayer, nothing remarkable like others had indicated were in their blessings.
I had graduated from high school and was preparing for my first year of college. Before I left home, I wanted to be ordained an elder and receive my patriarchal blessing. Two weeks before school started, I was able to accomplish both goals.
My patriarch gave a fine blessing, but I just did not feel that the experience was as great as everyone made it out to be. I admit that in a way I was even disappointed. I had expected so much, and it seemed that I did not receive what I had wanted. I questioned my own worthiness. Could it be my fault that I was not feeling anything spectacular?
After days of pondering, I knew I was at fault. I realized I needed to do some preparation in my own life to receive the personal witness that my patriarchal blessing was from God.
For the next few weeks, I fasted, prayed, and sought forgiveness of any sins I had. I was changing slowly. I could not tell a great difference, but by the time my patriarchal blessing came to me in the mail, I was ready.
I waited until Sunday evening to read it when all was quiet. Even as I opened the envelope, I could sense a different feeling come over me. I began to read. I had not read more than a few lines when amazing statements appeared. I could not believe this was my blessing! It seemed my whole blessing was full of material I had never heard before, and the things which I did remember began to have new meanings. A full-time mission, celestial marriage, eternal life—I now saw these expressions, that I had thought were trite, as the great promises they were. I had missed so much when I first received my patriarchal blessing. My “nice prayer” had turned into a personal revelation from God to me.

When I’d been married only two weeks, I almost burned our apartment down. I was making toast when suddenly our brand-new toaster burst into flames.
While I stood there in shock, my new husband took action. He ran the toaster outside and dumped it upside down. Along with my blackened toast, out came … a thoroughly toasted instruction manual. Oops.
Thankfully, you don’t need to be perfect at making toast (or at anything else) to be ready for eternal marriage. But there are a few simple things you can do to prepare, as a youth, right now.

In May of 1974, I was with Brother John H. Groberg in the Tongan islands. We had an appointment to visit the king of Tonga, and we met with him in a formal session. We exchanged the normal pleasantries. However, before we left, John Groberg said something that was out of the ordinary. He said, “Your Majesty, you should really become a Mormon and your subjects as well, for then your problems and their problems would largely be solved.”

The king smiled broadly and answered, “John Groberg, perhaps you’re right.”

I thought of the Apostle Paul before Agrippa. I thought of Agrippa’s response to Paul’s testimony: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”4 Brother Groberg had the courage to bear his testimony to a king.

Years ago our youngest child had a serious bone tumor in his lower back. When he was taken to the hospital for surgery, I overheard the doctors in the hallway talking about his condition. They said it was likely that nothing could be done to save our boy’s life.
When I went back in my son’s room, I tried to encourage him. I assured him that he was receiving the finest medical care. He said, “Daddy, I’m not counting on the doctors. I’m counting on my blessing. You laid your hands on my head, and you blessed me. And I have faith that the blessing will be fulfilled.”
My son was healed. His life is an example of the power of a priesthood blessing. One of the lessons I’ve learned through my Church service is that our Father in Heaven loves little children. He loves to bless them, and He often blesses them through His priesthood servants.

The institute also spreads its influence through a graduate scholarship program. Hector Solorio was one of Mexico’s top agronomy graduates in 1983. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he gave up a graduate school scholarship to serve a mission. Since completing his mission, he is attending graduate school at BYU under a Benson Institute and Agricultural Economics scholarship. “These young people will return to their countries to become leaders in government and leaders in agriculture,” predicts Brother Brimhall. “We would like to sponsor hundreds more such students.”

To find and rescue requires fitting a message to the individual. Let’s look at the case of Brother Jones. When his home teachers came, he often brought up a counter idea to every one presented by them. When a new home teacher and his companion visited Brother Jones and his wife and young son, the family wasn’t very responsive. During each visit the home teachers fell into a pattern of just talking about the weather. This worked out quite well, because Brother Jones was a weatherman! He was very intelligent and had an air about him which was rather intimidating to the home teachers. But they visited him regularly each month for several months.
Then in a personal interview with the elders quorum president, the home teacher was told to ask Brother Jones to quit smoking. The home teacher said, “Oh, I don’t want to ask him that. We’re not ready for that.”
But the quorum president persisted: “Next time you come back for an interview, I want a report on what he said when you told him to quit smoking.”
I might note at this point that the best way to do individualized teaching is for the quorum president and the home teacher to discuss what could be done for that family. Both should pool their knowledge and feelings about the family. Then, after praying about what the Lord would have done, the home teacher should be assigned to do it.
On the next visit the home teacher went to the Jones home with courage because he wasn’t just going, he was being sent. We always go with more courage when we’re being sent. That’s one of the real purposes of the priesthood interview—to assign home teachers to do specific things so that they can go as one who is sent. We recall how boldly Jacob taught, “having first obtained mine errand from the Lord” (Jacob 1:17).
The first part of the visit at the Jones home went about like the others had, and the home teacher became quite nervous. He knew what he should do, but he didn’t quite seem to have the courage to do it. After the visit was about two-thirds over, the home teacher finally took a deep breath, prayed to the Lord for strength, and then began to speak.
“Brother Jones, our message tonight is simple.” Brother Jones looked right into the home teacher’s eyes as the home teacher said, “Our message tonight is that we want you to quit smoking.” There were a few seconds of silence and then the home teacher spoke again, “And the reason we want you to quit smoking is because we love you.”
A sound of sincerity in that home teacher’s voice, coupled with the Spirit, let Brother Jones know that this man’s love was indeed the reason he made such a dramatic request.
Brother Jones could scarcely speak as he said, “Do you know how hard it is to quit smoking?”
The home teacher said, “I really don’t, but I know you can do it and you’ve got to do it. You’re needed in this Church, and the first step to get back into activity is to quit smoking.”
Sister Jones quickly broke in and said, “Honey, you can quit. I know you can quit.”
Brother Jones said, “Oh I would really like to quit smoking.”
They talked a bit more and then the home teacher said after a while, “We want you to start coming over to Church.”
Brother Jones said, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m not even active.”
The home teacher quickly said, “You’re active. I’ve seen you walk around this block holding the hand of your little boy, telling him about the birds and the bushes. That’s the highest form of activity in the Church—just to teach your own children.”
Not in a rebellious tone, Brother Jones then simply said, “I just can’t go along with organized religion.”
The home teacher replied, “Well, you could have family home evening at home. You could do it like we do and not be very organized. Then you wouldn’t be an organized religion. But you could say your prayers and use the family home evening manual.”
After that, the home teachers and the family prayed and the home teachers went away. Later Brother Jones told the home teacher’s daughter, “Your father is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met.”
That inactive man is now in a bishopric. But the teaching had to meet his individual needs. It came from the Lord through the home teacher to him.

One of the great blessings the people of this Church have is to meet with the bishop once each year, settle their tithing, and report that what they have paid in contributions constitutes a tithe. It is also a great blessing for the bishops to have this experience. I remember a man in our ward who had a large family who would bring all of his children with him when he came to tithing settlement. Starting with the youngest, he would ask each one to report to the bishop as to whether their contributions constituted a tithe. When all of the children had reported, he would report for his wife and his family. This family was abundantly blessed for their faithfulness.

One time I was conducting a conference in Salt Lake City and President George F. Richards of the Council of the Twelve was there. I invited him to speak, and he said, no, he didn’t care to speak but to go ahead. So I began to speak, and I told them that if they ever told a story about anybody, that story would stick to that person no matter how long he lived, and it would be believed by most people, and therefore they must not bear false witness.
While I was speaking, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and there stood President Richards right behind me, and he said, “I’ve changed my mind. I want to speak.”
He said words about like this: “Once upon a time I was a high councilor in a stake, and somebody made a serious accusation against a man. We debated whether to have him in and try him. Finally, the stake president decided he would talk to him privately, and apparently he did, and the man proved to the satisfaction of all of us that not only was he not guilty of the accusation, but he hadn’t even been in the country when it was supposed to have taken place. He was away somewhere, and he couldn’t possibly have done it.”
He said, “Forty years went by, and that man’s name came up for a very high appointment in the Church. In spite of myself, I caught myself wondering if the story told about the man was true, even though it had been proven false.
I had to get hold of myself to keep from voting negatively against that man on a false story told forty years before that was proved false.” Then he sat down, and I continued speaking.

One day when I was 14 years old, a loud sound from the street caught my attention. I hurried to investigate and found a truck with huge sacks of seeds lumbering up the road. One of the sacks had tumbled off the truck and burst open.
The recently paved street was covered with tar and fresh gravel. This caused an enormous mess as thousands of seeds mixed with the road material. After the driver stopped and examined the situation, he expressed his frustration and drove away angry. He didn’t think the seeds were worth the hassle of picking them up out of the tar and gravel.
For me, though, those discarded seeds were a treasure I couldn’t pass up. I lived on a farm. Even though I had no idea what type of seeds they were, I knew they could grow into something useful. So I grabbed a five-gallon bucket and scooped up as many as I could, gravel and all.
I ran home to show my family my newfound treasure. Though we’d never planted string beans before, my dad recognized the seeds for what they were. He walked me to a back corner of our farm. “This is your area now,” he said. “Plant those seeds and help them grow.”
I was excited! I’d never had my own area of the farm to work before. That year my little corner was better watered and better weeded than any other part of our entire farm. While the rest of my farm chores still felt like work, taking care of my own corner with the string beans each day felt like fun.
The plants grew and grew. We ended up with so many string beans that we had enough to freeze and eat all year long.
The best part was that I used only a tiny portion of the seeds from my bucket. I had enough seeds in there to keep me going for years. Every year I planted more string beans and every year our family enjoyed a good harvest.
When I was about to leave on my mission, I looked at my bucket of seeds. The seeds were still mixed in with tar and gravel, but they were still as valuable as ever.
Every seed still had potential. It didn’t matter if the seeds were surrounded by tar and gravel or if they were grimy on the outside. The harvest was the same with these seeds as with any other string bean seed. They only needed somebody to see their worth.
Looking down into my bucket, I realized that those seeds were like Heavenly Father’s children. Sometimes people “fall off the truck” into rough places and nobody seems to want them. But we all have the same divine potential, no matter our circumstances. We all need to recognize that potential in others and help nurture it along.
Many years later I was reading in Jacob 5 about the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees when I remembered this experience from my youth. In the allegory, the master had a place in “the nethermost part of the vineyard” (Jacob 5:19) that was poorer than the rest.
His servant wondered why they would even want to spend time in that part of the vineyard (see Jacob 5:21), yet the master of the vineyard saw its potential and chose to labor there. These efforts ultimately yielded a great harvest.
Back when I was 14, my corner of the farm also happened to be the poorest on our property. And yet this corner still yielded a great harvest as a result of the time and effort I spent there working with the abandoned seeds.

“My father was a loving man. He thought everything I did was marvelous. You can imagine what that does to build confidence in a young girl! There was love, love, love. He gave it to everyone, the stranger included. He had a marvelous personality, full of humor. He came home with fun jokes every night. There was much laughter around our kitchen table, where the heat from the furnace attracted us until the wallpaper was worn out in spots. I became comfortable praying to my Heavenly Father very early because I felt my earthly father and my Heavenly Father must be very much alike.
“When daddy prayed, he always blessed everyone up and down the street by name. Often I couldn’t follow what he said because the words were unfamiliar and the style unlike our comfortable conversations. He’d say things like, ‘Father, we thank thee that all is in accord and that the personnel of this family is complete and accounted for.’
“Once I visited his office and heard him dictate letters while I waited for a ride up the hill. That was it! His prayers were like he was giving dictation. That night when he prayed, I risked the wrath of heaven and sneaked a look at daddy’s face. I was startled. He was weeping! The language he spoke was formal like his letters to important people, but the tears running down his cheeks spoke volumes about the tenderness of his heart.”

In 1995, since our stake youth conference focused on family history work, we decided to do baptisms for the dead, using family names gathered by members of the stake.
Because it was my first time going to the Salt Lake Temple, I was nervous entering the baptismal font room. As I sat on the bench waiting my turn, the Spirit prompted me to let some other youth go ahead of me. When my sister’s turn came, she was baptized for names that our grandpa had given us. It was wonderful to see her baptized for members of our family.
When my turn came, out of 1,400 names that the stake had submitted, I was also baptized for names my grandfather had gathered.
I felt like the Lord wanted me to wait so that I could do the baptisms for my family members. I have a firm testimony of family history work. I now work in the Salt Lake Temple and I see a lot of youth with family file cards every month. I think that’s amazing that people are doing their family history.

When I joined the Church in Taiwan as a teenager, paying tithing was not difficult because I had little income. After I graduated and began working, it became a little harder. There were always so many things to buy and so little money to buy them with. But each year at tithing settlement, I could honestly tell the branch president that I had paid a full tithe.
Then last year my mother had to be admitted to the hospital intensive care unit. I was sorely worried about my mother and also about how we would pay for her care. The following Sunday I remembered I hadn’t yet paid my tithing that month. Thinking I would need all my money to pay the hospital, I decided to put off paying my tithing until the next week. As Sunday approached once again, a small voice reminded me that the Lord has promised to open the windows of heaven when we pay tithing. “Now is the time to give my faith a test,” I thought.
I withdrew some money from the bank and placed it in a tithing envelope. I felt a little hesitant, but summoning my courage, I gave the envelope to my branch president. Although I felt reluctant to let go of the envelope, I decided to leave the matter in God’s hands.
Just a week later, I received a telephone call informing me that our insurance company would soon be sending a check. “For how much?” I asked. The amount was many times more than the tithing I had paid. I know that when we are faithful, God will never forsake us.
Lu Chia, BYU Chinese Ward, Brigham Young University Sixth Stake

That was the way he looked when I reached the summit of Snowdon for the first time. As the highest mountain in England or Wales, Snowdon, for a six-year-old, seemed as inconquerable as Everest does to me now. The old miner’s track was surfaced with rough shingle that shifted unnervingly as we walked. The craggy gray rocks and scattered boulders were a stark contrast to the sailor-blue sky and white scudding clouds above. Occasionally, we would pass a stray sheep searching for an area to graze. These hardy animals were so used to human invaders that they barely noticed us passing.
It wasn’t long before my short legs were failing, and with them my spirits. The gray path seemed endless. “Come on, Sian. You can do it,” Dad coaxed as he heaved me onto his back. It made the climb more difficult for him but helped revive me. We trudged past crumbling stonewalls that had been built by a now forgotten shepherd long before the era of cement. From a distance they looked like huge scars on the face of the mountain.
At last we reached the final scree. Dad held my hand tightly as we scrambled up. When we reached the plateau on the top, we sat down breathlessly. I looked around. Far below I could see moving people like multicolored ants. As far as the eye could see there were mountain ridges, deep valleys, and in the distance the glint of blue from the North Sea. I gazed around in wonder, then laughed excitedly. “We made it, Dad. We reached the very top!” I looked up to see that the expression in my father’s eyes at that moment was a reflection of my own. It said, I love you, I have faith in you, and I know that you can do what you set your mind to do.

Many unselfish children of God are involved in teaching efforts, also worldwide. A good example, known to us through our humanitarian efforts, is the activity of a man known as Mr. Gabriel, who has been a refugee from various conflicts on several occasions. He recently observed that hundreds of thousands of refugee children in East Africa needed help to keep their hopes alive and their minds active. He organized other teachers in the refugee population into what they called “tree schools,” where children were gathered for lessons under the shade of a tree. He did not wait for others to organize or direct but personally led efforts that have provided learning opportunities for thousands of primary school children during stressful years of displacement.

Equal to my fears of going to the bishop were my feelings of unworthiness to be at church with people who were living good lives and had not indulged in the sins I had committed. I was sure the first Sunday I returned to church that everyone would see right into my soul and know what I was guilty of and the feelings I was struggling with.

Instead, my anxieties were put to rest when members of the ward welcomed me back with loving fellowship. Repentance would have been much more difficult if I had gone from being a less-active member to a less-included member of the ward.

There was, for example, the return trip from my second zone conference. We had transferred trains and were busy talking to a woman about the new temple in Freiberg when I noticed that the train had stopped in a city we shouldn’t have been in. We realized we had gotten on the wrong train and quickly jumped off. Unfortunately, the next train headed in the right direction would not pass through for another two hours, and our connection after that would be even later. Waiting in that train station, we had the chance to do some reading. “The Inconvenient Messiah,” an article by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, then president of Brigham Young University, appeared in the Ensign we had just received, and his thoughts seemed directed straight to me:
“And so I ask you to be patient in things of the Spirit. Perhaps your life has been different from mine, but I doubt it. … My mission was not easy. …
“… All but a prophetic few must go about God’s work in very quiet, very unspectacular ways. And as you labor to know him, and to know that he knows you; as you invest your time—and inconvenience—in quiet, unassuming service, you will indeed find that ‘his angels [have] charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up’ (Matt. 4:6). It may not come quickly. It probably won’t come quickly, but there is purpose in the time it takes. Cherish your spiritual burdens because God will converse with you through them and will use you to do his work if you will carry them well” (Tambuli, Mar. 1989, 23; Ensign, Feb. 1984, 70).

My experience in the mission field helped me understand those words, and the Spirit bore strong, penetrating, comforting witness to me of those truths in that lonely train station.

A couple of weeks later, our branch was visited by a beloved member of our stake presidency. He gave a talk in the sacrament meeting and invited everyone to remain faithful in their trials and to prepare for the temple. He asked all the members to pray for us to go to the temple again. His talk was comforting to our wounded hearts and gave us hope that one day we will be able to attend the temple.

Have you ever taken something for granted, unaware of how it benefited you until it was gone?
I did once—with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Growing up in Mongolia, my family and I were members of the Church. But over time, my parents’ church attendance became less and less frequent. I slowly started to feel indifferent about the gospel too.
I never took what I learned seriously and eventually stopped going altogether. I didn’t think I would miss the gospel, because it had never really seemed to benefit my life anyway.

When I was a young adult, my older sister bumped into some missionaries. They stopped her to ask if she could translate something for them in Mongolian. They had a quick conversation, and when she returned home, she realized who they were.
She wanted to go to church that week and invited me to join her.
I was totally against the idea at first. I thought I was doing fine in life without the Church! But she convinced me to join her just once.
When I walked into sacrament meeting for the first time in years, I wasn’t very happy to be there. However, as I looked around, I saw some friends I had grown up with. The light they emanated was almost tangible. As I watched them, I recalled small inklings of spiritual experiences I had felt at church growing up.
So many truths I had disregarded came flooding back, and I suddenly felt empty and sad. “I’m not like them,” I thought. “Why did I leave this all behind?”
I realized that I had become a different person in the past few years. There was a sense of darkness in my life I had been ignoring. But as I sat there, I heard a peaceful voice in my mind that seemed to say, “You can shine too. It’s not too late.”
I thought of the parable of the lost sheep. The one sheep who the Savior brought back to the fold (see Luke 15:4–7).
I was that sheep. And the Savior was lovingly coming after me because He loved me as much as His other sheep.
He wanted me back.
This brought me so much gratitude for my Savior. Feeling the Spirit for the first time in years, I made the decision to come back to the Church and, this time, to take it seriously.

I felt that truth and knew that if I put my heart into the gospel, my life was going to change.
As I started living the gospel, I found purpose in my life again. I finally believed that Heavenly Father loves each of His children and that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the key to returning to our heavenly home.
This means everything to me now.

We also served for three years in the Pacific Islands. It is significant that almost 25 percent of all the Polynesians in the world are members of the Church. Their faith and spirituality are legendary. Sister Cook and I were in Vava‘u in the Tongan islands on one occasion. I had just spoken about following the prophet in the general session of stake conference. At the luncheon following the conference, I sat next to a distinguished elderly patriarch. He indicated how grateful he was to hear what the prophet was teaching. He gave me the following account. Vava‘u, which is a relatively small island, usually has sufficient rain, but periodically there are severe droughts. The island has long inlets or bays, almost like sounds, which curl into the island below steep hills. When drought conditions left the village without water, there was only one way they could obtain fresh water and stay alive. Over the centuries they had found that fresh water traveled down through rock formations inside the mountains and came up in a few spots in the sea.

The Tongan men would set off in their small boats with a wise elder standing at one end of the boat looking for just the right spot. The strong young men in the boat stood ready with containers to dive deep into the seawater. When they reached the appropriate spot, the wise man would raise both arms to heaven. That was the signal. The strong young men would dive off the boat as deep as they could and fill the containers with fresh springwater. This old patriarch likened this lifesaving tradition to the living waters of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the wise man to God’s prophet here on earth. He noted that the water was pure, fresh, and, in their drought condition, lifesaving. But it was not easy to find. It was not visible to the untrained eye. This patriarch wanted to know everything the prophet was teaching.

This story about the Aaronic Priesthood begins with a young woman, 16-year-old Lauren DellAquila of the Cary Second Ward, Apex North Carolina Stake. Lauren hadn’t come to Church for years. She had never been baptized and confirmed, “but I just knew in my heart that the Church was true.”
She also knew David Christison, 16, and Andrew Hill, 15, who attend the same school, are Latter-day Saints. “I’m in marching band with David and had a couple of classes with Andrew last year,” she says. And she knew they stood by their beliefs. “It meant a lot to see their example, because most teens at our school don’t have values like they do,” Lauren explains.
Then one day after band, some other classmates were making unkind comments about the Church. Lauren told them if they really wanted to know the truth, they shouldn’t repeat rumors; they should find out for themselves. Afterward, David thanked her and asked how she knew so much about the Church. “She said that when she was really young she went to Church, but then her parents divorced and she stopped coming,” David says. “So I invited her to come again.”
“People had tried to get me to come back before, but for one reason or another it had never happened,” Lauren explains. “But when I told David and Andrew that I did want to try again, they were excited. I started coming to meetings, and they introduced me to the bishop, the missionaries, and the young women in the ward. They helped me feel at home.”
Soon Lauren was baptized and confirmed, and today she’s a happy, confident Laurel who recently gave a sacrament meeting talk about the importance of the priesthood. “If the gospel had not been restored,” she says, “I wouldn’t have seen two young men honoring their priesthood. And I wouldn’t have had the opportunities I have had to make covenants and to draw close to the Savior.”
It’s a similar story for Hope Riner, an 8-year-old in the same ward. She benefited from the good example of her 17-year-old half-brother, Andrew Roberts. He joined the Church a little over a year ago and was recently ordained a priest, which meant he could baptize her. “I felt great about it, because we have a strong bond already,” Hope says. “I was glad my brother could use the priesthood to help me.”
“It was an incredible experience,” Andrew says. “I know I need to be an example to my sister, not only as a brother, but also as an example of the kind of young man she should have as friends and the kind of man she will marry one day. By my example, I’m preparing her to understand how the priesthood can bless her life.”
Both Lauren and Hope know that the young men in their ward—as well as in the Cary Third Branch (Spanish speaking), which is dependent on their ward—take the priesthood seriously. “They don’t just talk about it,” Lauren says. “They live it.”
Maxwell Guerra, 13, is another example. He’s a member of the branch but serves as the deacons quorum president of the ward. On any given Sunday, he’s meeting with the presidency and the quorum adviser to keep track of the quorum members, plan activities, and make sure all the deacons needed will be there to pass the sacrament. After church on a recent fast Sunday, he helped another deacon collect fast offerings and then visited Alma Parraga, who is about to turn 12 and will soon be joining the quorum.
Andrew Hill, mentioned earlier, is president of the teachers quorum, and he loves the fellowship he finds there. “It’s more than just getting along with each other,” he stresses. “We strengthen each other and learn from each other.” Any assignment, he has found, is easier with teamwork, and that includes home teaching. “One of the great things we do in the Church is to look after each other,” he says. “It’s a powerful thing when an Aaronic Priesthood holder and a Melchizedek Priesthood holder become a team, with a responsibility to watch over families and individuals.”
The teachers also spend time preparing the sacrament, and Andrew says that has special significance for him. “Priests bless the sacrament,” he says, “and deacons pass the sacrament. But teachers set a tone of reverence by having everything ready before the meetings begin.” Being involved with something so sacred is a great privilege for the Aaronic Priesthood, Andrew says.
Of course, the bishop of the ward is the president of the Aaronic Priesthood. In the Cary Second Ward, Matthew Watkins is the first assistant to Bishop Charles N. Anderson. Matthew says he feels one of the most important things the priests do is to study the gospel together. He is grateful when the bishop helps the priests to understand gospel principles. “The priests help teach each other, too,” he says. “Each Sunday I feel like I understand more and more.” In particular, he remembers a lesson about fasting. “It helped me see how important it is to get close to the Spirit.” He also enjoys providing music for priesthood meeting. “Music is another way of getting close to the Spirit,” he explains.
Another priest, Erick Wells, 18, recently ordained his younger brother, Michael, 12, to the office of deacon. “I wanted Erick to ordain me,” Michael says, “because he’s one of the greatest examples in my life. He never does anything wrong that I’ve noticed, so everything he does, I know I can do too.”
Erick smiles at the tribute. “I really enjoyed being able to use my priesthood to confer it on Michael,” he says. “I feel a great responsibility to be an example not only to my family but to other people as well so that I can share in the gospel with all of them.”
Erick says the goal of all young men in the Church should be “to obtain both the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods, make covenants in the temple, be missionaries, prepare for a lifetime of service, and live faithfully with their families so that they can be together with Heavenly Father again.” Matthew agrees. “The Aaronic Priesthood lifts us to a higher sense of what we need to be doing,” he says.
And that’s what’s happening in the Cary Second Ward. Ask these young men who is using the priesthood to make a difference right now, and they can truthfully answer, “We are!” Ask them who is using the priesthood to prepare for the future, and the answer is the same.
How has the priesthood made a difference in your life? E-mail your experience to us at newera@ldschurch.org.