Gospel Story Finder

Now, don’t second-guess the Lord’s anointed servants. Sometimes we get the idea that the bishop just doesn’t recognize our ability or he wouldn’t call us to such menial tasks. I had missionaries who wondered sometimes about my transfers. I might move them from Jacksonville, Florida, where there were 750,000 people (which they figured was commensurate with their ability) to the small town of Bristol, Florida, where there were less than 5,000. I got a letter from a missionary who got such a transfer one day. He said, “President, is this inspiration or desperation?”

I learned a verse that I think depicts the attitude that we must cultivate if we’re going to accomplish the work the Lord has given us to do, for it’s a mountainous task:
“Where shall I serve today?” I said, And my love flowed warm and free. Then he pointed me out a little spot and said, “There, tend that for me.”
I said, “Oh no, not that, Why, no one would ever see— No matter how well my work was done— Not that little spot for me.”
And the words he spoke, they were not stern, He answered me tenderly, “Little one, search that heart of thine, Art thou serving them or me? Nazareth was just a little spot And so was Galilee.”

You see, there are no small, small spots in the kingdom of God. There are no small jobs in the kingdom.

The Taylorsville Utah West Stake presented an original musical for their Heritage Arts Festival. For weeks a 60-voice chorus practiced diligently, while Scouts whooped it up square dancing. Backstage the set designer sloshed paint on canvas and the makeup committee practiced mass-production mascara application. “The Heritage of Our Future” played two nights to packed audiences. The drama dealt with the influence a young girl’s heritage has on her decision to not marry a nonmember and how that decision affects her future.

How do you remember to choose the right? Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles tells a story about a young boy and his friends who found a package of cigarettes: “They decided to go down on the cliff alongside some large boulders and smoke. … They lit up, and the young man said that as he was looking down at the smoldering cigarette that he held between his fingers, he saw his CTR ring. He quickly put the cigarette out. … He chose to choose the right, as he remembered what the emblem stood for” (Ensign, Nov. 1993, 66).

“My story is very short. I settled on Mrs. Canfield. She’s an old friend of our family. She baby-sat us when we were little, and now she’s teaching me embroidery. She’s so warm and happy! I’d love to have her join the Church.
“It was tough deciding how to approach her. She’s very old and wise, and I didn’t want to sound like a smart-aleck.
“I stewed and fretted and finally just came right out and asked her. ‘Mrs. Canfield,’ I said, ‘would you like to learn about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?’
“She smiled kindly. ‘No, Michaelene. Churches—any church—aren’t important to me. But thank you for asking.’
“And that was that.”
“We can’t force the gospel on people,” Sister Searle said. “But you’ve given her the opportunity to choose.”
“She knows where I am, if she changes her mind,” Michaelene mused.

From the time I was thirteen I knew that I wanted to live a life of service in my church. Brought up as one of eleven children in a good Catholic family, I had their support as I trained in a convent for six years and then took my final vows as a nun. My first field of service was Perth, Australia, and after four years there I was transferred to Sydney. I found the work very rewarding, and I had many wonderful experiences in the service of others. I will never forget those years, for in that time I feel I was being prepared for an experience that changed the course of my life.
It started out to be a normal day. I was on my way to the home of an elderly lady who lived about two blocks from the convent when I saw walking towards me two young men in dark suits. The tall one stopped in front of me, introduced himself, and asked me what I knew about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I replied that I knew all I wanted to know about Jesus Christ. He then said, “If Christ visited some people and spoke to them, wouldn’t you want to read what he said?”
I pondered that for a few seconds and replied, “Yes, I would.”
He pulled a Book of Mormon from his pocket and said, “This book tells of a visit that Jesus Christ made to the ancient people of America. All God wants you to do is read thirty-four pages and pray and ask him if it is true. Would you do that for Him?”
I replied that I could see his religion meant as much to him as mine did to me, so I would read the thirty-four pages and pray about it. We agreed to meet the next morning, and I would return the book to them. Then I put the Book of Mormon in my purse and went on my way.
I still can’t describe the feeling I had as I read those thirty-four pages (3 Ne. 11–28) that evening. I didn’t have to pray to know that the message was true. The words of the Savior were absolutely beautiful; they rang true with every word that passed before my eyes. I went to bed feeling better than I ever had in my life. It was a feeling of having found truth.
The next morning I wanted to tell someone that I had found something true, but with reluctance I said to myself, “No, it can’t be true.” I arose and prepared to meet the elders; but as the time approached, I was very nervous. I arrived ten minutes early, and those minutes seemed to tick away like hours. At last I saw them coming, right on time.
The first thing I did was to hand back the Book of Mormon. I told them I didn’t want the book anymore, although deep down inside I knew I did. But instead of taking the book, one of them asked me if I had prayed about what I read. “No, I didn’t,” I replied.
Then he said, “You’ll never know it’s true until you do.”
I wanted to say that the book wasn’t true, but I didn’t. The elders knew I was disquieted about something, but they didn’t know what.
Then one elder said, “You read those pages last night. Why didn’t you pray?”
I had no answer to that question, so at last I told them how I felt when I was reading the Book of Mormon.
Then they said, “You know the Book of Mormon is true, and that means Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and we have God’s authority to baptize. And that means you know you must be baptized to be obedient to these truths and follow God. Will you be baptized by one holding God’s authority?”
I knew right then that I must do as they said, but I answered, “No.” I knew I was wrong in saying it, but I thought they would leave me alone. They didn’t.
They said, “If God told you from your own prayer to be baptized Sunday [only three days away!], would you follow him and do it?”
What else could I say, but “yes, I would?”
So they said, “Let’s go where we can pray.”
When we were alone, they explained to me how I should pray. As I prayed and asked God if I should be baptized, the same feeling came to me that I had when I read the Book of Mormon. When I opened my eyes, we looked at each other without speaking, for what seemed a long time. I was afraid to speak, so finally one of the elders said, “Wasn’t that a wonderful feeling?”
“Yes, it was,” I replied.
“Will you follow God and keep his commandment to repent and be baptized by one holding authority? Will you do it this Sunday?”
I hesitated for a long time, but finally I said, “Yes, I will follow God and be baptized.”
When Sunday came, the elders had taught me many wonderful truths from the Bible—truths that were as plain as day, yet I had never heard or read them before. I hadn’t told any of the other sisters what I was going to do. As I left the convent that morning to meet the elders, I was very nervous but excited too. The church service was a beautiful experience. And I spent the time after the service waiting for my baptism at a wonderful member’s home.
As the time for my baptism approached, I became nervous; but I knew it was what God wanted for me, so I was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Back at the convent that night, many sweet memories and emotions passed through my mind as I packed my belongings. A few of the sisters came and asked me what I was doing, and I simply replied, “I am leaving. I found where God wants me to go. I’ve become a Mormon. I was baptized tonight.”
They were alarmed, but I just kept packing; and when I said good-bye, I gave each of them a copy of the Book of Mormon. “Please read it with an open mind and heart,” I said.

Church pioneers in family history had to learn to be very resourceful. In October 1939, L. Garrett Myers and Ernst Koehler were in charge of the first microfilming of records outside of Utah. They worked in a hotel room in the state of Tennessee. A big, troublesome fan in the hotel’s kitchen caused vibrations in their room that made working with the cameras difficult, so Brother Koehler decided they would have to film the records between 10:00 at night and early morning, when the fan wasn’t turned on. They processed the film in the bathtub and dried it on a clothesline.

Our son is a new hematology-oncology doctor. He has had the blessing of obtaining all his medical school education and training through a scholarship from the United States Army Medical Department (AMEDD). It has provided 100 percent of his tuition, housing costs, and expenses and even a small monthly stipend during medical school. When he was working hard to qualify for that scholarship and fearing the possibility of having to take out six-figure loans if he did not, I remember a conversation we had. I will never forget what he shared. My son told me that he knew it would all work out somehow because he was committed to paying tithes and fast offerings while he was in medical school.
He wanted to know he was doing everything he could to qualify for the Lord’s help with the large task he was setting out to accomplish. His work ethic has since been tested to its limit, but he is a good example to me of never being weary in well doing (see Doctrine and Covenants 64:33). Even with his busy hospital schedule, he has happily accepted heavy Church assignments, and he and his wife and little family have been blessed.

During my mission I learned a true story of a young boy named Tonga who exercised his faith in the Lord during a time of trial, and eventually, the Lord blessed him greatly. With permission from his grandson, Kafea Lavulavu, I would like to share the following:
A couple of missionaries taught the gospel to a family. They enjoyed hearing many things while being taught by the missionaries. At one point, they seemed upset with what the missionaries were teaching and felt that the missionaries were liars. They told the missionaries to leave their home as they didn’t accept the teaching of the missionaries anymore. One of the boys in the family, Tonga, felt strongly that their message was true. He felt it would bring him joy and was something that he needed in his life. Fortunately, the missionaries visited a family next door to Tonga. He joined the missionary lessons with his neighbors. Tonga enjoyed learning what the missionaries taught. Once his dad found out he was joining the missionary lessons with the other family, he was angry and told Tonga not to join again, otherwise he would punish or even kill him. Tonga was very sad because he really wanted to learn more about the gospel.
For the next appointment, he opened the windows close to the neighbor and sat next to the wall as close as possible so he could hear what the missionaries were teaching his neighbors.
One day, the missionaries taught about baptism, and Tonga felt he needed to be baptized in order to be saved in the Kingdom of God. He was very excited and asked the missionaries if he could be baptized. “No,” the missionaries replied, "your dad will kill you if you are baptized". He was instructed that he must wait until he was 18 years old. After turning 18, he met with missionaries again and asked if he could be baptized. He was interviewed by a missionary, and he recounted every story in the Book of Mormon from cover to cover. Finally, he passed the interview and was ready to be baptized. Tonga was baptized by one of the missionaries in the ocean. When he was immersed in the water and was lifted back up, he saw one of his older brothers walking towards him with a big stick on his shoulder. While his older brother walked step by step into the water, the elder told Tonga to run. He stood still in the water in obedience to his older brother’s command. In respect, Tonga stood in the water. The older brother hit Tonga as hard as he could with the big stick. His head was bleeding, his white baptism clothes became red, and blood was everywhere in the water. The older brother walked out of the water, angered, and left his brother submerged. The elder ran back and lifted the boy from the water and shook him, “Wake up! Wake up!” the elder said. Tonga weakly opened his eyes and grabbed the missionary’s arm and said, “Elder, can you confirm me with the Holy Ghost now?” “No, you are going to die,” the missionary responded. “We need to take you to the hospital right now.” The boy grabbed on tightly to the missionary’s arm and said: “Elder, if you confirm me now and I die, I know that I will go to heaven, but if I die without the confirmation, I cannot go to heaven.” Because of the faith of the boy, one missionary held him on the back and the other missionary confirmed him a member of the Church and bestowed upon him the gift of the Holy Ghost. His faith really blessed him. His injury was not serious, and he was healed. However, he could not go home, and he had to find another place to live so he could attend school and work. Every time he got paid from work, he always sent money with a letter of his testimony of the gospel to his family. Some months later, his father felt bad about what he did to his own son, and he started to miss him.
His mother wrote a letter, and his father delivered the letter and asked him to return home even though he knew he had joined the Church. Tonga returned home and lived with his family happily and always bore his firm testimony of the restored gospel. Eventually, his father’s heart was softened, and he allowed missionaries to come back into the home to teach them the gospel. Later, the whole family was baptized and joined the Church, and Tonga served as a Stake Patriarch.

I wasn’t really interested in the Church. I had listened to the missionary discussions only to learn more about a friend’s religious beliefs. But when the missionaries then asked me to pray about whether or not the Church was true, I felt I needed someone to talk to.
I thought about talking with the minister of the Christian church I had been attending. He and his wife had been good to me, and I respected him as a man of God.
“Surely, he could give me some direction,” I thought as I put on my coat.
As I was about to leave, I was impressed to pray about the matter. The feeling was so strong that I acted immediately without question.
I closed the door, knelt by me bed, and asked Heavenly Father to guide me as I talked to my minister. I also prayed that I might receive an answer about what the missionaries had told me.
After ending my prayer, I rose to my feet and again prepared to depart. However, another strong feeling came—that I should not see the minister. I felt that I should tell no one of my problem and that my answer would come in due time. If I needed truthful answers, I was to turn to the Lord in prayer.
Without further thought, I took off my coat and went on with my usual morning tasks.
My answer did come in due time. A burning sensation within me testified of the truthfulness of the gospel.
Several weeks after my baptism I visited my former minister and told him of my experiences. As I politely listened to his biased opinions, I felt thankful that I had taken the time to listen to that still, small voice several months earlier.

When I was at U.S. Steel, I had a very choice friend—a great young man with a great intellect. He had graduated with an electrical engineering degree when he was 21 years of age. He just had a finite mind. He was an inactive member of the Church, and one time he told me, “Jim, I’m going to prove that the Church is not true.” And so he went to the writings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and explored them, and one of the things he read about was the discovery of the golden plates. He took this as his first premise to build his own foundation, and he wrote about his exploration. He showed that the mass—which, according to the Prophet, was six by eight by eight, or approximately 288 cubic inches, and made up of malleable gold—could be assumed, based on the density of malleable gold, to weigh in the neighborhood of 184 pounds. And there would be no way that a young boy, even a farm boy, could bring 184 pounds of gold out of the stone box in the hillside.
Then he read further, and in order to recreate the case properly he built that body of mass to prove to himself what it looked like and to get a good feel for his subject matter. When he got through he noticed two interesting things: there were voids between the plates, and that accounted for loss of mass and weight; and also, according to the Prophet’s description, there were engravings on the plates, and that would account for loss of metal. When my good friend finished, he guessed that the plates probably weighed 94.35 pounds. And it would have indeed been possible for a twenty-year-old farm boy to carry those out of the hills.

For almost a year, between 2016 and 2017, the people in the Kasai region faced a terrible tragedy. It was a very dark period for the people because of a conflict between a traditional group of warriors and government forces. The violence spread from towns in Kasai-Central Province to the wider Kasai region. Many people fled their homes for safety and hid in the bush. They had no food or water or not anything, really, and among these were some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Kananga area. Some members of the Church were killed by the militia.
Brother Honoré Mulumba of the Nganza Ward in Kananga and his family were some of the few people who remained hidden in their house, not knowing where to go because all the streets were transformed into firing ranges. One day some neighborhood militiamen had noticed the presence of Brother Mulumba and his family as one evening they went out to try to find some vegetables in the family garden to eat. A group of the militiamen came to their home and then pulled them out and told them to choose to adhere to their militia practices or be killed.
Brother Mulumba courageously told them, “I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My family and I have accepted Jesus Christ and have faith in Him. We will remain faithful to our covenants and will accept to die.”
They told them, “As you have chosen Jesus Christ, your bodies will be eaten by the dogs,” and they promised to come back. But they never did come back, and the family stayed there for two months and never saw them again. Brother Mulumba and his family kept the torch of their faith alight. They remembered their covenants and were protected.

I was recently in Vavau, Tonga. It is a little island which is one and a half hours away from Nuku’alofa by plane and twenty-four hours away by boat. By boat it is the worst trip that can be made. (If you don’t believe that, ask Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, who went there recently to organize a stake and could not get a plane.) When the area conference was announced for Tonga, it was determined that only one boat would be available for the Saints from Vavau. The boat held 150 people. If you stuffed bodies into every possible corner of the ship, you could get close to three hundred people. Eight hundred Tongans jammed onto that boat and stood up for twenty-four hours without sleep, without food, without drink, without anything—because they knew that a prophet of God was going to be in their islands and they were not going to miss him for anything in the world.

Do you want to go to conference that badly? Do you care that the prophet of the Lord is speaking in the neighborhood? Do you care enough to flip on a television set, a radio, or to come to this building to watch a priesthood meeting? Eight hundred people stood up for twenty-four hours to get to conference, and they didn’t think anything about it. “The President of the Church is here,” they said. “That’s our prophet, and we may not see him again soon.” And they came.

Another member, many miles away, shared the gospel in correspondence to a friend in Richmond, Virginia. A wonderful experience followed. Two missionaries were tracting one day in Richmond. One had been ill; the other felt uneasy as they walked the streets, knowing that his companion was not at his best. Both desired to persevere, however.

After two hours of having little success, they knocked on a door and introduced themselves as missionaries with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Oh, yes,” the woman replied, “Ann Smith sent you.” The elders looked at each other, shook their heads, then told her they were just knocking at the doors in the neighborhood and that no person in particular had sent them to her. She invited them in; the husband and other family members were present in the room.

She then told the missionaries something that caused them to marvel. She said, “Just an hour or two ago I finished reading a letter that I had received today from my dearest friend who lives in California. A year ago her husband and she were converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were recently married in the temple. When we last heard, their marriage was falling apart, and she confided in me the sad situation. But today I received this ten-page letter telling me all about your church and the marvelous change it has made in their lives.”

She allowed the missionaries to read the contents of that letter, which covered Relief Society, Primary, Sunday School, MIA, and much, much more. Then they read a short note at the bottom, which said, “I will be sending two missionaries to your house to teach you more about the Church.”

After hearing the elders’ message, she said, with tears streaming down her face, “I believe the Lord sent you to us.”

When members and missionaries work faithfully together, they become as one and the Lord can use them to achieve his purposes among his children. The Lord had united as one the efforts of this faithful member and these diligent missionaries, to bring this family instruction which, if followed, will bring them joy and peace beyond measure and lead them back into the presence of our Heavenly Father.

Family prayer and scripture study are also important preparation. Each morning when the parents wake up the children, they all gather on the parents’ bed. There they sing a hymn, kneel and pray, and take turns reading scriptures aloud before having breakfast and getting ready for school. They talk about the principles in the scriptures.

“It’s really a challenge to get everybody up so early,” says their mom. “But since we’ve been studying the scriptures every morning, the children are understanding them better. When we didn’t do it, we felt we were sending our children out to school unprotected. But now they are going out into the world more prepared. We hope that during the day they might think of something we read about.”

After lunch on Saturday, Sara asked, “What should I do now?”
“What would you like to do?” Father was at the desk, opening his stamp album.
“I don’t know,” Sara replied. “Everyone else has a hobby to work on.”
“You could start a recipe collection.” Mother liked to cook new things. She was scanning the newspaper for recipes to clip.
“Quilting is a nice hobby.” Grandmother was cutting small squares from scraps of material for quilt blocks.
“Go leaf hunting.” Sara’s sister, Grace, held a leaf in one hand and a book about trees in the other.
“Rocks are more interesting than trees,” Sara’s brother, Glen, argued. He was sorting small stones in old egg cartons.
Sara didn’t know what to say. Dad’s stamps were colorful. Mother’s meals were delicious. Grandmother’s quilts were beautiful. Grace’s leaf collection was pretty, and Glen’s rocks were interesting. But Sara didn’t want to do what anyone else was doing. She wanted a hobby of her own.
“Thank you for the ideas,” Sara said sadly. She sat on the sofa and looked out the window. Jake was in the backyard burying a bone. Even he had something to collect! Sara sighed. She thought about how her family had tried to help. Suddenly she had an idea. “I know what I’ll collect!”
“What?” Father asked.
Sara smiled. “It’s a surprise,” she said. “I’ll show you next Saturday.”
There was a field trip at school on Monday. Sara’s class visited a limestone quarry and watched the big machines load rocks from it onto trucks. Sara picked up one of the small stones scattered on the ground and put it into her pocket. When she got home, she put the stone into an empty shoe box.
After school on Tuesday, Mother told Sara “A letter came for you.” She handed Sara an envelope.
“I’ve been hoping for this!” Sara tore open the envelope. Inside was a letter from her Swedish pen pal. Sara read the letter three times.
Then Sara looked at the envelope again. With a pair of scissors she carefully cut off the corner of the envelope that held the stamp. She had seen Father do this many times. My collection is growing, she thought as she dropped the stamp into the shoe box.
After dinner Wednesday night, Sara came downstairs carrying a worn-out dress. “May I have this for my collection, Mother?”
“Yes,” Mother replied, looking at Sara curiously.
Sara spent the rest of the evening cutting the dress into small squares. By bedtime she had a large stack of squares to put into the shoe box.
Thursday, during recess, Sara looked closely at all the trees in the school yard. Some of the leaves were golden. One tree had leaves shaped like mittens. Sara pulled a leaf from that tree and put it between two pieces of paper and slipped it into her math book. Later she laid it gently in the shoe box.
Mother shopped for groceries every Friday night. Glen, Grace, and Sara took turns going with her to help. Sara was glad that it was her turn. Before leaving for the store, she took some coins from her piggy bank.
At the meat counter, Sara found a beef bone wrapped in plastic. She put the bone into their cart and handed Mother the coins. “I would like to buy this for my collection.”
“Are you sure?”
Sara just smiled and nodded.
On Saturday Sara had lunch with her friend Hana Clark. Mrs. Clark made a pie, but it was not a dessert pie. It was filled with cheese and tomatoes. It was the main course.
“This pie is unusual, but it is very good,” Sara said. “May I have the recipe?”
“Of course,” answered Mrs. Clark.
After lunch, Hana read the recipe to Sara, who printed it on a piece of paper. When she got home, she put the recipe into the shoe box.
Saturday evening Sara took the bone from the refrigerator and put it into the shoe box.
“Are you going to show us your collection?” Glen asked when Sara brought her shoe box to the dinner table.
Sara nodded. She set the shoe box on the table and took off the lid. Father, Mother, Grandmother, Grace, and Glen peered inside. They all looked puzzled.
“What a strange collection,” Glen said.
“It is different,” Grace agreed.
“Sara, what is your hobby?” Father asked.
Sara didn’t say anything. She just handed the recipe to Mother, the stamp to Father, the fabric squares to Grandmother, the leaf to Grace, and the stone to Glen. “The bone is for Jake,” she explained. She unwrapped it and set it outside the back door.
When she came back to the table, she saw smiles on everyone’s face. “I’m collecting smiles,” she said. “Now I have five smiles for my collection. If you count Jake’s wagging his tail, I have six.”
“Yours is the best hobby of all,” Grandmother said. Then she kissed Sara on the nose.

We live on the shores of Flathead Lake in Northwestern Montana. Flathead Lake is 16 miles wide, 30 miles long, and the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. When calm, it is a clear, pristine, beautiful lake; however, it can quickly turn into a tumultuous, raging body of water. Several times a year, there are storms that pound the waves over our docks and onto the shore. I love watching these storms roll in, and I’m always amazed at how quickly they appear and how much damage they can do in a very short amount of time.
Last summer, on a beautiful Sunday morning, I was outside inspecting some new landscaping when I noticed a tube resting on our dock that someone had forgotten to tie up. I had an impression that I should grab the tube and tie it to the dock, but I glanced at the clear, blue sky and brushed aside the prompting, thinking to myself that there was no wind and one of the kids could do it as soon as they woke up.
A short time later, I was inside when one of my boys came running down the stairs saying that the wind had just blown a tube off the dock. What was a calm, peaceful lake an hour earlier was now a white-capped, furious body of water. It took about 10 seconds for my son to reach the dock, but it was too late. The tube had been snatched into waves pulling it away from the shore. It was quickly taken out of reach, and within a few short minutes, it was hardly visible from the shoreline.
While this wasn’t a life-changing experience, it still reminded me of several important lessons. First, listen and act on promptings. Whether we feel a nudge, a burning sensation, a whisper, or an impression, we need to pay attention and act. It is easy to second guess the impression we feel, rationalize it away, or do what I did and simply ignore it. It would have been so easy for me to follow this prompting, grab the tube and secure it to the dock.
The second thing I realized that morning is we need to always have strong anchors to keep us secure. We live in an intense, crazy world and without anchors to keep us grounded and safe, we are in danger of being pulled into the storms of life. If we are not consciously working to stay tethered to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are at risk of being pulled into the willing arms of the adversary.

I wrote Elder Featherstone's quote in my scriptures because at the time I read it, I was working in a refugee camp in Thailand. How could I have ever imagined while growing up in the small town of Chino Valley, Arizona, that I would someday find myself working in a refugee camp in Southeast Asia?
I received my first mission call to Indonesia, but the week before entering the MTC, my call was changed to the Philippines because of visa problems. I served in the Philippines a year before being transferred to Thailand to work in the refugee camp.
At that time, refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were fleeing the war in their countries. The Church volunteered to assist the United Nations; sister missionaries were called from several missions in Asia to work in the refugee camp. We were assigned to teach cultural orientation and English.
Working in a refugee camp, along with other missionary experiences, proved to be life changing for me. First, these experiences became the basis of a life-long professional career that has brought me many blessings and opportunities, both teaching English and working in international development.
Second, the experiences in the camp became significant spiritual experiences. I will share a couple of them with you.
Shortly before Christmas in 1981, Elder Marion D. Hanks, who was presiding over the Asia Area at that time, came to visit us in the camp. He had told us that we would have one of the best Christmases of our lives as we served the refugees. He read to us what he called the TRUE Christmas story….I have written in my scriptures, "The Christmas story." You know this scripture—when Christ comes in his glory, He will put His sheep on His right hand and say to them:
35 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:35-40).
When Christmas Day arrived, the sister missionaries assigned to the camp put on a Christmas program for five different groups of refugees—Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Yao.
In the Vietnamese section, as we portrayed the manger scene and were singing "Away in a Manager," a young mother near the front, walked up and presented her young baby in place of the rolled up towel we were using for the new born Jesus. For the entire song, the small and beautiful Asian baby looked up at the sister representing Mary and a sweet and quiet spirit came over the large group. The Spirit of Christ came that Christmas day to the Phanat Nikom refugee camp. How blessed we were as missionaries to have followed Him to that place at that time—to have a blessed Christmas Day.

1. It was two days before Christmas in Sharon, Vermont. The sharp features of houses, trees, and fences were softened and rounded by a heavy blanket of snow.
2. Near midnight the scattered farm homes were dark—except for the Smith’s, where a single lamp shining through a bedroom window made a checkered pattern on the snow outside. Although it was Christmastime, a light that late at night was unusual.
3. Something wonderful had happened on that twenty-third night of December 1805; a baby who would become a prophet had been born.
4. The next morning when Alvin and Hyrum, oldest of the children, saw a neighbor coming to visit, they plowed through the drifts to meet him and shouted …
5. “We have a new baby!”
“It’s a boy!”
6. Trudging back to the house, the trio waved at little sister Sophronia who was watching them.
7. Father Smith came to the door and let them in …
8. Inside, the baby was sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms.
9. “Well what do you know … a baby boy!”
“We’re so pleased! He’ll be named Joseph after his father.”
10. There were no telephones, just neighbors to pass the word along.
“Another boy for the Smiths.”
“They can always use another hand on the farm.”
11. Mother Lucy stroked the soft baby hair and even though he looked now like any other baby, she dreamed that someday he would be a leader, a mighty man.
12. But she could not have guessed that this tiny Joseph would restore the Church of Jesus Christ and that millions would follow his teachings.

Elder Kikuchi related how, as a young missionary called to serve in Japan for two years, he was first asked to extend for six months and then for an additional 12 months. He agreed without hesitation but each time asked his mission president to call the future Sister Kikuchi. “She was so happy that the Lord needed her future husband,” he recalled.

The young couple married soon after he returned, Elder Kikuchi continued. Then a Latter-day Saint American general who had been stationed in Japan offered to provide him with a complete scholarship and living expenses at Brigham Young University in Provo. “It was a wonderful, ideal situation,” he said, “but we felt we should stay in our country and serve the Church. We kindly turned down that great scholarship.”

Ten months after enrolling in the Asia University of Tokyo—where he eventually graduated in business psychology and management—“I was called as a branch president, and one year later our first daughter came,” Elder Kikuchi said, recalling he got by on four hours of sleep a night. “Those days were the most profound experiences of our lives.”

In 2023, President Russell M. Nelson delivered his now-famous address “Peacemakers Needed.”2 When my husband, Alexander, and I heard this prophetic message, we felt convicted to act. We had demanding work and school schedules, but we knew that our time was not our own—rather, it was a covenant gift from God. We felt inspired to create the Peacemaker Project, an academic student association dedicated to helping BYU students “engage in productive disagreement based on mutual respect and dignified dialogue.”3

Each of you has been given unique gifts, bestowed with the sacred purpose of building the kingdom of God. God Himself will accompany you in this pursuit. As Elder David A. Bednar taught, “The enabling power of the Atonement of Christ strengthens us to do things we could never do on our own.”4

I saw this miracle take place in my own life as I led the Peacemaker Project. The truth is, my husband and I are woefully unorganized, as the current sorry state of our apartment can attest. Despite our questionable abilities, the Peacemaker Project has reached thousands of students at BYU as well as students at 17 other campuses across the United States—a testament to God’s willingness to multiply our meager loaves and fishes.