Gospel Story Finder

Early in my youth, I was counseled in a blessing to stay close to my mother and to keep her advice near me, and I would be safe. I have always remembered that, but I often wondered about it because it was my father who seemed to give most of the advice. Then one winter when I was in the seventh grade, I had blood poisoning and became quite ill. My father was traveling at the time—in the summer he farmed, and in the winter he traveled, selling livestock feed. It was during this period that mother gave me some important counsel. It concerned moral cleanliness, and I’ll always be grateful for that advice. It helped me to set some personal standards early in my life.

Children, develop a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray, and Heavenly Father will send you the help you need. Listen to and obey your parents, who only want what is best for you. And when the time is right for you, get your patriarchal blessing and heed its counsel too.

I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Church when my wife asked if the missionaries could teach our sons. But I didn’t say no because she was already a member.
When the missionaries started coming to our home twice a week, I would go to my friend’s house next door. My friend was a strong member of another Christian church. Every time I visited with him, he wanted to talk about the Bible. I told him I was not into that sort of thing and didn’t want to study religion. But he kept trying to convince me, and I finally said yes. So for a long time I studied the Bible with my friend while the missionaries taught my boys.
One day it was time for the missionaries to come to our house. But instead of leaving, I decided to stay in the next room. As the missionaries started teaching my sons, I found myself wanting to hear more. I moved closer and closer to the door to hear better. They were teaching my sons about apostles and prophets.
Later I realized I wanted to learn more. I spoke with the missionaries and decided to take the discussions from them—privately. My wife was always there, but no one else knew about it.
So when the missionaries came to teach my boys twice a week, I would go to my friend’s house. Then, on a different day, they would teach me.
One day when my friend said something bad about the Church, I defended it. Like many people in the Marshall Islands, he did not know much about the Church and misunderstood some things Latter-day Saints believe. When he said other negative things, I again defended the Church.
That’s how it went for seven months. Then one day I realized that the Holy Ghost had been confirming to me that everything the missionaries were teaching me was true. I realized I needed to get baptized, even though I still knew so little about the gospel.
After my baptism in 2007, I was so happy. We started saving money to go to the temple in Hawaii, where my wife, our three children, and I were sealed in December 2008.
Being a member of the Church has made a huge impact on my life. I decided to quit my second job entertaining at a restaurant because I would come home late and my garments would be saturated with tobacco smoke. Despite the loss of that extra income, the Lord has taken care of us.
I know the Church is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God because of the Spirit I have felt and the blessings that I have received.

One afternoon my wife had taken our oldest son to the home of a woman who was teaching him to read. I was to pick him up on my way home from work.
His lesson ended earlier than we had expected. He felt confident that he knew the way home. So he started to walk. After he had gone about half a mile (0.8 km), it started to grow dark. He was still very far from home.
The lights of the cars as they streamed past him were blurred by his tears. He realized that he needed help. So he left the road and found a place to kneel down.
Through the bushes he could hear voices coming toward him. Two young people had heard him crying. They said, “Can we help you?” He told them he was lost and that he wanted to go home. They asked if he knew his home phone number or address. He didn’t. They led him to the nearby place where they lived. They found our family name in a phone book.
When I got the phone call, I rushed to the rescue, grateful that kind people had been placed along his way home. And I have been ever grateful he was taught to pray with faith that help would come when he was lost.

One branch agricultural project has put a parcel of Church property adjacent to a chapel under cultivation to provide fresh produce. The lot had been filled with weeds until the local priesthood leaders, using agriculture missionaries as resources, initiated this project to assist branch members with severe nutritional problems.
Even the children participated and learned as the ground was prepared for planting. The members learned and practiced sound agricultural techniques relating to moisture and nutrient requirements of the soil and now have a corn yield many times greater than they had previously obtained in their own farms and gardens.

Five years later, two young men in suits stood at Mark and Letitia Stoon’s front door. They wanted to come in and share a message about Christ, they said. “No, I don’t think so,” Mark began, but Letitia, who had come to see who was at the door, stopped him. “Wait, are you the people with the Book of Mormon?”
The young man smiled. “Yes, we are,” one of them answered.
“I have a friend, Amy Richards. She was my roommate at college for a couple of years. She gave me one of those before she left to be a missionary in Mexico.”
“Really? That’s great. Did you read it?”
“I read some of it. I thought it was interesting. Amy always seemed to care about it. And she still writes to me. She’s a good friend.”
“Do you mind if we come in and talk about it with you a little bit?”
“Not at all,” Letitia smiled. “Come on in.”

My real acquaintance with and love for the book developed between 1929 and 1941, the years during which I practiced law.

After I had worked my way through law school, had passed the bar examination, and had been admitted to practice, I became concerned over the question of whether or not I could live the standards of the gospel of Jesus Christ and practice law at the same time. My father’s worrying about it added to my concern. I don’t know that he had heard the story, but I was told that some wag, walking through a cemetery, saw on a headstone the inscription, “Here lies John Brown, a lawyer, and an honest man.” Whereupon he added to the inscription: “I wonder why they buried all three of them in the same grave?”

Remembering the Prophet Joseph’s appraisal of the book, I decided upon and carried out the following procedure:

I went regularly to my law office half an hour earlier than my associates, locked the door, and spent 30 minutes each morning praying and reading the scriptures. During the 12 years I practiced law, I read the Book of Mormon through nine times.

On a rainy morning in 1953, 79-year-old President David O. McKay visited Thurso, Scotland, to see the home where his forebears had embraced the restored gospel more than 100 years earlier. President McKay’s son Llewelyn, who accompanied him on this visit, recalled: “[As we approached the home], the sun broke through the clouds and smiled at us as though he were reflecting the joy and happiness in father’s heart. As we all gathered in front of the home, tears came to father’s eyes as he looked through the door. ‘If it had not been for two missionaries knocking on this door about 1850, I shouldn’t be here today!’” he declared.1
Even though the home had fallen into disrepair and was by that time used only to store potatoes, President McKay lingered for some time in the doorway, speaking fondly of what had happened there. The gratitude and joy President McKay expressed that day were characteristic of his life and ministry. As a General Authority for almost 64 years, including 19 years as the ninth President of the Church, he served with the energy of one who cared deeply for people and for the gospel and found joy in bringing the two together.

Let me tell you of a young man I knew when I was a mission president. He was a missionary full of faith. He was Uruguayan. He had been in the mission about three or four months when I arrived, and I noticed that wherever he served, people were being baptized. In the beginning I thought it was because of his senior companion, because he seemed too young, too new, to be the cause—that was my mistake. He knew how to make things happen.

He was called as a senior companion and a district leader. I sent him into a city that had gained a reputation of being a tough, “no results” city. Missionaries had not baptized anyone there for nearly a year—not one person! The members were discouraged. Only ten to twelve members were attending the branch. I didn’t tell him anything—I just notified him of the transfer. Three weeks later, he and his companion began baptizing. He served there about ten weeks. All of his district started baptizing.

It is great to have a missionary who can baptize, but if he can teach others how to do it, his leadership can bless the lives of many.

This missionary never wrote me much in his weekly reports. He would only write, “Dear President, I sure love you. Things are going great. Sincerely,” or “President, the Lord is blessing us greatly. I love the work. Your brother.”

He was called later to serve as a zone leader and sent to supervise the whole upper area of the mission where there were some very challenging cities. His new challenge was to teach the missionaries to do what he was doing. He served there two or three months and was responsible for scores of baptisms, and he literally changed the spirit of the whole zone, member leaders as well as missionaries. Together they wrought a spiritual miracle.

Then came a spiritual struggle for me, a restless feeling about him. I felt impressed that he should be sent to Paraguay. At that time the work was very slow in Paraguay. We averaged only 20 to 25 baptisms a month in the whole country. I wrestled with that and thought to myself, He has really proved himself here, but to put him in that situation might drag him down in discouragement as it has so many others. He may have a hard time sustaining his faith there. I had to struggle with my faith to convince myself that he really ought to go, but I obeyed the promptings.

I sent him a telegram transferring him to Asunción, Paraguay, as a zone leader and told him that he should leave the very next day. When he came into Montevideo, he didn’t even come to see me. He was modest and always a little embarrassed to see “the president.”

He departed from the mission home, but he left a letter, which was the first one that I had ever received from him. It said, in effect, “Dear President Cook, I received a telegram today telling me to go to Paraguay, and I thought you ought to know a few things: (1) You can’t baptize in Paraguay. I have had at least ten to fifteen elders tell me of their experiences there. (2) The members are not helping at all. (3) There are some real morality problems among the nonmembers there. (4) Many people live together unmarried. (5) ,(6), (7), (8) …” And he went through and listed ten to twelve of some of the most negative things that I have ever heard in my life.

I thought to myself, Oh no, unbelieving people have gotten to him.

But as he finished the list, he said, “I just wanted you to know, President, that I don’t believe any of those things.” Talk about faith! Then he committed himself, after expressing his faith, saying, “I want you to know, President Cook, that on Christmas Day (and the date of the letter was December 1), we are going to baptize 25 people.”

When I read that, I prayed for him and thought, The Lord bless you, elder. You have a tremendous amount of faith, and the Lord will sustain you. You don’t know the country. You haven’t ever been there. You don’t know where you are going to live. You don’t know your companion, the leaders, the members. You don’t know anything, and yet you, in faith, believe that you are going to baptize 25 people in 25 days.

Well, this young man was full of faith and was a real example of a great Latin leader. On December 25, he and his companion baptized 18 people. They hadn’t reached the 25, but 18 was just about all that the whole country baptized in a normal month. It was a great privilege two weeks later to participate in a baptismal service where he and his companion baptized 11 more. His district baptized about 30 that day. Can you see how one righteous man can turn around a whole set of circumstances? He believed, he committed, and he and the Lord did it.

When Elder Christofferson was a teenager, he visited the Sacred Grove in New York. He got there early on a warm summer night, and it was very quiet. Todd thought it was a perfect time for a special prayer. He began praying to know for sure that what he believed about the gospel was true. He prayed hard for a long time. But nothing happened. Feeling sad, he gave up and walked back to the place where his family was staying. He wondered what he had done wrong. Why didn’t he get an answer?
The answer Todd was praying for came a month or two later when he was reading the Book of Mormon. “I was overcome with a very powerful spiritual witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the calling of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” Elder Christofferson said. This was the answer he was hoping to receive in the Sacred Grove.
Todd learned that you don’t have to be in any special place to receive an answer from Heavenly Father. He was at home, in his bedroom, and Heavenly Father spoke to him there.
He learned that we don’t have to travel to Palmyra to find out that Joseph Smith was a prophet. We don’t have to go to Jerusalem to know that Jesus is the Savior, the Son of God. Heavenly Father knows us, and He will find us wherever we are. Wherever we may be, He can speak to us if we seek Him in prayer.

Photograph courtesy of the author
I often saw the same face staring from an apartment window. I thought to myself, “Isn’t it sad that someone would constantly look out their window, judging their neighbors’ activities?”
Then one day I thought perhaps I should go ask to see if I could be of some help. I decided to take some fresh-baked bread with me.
The warm bread melted the ice in my elderly neighbor’s heart. Tearfully she told me how lonely she felt. No one visited her and no one called her, not even her own children. With a trembling hand, she wiped tears from her cheeks.
She sighed and then said, “How nice it would be to just leave this world. I don’t judge anyone as I look out my window. I just watch the children playing and other things going on in the yard.”
Illustration by Alex Nabaum
Over time, we talked about the gospel. At first she was reticent because her husband served as an official in another church. But the more we talked, the more impressed she became with the truths I shared about Jesus Christ and His restored gospel.
“It’s wonderful that we have the same Jesus!” she said. “Will we see each other in heaven?”
“Yes,” I responded, “we will be there together—hand in hand.”
From then on, we were good friends for many years, until she finally passed from this world.
Now I like to think that my former neighbor looks from the window of her heavenly home, following our activities and hoping we have sufficient harmony and love toward one another.

During my junior year of high school, the bishopric called a new Sunday School teacher for my class. It was wonderful because this new teacher was very entertaining. At that time I didn’t go to Sunday School regularly. Before Brother Dahl was called, I hardly went at all.
One Sunday, I was walking down the hall to throw away my little brother’s leftover Cheerios from sacrament meeting and head for the bathroom to spend Sunday School time with my friends. On my way, Brother Dahl greeted me. Shaking my hand he said, “How are you doing, Sister Whitworth?” I just smiled, pushed open the garbage can, and dropped the bag in. “I hope you are coming to Sunday School today. The lesson is one of my favorites.”
“Brother Dahl, all the lessons are your favorites.” He smiled and left for class, leaving me with a weird feeling that he knew I had not planned on going to class that day. I am always one to do exactly the opposite of what everyone thinks I will do, so I went to the bathroom and casually said, “Come on, Kristina, let’s go to Sunday School.” Kristina always went to Sunday School, but I could see the surprise on her face when I was the one who suggested it.
As we entered the class, Brother Dahl asked, “Annie, what would you like for Christmas this year?”
“Money,” I said. Everyone giggled, even Brother Dahl. Brother Dahl asked everyone in the class the same question. Some wanted a mountain bike, others a stereo, and others didn’t really care as long as they got something.
Brother Dahl said, “Every year about this time I start wondering if my wife knows what I want for Christmas. I hope this year she gets me a new tennis racket and shirt, because my old ones are getting a little worn out.” Everyone knew he was joking because he was grinning.
“But that is not what Christmas is all about,” he said in a voice that changed the tone of the lesson. He started handing out paper and pencils. “At Christmastime we should be in the spirit of giving, but we should also remember what Christmas really is. On this paper I want you to write a letter to Jesus, thanking Him for all He has given you. And tell Him what present you will give Him.”
This was not an easy assignment for me. At first, I wrote down that I would give Him all of my money so He could build temples and churches, but I realized that the money really wasn’t mine anyway; it was His.
When class ended I still hadn’t thought of anything I could give Jesus that He had not already given me. I had found someone who truly had it all, and what kind of a present can you get the person who gave you everything?
That afternoon I had to set the table for Sunday dinner. While I was matching up knives with spoons, I tried to think of a really good present, but I still couldn’t think of anything. As we ate dinner, we talked about the lessons we learned at church. No one had any suggestions for what I should give Jesus for Christmas. But when my family read scriptures that night, I found my answer.
We were taking turns reading in Matthew. When I started reading, I wasn’t paying attention until I read Matthew 25:40: “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.” Now I realized the Savior had already told us what the best present is. I only needed to read His words for myself to understand.

In 2005, I gave birth to premature triplets: Milena, Mateo, and Nelson. Milena was born healthy, but my two little boys suffered complications. Mateo died of those complications three months after he was born.
A month after we lost Mateo, Nelson was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and deafness. We were devastated. Doctors told us he would never walk. At that moment, we were grateful for our knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It helped us understand why we experience adversity in this life.
Through faith and hard work, Nelson learned to walk and to communicate through sign language. He has done much better than his doctors ever predicted. He has grown up happy in our family and in the gospel.

Our sacrament meeting had just begun when the phone in the foyer began ringing. Someone seated nearby answered it, then walked up to the stand to talk with our bishop during the opening hymn. The bishop walked out and then came back in, whispered to his counselors, and sat back down. The invocation was offered, and announcements were given.
Again the phone rang, and the bishop was summoned. When he came back in, he whispered to his counselors and left. One of the bishop’s counselors motioned to the chorister to pause and stood to explain the disruption. He told us our bishop needed to be excused because a wide section of his cattle pasture was on fire. If not brought under control, the fire might threaten homes in the area.
At those words, one man stood up and left to help the bishop. Over the next few minutes, several men got up one by one and excused themselves from their families. Obviously moved by this outpouring of love for our bishop, the counselor announced that any men or teenage boys who were not participating in the meeting could be excused. We lived in a small rural town with only a volunteer fire department, and we didn’t want to wait for the fire department to get there.
Our ward choir, of which I was a member, was singing as part of the program. As a priest, I had also been asked to help bless the sacrament. After some commotion of men and boys leaving, the sacrament hymn was sung and we blessed the bread.
I had wanted to leave with the rest. I wanted the bishop to know of my love for him, but as the meeting progressed, I was glad to have stayed. The meeting changed even more when it became clear that one of our speakers had left as well. Thanks to the leadership of a bishop’s counselor, impromptu speaking filled the gaps. When the choir sang, only two male voices were left—I sang bass while my dad sang tenor.
Our congregation was cut by a full third that day as its members practiced what they had been taught: to love one another and to serve each other where needed most. The Spirit of the Holy Ghost was so strong in our chapel.
Those who remained longed to help fight the fire but remained to serve in other ways, as our bishop would have wanted. Those at the fire reaped a reward of service and an outpouring of love. Those left behind were rewarded with an incredible manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
The blaze wasn’t a forest fire by any means. Flames were never higher than 10 feet, but the size of the area engulfed had made the fire uncontrollable for one man.
Can you imagine the feelings in our bishop’s heart as he fought the fire alone, getting one area under control only to have flames flare up in another? Then through the smoke came good and dear friends to stand at his side.
Men and boys, still wearing white shirts and ties, hunkered against the blaze like a royal army. They wielded shovels against the flames; they flung wet burlap sacks on top of the grass in an attempt to smother the fire. At the hands of so many, victory was swift and complete.
Then, as the last flickers of flame were extinguished, a great fellowshipping occurred. Fathers and sons compared notes on the fire. Old friends talked together. The bishop moved from group to group, thanking everyone. Hearts were bound together as one in a bond of priesthood brotherhood.
The next Sunday at church, those who fought the fire came in the same white shirts, washed and clean. Those of us who had remained at church gathered around to hear their stories. Both groups were blessed by the events of that day as we saw gospel service given in two distinct ways.

Pablo wasn’t much different from any other investigator I had taught as a missionary in Paraguay, except for one thing: he couldn’t hear. That sometimes made it difficult to communicate. Because he didn’t know sign language, our discussions were usually a mix between lip reading and writing notes back and forth.
During the week, Pablo lived alone. His wife worked as a housekeeper and could only come home on weekends. He really enjoyed our company but was becoming less and less interested in the Church. My companion and I wondered what we could do to help Pablo progress. One day my companion said: “You know, Pablo’s birthday is next week. Maybe we should get him a card.”
It sounded like a good idea, so on Pablo’s birthday we headed to his house with the card. He saw us crossing the lawn and came out to welcome us. “Happy birthday, Pablo,” we said, exaggerating our lip movements and showing him the card. For a moment he didn’t seem to know how to respond. A tear came to his eye.
As we stood there on Pablo’s front patio, something changed in him. With his wife gone for the week, we were the only people who had remembered his birthday. Though no real conversation took place, we came to an understanding we hadn’t had before. Pablo started “listening” more closely to our messages, and he even went to church the next Sunday. He couldn’t hear the words spoken there, but he felt the Spirit testify of the truth of it.
Within a short time, Pablo was baptized and later ordained to the priesthood. The Church has made such a big difference in his life. His wife joined the Church, and they are now preparing to be sealed together in the temple.
I never would have guessed what a difference that card would make. Simple love and kindness had helped a man who couldn’t hear to accept the gospel. Sometimes it’s by the simplest means that the greatest things are brought to pass (see Alma 37:6).

In 2005, President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) asked members of the Church to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. I had never read the Book of Mormon all the way through by myself. My family decided we would take President Hinckley’s challenge; we were determined to follow the prophet. I began by reading a chapter a day, and soon found that I could read several chapters a day. I felt good knowing that I was doing what the prophet had asked me to do. Christmas came, and I forgot about my goal. On New Year’s Eve I still had 115 pages left to read. I spent most of the day reading. That evening I finished the Book of Mormon. I learned never to procrastinate what the prophet asks us to do.

I grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana, USA. We also had about 300 sheep on the ranch. My mother bought them as a way for us to earn money for our missions.
My job was to take care of the lambs that didn’t have a mother taking care of them. When a sheep has more than one baby, sometimes she doesn’t take care of all of the lambs. So those were the lambs I took care of. There were 5 to 10 of these lambs each year.
Every day, I would drive to the pasture in our small blue car, called a Volkswagen Beetle, and honk the horn. Then I opened the car doors. Those lambs would come from wherever they were in the field. They knew the sound of that old Volkswagen. They would jump in the back of the car, and I would drive them to the barn and feed them.
We are like those little lambs. We live in different places and have different challenges in our lives. But Jesus is reaching out to each of us. We can learn to hear His voice. We can turn to Him for comfort and security. We can feel loved by Him and Heavenly Father.
As I’ve looked toward Jesus as the Shepherd in my life, my life has changed. When we place our lives in the hands of the Savior, we will feel His love and learn to trust Him.

One day my father brought home a beautiful, spirited thoroughbred. She had been fully trained as a polo pony. She happened to be about half a hand too small to qualify for the buyer of the rest of the string, so my father bought her for us. This was one of the most exciting gifts I had ever had. Here was a prize any boy would be thrilled with. She could take off like a jack rabbit. She could stop on a dime, back up almost on a run, do anything any other horse could do, and do it better. She was a thoroughbred; yet, she lacked one thing. Almost every time I got on her, she ran away with me. Perhaps it was my fault, but she simply would not accept authority. She would take the bit in her teeth and take off, paying no attention to where I wanted to go. She was a rebel. All her training and talent were lost because she was headstrong and resented authority. We had named her Lady, but it was not long before we stopped calling her Lady and finally gave her away.

Not long after his baptism, Junior was visiting another ward’s fast and testimony meeting with his father. He felt impressed to bear his testimony for the first time in public. “I wanted to see if I could bear my testimony in front of everyone. I couldn’t. Then Dad stood up and helped me, and I could.” Junior’s testimony is simple and strong. “I know that God lives. I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet.”

You know from studying Church history that we have tried to live as one in a variety of settings. A story from one of those tries, in Orderville, Utah, gives us a clue as to why it is so hard.
Orderville was founded in 1870 and 1871 by people who wanted to live the united order; in 1875 they began the order. They built housing units in a square, with a common dining hall. They built a storehouse, shoe shop, bakery, blacksmith shop, tannery, schoolhouse, sheep shed, and woolen factory. They grew and made nearly everything they needed, from soap to trousers. They had carpenters, midwives, teachers, artists, and musicians. They produced enough surplus that they could sell it in neighboring towns for cash: with that they built up a capital fund to buy more land and equipment.
The population rose to seven hundred people. One hundred and fifty of them gave Orderville a special advantage: they had come to Orderville from the mission on the Muddy River, where they had nearly starved. When those who had been called to the Muddy were released, they were in near destitution. Twenty-four of those families went to Long Valley, founded Orderville, and pledged all they had to the Lord. They didn’t have much, but their poverty may have been their greatest contribution. Their having almost nothing provided a basis for future comparison that might have guaranteed gratitude: any food or clothing or housing that came to them in Orderville would be treasure compared to their privation on the Muddy mission.
But time passed, the railroad came, and a mining boom put cash in the hands of people in the neighboring towns. They could buy imported clothes, and they did. The people in Orderville were living better than they had in years, but the memory of poverty on the Muddy had faded. They now focused on what was in the next town. And so they felt old-fashioned and deprived.
One ingenious boy acted on the discontent he felt when he was denied a new pair of pants from the Orderville factory because his were not worn out yet. He secretly gathered the docked lambs’ tails from the spring crop. He sheared the wool from them and stored it in sacks. Then, when he was sent with a load of wool to sell in Nephi, he took his sacks along and exchanged them for a pair of store pants. He created a sensation when he wore the new-style pants to the next dance.
The president of the order asked him what he had done. The boy gave an honest answer. So they called him into a meeting and told him to bring the pants. They commended him for his initiative, pointed out that the pants really belonged to the order, and took them. But they told him this: the pants would be taken apart, used as a pattern, and henceforth Orderville pants would have the new store-bought style. And he would get the first pair.
That did not quite end the pants rebellion. Orders for new pants soon swamped the tailoring department. When the orders were denied because pants weren’t yet worn out, boys began slipping into the shed where the grinding wheel was housed. Soon, pants began to wear out quickly. The elders gave in, sent a load of wool out to trade for cloth, and the new-style pants were produced for everyone.
You know that isn’t a happy ending. There were many challenges Orderville faced in the ten years they lived the order there. One of them they never really conquered. It was the problem of not remembering. That is a problem we must solve, too.

A man walked up to a counter in a hardware store that advertised that it carried everything that one might need for the home. Picking up an item, he asked the clerk, “How much is this?”
“Twenty-five cents,” the clerk replied.
“Then one hundred would be seventy-five cents?” the customer asked.
“Yes,” answered the clerk.
“I need fifty-seven,” said the customer.
“That will be fifty cents,” the clerk told him.
All the foregoing statements are correct. What item was being purchased?
Answer: