Gospel Story Finder

Some time ago, I felt impressed to embark on a road trip to visit family in Salt Lake City, an eight-hour drive from our home in Colorado. With little planning, I loaded up our three young daughters and began the trek. We left later in the day than was wise. My husband stayed behind due to prior commitments. It was an unseasonably warm October day both in Denver, where we lived, and in Salt Lake, so I grossly underestimated the wintry roads ahead as Interstate 80 crosses Wyoming.
We started our journey uneventfully, but temperatures dropped quickly as we gained elevation. I became nervous and full of doubt. Our van had new tires but no four-wheel drive. I hadn’t packed warm clothes or blankets. I was terribly unprepared for something to go wrong. I pulled over to check road conditions and decided to press forward, but a few hours later I was white-knuckle driving in the worst snowstorm of my life.
I laughed and sang with my kids so they wouldn’t sense my unease. I knew this stretch of interstate was no stranger to terrible weather-related accidents. Large snowflakes streaked past the windshield in heavy sheets and blurred my vision. I could hardly make out a landmark anywhere on the road.
I dreaded the occasional 18-wheeler throwing snow and slush across the windshield as it passed. I watched several vehicles slide off the road into ever-deepening snowbanks. I knew I was in trouble. The pressure I felt to keep my girls warm and safe weighed on me as we crept slowly along in the dark.
Suddenly, I felt my phone buzz with a notification.
I had been ignoring my messages to focus on the road but glanced down and saw that my brother, who I thought was home in Texas, had texted me: “We are passing through a bad blizzard in the middle of Wyoming.” I was surprised to learn that my brother and his wife were just a few miles ahead in the storm. They were en route to Idaho in a vehicle much safer than mine and well prepared for cold weather. Our intersection was no coincidence. The storm persisted, but I was not alone.
I called them. Relief washed over me as they talked me through the blizzard. At times, they didn’t have good news. At one point, fatigued from the tedious driving, I asked if the roads ahead had cleared up. “It’s pretty bad around mile marker 280,” my brother responded. “Take your time.”
Soon, I completely lost visibility and resorted to keeping my right front tire along the rumble strip on the side of the road. For many long minutes I continued forward, trusting only the sound of those vibrations to keep us safe on the road. Finally, the skies cleared, and I stopped for the night at a hotel, too exhausted to go on.
I never saw my brother and his wife, but I knew they were there. I didn’t realize how panicked I would have felt without their guidance until my kids were safe and warm in our hotel room. My brother’s knowledge of the specific path ahead gave me the perspective I needed to keep moving forward. Without him, my fear of the next snowy mountain pass might have left me highly reactive, and one anxious tap of the brakes could have sent us off the road.
Here I was, trying to make it to the safety and familiarity of my parents’ home, and my older brother showed up to trudge the path before me. How sad it would have been if I had driven this road never knowing that he was ahead and never accessing the peace available to me. Just as our Savior is there for us, my brother was there even when I couldn’t see him.

We had just moved to a new state, and I was nervous. As I was walking into my new school, I said a prayer asking Heavenly Father to let the Holy Ghost be with me. I felt a warm feeling in my chest. If you don’t know if you are feeling the Holy Ghost, see if you feel a warm feeling inside. Everybody feels it differently. It’s easiest to feel it if you say a prayer or do something good.
Joshua S., age 8, North Dakota

For several of the cast, filming one scene was particularly moving. It was the passage in 2 Nephi 5 where Nephi flees into the wilderness with all those who will follow him to escape Laman and Lemuel, who want to kill him.
That same scene was really hard for Aleyna A., 12, who plays Lemuel’s daughter. She and another boy named Oliver hug each other in the video as they say goodbye. “We had to cry—I stayed and he left with Nephi. Being in it, living it, brought the tears out.”

The next morning, everyone gathered to listen to the person playing the Prophet Joseph Smith announce the building of the Kirtland Temple. A wooden frame replica had been erected by volunteers a few weeks earlier. Each family took turns helping to finish the outside of the structure, using cut tiles of Styrofoam and gluing them in place. Aleisha Anderson said that working on the temple was the highlight of the conference for her and that “it was spiritual and made me feel really good.”
The temple dedication was then reenacted. Rebekah Leonard said it was her favorite part of the week. “The weather was perfect, and the Spirit was so strong.”

It was one of those warm summer afternoons, the kind of day that seems to envelop the mind in daydreams and push out thoughts of work or study. While I’d been on my mission, this had been the hardest kind of day to keep my mind on the work. Now it was the same way with school. Since before noon I’d been up in the foothills east of campus collecting root samples. My lab partner and I had been collecting them for a botany project. It had taken us about twice as long as it should have, because we spent as much time chasing butterflies as we did collecting plants. After we had finally completed our collection, my lab partner had given me a ride in his car back to civilization, and I’d got on a bus to go home. It was Friday afternoon, and with the quiet influence of the early summer day still in my mind, I decided as I rode along to dedicate Saturday to sunny beaches and cool water.
I was beginning to imagine the day in a little finer detail when the air brakes gave a familiar hiss and I noticed a small Chicano boy getting on at the front of the bus. The bus was about half full. There were several empty seats between the front of the bus and where I was sitting so I paid little attention. Gazing back out the window, I let my mind drift again to my imaginary weekend.
But just as I was getting back to my daydreams, I saw that boy again out of the corner of my eye. He had passed two empty seats and seemed to be coming straight for the one next to me.
He was about nine or ten, dressed in well-faded but clean pants and a red-checkered shirt. The shirt seemed a little too big, it probably used to belong to his elder brother. As he approached, I stared determinedly out the window, hoping he’d pass by my seat and sit in one of the empty ones behind. But he didn’t.
“Hi, mister,” he said, sitting down next to me. He had a smile so big it seemed about a size and a half too wide for his face. I didn’t want to smile back, but his grin was too contagious; I couldn’t help smiling back at him.
“Hello,” I answered, trying to regain my stern composure.
“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes,” I answered, “it is a nice day.” This time I managed not to smile, and I looked back out of the window hoping that would end the conversation. It was a day too well suited for daydreaming to waste talking to some little boy about the weather. There was silence for a moment, and I began to relax again. I began to imagine playing volleyball on the beach.
“Hey, mister, are you married?”
“What?” I asked, turning back to the boy. His smile, if possible, seemed even a little wider than before.
“Are you married?”
“No,” I answered coldly, hoping he’d realize I didn’t want to talk to him.
“Oh,” he said, looking down disappointed, his smile disappearing. I seemed to have momentarily surprised him. He was thinking. Then in an instant he looked up again, his eyes brighter than ever. “But you’re going to get married, right?”
I tried not to smile, but his eyes and that row of teeth made it impossible. “Yes,” I said smiling back. “I guess I will.”
“And when you get married, mister, are you going to love your wife?”
Now he had surprised me. The question seemed out of place coming from someone so young. I felt like he was leading up to something, but I wasn’t sure what. “Of course,” I answered cautiously, “of course I will.”
“And when you love somebody, you always want to be with them, don’t you, mister, even after you die?”
Suddenly I realized what he was doing. He was asking me a Golden Question. He was a Mormon. I sat there looking at him. I didn’t answer; I didn’t know what to say. How many times had I asked almost that same question? How many times on the buses and streets of Brazil while I was on my mission? But that was my mission; that was then, not now. It seemed inconceivable that those same words were being repeated to me here, at home, by a ten-year-old boy. The bus was slowing rapidly and the boy stood up, taking something from his pocket and giving it to me.
“Hey, mister, I have to get off here. Take this. It’s got the name of two of my friends on it. If you want to know more, give them a call. Good-bye, mister.” And he was gone.
I sat staring at the pamphlet he had given me. It was folded in half and a little tattered at the corners. I unfolded it and read the title, “The Plan of Salvation.”
I’d come home from my mission almost two years ago. I’d brought home my missionary journal, color slides, souvenirs, and a lot of memories. But I’d left my mission behind. How many people had I told about the Church in the time I’d been home? How many Golden Questions had I asked? How many nonmembers did I know who might be interested if only I’d bring up the subject? I’d just been taught a lesson about missionaries that I hadn’t learned in the whole time I’d been on a mission, and it had been taught to me by a young boy with nothing but a testimony and a smile.
The bus was filling up with people now. We were near the center of town and it was almost 5:00. A young man in a business suit sat down next to me. Self-consciously I stuffed the pamphlet in my shirt pocket and looked down at my feet. I was still thinking about that boy; as young as he was, he was still more of a missionary than I’d ever been. I glanced up again. The man next to me was looking out the window, probably daydreaming.
“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” I said without thinking.
“Yes,” he smiled back, “a very pretty day.”
I sat for a moment, touching the pamphlet in my pocket. Then, with my biggest smile, I asked, “Are you married?”

At a solemn assembly held in the Kirtland Temple on April 6, 1837, the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the Gospel.”1
Almost precisely seven years later, on April 7, 1844, he declared: “The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. The apostle says, ‘They without us cannot be made perfect’ [see Hebrews 11:40]; for it is necessary that the sealing power should be in our hands to seal our children and our dead for the fulness of the dispensation of times—a dispensation to meet the promises made by Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world for the salvation of man.”2

I straightened up in my seat when I heard the topic of the next speaker: why the Mormon Church is wrong and why Mormons are hypocritical haters. During the speech, I felt my cheeks burn, and shock and betrayal settled within my chest. How could my very own friends, knowing I was a Latter-day Saint, choose to say slanderous remarks in front of my entire English class?
After the bell rang, I was approached by the speaker and some of my other friends. With the Spirit burning inside me, I told them what had been said was wrong and that the Church doesn’t hate people who don’t live our beliefs. In return, they bombarded me with false statements and accusations. I felt alone. I thought, “How is it fair that when I am living what I know to be true, I must be persecuted?”
When I got home from school that day, I saw an email from my grandmother. In it she told me to look up Matthew 5:11–14. With tears in my eyes, I read: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. … Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.”
The Holy Ghost filled my heart as I read those words. I know that persecution will strengthen our testimonies, and I know that the blessings in heaven will be well worth the pain we go through here on earth. The Savior made it possible for us to find peace when we are being persecuted for living His gospel, and for that I’m truly grateful.

But the Bensons had always considered their children—Reed, Mark, Barbara (Mrs. Robert H. Walker), Beverly (Mrs. James M. Parker), Bonnie (Mrs. Lowell L. Madsen), and Beth (Mrs. David A. Burton)—to be far more valuable than prestige or material gain. In the early years of their marriage, Ezra and Flora Benson had met the expenses of a new baby by selling their only cow. In an increasingly materialistic age, President Benson urged parents to sacrifice their worldly pursuits to attend more carefully to the teaching and nurturing of their children.

Do everything in the spirit of love. Elder LeGrand Richards (1886–1983) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shared a tender relationship with his father. Said he: “I walked into my father’s apartment when he was just about 90 … , and as I opened the door, he stood up and walked toward me and took me in his arms and hugged me and kissed me. He always did that. … Taking me in his arms and calling me by my kid name, he said, ‘Grandy, my boy, I love you.’”

A story from my own family history illustrates this principle. My great-grandfather Joseph Watson Maynes was born in 1856 in Hull, Yorkshire, England. His family joined the Church in England and then made their way to Salt Lake City. He married Emily Keep in 1883, and they became the parents of eight children. Joseph was called to serve a full-time mission in June of 1910, when he was 53 years old. With the support of his wife and eight children, he returned to his native England to serve his mission.

After serving faithfully for approximately two years, he was riding his bicycle along with his companion to Sunday School services in Gloucester, England, when his tire burst. He got off his bicycle to assess the damage. When he saw that it was serious and would take a while to fix, he told his companion to go ahead and begin the Sunday service and he would be there shortly. Just as he finished saying this, he collapsed to the ground. He had died suddenly of a heart attack.

Joseph Watson Maynes never saw his wife and eight children again in this life. They were able to transport his body back to Salt Lake City and have his funeral service at the old Waterloo Assembly Hall. A statement made at his funeral service by Elder Anthony W. Ivins of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles teaches us an important lesson about life, death, and endurance: “This is what the gospel gives us—not immunity from death, but victory over it through the hope we have in a glorious resurrection. … It applies to [Joseph Maynes]. … It is a pleasure, and it is a satisfaction and joy to know that men lay down their lives in righteousness, in the faith, true to the faith.”

This family story inspires me to try my very best to follow the example of endurance and spiritual stamina illustrated by my great-grandfather. I am equally inspired by the faith of his wife, Emily, whose life after Joseph’s death was certainly a heavy burden to bear. Her testimony was strong and her conversion complete as she spent the rest of her life true to the faith while supporting her eight children on her own.

Stowed away in grandfather’s barn
Is a beautiful doll with hair made of yarn.
Oh, beautiful is her china face
And her dress, made of pink and white lace.
All these years up there she lay;
She long ago began to fade.
She’s been waiting for a little girl’s touch
And a little girl’s voice: “I love you so much.”
But there’s always tomorrow for dreams to come true,
For the China doll and a little girl, too.

In September 1993, my first year as a General Authority, President James E. Faust (1920–2007), then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, invited my wife, Kathy, and me to attend a Brigham Young University devotional with him. Remember, 1993 was before the widespread availability of smartphones, social media, and the internet.

In his talk, titled “The Voice of the Spirit,” President Faust warned: “In your generation you will be barraged by multitudes of voices telling you how to live, how to gratify your passions, how to have it all. You will have up to five hundred television channels at your fingertips. There will be all sorts of software, interactive computer modems, databases, and bulletin boards; there will be desktop publishing, satellite receivers, and communications networks that will suffocate you with information. … The voice you must learn to heed is the voice of the Spirit.”

In your growing up there are many calls for courage, as you have heard so eloquently tonight from President Romney.
“
“You’re young, with your life before you,” said the chaplain on a sinking ship. “Here, take this,” he said. And with these words the chaplain shoved his life preserver into the hands of an enlisted man, and a few moments later, went down with the ship.
“The date was February 3, 1943. The tragedy was the torpedoing of the American troop ship Dorchester. The chaplain was one of four, all of whom said in effect the same thing, gave up their life preservers, and sacrificed their lives: one was a Catholic; two were Protestants; one was Jewish.
“Their heroism was a dramatic example of chaplains’ action in an emergency and it has become known everywhere. But chaplains’ day-to-day service for the men in the armed forces is less well understood, and it is important to all of us.” (Source unknown)

In 1955, President David O. McKay dedicated the Swiss temple. It was the first temple in Europe, and it served members from Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and France. In other temples, temple workers presented the endowment. Since those who would attend the Swiss temple spoke different languages, the Spirit directed President McKay to present the endowment as a film. It was recorded in several languages so everyone could be taught in his or her own native tongue.

Thomas B. Marsh, the first President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in this dispensation, elected to take offense over an issue as inconsequential as milk strippings (see Deseret News, Apr. 16, 1856, 44). Brigham Young, on the other hand, was severely and publicly rebuked by the Prophet Joseph Smith, but he chose not to take offense (see Truman G. Madsen, “Hugh B. Brown—Youthful Veteran,” New Era, Apr. 1976, 16).

In many instances, choosing to be offended is a symptom of a much deeper and more serious spiritual malady. Thomas B. Marsh allowed himself to be acted upon, and the eventual results were apostasy and misery. Brigham Young was an agent who exercised his agency and acted in accordance with correct principles, and he became a mighty instrument in the hands of the Lord.

Such a victory is being won by my friend with a large family of twelve children who, although having days of discouragement, generally speaking is (1) out of bed early to exercise. She hates to exercise so she hurries to get it out of the way. (2) She reads the scriptures. She enjoys that so much she has to make herself stop at her determined one-half hour. (3) She prays, sharing her gratitude and her concerns, and in this way she feels the Lord’s guidance and direction even when things don’t work out the way she had planned. (4) She has a positive, happy attitude as she greets her children.
I wish all of us could attend to our homemaking responsibilities with the vision of my friend. She certainly hasn’t obtained perfection in her home, but she does realize that even though her children don’t practice the piano every day, if they continue to practice they will at least develop the recognition necessary to love music and enrich their lives through it. She knows the challenge of living within her husband’s paycheck, but she also knows the importance of loving him and their children and laughing with them. She may not know that C. S. Lewis has wisely said that homemaking “is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, and governments, etc. exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? … We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist” (Letters of C. S. Lewis, Warren H. Lewis, ed., London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd., 1956, p. 62).
If we could listen to the earnest pleadings of the prayers of my friend we would probably find them to be much like yours and mine, even though I am well aware of the fact that all women cannot stay in the home but must seek employment to supplement or supply the family income. They should be commended, because it is not an easy role but one that is vitally important. I hope their prayers are raised to the Lord for his affirmation of their decision to accept employment away from their small children only when necessary. When employment away from the home is secured for the right reasons, a woman should feel confident and serve happily.

Two weeks later, however, my mother was back in the hospital. She had started to hemorrhage and was hospitalized for another two weeks.
Like most fifteen-year-old girls, I had had my share of thoughts about romance, marriage, and babies. But nothing I had ever dreamed of had prepared me for what I then faced. Not only did I have my father to cook for, but I had the four other children as well—breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. There was also the laundry to wash and, to top the list, a two-week-old baby to care for.
At times I thought I wouldn’t make it. But that new little girl and I developed a very close bond; I felt as though she were mine. I recall one day when a few sisters from our ward came by to help out by offering to take the baby for a while. But after all we had gone through to get this little one, I told them they couldn’t have her and ordered them out of the house. (I had a hard time explaining my actions!) My mother called all of the ladies later to explain how very tired I was, and that I didn’t mean to be so rude.
How happy we were when mother came home! She found a very fat little baby girl (and why not? I had thought if the baby cried she must be hungry, so I fed her constantly), and in spite of me, everyone had survived.

One who saw such a star and followed it was Boyd Hatch of Salt Lake City, Utah. Deprived of the use of his legs, faced with a lifetime in a wheelchair, Boyd could well have looked inward and, through sorrow for self, existed rather than lived. However, Brother Hatch looked not inward, but rather outward into the lives of others and upward into God’s own heaven; and the star of inspiration guided him not to one opportunity, but to literally hundreds. He organized Scout troops of handicapped boys. He taught them camping. He taught them swimming. He taught them basketball. He taught them faith. Some boys were downhearted and filled with self-pity and despair. To them he handed the torch of hope. Before them was his own personal example of struggle and accomplishment. With a courage which we shall never fully know or understand, these boys of many faiths overcame insurmountable odds and found themselves anew. Through it all, Boyd Hatch not only found joy, but by willingly and unselfishly giving of himself, he found Jesus.

Upstairs, Mama hesitated a moment before going into the bedroom. “Emily,” she asked, “are you awake?”
“Come in, Mama,” a husky voice answered.
“How do you feel, dear?”
“Better, thanks, Mama.”
“Want me to plump up your pillows and raise the shade a little?” Emily nodded.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Mama wondered how to begin. She fussed with a thread on the coverlet a moment, then she started. “Emily, you remember last fall when your papa’s saddle horse Jake turned up missing?”
“Yes, Mama, and I remember how bad Papa felt when he found him dead and the mountain lion tracks all around where they had struggled. It was awful.”
“That’s right, honey, it was awful and we all felt bad, knowing how much your papa loved that old horse. But somehow we get over those hurts. Memories are softened in time, and we can more clearly see why things happen the way they do. Our hatred for the big cat gradually changed to an understanding that he was only acting out of instinct and that he must have been very hungry to attack an animal as large as a horse.
“Emily, I’m telling you this to help you bear some more hurt. And I’m sorry to have to tell you when you’ve been so sick, but there’s never a good time to hear some things.”

When my family moved a few months after I turned 18, I found myself in a new ward and facing a challenge. Within two weeks of my moving in, almost all of the priests were made elders. I was also called to be the first assistant in the priests quorum.
In giving me this calling, the bishop explained that there were a lot of priests on the roll, but almost no one showed up. We had a lot of work to do to encourage people to attend.
“Just invite people to come,” he said.
Only one other priest came to church, a guy named Ryan, who showed up a couple times each month. I decided to go knock on doors of our less-active quorum members and invite them to our activities. I was nervous, afraid that they’d get upset at me for inviting them to church. I figured they weren’t coming because they didn’t like church. But I also figured it was good practice for my upcoming mission to try to invite, so I gritted my teeth and started calling the other priests or stopping by their houses. I invited them to firesides, to activities, to church.
What surprised me was that some actually responded and came. We eventually had a group of four priests who started coming on a regular basis. It wasn’t that they didn’t like church—they had just been waiting for an invitation to come. They were just as nervous about a new situation—attending church—as I had been.
Some activities were more successful than others. Everyone showed up for volleyball, but I struggled to get people to attend other activities.
Youth conference that year was especially rewarding as I watched some of these young men stand up and bear their testimonies. I felt like I had made a difference in their lives.
One of the differences I saw was that Ryan was attending church every week and we had become good friends.