Gospel Story Finder

A second major problem that had to be resolved soon after Ralph’s death was how to provide for my family. This is probably the most crucial and frightening reality that most newly-widowed mothers face. My options were whether to use our insufficient financial resources until they were gone, and then decide how to support the family, or to find employment in the near future and keep some funds in reserve. I chose the latter. Fortunately, it was possible for me to be away during the day because all the children were in school, and an older daughter was responsible until I arrived home. The children’s acceptance of this new situation and their faith in me was viewed as “God’s in his heaven and Mother will provide.”
I had limited qualifications, having married before completing college. But after a refresher course in business English and typing, I was ready to start at the bottom. I became a receptionist. It was a good beginning. Further training brought additional employment opportunities and added responsibilities. These experiences, along with subsequent years in the field of corporate communications at one of the government banking agencies, have broadened my interests, supplemented my education, developed my skills, strengthened my self-confidence, contributed to my financial independence, and provided for my future security. This is compensation I had never dreamed of.

During this time, I was having difficulty getting along with my mother, as teenage girls sometimes do. I can remember after disagreeing with her once, I went down to the basement to be alone. Full of confusion and remorse, I prayed for comfort. I was still sobbing when in my mind I heard these words, “Blessed art thou, Carol.” At that time I wasn’t understanding my world very well, and I felt like Heavenly Father was comforting me so that I could get through a difficult time. It strengthened my testimony so much to know that He cared.

In northern Germany where I live, winter’s snowstorms had taken their time coming. So I didn’t pay any attention to the prediction of snow on the radio that particular morning. If the weather does happen to change, I thought, I’ll already be home. I left to catch the bus—not warmly dressed at all.
By the time school let out, it was snowing heavily, and after I got off the bus, I had to ride my bike the rest of the way home. I was angry with myself for ignoring the weather forecast on the radio.
The sharp east wind blew against me, and small snowflakes whipped into my face like a thousand pins. An icy shiver crawled over my body. The way home was not only difficult but painful.
When I finally arrived home, I changed clothes and watched the snowstorm from the comfort of my room. It occurred to me then that life can be compared to my experience that day.

One of my mom’s favorite memories is of when she brought cupcakes to share with my class on my birthday. Josh was with his special education teacher in another classroom down the hall and around the corner. Miss Ready asked me to go get him. I was so excited that I told Josh, “Let’s run!” With Josh holding my arm, we ran for all we were worth. When we got to the classroom, we were out of breath, and Josh said, “That was so much fun! Can we do it again?” I realized then that Josh never gets to run.
Josh’s teacher came huffing and puffing into the room, her eyes big and round from fright. She calmed down when she saw that Josh was OK and that I had been careful and hadn’t bumped him into anything as we ran.
During a field trip toward the end of our first-grade year, Miss Ready separated Josh and me and put me into another group. She told my mom that she hadn’t realized until then how isolated I had been, taking care of Josh all year and that she felt bad about it. But both Mom and I feel that it was a very rewarding year.
I have gone on to second grade now. Josh stayed back in first grade. I miss him a lot, but every couple of days or so we talk on the phone. I’m going to invite him back to church with me and pray that his grandma will let him come. I know that Heavenly Father loves Josh, and I pray that he will find someone else in his class to care for him with love and kindness. In the meantime, I’ll find someone in my second-grade class who needs a friend, because I’m trying to be like Jesus.

My big chance came late one Saturday night. It had been fairly quiet and I had been spending time checking back alleys when suddenly the silence was broken by the breathless voice of an excited officer calling for help. “Fifth West and Second South … gang fight … 9-1.” Nine-one is the code meaning emergency aid is needed, and every officer able to help responded.
I was nearly the first car to arrive. There were hundreds of people completely blocking the street, and many were fighting. The officers quickly identified those who seemed to be the ring leaders of the disturbance and systematically started making arrests. As the first few were isolated and hand-cuffed, most of the crowd seemed to vanish into the alleys and doorways. Soon there were only the police cars, lights flashing in the darkness, a few officers, and those who had been arrested.
As the crowd disbursed, most officers left the scene, and I was also preparing to leave for the jail with the prisoner I had handcuffed and placed in the front seat of my K–9 truck. My dog was still in the back, since I didn’t feel it was wise to use him with such a large crowd. I approached the driver’s door and had just opened it, when suddenly I was engulfed from behind in the tightest, biggest bear hug I had ever felt. I struggled and fought futilely. This big man was trying to rescue his friend whom I had arrested, and it looked like he might make it.
Now was the time to use my dog. His name was Dusty, and I struggled to reach the small release handle on the side of the vehicle. It would free the back door to the cage and allow the dog to get out. With a lunge I jerked the handle, my arms still pinned to my sides, and the door swung open. “Get him, Dusty,” I shouted. Dusty hit the street running, skidded as he turned back toward me and my captor, and then to my amazement he ran right past me and around the truck. I continued to shout for him to “get him,” but without response. Around and around he went, once, twice, then with sudden purpose he turned from his path and ran to the gutter where fresh water was running and paused for a drink. Thank goodness by this time another police officer came to my rescue.
I spent about another year in the K–9 Corps after that incident, but it was spent with a different dog. In spite of his fine performance in training, Dusty had proven that in real life he couldn’t be trusted.

Jeremy John was a wiggler. When he sat on the front row in Primary, he wiggled. When it was singing time, he wiggled. Even when he listened to his Sunbeam teacher, Sister Cardon, give a lesson, he wiggled.
“Jeremy John,” his teacher would say, “please stop wiggling.”
He tried to sit still. He really did. But then his legs would start swinging back and forth, back and forth. And before he knew it, he was wiggling again.
Then one Sunday, Sister Cardon said, “Boys and girls, I have a special Book of Mormon story to tell you.”
Jeremy John liked stories. He scooted his chair a little closer to his teacher.
“This story is about Jesus Christ visiting the Nephites,” she said.
Jeremy John really loved stories about Jesus, so he scooted his chair even closer.
“Jesus Christ taught the Nephites many wonderful things,” Sister Cardon said. “The people loved to listen to Him. And they loved to be near Him.”
She held up a picture of the Savior blessing the children. “He had all the children come to Him,” she said. “He took them one by one, and He prayed for them and blessed them.” Jeremy John could see that his teacher’s eyes were shiny with tears as she said, “Jesus Christ loves every child. He loves you.”
Jeremy John felt cozy and warm inside just like he felt when he snuggled up in his fuzzy green blanket. How he wished he could have been there with Jesus!
He looked at the picture again. There, sitting beside Jesus, was a little boy about the same age as Jeremy John. The boy was sitting very, very still, looking up at Jesus.
I could do that, Jeremy John thought. I could sit still if I were sitting by Jesus. All of a sudden, he knew how to stop being a wiggler.
Now whenever he sits in Primary, he imagines that Jesus is sitting right beside him. And Jeremy John hardly wiggles at all.

Gaining an education was the goal of Roberto Flete Gonzalez of the Dominican Republic, who enrolled in college shortly after returning from his mission. His father agreed to cover his living expenses so that Roberto could focus on his studies, but a short time later, Roberto’s father died, leaving the family in a dire financial situation.

Roberto quit school and began working to support himself, his mother, and his sister. He wondered how he’d ever be able to finish school.

Weeks later President Hinckley announced the Perpetual Education Fund, “a bold initiative” that would help youth in developing areas “rise out of the poverty they and generations before them have known.”6 Roberto applied for and was granted a PEF loan, which allowed him to continue his studies. This opportunity not only helped with immediate finances, but it also helped Roberto have the faith to marry and form an eternal family because he knew he would be able to provide for them.

Roberto finished medical school while serving as a bishop and became the first Church member on the National Board of Dominican Medical Schools. But the best results, he says, have been at home. “There have been changes in my family as we are now further removed from the cycle of poverty,” he says. “I am grateful that my son won’t have to live the same way I did because we’ve stepped out of that cycle.”

I saw the promise come to fruition that my doctors would be guided. When I awoke after one of my operations, the surgeon came to see me.
“I was all done,” she explained, “but something told me to go deeper, and I found additional problem areas, which I was able to remove. We’re fortunate to have found them.”
She is not a member of the Church, but the promise of the blessing I had received early on had come to pass. The Spirit had guided her.

Regional coordinator for Seminaries and Institutes, Julian Jones, has connections with this anniversary year too. In 1968, whilst attending Loughborough University to become a P.E. teacher, he also came under the influence of Brother Madsen.

“I think I could easily have drifted into a wilderness if it hadn’t been for that seminary year,” says Brother Jones. “I was away from home for the first time since joining the Church five years previously. The challenge of that strong nucleus, enjoying gospel study in such depth, drew me into the group activity at exactly the right moment.”

Brother Jones has since served as bishop twice, baptized his own father (now mission president of the Bristol England Mission), and served as a counsellor in the Wandsworth Stake presidency. “And my final connection with this 20th year is that our eldest daughter, Hannah, begins seminary this year.”

One night a family watched a terrible storm from their home near a beach. Huge waves crashed against the shore, breaking apart the family’s wooden boat dock. The next morning the family found pieces of the dock along the shoreline. But their boat was floating unharmed in the water. It was held in place by a strong anchor. The anchor had kept the boat from crashing into the shore and being destroyed.

When I was a child, my dad worked far away and always came home when it was pitch dark. I would stay awake until he came home. But one day he was very late, and I couldn’t reach him on the phone. I was very scared. I remembered that my parents had taught me to pray always and to ask for help whenever I was scared, so I knelt down and prayed that my father would return home safely. To my surprise, as I ended my prayer, I heard my dad’s bike outside. I was so grateful to my Heavenly Father for watching over my father.

In the late 1980s, Elder Carlos A. Godoy had just been released as bishop. He had also graduated from college, was working for a successful company, and thought life couldn’t get better—until an old friend came to visit.
That friend congratulated him but then asked a question that left him unsettled: “If you continue to live as you are living, will the blessings promised in your patriarchal blessing be fulfilled?”
Elder Godoy realized that he needed to make changes if he wanted to receive all his promised blessings. Despite his contentment, he decided to pursue a master’s degree. He quit his job, sold everything he owned, and, with his family, left the familiarity of Brazil to attend school in the United States.
Elder Godoy, named to the Presidency of the Seventy on March 31, 2018, said this experience taught him a lot about trusting in the Lord’s plan and being willing to leave his comfort zone.
“I know that the Lord has a plan for us in this life,” he testified in the October 2014 general conference. “He knows us. He knows what is best for us. Just because things are going well does not mean that we should not from time to time consider whether there might be something better.”

One day at school before I was eight, they were inspecting our hands and nails to see if they were clean, and the principal saw my CTR ring (“HLJ” in Spanish). After the principal checked the rest of my row, she came back to me and said, “Rebeca, come with me to the principal’s office.” Then she said to my teacher, “Can I take Rebeca for a while?”
In her office, she asked me what the ring meant. I said, “Choose the right.” I explained that at church they teach us to do good, pray, and read the scriptures. She asked which church I went to, and I said, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Then she asked me what that church was about, and I told her about Joseph Smith going into a grove to pray and seeing the Father and the Son. I told her about going to the temple to be sealed to my parents and that I would be baptized when I was eight. She said, “You can tell me more later.”
Later I took the principal a copy of the Book of Mormon with my testimony inside.

“I had wanted to tell others about the Book of Mormon since the day I found it when I was eight years old,” she says. “Now I felt I had to become a missionary.”
But she was only seventeen. Every year thereafter on her birthday, she asked her bishop if she was old enough yet to be called on a mission, but each year he told her she must wait until she was twenty-one. In the meantime, she taught Primary and Sunday School and continued to grow in her knowledge of the gospel.
Then—on the very day she turned twenty-one—her call came.
Sister Marilu Ramirez was prepared. A bright student, she was teaching elementary school even before finishing her university degree, and she carefully saved her earnings. By the time she received her call, she had saved up enough money to pay for her entire mission. At that point she gave up her job, with no assurance of finding one when she returned.
Her family was sure she was insane. The child who had wasted time and money on religious books was now throwing away a good job, all her savings, and eighteen months of her life. But once again, no amount of pressure made any difference.
Now on her mission, she prays for her family and writes them weekly.
On 24 January 1988, as her group is about to leave the Mexico City Missionary Training Center and enter their fields of labor, Sister Marilu Ramirez stands during a meeting to bear her testimony. Her jet black hair, pulled back and held in place with two blue hair clips, almost reaches her waist.
At the pulpit, she stands on a short stool in order to speak into the microphone. Her petite frame suggests that she might speak timidly, but her voice is powerful and her testimony is that of a mature disciple. “I have had to fight to get here,” she says with emotion, “and I have learned that without the Lord, I am nothing. But I have felt his infinite love for me, and I know in whom I have confided.”
The next day, as she meets her new mission president and his assistants, she again bears powerful witness of the Father’s love. “When I entered the temple for the first time a few days ago, I felt his Spirit and was overwhelmed by his love,” she says. “As I prayed to him, I asked, ‘Why do you love me so much?’ And I seemed to hear an answer: ‘Don’t you know I love all the world—all my children? I don’t want anyone to be lost.’ And I began to comprehend the great love he has for each one of us.” Her voice again fills with emotion. “I know that our Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ live and love us. I feel very honored to be a daughter of God and to serve him as a missionary.”
Sister Ramirez is currently teaching the gospel to non-members who come to the Mexico City Temple visitors’ center. In the evenings, she and her companion go out into the surrounding neighborhoods to teach families the gospel in their homes.
Like that eight-year-old child, the twenty-one year old missionary is still consumed with thoughts about God. And her cup, filled drop by drop when she read the pages of the Book of Mormon as a child, is now overflowing.

It was a period of rapid economic growth for Kirtland and Ohio. Money and credit were scarce on the American frontier. Population, business opportunities, and land prices were all increasing rapidly, and LDS businessmen saw the need for a bank to print and circulate notes as an aid to paying debts and further stimulating an inflationary economy. On November 2, 1836, Joseph Smith and others organized the Kirtland Safety Society Bank and applied for a state charter. During the previous eight years more than 400 new banks had been established in the United States for similar purposes. But the Kirtland application arrived in Columbus, the capital of Ohio, just after anti-banking forces won control, and government officials refused to issue any new bank charters. The Mormon applicants then decided to create a joint stock company to issue notes and take in money. They called it the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company and overprinted that name on the bank notes already prepared.
When Kirtland notes began circulating in January 1837, backed by a limited amount of gold, they were accepted at face value. Residents used them to purchase goods and pay old debts. But before the month had ended, the bank had to stop redeeming its notes in gold coin. The demand for gold was greater than available supplies. When other banks in the area learned that the paper money was redeemable only in land they refused to accept the Kirtland notes. These difficulties for the company were multiplied when the United States entered an economic panic which forced hundreds of banks to close.
Joseph Smith resigned as cashier of the Kirtland Anti-Banking Company early in the summer of 1837, several months before the firm closed its doors permanently. Like a number of others, the Prophet was left deeply in debt by the company’s failure. He had invested in land and had purchased merchandise for his store on credit, but could not easily sell his assets to get money to pay his debts.
Some of his associates failed to separate Joseph Smith’s role as prophet and businessman. He was struggling like others to earn a living, and closure of the business was not related to his integrity as a religious leader. Yet some in Kirtland became bitter and attempted to replace him as president of the Church. A faction turned against him as a prophet. Their apostasy led to threats against his life and against the lives of his supporters. Brigham Young and others publicly defended Joseph Smith and then joined the Prophet in fleeing from Kirtland to escape assassination or harassment.
The departing Church leaders traveled in the cold of winter to Missouri. They arrived in the early spring of 1838 at Far West, where members came to their assistance with animals and money. That summer many of the loyal members remaining in Kirtland decided to join the Saints in Missouri. Under the direction of the seventies, a group of more than 500 people known as the Kirtland Camp traveled by wagon over rough frontier roads to Far West and then became settlers at Adam-ondi-Ahman.

Seven years later I too was preparing to serve a mission. I remember the night my call letter came, and I had all the family gathered around. Everyone had made their guesses as to where I would go. We all thought that I for sure would go to Temple Square. When I actually read my call, I was absolutely shocked! I thought, “Do they know that I am a girl!?” I knew that there were girls serving in India when my brother was on a mission, but they were Indian girls! I had no idea that they sent foreign sisters there and I wondered if I was the first one? Later I learned that I am the first sister from Australia to serve in India.

Another shock was how soon they wanted me to be prepared and ready to leave. I had just eight weeks from the time I received my call to the time I had to report to the Provo MTC. I quickly applied for my overseas Indian citizenship. It normally takes 6-8 weeks or more to arrive which meant that it would have come on the day I was supposed to leave. I knew there was a reason I was to leave so soon so I just put my faith and trust in the Lord that everything would work out. I ended up getting my visa in just five weeks! That is just one of the miracles I saw as I prepared for my mission. It was a crazy whirlwind getting ready for my mission, but it was a testimony to me that the India New Delhi Mission was where I needed to be.

The classics of literature, as well as the words from holy writ, teach us the endurability of anonymity. A favorite of mine is Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” I can picture the trembling Ebenezer Scrooge seeing in vision the return of his former partner, Jacob Marley, though Jacob had been dead for seven years. The words of Marley penetrate my very soul, as he laments, “Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I!” (“A Christmas Carol,” in The Best Short Stories of Charles Dickens, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947, p. 435.)
After a fretful night—wherein Scrooge was shown by the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come the true meaning of living, loving, and giving—he awakened to discover anew the freshness of life, the power of love, and the spirit of a true gift. He remembered the plight of the Bob Cratchit family, arranged with a lad to purchase the giant turkey (the size of a boy), and sent the gift to the Cratchits. Then, with supreme joy, the reborn Ebenezer Scrooge exclaims to himself, “He shan’t know who sends it.” (“A Christmas Carol,” p. 481.) Again the word anonymous.

As a young boy, George Albert Smith was very ill with typhoid fever, a disease that killed many people at that time. The doctor advised his mother to give him coffee to drink, but George refused it. Instead, he asked for a priesthood blessing from their ward (home) teacher. The next morning, when the doctor arrived, he found George Albert in the yard, playing. “I was grateful to the Lord for my recovery,” he said. “I was sure that He had healed me.”

Members from the Brandon Florida Stake, an area near Tampa, were on the phone with members in the Port Charlotte Ward as soon as they heard Port Charlotte was receiving the brunt of the storm. They arrived before relief workers had time to set up camp, so they began clearing the grounds around the meetinghouse using tools and machinery from the local Church farm. They then went to members’ homes to assess their needs.

All members in all areas of Florida were accounted for with no reports of injury, though some lost their homes. All missionaries were evacuated before the storm hit, but they later returned to help in the relief efforts. At least seven meetinghouses were damaged, but repairs are underway or already completed.

While the member volunteers helped clear people’s property, counselors from LDS Family Services in Salt Lake City were helping clear people’s minds. “In these abnormal situations a lot of what we do is reestablish family patterns and instill hope in the community,” Doug LeCheminant, program specialist for LDS Family Services, said. They have also helped in such situations as the September 11 tragedy and the Kosovo refugee crisis.

John also reports an incident which took place in June 1844, shortly before the martyrdom. Now 16, he had been marching with 75 legion troopers summoned to Nauvoo by the Prophet. It was raining; roads were bad. Most of the men were on foot, wading in places through waist-deep water.
We reached Nauvoo about daylight and encamped near the temple. While I was guarding the baggage, Joseph the Prophet rode up. He asked about my parents. As we were talking, he took my hand and pulled me forward until I was obliged to step up on a log. Then turning his horse sideways he drew me step by step to near the end of the log, when, seeing that each foot left marks of blood upon the bark, he asked me what was the matter with my feet.
I replied that the prairie grass had cut my shoes to pieces and wounded my feet, but they would soon be all right. I noticed the hand he raised to his face was wet and looking up I saw his cheeks covered with tears. He placed his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my dear boy,” and asked if others of the company were in the same plight. I replied that a number of them were.
Turning his face toward Mr. Lathrup as the latter came to the door of his store, the Prophet said: “Let these men have some shoes.” Lathrup said: “I have no shoes.” Joseph’s quick reply was, “Let them have boots, then.”
Joseph then turned to me and said, “Johnnie, the troops will be disbanded and return home. I shall go to Carthage for trial. …” Then leaning toward me, with one hand on my head, he said: “Have no fear, for you shall yet see Israel triumph in peace.” (Adapted from Carl Arrington, “Brother Joseph,” New Era, Dec. 1973, pp. 16–19.)