Gospel Story Finder

Joseph’s father, Hyrum Smith, was the Prophet Joseph Smith’s older brother. Both the Prophet and Hyrum were shot and killed by a mob when young Joseph was only five years old. It is well known that Hyrum had been the Prophet Joseph’s great friend and support through much of their lives and that Joseph had loved his older brother as he loved his own life. The Lord also had expressed his love for Hyrum, “because of the integrity of his heart, and because he loveth that which is right before me” (D&C 124:15).
Throughout his life, Joseph F. Smith loved his father with a special devotion. His last memory of his father, as Hyrum rode off to Carthage, was vivid: “Without getting off his horse,” President Smith related later, “father leaned over in his saddle and picked me up off the ground. He kissed me goodbye and put me down again and I saw him ride away.” This experience was to be followed by days of uncertainty and then a night of terror. “I remember the night of the murder … when one of the brethren came from Carthage and knocked on our window after dark and called to my mother, ‘Sister Smith, your husband has been killed.’” Although this occurred when the boy was only five years old, many years later he still remembered the terror of that night.

It was May 1843, and he had just celebrated his eighth birthday. His mother had made a cake with butter icing, and he was eating a thick slice on the front porch when he saw a tall, handsome man coming down the lane. Thomas recognized him immediately—Brother Joseph—and ran to him.

Brother Joseph chuckled, “What’s this I hear about you today? I knew it was a special day when I woke up to a chorus of birds outside my window!”

“It’s my birthday, Brother Joseph!”

“Your birthday?” The Prophet waved to the boy’s mother in the garden and clasped his father in a warm embrace. “But it isn’t just any birthday, is it?”

“It’s my eighth birthday! Now I can be baptized!”

The Prophet sat on the porch steps and drew the boy down next to him. “A very special day indeed. But why do you want to be baptized?”

Thomas tried to stretch his legs out far like Brother Joseph’s. “So I can be a member of the Church like you and Papa and Mama and my older brothers and sisters!”

Brother Joseph nodded and put his arm around Thomas’s shoulders. “That’s good. But I think there’s more to it than that. If your family and I weren’t here, would you still want to be baptized?”

Thomas thought for a moment. “Yes, I would, Brother Joseph. Jesus wants me to be baptized, and I always want to follow Him.”

Tears filled Joseph’s kind eyes. “I want to follow Him, too, Thomas. It may be hard sometimes, but we will always be blessed.”

Thomas’s father cleared his throat. “Brother Joseph, we would be honored if you would baptize Thomas.”

Joseph laughed joyfully and ruffled Thomas’s hair. “I would be delighted,” he said.

It had been a perfect day of exploring a narrow sandstone canyon and basking in the rugged beauty of southern Utah. I was a little worried that we hadn’t come across any signs of previous hikers in the canyon, but we had researched the route and had a good map, so we knew what lay ahead: a spectacular 150-foot rope descent through a waterfall into a picturesque canyon, leading out to the main road. As Dustin, Roland, and I neared what we expected to be the end of our adventure, we stopped to eat the last of our food and grinned at each other in anticipation.
Half an hour later, the canyon opened up to the sunlight, and in front of us the riverbed curved in a different direction than the map indicated. Our spirit of adventure overcame our better judgment, so we followed this new course. The soft sand quickly turned to rock, and we scrambled over boulders and potholes. We successfully negotiated a 40-foot drop, turned a corner—and stared in disbelief. There in front of us the ground melted away, dropping hundreds of feet to the Virgin River below.
It dawned on us that we had messed up somehow. There was no turning back; the slick canyon walls made ascension impossible. My two friends scouted the narrow ledge for a possible route down while I pored over the map. After awhile, my eye spotted another canyon on the map, and this one definitely matched the canyon we were in. Scanning the map, I could see that the cliff we were on was over 400 feet high. Dustin and Roland returned, and we talked about the possibility of trying to descend the cliff with the rope we had. Roland suggested we pray about it, and we quickly agreed.
It was a simple, sincere prayer. We thanked the Lord for keeping us safe and admitted that we had made mistakes. We told Him we were now trying our best to correct ourselves and return to safety. Laying before Him our problem and the possible solution of descending the cliff, we asked for a confirmation. And the Lord truly responded, touching each of us with a quiet feeling in our hearts that we should not try to go down the cliff.
As darkness fell, we realized our only way out was rescue. Our cellular phone received no signal, and we couldn’t go forward or back. When the sun sank behind the opposite mountains, the temperature dropped sharply, and we spent a sleepless night shivering together, hungry and thirsty, a few steps from a 400-foot cliff. Before trying to sleep, we again offered up a prayer of sincere thanks for protection, and a blessing of peace for our families, who had certainly figured out, by now, that something had gone wrong.
The next morning, by the time it was light enough to safely walk around the cliff’s edge, we had decided on several courses of action. We burned leaves to send up white smoke and scattered our equipment around the ledge to make us easier to spot from the air. After we split a granola bar, Dustin climbed up to higher ground to try to get reception for the phone, while Roland and I set about purifying water from a pool. We had made mistakes, and now we could only do everything in our power to be rescued, trusting that the Lord would comfort our families and lead rescuers to us. The day wore on, and our situation worsened. The fire melted our water container, Dustin had no luck with his phone, and we made plans for surviving another night. In that helpless state, I realized like never before my utter dependence on the Lord. I’d never felt so close to Heavenly Father when I prayed.
We thought we heard planes throughout the day, but neither the fire nor our yells brought them any closer. Around noon we heard the thumping sound of an engine grow and saw a helicopter in the distance, but our hopes faded when it flew out of sight. Then, quite suddenly, the search and rescue helicopter burst over the far canyon wall. It spotted Dustin above us and circled, looking for a place to land. Not long after, a rope dropped down to us, quickly followed by the search and rescue team with food, water, and our way home.
As we flew over canyon and mountain to our waiting families, I offered a silent prayer of thanks. The Lord had helped us make wise judgments and had helped our rescuers find us. He had also answered our plea to comfort our families. While they had spent a sleepless night, they had felt the Spirit whisper that we were OK. The Savior’s promise in 3 Nephi 18:21 is true: “Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed.” I learned that on the edge of a 400-foot cliff, waiting to be rescued.

Beckham loved to fish with Grandpa. He even caught a little fish!
But when Beckham told Mom about it later, he might have told a little lie.
Beckham won a jumping contest with his friends.
But when he told Dad about it, he might have told a little lie.
The next day, Beckham’s family went to the zoo. He even got to feed a monkey!
But when he told Grandpa about it, he might have told a little lie.
Wow! Did you really feed a dragon?
Well, no … it was just a monkey. But people won’t think I’m cool if I tell them what really happened.
You don’t need to make up stories for people to like you. Telling the truth is the best choice. And just being you is enough! Heavenly Father thinks so too.
Besides, feeding a monkey is pretty cool.
This story took place in the USA.

My years at Ricks College, during which I tried to seek God’s will and do it, kept the pavilion from covering me or obscuring God’s active role in my life. As I sought to do His work, I felt close to Him and felt assurance that He knew of my affairs and cared deeply for my happiness. But as they had at Stanford, worldly motivations began to present themselves to me. One was an attractive job offer, extended just as I was finishing my fifth year as president of Ricks College. I considered the offer and prayed about it and even discussed it with the First Presidency. They responded with warmth and a little humor but certainly not with any direction. President Spencer W. Kimball listened to me describe the offer I had received from a large corporation and said: “Well, Hal, that sounds like a wonderful opportunity! And if we ever needed you, we’d know where to find you.” They would have known where to find me, but my desires for professional success might have created a pavilion that would make it hard for me to find God and harder for me to listen to and follow His invitations.
My wife, sensing this, had a strong impression that we were not to leave Ricks College. I said, “That’s good enough for me.” But she insisted, wisely, that I must get my own revelation. And so I prayed again. This time I did receive direction, in the form of a voice in my mind that said, “I’ll let you stay at Ricks College a little longer.” My personal ambitions might have clouded my view of reality and made it hard for me to receive revelation.
Thirty days after I was blessed with the inspired decision to turn down the job offer and stay at Ricks College, the Teton Dam burst nearby. God knew that dam would burst and that hundreds of people would need help. He let me seek counsel and gain His permission to stay at Ricks College. He knew all the reasons that my service might still be valuable at the college and in Rexburg. So I was there to ask Heavenly Father frequently in prayer that He would have me do those things that would help the people whose property and lives had been damaged. I spent hours working with other people to clear mud and water from homes. My desire to know and do His will gave me a soul-stretching opportunity.
That incident illustrates another way we can create a barrier to knowing God’s will or feeling His love for us: we can’t insist on our timetable when the Lord has His own. I thought I had spent enough time in my service in Rexburg and was in a hurry to move on. Sometimes our insistence on acting according to our own timetable can obscure His will for us.

I learned recently of loving service given to a mother when her children were very young. Frequently she would be up in the middle of the night tending to the needs of her little ones, as mothers do. Often her friend and neighbor across the street would come over the next day and say, “I saw your lights on in the middle of the night and know you were up with the children. I’m going to take them to my house for a couple of hours while you take a nap.”

Said this grateful mother: “I was so thankful for her welcome offer, it wasn’t until this had happened many times that I realized if she had seen my lights on in the middle of the night, she was up with one of her children as well and needed a nap just as much as I did. She taught me a great lesson, and I’ve since tried to be as observant as she was in looking for opportunities to serve others.”

One day in 2023, Uyanga Altansukh was at work in the northern Mongolian city of Darkhan when the Mongolian mission president entered her workplace. In her words:
““I saw him and thought he had this bright light in his countenance. He was very kind and fun to those around him, and I felt warmth. Before he left, I asked him some questions. A few days later, he came into my work again and asked if I could attend his church. I thought it might be helpful. I was worried for my children’s future, as society seemed to be full of stress and darkness. I wanted my children to be like this man with a light in their countenance, spreading joy to others around them.
“One day the missionaries taught us the law of tithing. My children said with excitement, ‘We must pay our tithing, Mom.’ I could see my children’s faith at that moment. Before I joined the Church, I watched general conference and listened to President Russell M. Nelson speak. He announced new temples all over the world and said that a new temple would be built in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I rejoiced and shed tears, even though I did not understand why. With this joy, I could tell that my faith and testimony were growing.”

Coll and His White Pig by Lloyd Alexander; illustrated by Evaline Ness. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Hen Wen disappears in the middle of the night, and Coll sets out to recover the white pig.

Today the Church honors a faithful and distinguished pioneer woman. Aurelia Spencer Rogers—a child of adversity, testing, determination, and love, who built her faith event by event, challenge by challenge. What of her beginnings?
Orson Spencer and his six motherless children ferried across the Missouri River and hurriedly moved into their unfinished log cabin in Winter Quarters. Their mother had died soon after the family left for Nauvoo. The family had to be settled before their father left for England—he had been called by President Brigham Young to publish a newspaper for the Church.
Orson Spencer had trained Ellen, just fourteen, and Aurelia, only twelve, to be father and mother to the four younger children. He bought eight cows so there would be plenty of milk to drink and enough to sell. There was also a horse to be sold if necessary to buy supplies.
That winter was long, cold, and lonely. Many people at Winter Quarters died. Aurelia wrote in her diary, “We got through the first part of the winter pretty well. … Our horse and all our cows but one had died, therefore we had no milk nor butter; our provisions had also … nearly given out. … We really suffered for something to eat; part of the time having nothing but corn-meal, which was stirred up with water and baked on a griddle. Many a night I have gone to bed without supper having to wait until I was hungry enough to eat our poor fare.” (Rogers, pp. 48, 50–51.)
One day President Brigham Young visited the Spencers’ one-room cabin and found it neat and the children clean. Their father had been gone a year. The Saints were beginning to make preparations to start their move west.
The children informed President Young that their father wrote often, making suggestions as to what they should wear, how to comb their hair, what to do if they became ill, and how to take care of each other. After President Young read their father’s last letter, he told them he had a very important matter for them to think about. He asked, “What would you say if your father stayed in England at least another year? We need him there.”
The children looked at each other and then waited for Ellen to speak since she was the oldest. “If it is thought best,” Ellen said quietly, “we would like it so, for we want to do [what’s] for the best.” (Rogers, p. 87.)
All the other children agreed. They remembered that Father had once written, “Though He slay us we should trust in Him, and all will be right.” (Rogers, p. 62.)
They had faith in their father, in his counsel, and in their Father in Heaven. In the spring of 1848, the Spencer children, with determination and grateful hearts, moved west with the Saints.
During the two-year absence of their father, the six children had experienced many trials—crossed the plains to Salt Lake Valley, lived in the old fort, then moved to a one-room adobe house. Relatives and friends watched over them, but the responsibility had rested on the two eldest girls, Ellen and Aurelia.
At last, Orson Spencer, the former New England Baptist minister, was welcomed home amid a chorus of shouts and hugs and kisses from his heroic family. He was appointed chancellor of the new University of Deseret. Daughter Aurelia was one of his students for only a time, for Aurelia had met and fallen in love with Thomas Rogers, a young teamster, while crossing the plains. They married and set up housekeeping in a log cabin in Farmington. Here in the foothills of the Wasatch, overlooking Great Salt Lake, Aurelia Spencer Rogers spent the rest of her life. Here, she bore twelve children, burying five of them in infancy. As her children grew, she became increasingly concerned about the lack of weekday wholesome activity—the genesis of Primary.

There was the man who, after the Prague, Czechoslovakia, concert, slowly voiced his thoughts to a choir member about his having lived in a land where belief in God was oppressed and atheism was the religion: “I am thirty-eight years old—now I have thirty-eight years of opposite philosophy to get rid of.”

One mother told the following experience that helps to explain this idea. She said, “Sometimes while we are eating, one of my children will get my attention and signal to me while his mouth is full of food. Grunting and waving, he will try to motion for me to do something for him. I know perfectly well that what he wants is for me to pour him a glass of milk, but I will wait until he uses words to ask me before I will do it. It’s not that I can’t understand what he wants but that I feel it is important for him to learn how to communicate well.”

For instance, I was speaking to the missionaries at the Language Training Mission, when I suddenly felt impressed to testify of the intrinsic worth of each person there. There was no need to compare oneself with another, that the Lord knew and loved each one as a separate person and had special guidance and power to give in helping each one move on to the next step, etc., etc. Afterwards, several asked me to bear that exact testimony again and to give more explanation, almost as if they desperately wanted to believe it. One was almost overcome with a feeling of relief and joy.

Page 6: Sister Rosemary M. Wixom, Primary general president, shared a story about a girl named Amy. Amy prayed to know if God really loved her and was there for her. Read or retell this story as a family and talk about a time when you felt God’s love. How does it make you feel to know you are a child of God? How can you help others know they are children of God?

Anyone who’s ever been to girls’ camp knows that it’s a lot of fun but also a lot of hard work. For Kelsey Mack of the Safford Arizona Fifth Ward, Safford Arizona Stake, mental and physical handicaps made the challenge of camping even greater.
When Kelsey decided she wanted to go to camp, her mom went to the youth leaders and asked if it would be a possibility. Much to her delight, all the leaders agreed to make it happen. Even more important, the girls rallied around Kelsey and really made her feel a part of all the camp activities.
After five days of crafts, outdoor skills, and other standard camp activities (many of which were tailored to fit Kelsey’s needs) Kelsey returned home happy and excited.
“You know, those girls really love me,” says Kelsey.

After her baptism, a mother living in the Philippines expressed sorrow at having lost her firstborn baby from malnutrition and improper care. With her conversion, there came a great motivation to learn how to properly care for her family. She asked, as she expected another baby, “What do I need to do to have a ‘healthy Mormon baby?’” She took a special course provided by the Relief Society on child care. She was enthusiastic about the lessons and did her best to apply the principles she learned. The second baby was born strong and vigorous and continues to be healthy. The health missionary who helped those teaching the Relief Society course is a local sister called on a full-time health mission. She has since been released from her mission but is still serving her people as a health resource person through the branch Welfare Services Committee.

In February, three stakes in the Suva, Fiji, area held a drive to collect food, household items, and school supplies for flood victims in northern and western Fiji.
Fiji was hit by continuous heavy rainfall earlier in the year, causing widespread flooding and localized landslides in the western and northern areas. Flooding led to several deaths and forced thousands to evacuate their homes.
As the floods raged through the western and northern regions of Fiji, local Church leaders immediately opened up meetinghouses as evacuation centers for people whose homes were in the path of the flood.
Elder Taniela Wakolo, Area Seventy and the Church’s Fiji Service Center manager, initiated the drive on February 6, shortly after local Church leaders were alerted about the flood. Members collected and sorted food, clothing, bedding, kitchenware, and school supplies; the items were then allocated to people in need.

They point to Tiffani as the one who first started formally investigating the Church. During her junior year of high school, she started dating an LDS boy. She began attending church with his family and eventually started meeting with the missionaries in his home. Gradually, she made some changes in her lifestyle. Her friends noticed, but they thought it would pass. But to Tiffani, it was no fad; her testimony had begun.

Meanwhile, after investigating the Church for more than a year and a half, Tiffani was ready to be baptized. Nine days after Sara’s baptism, Tiffani’s baptismal service was held.

Then Hannah thought about Grandfather Bird. As a young man, Grandfather had gone on a mission to Wisconsin. He had cut down trees, which were then floated down the Mississippi River and used to build the Nauvoo Temple. Hannah had heard him talk about how important temples were. Did she want to go to the temple because of Grandfather?

Henry B. Eyring
(75) The father and priesthood leaders of young Henry B. Eyring raise his sights and give him confidence.

Thank you so much for the Friend! I saw the Family History Quest (Jan. 2018), and I love it! I am using this for a 10-hour project for Personal Progress.
Paige K., age 12, British Columbia, Canada