Gospel Story Finder

During my youth, my father had a stable job and made a good living. However, he was addicted to alcohol, and this affected his family life. One day, a building was completed in my neighborhood near our house, and many speculated on its use: a school, a hospital, a church?
It was a building of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My father was invited there and he went despite the mockery and ridicule of his family members. Eventually my father was baptized.
From that moment on, we noticed a change in his character: To our astonishment, he stopped consuming alcohol and tobacco. He often read a book that later turned out to be the Book of Mormon. After my father was baptized, he invited us to join him in his new Church. The other members of my family were reluctant to join. I had always been close to my father and decided to go to church with him.
After my baptism, my two brothers and sisters joined the Church. My mother was later baptized as well.

Through the long hours of the night, I kept a lonely vigil by the nursery window. Inside the nursery, a tiny boy struggled for breath. The day before, we had rushed nearly 160 kilometers from our ranch to the hospital. The baby was born shortly after our arrival, six weeks premature. He looked like a fine, healthy boy, but the doctor told us that his lungs had been slow in developing and that he was fighting a desperate battle for air.
A few hours before, I had given Matthew his name and a father’s blessing. As I had blessed him, the Spirit had assured me that he would someday be a part of our family.
Little Matthew continued to cling to life until his mother was able to come to the nursery to see him. He died before we left the room. It seemed to me that he had only waited for her to have one look before he returned to his heavenly home.
The shock of our son’s death left my wife in such a daze that she could not cry. It was only after the small graveside service, when we had returned home to the ranch, that she was finally able to release her grief. She wept for a long time.
The emptiness of losing a baby after those long months of expecting him was very hard on her. She wasn’t really happy again until the next baby, a fine healthy boy, arrived.
As the years passed, we were blessed with many children. They grew up feeling that Matthew was as much a part of our family as they were. One of our children, the oldest, has felt an unusual closeness to him and has at times sensed his presence. Once, while traveling to work through a storm, she felt him with her, watching over her. One night she awoke and saw a young man standing by her bed. He seemed to sense that she could see him, and appeared to “melt” in the air like a burning film. This experience frightened her, and she prayed to know who the young man was. A few years later, she again felt Matthew’s influence—when her sister-in-law lost a baby and needed comfort and understanding.
Not long ago, one of our sons was married in the Idaho Falls Temple. We had assembled in the sealing room for the ceremony when the sealer asked me and the bride’s mother to bear our testimonies before he performed the marriage ceremony. As I spoke, I noticed that my oldest daughter was sobbing. Later, outside the temple, she told us that as I stood to speak, Matthew had entered the room accompanied by so much spiritual power that she could not control her feelings. As she was about to leave the room, lingering behind all the others, she had felt something warm touch her shoulder. A still, small voice had whispered, “That was your brother Matthew. He is the one who stood by your bed one night.”
The peace and joy this beautiful experience brought to us is inexpressible. What comfort there is in knowing that we are important to Matthew and that he cares about what we are doing, and to know that God loves us and has let us feel Matthew’s presence so that we can have that assurance.

My piano teacher is not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but she knows that some of our members are called to play the organ. One time she encouraged me to audition for a scholarship to learn the organ. I decided to audition so that I could learn to play the organ in order to serve in church.
The morning of the audition, I woke up extremely sick. My mom said our family would be praying for me. When we got to the audition, my dad told the judges I wasn’t feeling very well. Before I began playing, I said a little prayer in my heart. I asked Heavenly Father for His help, especially if He wanted me to play the organ at church. As I began to play I felt as if someone else was playing. I didn’t feel sick but instead was just amazed to watch my fingers move. Before I knew it, I’d finished all my songs, and I don’t remember making any mistakes.
As soon as I got off the bench, the sickness returned and my dad took me home to rest. I slept all day until my mom woke me up that evening to tell me I’d won the scholarship. I know Heavenly Father wanted me to learn to play the organ and listened to my prayer. I’ve truly felt the Lord’s hand in my life. I’m so grateful for the talents He has blessed me with, because as I share them and use them to serve, He strengthens and blesses me.

Two days later, Stephanie and Serena meet at the train station in Amsterdam. Three American sisters, Michelle, Amanda, and Jackie Miller of the Hilversum Branch, are with them. They can’t get together very often, so they’re happy when they get the chance. It’s 6:00 P.M. as they walk out of Central Station. They’re all hungry, they decide on pizza, then they look for a restaurant. As the group walks the streets of Amsterdam with the rain coming down, they’re laughing and telling stories. But nobody is sure where the closest restaurant is. For a moment they stop. Then a voice calls out, “I know where we can go.”

Stephanie then speeds her pace and leads the way.

“My Young Women leaders had challenged me to finish reading the Book of Mormon by November,” says Sierra Hoffman, a Mia Maid from Albany, Oregon. “I was in the middle of it when President Hinckley gave the challenge to all members to read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year.”
She could have simply finished from where she was. And she did. Then, after completing her leaders’ challenge, Sierra turned back to 1 Nephi in late November and started reading again—this time to meet President Hinckley’s reading challenge. She read each night, sometimes for several hours.
“The spirit that filled my room and my heart as I read was amazing!” she says. “Passages that I had never noticed before stood out and touched me deeply. Verses that had confused me before made sense. Tears would fill my eyes as I read about the Savior visiting the Americas.”
Sierra also noticed a change in her 10-year-old brother as he, too, began reading from the Book of Mormon daily. He became more loving, kind, and respectful. Just as President Hinckley promised when he made the challenge, there was a greater feeling of the Spirit of the Lord in the Hoffman family’s home.

“Each one of us had a job, a goal, and an objective. We knew we had to make Sauniatu stand up and be independent,” said Ed Kamauoha as he began relating the incredible story of a service project that has continued for years and dramatically influenced hundreds of lives.
In December 1967 Brother Ed Kamauoha was appointed to be the new headmaster at Sauniatu. For years Sauniatu had been functioning as a school, but when he arrived, the future of Sauniatu was once again in question.
“There were real administrative questions about the efficiency and quality of the school,” he explained. Everyone in Samoa is required to take a standard government education test when they leave high school, and the Sauniatu scores were an average five points below the scores of students from the other Church schools in Samoa. In addition to the low test scores, it was costly to operate the remote school. Many of the students were from very poor families and could not afford to pay more tuition. Enthusiasm among students and teachers was low.
“I felt bad about the school,” he said. “As an administrator I understood the problems, but I also understood what the tradition of Sauniatu means to the Saints in Samoa. I knew the place was not what it could be because it was not living up to President McKay’s 1921 blessing.”
Ed Kamauoha believed Sauniatu had a prophetic future yet to be fulfilled if each person living there cared. His mind remained restless and his wiry body became charged with nervous energy as he began planning to meet the many requirements needed to make the students of Sauniatu self-sufficient and proud and to help the community of Sauniatu reap the promised blessings.
The projects he outlined for the betterment of Sauniatu were big projects. In many people’s minds they were too big for a handful of teachers and a few dozen school children to handle. Yet Brother Kamauoha felt they could do it.
“Getting everyone to work on big projects is like starting a large machine. You just can’t let it idle; you have to really rev it up and keep it going,” said Brother Kamauoha.
He also felt that the students’ performance in school would improve and the morale among the teachers would also improve if they knew they had some control over their own future. “We had been waiting for others to help us at Sauniatu,” explained Brother Kamauoha. “I tried to teach the people that they had depended too much on outside help and assistance from others. I told them the Lord gives us brains and a pair of hands but they won’t help us unless we use them. And so we started building roads, and we did it by hand.”

Her first love, though, is ballet. She started studying at age four, and plans to be a professional ballerina. She became so skilled that her teacher suggested that she audition to be a Junior Associate of the Royal Ballet School. This would mean attending a regional class with Royal Ballet School teachers once a month. Miriam was accepted. But with the acceptance letter came bad news—the classes were to be held in Swansea on Sunday! (Swansea is a Welsh coastal city west of Cardiff.) Miriam’s mother recalls, “I’d heard from Miriam’s ballet teacher that the class in Bristol (an English city east of Cardiff) would be held on Saturday, so I wrote a letter to the administrator of the Junior Associates explaining how I felt about the Sabbath and asking if Miriam could attend in Bristol. It was the most eloquent letter I’ve ever written. The administrator rang me and said, ‘I just received a letter from another parent wanting her child to move from Bristol to Swansea.’ It was an answer to prayer.”

Many young men with great talent never really make it in high school athletics. Conversely, many others with seemingly little talent end up playing first string varsity, making the all-state team. What is the difference? Some will tell you it’s luck, or a break, or a coach who likes them. Let me submit to you another idea. I believe those who play do so because they have a white-heat desire to play. When you want something with all the intensity of your soul, then other things are dwarfed in importance.
The desire to play obscures such things as dating, school politics, just being one of the boys, and fooling around. Self-discipline takes over, not because of a “have to” attitude but because of a “want to” attitude.
Let me share with you some things I have discovered over the years, especially while I was involved in football. I didn’t have much confidence, but I wanted to play almost more than anything else. The coach told us to eat a lot of beans and drink lots of milk. I didn’t like milk, but I drank it. I really wasn’t all that hot on beans, but I persuaded Mom to make a pot as often as I could. The coach said to be in bed by 9:30, and I was in bed by 9:30. It wasn’t hard to do because the desire to play overshadowed all these little things. One thing the coach asked me to do that I couldn’t do was work out on Sunday. He had asked each player to do calisthenics on an individual basis on Sunday. In this thing I followed the teachings of the Church.
At regular football practice I would do every calisthenic exercise the best I possibly could. I felt like I needed to do more than the other guy because he had more talent than I did. I only remember missing one football practice in three years, with the exception of when I broke my leg. The one practice I missed was for my grandmother’s funeral. And even at that age I hoped the funeral would be at a time other than practice. For four weeks after I broke my leg I would go out and watch the team play. After four weeks I persuaded the doctor to take the cast off, and six weeks after my leg had been broken I had the privilege of playing in another game.
Why do I tell you all this? Because I learned some great lessons from athletics. They have helped me through life. The young man who wants to play in high school athletics must discipline himself. The coach can lay down rules and regulations, but without self-discipline the rules and regulations only result in bodily movements or action. Self-discipline puts one’s heart into the program. It becomes something we want to do far more than the desire to just get by. Self-discipline imposes the need for self-motivation. I recall working in a grocery store during the summer; some of the other fellows worked in construction. I felt a need to make the eight hours a day I worked as strenuous as the eight hours they worked. I would force myself to run from one task to another. I would lift 100-pound sacks of potatoes and put them on a cart. Then I would push the cart with five 100-pound sacks to the display and unload the sacks, trying to hold each sack shoulder high without letting it touch my body. When football season came, I was in great shape physically.

About a month after I joined the Church, I met my wife, Magareth, and one year later we got married. While we were dating, I told her that because I knew Joseph Smith was a prophet, I desired to build our family upon the words and teachings of the prophets. For example, President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) was the prophet at that time, and he counseled Church members to stay out of debt. In close to 29 years of marriage, my wife and I have never paid one penny of interest. Never.

I really liked the advent calendar (Dec. 2008) and focused a family home evening on it. My family and I started planning and decided on a task: my sister and I made homemade mincemeat pies and took them to an elderly woman in our neighborhood. That made her very happy, and we decided to visit her more often. My mum, sister, grandmother and I also sang the song “Little Baby” at our ward’s Christmas party.
Alice T., Scotland

I remember the example of another sister missionary just returning back to our community. I asked her, "Besides seeing an investigator baptized, what was your favorite activity in the mission field?" Sister Tofa looked at me and said, "I believe I liked ‘the search’ the most, knocking on doors. We would get yelled at a lot and doors would slam in our faces. Some people thought I was crazy and would ask ‘how can you keep going when you are so violently rejected so often.’ I simply answered them saying, ‘I keep going because I know that despite multiple rejections, some day, somewhere, I am going to knock on a door and someone will open it and say to me, "Oh, please come in, we have been waiting for you.’"

Several years ago I went on a backpacking trip in the Teton Mountains of Wyoming with a group of young women. It was a difficult hike, and on the second day we arrived at the most dangerous part of the hike.
We were going to hike along Hurricane Pass—aptly named because of the strong winds that almost always blow there. We were instructed by a ranger to stay in the center of the path, stay as low as possible on the exposed part of the trail, secure everything in our packs, and move quickly. This was no spot for photographs or for lingering. I was relieved once each of the young women had navigated the spot successfully. And do you know—not one of them asked how close to the edge she could get!
Sometimes as we walk life’s paths, we want to loiter in dangerous places, thinking that it is fun and thrilling and that we are in control. Sometimes we think we can live on the edge and still maintain our virtue. But that is a risky place to be. As the Prophet Joseph Smith told us, “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue” (History of the Church, 5:134).
In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord gives counsel to one of His precious daughters—Emma Smith—to be faithful and to “walk the paths of virtue before me” (D&C 25:2). The Lord’s advice to Emma Smith is also His advice to all His precious daughters. What are those paths, and what is virtue?
Virtue is a pattern of thought and behavior based on high moral standards. It encompasses chastity and moral purity. Virtue includes modesty—in thought, language, dress, and demeanor. Virtue provides an anchor on the path leading to our Heavenly Father’s presence. The paths of virtue lead to happiness in this life and in the life to come. The paths of virtue lead to strong families. The paths of virtue contain the foundation stones for the blessings of eternity. They lead to the temple. No wonder the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things” (Articles of Faith 1:13).
In another revelation the Lord promises each of us that if we let virtue garnish our thoughts unceasingly, we will have confidence. He promises that our “confidence [will] wax strong” and the Holy Ghost will be our constant companion (see D&C 121:45–46). Living Church standards helps each of us stay on the paths of virtue. Whenever we are worthy of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, we can have the confidence that the daily decisions we make will be correct even when they are difficult.
All over the world young women are living lives of virtue and purity. It shows in your eyes and radiates in the light that shines forth from your countenances. But in a world that surrounds us with sights and sounds, music and messages that are less than virtuous, it can be difficult to hold onto virtue. What about those who have made mistakes along the way?
President Monson has said: “If any of you has slipped along the way, there are those who will help you to once again become clean and worthy. Your bishop or branch president is anxious and willing to help and will, with understanding and compassion, do all within his power to assist you in the repentance process that you may once again stand in righteousness before the Lord” (“Examples of Righteousness,” Liahona, May 2008, 65).
Never has there been a time in the history of the world when virtue is more needed. The blessings and promises of being virtuous will help you be free and happy and worthy to enter the Lord’s holy temples. For this reason we have added “virtue” to the Young Women values and theme. Each week when you repeat the theme, I hope you will be reminded of what it means to cherish virtue.

One day I witnessed evidence of the Spirit and the courage to follow counsel. It was in a second grade elementary classroom. The student-teacher held the children captive with her storytelling skills. In great detail she told of a cross old man whose name was Mr. Black. In contrast, the account was given in similar detail of a Mr. Brown who was kind and thoughtful and loved by everyone. At the conclusion of the story, the teacher asked the children, “How many of you would like to be a neighbor to Mr. Brown?” Every hand was raised high. Then almost as an afterthought, she inquired if there was anyone who would like to have Mr. Black for a neighbor.
A little boy in a faded green shirt near the back of the room began to raise his hand, which brought a ripple of quiet amusement from the children. Hesitating only briefly, he looked around at his friends and still mustered the courage to hold his hand high and to stand alone in his difference. When called on for an explanation to his single vote, he spoke in a soft tone. “Well,” he said, “I’d like Mr. Black to be my neighbor, because if he was, my mom would make a cake for me to take to him, and then he wouldn’t be that way anymore.” A hush fell over the room. Everyone felt something wonderful that they couldn’t explain. A little child broke the silence like a benediction: “Oh, I wish I’d said that!”
We had all made a quick decision about who would be the best neighbor, but only one, just one, had a spirit within, a discernment that allowed him to see what might be.

May I share my experience? I have here a valise, probably 75 years old. On the side are the initials R.R. They stand for Robert Redford—not the movie star. It belonged to my grandfather. He spent the final years of his life as an ordinance worker in the Logan Temple. He passed away in 1939 when I was twelve years old.

After the funeral, mother and her brothers and sisters gathered together to distribute his modest personal belongings. Each family member was given a first-choice selection. Unknown to us, Mother prayed that as her first choice, she could have Grandfather’s temple clothes in the black valise, with the initials “R.R.” printed on it.

Mother’s prayer was answered.

As a teenager, I thought it strange that Mother would prefer that little black bag to furniture or other items of practical value. Years later I went to the temple as a missionary to receive my own endowment. Mother gave me Grandfather’s temple clothing in the black valise. It would be difficult for me to describe my first experience in the temple. It was beyond anything earthly I had witnessed. I didn’t comprehend much that I was taught that evening in the Idaho Falls Temple. But clothed in the inheritance from my grandfather, I shall never forget the sublime feelings that penetrated my soul.

During my last sacrament meeting at the MTC, an elder stood who was older than most missionaries. He apologized for his poorly-spoken English, but hoped that he would be understood. His voice was deep and strong. He told of growing up in Cracow, Poland. He felt uncomfortable attending his family’s church and said that he “instinctively” knew some of its practices were not correct. He stopped going to his church and instead began to study the Bible. As he grew he became increasingly unhappy with the government, and at age eighteen he asked for political asylum in Austria. It was granted, and he left his home to start a new life. He spent nine very difficult months in the refugee camp near Vienna before seeking permission to migrate to the United States. Once he arrived he was contacted by missionaries from many churches. “They were nice,” he said, “but I could tell they did not have the answers I was looking for.” One day he saw a television program on the Mormons. He felt good about what he saw, and he decided to learn more of the Church. He met the missionaries, heard and accepted the gospel, and at age twenty-five was serving a mission. “It is a privilege to be here,” he said softly in his deep Polish accent. “I have been looking for a long time.”

Recently the Young Women of the Leavenworth Second Ward in Kansas came up with a super service activity. They decided to make children-size quilts to donate to Humanitarian Services. The girls spent several nights working on their quilts. They learned to cut fabric and batting, how to pin them together, how to stitch around the perimeter, and finally how to finish it off using a quilting machine.
Hannah Fowles, a Beehive, said, “I learned how much fun it can be to help other people. Not only did I learn to quilt, but it was spiritual and beneficial as well as being fun.”

With that note on the breadth of life at BYU, may I describe a recent morning when I sensed some heights of life at BYU. On the morning of June 21, I welcomed the Institute of Applied Statistics to our campus. Those number crunchers were ecstatic to be meeting at the nation’s largest private, church-related university on the longest day of the year, the warmest June 21st in 23 years, following the wettest Utah May in 17 years. They quivered with delight to discover that the Talmage Building has 130,893 square feet and that the BYU campus has 638 acres, 482 buildings, and 399 miles of sidewalks. They loved learning that the BYU Statistics Department has done a special study on skiing accidents to help those who come to Utah for the 2002 Winter Olympics. According to these statistically valid data, most skiers who break their legs on Utah slopes do so on the last run of the day.

As I left the statisticians to go to my office that morning, I saw Hugh Nibley walking toward me near the ASB parking lot. Suddenly he stopped walking, turned around, and began looking intently northward. The inimitable Nibley removed his sunglasses, tipped back his canvas hat, and stood transfixed, as though his eyes drank in a vision. Then I saw what had stopped him—and an aesthetic and spiritual view of BYU replaced the statistical one. A clearing storm and rising sun had left a ring of heavy, low clouds around the neck of Mt. Timpanogos, like a richly flowered lei. The familiar Timp skyline poked above the clouds, glistening in the sunlight with a light layer of fresh snow, the white peaks contrasting brilliantly with the blue sky and the full green foreground. I stopped, too, looking not just at Timp but at Hugh Nibley looking at Timp. No matter how many hundreds of times he had seen that mountain, no matter how full his head from his latest reading and his always brimming stream of consciousness, Hugh looked up longingly at Timp. He doesn’t take it for granted. For Nibley, Timp is like a wonderful poem or painting or scripture or trip to the temple—always revealing new meaning and new inspiration to those who probe its depths.

Saturday was finally here. It was time for our surprise adventure!
“I hope we’re going to the trampoline park,” I shouted from the backseat. Mom wouldn’t tell us where we were going, but the street we were on looked familiar. …
Then it hit me. We were going to the care center. Our school class had gone there a few times. We each had a “grandparent buddy” to talk to and play games with. My buddy was named Bill, and he was pretty cool.
But not as cool as a trampoline park, I thought as Mom pulled into the parking lot. When my brother saw the red and tan building, he groaned.
“This is going to be the worst day ever!” he grumbled. “This isn’t a fun adventure at all.”
Mom looked at us from the rear-view mirror. “Oh come on, give it a shot. By the time we’re through, you just might change your mind.”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t so sure. I helped Mom carry bags of small quilts into the lobby. It felt calm and peaceful inside.
“Do you know why I like coming here?” Mom asked. I shook my head.
“I feel the same way here as when I see new babies at the hospital,” she said. “Like I’m close to heaven.”
Close to heaven. I liked that.
We showed the receptionist at the front desk the quilts we wanted to hand out, and he led us to a room where we could visit.
“Is Bill still here?” I asked. “The one who’s married to Ruth and likes baseball?”
One of the workers nodded. “Oh, yes! Bill is still here. We sure love him.”
We started talking with some of the people, and it was actually pretty interesting hearing about their lives. And after a while, I saw Bill sitting in his wheelchair.
“Hi, Bill!”
He didn’t look like he remembered me, but that was OK. I picked out a small quilt with a baseball pattern and laid it on his lap.
“He gets cold a lot, and that will really help him,” said one of the workers standing nearby. “His wife will be happy to see it. She comes to visit him every day.”
Our visit wasn’t long, but it was long enough to see Bill smile. On our way out, we read a piece of paper posted on Bill’s door that told some fun things about his life. We learned that he grew up on a farm and learned to play baseball from his stepmother.
“Hey, Mom, look!” I pointed to a line on the paper. “He was so good at baseball that he was going to sign on with a professional team! But then he served in the military instead.” It was neat to learn a bit more about Bill.
Soon we were back in the van, buckling our seatbelts.
“So?” Mom asked us. “What did you think?”
I smiled. “I actually had fun. And I feel really happy. I think it’s because we helped Bill.”
As Mom drove home, we talked about different ways we can show people love and how the Spirit tells us when we are making good choices. We were all feeling so great that we decided to go back and visit another day.
What a great day! I thought as we pulled into our driveway. It was a fun adventure after all.

Our parents hadn’t encouraged us to go. They said it was too early to be climbing in Echo Canyon, that we should “wait until spring was really here.” But the winter had been long and cold, we were 16, and we couldn’t wait any longer. Though it was just mid-March, the invitation from the brilliant sun light and the soaring temperatures could not be turned down.
Glenn, Marvin, John, and I settled into Glenn’s Chevy Bel Air. We didn’t relax much in the car for the ten minutes or so it took us to drive to Echo Canyon.
I climbed out of the back seat, stretched, and looked up at the rock formations surrounding us. The prehistoric waters of Lake Bonneville once covered this area, and the currents had eroded the cliffs and pinnacles into exotic shapes. Now the almost continual wind worked on the job of rock carving. Its blasts had slashed grotesque caves and chutes and chambers into the sandstone and shale walls. Echo Canyon was a place of eerie beauty.
In our years of going to Echo Canyon, we never climbed up any of the “real” cliffs. We didn’t have the equipment or experience for that. But several times each summer we tried our strength against the intermixed “almost” cliffs—they were close enough to being straight up and down to suit us fine.
We settled down to climb one of the major “almost” cliffs that glowered down on the main canyon and spent almost an hour getting to the top. Our ascents—though requiring more endurance than skill—were always marked by caution. Even though nature had already gouged hundreds of hand and foot holds out of the rock, it was a long way to the bottom for a foolhardy climber.
The view from the top, though familiar, was invigorating. From the valley floor, the blue sky seemed to arch overhead. Here on top, we were in the sky, a part of it. Climbing today was more than an adventure—it was a celebration of the radiance of the sun, a celebration of our youth and vitality—a celebration of life.
Going down the “cliff” took longer than climbing it did. Between us and the car, still almost a quarter of a mile below us, was a rock slide. Since we had run down similar slides on earlier trips, we knew that we could throw caution away and rashly blast down the hill without much danger of a twisted ankle or a small avalanche of cascading rock, as long as we ran without stopping.
We scattered out along the top side of the immense slide, littered with tons of shale and sand stone, threw our hands high in the air, whooped and screamed, and started running for the car. We were cheered by our own echoing voices as the sliding rocks and our churning legs started us down the hill.
One of the best parts of these lunatic runs was jumping over any sagebrush we could find. We purposely headed for any of the sparsely-spaced bushes that punctuated the shale for the incredible ecstasy of soaring over them. The momentum of our bodies would carry us over them with hardly any effort. I would feel like a lunar astronaut, bounding into the air against gravity, landing—still running—below the bushes I hurdled.
Halfway down the slide, I headed for a grand sagebrush. It was almost three feet higher than any other I had seen on the slope, and I knew I could jump it with dramatic speed. As I approached it, I calculated how I would maintain my balance—and speed—as I landed on the other side of it.
As I hit my final approach, my energy seemed electrified, yet I was in absolute control. Just before I jumped, a voice in my mind commanded, “Stop! Stop right now!”
There was no time to consider the source of the voice—I just felt impelled to stop. My legs stopped churning and dug into the shale like anchors. I leaned backwards and skidded to a stop in a shower of stones.
As the dust swirled around me, I felt foolish. My friends were still running, oblivious of me in their own descent. I lay there on the sharp rocks on the uphill side of the bush, catching my breath, wondering how long it would be until inevitable scrapes and bruises from the rock would start to sting my currently numbed body.
Some of the retinue of rocks I had loosened as I ran down the hill caught up with me and rocketed through the sagebrush and on down the slope. Then I heard the buzzing—fierce and steady. There was a rattlesnake somewhere close!
My breath stopped momentarily with fear. We all knew that a few rattlesnakes showed up here and there in our area, but not here in Echo Canyon! I wondered what I should do and warily looked around, being careful to not move anything but my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.
I listened intently to the buzzing and determined that it was coming from the downhill side of the bush. I slowly got to my feet and skirted the sage, keeping back from the sound, until I could see the downhill side clearly.
Until interrupted by me and my rocks, a big rattler had been sunning itself in the shale. Now it was coiled to strike—its defiant head was matched by its angry tail. I watched it for several minutes until it uncoiled and slid back into the security of the bush. It was a diamondback, at least three feet long. At its thickest part, its brown and gray body was as big around as a baseball.
I felt no anger for the snake. I had disturbed it; it hadn’t sought me out. The unusual warmth of the last few days had undoubtedly brought it prematurely out of hibernation. Its venom would be a thick concentrate, incredibly potent after not being used for killing prey during the winter months of hibernation. If I had jumped the bush, I would have landed inches away from its fangs. My heart was still beating like primitive drums from my downhill exertion and my astonishment. This rapid heartbeat would have scattered the poison throughout my body in a few seconds. My only chance for survival came in the voice: “Stop! Stop right now!”
I was overwhelmed as I realized, with a startling and clear perspective, that God was aware of me as an individual. He really was a Heavenly Father—and he knew Layne Dearden, one of his sons. He knew what I was doing on that March afternoon. And he knew that my careless exuberance would end my life unless he helped.
That day was more of a celebration of life than I ever imagined it could be, even when I had stood at the top of the cliff. I basked in the warmth of my Father’s love as I slowly walked down the remaining shale slope.

When we ask ourselves whether we are keeping the Sabbath day holy, we may sometimes answer, “Yes. I attend Church meetings, spend time with my family, read the scriptures, write in my journal, and refrain from working.” But one particular experience caused me to search my soul, asking, “Is this enough?”
Each week I travel from Octavo, Argentina, to Cordoba to buy merchandise for my business. During one trip, I found that for each purchase I made from one vendor, I could participate in a contest. The contest’s top prize was a ticket to a basketball game played by the top team in Cordoba.
When I won one of the tickets, I was excited—until I realized there was a problem. The game was on Sunday, so I wouldn’t be able to go myself. But I quickly figured out how I could use the ticket. I had some advertising space on a radio station in my city, and I could give this ticket away in a promotion for my business.
The following week I made a purchase from the same vendor and strangely enough won another ticket to the same game. Now I could give away two tickets. I knew my promotion would be even more successful.
A few hours after winning the second ticket, I had an unusual feeling. It was a soft, quiet voice telling me I should not run the promotion. When my wife asked why I was canceling the promotion, I responded that if we couldn’t go to a sports event because it would be dishonoring the Sabbath, I felt it would not be right to encourage others to do so through a radio promotion.
This experience helped me understand that honoring the Sabbath is more than just following a list of things we should and should not do. Although prophets have not spoken about the particular situation I found myself in, when I felt the Spirit’s prompting, I knew I needed to keep the spirit of the Sabbath by helping others to enjoy it as well.
I am grateful to my wife for supporting this decision and to my Heavenly Father, whose Spirit helped me understand how to better honor His holy day.