Gospel Story Finder

Juan Rodríguez is from the La Romana Stake in the Dominican Republic. He was baptized at the age of 13 and promptly took the action part of the gospel seriously. He enthusiastically shared the gospel message with the people in Mexico on his mission in 2014 and when he returned home, his passion for the gospel increased. For reasons of employment, he moved to a small community near Punta Cana called Verón, and there he likened the revelation given to Hyrum to himself when he was called to be the branch president. Juan knew that he and his counselors were being called of God to establish the cause of Zion in his hometown.
Together in prayer, with others in the area, they brought the Church out of obscurity through connecting with the community’s needs. They created activities like, Night at the Movies for the young single adults and International Day of Our Heritage as the community bonded together over delicious food. The youth also connected with the community on the International Day of Service as they cleaned a public school or did fundraisers. Through these events, the community became interested in the Church and the missionaries were kept busy teaching lessons and challenging friends to be baptized.
All this time, the members were meeting in a rented building that increasingly became too small for their growing group of Saints. Juan and his counselors believed, “If you will ask of me you shall receive; if you will knock it shall be opened unto you” (Doctrine and Covenants 11:5). So, they went to their stake president and asked how they could build a meetinghouse. Leaving the meeting with the Church guidelines to receive a meetinghouse for their congregation, they were filled with the spirit knowing that “A great and marvelous work [was] about to come forth among the children of men” (Doctrine and Covenants 11:1). Through faith and effort, they would fulfill scripture right there in Verón.
During a period of four years, the branch became a ward, the guidelines were met, and in April of 2022, land was purchased, followed by the groundbreaking ceremony on Jan. 20, 2023. The meetinghouse is anticipated to be completed early in 2024 and will be a monument of faith and hard work.

President Henry B. Eyring shared an incredible witness and reminder that covenants can banish fear, doubt, and uncertainty that can otherwise stifle our efforts to become what God wants us to become. While entering into sacred temple covenants with his eternal companion, Kathy, President Eyring was taught by a prophet of God, President Spencer W. Kimball, to strive to keep his covenants in such a way that he could “walk away easily”16 from other pursuits when the call to greater consecration came. As President Eyring observed:

The loving counsel given by President Kimball in the temple to be able to “walk away easily” became a reality. Kathy and I received a call to leave what seemed an idyllic family situation in California to serve in an assignment and in a place that I knew nothing about. However, our family was ready to leave because a prophet, in a holy temple, a place of revelation, saw a future event for which we were then prepared.17

We are grateful President Dallin H. Oaks will be our concluding speaker. When I was a new freshman at Brigham Young University and President Oaks was the new president of Brigham Young University, we spoke together on a panel for parents and prospective students. As I waited nervously for the program to begin, President Oaks leaned over to assure me. With a warm smile, he said he was wearing a red tie because he was celebrating his 40th birthday and was feeling old. To me, as a new freshman, 40 did seem pretty old!

After hearing the stake patriarch speak in sacrament meeting, I felt inspired to ask my bishop for a recommend. Then the patriarch and I set a date. As I entered his house that morning, I knew I was on the right path. We told each other a little about our lives. After that, the patriarch laid his hands upon my head and began to prophesy about my life. I could feel that it was all true and that it was really God that was speaking through the patriarch. I wept. I learned many things about myself that day.
Jared Edge, 18Layton, Utah

I was nervous, but I remembered a story about President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) when he received a mission call to England. He was preparing to leave in the midst of economic pressures and concerns that troubled him. Just before he left, his father handed him a card with five written words: “Be not afraid, only believe” (Mark 5:36). I also remembered the words of my bishop: “Have faith. God will provide.” These words gave me courage and strength to move forward.

Jacob E. watches general conference on TV at home with his family in Layton, Utah. But today he’s excited to be visiting the Conference Center in person. That’s because he gets to help show Friend readers what happens behind the scenes at general conference.
“The auditorium is awesome!” Jake said. Actually, it’s the biggest auditorium of its kind in the world. It can hold 21,000 people—7,000 on each of its three levels.
It was an amazing experience to stand at the same pulpit where President Monson stands. He can read his talk from these screens, which are invisible to the camera. He can check the time on a clock on the pulpit.
When it’s time for President Monson to begin the conference session, this sign lights up.
When someone else is giving a talk, President Monson can watch him or her on one of the TV screens.
Jacob visited the video control room, where the director of the general conference TV broadcast does his job. Jacob wore the headset that the director uses to tell the camera operators when to switch to a different camera. The director also tells the lighting designer when to turn lights on and off.
In the light booth, the auditorium’s 6,000 lights are controlled. A lighting designer showed Jacob how to dim the lights and turn them up. Jacob got to try out the spotlight and also to shine colored lights on the organ pipes.
What’s he doing behind the pipes? Each one of the organ’s 7,667 pipes has to be tuned. Brother Lamont Anderson showed Jacob how he taps a pipe to make the sound go higher or lower. The pipes are made either of zinc or wood. The biggest one, which is 43 feet tall, has the lowest sound.
Jacob was surprised to learn that conference talks are translated into 92 different languages! Before conference, a translator translates the written talks. Then during conference, interpreters for each language sit in little rooms like this one and translate any added or changed words they hear.
Now Jacob knows more about what it takes to bring the prophet’s words to people all around the world. The one thing he would like to tell Friend readers is, “Follow the prophet!”

While my grandmother was expecting her first child, Grandfather Ballard was called on a mission in the United States. He was sent to the Midwest, and he provided music at missionary meetings at which he, Brother B. H. Roberts, and Brother George Pyper taught the gospel. When Brother Roberts and Brother Pyper went back to Salt Lake City, Grandfather was left alone in Illinois. He was discouraged and lonely. He missed his wife and his firstborn son—my father—who was born after he left. Then he came across the hymn “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” (Hymns, number 270). He had a beautiful baritone voice, and he sang that hymn often.
When he became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he was put in charge of the Music Committee of the Church. When the hymnbook was updated in English in 1927, he saw that “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” was included. I think this hymn has the greatest missionary message of any of our hymns. It has affected my life much the same as it did my grandfather’s. My commitment to go wherever the Lord wants me to go has taken me to almost every corner of the earth. As a General Authority, I have visited Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the United States, Canada, and Russia. Truly the commitment to be a missionary has prepared me for a lifetime of service to the Lord.
As a young boy, I was a little bit timid, but I had the desire to be a missionary because I knew that was what my grandfather wanted me to do. I knew that was also what my mother and father wanted me to do. When I was old enough, I was eager to serve.
There has never been a time in my life that was more important than my own mission in preparing me for what I am now doing as a General Authority. I served in the British Mission from 1948 to 1950. All of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were part of that mission. The Church had gone through a difficult period in the British Isles after World War II, and we were reopening the area to missionary work. We would knock on doors and hand out tracts about the Church.
You can’t be timid for long as a missionary. Street meetings were a very popular form of missionary work. We would set up a stand in the marketplace or town square, sing a few hymns, then bear our testimonies and answer questions.
The second day I was in England, I attended my first street meeting at Hyde Park in London. Six missionaries and our mission president, Selvoy J. Boyer, were there. President Boyer called on two missionaries to speak. I was one of them.
On my way up to the stand, he said to me, “Elder Ballard, you preach the gospel.” I quickly picked the principle of baptism and said everything I knew about it in about 30 seconds. That was a good experience because it made me realize very quickly how much I did not know. I realized I had a lot of studying to do.
While I was on that mission, the plan of salvation came into focus for me. I knew we had the truth and the scriptures, so it was not frightening to bear my testimony in public. I began to understand that Heavenly Father is willing to give all He has to His faithful children.
Serving a mission is a great opportunity to show our love for Heavenly Father. I think it is very important that young boys and girls save money for their missions. Young people who help pay for their own missions are better missionaries. I tell young people wherever I go that whenever they earn money, they ought to pay 10 percent for tithing, save 40 percent for their missionary fund, and keep 50 percent for their use.
If I could go back and relive my life, I would start preparing for a mission much earlier. I would read the scripture storybooks. I would read the scriptures daily with my family. I would pay more attention in Primary. I would spend time in my youth really trying to understand the message of the Restoration.

“Papá, Alan’s hurt!” Nicole cried as she and her friend Nathalia quickly rode into our camp on their four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle.
We were camping in central Utah with two other families. While my son Alan and his friend Kurt were out riding, they hit a ditch and flipped their four-wheeler. It had landed on top of Alan, but somehow Kurt lifted it off of him.
When I arrived at the scene a few minutes later with two friends, Alan was lying in the ditch, surrounded by several men. He was having trouble breathing, and Kurt looked sick with worry. When Alan tried to get up, a man with a medical bag told him to stay down as he administered first aid and checked his vital signs.
“You’re the father, correct?” he asked as he looked up at me.
“Yes.”
“Stay with Alan a minute.”
To my friends Hector and Carlos, he said, “I need to speak with you.”
They went off by themselves, which raised a red flag in my mind. The man’s name was Mike Staheli. Mike, a medical nurse, was camping with some friends. They had planned to return home that morning but felt prompted to stay one more day. His son had seen the accident and immediately called his father for help.
I learned later that Mike had told Hector and Carlos that Alan was in serious condition. Mike feared that Alan might die in the ditch if he didn’t receive medical help soon. Alan’s left leg had swollen to twice its normal size, and Mike feared that Alan had suffered a hip or femoral fracture. Mike was convinced that Alan had broken his now Z-shaped left arm and perhaps some ribs. Mike also feared that Alan had injured some internal organs.
To get Alan to the hospital quickly, Mike said we should call for a medical helicopter, which we did.
“Luis,” Hector said for the second time, “we need to give Alan a blessing.”
I hadn’t really heard Hector the first time because I was too focused on Alan. Hector was right.
“We’re going to give you a blessing,” I said to Alan, who had recently been ordained a deacon. “You understand what that means?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“But you have to do something,” I said. “You have to have faith in Jesus Christ and the power of the priesthood. Do you have faith that the Lord can help you and heal you?”
“Yes, Papá,” he told me, “I do have faith.”
I anointed Alan, and then Hector, Carlos, and I gave him a blessing, with Hector sealing the anointing. Hector’s words were simple, but we all felt the powerful presence of the Holy Ghost.
Alan’s breathing slowed, and his vital signs stabilized almost immediately. The wind stopped, a calmness settled over us, and some of the men began to weep. It was a cold fall day, but afterward, Alan said he felt warmer as Hector pronounced the blessing.
Soon the helicopter arrived, and I joined Alan on the flight to the hospital. When we landed, he was rushed inside, where he underwent several examinations and tests, including an MRI. As I waited, I expected the worst. But the worst never came. Doctors found no internal injuries and no broken femur, hip, arm, or ribs—nothing.
“Alan,” one of the doctors told him, “it looks like you can go home tonight.”
Alan had difficulty walking, so he stayed overnight in the hospital for observation. When we brought him home the next morning, he wore only a brace on his left wrist. Six weeks later, he was preparing for soccer season.
A week after the accident, we went to Mike’s house to thank him for his help. He could hardly believe his eyes when Alan walked in and sat on his couch.
“I’ve taken care of a lot of people, and I’ve seen a lot of people pass away,” he told us. “Medically, Alan should not have made it. What I saw that day was truly miraculous. It was divine intervention.”

Let me take you over to the east coast of England to meet a new convert to the Church. We have just finished a sacrament meeting.

“Oh, Brother Simpson, that was wonderful! I wish this meeting could have gone on for two more hours. I’m a new convert to your church.”

I asked him how long he had been in the Church.

“Oh, just three months.”

“Tell me about your conversion.”

He tells this story: “I was out doing my gardening on a Saturday morning; I was all by myself. It as a beautiful morning. All of a sudden I heard a voice behind me that said, ‘Sir, do you love the Lord?’ I turned around, expecting to see an angel. There were two of them standing there. I came to my feet and took them by the hand and said, ‘I love the Lord; come into the house and let’s talk about it.’” And that was the beginning of his conversion—the honest in heart meeting the honest in heart. We do not have to have these profound approaches out in the mission field; all we have to do is be sincere and strike that responsive chord that lets someone know we come with proper authority and indeed represent the Lord Jesus Christ.

The challenges that face us and our families as disciples of Christ are somewhat different than those of Joshua’s Israelites. Let me illustrate with an experience. Our family lived for many years in the state of Florida. Because Florida has a high concentration of sand, lawns there are planted with a large broadleaf grass we call Saint Augustine. A formidable enemy of a Florida lawn is a small, brown insect called a mole cricket.

One evening as my neighbor and I stood on the front steps, he noticed a little bug crossing my sidewalk. “You better spray your lawn,” he warned. “There goes a mole cricket.” I had sprayed the lawn with insecticide not too many weeks previously, and I hardly felt that I had the time or money to do it again so soon.

In the light of the next morning, I examined my lawn closely. It was lush and beautifully green. I looked down into the grass to see if I could see any of the little bugs. I could see none. I remember thinking, “Well, maybe that little mole cricket was just passing through my yard on the way to my neighbor’s yard.”

I watched my lawn for more than a week, looking for signs of invaders, but none was evident. I congratulated myself that I had not overreacted to my neighbor’s warning.

The story, however, has a sad ending. I came out the front door one morning, about 10 days after the conversation with my neighbor. Shockingly, as if it had happened overnight, brown spots covered my lawn. I ran to the garden store, bought the insecticide, and sprayed immediately, but it was too late. The lawn was ruined, and to return it to its former state required a new crop of sod, long hours of work, and large expense.

My neighbor’s warning was central to my lawn’s welfare. He saw things I could not see. He knew something I did not know. He knew that mole crickets live underground and are active only at night, making my daytime examinations ineffective. He knew that mole crickets did not eat the leaves of the grass but rather found nourishment in the roots. He knew that these little inch-long creatures could eat a lot of roots before I would ever see the effect above the ground. I paid a dear price for my smug independence.

My greatest challenge when I was a child was when my father died. I was seven years old.
I had a wonderful mother and kind grandparents. But I cried many tears. At school my classmates made fun of me because I couldn’t spell or do math very well. Some of the older kids bullied me on the school bus. I wished I had talents like others who were good athletes or good singers.
After a while, I began to feel better. My family loved and helped me. I kept working, and slowly I did better in school. I also found things I was good at. I worked to become better at those things. Heavenly Father helped me.

Recently I talked to an old friend who has gone through two divorces due to the addictions and unfaithfulness of her husbands. She and her three children have suffered greatly. She pleaded, “I have tried so hard to live righteously. Why have I had so many trials? What have I done wrong? What does Heavenly Father want me to do? I pray and read my scriptures, help my children, and go to the temple often.”

As I listened to this sister, I felt like shouting out, “You are doing it! You are doing all that Heavenly Father wants and hopes you will do!”

Understandably, many have expressed that our Father’s promised blessings are just “way too far away,” particularly when our lives are overflowing with challenges. But Amulek taught that “this life is the time … to prepare to meet God.” It is not the time to receive all of our blessings. President Packer explained: “‘And they all lived happily ever after’ is never written into the second act. That line belongs in the third act, when the mysteries are solved and everything is put right.” However, a vision of our Father’s incredible promised blessings must be the central focus before our eyes every day—as well as an awareness “of the multitude of his tender mercies” that we experience on a daily basis.

Sisters, I do not know why we have the many trials that we have, but it is my personal feeling that the reward is so great, so eternal and everlasting, so joyful and beyond our understanding that in that day of reward, we may feel to say to our merciful, loving Father, “Was that all that was required?” I believe that if we could daily remember and recognize the depth of that love our Heavenly Father and our Savior have for us, we would be willing to do anything to be back in Their presence again, surrounded by Their love eternally. What will it matter, dear sisters, what we suffered here if, in the end, those trials are the very things which qualify us for eternal life and exaltation in the kingdom of God with our Father and Savior?

I testify that our bodies are sacred gifts from our Heavenly Father and that as we keep our lives pure and clean through the atoning sacrifice of our Savior and keep the vision of our Father’s promised rewards daily in front of us, we will one day receive “all that [our] Father hath.” In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

“Read the scriptures again? I’ve already done that for two years and made it through each of the standard works four times!”
Thus wrote a returned missionary after I challenged my institute class to read and ponder the scriptures twenty minutes each day for a month.

Those reactions justified my confidence in the scriptures. The returned missionary who had resented the assignment wrote, “I have rediscovered an exciting adventure. I have once again astonished myself with the wonder of learning and understanding the gospel as it has been presented to us by the prophets. The gospel has become even more relevant in these last few weeks than ever before. I understand more clearly that faith and the strength of one’s testimony are things that vary from day to day and must be kept current.”

More than 120 youths from the Monticello Utah Stake undertook clean-up operations at their stake farm that will one day include a recreation-park area for Scouts and a girls’ camp. A stake committee is working on a master plan for the campground, and the project will involve several years’ work.
Some of the day’s work included cleaning out the old spring, tearing off old roofs, cleaning out the solidly built root cellar, and hauling trash to the ravine for burial.
The farm, complete with log cabins still very much intact, will someday serve recreational needs for generations.
After the work was done the young people organized games, and a delicious Dutch-oven supper was served.

Much of what I know I have learned from watching and listening to those older and wiser and younger and wiser than myself whom I have lived near enough to see and hear up close. As a young bride, newly arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was experiencing some cultural shock. In those days Boston billed itself as the hub of culture which included the Cabots and Lodges and their associates. That dates me just a little bit if you know when those people had any influence in Boston. My husband suggested that I not keep mentioning how old I am, but I’m fifty years old. I’d like you to know that right to begin with. I think that lends some credence to my experiences. In our first Relief Society meeting in a little old house on Brattle Street, I listened as a strong, faithful, wise woman (a long-time resident) implored us:

Now don’t you Utah girls come here and hold your noses for four years wishing you were back in the only true West where things are done right! Absorb this wonderful culture. Learn New England cookery, get to know your Yankee neighbors; that may take some patience, but it’s well worth it. Catholics are people. Take the subway over to the Esplanade and hear the Boston Symphony, free, this summer. Do it; then you, as well as your husbands, will have something to take home.

I believed her. It changed my responses. It has changed my life. When our four years were over, my husband brought home a Ph.D., and I came back loving New England: speech patterns, seafood, Catholics, and all. She taught me about differences and a most impressive lesson on tolerance. I learned that tolerance can lead to love—a lesson I was able to apply recently living among the Jews in Israel.

This would be a fine place to end Kim and Neil’s story, but there’s more. The Kereszti’s son, Zsolt, was the only Latter-day Saint single adult in Hungary, so Dr. Davis invited him to come to Salt Lake City and live with his family for a while. Since Zsolt had medical training, he could help Dr. Davis in his research.
So now the Davis’s missionary efforts resulted in a new big brother for the family. What’s it like to suddenly have a friend from Hungary move in?
“I remember the first day he came,” says Kim. “We couldn’t even pronounce his name. But since then, we’ve become really close. I go to early-morning seminary, and he takes me. He’s come to our school and spoken, he’s cooked Hungarian dinners for us, he’s taught us a little of the Hungarian language, and we’ve done a lot of other special things together.”
“I was kind of shy at first,” says Neil, who was the oldest son in the house when Zsolt arrived. “We’d go out and play racquetball and Ping-Pong, and we all got used to each other. Considering he came from a family where he was the only child, he’s very patient with us.”
As for Zsolt, he was delighted to be accepted straight into the heart of a strong Latter-day Saint family. He’s fascinated by their unity, by family prayer, scripture study, and family home evening, and he’s amazed at their support of each other. The Davises are a musical family and play their various instruments together often. They’re also an athletic family and always attend each other’s games and sports activities.
“I’ve learned that I tremendously enjoy a big family,” Zsolt says. “It’s very educational for me to watch and learn how they handle everything. They set goals and motivate each other. I would like to have a family like this someday.”

Throughout my mission in Europe, a phrase in my patriarchal blessing about preaching the gospel in power reminded me I was on the Lord’s errand, and therefore I should speak with authority. When I returned home and began searching for a wife, I knew I must find someone who would help me be worthy. After all, my patriarchal blessing made reference to the joys of a righteous posterity. Today, I am thrilled to go to the temple with my six children and their companions, and I do find joy and rejoicing in my posterity.

During the summer, the children often went swimming in the river. A wooden pier came out partway on the deep side of the swimming hole. Those of us who couldn’t swim well would enter the water from the shallow side and play there. One time I thought that I could make it out to the pier. I was wrong. I got out to where I couldn’t touch bottom and started floundering. I remember feeling a hand lifting me up. It may have been one of the older kids, but I can still feel that hand lifting me, and I think that Somebody was watching over me.

President Kimball recites the following story about a goal he made when he was still a young boy: “When I heard a Church leader from Salt Lake City tell us at conference that we should read the scriptures, and I recognized that I had never read the Bible, that very night at the conclusion of that very sermon I walked to my home a block away and climbed up in my little attic room in the top of the house and lighted a little coal-oil lamp that was on the little table, and I read the first chapters of Genesis. A year later I closed the Bible, having read every chapter in that big and glorious book.
“I found that this Bible that I was reading had in it 66 books, and then I was nearly dissuaded when I found that it had in it 1,189 chapters, and then I also found that it had 1,519 pages. It was formidable, but I knew if others did it that I could do it.
“I found that there were certain parts that were hard for a 14-year-old boy to understand. There were some pages that were not especially interesting to me, but when I had read the 66 books and 1,189 chapters and 1,519 pages, I had a glowing satisfaction that I had made a goal and that I had achieved it.
And he continues: “I am not telling you this story to boast; I am merely using this as an example to say that if I could do it by coal-oil light, you can do it by electric light. I have always been glad I read the Bible from cover to cover.” (Ensign, May 1974, p. 88.)

Of course, everyone makes mistakes. But let me tell you about a lovely young lady who visited in my office. She was discouraged, almost depressed. She enjoyed her profession of teaching yet felt that her life was not going anywhere. To complicate the problem she was feeling, her testimony had waned, and she was lacking the spark that all who had known her acknowledged was part of her vibrant personality.
“I am going to ask you a question,” I said, “but I do not want details. Are you living the commandments?”
She whispered, “No.”
We talked about her going to her bishop. We also talked about testimony and about how when one lives the commandments, that individual is endowed with blessings of the Spirit that can come in no other way.
She left, seemingly as discouraged as she had entered my office. But in a while, perhaps a month later, my telephone rang. She reported that all was well.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I went to my bishop. I am living the commandments now, and, yes, I know the gospel is true. I did it on my own,” she reported.
“No one else could have done it for you,” I replied.