Gospel Story Finder

I’ve visited the Church in different places around the world, and while on those visits have always felt welcome. For a long time, I thought it was good enough for me and my family that I was an enthusiastic supporter of this Church, but in June 2022, something changed.
I was raised Catholic and said prayers during my younger years, but in June of 2022, I really prayed to God for the very first time. I prayed for guidance, to know if this was the right time for me to study the gospel. That night in my sleep, a scripture from the Book of Mormon entered in my mind: 2 Nephi 17.
It was like a movie. I saw golden glowing letters on the inside of my head. I had no idea if the scripture, 2 Nephi 17 existed, but I clearly felt that this was an answer to my prayers and came up with a plan to go to Church with Ellie and the children for at least a year, to read the scriptures and to pray together as a family. Later that day at work, I looked up the text of 2 Nephi 17, and my eyes landed on verse 11, that reads: “Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depths, or in the heights above.”
I did not see this experience as a faint sign. This felt like God literally telling me that indeed it was time. I went home to tell Ellie and told her that I was ready to start a sincere study of the gospel. While telling her my story, I was struck by lightning—not by actual lightning, but by the Holy Ghost. I immediately knew what it was. Physically I felt something happening in my heart and realized that I was freed from a restlessness that I’ve carried all my life. Immediately I felt a love come over me that I have never felt before. I knew that this was the love of Christ. I literally had a change of heart. For my oldest daughter, Mayra, it was a very emotional moment, because two days earlier she had prayed that I would experience a conversion. Later, I learned two other friends had prayed for the same thing a few days earlier. A great testimony of the power of prayer!

I vividly recall a couple who came for counsel. She was in the final stages of divorce, and he was bitter with resentment. Gone were the flowering petals of love that had given such meaning and purpose to their courtship. Shattered was the trust that once served as a sacred bond to draw them together. The ugly entanglement of selfishness was strangling what was left of the few remaining feelings of mutual respect. I listened privately to one and then the other. Their story was all too familiar. “I love her, but do not want to be trampled upon.” “I’m grateful for what he does, but if I show the least gratitude, he thinks all our differences are resolved, and I am submerged again.”
Their problems were further complicated by economic pressures. Yet, as I listened to each separately, I could see that the means they tenaciously held individually, if shared selflessly, could have solved their financial difficulties. I could see in each admirable characteristics. There was a sincere testimony of truth, a desire to do right, and an anxiety to feel at peace with the Lord for the decisions about to be taken.
He had honestly tried to show love and affection and had done much to help her, but in every case these righteous gestures were destroyed by simultaneously expressed feelings of concern for self. In his own words, “I do not want her to take advantage of me.” She restrained the honest feelings of gratitude in her heart for his help with the children and home and said nothing. They had not the courage, nor the vision, to build one another.
Two individuals trapped in the cross fire of intense feelings rarely can think clearly or be properly motivated. They need help, and the best source of help is the Savior. Oh, how I pray they will use the principles we discussed to reach out, to lift, to build, to edify, and to forgive one another.

I was skeptical when the missionaries taught me about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. My first thought was that Joseph Smith, like many other so-called “prophets,” may have brought a false book into the world seeking to become wealthy, famous, or heroic.
I had no intention of reading the Book of Mormon. But over time the missionaries’ friendship and their enthusiasm for the gospel allowed my curiosity toward their message to grow.
As I read the verses the missionaries gave me in the Book of Mormon, I found Moroni’s invitation to ask God with a sincere heart, real intent, and faith in Christ if the Book of Mormon is true (see Moroni 10:4–5). I thought, “Who, knowing the book was fake, would dare challenge us to ask God with real intent and sincerity if the Book of Mormon is true?”
Then one day the missionaries explained that Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were martyred for their testimony. Suddenly, a thought came to me that they would never have given up their own lives for something they knew was false. At that moment, a warm feeling, like a burning fire, spread through me. It was a witness of the Holy Spirit confirming to my heart that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. With this witness, I was baptized and confirmed.

That is how I came to find out about Juana Cancel, one of my father’s grandmothers (and one of my great-grandmothers). She was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico in the year 1880. I wrote and recorded the following information about her, which I learned from my father. “Juana Cancel was a very beloved grandmother of my father. She would protect, love, nurture, and spoil him. She safely kept his Life Magazine collection for him. Her husband, Jose Hilario Martinez, died eighteen years before she did. That meant that she had to continue administering and working their farm by herself after his death. She then used to sleep with a half a cue stick, an iron bar, and a hatchet underneath her bed, in case somebody tried to break into her home. She also used to smoke cigarettes. She said that she smoked in order to repel the mosquitoes! She passed away from a metastatic cancer of her cervix. My father remembers her going to receive treatments in the oncologic hospital in San Juan. I love her very much, because it is quite clear to me that my father nearly worshiped her.”
I could not rest until the temple work was done for her. It was a moving labor of love to have all of her vicarious ordinances performed. Family history and temple work are truly the “most glorious of subjects belonging to the everlasting gospel” (D&C 128:17).

Twenty-three-year-old Totshauna Svenstrup, her husband, Christian, and their two small daughters were four of those who responded to the call. They came out of Denmark and, after sailing to the United States, joined one of two ill-fated handcart companies that headed westward to Zion. Totshauna’s daughter, Anna Karil, at that time only five, years later wrote briefly of the trek in her journal:
“Father died just outside of Florence [Nebraska] in a wagon accident. Mother pulled the cart, and she with child. We buried Gury in the snow by the Sweetwater [Wyoming]. She froze one night next to me and Mother in the tent. We reached the Salt Lake Valley in October. In December Mother delivered a son.”

Between December 23 and 24 1993, our Oshodi Branch missionaries asked me to go to Sister Patience Ojukwu’s farm to buy old layer chickens for Christmas dinner. When I returned with one, the other companion asked me to get another for them. Arriving at the farm on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Sister Ojukwu informed me that she had lost more than two hundred old layer chicken which had been stolen the previous night. I was only a priest in the Aaronic Priesthood, but I was the only priesthood holder on the farm that very day. I asked that we all join hands together and pray to God to reveal to us what action to take. I got the answers immediately and asked Sister Ojukwu to inform the police. When the detectives arrived, the farm security guard was arrested and confessed that the farm supervisor transferred and sold the birds to a small neighboring farmer.

Over 90 percent of the birds were recovered. The activities at the farm that day lasted until nightfall. Sister Ojukwu pleaded that I spend the night with her family. Very early on Christmas morning, I returned to the missionary apartment at Oshodi with crates of eggs as a gift from Sister Ojukwu.

After I returned to Samoa, I spoke at a YSA devotional about health. Following the conference, a woman walked up to me to shake my hand and tell me she liked my talk. Lagimanofia had just returned from her mission. From the moment I met her, I felt that she completed me. I had been praying to find someone who could be a companion and who would love and accept me.
As Lagimanofia and I started dating, she cared for me and accepted me, and her family was supportive. We married, and our lives changed forever when we adopted Posenai Jr. God prepared us to adopt him. Having him in our lives has made us very happy.

Sister Omondi used to exercise every morning, running from her home to Uthiru. Then she thought there was something more she could do. She contacted Brother Vidonyi, who informed her there was work to be done in the shamba. That is how her morning run was alternated with work at the shamba.
Ward members who previously worked there had little training in planting, so Sister Omondi taught them how to dig and plough. She explained her experience this way: “I doubted if the groundnuts (peanuts) would grow, but they did and despite growing the potatoes in the wrong format, they caught root.” Sister Omondi’s main responsibility was to water the plants and she learned her duty and acted in her appointed office with strict obedience.

I used to be guilty of judging by appearance back in the days when I could see, before I lost my sight because of diabetes. I remember in particular my girls’ glee club teacher in junior high school. She was about as plain as a person could be, with limp hair and a pock-marked complexion. She wore drab clothing, and even in conducting the choir she seemed to be a shy, backward person with about as much personality as a soda cracker. I am ashamed to admit that she was subject to many rude remarks and cruel jokes behind her back from us girls.
One day at the end of the school year, some friends of mine thought it would be funny to leave an anonymous note on her desk telling her what we really thought of her. I was elected to do the dirty work. But as I went into the empty room to leave the note, I couldn’t do it. Instead, overcome by what I now suspect was the Spirit, I quickly wrote a note thanking her for her efforts in leading the glee club and told her I had enjoyed singing.
As I was leaving the note on her desk, she entered the room. I was frozen to the spot as she walked to the desk, picked up the note, and read it. As I watched, I was astonished to see tears come to her eyes and flood down her cheeks. She clutched the note to her heart and in her mild way said, “Thank you.”
As I looked into her eyes at that moment, I believe I saw her clearly for the first time. I felt like I saw straight into her soul and sensed at once her loneliness, her pain, and her gentle goodness. At that moment, I loved her with a love that was far more powerful than anything I had ever felt for my favorite teachers. The Lord permitted me to see her heart as he sees it.

… As a missionary, I was speaking [in London, England, when a heckler interrupted], “Why don’t you stay with the doctrine of the Bible which says in John (4:24), ‘God is a Spirit’?”
I opened my Bible to the verse he had quoted and read to him the entire verse: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
I said, “Of course God is a spirit, and so are you, in the combination of spirit and body that makes of you a living being, and so am I.”
Each of us is a dual being of spiritual entity and physical entity. All know of the reality of death … , and each of us also knows that the spirit lives on as an individual entity and that at some time, under the divine plan made possible by the sacrifice of the Son of God, there will be a reunion of spirit and body. Jesus’s declaration that God is a spirit no more denies that He has a body than does the statement that I am a spirit while also having a body.

Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Openshaw then, now 30-year-old Jennifer Bowden, thought about where she wanted to be in 15 years when the time capsule was buried.

“I was hoping I’d be married and be a mom,” she says.

Check. Her husband sends her a smile from a nearby table as her children, Samuel and Emma, giggle on the Jeppsons’ swing set.

“I also knew I wanted an education,” she continues.

Double check. Jennifer has a master’s degree in dietetics from Utah State University.

What has stayed the same is her strong testimony of the gospel. She pauses thoughtfully to consider where the last 15 years have taken her. “If my younger self could see me, I think she’d be pleased,” she says.

When I was a young boy, we had no running water in our homes and no electricity. I can remember clearly when electricity first came to Bunkerville. I also remember my father and me taking horses and a big water wagon up to a spring in the mountains and bringing back drinking water to fill our man-made cistern. We would have to clean out the cistern before putting the fresh water into it. When we needed drinking water, we pumped it out by hand and carried it into the house in buckets.

Illustration by Mark Robison
Before Christmas my parents bought a box full of copies of the Book of Mormon to give to people. That was when I had the idea to take some to school and give them as presents to three of my teachers.
When I got to the music classroom, I saw my music teacher and thought, “Go ahead, Sophia. Give one to her!” I walked slowly up to my teacher. But I didn’t have the courage to give her the book.
I went to a corner of the room and prayed very quietly. “Heavenly Father, I ask Thee to help me give this book to my teacher.” When I finished my prayer, I felt very strongly that I should give the book to her. Suddenly I had courage.
I went up to her. She looked at me, and I gave her the Book of Mormon and said, “Teacher, I love you from the bottom of my heart, and I want to give you this Book of Mormon!”
She took it and looked at the cover. “Look inside!” I said. She saw that I had written a few words.
She hugged me and said, “Oh, Sophia, thank you for giving this to me!”
After I sat down, she said to the class, “Look what Sophia gave me. I am going to read it during the holidays!”
When I got home, I ran to my mother and said, “Guess what! I gave my teacher a Book of Mormon.”
She smiled and said, “That’s wonderful! You’re a great example to me, Sophia.”
We decided to pray to thank Heavenly Father for giving me the courage to give my teacher the Book of Mormon.

I saw him again—the little freckle-faced, redheaded kid in the wheelchair—holding a baseball. He couldn’t be more than eight years old, and he was maneuvering that old chair around just like a car. Boy, can he drive that thing!
I wondered if they had taken some blood from him too. I didn’t like it very much when they took it from me, but I didn’t let on. After all, I’m twelve, and I don’t want to act like a baby. Anyway, they made me sit in a wheelchair, and they pushed me into elevators and down long hallways to my room. Our wheelchairs passed each other, and the freckle-faced kid said, “Hi! My name’s Kenny. Do you like baseball?”
I mumbled a quick hello in return, ignoring the question about baseball. I didn’t want to tell him that I loved baseball but that I couldn’t run very fast. I wanted to show him my autographed baseball that was signed by three superstars. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Some of the other guys on our baseball team, especially Bill and Kevin, didn’t want me on the team anymore because I couldn’t run the bases. They said it was my fault we’d lost one of the games. So I quit. But I still have the autographed ball, and I still want to be a famous baseball player someday. I’ll show them!
Anyway, I saw the kid in the wheelchair yesterday, sitting in the TV room watching a major league game. He was still holding a baseball. I went in and sat down on the couch in the back of the room. I wanted to watch the game, too, but I didn’t want to answer any of that little kid’s questions! As soon as I sat down, though, he wheeled that monster of a chair over and started in on me.
“Hi!” he said again. “What’s your name?”
“Luke,” I replied quietly, trying to ignore him. He kept staring at me, and I finally said, “You can call me Lucky. That’s my nickname.”
“That’s neat,” Kenny said. A big grin spread across his face, making his freckles seem to pop out. “Are you really a lucky person? I wish my name was Lucky. Why are you in the hospital? You’re not in a wheelchair, and you can walk.”
Boy, could this kid talk! But he was so friendly that I felt I had to answer.
“It’s something to do with my heart,” I told him. “They had to operate about three weeks ago. They left a big scar straight down my chest.”
I turned away from him, and he started to get excited about the home run scored on TV. I thought about waking up after the operation with the tubes stuck in me. They’d put them everywhere, and they hurt. I didn’t want to tell Kenny about it. After all, he was just a kid and wouldn’t understand. The doctors said that my heart was the reason I couldn’t run fast. Only they said everything would be OK now. But I didn’t believe them. I felt even worse than before. When Bill and Kevin came to see me and told me I could be on the team again when I’m stronger, I told them I didn’t want to be on their old baseball team anymore. I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me.
Kenny suddenly turned toward me and asked, “Do you play baseball?”
I tugged at the back of my hair, my eyes looking down. “A little,” I answered, then added, “I want to be a real baseball player someday, like the guys you’re watching on TV.” I don’t know why I said that. It must’ve just slipped out. Kenny’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, and he pushed his baseball at me.
“Can I have your autograph, please? You’re the only real baseball player I know. Please.”
He seemed almost to plead with me. He thought I was a star. Hesitantly I took his baseball. Kenny grabbed a pen out of his pocket and gave it to me. I looked at the ball, signed it “Lucky Wilson,” and handed it back to him.
“Thanks a lot!” Kenny actually glowed. “Now I have a real autographed baseball!”
I smiled weakly, turned, and walked slowly back to my room. I didn’t want to watch TV anymore. I felt a little mixed-up. In the hall I met the nurse who worked on that floor. “Why is that boy in a wheelchair?” I asked.
“Kenny?” she said. “Oh. His legs are paralyzed. He’s here for more tests and therapy.”
“Will he ever be able to walk?” I asked.
She gave me a long look before she said, “Kenny’s been in that wheelchair for a long time.” Then she added quickly, “He’s a very nice kid, though, don’t you think?”
“He sure is!” I answered and went on to my room.
Today I went back to the TV room. Kenny was there again, sitting all alone. I walked over to him, put my autographed baseball in his lap, and said, “This is for you.” His face sparkled.
“Are you sure you don’t want it?” he asked eagerly.
“I don’t need it,” I answered. “My name’s Lucky, remember?” I don’t think he understood—but I did. I knew someday I would hit a home run. I would hit it for Kenny.

My family, like all of you, has also dealt with both sides of this phrase. In 2012, my twelve-year-old son Brian was diagnosed with an inoperable golf-ball-sized brain tumor. He had a high risk of death, blindness, or permanent one-sided paralysis. Through many prayers, fasting, and over time, due to God’s grace he was miraculously healed and is now a student at this university.

While our family was dealing with the trial of Brian’s brain tumor, we received great help from those around us. Just a few examples include ward members and friends secretly gave us money to help with medical expenses; one ward member picked up a CD with an MRI scan on it in Rexburg and drove it down to the hospital in Salt Lake City so physicians could get it as soon as possible; numerous food items dropped off at our house; family members watched our other young children so my wife and I could be with Brian; many ward members, friends, family members and even classmates and school teachers fasted for him on the day of his seven hour tumor removal surgery; when Brian finally came home from the hospital, ward members lined our driveway to welcome him home; President Thomas S. Monson even became aware of his situation and sent him a personal letter that buoyed him up in between his two surgeries. A quote from this letter still helps me in my daily trials. It states: “Undoubtedly you have had many questions and concerns about your future and what lies ahead. At times it may be difficult to understand why we are faced with certain challenges in this life. While we may not fully comprehend our Heavenly Father’s plan for us individually, we do know if we bear our burdens well, we will be eternally blessed.”[13] Our family was truly strengthened by all these people’s service.

The funny little woman in this 1973 Caldecott Award book likes to laugh, “Tee-he-he-he,” and make rice dumplings. One day when she runs after a rolling dumpling, she laughs at the wrong moment and is captured by the wicked oni. For a time she enjoys cooking for them with their magic paddle, but soon she becomes lonely and runs away. The wicked oni try to stop her—until they too laugh at the wrong moment!

When I was a mission president, a fine elder came to me. I asked, “How can I help you?”
“President,” he said, “I think I’m losing my testimony.”
I asked him how that could be possible.
“For the first time I have read some anti-Mormon literature,” he said. “I have some questions, and nobody will answer them for me. I am confused, and I think I am losing my testimony.”
I asked him what his questions were, and he told me. They were the standard anti-Church issues, but I wanted a little time to gather materials so I could provide meaningful answers. So we set up an appointment ten days later, at which time I told him I would answer every one of his questions. As he started to leave, I stopped him. “Elder, you’ve asked me several questions here today,” I said. “Now I have one for you.”
“Yes, President?”
“How long has it been since you’ve read from the Book of Mormon?” I asked.
His eyes dropped. He looked at the floor for a while. Then he looked at me. “It’s been a long time, President,” he confessed.
“All right,” I said. “You have given me my assignment. It’s only fair that I give you yours. I want you to promise me that you will read in the Book of Mormon for at least one hour every day between now and our next appointment.” He agreed that he would do that.
Ten days later he returned to my office, and I was ready. I pulled out my papers to start answering his questions. But he stopped me.
“President,” he said, “that isn’t going to be necessary.” Then he explained, “I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know Joseph Smith is a prophet of God.”
“Well, that’s great,” I said. “But you’re going to get answers to your questions anyway. I worked a long time on this, so you just sit there and listen.”
And so I answered all of those questions, and then asked, “Elder, what have you learned from this?” And he said, “Give the Lord equal time.”

Let me tell you a story about one sister. This sister was born into a humble family with limited financial resources. After she converted to the Church, she knew God loved her and often felt she had nothing to offer in return. She decided to do her best in all the things she could, so that people could see her good works and glorify her Father in Heaven.

Her patriarch advised her to also obtain additional education that would help develop her talents and prepare her to serve in the church. She did not know how this could be done because she did not have the opportunity at the time to pursue further education. Many years later she married a return missionary and her family moved close to a university where her husband was a student. She enjoyed staying at home with her young daughter.

One day, the long forgotten advice of the patriarch came back to her, and the messages for her to go back to school was so certain and clear in her mind. With her husband’s support, she applied for school. Her application, however, was rejected because she did not meet the necessary qualifications. After many family prayers, fasting, and with the help from a faculty member, the school agreed to admit her for one semester only. Let me repeat that she was admitted for one semester only. After one semester, the school would then make a final decision.

This sister did well in her first semester and went back to the faculty member who had helped her for advice. He told her to keep taking classes until the school said otherwise. She took the advice seriously, and with the great love and support of her husband, children, and especially the help of her Heavenly Father, she continually took classes until both this sister and her husband finished their Ph. D. degrees.

Many of you may have already figured out that I have just told you my own life story. Until today, I still don’t know if the school ever made a final decision on my case. I hope my BYU-Hawaii diploma is still valid after this devotional.

During my schooling, many people asked me or even questioned me why I was in school. I did not have an answer for them; all I knew was that my patriarch told me so. Mike and I knew that Heavenly Father had a plan for my family, but what it was we did not know. In the middle of my Ph. D. program, Brother Glade Tew, the accounting department chair, informed me that there was an accounting faculty position open. He knew I may not have been ready at the time, but he wasn’t sure if there would be any openings later on. I did not apply for the position because I believed that if BYU Hawaii was the place that our Father in Heaven wanted my family to be, he would lead us there. Six months prior to the completion of my dissertation, I already had interviews with other universities when Brother Tew emailed me and let me know that the same position has again become available. By then, the message for my family to return to BYU Hawaii was as clear as the message I received for me to go back to school many years ago.

When my family once again set foot on this campus, Mike and I humbly realized that over these years, Heavenly Father had placed many wonderful people around us to prepare us to be here to serve and guide the students. I am forever grateful for the faculty, staff, and friends who taught and helped my family. Many of them are in the audience today. I sincerely thank each one of you for the extra steps you took to touch and change my life. I am also thankful for my students who gave me the opportunity to walk with them during this stage of their lives.

By the autumn of 1838, the spirit of his missionary calling began to press so heavily on his mind that he longed to engage in its labors, though he had been ill through much of the summer. His strength was depleted, but he felt if he would make the effort to embark in the Lord’s service that God would supply the needed strength. Therefore, contrary to the advice and wishes of his parents, he set out to share the gospel. At first he could only walk a short distance before he was forced to sit down and rest, but gradually his strength returned and he was completely restored to health.

During this missionary journey he labored in four states. February found him in Kentucky, preparing for his return to Ohio, a journey of five hundred miles through deep snow. He had only $1.25 in his pocket, but he had a deep faith that the Lord would provide.

This return trip was a difficult one. During most of the trip his socks were wringing wet from mud, snow, and rains, and he was fortunate if he found lodging before a fire. The trip completely emaciated the young missionary, and when he returned to his friends in Ohio, he was not recognized. Under the care of his friends he collapsed and was seized with a violent fever, lying many days prostrate in bed.

Such were the missions in the early career of Lorenzo Snow—and the beginnings of many more. The following year he went to Great Britain. He was upon the sea forty-two stormy days. Writing to his aunt he described the storms:

“Just look at me in your lively imagination, in one of these terrific storms, seated to a large hogshead of water—holding on, with both hands, to ropes near by … the ship reeling and dashing from side to side—now and then a monster wave leaping over the bulwarks, treating all present with a shower bath—see, sitting near me, a man weeping bitterly with terror on his countenance—the next moment a wave shoots over the bulwarks, dashing him from his seat and landing him … on the opposite side, from which he arises with a broken arm and dripping wet.”

Below, boxes were broken loose and were tumbling about among the groaning and crying women and children. Yet, through it all, Elder Snow was filled with peace, for he was on the Lord’s errand. This scene was much like one described by Luke, involving the Apostle Paul. In fact, there was much in Lorenzo Snow that was like Paul in terms of missionary labors. Elder Snow’s mission to Britain was followed in coming years by missionary labors in Italy, Switzerland, Malta, Hawaii, and the Holy Land. Before his missions were completed, he had crossed the ocean eight times, traveled over one hundred and fifty thousand miles, and borne his own expenses through it all.

President Snow should be remembered for many things: for his gentlemanly manner, for his deep spiritual commitment to the Lord, for his great abilities as a colonizer, for his value as an educator; but among all his other virtues, he should be especially remembered as a missionary par excellence. One of the major thrusts of his administration was that of fostering missionary efforts worldwide. He even sent out MIA missionaries to serve in other stakes for a period of five or six months. He assigned Elder Heber J. Grant to open Japan to the teaching of the gospel. He spoke of carrying the gospel to Russia and Austria. And during the first year of his administration, he called over one thousand missionaries to labor throughout the world—a number that had never been sent out before in the history of the Church, and never was again for twenty years.

One is left to wonder what might have happened if Lorenzo Snow, as a busy young college student, had decided that religion was not for him. How many thousands of individuals might not have had the chance to accept the gospel!

This photograph, taken during Lorenzo Snow’s presidency, shows him as he is most often portrayed today.

Veronica Cousino, from Chicago Second Ward, is back for her second year at camp. She worked hard last year to pass her certifications. This year she was asked to come to camp as a counselor in one of the Inspirator tents. She loved learning how to cook outdoors. “The hardest part was speaking English all the time. It was a great experience for me. I loved it. That was the reason I wanted to come back this year. And,” Veronica added with surprise, “they wanted me to come as a counselor.”