Gospel Story Finder

That was not the end of the Lord’s blessings to me. At the end of their senior year, all dental students have to take practical tests—performing procedures on patients while professors watch and grade their performance. If you don’t do well on these practical tests, you don’t graduate. In the early winter of my senior year, I slipped on a patch of ice and broke my right arm. Immediately I felt grateful that it was only January, assuming the cast would come off in six weeks. But I was informed I had broken the scaphoid in my wrist, one of the most difficult bones to heal. I would be in a cast for six months. In despair, I realized I couldn’t work on patients with a cast on my right arm.
I asked for a priesthood blessing. In that blessing I was told not to fear, all would be well. After some weeks I discovered that my fingers were perfectly agile, even with the cast on. When I arrived at the testing area, the professors shook their heads, insisting there was no possibility I could perform the necessary procedures. I asked them to let me try, and if they were not satisfied I would withdraw. Each patient looked surprised upon seeing my cast, but I was able to perform the procedures to the complete approval of the examining professors. I graduated in the top of my class.

Corrie ten Boom, a devout Dutch Christian woman, found such healing despite having been interned in concentration camps during World War II. She suffered greatly, but unlike her beloved sister Betsie, who perished in one of the camps, Corrie survived.
After the war she often spoke publicly of her experiences and of healing and forgiveness. On one occasion a former Nazi guard who had been part of Corrie’s own grievous confinement in Ravensbrück, Germany, approached her, rejoicing at her message of Christ’s forgiveness and love.
“‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,’ he said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’
“His hand was thrust out to shake mine,” Corrie recalled. “And I, who had preached so often … the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
“Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. … Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
“I tried to smile, [and] I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
“As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
Corrie ten Boom was made whole.

The Name of the Tree The animals were very hungry. Very hungry. The wonderful tree had fruit, but they could not get it until they learned the tree’s name. The speedy gazelle ran to Lion King to learn its name but forgot it. The elephant with his remarkable memory went next but also forgot it. It was the plodding but steady, ordinary but caring tortoise who saved the starving animals in this Bantu folktale about true humility.Celia Barker Lottridge (reteller)5–8 years

Some years ago, my husband, David, and I took our young children to a lake to vacation. He has always had the greatest confidence in their ability to do anything for which they are prepared. He taught a small son, age nine, how to manage a one-man sailboat, then let our son take the boat by himself out onto the lake. He joyfully sailed away, his bright life jacket and silhouette getting smaller and smaller against the horizon. Finally, we felt that Dave should make sure all was well, so in another little boat he sailed out to him. When he arrived Doug was sitting calmly in the boat, but he had forgotten how to turn it around! The thing I love was his response to his dad. He looked up and said, “I knew you’d come.”

One day, shortly before I was baptized, I was at my grandmother’s house when she went to the basement to get something. She tripped and fell and couldn’t get up. She called to me, but I was watching TV and didn’t hear her. After about 10 minutes, I heard my name quietly, “Tom!” I went to look for her and found her lying on the floor. I was not strong enough to help her up, so I ran to a neighbor’s house. She came and helped Grandmother up.
Grandmother told me, “Tom, that was the Holy Ghost that you heard. I was too far away for you to hear me.”
I know it was the Holy Ghost who whispered to me. Now I am baptized, and I am glad to have the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Tom R., age 8, Germany

In Belfast, in quieter times, I had two roommates—girls of another faith whom I had met through a mutual friend. None of us had any extra money. Carol and Anne were both midwifery students, and I was saving for a postgraduate nursing course.
Our apartment was dismal, faded, and hard to bear, but we could find no other place within our means.
Nevertheless, Carol and Anne decided to call the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and offer to give a Christmas party for 12 needy children. Of course, I agreed to help with the work and the financing as did Carol’s sister Marian.
I had seen some of the miseries of the slums. The most appalling thing I remembered was a little girl in a torn summer dress sitting on the cold, windy sidewalk molding a lump of filthy clay because she had no other toy. I could not now find and help that child, but I could try to help some others.
Our Christmas tree was two feet high, decorated with nine small glass balls, one package of tinfoil icicles, and a star we had made from the foil inside a cracker box. The room was decorated with a few streamers and a dozen balloons. The food was simple—fried potatoes and sausages, grilled tomatoes, cookies, and orangeade. Fancy food is almost unknown to ghetto children, and we were afraid they would not eat anything unfamiliar. Besides, we couldn’t afford it. The 12 gifts were small and inexpensive: a string of plastic beads, a doll’s feeding set, a young child’s picture book, small toys and games. And, remembering the girl on the sidewalk, I bought a package of clay.
The children arrived semiclean and in their best rags. Eleven, twelve, thirteen! One of the girls had come with her toddler sister, who had refused to stay at home. That presented a problem.
Most of the children stood in a group at the door, but one determined boy about eight years old examined all the gifts through the paper.
“If you don’t mind, Missus,” he declared, “I’ll have this game of blow football for me and me mates.”
Carol smiled but was firm.
“We’re giving out the presents at the end of the party. Right now we’re going to play some games.”
We played their games; they played our games. We told stories; they related past experiences. We sang songs and grew decidedly tired of the children’s favorite, “Jingle Bells.”
“Last year,” announced the oldest girl, trying hard to be sophisticated in an ill-fitting sheath and high heels much too large, “I was to a party in the Linen Makers’ Hall. Hundreds of us there was, and a tree 30 feet high.”
“Was it grand, but?” asked a slightly envious voice.
“It wasn’t, for no one had time to talk with us like these good ladies are doing.”
We served the simple food, which first brought forth cries of delight and then the silence of serious eating.
“Ye’ve left food on your plate,” objected our blow football elf to his neighbor.
“I can’t eat it, but,” she replied, “for I’ve never had this much food on me plate at once.”
“Give it here, then, for ’tis a shame to waste good food.”
He ate several children’s leavings and then conceded defeat. He could not prevent a few scraps from going to waste.
We gave him the blow football game. We gave the 12-year-old, would-be sophisticate the plastic beads.
We gave the doll’s feeding set to a seven-year-old Raggedy Ann.
“It’s no use to me, Missus. I ain’t got a doll.”
So the Relief Society lost another plastic doll. This time it was wrapped in writing paper, and we pretended it had fallen behind the tree.
“Tis the best party I was ever at,” someone announced with satisfaction. “I felt right to home.”
“Indeed it was grand, Missus,” seconded another voice. “For whenever we’uns wanted something, one of you ladies was near.”

Recently, I approached the reception desk of a large hospital to learn the room number of a patient I had come to visit. This hospital, like almost every other in the land, was undergoing a massive expansion. Behind the desk where the receptionist sat was a magnificent plaque which bore an inscription of thanks to donors who had made possible the expansion. The name of each donor who had contributed $100,000 appeared in a flowing script, etched on an individual brass placard suspended from the main plaque by a glittering chain.
The names of the benefactors were well known. Captains of commerce, giants of industry, professors of learning—all were there. I felt gratitude for their charitable benevolence. Then my eyes rested on a brass placard which was different—it contained no name. One word, and one word only, was inscribed: “Anonymous.” I smiled and wondered who the unnamed contributor could have been. Surely he or she experienced a quiet joy unknown to any other.

I grew up in a dry country. It seemed to me that hardly ever was there enough rain to spread over the crop-growing period to carry us through the season—not enough water to distribute between the many hungry canals and the tens of thousands of thirsty acres, not enough to irrigate all the crops.

We learned to pray for rain—we always prayed for rain.

When I was still very small, I knew that plants could not survive in dry country more than about two or three weeks without water. I knew how to harness up the old mare to a lizard (a forked log on which a barrel was placed) and I drove the animal to the “big ditch,” the Union Canal, which was a block below our home. With a bucket I scooped up water from the small stream or the puddles and filled the barrel, and the horse dragged it back so I could pour bucketsful of precious liquid on the roses, the violets, and other flowers, and the small shrubs and hedges and new trees. Water was like liquid gold, so reservoirs became the warp and woof of the fabric of my life.

“What’s that book?”
Kaylan Miller was curious to see what her friend April Leach was reading, particularly because she was reading by flashlight.
“It’s called the Book of Mormon,” April replied. “It’s part of our scriptures.”
Kaylan already knew April, knew she was a good person and a good friend, knew she came from a good family, knew she and her family were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She and April had been close since they were in first grade at elementary school. Even though April moved away for a couple of years, “we were still friends,” Kaylan says.
Now April was back in Pebble Beach, California, and Kaylan was excited to see her. Their parents had agreed that Kaylan could stay over at April’s house. And April was comfortable enough with her friend that she did what she did every night before going to sleep—she read her scriptures by flashlight.
April, now 15 (so is Kaylan), explains: “When I was a little girl, I didn’t want to get out of bed to turn off the light, so I started reading in bed with a flashlight. I just never got out of the habit.”
Watching her from across the room, Kaylan was curious. “Read some of it to me, okay?”
And April did. She read some of her favorite verses of scripture out loud. The words—about the Savior, about faith, about prayer—left Kaylan feeling she had found a new source of light. She thought a lot about what April had read, about the book subtitled “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.”
A little while later April presented Kaylan with a gift—her very own copy of the Book of Mormon. April had written her testimony next to the title page inside. The reading continued, alone and together. They discussed stories and passages, trading favorite verses back and forth.
The light April now shared with Kaylan was much more than illumination from a flashlight. It was the friendly light of her love for the restored gospel and her love for the Lord Jesus Christ. And for Kaylan, that light continued to grow and grow.
“I felt at home with April and with her family,” she says. “I felt comfortable and natural with them. It was like a second home to me.” The rest of the family includes parents Michael and Jill and two brothers, Michael, 17, and Jason, 10.
“I noticed some special feelings between members of her family,” Kaylan explains. “They’re wonderful and genuine. They always made me feel like I belonged. They had a different atmosphere in their home than I had felt in any other home of any of my other friends. I guess that feeling helped the gospel and its message about families to make sense to me.”
April’s example also said a lot. “She’s different from most of the other kids I’ve known, too,” says Kaylan. “She’s always friendly and happy, but most of all she’s sincere and honest. I really like her. Her whole family’s example gave me hope for the kind of life that I want.”
“Kaylan began asking questions about the special feelings in our home and what caused them,” April explains. “I tried to explain why the family is so important to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I suggested she talk to the missionaries.”
In the meantime, Kaylan kept reading the Book of Mormon and kept finding answers to many of her other questions about the Church. Though she already understood many things from her conversations with the Leach family, she listened intently as the missionaries taught her. She became more and more excited and wanted to join the Church. She talked to her parents, and they gave permission for her baptism.
That was more than a year ago. Today Kaylan is a strong member of the Church who is letting her own light shine, in more ways than one. She was chosen as a princess for the Pacific Grove Feast of the Lanterns, a festival with a pageant that reenacts a story about a Chinese princess and her sweetheart, who is a commoner.
The festival and pageant take place at night on a small beach at Pacific Grove. People come from miles around to join in the festivities, and long before the pageant begins the beach is crowded elbow to elbow with people carrying small, lighted paper lanterns. As darkness gathers, the beach is aglow with hundreds of multi-colored lights. Then the pageant begins, and Kaylan steps forward to play her part.
It is an enjoyable evening, and the lights are a big part of the show. When the pageant is over, fireworks burst and blaze in the darkened sky.
Kaylan talks about her friend April’s light and how it kindled her own. “Now I want my friends to know how much the gospel means to my life,” she says. “I want to share it with them, just like April shared it with me.”
It is a night alive with light, light much brighter than the flashlight by which April reads her scriptures. It is a night when there are many lantern bearers, each eager to share light with all who will receive it. It is a perfect night for April and Kaylan to remember the friendly light that they have shared with each other, the light of truth.
They know that it is a light that will grow “brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (D&C 50:24).

Let me relate a personal experience to show the importance of keeping your future continually in mind. When I was in the Aaronic Priesthood, I and one of my friends attended general priesthood meeting in this tabernacle and found ourselves over here by the stairs where we didn’t belong. President George Albert Smith, in his kindly way, saw our plight and invited us to sit on the stairs. As we sat there and watched the proceedings of the meeting, I did not believe that I ever again would get that close to this pulpit. I remember saying to my friend as we left the Tabernacle, “It would sure be nice to be a General Authority; then you would have one of those seats on the stand to sit in.”

I know now by personal experience that, in some ways, brethren, the benches you are sitting on are much more comfortable than these on the stand. Now the point: As an Aaronic Priesthood holder, I had no idea that the time would come in my life when I would serve as a bishop, a mission president, a Seventy, and now as an Apostle. We cannot foresee what the Lord has in mind for us. Our only course of action is to be prepared and worthy for whatever he requires. We must govern our actions every day with our future in mind.

For some, the suffering is extraordinary.
Stillman Pond was a member of the Second Quorum of Seventy in Nauvoo. He was an early convert to the Church, having come from Hubbardston, Massachusetts. Like others, he and his wife, Maria, and their children were harassed and driven out of Nauvoo. In September 1846, they became part of the great western migration. The early winter that year brought extreme hardships, including malaria, cholera, and consumption. The family was visited by all three of these diseases.
Maria contracted consumption, and all of the children were stricken with malaria. Three of the children died while moving through the early snows. Stillman buried them on the plains. Maria’s condition worsened because of the grief, pain, and the fever of malaria. She could no longer walk. Weakened and sickly, she gave birth to twins. They were named Joseph and Hyrum, and both died within a few days.
The Stillman Pond family arrived at Winter Quarters and, like many other families, they suffered bitterly while living in a tent. The death of the five children coming across the plains to Winter Quarters was but a beginning.
The journal of Horace K. and Helen Mar Whitney verifies the following regarding four more of the children of Stillman Pond who perished:
“On Wednesday, the 2nd of December 1846, Laura Jane Pond, age 14 years, … died of chills and fever.” Two days later on “Friday, the 4th of December 1846, Harriet M. Pond, age 11 years, … died with chills.” Three days later, “Monday, the 7th of December, 1846, Abigail A. Pond, age 18 years, … died with chills.” Just five weeks later, “Friday, the 15th of January, 1847, Lyman Pond, age 6 years, … died with chills and fever. Four months later, on the 17th of May, 1847, his wife Maria Davis Pond also died. Crossing the plains, Stillman Pond lost nine children and a wife. He became an outstanding colonizer in Utah, and became the senior president of the thirty-fifth Quorum of Seventy. (See Leon Y. and H. Ray Pond, comps., “Stillman Pond, a Biographical Sketch,” in Sterling Forsyth Histories, typescript, Church Historical Dept. Archives, pp. 4–5.)
Having lost these nine children and his wife in crossing the plains, Stillman Pond did not lose his faith. He did not quit. He went forward. He paid a price, as have many others before and since, to become acquainted with God.

Danny’s sister poked him in the side. “Mom wants you,” she whispered. Danny looked down the row past his brothers, sisters, and father to his mother. She was leaning forward in her seat and staring at him. She pointed to the empty seat next to her. Danny knew what that meant. He stepped slowly past the whole family and sat beside her.
“You need to be quiet,” she whispered in his ear, then looked back up at the speaker.
“But I want to play,” Danny whispered back. He put his head down and closed his eyes. His chin started to tremble.
His mother pulled him close and whispered, “Danny, you’re a good boy, and I love you. But what would it be like in here if everybody started playing?”
“That would be great!” he whispered back.
“Are you sure?” she asked, more softly still. “Think about it.”
Danny turned to look around the chapel. He saw Brother and Sister Lund and their two children sitting quietly in their seats. Danny imagined Brother Lund turning to his family and holding up a chalkboard with a word game on it. Sister Lund and the children held their hands high in the air, waving them as they yelled, “Pick me! Pick me!” Danny giggled. That would be fun! he thought.
Danny looked the other way and saw the Clark family sitting on the front row. He wondered what it would be like if all the Clark children were playing “Guess What Animal I Am?” He pictured Adam, who had just returned from his mission, hopping up and down as his family yelled, “A rabbit! A rabbit!” That would be fun too. Then he wondered, But would it be fun for the speaker and the people who were trying to listen?
Danny saw his friends Sam and Billy. What if they brought their small video games to sacrament meeting? He could almost hear the music and beeping noises. He imagined Sam and Billy jumping out of their seats, yelling each time they won or lost. Danny frowned. What if Sam and Billy and the Clarks and the Lunds were all playing at once? They would hardly be able to hear themselves, and no one else could hear anything.
What if everyone in the chapel started playing? Danny asked himself. He pictured balls being tossed back and forth, children skating down the aisles, fathers watching television, and mothers talking loudly to their friends. It would be so loud that my ears would hurt—and could anyone think about Heavenly Father?
Danny looked up at the pulpit. He was sure he wouldn’t be able to understand anything the speaker was saying, but he tried. To his surprise, she was talking about how much Jesus Christ loved little children. Danny felt a warm glow spread through him. If everyone was playing,I wouldn’t have this good feeling.
Danny snuggled up closer to his mother and kept listening. There would be plenty of times to play, but this wasn’t one of them.

After spending her childhood in different locations throughout the United States, Sister Jeannie Anette Dennis thought her dreams had come true when her family moved to Cottonwood Heights, Utah.
“I thought everybody in Utah was a member of the Church and that it was going to be a haven here,” she said.
During her first few days in ninth grade, she was excited to be invited to a party. But a girl who became her best friend warned her that people at the party would be using drugs.
“I learned very quickly that the world is everywhere,” she said. Her testimony and a gospel-centered home, however, kept her strong throughout high school.

“When I became an assistant to the mission president, it was difficult initially,” recalls Houston. “I had to train missionaries, including some who had more education than I had. I felt inadequate until I prayed and received a testimony that ‘whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies’ (Thomas S. Monson quoting Harold B. Lee, “Who Honors God, God Honors,” Ensign, November 1995, 50). This knowledge helped me proceed.”

Shortly after the 1985 April general conference, a guest band and chorus were to perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This event was being recorded, so there was a great deal of equipment set up in the Tabernacle.
The department I managed was responsible for tuning the great pipe organ. Fluctuation of the building’s temperature greatly affects the sound of this fine instrument. The performance had occurred on an especially warm night, so afterward we had left the Tabernacle doors open to allow the fresh evening air into the building. The organ could then cool down and be tuned for the next evening’s concert.
Unknown to us, a sparrow had flown into the Tabernacle while the doors were open. The building was later closed, and the bird was not discovered until the next morning.
When I arrived at work, I received a phone call from my employees, who had spent several hours trying to remove this bird from the Tabernacle. The Salt Lake City animal control people had been called, and they came with long-handled nets to capture the sparrow.
When I entered the building I found my employees racing back and forth through the Tabernacle, waving the long nets at the frightened bird. As they would run to one end with the nets, the frantic sparrow would fly to the other end of the building.
It flew from the top of the facade of the great pipe organ to the back of the building, where it would perch atop a bench. The only thing the nets accomplished was to terrify an already frightened bird. It couldn’t recognize that all the doors in the building were open for its escape.
The animal control people brought some pellet guns. Although they were not allowed to fire them on private property, they pointed out that our employees could borrow them to shoot the sparrow.
I immediately stopped that idea. The ceiling in the 118-year-old building was the original—made from plaster combined with fine animal hair to give it stability and its beautiful acoustic—and I didn’t want it damaged by pellets. There were other practical reasons not to shoot at the bird, including the risk of damaging the delicate recording equipment and musical instruments still on the stand. But more important, I did not feel it would be appropriate to kill this tiny creature. I remembered a talk by President Spencer W. Kimball about not shooting little birds.
The animal control people then suggested setting poisoned food out for the bird. I didn’t feel right about that, either. But the bird needed to be removed from the Tabernacle as quickly as possible. That night there would be a full house with several General Authorities and other dignitaries in attendance.
As the bird continued to fly back and forth, chirping loudly, the thought came to me that if this bird was important to Heavenly Father, perhaps I should ask him how to get it out of the building. I turned my back to the others, bowed my head, and said a simple prayer: “Heavenly Father, if this sparrow is important to you, could you please let us know how to safely remove it?”
I immediately had a strong impression of what to do. Closing the prayer, I turned and gave instructions to the workers. They turned off all the lights in the building, shut the window blinds, and closed all but one of the doors.
At that moment, the bird was perched on top of the organ’s facade. Suddenly he left his high perch, swooped down low, and flew out the open door to freedom.

Michelle was born with VACTERL association with hydrocephalus. “This means she has a lot of health problems,” say her parents. “But when Michelle hears there is something to be done, she will find a way.”
When President Nelson asked the youth to help gather Israel in 2018, Michelle T. of Oregon, USA, paid close attention.1
Then she decided to answer the challenge.
Almost immediately, however, she faced obstacles. Michelle wanted to get started with indexing, yet even with her membership number handy, she couldn’t sign up. Not with her parents’ help, and not with her grandparents’ help (and they are very big family history pros!).
Even after going into the nearby family history center, things still weren’t working. This, by the way, is highly unusual! Normally it’s a fairly straightforward process. When the volunteers at the family history center finally got Michelle up and running, they looked at her and said, “You must be meant for great things in family history, because you’re facing a lot of opposition right from the start!”
She has indeed gone on to great things in family history. In fact, a video she shared during RootsTech 2021 ended up being the #1 watched video from the conference. She has an inspiring story to tell! And it’s only gotten more inspiring since then.
Michelle can’t speak, so she uses text on her phone to communicate.
At first, Michelle decided to do a batch or two of names each Sunday evening. She joined a video call with her grandparents so that they could help teach her the ropes.
“It was hard!” she says. “Cursive is hard!”
However, she was not going to be intimidated. Michelle kept at it. As she started learning more and getting better, she decided to set a goal for indexing 1,000 names in 2019.
After hitting that goal, she set a much more ambitious goal for 2020—especially after the pandemic hit and she had more time available. She was soon indexing as many as 1,000 names each month!
As she kept indexing, bit by bit Michelle began noticing something interesting in her life—things were just simply getting better.
“I started noticing differences in my life,” says Michelle. “I felt healthier. I was kinder to my family. I felt calmer and more peaceful. I was happier! I wanted to do more good things. I felt the Spirit so much stronger! Indexing wasn’t just helping me, it was helping others.”
Michelle enjoys sewing and baking for her family. “It’s so fun to see them enjoy all the things I help create,” she says.
One of the other good things that began happening was an increased ability to focus on her other spiritual goals. “I was reading the scriptures more, especially the Book of Mormon,” Michelle says. “I also started studying my Sunday church lessons each week before class so I could be prepared for the discussions. Learning about my family history has become very important to me along with visiting the temple.”
I began to feel so much peace.
Life can be hectic. Lots of stuff can get in the way! But Michelle has learned the blessings that come from carving out enough time to do family history work. “When I started indexing, I began to feel so much peace,” she explains. “Then my family started noticing the peace I felt and it started flowing into the rest of my family. Our whole home just felt more calm and peaceful, and it is amazing. Jesus Christ is the source of peace. By doing the work that I have been called to do, I received a blessing of peace, the type of peace only the Savior can give. The best part is being able to share that blessing with others.”
Michelle loves teaching others how to do family history.
Clearly, Michelle has felt the blessings firsthand of how indexing blesses her life. She also has a testimony of how her efforts can also bless many other lives on both sides of the veil.
One experience she likes to share to teach this point is that her grandmother had been looking for a specific ancestor for a long time, without any luck. Then a few years back, somebody indexed the name of this family member. That’s all it took for Michelle’s grandmother to be able to find this ancestor at last!
“That story really motivates me,” Michelle says. Small steps connect many dots and bless many lives.

We attend a lot of meetings in the Church, and one meeting I attended a few years ago had a powerful effect on me. It was a testimony meeting in a ward in Barcelona, Spain.
To my surprise, around 10 youth shared their testimonies following an FSY conference they had participated in. What impressed me most was that they all bore pure, powerful testimonies of the Savior, Jesus Christ, His atoning sacrifice, and His love for all of us. I was amazed that after five days of fun activities with other youth, food, games, and dances, it was the joy they had in the Savior that really stuck with them. It left me wondering why.
Later I moved to Brazil. I learned the leaders in the area were preparing for an FSY conference. As an Area Seventy, I was invited to help organize the conference and to participate in all five days with the youth.
Before I left, the Area Presidency asked me to be prepared to give a report on my experience at FSY when I returned. My wife and I attended the conference, and for the first three days we enjoyed the planned activities, including morning scripture study, devotionals, classes, outside activities, good food, family home evening, and dances. Everything moved forward as planned, and I felt that I had seen enough to complete my report.
The next evening, we held a beautiful and touching musical program. The Spirit was so special that the owner of the conference site, not a member of the Church, told me that he would love to have our group attend FSY at his place every year.
After the musical program, the youth gathered in their groups for a testimony meeting. My wife and I went from group to group and heard touching testimonies. We could tell that the participants in the conference had been having strong spiritual experiences. We loved hearing the youth freely express their feelings of happiness. We felt like a part of a big spiritual family. We felt the love of the Savior for each one of us.
I looked to my wife and asked, “What is going on here?” She could not say a word. But we knew so many had experienced a spiritual moment and received an unforgettable testimony of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
I went to my room that night and wrote a totally different report! The following year, my wife and I went to FSY again and enjoyed the same experience. Now I understand why the youth in that testimony meeting in Spain shared such meaningful feelings for the Savior instead of relating the fun activities they had.
My desire is that you will have many similar experiences in your life, whether it is at FSY, by your bedside as you pray, when you read the scriptures, or when you share your testimony with your friends.
I testify that we are sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. We came here to earth from His presence, and we are all members of His great spiritual family. Our eldest Brother is the Lord, Jesus Christ. He is our Master, and from Him we can learn and grow “in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52), as He did.
Detail from Christ and the Rich Young Ruler by Heinrich Hofmann
Jesus Christ is our Savior. His power is infinite, and He stands ready to rescue us from any afflicting situation we may find ourselves in. He is our friend—a friend who loves us, knows us, and has offered His life to save us. His atoning sacrifice for us made it possible for Him to know how to succor us, to strengthen us, and to perfect us. Let us all accept His invitation: “Come, follow me” (Luke 18:22).

It was a unique service project for a unique Christmas season. Many families in the northern California bay area were still busy rebuilding their homes after last year’s tragic earthquake and hadn’t given Christmas decorations a thought. But the girls in the Hayward Fourth Ward, Hayward Stake, had. They decided to make Christmas decorations for earthquake victims in the surrounding areas.
The girls made napkin holders, Christmas tree decorations, and Christmas wall hangings. Each piece was one-of-a-kind, and the recipients were thrilled with them, since many of their own decorations had been destroyed by the quake. Their project spread the true Christmas spirit to both the givers and the receivers.

As we’ve tried to implement our plan, we are learning that inviting the influence of the Holy Ghost into our family discussions will take practice and time. But we refuse to get discouraged or give up. Just the other night, our 10-year-old daughter, prompted by a verse from the Book of Mormon we were reading as a family, asked in sweet sincerity, “How do you learn by the Holy Ghost?” I smiled. I knew we were getting somewhere!

My mother tried to teach me when a small child to sing but failed because of my inability to carry a tune. When I joined a singing class taught by Professor Charles J. Thomas, he tried and tried in vain to teach me when 10 years of age to run the scale or carry a simple tune, and finally gave up in despair. He said that I could never, in this world, learn to sing. Perhaps he thought I might learn the divine art in another world. Ever since this attempt, I have frequently tried to sing when riding alone many miles from anyone who might hear me, but on such occasions could never succeed in carrying the tune of one of our familiar hymns for a single verse, and quite frequently not for a single line. …
While listening to Brother Horace S. Ensign sing, I remarked that I would gladly give two or three months of my spare time if by so doing it would result in my being able to sing one or two hymns. He answered that any person could learn to sing who had a reasonably good voice and who possessed perseverance and was willing to do plenty of practicing. My response was that I had an abundance of voice and considerable perseverance. … I would take my first music lesson of two hours upon the hymn, “O My Father.” Much to my surprise, at the end of four or five days, I was able to sing this hymn with Brother Ensign without any mistakes. At the end of two weeks, I could sing it alone, with the exception of being a little flat on some of the high notes. …
One Sunday, at the close of a meeting, upon telling Professor Charles J. Thomas that Brother Ensign informed me that I could sing, he said: “Didn’t you tell him I said no?” I answered, “Yes.” He said, “Why, you can’t even run the scale.” I said, “I am aware of that fact, having tried for half an hour this morning and failed.” My voice at 10 years of age must have made a deep impression upon Brother Thomas, seeing that he had remembered it for 33 years. Noticing that he seemed quite skeptical, I asked him to walk over with me into the corner of the building, so as not to disturb the people who had not yet left the meetinghouse when I sang to him in a low voice, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” At the close he said, “That’s all right.”
At the end of two or three months, I was able to sing not only “O My Father” but “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” and two or three other hymns … (Hymns, nos. 292, 285, 30).
It required a vast amount of practice to learn, and my first hymn was sung many hundreds of times before I succeeded in getting it right.
Today, my musical deafness is disappearing, and by sitting down to a piano and playing the lead notes, I can learn a song in less than one-tenth the time required when I first commenced to practice. …