Gospel Story Finder

1 Indians in the Western Hemisphere are often called Lamanites by Church members because these Indians are descendants of the Nephites and Lamanites in the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer, Jr., were called to go on a mission to the Lamanites. Other men wanted to go with them. The Lord indicated that Ziba Peterson and Parley P. Pratt were to accompany Oliver and Peter.
2 First the missionaries went to the Catteraugus Indians in New York. Finding a few Indians who could read, the missionaries gave them two copies of the Book of Mormon.
3 Near the Ohio border the missionaries preached to the Wyandot Indians, who were happy to learn about their ancestors in the Book of Mormon.
4 In Missouri the missionaries preached the gospel to the Delaware Indians. These Indians were also given the Book of Mormon. They thanked the missionaries for traveling so far and for caring enough to give them the Book of Mormon.
5 Other people in Missouri did not believe the gospel, nor did they believe the Book of Mormon. They told the missionaries to stay away from the Indians.
6 When told that soldiers would force the missionaries to stay away from the Indians, the missionaries were sorry, but they obeyed the authorities and left the Indian settlements.
7 One of the missionaries, Parley P. Pratt, went to tell the Prophet Joseph about their mission to the Lamanites. The mission had been a good one; the gospel had been taken to three great Indian tribes.

For some people, like Emily Nielsen, 16, the temple brought special blessings.

“For me personally, the temple is very important,” said Emily. “My choicest memories have been made there. Our family adopted a baby, Matthew Kimball, and he was sealed to our family in the Los Angeles temple. As my brother and I followed our parents in their beautiful temple clothes into the temple, I knew that we’d be together forever.

“During the Atlanta Temple open house, I had a personal tour and was able to see rooms in the temple that weren’t shown on the regular tour. I had been very concerned about my mother’s health and was afraid. When we got to one of the sealing rooms, I asked if I could be left alone for a moment to pray. As I prayed, the Spirit came upon me, and I knew that everything would be all right and that the Lord loved me. And even though my mother died five months ago, everything is all right, just like the Lord promised me.

“The temple and its ordinances are special to me because, I know that through them I will be with my best friend, my mom, again, and that our relationship will last forever. I also know that if I live worthily, I’ll be able to be married in the temple to my eternal mate, and my mother will be there because she promised me.”

But soon after I began using it, I became Anderson’s close friend.
It happened in gym through a bizarre accident. We were on the field playing soccer, when suddenly a ball came sailing from nowhere.
“Save it, Jack, save it,” I heard, and the next thing I felt was a terrible blow to my head. Some primitive instinct told me to fight back, so I kicked with all my strength and heard a crunch before I fell into blackness.
When I awoke, I saw the white curtains of the infirmary and knew I was going to be sick.
“Want me to call Ol’ Collins?”
I rolled over and in my misery saw Anderson’s grin with a slightly fat lip and missing one tooth.
“Anything you want,” I groaned.
Collins came bustling in, murmured about “concussion” and “our mother” and bustled out.
“I didn’t know you could kick so hard.” Again I saw the snaggly grin.
“It must have been the blow to my head. It gave me strength.”
“Your head is only half your problem. We also have two months in the clink together for fighting.”
“Fighting? Who was fighting? And what’s the clink? Where am I, Africa?”
“You and I, sir, have two months in detention hall.”
And that’s how I met Scott Anderson.
For a first friend there could have been no better. He showed me how to play soccer, and I showed him geometry and sentence diagraming. He explained to me the caste system of Eaton from the lowliest freshman to the headmaster. His parents had been assigned to a post overseas, so he was at Eaton finishing up his junior year. His comprehension of human systems astonished me just as my understanding of split participles fascinated him. I felt as though that day of our soccer crash had been for me a grand awakening to a world that had always been but I had never seen. I was a blind man granted sight.
It was four weeks into our detention that I mentioned to Anderson his famous quote from World Problems.
“That was some line,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s no joke, you know. I really am going on a mission.”
“A mission, a mission, what is a mission, Dr. Livingstone?”
“I’m going out into the world to teach people about the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“Why?”
“Because the Church is true.”
“Are you really Mormon?”
“Sure thing, died in the wool, true blue.”
“No kidding. I never thought they got out of Utah.”
“Yeah, they did. Got out all over the world.”
So not only did I meet Scott Anderson, but also the Mormon church.
Too soon the term came to an end. When I came back from vacation, Scott Anderson was gone. “Moved,” somebody told me, “back to Utah.” I clung even more to his famous one line in memory of our friendship.
It was a fresh April day at the Apothecary Outdoor Restaurant when I had a final chance to use Anderson’s line. We had just finished our salad and were beginning our soup when an acquaintance of my mother stopped to greet us. He added the usual, “And what are you going to be doing next year, Jack?”
“I will be going on a mission for the Mormon church, sir,” I replied.
“You will?” He seemed more than astonished. “Why I didn’t know you were Mormons!”
“We’re not,” my mother smiled her let’s-get-on-to-other-things smile.
“But I am,” the man went on. “As a matter of fact, I’m bishop of the Manhattan Third Ward.”
“A bishop? I’ve heard of bishops,” I said. “You see, I had this friend at school …”
And so I met Bishop Beesely. And now I am going on a mission for the Mormon church. My father thinks that I am tomorrow’s Dr. Livingstone because I am going to South Africa.
My mother, though, is her same plural self. Just yesterday she said, “We’ll be needing some white shirts and dark suits now, won’t we, Jack?”

Sixteen-year-old Tawnya Cazier, who lives in northern Idaho, has a best friend like that, and she doesn’t even mind the face-licking part. Her friend’s name is Nephi, and he’s a 75-pound malamute, the leader of her dogsled team. Nephi has saved Tawnya more than once, and he came into her life at a time when she was in desperate need of a good friend.
At 13, Tawnya was diagnosed as having a severe case of diabetes. Her blood-sugar levels were so erratic she had to stay out of school for a year. Many times her parents took her for special treatment in a clinic more than a thousand miles away from their home near Spirit Lake. All this took its toll on Tawnya. “I complained a lot, and I became very lazy,” she said.
It hurt Tawnya’s father to see his daughter’s suffering. He’d been diagnosed with diabetes when he was younger too and knew what she was going through. He decided Tawnya needed something to perk up her spirits. He’d always had an interest in dogsledding, but had never been able to pursue it. He noticed that Tawnya followed closely Susan Butcher’s progress in the Iditarod, the world’s most famous dogsled race, and thought dogsledding might be a good hobby for Tawnya. Since they were living in a sparsely populated, wooded area known as “Frazier’s Icebox,” where snow lasts into June, he asked, “Why not?”
Tawnya loved the idea, so they began putting together a homemade sled with skis for runners. They also began acquiring dogs from friends and from newspaper ads that said, “Free to good home.” Nephi was the first and the best. He was a natural leader, loved to run and work, and had the strength of three dogs. He would prove this many times as they took him all over the Northwest for weight-pulling competitions, which he often won.
Although Tawnya loves competition, the weight pulls are the only contests Tawnya has entered. What she’d really like to do is enter her team in the 150-mile Junior Iditarod, held each year in Alaska.
“I thought that would be the most awesome thing in the whole world, since I can’t compete in the real Iditarod until I’m 18,” she says. “So I wrote for the information on it, and they sent me a packet. I was so disappointed when I learned it was held over a weekend, on Saturday and Sunday. I asked them if they could change it, but they wouldn’t.
“That was a big hang-up. I wanted to run it so bad. I really had to fight with myself. But I finally got to the point where I realized that this would go against everything I’d ever been taught. It wasn’t worth it.”
So instead of training for the big races, Tawnya is content spending a couple of hours each day after school with her dogs. In the summer, when there’s no snow on the ground and her sled is useless, she hitches the dogs to a three-wheel cart. On Saturdays she cleans the dog runs, but Sundays she reserves for church.
“I like to go to church, read the scriptures, nap, write letters to missionaries, and spend time with my family,” she says. “It’s the one day of the week we can be together and just relax and talk. Most of the other days we’re all going in different directions.” Tawnya is the oldest of nine children, and they live together with their parents in a large mountain cabin.
The dogs have been good for the whole family. The younger children enjoy helping Tawnya feed and care for them, and, of course, they love rides on the sled. The dogs, in turn, love the children, and are extremely gentle.
“They have been bred through the years not to bite,” Tawnya explains. “The Eskimos couldn’t afford to have a vicious dog that would attack other dogs or people. Many times the dogs lived inside with the families. These dogs have been bred to love being around people and to love pulling a sled.”
The enthusiasm the dogs have for pulling is obvious the minute Tawnya walks outside with harnesses in hand. The dogs prick up their ears and begin barking and jumping. They’re eager.
“I learn lots of things from these dogs,” Tawnya says. “Enthusiasm for what you’re doing is one of them. Another is obedience. You don’t use reins with them, just voice commands. If they didn’t listen to what I told them, I could have had some really bad accidents. Once, if the dogs had followed their instincts and kept running, rather than stopping right when I told them to, we would have gone right between a mother bear and her cub. I don’t think any of us would have survived that.”
Tawnya has also learned that physical handicaps, like diabetes, don’t have to keep you down. Although she gives herself blood tests and shots three times a day and constantly has to be aware of how the food she eats and her physical activity will affect her insulin level, Tawnya doesn’t let that limit her. She’s back in school now, achieves straight A’s, and goes to seminary early each morning. She also finds time to spend with her friends, who love her dogs as well.
One of Tawnya’s favorite Mutual activities involves taking the youth in the ward on a dogsled ride out to a spot where a large bonfire has been built. They sit around toasting marshmallows and singing. The dogs, who love it as much as Tawnya does, sometimes join in on the chorus. Tawnya’s hobby has become well-known in the ward. Even the bishop has been for a ride on her sled. “He loved it!” she says. The missionaries have enjoyed it too.
It would be hard for anyone to resist such an offer, especially coming from this girl. Tawnya is as warm and down-to-earth as they come. Unless she told you, you’d never guess she suffers from a life-threatening disorder.
“I used to ask, Why me?” she says. “I used to wonder why I have to go through all this—be sick, give myself shots and blood tests, watch what I eat, and all that. But then I realized that the Lord knew I could handle it. It’s a comfort to know that the Lord has confidence in me. It gives me the strength to go on.”
Tawnya says she’s grateful for the strength she also derives from the support of her friends, family, and of course, her dogs.
“My dogs teach me so much,” she says. “I learn how to treat people by watching how they treat me. At first I thought I had to have patience with my dogs, but then I realized they have to have patience with me. Nephi shows me so much love, even when I’m not at my best. I want to be able to show that to other people. Nephi really is my best friend.”

When I was seven years old, I promised the Lord that if given the opportunity, I would preach the gospel throughout the world. At that time I regularly attended the Baptist Church with my family. I did not understand many things. For example, I didn’t know why only the pastor and his assistants were allowed to speak. I felt that everyone should have the opportunity to share their feelings and beliefs about their church. However, my family and our church helped me to gain a love and appreciation for our Savior Jesus Christ and for the scriptures.
As I was growing up, my family lived less than five minutes from the Washington D.C. Temple. The temple just fascinated me as a young boy, and I always wanted to enter it, but my father assured me, “It won’t be part of your life. Don’t ever worry about that building.”
Every day I would watch my father study the Bible intensely. I knew my father was a man of God, and I began to pose many questions. He would always tell me to read the Bible and find out for myself.
A decade later, I was serving as a United States Marine security guard for the American Embassy in the Republic of Djibouti, a small country in northeast Africa. I decided to search for the truth, so I read the Bible cover to cover. As I grew closer to God, I came to realize that the Bible was the true word of God. I did not have to rely upon the testimony of my father, but I still did not have the whole truth. I longed to know why I felt compelled to live my life never drinking, smoking, or swearing and remaining morally clean. Why did I always strive to obey the commandments?
After 15 months, I was reassigned to the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa. I was selected as the first black Marine security guard ever to serve in South Africa. In each place I was assigned, I was handpicked because of my standards. Interestingly, President Bill Clinton phoned to ask me to accept the South Africa assignment. Those were some of the reasons that I received many recognitions and awards.
It was in South Africa that I met the Cleverlys, who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The mother of the family invited me to their home at various times. She always told me about young single adult activities, but I could never attend due to my job schedule. Then she invited me to attend church, and I accepted. But before Sunday came, I had three nights of night-shift duty. I went downstairs to the library of the embassy where there was a computer with a huge search capacity. I just typed in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All this information came up, so I just read it for eight hours the first night, eight hours the second night, and eight hours the third night. What I looked at most of all was what Latter-day Saints believed and how they applied it in their lives. Did they live according to what they had established as laws or standards of the Church?
The week preceding my visit to church, I had a dream. I was sitting at a table, and there were two young men with white short-sleeved shirts and black tags. They were sitting on the sides of a table, and I was seated at the head. I woke up, but I didn’t think much about the dream.
The first time I walked into an LDS ward, I knew there was something different about this church. Also, it happened to be the first Sunday of the month, which meant that the members had an opportunity to stand and bear testimony. Now this is the true order of church, I thought.
I was introduced to two missionaries who began to teach me. One of the young men was one of those in my dream, the exact person. Sister Cleverly invited the missionaries and me to her home for dinner. She placed us at the table exactly as my dream had predicted.
Later, when we got to the principle about baptism for the dead, I thought it was so amazing that one could go to a sacred place and do these things for people who had passed away. I just thought that was incredible, and I thought about my two grandfathers and my grandmother who had passed away. That’s when I started to feel the Holy Ghost. The teachings sounded right to me.
We got to the next principle, which is about families, and I just always knew that was true. When I heard about eternal families, I told the missionaries, “I knew this existed.”
Then the missionaries taught me about the Word of Wisdom, and it was then that I had a discovery. I don’t want to call it a paradigm shift, but it felt like my soul unfolded, and I just shed this shell and a new person came out. I felt like I was three feet off the ground. I had always lived the Word of Wisdom, and I wanted to know why I was the way that I was. No one ever had the answer to that for me, but the Lord did through the missionaries and the discussions. I knew that everything they had taught me previously was true, and everything that they would teach me would be true. I never felt the Spirit so strongly reading scriptures before, and when I read Doctrine and Covenants 89:18–21, I knew it was true. I always knew that my body was important, and I knew that it was never to be defiled.
From this point forward, I began to experience mixed emotions about becoming a member of the Church. I was concerned about my father’s opinion and his reaction to my decision. The night of the sixth discussion was a very eventful night.
During the sixth discussion, I received the message that I had an incoming call from my father. The phone rang. I picked it up, and it was indeed my dad.
He said, “Your mother informed me that you’ve made a decision to join the Latter-day Saints.”
I said yes.
He said, “I’m here to prevent that from happening.”
And I said, “You know what, Dad? I love you, and you’ll always be my dad. You’ve done a great job with me. But I’m 22. I’m a man now, and these decisions are for my family and my future. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me and that you will continue to do for me, but this is my decision. I’m going to do it, and I know that the Lord wants me to do this.”
My dad wasn’t too happy when he hung up the phone. Immediately I got on my knees in the kitchen and asked the Lord to help me see and understand that what I was going to do was correct. I was thousands of miles away from home. I was all alone, and nothing was going right. Only when I was with the missionaries did I feel good. At that moment the Spirit testified to me that it was the Lord’s will and that the Lord wanted me to be baptized. It was a very clear voice that just said, “You’re to do the Lord’s will. You are to follow His example.” Then I knew. I never looked back after that. I was baptized on October 12, 1995.
It was a year to the day of my baptism, October 12, 1996, that I entered the Washington D.C. Temple to be endowed in preparation for serving a full-time mission to the Spain Madrid Mission.
During the first year of my mission, my parents were not supportive about my missionary service. The Lord revealed to me while I was on my mission that my family was fine, and they would be taken care of. Then things changed all of a sudden. The last six to eight months of my mission my family was very supportive. They said they were receiving blessings, and they knew it was because of my serving a mission.
After I returned from my mission, I stayed with my family for three weeks before I had to leave to enter Brigham Young University. Before school started, my father visited me, meeting my friends and seeing Salt Lake City. When I took him to the airport, he embraced me and told me, “Out of all 46 years of my life, never ever have I felt more love or the Spirit of God in my home than when you were home the last few weeks. I know that we owe it to the service that you gave in Spain for two years.”

One of the greatest joys of my life is becoming acquainted with and inspired by members of the Church all over the world who are living exemplars of faith in Jesus Christ and His gospel. They have strong personal foundations that allow them to withstand seismic events with steady understanding, despite their heartache and pain.
To display this on a more personal level, I recently spoke at the funeral of a beautiful, vibrant young wife and mother (also a family friend of ours). She was a scrappy Division 1 soccer player when she met and married her dental student husband. They were blessed with a beautiful, precocious daughter. She valiantly battled with various forms of cancer for six challenging years. Despite the ever-present emotional and physical distress that she experienced, she trusted in her loving Heavenly Father and was often quoted widely by her social media followers for her famous saying: “God is in the details.”
On one of her social media posts, she wrote that someone had asked her, “How do you still have faith with all the heartache that surrounds you?” She replied firmly with these words: “Because faith is what gets me through these dark times. Having faith doesn’t mean nothing bad is going to happen. Having faith allows me to believe that there will be light again. And that light will be even brighter because I have walked through the dark. As much darkness as I have witnessed over the years, I have witnessed far more light. I have seen miracles. I have felt angels. I have known that my Heavenly Father was carrying me. None of that would have been experienced if life was easy. The future of this life may be unknown, but my faith is not. If I choose to not have faith then I choose to only walk in darkness. Because without faith, darkness is all that is left.”
Her unshakable testimony of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—in her words and in her actions—was an inspiration for others. Even though her body was weak, she lifted others to be stronger.

Such a family was Oskar and Albertina Andersson, who became members of the Church in 1915. After World War II, Oskar, Albertina, and seven of their children who had married members made the heart-rending decision to sell all they owned and “travel to Zion.” From 1949 to 1950, 29 members of the Andersson family left Sweden. Oskar and Albertina left their home, three children, and four grandchildren, whom they would never see again. They arrived in a desert and a city where the people spoke a language they did not understand. But for these faithful members, being close to the temple was more important than anything else.
Members of the Andersson family have since served as missionaries and Church leaders in all parts of the world, including as an Area President in Africa and a temple president in Sweden.

When Israel and Elizabeth Haven Barlow left Nauvoo, Illinois, for the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, they left behind a baby boy buried in a small Nauvoo cemetery. Little James Nathaniel Barlow, their first child, had died shortly after birth in May 1841.
Israel and Elizabeth likely never expected to gaze again upon their son’s grave. But when Israel was called on a mission to England a few years later, he passed through Nauvoo. At Elizabeth’s request, he stopped to locate their son’s grave and move it to the main cemetery.
After Israel found the grave, he saw that it was decayed and broken. In a letter to his wife, Israel wrote that he decided to leave the grave and return in the future.
He had not walked more than a few feet from the grave when he heard a voice in his mind say, “Daddy, do not leave me here.” Israel returned to the grave, concluding to move his little boy after all.
As Israel lingered at the graveside, he told Elizabeth, “I felt a desire to dedicate myself and all that I might call mine into the hands of the Lord that I might be counted worthy to come forth with [James] in the morning of the First Resurrection.”
Israel’s devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ and honoring sacred covenants make eternal life—that grandest of all blessings—possible for him and bless his family—both ancestors and posterity.

This has been a most unusual year. For me it began with an assignment from the First Presidency to dedicate a holy temple to the Lord in Durban, South Africa. I will never forget the grandeur of the building. But more than the setting, I will always treasure the dignity of the people who were so well prepared to enter that sacred edifice. They came ready to partake of one of the crowning blessings of the Restoration: the dedication of a house of the Lord. They came with hearts filled with love for Him and His Atonement. They came filled with thanks to our Father in Heaven for providing sacred ordinances that would lead to exaltation. They came worthy.
Temples, no matter where they are, rise above the ways of the world. Every Latter-day Saint temple in the world—all 168 of them—stand as testaments to our faith in eternal life and the joy of spending it with our families and our Heavenly Father. Attending the temple increases our understanding of the Godhead and the everlasting gospel, our commitment to live and teach truth, and our willingness to follow the example of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
On the outside of every temple in the Church are the fitting words “Holiness to the Lord.” The temple is the Lord’s house and a sanctuary from the world. His Spirit envelops those who worship within those sacred walls. He sets the standards by which we enter as His guests.
My father-in-law, Blaine Twitchell, one of the best men I have ever known, taught me a great lesson. Sister Rasband and I went to visit him when he was nearing the end of his mortal journey. As we entered his room, his bishop was just leaving. As we greeted the bishop, I thought, “What a nice bishop. He’s here doing his ministering to a faithful member of his ward.”
I mentioned to Blaine, “Wasn’t that nice of the bishop to come visit.”
Blaine looked at me and responded, “It was far more than that. I asked for the bishop to come because I wanted my temple recommend interview. I want to go recommended to the Lord.” And he did!
That phrase, “recommended to the Lord,” has stayed with me. It has put a whole new perspective on being interviewed regularly by our Church leaders. So important is a temple recommend that in the early Church, until 1891, each temple recommend was endorsed by the President of the Church.
Whether for youth or adults, your temple recommend interview is not about do’s and don’ts. A recommend is not a checklist, a hall pass, or a ticket for special seating. It has a much higher and holier purpose. To qualify for the honor of a temple recommend, you must live in harmony with the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In your interview you have the opportunity to search your soul about your personal faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement. You have the blessing to express your testimony of the restored gospel; your willingness to sustain those whom the Lord has called to lead His Church; your faith in the doctrine of the gospel; your fulfillment of family responsibilities; and your qualities of honesty, chastity, fidelity, obedience, and observance of the Word of Wisdom, the law of tithing, and the sanctity of the Sabbath day. Those are bedrock principles of a life devoted to Jesus Christ and His work.
Your temple recommend reflects a deep, spiritual intent that you are striving to live the laws of the Lord and love what He loves: humility, meekness, steadfastness, charity, courage, compassion, forgiveness, and obedience. And you commit yourself to those standards when you sign your name to that sacred document.
Your temple recommend opens the gates of heaven for you and others with rites and ordinances of eternal significance, including baptisms, endowments, marriages, and sealings.
To be “recommended to the Lord” is to be reminded of what is expected of a covenant-keeping Latter-day Saint. My father-in-law, Blaine, saw it as invaluable preparation for the day when he would humbly stand before the Lord.
Consider when Moses climbed Mount Horeb and the Lord Jehovah appeared to him in a burning bush. God told him, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
Putting off our shoes at the door of the temple is letting go of worldly desires or pleasures that distract us from spiritual growth, setting aside those things which sidetrack our precious mortality, rising above contentious behavior, and seeking time to be holy.
By divine design, our physical body is a creation of God, a temple for our spirit, and should be treated with reverence. So true are the words of the Primary song: “My body is a temple [that] needs the greatest care.” When the Lord appeared to the Nephites, He commanded, “Be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me.” “What manner of men ought ye to be?” asked the Lord and then answered, “Even as I am.” To be “recommended to the Lord,” we strive to be like Him.
I remember hearing President Howard W. Hunter in his first general conference address as the 14th President of the Church. He said: “It is the deepest desire of my heart to have every member of the Church worthy to enter the temple. It would please the Lord if every adult member would be worthy of?—and carry?—a current temple recommend.” I would add that a limited-use recommend will set a clear path for our precious youth.
President Russell M. Nelson recalled President Hunter’s words: “On that day, June 6, 1994, the temple recommend that we carry became a different object in my wallet. Before that, it was a means to an end. It was the means to allow me to enter a sacred house of the Lord; but after he made that declaration, that became an end in itself. It became my badge of obedience to a prophet of God.”
If you have yet to receive a recommend or if your recommend has lapsed, line up at the door of the bishop just as the early Saints lined up at the door of the Nauvoo Temple in 1846. My ancestors were among those faithful. They were abandoning their beautiful city and going west, but they knew that there were sacred experiences awaiting them in the temple. Wrote Sarah Rich from the rugged trail in Iowa, “If it had not been for the faith and knowledge that was bestowed upon us in that temple … , our journey would have been like … taking a leap in the dark.” That is what we are missing if we are going through this life alone without the inspiration and peace promised in the temple.
Begin the process now to become “recommended to the Lord” so that His Spirit will be with you in abundance and His standards will bring you “peace of conscience.”
Your youth leaders, elders quorum president, Relief Society president, and ministering brothers and sisters will help you prepare, and your bishop or branch president lovingly will guide you.
We have been experiencing a time when temples have been closed or limited in use. For President Nelson and those of us who serve at his side, the inspired decision to close the temples was “painful” and “wracked with worry.” President Nelson found himself asking, “What would I say to the Prophet Joseph Smith? What would I say to Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff and the other Presidents, on up to President Thomas S. Monson?”
Now, we gradually and gratefully are reopening temples for sealings and endowments on a limited scale.
Being worthy to attend the temple, however, has not been suspended. Let me emphasize, whether you have access to a temple or not, you need a current temple recommend to stay firmly on the covenant path.
Late last year Sister Rasband and I were on assignment in New Zealand speaking with a large group of young single adults. They had no easy access to a temple; the one in Hamilton was being renovated, and they were still awaiting the groundbreaking for the temple in Auckland. However, I felt prompted to encourage them to renew or receive temple recommends.
Even though they could not present them at the temple, they would be presenting themselves before the Lord pure and prepared to serve Him. Being worthy to hold a current temple recommend is both a protection from the adversary, because you have made a firm commitment to the Lord about your life, and a promise that the Spirit will be with you.
We do temple work when we search for our ancestors and submit their names for ordinances. While our temples have been closed, we have still been able to research our families. With the Spirit of God in our hearts, we are, by proxy, standing in for them to be “recommended to the Lord.”
When I was serving as the Executive Director of the Temple Department, I heard President Gordon B. Hinckley refer to this scripture spoken by the Lord about the Nauvoo Temple: “Let the work of my temple, and all the works which I have appointed unto you, be continued on and not cease; and let your diligence, and your perseverance, and patience, and your works be redoubled, and you shall in nowise lose your reward, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
Our work in the temple is tied to our eternal reward. Recently we have been put to the test. The Lord has called us to work in the temples with “diligence, … perseverance, and patience.” Being “recommended to the Lord” requires those qualities. We must be diligent in living the commandments, persevere in our attention to our temple covenants, and be grateful for what the Lord continues to teach about them and be patient as we wait for temples to reopen in their fulness.
When the Lord calls for us to “redouble” our efforts, He is asking that we increase in righteousness. For example, we may expand our study of the scriptures, our family history research, and our prayers of faith that we may share our love for the Lord’s house with those preparing to receive a temple recommend, our family members in particular.
I promise you as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ that as you strive to redouble your righteous efforts, you will feel renewed in your devotion to God the Father and Jesus Christ, you will feel an abundance of the Holy Ghost guiding you, you will be grateful for your sacred covenants, and you will feel peace knowing you are “recommended to the Lord.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

After the battalion departed, Brigham turned again to the next stage of the Saints’ journey. Cooperating with the United States had allowed him to secure permission to establish a winter camp on Indian lands west of the Missouri River. He now planned to winter the Saints at a place called Grand Island, two hundred miles west, and from there send the advance company over the Rocky Mountains.4
As the apostles counseled together, Wilford spoke of other important Church matters that needed their immediate attention. Reuben Hedlock, the man he had appointed to preside over the British mission, had alienated many British Saints by squandering funds they had consecrated for emigration. Wilford foresaw problems within the mission, including the loss of many new converts, until Reuben was released and replaced by more responsible leadership.5
The quorum also knew that impoverished Saints were still in Nauvoo at the mercy of mobs and false prophets. If the apostles did not do more to help these Saints, as they had promised to do in the temple at the October conference, then the quorum would be breaking a solemn covenant with the Saints and the Lord.6
Acting decisively, the quorum resolved to send three of the apostles in camp—Parley Pratt, Orson Hyde, and John Taylor—to England to lead the British mission. They then sent wagons, teams, and supplies back to Nauvoo to evacuate the poor.7
As the quorum sent men and provisions east, Brigham realized his plan to push farther west that year was no longer possible, especially since the battalion had reduced the number of able-bodied men in camp. Thomas Kane recommended building their winter camp at the Missouri River, and Brigham ultimately agreed.8
On August 9, 1846, the apostles announced that the Saints would spend the winter in a temporary settlement just west of the river. Brigham wanted to go over the Rocky Mountains and build a temple as soon as possible. But before then, he would gather the Saints together and look after the poor.9

1 Harold B. Lee was a busy man. He was a city commissioner, stake president, husband, and father of two little girls.
2 It was early morning on the day before Christmas. President Lee had been up all night, helping city crews snowplow the streets. Now he was on his way home to change clothes before going to his office.
3 He saw a small boy by the side of the road. The boy had no coat, no gloves, and no overshoes. President Lee stopped the car and offered the boy a ride into town.
4 As they rode along, the man and boy began to talk. President Lee asked the boy if he was ready for Christmas.
5 He was shocked when the boy replied that there would be no Christmas at his house. His father had just died, and the family had no money. Before President Lee dropped the boy off in town, he asked him his name and address.
6 That Christmas Eve, as Harold B. Lee and the bishops in his stake delivered gifts to needy families, he remembered the young boy. He asked one of the bishops to take some Christmas boxes to the boy’s family.
7 Harold B. Lee was always very loving and caring. When he became the eleventh President of the Church, this talent was greatly appreciated by Church members.

Years later I received a similar call late at night in a hotel in Japan. I was then the new commissioner of education for the Church. I knew that President Gordon B. Hinckley was staying somewhere in that same hotel on his separate assignment to Japan. I answered the ringing phone just after I had lain down on the bed to sleep, exhausted by having done all I thought I had the strength to do.

President Hinckley asked in his pleasant voice, “Why are you sleeping when I am here reading a manuscript that we have been asked to review?” So I got up and went to work, even though I knew that President Hinckley could give a better review of a manuscript than I could possibly do. But somehow he made me feel that he needed my help.

In my class at school, there are only two other members of the Church. What we believe is like a new world to some of my classmates. They often ask us questions about the gospel, and some are difficult to answer. If we don’t know the answer to a question, we discuss it together and seek guidance from our Church leaders. Once we know how to respond, we tell our classmates about what we know to be true. I have even invited some of them to come and see for themselves how we worship, and they’ve received good feelings about sacrament meeting.

Sister Penaloza wanted to serve a mission. Year after year she expressed this desire to her bishop but never received a call. Finally she cornered the mission president’s assistants and told them her plight. They called the president on the phone.
“This sister wants to serve a mission, but she has one problem.”
“What is it?”
“Her age. She’s 103!”
President Enrique Moreno interviewed her and called her to a two-month “summer mission” in Puebla, about two hours from her home, with a companionship of strong, capable sisters. Ward members there loved her and were eager for her to teach their friends. “What a blessing she was for the work,” says President Moreno. “What a great motivation she was for both members and missionaries!”

In earlier years the Brethren often reported their missions in general conference. I realize this is 2004, not 1904, but I wish to invoke the spirit of that earlier practice and reflect on some of the wonderful things Sister Holland and I are experiencing in Latin America. In doing so I hope to make general application to all of you, wherever you may live or serve.
First of all I would like to thank every missionary who has ever labored in this transcendent latter-day undertaking we have been given. The rolling forth of the restored gospel is a miracle in every sense of the word, and not the least of the miracle is that a significant portion of it rolls forward on the shoulders of 19-year-olds! As we have seen your sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters (and in some cases your parents and grandparents!) faithfully laboring in Chile, I have pictured the tens of thousands of others like them we have met all over the world. Clean, clear, bright-eyed missionaries, laboring two-by-two, have become a living symbol of this Church everywhere. They themselves are the first gospel message their investigators encounter—and what a message that is. Everyone knows who they are, and those of us who know them the best love them the most.
I wish you could meet the sister called to serve with us from her native Argentina. Wanting to do everything possible to finance her own mission, she sold her violin, her most prized and nearly sole earthly possession. She said simply, “God will bless me with another violin after I have blessed His children with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
I wish you could meet the Chilean elder who, living without family in a boarding school, happened upon a Book of Mormon and started reading it that very evening. Reminiscent of Parley P. Pratt’s experience, he read insatiably—nonstop through the night. With the breaking of day, he was overwhelmed with a profound sense of peace and a new spirit of hope. He determined to find out where this book had come from and who had written its marvelous pages. Thirteen months later he was on a mission.
I wish you could meet the marvelous young man who came to us from Bolivia, arriving with no matching clothing and shoes three sizes too large for him. He was a little older because he was the sole breadwinner in his home, and it had taken some time to earn money for his mission. He raised chickens and sold the eggs door-to-door. Then, just as his call finally came, his widowed mother faced an emergency appendectomy. Our young friend gave every cent of the money he had earned for his mission to pay for his mother’s surgery and postoperative care, then quietly rounded up what used clothing he could from friends and arrived at the MTC in Santiago on schedule. I can assure you that his clothes now match, his shoes now fit, and both he and his mother are safe and sound, temporally as well as spiritually.
And so they come, from your homes all over the world. Included in such a long list of dedicated servants of the Lord is an increasing number of senior couples who make an indispensable contribution to the work. How we love and need couples in virtually every mission of this Church! Those of you who can, put away your golf clubs, don’t worry about the stock market, realize that your grandchildren will still be your grandchildren when you return—and go! We promise you the experience of a lifetime.
Let me say something of the marvelous members of the Church themselves. In the reorganization of a rather far-flung stake recently, I felt the Lord’s prompting to call a man to the stake presidency who, I had been told, owned a bicycle but no automobile. Many leaders across the Church don’t have cars, but I was nevertheless worried about what that might mean for this man in this particular stake. In my terminally ill Spanish I pursued the interview, then said, “Hermano, ¿no tiene un auto?” With a smile and not a second’s hesitation he replied, “No tengo un auto; pero yo tengo pies, yo tengo fe.” (“I do not have a car, but I do have feet and I do have faith.”) He then said he could ride the bus, ride his bicycle, or walk, “como los misioneros,” he smiled—“like the missionaries.” And so he does.
Just eight weeks ago I was holding a mission district conference on the island of Chiloé, an interior location in the south of Chile that gets few visitors. Imagine the responsibility I felt in addressing these beautiful people when it was pointed out to me that a very elderly man seated near the front of the chapel had set out on foot at five o’clock that morning, walking for four hours to be in his seat by nine o’clock for a meeting that was not scheduled to begin until eleven o’clock. He said he wanted to get a good seat. I looked into his eyes, thought of times in my life when I had been either too casual or too late, and thought of Jesus’s phrase, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”
The Punta Arenas Chile Stake is the Church’s southernmost stake anywhere on this planet, its outermost borders stretching toward Antarctica. Any stake farther south would have to be staffed by penguins. For the Punta Arenas Saints it is a 4,200-mile round-trip bus ride to the Santiago temple. For a husband and wife it can take up to 20 percent of an annual local income just for the transportation alone. Only 50 people can be accommodated on the bus, but for every excursion 250 others come out to hold a brief service with them the morning of their departure.
Pause for a minute and ask yourself when was the last time you stood on a cold, windswept parking lot adjacent to the Strait of Magellan just to sing with, pray for, and cheer on their way those who were going to the temple, hoping your savings would allow you to go next time? One hundred ten hours, 70 of those on dusty, bumpy, unfinished roads looping out through Argentina’s wild Patagonia. What does 110 hours on a bus feel like? I honestly don’t know, but I do know that some of us get nervous if we live more than 110 miles from a temple or if the services there take more than 110 minutes. While we are teaching the principle of tithing to, praying with, and building ever more temples for just such distant Latter-day Saints, perhaps the rest of us can do more to enjoy the blessings and wonder of the temple regularly when so many temples are increasingly within our reach.
And that leads me to my final point. For the Church at large, we have so many things to associate in our minds with the visionary ministry of President Gordon B. Hinckley, including (perhaps especially) the vast expansion of temples and temple building. But I dare say for those of us on this rostrum, it is likely that we will remember him at least as emphatically for his determination to retain in permanent activity the converts who join this Church. No modern prophet has addressed this issue more directly nor expected more from us in seeing that it happen. With a twinkle in his eye and a hand smacking the table in front of him, he said to the Twelve recently, “Brethren, when my life is finished and the final services are concluding, I am going to rise up as I go by, look each of you in the eye, and say, ‘How are we doing on retention?’”

He limped along beside his family’s wagon. A few yards in front of him, his stepmother, Caroline, walked. Snatches of her Danish words now drifted back to him. He watched as she looked up at Fader (Father), who sat on the wagon seat, driving the ox team. Jimmy heard Fader’s voice answering her. It was a comforting, familiar sound in this strange new land of sagebrush and endless miles.
“Jimmy.” Caroline’s voice woke him from his thoughts. “Run fetch that stick, please.”
Hobbling off in the direction of her pointing finger, Jimmy soon found the little sage branch. Part of it lay under a pile of buffalo dung. The animal was nearby, Jimmy knew, for this pile was not one of the dried chips used for fuel, but a stinky, fresh one. If kindling wasn’t so scarce, he would have left the branch. He picked it up, scraped it off in the dirt, and carried it to the woodbox Fader had attached to the back of the wagon.
Jimmy looked down at the rags wrapping his feet. I hope there is a stream at the camp tonight, he thought. Whenever there was enough water, he soaked his rags so that they would peel away from the sores on his feet.
“Why the long face?” Jimmy looked up to see his older brother and hero, John.
“My feet hurt,” Jimmy admitted.
John laid a comforting hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “What’s this? Do I hear murmuring?”
Jimmy shook his head. “I was just answering your question. You’re lucky, John. You have boots.”
“Aye, little brother, but even feet in boots sometimes bleed when you’ve walked as far as we have.”
Stepping over a rock, Jimmy asked, “So what do you do when your feet hurt?”
“I think about the blessings.”
“Blessings?” Jimmy looked into John’s face. He saw a mixture of peace and conviction.
His older brother nodded. “God has restored His ancient authority, Jimmy Boy. Because of that, we can be united as a family forever.”
“One day we will be with Moder (Mother) again.” A warm feeling filled Jimmy.
John nodded. A tear seeped from his eye and rolled down his dusty cheek. “Sore feet is a small price to pay.”
“That’s not the only price, John. I still have bad dreams about the fire.”
John tipped his hat to shield his eyes from the sun. “Do you also remember what Caroline found in the ashes?”
“A lump of gold—enough to make two wedding bands and pay our fare to America.”
“See? Even in the fire there was a blessing.” John gave Jimmy an encouraging pat.
“Lars,” Fader called John’s Danish name, “skynd dig (hurry)!”
“Coming.” John ruffled Jimmy’s hair, then trotted away.
Jimmy wished for a walking stick. He shook his head. It wouldn’t do me any good, anyway, he thought. It would just be used for kindling.
Thinking about the gold in the ashes, Jimmy imagined finding a treasure bound up in his rags. He grinned as he grasped the handle on the lid of the woodbox. Hopping along on one foot after the rolling wagon, he found a good toehold and climbed up. Finally perched on top of the box, he picked at the knots in the ragged strings until he had untied them. He loosened the cloths covering his feet and peeked among the folds—nothing.
“Oh, well.” He retied the knots. “At least I got a ride—and we’re going to Zion, where people won’t burn your house down if you’re a Mormon. And there isn’t as much dust up here.”
He even smiled and waved as he looked back at Brother Bysbee in the next wagon.
“I see you found a seat, Jimmy.” Brother Bysbee laughed good-naturedly.
“It’s better than walking!” Jimmy answered. It felt good to be sitting, even though the wagon ride jolted and rattled him to the bone. He looked out over the hills of gray-green sagebrush, the home of jackrabbits, prairie dogs, and buffalo—and soon his home, too. Long before he was ready to move, he heard Fader call, “Jimmy, please get that scrap of wood.”
Jimmy sighed. He was tired. To get down, he’d have to jump. That would hurt. But Fader had called. Gritting his teeth, Jimmy leaped. As he tumbled in the dirt, he rolled out of the way of Brother Bysbee’s oxen.
Suddenly Jimmy heard a bellow of rage. He looked to the opposite side of the wagon. An angry buffalo thundered from behind a bush and charged the woodbox! Its massive head crashed into the box and splintered it. Screams, shouts, and bawling from the startled oxen filled the air. “Whoa!” Brother Bysbee called. “Whoa there!”
Stamping, pawing, and snorting, the buffalo ran past Jimmy so close that he saw the crazed look in the animal’s eyes. Gunshots exploded.
“Jimmy!” The boy looked up to see Caroline and John running toward him.
From the front of the wagon Fader called, “Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right.” Jimmy called back.
He reached out his hand, and John helped him to his feet. “You were right about the blessings, John. If I hadn’t obeyed Fader, that buffalo would have killed me!”
“Two blessings came out of that one.” John agreed. “The Lord spared your life, and He provided buffalo meat for everybody in camp.”
As Jimmy reached down to pick up the broken pieces of the woodbox, he hardly noticed his sore feet. “We’ll have a good fire tonight!”

When I was growing up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was lonely.
Being one of the only members in my whole high school made me feel cut off from everyone else. Not many people had even heard about the Church before, so I felt like I didn’t have many opportunities to talk about it. Sometimes I didn’t want to because I was afraid of being rejected and feeling even more isolated.
I started feeling resentful toward the gospel when many of my friends seemed like they were so much happier than I was.
They looked like they were having so much fun partying, and I felt left out. I was always saying no to their invites and felt like I was rejecting their friendship and happiness.
So one day I didn’t turn down their invitations.
I hung out with these friends more and more. I felt like I was finally part of a community and eventually stopped going to church.
However, after a while, I felt burned-out and more alone than ever. I could feel myself growing addicted to nicotine and losing control over my life.
I didn’t understand what my problem was. I finally had the friends and connection I had wanted, so why couldn’t I just be happy like they were?
Around this time, one of my friends lost a loved one. When I was talking to them and trying to help, I started blurting out everything I knew about the plan of salvation, explaining that they would be able to see their loved one again one day.
… What?
I couldn’t believe what I was saying! I hadn’t thought about the gospel for years.
But I felt hope as I explained this truth I had learned, and I realized that my faith wasn’t completely gone.
I pondered the pieces of my faith that I still had. I thought about how the Church had always offered me a place of community with like-minded people—all striving to follow Jesus Christ, serve others, and experience the joy and promises of the gospel.
Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has taught, “We … can be prone to look beyond the mark. We need to guard against this tendency lest we miss Jesus Christ in our lives and fail to recognize the many blessings He offers us. We need Him.”
I realized I had been looking for happiness in all the wrong places.
After this experience, I started meeting with the missionaries to help me get to know Jesus Christ again. They helped me become more engaged with the gospel. I started praying more and focusing on rediscovering my divine identity. I even gave up nicotine. I knew God was with me as I was striving to change my life.
Over time, I recognized the connection I had with other disciples of Christ in my ward. I also started talking to my friends about my faith and answering their questions, and that made me happy.
Much of my past loneliness stemmed from my lack of confidence. But as I changed my focus from trying to fit in to being myself—a son of God—and sharing my faith, I found joy and belonging in fully living the gospel.
Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles promised:
“God has something more to give. A higher and more profound joy—a joy that transcends anything this world offers. It is a joy that endures heartbreak, penetrates sorrow, and diminishes loneliness.
“Worldly happiness, by contrast, does not last. It cannot. It is the nature of all earthly things to grow old, decay, wear out, or become stale. But godly joy is eternal, because God is eternal.”
I no longer feel isolated as a member of the Church. Focusing on Jesus Christ has removed the weight off my shoulders and allowed me to breathe again! When I am following Him, I realize that I truly am not alone. Because of the blessing of covenants, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and all Christ’s promises, I know He’s with me.
The enduring joy this truth brings into my life is greater than anything fleeting I sought without Him.

“I’ve never had it easy,” says Dahvana Daneisha Shanika Providence from Saint Vincent.
After attending different schools due to constant changes in her earlier education and having health issues during her secondary education, she felt the need to achieve her dreams.
Having obtained second place on her first pageant, she decided to pursue her dreams in the textile world.
Being persistent in that dream has gotten Dahvana a scholarship in New York to study fashion after winning Miss Venus Model Caribbean 2018.

Born in Mährisch-Ostrau, Czechoslovakia, on November 6, 1940, he was destined to see at every turn the devastation of war and the suffering innocent people endure because of the fateful decisions of others. His father, Karl Albert Uchtdorf, was conscripted into the German Army and was taken immediately from his wife and four small children. Little Dieter, the youngest in the family, knew only that his father was somewhere he didn’t want to be and that his mother, Hildegard E. Opelt Uchtdorf, was bravely fending for her little family as the war in Europe swirled around them.

With the Allies’ increasing success in the west and ominous progress by Stalin’s forces in the east, Hildegard Uchtdorf wanted to get as close as possible to the western front. So she left every meager possession the family possessed and, with her small family, made her way to Zwickau, Germany. Fortunately her husband survived the war and joined them in Zwickau, but he was a bitter opponent of both the Nazi and the Communist regimes. The former was now destroyed, but the latter was in control of their lives as a result of the postwar division of Germany. Because of Karl’s political position, their lives were in danger, so the family—for the second time in seven years—left every possession they owned and, despite the danger, made their way to a new haven in Frankfurt, West Germany.

Of this period Elder Uchtdorf has said: “We were refugees with an uncertain future. … I played in bombed-out houses and grew up with the ever-present consequences of a lost war and the awareness that my own country had inflicted terrible pain on many nations during the horrific World War II.” The family had every reason to be filled with despair and fear.

But, as President Gordon B. Hinckley once said during another time of international conflict, there is a “silver thread” that can run “through the dark tapestry of war.” And so it did for the Uchtdorfs. While in Zwickau they found the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his first message after being called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Uchtdorf expressed his gratitude for that gift.

“After World War II,” he said, “my grandmother was standing in line for food when an elderly single sister with no family of her own invited her to sacrament meeting. … My grandmother and my parents accepted the invitation. They went to church, felt the Spirit, were uplifted by the kindness of the members, and were edified by the hymns of the Restoration. … How grateful I am for a spiritually sensitive grandmother, teachable parents, and a wise, white-haired, elderly single sister who had the sweet boldness to reach out and follow the Savior’s example by inviting us to ‘come and see’ (see John 1:39).”

Faith is thriving among the Saints of Guatemala. Following are just a few examples:

Carlos Santíz, president of the Mazatenango Guatemala Stake, refers to notes made on a whiteboard during a meeting with bishops, explaining how they followed the direction of Church leaders to meet in council and plan to serve the needs of less-active members. “I’m grateful to the Lord for putting me in this stake presidency because it is a challenge—but a challenge I needed—and it has brought growth,” he says.
Nery Eduardo Marroquín, a counselor in the bishopric of a ward in the Retalhuleu Guatemala Stake, was an evangelical Christian before joining the Church five years ago through the influence of his wife, Ada. He grew up in a home where he learned the importance of personal prayer, the Bible, and worship of Jesus Christ as the Savior, but he felt there was something more. He found it in gospel ordinances that could allow him and his wife to have an eternal family. “Christ said no one will come to the Father ‘but by me’ [John 14:6],” he explains. “And the ordinances are through Him. That’s why it’s such a blessing to have a temple in Guatemala.”
Hector González of the Villa Nueva Guatemala Stake says the gospel has given him strength to face the cancer that cost him a leg and nearly took his life. At one point, he wondered why this should happen to him. His wife brought his patriarchal blessing to him in the hospital, and he found hope in its promise of a long life of service. When it became obvious that he would lose his right leg, he received a spiritual witness that all would be well. After the surgery, he recalls, “It was incredible the support I found in reading the Book of Mormon. It gave me the strength to go on.” Now back at work, he says, “I know the Lord has been watching over me. I know He has cared for me through all of this.”
Jorge Popá, a member of the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Stake, originally invited the sister missionaries to his home to help his wife understand the English instructions that came with the bread maker he had bought her. The sisters agreed—if they could also share the gospel message with the family. After the missionary lessons, Jorge and his wife, Mirna, told the missionaries they weren’t interested in baptism. But that night neither Jorge nor Mirna could sleep. At the same time, each felt moved to get out of bed and pray about what they had been taught, and each received the same manifestation of the truth. They sought out the sister missionaries at church on Sunday and asked to be baptized. After their baptism, the Popás faced the problem many converts face: how to tell their family they had broken with the traditional religion. Their four-year-old son (who is now a deacon) solved that problem at a family gathering. When someone served tea, he stood and announced, “We don’t drink that! We’re Mormons.”
Udine Falabella was president of the first stake organized in Guatemala, in 1967. In 1965, as district president in Guatemala City, he organized the first temple trip from the area, by bus across México to Mesa, Arizona, in the United States. It was a great blessing to Guatemala when the temple was dedicated in Guatemala City in 1984, he says. It was a blessing for him to serve later as its president; he was released in 2000 after more than four years in that position.
He recalls that, in dedicating the temple, President Gordon B. Hinckley pronounced a blessing of peace on the country. Not long afterward, the country’s long period of civil strife came to an end. Perhaps more important, though, was the fact that Guatemalan members could now enjoy the peace of the temple without having to travel so far from home.
Brother Falabella’s granddaughter Evelyn was married in that temple in December 2000. She says many young Guatemalans who see unhappy or failing marriages around them have lost faith in the institution of marriage and may feel it is better to put time into developing their careers, marrying later if at all. “I believe if I didn’t have the gospel in my life, I wouldn’t have dared get married right now,” she says. But through the gospel, she continues, there is peace in facing the challenges because we can know the eternal reasons for marriage and the everlasting blessings it can bring.
And that, says Brother Falabella, is indicative of the change that has come to the Church in Guatemala in his lifetime: thousands of strong Latter-day Saints now have all the means to implement full gospel programs and enjoy their blessings.
José Sazo agrees that the gospel blessings available in his country and his generation are rich—for those who strive to receive them. José, who was not yet born when that first stake was created in Guatemala, is now president of the Guatemala City Guatemala Florida Stake.
It takes constant, consistent effort to maintain strong families and marriages, President Sazo says. He and his wife, Claudia, both served missions in their country, and they agree that much of the secret to maintaining strong marriages can be found in two good habits learned by missionaries: frequent, loving companionship evaluations (conversations about how their marriage is going) and regular gospel study. “If I had a prescription for happiness,” President Sazo says, “it would be to study the scriptures together always.”
President Sazo adds that he and his wife “are agreed on this: we want to do everything we can for our children so they will become strong leaders and the Lord will be able to call them to do whatever He wants, without reservation.”
So it was with those strong Church members in this country more than half a century ago who were willing to persevere in the gospel no matter what challenges they faced. And so it is now with the heirs of this spiritual legacy: the future of the Church in Guatemala will be in the hands of those ready to answer the call of the Lord without reservation.