Gospel Story Finder

In Florida a young couple was visiting different denominations and finally happened upon an LDS church, where they attended a meeting. They said:
“We found it to be different from any church we’d visited before. After having the lessons and going to church, we decided this was the church we’d been seeking all along.” The mother stated that it was surprising to see what the children were learning about the Bible and Jesus Christ, the changes she noticed in their relating better to other children, and their helpfulness at home.
Family and home life also changed for them when her husband received the priesthood, which increased his self-confidence and desire to improve their family life and relationship.

In addition to the scriptural accounts of the Lord's resurrection, let me share two other modern witnesses. Lorenzo Snow's granddaughter testified that the prophet spoke to her on one occasion in the Salt Lake Temple and said:

"It was right here that the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to me at the time of the death of President Woodruff. He instructed me to reorganize the First Presidency of the Church at once and not wait as had been done after the death of the previous presidents, and that I was to succeed President Woodruff...He stood right here, about three feet above the floor. It looked as though He stood on a plate of solid gold." She recalled: "Grandpa told me what a glorious personage the Savior is and described His hands, feet, countenance, and beautiful, white robes, all of which were of such a glory of whiteness and brightness that he could hardly gaze upon Him." Then Grandpa came another step nearer and put his right hand on my head and said: "Now, granddaughter, I want you to remember that this is the testimony of your grandfather, that he told you with his own lips that he actually saw the Savior here in the Temple and talked with Him face to face."

When I was a young boy in Long Island, New York, a robin built her nest every year on the roof of our home. We used to watch as she had her little ones. She fed them and nurtured them. And when it was time for them to fly, she gently and lovingly would nudge them out of the nest. They would glide to the ground, their wings fluttering—unsure, afraid, and not knowing how to fly. Then the mother would go down to the ground and help them learn how to find their food and teach them how to fly. She wanted to help them to be on their own.

It brought me great sorrow each year when I would find a young bird that tried to “do it alone.” Often he would be found dead in the rock garden below among the lilies of the valley.

There are many today who harbor in the deep recesses of their hearts a canker, a hurt, a feeling of resentment, a dislike, or in some cases even a hate because of unpleasant experiences with past and present associations. Some have been taken advantage of in a business sense. Others have had their feelings hurt by neighbors, or relatives, or friends. A few have been lied to or had a trust of long standing betrayed. Some children, young and now grown, have been offended by harsh or dictatorial parents. Husbands and wives may have deep schisms between them caused by criticism and a resulting resentment. The list of sad experiences goes on and on—yes, it is too long. To those of you who have been nursing the wounds of hurt feelings from the past, even from the little things, I would like to tell an experience which happened some time ago.
For much of our lives, we lived in central Arizona. Some years ago a group of teenagers from the local high school went on an all-day picnic into the desert on the outskirts of Phoenix. As some of you know, the desert foliage is rather sparse—mostly mesquite, catclaw, and palo verde trees, with a few cactus scattered here and there. In the heat of the summer, where there are thickets of this desert growth, you may also find rattlesnakes as unwelcome residents. These young people were picnicking and playing, and during their frolicking, one of the girls was bitten on the ankle by a rattlesnake. As is the case with such a bite, the rattler’s fangs released venom almost immediately into her bloodstream.
This very moment was a time of critical decision. They could immediately begin to extract the poison from her leg, or they could search out the snake and destroy it. Their decision made, the girl and her young friends pursued the snake. It slipped quickly into the undergrowth and avoided them for fifteen or twenty minutes. Finally, they found it, and rocks and stones soon avenged the infliction.
Then they remembered: their companion had been bitten! They became aware of her discomfort, as by now the venom had had time to move from the surface of the skin deep into the tissues of her foot and leg. Within another thirty minutes they were at the emergency room of the hospital. By then, the venom was well into its work of destruction.
A couple of days later I was informed of the incident and was asked by some young members of the Church to visit their friend in the hospital. As I entered her room, I saw a pathetic sight. Her foot and leg were elevated—swollen almost beyond recognition. The tissue in her limb had been destroyed by the poison, and a few days later it was found her leg would have to be amputated below the knee.
It was a senseless sacrifice, this price of revenge. How much better it would have been if, after the young woman had been bitten, there had been an extraction of the venom from the leg in a process known to all desert dwellers.

Tina’s brown eyes flashed as she rechecked her duffle bag, making certain she had everything she would need on the vacation.
“Is everyone ready?” Dad asked. “It’s time to go.”
Soon the car was crammed with luggage and camping gear. Tina saw a suitcase next to the cooler chest. Surrounded by beach towels and sleeping bags, the suitcase looked out of place. Suitcases were for dressy clothes, and dressy clothes were for special days like Sunday. This vacation would take ten days, Dad had said, so they wouldn’t be home for Church meetings.
As Tina thought about being away from home on Sunday, she remembered what Sister Gustafson, her Primary teacher, had told the class about Sunday being a day of worship and rest. Sister Gustafson was going to ask each child how he had spent his Sundays for an entire month, and she would pay special honor to those who had kept the Sabbath days holy. Tina worried that she would probably be the only one in the class who would miss any Primary and sacrament meetings. How can Sunday be a holy day when we’re camping at the lake? Tina wondered. She turned to wave good-bye to the friend who would take care of her little kitten while she was gone.
As they drove past the church and the school and out of town, the family sang, “Give, Said the Little Stream,” “The Golden Plates,” and Tina’s favorite, “Book of Mormon Stories.” Because Josh liked “Smiles,” and because he was the youngest in the family, they sang it again and again. Mom said she liked that song, too, because it made her happy.
As soon as they arrived at their lakeside camp, everyone went swimming. After supper was over and all the marshmallows had been toasted and eaten, Tina and Josh got ready for bed and climbed into their sleeping bags. Mom and Dad listened to their prayers and kissed them good night.
All week long the children played in the sand and swam in the lake. They fished. They climbed hills. And they fed potato chips to bushy-tailed squirrels.
On Saturday evening Tina helped Mom fix a picnic lunch for the next day. Then her mother asked everyone to help carry enough water to shampoo their hair and bathe. As Tina carried her small bucket of water from the lake, she laughed and sang,
“Saturday is a special day,
It’s the day we get ready for Sunday.
We clean our tent,
And we gather the wood
So we won’t have to work until Monday.
We brush our clothes,
And we shine our shoes,
And we call it our clean-up-our-camp day.
Then we tote the water
To shampoo our hair,
So we can be ready for Sunday.”*
Tina liked feeling clean, and she was glad that the picnic lunch was already made, because that meant no cooking the next day.
Because the next day was Sunday, Tina remembered her teacher’s words, “Sunday is a day of worship and rest.” Well, she could rest, and she wouldn’t play, but how could they have a regular worship service when their family was camping?
That night, as Tina sat watching the campfire, Mom brought the suitcase from the car and opened it. Dad took a piece of wrinkled paper out of it, smoothed it with his hand, and with a twinkle in his eye announced, “Tomorrow we’re going on a treasure hunt. This map shows where we can find something to help us to be happy for the rest of our lives.”
Then Mom took four books from the suitcase. Keeping one for herself, she gave one to Tina, one to Josh, and one to Dad. Tina opened her book. It was full of blank pages. Josh’s book was the same. Someone had written in Mom’s book, and in Dad’s, too, but most of their pages were also blank. What kind of books are these? Tina wondered.
Josh was given a turn to take something from the suitcase. He found some postcards and stamps. Then it was Tina’s turn. She looked in and found her favorite Sunday dress! And there was Mom’s green dress and Dad’s suit and tie. Josh’s best outfit was there too. Then Dad said, “We’ll wear our best clothes on our treasure hunt tomorrow.”
The next morning the family got up early and dressed in their Sunday clothes. When they got into the car, Tina helped read the treasure map, directing Dad to cross a bridge and then to take Ryre’s Road west for eighteen miles to where a large red star had been penciled in on the map. That must be where the treasure is! Tina decided.
Dad drove for eighteen miles and stopped right in front of a meetinghouse.
“That’s it—the treasure is where we learn about the gospel!” Tina declared excitedly.
It was wonderful going to church in that little town. People they didn’t even know smiled at Tina and her family.
After the meetings, the family returned to camp. Taking the picnic basket, the blank notebooks, and the postcards, they walked to a small wooded area. After lunch, mother read from her little book, which she called a journal. She showed Tina and Josh how they, too, could keep a journal of the things they did.
Tina and Josh wrote in their special books. Tina also wrote some postcards to send to her friends. The message she liked best was the one she sent to her Primary teacher. It said:
“Dear Sister Gustafson,
Please tell all the class that I kept the Lord’s Sabbath-day commandment. Sunday was a day of rest and worship for our family on our vacation. It was the best day of my vacation.
Love, Tina.”

1. Anna sat with her CTR 6 class in the Primary room. Sister Howe told the class,
Today we are going to talk about Christmas gifts. I would like you to think about what you can give to Jesus.
What gift could I give to Jesus? I don’t have very much money.
These gifts don’t cost money. They come from the heart. Who can name a gift you could give to Jesus?
2. Christina and Mason said,
I can be reverent in church.
I can be nice to my little brother.
3. Sister Howe handed a paper angel to each child.
You can write a gift you want to give to Jesus on your paper angel. Then the Primary president will put the angels on a tree.
4. Anna wrote, “I will say my prayers every day.”
5. The next Sunday, Anna saw the angel tree at church. She looked for her angel and saw it on a branch in the middle.
I love Christmas, Mom. And this year will be the best Christmas of all.
Why is that?
Because I’m giving a gift to Jesus.

by Terri Jensen
When selected chapels in your stake are only ten minutes from the Bull Run battlefield of Civil War fame, 20 minutes from George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and 30 minutes from Washington, D.C., it’s only natural that your stake roadshows would bear the theme, “What’s More American?”
And for the newly formed Fairfax Virginia Stake, they did.
On March 16 and 17, 176 youths paraded up aisles to open their first annual roadshows with just that question. They carried with them 176 possible answers in the form of corn flake boxes, toothpaste tubes, footballs, baseball gloves, Christmas tree decorations, American flags, rock albums, peanut butter jars, and an array of other paraphernalia.
“What’s More American?” was asked in song. It was answered at the song’s conclusion with a unanimous shout, “I am!”
Once it was established that there’s nothing more American than Americans, each decade of our 20th century was introduced with narration and slides made from authentic pictures of the period. Among the 76 slides shown were the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Henry Ford’s Model T, and Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara.
Each ward roadshow was developed around a decade and immediately followed its slide introduction. Wakefield Ward opened the century with Teddy Roosevelt frantically searching for his missing daughter, Alice. Even the Pinkertons were called in to assist. But it all ended happily with Alice’s lavish wedding to Mr. Longworth. Manassas Ward brought 1910–1920 alive with the suffragette movement.
The 1920s gave Fairfax Ward a story line that included everything from crashing airplanes to flappers and gangsters. Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen, and Shirley Temple were among those who helped Americans through the “Hard-Time 30s.” Prince William Ward brought them all to life with lavish imagination and costumes.
Warrenton Branch introduced the ’40s with a wartime laboratory that was trying to split the atom but ended up inventing the milk shake. Stuffing phone booths, doodling, and viewing 3-D movies didn’t make much sense to “square” Freddie of the 1950s. Woodbridge Ward showed Freddie finally finding someplace where he could excel so he was no longer considered a square. Fancy Foot Freddie and Boogie Woogie Betty ended the decade with a swinging rendition of the jitterbug.
The curtain closed. The combo began playing. Once again the Fairfax Stake young people marched up the aisles and began singing, “What’s More American?”
To accompany their singing, slides of the most American thing around were flashed on two large walls: The young people themselves were featured. They were hiking, laughing, running, playing, working, singing, picnicking, camping, painting, practicing, listening, serving, learning, wondering, stretching, yelling, swimming, eating, dancing, and praying.
After it was all over, church members may have driven past Bull Run, Mount Vernon, and Washington, D.C., on their journeys home. But the most American things in this area were still at the Fairfax chapel removing make-up and costumes.

Pres. Shumway extended an invitation for me to sculpt the sculpture of George Q. Cannon and Napela. I felt that it was an inspiration and I was moved to sculpt it.
On the day we unveiled the sculpture, a short Hawaiian lady came over to hug and congratulate me. She whispered a statement which inspired my new dream.

"Thank you for doing this for my people; I feel closer to them."

Ever since that day, I dreamed of doing the same thing for the Tongans. I went to the library and I found that the history of the Pacific Islands was well documented: the Samoans, Maori, Hawaiians, and the Tahitians, but nothing for Tonga.
I took this dream to the Lord and I have been in the heat since. I have been sweating for the past five years, navigating this dream. I have been searching the history of my roots, from mission records and journals of those American missionaries who have served in Tonga since Elder Brigham Smoot and Alva John Butler in 1891.
I titled this project "Seek the roots for the health of the shoots".

Like Deborah, Francisca puts her trust in the Lord.
Francisca is from Ghana. She joined the Church after she and her twin brother were adopted by a family in Idaho. She loves going to youth activities, but sometimes Francisca finds herself asking God if she truly belongs.
“I struggle to find my place in this world,” Francisca says. “But when I need help most, Jesus Christ is there to help me find my way. Jesus Christ has helped me through my struggles and has helped me find peace and comfort in my life. I know this Church is true, and I love my Savior who died for us.”
Both Deborah and Francisca are examples of steadfast faith in Jesus Christ.

“Mike,” Dad called. “Time for school.” Walking slowly down the stairs, Mike found Dad waiting for him at the bottom.
“Do I have to go?” Mike asked. “Can’t I wait until tomorrow?”
Dad shook his head. “There have been too many tomorrows. I understand how you feel, but you need to get caught up.”
“Mrs. Peters sent home some of my work,” Mike said.
Dad sighed and handed Mike a sweater. “Today I go back to work—and you go back to school.”
Mike felt tears welling up. Surely he wasn’t going to cry again! “It’s so hard without Mom.”
Dad knelt and hugged Mike. “I know.” Mike could see the pain in Dad’s eyes.
As Mike walked out the door, he looked at Mom’s beautiful rose garden. But it wasn’t beautiful anymore. Weeds were popping up everywhere. He sighed. Would anything ever be the same again?
School was the same—noisy children running and talking. Mike dragged himself into his third-grade classroom.
Sam, his best friend, waved. Mike tried to smile, but his smile wouldn’t work. He kept taking deep breaths and trying not to cry.
Mrs. Peters began class. Mike heard her talking, but his gaze wandered outside. It was sunny. “How can the world look bright when Mom has died?” he wondered. A tear slid down his nose.
“Look, Mike’s crying!” shouted Bill, who sat across the aisle.
Without thinking, Mike got up and ran out the door and down the hall. He would never go back to school again! He pushed open the big school doors and ran the five blocks home. It was cold without a sweater.
He went to his room to get a jacket, then sat on his swing in the backyard. He swung back and forth, staring at the ground.
He thought of going to Grandma’s house, but she was sad now, too. She used to laugh a lot and go bowling and bake cookies. He wondered if she had gone back to work, too.
Mike made the swing go higher. Maybe, he thought, he would fall off and die. Then he could go to heaven and see Mom.
He heard words like the wind in the trees—“Then Dad and Grandma wouldn’t have you. Would you want Dad to leave?”
He stopped the swing, his feet skidding in the dirt. Who had said that? Was it Mom, speaking to him from heaven? He looked around, but there was only the sound of leaves rustling in the wind.
Mike looked at the patch of blue sky through the trees. “I miss my mom! Please, Heavenly Father, help me!” His tears started again.
Suddenly he had the urge to go to Mom’s rose garden. He stood looking at the poor rosebushes, without water and with lots of weeds. Mom sure wouldn’t like that! He knelt and began pulling and yanking at the weeds. Then he grabbed the garden hose and watered the bushes he had weeded. Soon it would be spring, and the roses would bloom bright red and yellow and pink. He wondered if Mom would see them from heaven. Somehow he felt closer to her as he worked in her garden.
Dad’s car came roaring up the driveway. He jumped out, ran to Mike, and hugged him. “They called me from school.”
“I’ll go back tomorrow,” Mike promised. “Dad, look at the rosebushes.”
“Mom would be proud,” Dad said. “I’ll change clothes, and we can work on it together.”
As Mike weeded alongside Dad, he thought of the roses that would bloom. He could almost smell their fragrance. After they bloomed, he decided, he would pick some of them for Grandma.
Mike looked up to see Sam and Bill. The two boys looked at the weeds.
“Can we help?” Sam asked.
Mike nodded. Slowly, a smile crept onto his face.

Imagine that at 13 years old you move 6,700 miles (10,782 kilometers) across the world to a new home and a new family. You have to learn a new language and culture and eat unfamiliar foods. And you can’t physically see any of it.
You might be thinking, “How could anyone do something so hard?” Well, meet Conner—a cool, carefree, and cheerful teen from Wuhan, China.
Conner was raised in a foster home in China. When he was six years old, his foster family discovered that he had an incredible ear for music. And being blind didn’t stop him from pursuing his musical talent. He took piano lessons and began attending a special school for the blind.
But just a month before he turned 14, his foster father showed up at Conner’s school and pulled him out of class. “He said that I was going to be adopted and that I needed to go home right away,” Conner says. His friends, family, and teachers got together the next day and said their goodbyes as a new chapter began in Conner’s life.
Conner found himself half a world away in Herriman, Utah. His new family included Dad (Jeremy), Mom (Christianne), six new sisters, and three new brothers. And Conner wasn’t the only child from China—six of his new siblings had been adopted from there as well.
Christianne explains, “People say that our kids are so lucky to have a family, but Conner had to leave everything that was familiar to him—a foster family who loved him, food, culture, friends—to come to this family that he didn’t know. It was a huge change, and we feel very blessed to have Conner and all the kids in our home. They’re a gift.”

After we joined the Church, we continued to nourish the seed. Challenges came: poverty, the birth of a baby with a handicap, my husband becoming disabled, my trying to go to nursing school and working to support our family. When I graduated as an RN with an associate degree, I was pregnant. We were told the name of that child, but he was stillborn a couple of days before I was to take the RN-NCLEX exam. The Lord was there to help us through. We were taught about unconditional love, survival, obedience, and submissiveness to the will of the Lord and that the Lord was always near to lift us up. Occasionally I wondered why the Lord was not as near, and I realized He was not the one who had moved away—I had.

When I was 16, my seemingly healthy, vigorous 41-year-old father dropped dead while water skiing. As you can imagine, this was a shocking event in my life and caused me much anguish. Why did this happen? This event was cause for considerable reflection and much prayer as I struggled to set my own course. A few months later, standing on the newly grown grass over his grave at the Ogden, Utah, cemetery, I decided several important matters:
One, that I would always keep the Word of Wisdom.
Two, that I would serve a mission.
Three, that I would always make him proud that I was his son.
Four, that I would strive to be successful as he was.
Five, that I would always be active in the Church.
Six, that I would marry someone in the temple as fine as my mother.
These were simple yet life-defining decisions. They were as indelible as the words carved on my father’s headstone, for my resolve was, in effect, carved in stone—unalterable and resolute. I had “decided to decide.”

Greg stared out his bedroom window at the snowflakes fluttering down past the Christmas lights shining from the neighbor’s house. He could hear Christmas carols coming from the radio, and he could smell cookies baking. In four more days it would be Christmas, and he was sad.
He knew that Christmas was supposed to be a happy time. And he did have happy memories. As long as he could remember, his family had spent Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Grandpa told funny stories. They sang carols and popped popcorn. And they read about the birth of Jesus from the Bible.
But this year Greg would not be seeing his grandparents at Christmas, because they were serving a mission. Why did they have to go away? What’s so important about a mission? he wondered.
The next morning Greg stayed in the house. When he heard the lid drop on the mailbox, he ran out to get the mail. His grandparents had promised to send him a Christmas card. Maybe it had come today.
Greg carried in all of the letters. Most of them were Christmas cards addressed to his parents. But when he sorted through the envelopes again, sure enough, there was one addressed to him in Grandpa’s big handwriting!
Greg also found a blue airmail letter with thin up-and-down writing, addressed to “Mr. Greg Peters,” Who could have sent it? he wondered. It had the same postmark as his grandparents’ card.
Greg hurried to his room and sat on his bed to open the envelopes. On a pretty Christmas card, his grandparents had written, “Merry Christmas! Only four more months until we see you again! We miss you, and Christmas will seem strange without you. But we’re grateful that we can celebrate Jesus’ birthday by teaching others about the gospel. It’s our gift to Him this year. Love, Grandma and Grandpa.”
Four months until his grandparents came home! That still seemed like a long time to Greg.
The second envelope had a letter in it that read:
“Dear Greg,
“I want to thank you for the best Christmas present my family has ever received—we are being baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’re all being baptized—me, my wife, my children, and my parents. Then when we are ready, we will all go to the temple together.
“Your grandparents taught us the gospel. They say that you miss them very much and that they miss you too. They hope that you understand that they are on a mission so that they can teach families like mine how to be together forever.
“My family and I thank you for sharing your grandparents with us. Now my children can have their grandparents forever just like you can.
Sincerely,Gerald Hobbs”
Greg put the letter down and picked up his grandparents’ Christmas card. How about that! A whole family were being baptized because of Grandma and Grandpa.
Greg still missed Grandma and Grandpa, but maybe four months wouldn’t be so long after all. And maybe it wasn’t so bad to share them for one Christmas, especially for such a good reason.

“Blast that girl!” said Arnie to himself. “Blast me, too! And blast everything that has to do with that stupid art show.”
He glanced upward towards heaven. “Why?” he asked. “Why on the day before the biggest art show of my life does she have to come to my school? What did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve this?”
Not receiving any answer, Arnie looked down at the pad he held in his hand. The beginnings of a little boy playing in the sand were sketched lightly in blue. Oh, yes, the picture would be a good one, one of his best. It would make a nice finale to his entry in the contest. But it was nothing compared to Jana Lee Smithy’s paintings in oil!
Arnie grimaced. If only she had arrived two days later! Then the judging would have been over and the art student-of-the-year award would have been his. After that Miss Jana Lee could have been the best art student in the school; it wouldn’t have mattered. But no. There she was. And she was brilliant.
Arnie threw down his pencil and groaned audibly. He glanced around the small park where he drew many of his sketches and collected ideas. What a waste of a beautiful day! But how could he be content to turn in just four drawings? Jana Lee Smithy was going to show four completed oil paintings, each a vision of color and light. When her paintings were unveiled in the morning and the school compared hers to his slight “sketches,” Arnie knew how his classmates would react. “Well,” they would say, “Arnie’s not quite as good as he makes out to be, is he?” And people would nod in assent and then never stop talking about what a genius Jana Lee was.
Arnie looked at the small boy who was unknowingly modeling for his sketch. Hurriedly and quietly the boy was building himself a castle. Tiny hands moved quickly and knowingly through the granules of yellow dirt. Wary of sand too dry or sand too wet, the boy’s small fingers gathered piles of sand together and molded them into turrets and walls. Broken twigs served as posts and pillars and flags for the castle.
Arnie wasn’t sure what everything the boy made was, but it was certainly immense. When Arnie began his drawing, the little fellow had just begun the main building. Now stables, dogs’ houses, an armory, and finally a great wall had been formed. The child was amazing. Or, thought Arnie, he would be until something better came along. Then the castle would be merely a trifle, something to be forgotten—like Arnie would be after tomorrow.
Arnie frowned and looked at his drawing. Despite its unfinished quality, he felt tempted to just leave it as it was. Nothing could help him now. Numbers of drawings couldn’t change the quality of Jana Lee’s work. Finally, discipline got the better of him. He picked up the blue pencil and finished the final details of the picture.
After another 45 minutes the picture was finished. Arnie smiled at the little figure in the drawing. The contentment on the child’s face was contagious, and Arnie grinned. It was a futile effort, he knew, like the sand castle whose immortality would lie in the little boy’s heart rather than in the park. But, like the child, Arnie felt a glow at having done a good job. The glow wasn’t big enough to fill the emptiness he felt at being a failure, but it was nice nonetheless. He gathered up his pencils and put them in their case. Carefully, he stood and, with a nod to the little boy, headed for home.
By the time Arnie reached his street, the slight high that finishing the drawing had given him was gone. Even the coziness of the familiar, flower-lined path that led to his front door had no effect. There’s not much that can make a failure happy, he reflected. The sounds of family that echoed in the air didn’t help, either. In fact, the thought of seeing his hopeful mother, proud father, and admiring sister made him want to hide. They’d all had such high hopes for him. And now he was letting them down. Arnie stood on the doorstep for a second trying to decide whether or not to tell them that he’d seen the winning entries, halfway hidden behind Mr. Olsen’s desk, and they weren’t his. Arnie shook his head. He didn’t want their sympathy. He opened the door.
“I’m home,” he called.
Sheryll, his sister, bounded past him on her way to the kitchen. “You don’t say?” she laughed over her shoulder. “I never would have guessed.”
Arnie grimaced at her. Sisters. Freshmen. Two deadly ingredients when combined. He put his supplies down on the floor and headed for the stairs. His mother’s voice caught him two steps up.
“You’re not going to leave your things here in the hall, are you?” He turned around and looked into his mother’s warning brown eyes. Arnie grinned sheepishly.
“Me?”
She nodded. “My visiting teachers are coming over tonight.” Arnie looked knowingly at her. “Not,” she said, raising her voice as well as her eyebrows, “that that should make any difference.”
“Of course not, Mom,” Arnie replied. He gathered his things up and took them with him to his room. Carefully, he put the drawing on his desk and his kit on the floor. Shutting his door carefully behind him, he made his way to the bathroom where he washed his hands. As he did so, he tried to smile in the mirror. It didn’t do any good. His brown hair looked unruly, his eyes dim, and his face ruddy. What a depressing sight! If my eyes looked any redder … He shrugged off the thought. What had he to complain about? He wasn’t hoping to make a living with his face, just his hands.
“Which,” he said to the face in the mirror, “are proving to be betraying assets.” Arnie went down to dinner.
As the family took their places after the prayer, Arnie’s father looked over the mashed potatoes at his son.
“So, are you ready for tomorrow, Arnie?” he asked. Arnie choked on a pea.
When his coughing had subsided he replied, “About as ready as I’m going to get, Dad.”
“Then you should be plenty ready,” said his mother.
“What were you doing this afternoon?” asked Sheryll.
“I was drawing at the park.” Arnie looked down at his plate. “I thought one more piece might help me in the contest.”
“That smacks of overkill,” said his father.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Arnie.
“Besides,” said Sheryll, “everybody in school knows how good he is. All my friends like his stuff. One more drawing will be …”
“One more drawing,” interrupted Arnie. “Enough. Isn’t there anything else to talk about?”
His mother looked at him with concern. “Are you feeling all right, Arnie?”
“Just nerves, dear,” said his father. But still, even as he spoke, Mr. Wells looked at his son with a searching look.
Arnie ducked his father’s gaze and stuck his fork into his mouth. Oops, he thought as his father’s look changed to one of amazement. I should have put something on the fork first.
“Arnie, if there’s anything …”
Frustrated, Arnie stood up. “May I be excused? I’m finished. And I’ve got to mount this last drawing.”
He could see by the surprised looks on the faces of his family that they were amazed by the sudden outburst. He continued, “I’ll be in my room.” Arnie backed out of the room and fled up the stairs.
“Well, at least they only doubted my sanity,” Arnie said to himself as he shut and locked the door behind him. “They don’t have to doubt my abilities until tomorrow.”
He looked forlornly at the drawing on his desk. “Ah, friend, if you only knew what humiliation you will face tomorrow, you wouldn’t smile so much.”
The little boy grinned at him happily. The scripture in 2 Nephi flashed into Arnie’s mind. “And men are, that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:25). Arnie frowned. Well, he thought, joy certainly hasn’t been my cellmate these last few hours! What’s there to be joyful about? Instead of a talent made out of silk, I get one made of a sow’s ear. And I’m supposed to be happy! He shrugged and set about making the results of his poor talent presentable.
When he finished, Arnie put his five entries on his bed and looked at them one at a time. Each of them was pleasant to look at. The laughter and light in them was enough to make any viewer smile. Each drawing represented a lot of effort. It was a pity that they would go to waste. Arnie shook his head and readied himself for bed.
After placing the five drawings and his books near the door, Arnie knelt to say his nightly prayer. “Heavenly Father,” he began. But his mind went numb. Arnie had always trusted his Father in Heaven, but this night he found it difficult to bare his soul. Before, he’d always known of his worth as a child of God. He’d never had any reason to doubt. But now, Arnie wasn’t everything that he thought he was. It was a little difficult to explain to Heavenly Father that things were different and that Arnie wasn’t quite the person he thought he had been.
Finally, after many minutes of silence, only one thing came to his mind. “I don’t understand,” he said softly, “why I am what I am. But I must be of some importance, despite my faults. Help me be happy.”
Arnie paused, then closed his prayer. He climbed slowly into bed, and after tossing and turning for a long while, drifted into sleep.
The next morning dawned much too early for Arnie’s likes. I’m not any happier, he thought, than I was last night. But he did feel a little more distanced from the despair than he had felt the night before. His drawings, as he looked at them one more time before leaving the house, didn’t look quite as inelegant as they had seemed. Still, they weren’t going to win any awards. Arnie still wasn’t quite good enough to be what was expected.
Despite Sheryll’s chatter in the car, Arnie maintained a stony silence on the way to school. Luckily, his lively sister was so excited about the competition, the weather, and her best friend’s new boyfriend, that it would have been impossible for him to have said anything had he wanted to. Finally, the ride was over. He said good-bye to his father and sister and escaped down the hall to the art department.
Voices could be heard behind the wood door as Arnie approached. He really didn’t want to see anybody just yet and was about to turn away when the door opened.
“Ah, Arnie,” said Mr. Olsen. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Arnie smiled weakly.
Mr. Olsen beamed at him. “I was just going to take Jana Lee down to where she’ll be hanging her paintings. But maybe you can show her.”
Great, thought Arnie, now I’m a glorified hall monitor.
Mr. Olsen continued. “Since you and Jana will be hanging your works next to each other, that should I make things easier for all of us. That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
Arnie nodded.
“Good.”
Arnie sighed and turned around. He heard the sound of Jana Lee’s feet behind him.
“Wait a second, Arnie,” she said as she reached his side. Arnie turned to give her one of his pained looks. But when he saw her he stopped.
Jana Lee smiled and adjusted the paintings which had started to slip. But that wasn’t what stopped him. It wasn’t the paintings either, though they were as magnificent as ever. It was something that he saw in her eye, something that he recognized. Her eyes were as red-rimmed as his own.
Why? he thought. What had she to worry about? When she was ready, they headed towards the library. Neither said another word, though Arnie saw her looking at him once as he glanced at her.
As Arnie thought about what he had seen and what it meant, something occurred to him that he had never thought of before. In the parable of the talents, different talents were given to the servants: five talents, two talents, and one talent. Arnie had always just assumed that some people were five-talent people and some people were two-talent people. But what he knew when the image of Jana Lee’s overworked eyes sank deep into his heart was that most people started out with both talents and potential for talents. Just because you didn’t have five talents the first day didn’t mean you couldn’t have them—if you worked. Didn’t the Lord say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” to the man who began with two talents? He had started with two and had come away with four. He had done good work.
Arnie was also a worker. Perhaps, today, Arnie had two talents. But, as he thought back, he’d only begun with one. Perhaps next time, at the next competition, Arnie would have a five-talent art like Jana Lee. She, as he saw in her eyes, had worked for hers. He, as he knew in his heart, could work for his. And with that revelation, being pleased with his own work, Arnie was, for the first time in a long time, content.
He and Jana Lee reached the wall where they would hang up their works. After he helped her with the paintings, Jana Lee helped him with his drawings. When they reached the last one, that of the boy in the sand, Jana Lee smiled.
“This one’s really good,” she said. “Who was the model? He’s got such a knowing look on his face.”
“I don’t know who he was,” replied Arnie. “But he was a smart kid. And he built a great sand castle.”

“We have some great progenitors on the Paramore side of my family,” Elder Paramore continued. “My grandmother left Denmark alone at the age of eight. Her mother put her on a boat with a tag around her neck addressed to Ephraim, Utah. When she arrived in New York, some Mormon missionaries who had arranged to meet her there helped put the child aboard the train that would take her to her destination. What an experience for an eight-year-old girl! It makes me weep to think about it. I’m sure her mother thought that this was a wonderful chance for her daughter to be where the Church was strong.”

In Tokyo, Japan, Natsuko Soejima doubted she could teach well. “When I was called to be a youth Sunday School teacher,” she says, “I told the bishop I would be scared. But he said the call was from God, so I accepted.”
As a group, the class intimidated her because of the individual challenges they presented. Two of the youth had hearing disabilities. Some class members who had moved to Japan from other countries spoke only English. She also feared the age difference between her and her class members.
Then, in a teacher council meeting, Sister Soejima found an answer. “We talked about loving each class member, learning their names, praying for them one by one, and teaching—guided by the Spirit—according to their needs,” she explains, “so that’s what I began to do.” She also did something else she’d learned in the council: “I used language that conveyed my love.”
The result? “My heart changed. I began to feel affection for my students. I cared about those who were missing and prayed for them too. As soon as one lesson ended, I started preparing for the next, to have time to think about teaching opportunities. I was overflowing with joy.”

Some thirty-five years ago I was seated in the choir seats of the Assembly Hall situated on the southeast corner of Temple Square. The setting was stake conference. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith and Elder Alma Sonne had been assigned to reorganize our stake presidency. The Aaronic Priesthood, including members of bishoprics, were providing the music for the conference. Those of us who served as bishops were singing along with our young men. As we concluded singing our first selection, Elder Smith stepped to the pulpit and announced the names of the new stake presidency. I am confident the other members of the presidency had been made aware of their callings, but I had not. After reading my name, Elder Smith announced, “If Brother Monson is willing to respond to this call we shall be pleased to hear from him now.” As I stood at the pulpit and gazed out on that sea of faces, I remembered the song we had just sung. Its title was “Have Courage, My Boy, to Say No.” I selected as my acceptance theme “Have Courage, My Boy, to Say Yes.”

At sacrament meeting I watched other families sit together. I watched them smile at each other. I wanted my dad to be there. I wanted our family to sit together.
But he never came to church. He said they didn’t like him because he drank beer. My ward had parties for fathers and their children. I helped plan these parties. I never got to go to them.
On Father’s Day our ward gave rosebuds to all the fathers. I helped pick every rosebud in our garden. My dad didn’t come to the meeting.
I hated it when they talked about temple marriage at church. I hated hearing my family was different. I knew as long as my father drank we could not go to the temple. I loved my mother. I loved my dad. I wanted to be with them forever. It’s very difficult to sit in class when they are teaching about the temple.
I just kept going to church. I decided I would not drink. I decided I would be married in the temple.
I’m an adult now, and I definitely don’t drink. I have been married in the temple, and I’m happy that my children are sealed to me.

“She’s like my mom,” says Ricardo of his grandmother. “She has been raising me since I was young.” Ricardo lives with his grandmother and grandfather and four of his uncles. “My grandfather suffers from Parkinson’s disease, so I do things like help him get in his chair,” Ricardo says. Ricardo is constantly trying to teach his family by example. “I try to be an example when I go to church because when I’m on the right path, my family is watching me, and I want them to come to church too.”
Even though Ricardo and his grandmother are the only active members of the Church in their house, he says, “We all have family home evening together.”
Standing up front and teaching the lesson each Monday is young Ricardo. “I use the Book of Mormon and the Bible for family home evening lessons,” he says. “I read the story and then testify. Sometimes I use the lesson manual for deacons.”
Ricardo also testifies to his friends and neighbors. “In my neighborhood I tell my friends stories about Christ, about prophets, about Nephi,” he says. “I tell them stories I’ve heard in church about faith and about how prayer helps us in our lives. Some friends stay and listen, but others leave. That’s a way I can be an example.”
No longer does Ricardo walk to church alone. Now every Sunday he puts on his shirt and tie, takes his grandmother by the hand, and they walk together. Who knows? In time, Ricardo will probably be leading others to church with him.