Gospel Story Finder

Chris had a hard time with his diabetes when he was a teenager. Living the lifestyle of a teenager—eating out at 2:00 a.m., having a crazy sleep schedule—was hard on his body. For most of his teenage years, he tried to deny that he even had a disease.
At college, a good friend helped Chris make some big changes in his physical and spiritual health. “Up to that point,” Chris says, “I had never really taken the gospel or my life seriously. As I started to read the Book of Mormon for the first time, I felt my whole life changing. Not only did I feel the enlightening effects come into my life that one feels when reading the Book of Mormon, but I also started to feel more concern for my body and my life.”
Chris says his decision to read the Book of Mormon led to other decisions that helped him become healthier. For the first time in his life, he started testing his blood-sugar level not just several times a week like he used to, but several times a day. He says, “I began to feel so much better as I started to take care of myself.”
After Chris finished reading the Book of Mormon and received an answer that it is true, he decided to serve a mission. “Serving a mission can be tough,” Chris says. “Every day brought something new for me and my diabetes to try and conquer.” But he believes the Lord blessed him to maintain control. “Constant fluctuations in schedules, modes of transportation, and eating would lead most diabetics to out-of-control blood sugars, but the Lord was watching over me as I served my mission.” Since Chris started taking better care of himself, his health has been almost perfect.
Chris is grateful that he was not only able to serve a mission but that he was able to serve with all of his strength. “The work never suffered as a result of my having diabetes. I saw God’s hand in my missionary work every day, and I still see it now.”

He liked to grow unusual things in his garden, and one spring day I remember asking him what he was planting. He replied, “Goober peas.” When I told him I had never heard of goober peas, he gave me some and told me to go home and plant them in our garden. I did, and I watched them carefully as they grew. When I expressed my concern that I couldn’t see any fruit on the vine, he told me to be patient. The day came when it was time to harvest the goober peas. Elmer showed me how to dig around the plants, and was I surprised and delighted to find that under the ground were mounds of peanuts just waiting to be roasted—Elmer’s goober peas.

The summer I was 15, a new family with teenage daughters moved into the ward. While my family was considered “goody-goody,” this family, though they were active, was definitely not goody-goody. The teenage girls always seemed to be having fun, and I felt awkward and left out when I was around them. But when it was time for girls’ camp that summer, I, of all people, was assigned to their cabin. I was determined to prove that I was not as goody-two-shoes as I seemed.
The campground where we had girls’ camp was used by other groups throughout the summer. On the rafters of the cabins, some of them had written their names and the year they were at camp. We were on the top bunks, reading some of the names, when one of the girls said, “We should put our names up there too.”
“Sure!” I agreed.
“No way you would do that,” said the other girl.
“Sure, I would,” I said. I decided that one more name wouldn’t really be noticeable. I also noted that the other girls thought it would be something on the edge—a thing they might do, but not something a straight arrow like me would do.
We pulled out some markers and began. The other girls wrote their names in small letters and with little flourish. I, however, wrote my name, the date, and “Girls’ Camp” in 5-inch-high flowing script with a decorative flower finish. The other girls were impressed, and we went to bed. I thought no more of it.
Others did, however. During cabin inspections, our decorations were discovered, and we were given bleach, water, and sandpaper to try to repair the damage we had done. I couldn’t erase my ink, which had penetrated the rough wood beams. After the fruitless scrubbing, the other girls were dismissed, and I got a lecture.
I heard how my actions would hurt the Church’s reputation. I heard how disappointed the leaders were that I would do something like that. “We wouldn’t expect it of you,” I heard over and over. And every evening, my name glared at me from the rafter overhead, shaming me in brilliant blue.
I was allowed to stay at camp and eventually stopped hearing about my transgression. But I heard more once I got home. The camp staff had called my parents.
My mom didn’t get angry, but her disappointment was deep. She asked why I did it. I explained how I felt left out and how I wanted to do something to show I could walk on the edge.
After talking to my mom I realized that I had done to my family and to myself the same thing I had done to the Church. By plastering my name where it shouldn’t have been in an act of vandalism, I had demeaned my parents’ good name.
I also realized that when I pursue popularity at the expense of respect, I am in danger of dishonoring the name of Christ or giving others the impression that I don’t belong to His family.
Since this experience I have often thought what a blessing it will be if, at the end of this life, we can give a good report to our Savior when He asks what we have done with His name. None of us will want to admit that we sold our good name for social acceptance or that we gave it up for a questionable video, for a girlfriend or boyfriend, for a bottle of beer, or for the laughter of friends. I know we will want to say that we have preserved our name by standing for truth and righteousness at all times—when it’s easy and fun and even when it’s not.
What’s in a name? As I realized that summer at girls’ camp, it can be quite a lot. When I think of my name blaring bright blue to future generations of campers, I remember the blessing and responsibility of carrying a good name, both for my mortal family and for the Church and family of Christ.

As a child, Elder Morrison and his family attended church meetings of another denomination. When he moved in with his uncle’s family to attend high school, he attended Latter-day Saint meetings with them and then meetings at his church. An early-morning seminary teacher invited him to attend seminary, where he met Hannah Nyarko.
“She was very intelligent and would give great comments,” he said. “It really gave me the edge to want to study more.” After studying the Book of Mormon that year, he said, “I was ready for baptism.”

The chain reaction continued as Ana Carolina reached out to a new investigator. Tatiane Pimenta, age 16, began attending church when she and her family were introduced to the Church by Sister Pimentel. “I felt very timid because I didn’t know anyone,” Tatiane says. “I quietly stayed in the corner.”
But soon things began to change for Tatiane. “I started feeling good because I made a friend.” In one class, Sister Pimentel introduced a game in which all the girls put their shoes in the middle of the floor, put on someone else’s, then got to know the owner of the shoes they had picked. “That’s how I started talking to Ana Carolina,” remembers Tatiane. “She became my first friend, a friend who encouraged me a lot. Because of her, I felt able to join the Church.”

August 20
Dear Sarah,
Mr. Trujillo and I took the beans to the Farmer’s Market and sold them. I got $8.00! After tithing, that’s $7.20 I have ready to send you, but I’ll wait till I get some more.
Yesterday I picked beans again. It was easier this time.
Do you remember the Claybourne family? The ones with all those kids? Well, he lost his job, and they’re having a hard time. Mom said they’re trying to get by on their food storage, so she wondered if I would mind giving them the beans from this picking to freeze for the winter. Mom said she’d like to freeze some, too, and that would help us have more money for bills and for you.
So I told Mr. Trujillo why I wouldn’t be selling my beans this time, and he looked at me sort of funny again, then gave me a bushel from his rows too. We gave the Claybournes zucchini also.
I hope you won’t mind about the bean money.
Love,Angela the Delivery Girl

The next time I had to use the Church’s full name, I was visiting a friend at a church of another faith. Someone came up to me and with a bright smile asked if I was a Mormon. “I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, yes,” I said. He started asking me several questions, each beginning with: “Does the Mormon Church believe … ?” And each time, I began my answer with the phrase: “In the restored Church of Christ, we believe …”
This banter went back and forth four or five times. When he noticed that I wasn’t accepting the title “Mormon,” he asked me point-blank, “Are you not Mormon?”
So I asked him if he knew who Mormon was—he didn’t. I told him that Mormon was a prophet, a historian, a military general, and a political figure in the ancient Americas. I am honored to be associated with a man who was so dedicated to the service of God and others.
“But,” I continued, “Mormon didn’t die for my sins. Mormon didn’t shed his blood for me or suffer in Gethsemane or die on the cross. Mormon isn’t my God. Jesus Christ is my God and my Savior. He is my Redeemer. And it is by His name that I want to be known at the last day, and it’s by His name that I hope to be known today.”
I felt the assurance of the Spirit supporting me in this short testimony to my new acquaintance. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “So, you are a Christian?”
“Yes, I am a Christian,” I responded, “and a member of Christ’s restored Church.”

It was a windy day in Mongolia. Nine-year-old Batbayar was walking home from the bus stop after school. He hugged his coat tighter in the wind. Luckily, it wasn’t far to his grandparents’ house, where he lived.
“Hi!” Batbayar said as he came inside.
“Welcome home,” Grandma said. “I made some khuushuur for a snack.”
“Thank you!” Batbayar reached for one of the warm, spicy meat pies.
“Wait! Don’t eat any until the missionaries get here,” Grandpa said. “They’ll be coming any minute.”
Batbayar loved it when the missionaries from Grandma and Grandpa’s church came to visit. He always learned a lot from them. But there was just one problem.
“Will they ask me to read from the Book of Mormon again?” Batbayar asked. “Reading is hard for me.”
“That’s why they’re bringing another book today,” Grandma said.
“What book?” Batbayar said.
“You’ll see,” Grandpa said.
Soon the missionaries arrived. They ate Grandma’s delicious meat pies together. Then Batbayar said, “Grandma says you brought me a book.”
“I think you’ll like this book,” Sister Heitz said. “It has lots of pictures.”
Batbayar looked at the cover. Book of Mormon Stories, it said. A picture on the cover showed people building a boat.
“I remember that story,” Batbayar said. “The man didn’t know how to build a boat. So he prayed. And God helped him.”
“That’s right,” Sister Enkhtuya said. “Will you try reading this book? Then you can pray to know that what it teaches is true.”
“I will,” Batbayar promised.
That night he read from the book with pictures. He read the story about the boat. Then he prayed. He fell asleep thinking about the man who built the boat and how God helped him.
From then on, each night Batbayar read a story. Then he prayed. And each night, he fell asleep thinking about what he read.
When the sister missionaries came again, they taught Batbayar more about Jesus Christ. Batbayar learned about prophets. He learned about God’s commandments. He kept going to church with Grandma and Grandpa. And he kept reading and praying.
One day Batbayar had something important to tell his grandparents. “When I read the stories in the book with pictures, my heart feels good,” he said. “When I pray, I feel they are true. I think I should be baptized.”
Today, Batbayar is a member of the Church. He has gotten better and better at reading. And he still reads the Book of Mormon every night!

After watching his newborn nephew, Austin, suffer so long before receiving a transplant, Eric McClellan, a 17-year-old priest from the San Jose California Stake, decided to do a good turn. Now this wasn’t your typical, daily good turn expected of all Scouts. Rather it was a three-month-long Eagle Scout project inspired by a woman who willingly gave her bone marrow to a five-month-old boy she didn’t even know. Eric used his Eagle Scout project as a way to return her good deed. He did this by organizing a bone marrow registry drive in conjunction with his stake’s blood drive.
To begin his project, Eric met with a Red Cross representative and discussed the immediate needs of his community. Eric and other Scouts under his direction then distributed the fliers and some sign-up sheets to the wards in his stake. Then, after weeks of reminders, Eric and his mom got on the phone the night before the drive to call and remind all 108 people on the sign-up sheets.
All this reminding paid off. The next evening 68 pints of blood were collected, and 34 people were tested for bone marrow and put on the national registry.
During the drive Eric, his dad, and one of his friends labeled the blood bags, another Scout escorted donors to the refreshment table, and some adults in the stake typed Red Cross forms. “I learned a lot about organization and organizing people to do the jobs that they are supposed to and getting everything to run smoothly,” Eric said.
Through his service, Eric hopes to spare others the suffering that his nephew and the rest of his family had to go through while waiting for a suitable bone marrow donor. Remembering the difficult five months before Austin had his transplant, Eric says, “It was hard for my sister [Austin’s mom], because she had to just keep hoping that there would be someone found that would match him. If they find someone from my drive to be a donor for someone else, I’ll feel good.”

While a member of the Council of the Twelve, Elder McKay owned a big boar named Caesar. One Sunday morning Caesar broke out of his enclosure. Not having time to repair the fence before catching a train, Elder McKay put him in the chicken coop. But he forgot to tell any of his boys about it. That night at 2 A.M., the McKay household was awakened by the incessant ringing of the telephone. Answering it, fearful that a tragic message was involved, they received a telegram over the phone: “Caesar in chicken coop. Water him!”

The Laurels in the Arvada Second Ward, Arvada Colorado Stake, exemplified the meaning of sharing at their “Time for Sharing” program recently. Earlier they had determined to make and give a quilt to someone as a service project. When their “Time for Sharing” night drew near, they decided to present it to their stake Young Women president, scheduled to be the guest speaker. The girls wanted the quilt to be something Sister Felice Swain would treasure as she had served lovingly for six years and was now preparing to move to Arizona. After discussing different ideas, they decided to incorporate the six areas of focus of the personal progress program into the quilt.
The Laurels spent one evening learning to quilt and getting started on their project. Copies of the pictures representing the areas of focus were hand-appliquéd onto the quilt. In addition to their Mutual night, the girls also planned a Saturday afternoon quilting bee and potluck lunch with their mothers. Many extra hours after school, as well as some evenings and Saturdays, were devoted to finishing it. As a final touch each of the Laurels embroidered her own autograph onto the back of their handmade gift of love.

In 1895 my great-grandfather, Abinadi Olsen, was called on a mission to the Samoan Islands. Obedient to the call of the prophet, he left his wife and four small children, including my maternal grandmother, Chasty Magdalene, in the town of Castle Dale, Utah. He traveled by train and ship to the mission headquarters in Apia, a journey of 26 days. His first assignment was to labor on the island of Tutuila.

After many weeks of living in what he called a grass hut, eating strange food, suffering severe illnesses, and struggling to learn the Samoan language, he seemed to be making no progress in his missionary work. Homesick and discouraged, he seriously considered boarding a boat back to Apia and telling the mission president he didn’t want to waste any more time in Samoa. The obstacles to the accomplishment of his mission seemed insurmountable, and he wished to return to his wife and children, who were struggling to support him in the mission field.

A friend who heard Abinadi Olsen describe the experience some years after his return, quoted him as follows:
“Then one night, as I lay on my mat on the floor of my hut, a strange man entered, and in my own language told me to get up and follow him. His manner was such that I had to obey. He led me through the village and directly against the face of a perpendicular solid-rock cliff. That’s strange, thought I. I’ve never seen that here before, and just then the stranger said, ‘I want you to climb that cliff.’
“I took another look and then in bewilderment said, ‘I can’t. It’s impossible!’
“‘How do you know you can’t? You haven’t tried,’ said my guide.
“‘But anyone can see’—I started to say in objection. But he cut in with, ‘Begin climbing. Reach up with your hand—now with your foot.’
“As I reached, under orders that I dared not disobey, a niche seemed to open in the solid-rock cliff and I caught hold. Then with my one foot I caught a toehold.
“‘Now go ahead,’ he ordered. ‘Reach with your other hand,’ and as I did so another place opened up, and to my surprise the cliff began to recede; climbing became easier, and I continued the ascent without difficulty until, suddenly, I found myself lying on my pallet back in my hut. The stranger was gone!
“Why has this experience come to me? I asked myself. The answer came quickly. I had been up against an imaginary cliff for those three months. I had not reached out my hand to begin the climb. I hadn’t really made the effort I should have made to learn the language and surmount my other problems” (Improvement Era, Aug. 1957, 554).

It is hardly necessary to add that Abinadi Olsen did not leave the mission. He labored for three and a half years, until released by appropriate authority. He was an exceptionally effective missionary, and he was a faithful member of the Church for the rest of his life.

Some decisions are choices between doing something or doing nothing. I heard an example of this kind of choice at a stake conference in the United States many years ago.
The setting was a beautiful college campus. A crowd of young students was seated on the grass. The speaker who described this circumstance said they were watching a handsome tree squirrel with a large, bushy tail playing around the base of a beautiful hardwood tree. Sometimes it was on the ground, sometimes up and down and around the trunk. But why would that familiar sight attract a crowd of students?
Stretched out prone on the grass nearby was an Irish setter. He was the object of the students’ interest, and the squirrel was the object of his. Each time the squirrel was momentarily out of sight circling the tree, the setter would quietly creep forward a few inches and then resume his apparently indifferent posture. This was what held the students’ interest. Silent and immobile, their eyes were riveted on the event whose outcome was increasingly obvious.
Finally, the setter was close enough to bound at the squirrel and catch it in his mouth. A gasp of horror arose, and the crowd of students surged forward and wrested the little animal away from the dog, but it was too late. The squirrel was dead.
Anyone in that crowd could have warned the squirrel at any time by waving his or her arms or crying out, but none did. They just watched while the inevitable outcome got closer and closer. No one asked, “Where will this lead?” When the predictable occurred, all rushed to prevent the outcome, but it was too late. Tearful regret was all they could offer.
That true story is a parable of sorts. It applies to things we see in our own lives and in lives and circumstances around us. As we see threats creeping up on persons or things we love, we have the choice of speaking or acting or remaining silent. It is well to ask ourselves, “Where will this lead?” Where the consequences are immediate and serious, we cannot afford to do nothing. We must sound appropriate warnings or support appropriate preventive efforts while there is still time.

“Mom, something happened at school today that’s really bothering me.” Angie dropped her backpack on the floor and flopped down on the couch.
Mom looked up from the book she was reading. “Oh? What happened?”
“Well, there’s a new boy named Musa in my class.”
“That’s great!” Mom said. “Did you talk to him?”
“No, and I don’t want to!” Angie said. “He’s mean.”
“What did he do?”
Angie scowled. “I saw him walking to school with his sister. He made her walk behind him the whole way! Every time she tried to walk next to him, he’d hurry and get in front of her. It made me so mad.”
Mom frowned. “That doesn’t sound very nice. Maybe he could use a friend like you to show him how to treat others with love.”
Just then, Angie’s younger sister, Meghan, rushed in. “Mom, guess what? There’s a new girl in my class! Her name is Dalia Kader. Isn’t that a beautiful name?”
“I think her brother is in my class,” Angie said.
“Really? You’re so lucky.”
Angie frowned. “Lucky? Why?”
“Dalia told me all about him!”
“I bet she did,” Angie muttered.
“She said she had to put some eye drops in this morning, and she was supposed to wear sunglasses to protect her eyes, but she forgot. So when they walked to school, Musa walked in front of her the whole way to shade her from the sun. Wasn’t that so nice?”
Angie blinked in surprised. Had she misjudged Musa?
“He sounds like a very thoughtful brother,” Mom said.
“He is!” Meghan said. “And when they got to school, he walked with her to the office so they could call home. And he stayed with her until her mom brought the sunglasses.”
Wow, Angie thought. I guess I didn’t see what was really happening.
Meghan sat down next to Angie on the couch. “Dalia’s sunglasses are really cool! They’re purple with jewels on them. Mom, can I invite her over this week? We could both wear our sunglasses and play dress-up!”
“Good idea,” Mom said. “Why don’t you invite Musa too? I’d like to meet both of them. What do you think, Angie?”
“I’d like to meet them too.” Angie smiled. “I think Musa would be a great friend.”

My name is Emma, and I am six years old. I love to read the Friend with my little brother, Dallas, who is four. We especially enjoy reading the stories at the back where children share stories about how they are trying to be like Jesus. We cut them out and save them in a special folder so we can read them again and again. The other day, Dallas and I did something that our mother said was following the example of Jesus Christ.
Our mother was feeling very sad. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know what I could do so she could feel better. Then I remembered that I should try to be like Jesus. Jesus comforts those who are sad. I went over to where my mother was sitting, gently put my arms around her, and held her to my shoulder. She looked up and told me that she felt special to know how much I love and care about her.
Then Dallas came into the room and asked what was wrong. Mother explained that she was feeling sad. He also hugged her and softly said, “Mommy, Jesus felt sad, too, when the men put nails in His hands. They were mean and spit on Him and laughed at Him. I love you, Mommy.” Mother sat up and wiped away her tears. Then she told Dallas and me that she didn’t feel sad anymore, because we had reminded her that Jesus loves us and that He had suffered more than anyone. We felt good knowing that we had helped Mother by following the example of Jesus.

At the October 1856 general conference, President Brigham Young (1801–77) announced that handcart pioneers were still crossing the plains and that everyone was to help gather supplies for them immediately. Lucy Meserve Smith wrote that women “stripped off their petticoats [large underskirts], stockings, and every thing they could spare, right there in the Tabernacle, and piled [them] into the wagons.”

As the rescued pioneers began to arrive in Salt Lake City, Lucy wrote, “I never took more … pleasure in any labor I ever performed in my life, such a unanimity of feeling prevailed. I only had to go into a store and make my wants known; if it was cloth, it was measured off without charge.”4

The small farmhouse appeared dreamlike in the predawn Florida mist that enveloped it and the surrounding swamplands. A large white ibis resting atop a darkened tree shape started at the sound of a screen door banging closed. A young girl ran from the farmhouse toward an as yet invisible landing on the edge of the swamp. She was crying and carrying a large doll with a broken right leg.
Cassie Gunnerson climbed into one of three wooden boats, untethered the rope that secured it to the pier, and shoved off into the gray silence. Using a long pole, she pushed with angry, tearful grunts against the soggy bottom of the shallow water.
The ibis blinked its eye, and the eleven-year-old girl was gone, swallowed up by the mist.
It wasn’t long before Cassie’s twelve-year-old brother, Nathan, and their parents, were up and searching for her. “We got in a fight, Pa,” Nathan sheepishly admitted as he and his parents scoured the mangrove thickets on the outer edge of the field. No one bothered to call to Cassie because she had been born deaf. “Cassie dropped the spyglass you gave me into the water yesterday while we were fishing, because …” Nathan’s voice trailed.
“Because why?” his father gently but firmly probed.
“Well,” Nathan continued somewhat hesitantly, “I guess because I cut her line. And that’s because,” he added defensively, “she kept splashing her feet in the water and scaring away the fish!”
“You haven’t told us why she ran off,” Nathan’s mother prompted him.
Nathan’s eyes fell, then lifted slowly. “I really liked that spyglass.” His look shifted to his father’s, hoping to find some kind of sympathy. But what he saw was deepening concern. “With it I could see things in the marsh nobody knew were there,” Nathan continued. “Little things like cooties and skater bugs and cucumber beetles and potter wasps and …” Anger festered inside Nathan as he tried to justify what he was about to say. “I broke Cassie’s doll,” he declared, “because of what she did to my spyglass!”
“Do you realize how long your sister saved for that doll?” Nathan’s mother questioned sternly. “How much it meant to her?”
“I guess about as much as my spyglass,” Nathan retorted.
Father rested his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Do two wrongs make a right?”
Nathan’s mother stared toward the swamp. “Cassie’s boat is gone!”
The swamp was deep, a maze of twisting waterways in a jungle of trees and vines. What made matters worse was Cassie’s being deaf. She couldn’t hear them call for her.
Father rested a calming hand on his wife’s arm. He turned to Nathan. “Son, I’ll take my boat; you take yours. I’ll carry my rifle; you take my Colt Dragoon. Whichever one of us finds Cassie first will fire three shots, is that understood?”
“Yes, Pa.”
Father’s eyes focused on Mother. “You stay near the house, in case Cassie shows up here first. Grandpa Sawyer’s pepperbox pistol is in the root cellar. If she does come here, fire three rounds to let us know.”
Nathan navigated his small boat through the lily-pad-laden backwater with his long pole. His eyes scanned the densely brushed islands and the countless waterways between the huge cypress trees for any sign of his sister’s boat. To his right, on some goldenrod that protruded above a log wrapped with Spanish moss, he observed a tiger swallowtail butterfly. To his left, a harmless rat snake rested in the fold of a dead tree. Directly above him on an old, dilapidated walkway that spanned two small islands, a gray squirrel chattered loudly and shook its bushy tail at him. And less than fifty yards in front of Nathan a sandhill crane waded looking for food. The young boy found himself thinking that he would gladly trade all these wondrous sights for a glimpse of his younger sister.
The boat scraped against hidden roots of cypress trees and groaned like Nathan’s conscience. He gazed into the smooth, glassy water and stared at his reflection. Then he disrupted his image with a swish of the pole—he didn’t like what he saw.
The thrashing of brushwood on one of the nearby small islands caused him to lift his eyes with a start. There, in a little clearing high atop dry ground, Nathan witnessed two male white-tailed deer contending with each other. They pushed against each other with their heads and curved antlers. Finally the fight ended when one of them tired and ran away. “I guess Cassie got tired of fighting and ran away, too,” Nathan muttered. “It was a stupid argument,” he added as he continued on down the winding, watery corridor. “Why do people who love each other fight so much? And what if something’s happened to Cassie and I didn’t tell her I was sorry!” Nathan’s pace quickened, scanning the shadows with unblinking scrutiny.
Nathan searched all day, meandering in and out of a maze of waterways. He was a few miles from home when it started to rain. He steered his little boat under the protection of an overhanging tree limb. His eyes welled up. He hadn’t heard any gunshots. Cassie hadn’t been found, nor had she returned home. He gazed through the gray curtain of falling rain. “Cassie!” he screamed, knowing full well that she couldn’t have heard him even if she was sitting right beside him. He bowed his head and beseeched his Heavenly Father to help him find his sister. He knew that Heavenly Father could hear him even through the pounding rain.
A few moments later the rain stopped as quickly as it had started, and Nathan continued his search. A great horned owl stared out of the mossy shadows with its bright yellow eyes and hooted as the little boat moved quietly by.
A short time later Nathan’s dugout floated into a clearing. He felt prompted to stop and listen. He heard someone whimpering! Rapidly poling toward the sound, he saw a small boat harbored along the shore of an island. Then he saw Cassie. She was sitting in a patch of goldenrod, her face soiled and drawn, her hair tangled. She looked very lost and very frightened. Relief washed over Nathan.
A moment later Nathan was standing before his sister. She was relieved to see him, but her reaction was dulled by leftover hurt. He glanced at the broken doll in Cassie’s boat, then at a paint-root plant in a tuft of grass. He picked some seeds from it and crushed them on a smooth rock. He dabbed his index finger in orange dye from the seeds and wrote “I love you” on Cassie’s arm. After a long look at her arm, then at Nathan, Cassie leaned forward and hugged her brother.
Smiling through his tears, he took his father’s Colt Dragoon from his boat and fired three rounds skyward.

She had just finished caring for her precious flowers one morning in ’59 when she received a phone call telling of an accident at her husband’s work. Two weeks later, father and son lay side by side for what she believed would be forever.

It had been hard after that accident that took her husband, but with help from the older children who were married and gone, she had managed to keep the house and property from becoming real estate owned by the Peoples City Bank.

“I grew up being in Primary plays and pageants. One recollection I have is of a Sister Paul and the making of costumes for these productions. As soon as school was out, Sister Paul would gather us children together and we would march around our neighborhood. I remember the feelings I had while marching with this little fluffy-haired lady. We would gather material, bits of lace, buttons, and ribbon to make costumes for the pageants. Sister Paul made it fun and exciting and allowed us to help make the costumes. These costumes became famous and were borrowed by people from all over. In fact, our enterprise may have been the beginning of the first costume rental business in the city.
“Another recollection I have from childhood is memorable to me because it became a powerful lesson in my life. Pioneer Day is a time of great celebration in Salt Lake City. It is climaxed with a long parade on the morning of July 24th. When I was a preschooler, I was asked to be on the Primary Children’s Hospital float. Of course, this was very exciting to me. Mother bought me a new nightgown and fixed my hair with a ribbon. Father walked me down to where the parade was forming—and there was the float! The woman in charge of this float turned and looked at me. She said, ‘Look at her! We chose her because she looked sick and was skinny.’ She took hold of my hair ribbon and pulled it out of my hair. Then she took one of those big powder puffs and put white powder all over my face. I was crushed. I’d had visions of riding as a queen on the float.
“Before the parade began, my father took me into the hospital, which was then right across the street from the north gate of Temple Square, to talk to the children—wisely, I know now, because I was heart-broken. I was introduced to all the children as the one who was going to represent them in the hospital bed on the float. They banged their crutches and shook their metal cribs as their way of saying, ‘Hurray!’ I went back outside and quickly got up onto the float. The cover on the bed hid my new nightgown, and the hair ribbon was gone. All you could see was my little white face. But I was happy now. I was representing all the children in the hospital. I was just pretending to be sick—for them. It was a wonderful lesson to me, one that I shall never forget.

“When I worked at the candy shop,” his older sister began, “I practically ate my paycheck each week in candy. I couldn’t help myself, it tasted so good. Finally after praying about it, I decided to set a candy quota for each day. If I stuck to my quota, I rewarded myself by taking the money I would have spent on candy and putting it toward a new pair of jeans. Some days I didn’t make it, but gradually I ate less candy. And I got the jeans!”