Gospel Story Finder

Suey watched Deana glide, spin around, and come to a stop at the end of the walk. She’s rolling on magic wheels, Suey thought, trying to imagine having her own magic wheels. She pushed the thought away quickly. Here in America she had so much that it would be ungrateful to want more.
Deana skated back and sprawled beside her friend. “Like them?” she asked.
“Oh, yes! What you call them?”
“Roll-er skates,” Deana said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly. “Roller skates.”
Suey tried to echo the words.
Deana clapped her hands approvingly. “Very good, Suey. You’re getting your r’s much better.”
Suey grinned. “How you get?” she asked.
“For my birthday,” Deana answered. Seeing Suey’s puzzled look, she tried to explain. “In America we get presents on our birthdays.”
Suey shook her head. The words had come too fast for her to understand. She tried another question: “Cost lots of money?”
Deana tried to speak more slowly. “I guess so. My mother told me that if I lose them I’ll be sorry.”
“Is it hard to make skates go?” Suey asked next.
“Just a little, at first,” Deana replied. “Here,” she offered, “try them yourself.”
Suey felt as if she were wobbling like a little baby as she stood up with the skates on. She clung to Deana and managed to not fall down. When she finally tried to move down the walk, her feet wanted to go every which way. Soon, with Deana’s help, she skated teeteringly to the corner, where they both collapsed on the grass with laughter.
“You did OK,” Deana said to her Laotian friend. “If you had your own skates,” she continued, speaking slowly, “you would soon skate like me.”
“No money,” Suey confessed.
Deana got up and brushed herself off. “Maybe you could earn some money. Sometimes I work for the neighbors, and they pay me for it. Maybe you could do that too.”
That night as Suey lay in her bed, she thought about Chu Nam, her brother. He earned money by cutting grass and by washing dishes at a restaurant. She sat up excitedly. She knew how to wash dishes! She could hardly wait until morning.
Suey was eleven, but she was small and looked much younger. She hoped the ladies in the neighborhood would not think she was too small to wash dishes.
She went to see Mrs. Bonn first. Mrs. Bonn had helped to bring Suey’s family to America.
When Mrs. Bonn opened the door, she smiled and said, “Why, hello, Suey. Come in.”
Suey searched her mind for the right words to say. “I come, wash dishes for you,” she managed.
“Suey, how nice of you. But I have a machine that washes my dishes for me. Come into the kitchen, and I’ll show you.”
Suey was bewildered as she went home. Chu Nam washed dishes for a lot of people, yet Mrs. Bonn had a machine to wash just a few dishes! Disappointed, she decided to try to forget about the magic wheels.
At home Ling Kou’s new baby was fussing. Suey picked him up, glad to have something else to think about. She discovered that he was wet, so she diapered him, then rocked him while her sister-in-law cooked.
“You’re a big help to me,” Ling Kou told her.
Suey flushed with pleasure. She loved to take care of the baby. Sometimes she would watch her other niece and nephew, too, while Ling Kou went to the washing place.
Suddenly Suey knew what she could do. She could tend children! Ladies might have machines to wash their dishes, but a machine couldn’t tend a baby. This afternoon she would find a lady who wanted a baby-sitter. Soon she would have her own magic wheels. And she would glide and spin and stop on them just like Deana.

Nolan has also learned to be persistent. Even when activities aren’t easy for him, he works hard at them and keeps trying. He has been practicing throwing and hitting a baseball, and is getting quite good at it. During the summer, he ran in a 5K race with his mom and his brother Hayden, 8. They practiced for a few weeks ahead of time. His mom says, “I was expecting to have to urge them along, but they left me in the dust. Nolan walked a little in the middle, but he pushed me the whole way. He ran across the finish line, and we were very proud of him.”

Jenny buried her face in her hands. All she wanted was to go home, but Amy and Mandy were so interested in the movie that Jenny didn’t know what to say. This was the worst night she could remember.
Jenny had been looking forward to a fun evening when she arrived at Amy’s birthday party. When she walked in, she found Amy and Mandy looking at a magazine.
“Hi, Jenny!” Amy said. “Come read with us!”
Jenny sat down and looked over Mandy’s shoulder. Immediately she saw a picture she knew she shouldn’t look at. Amy and Mandy giggled. Jenny stared at the floor. She didn’t know what to say. Amy and Mandy were two of the most popular girls in school, and Jenny wanted them to like her.
Finally Amy put down the magazine. “Let’s play a game!” she said.
Jenny was relieved. Now she could have some fun.
Amy pulled out a word game. Jenny was excited. “I play this game with my family all the time,” she said. “It’s one of my favorites.”
Jenny put together her word: “listen.” She smiled at her friends. “Look! It has six letters! I’ve never been able to make such a long word in this game before!”
Then Mandy put down her word. It was a naughty word Jenny’s family didn’t use. Mandy and Amy giggled. Jenny couldn’t decide if she should ask them to stop. She kept making regular words, but Mandy and Amy kept making bad words. The more they giggled, the worse Jenny felt.
Jenny was relieved when Amy’s parents came in to check on them. With grown-ups around, Jenny was sure no one would say bad words or look at bad pictures.
“Are you ready for the movie?” Amy’s parents asked.
Jenny sat on the couch with Amy and Mandy to watch the movie, but this wasn’t like movies Jenny watched at home. The movie bothered her. Should she say something? Should she leave? Jenny didn’t know what to say. So she just sat there feeling worse and worse.
When Jenny’s mom came to pick her up, Jenny almost ran to the car.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked as Jenny buckled her seatbelt and started crying.
“I feel so yucky!” Jenny said. She told Mom all about the party.
Mom’s face was serious. “Jenny, I’m so sorry that happened. If you are ever in a bad situation, remember that you can always call Dad or me to come get you.”
Jenny nodded. “I know,” she said. “I should have called.”
When they got home, Jenny went to her room and tried to act like everything was fine, but all she could think about was the bad things she’d seen. How could she forget them?
A while later she heard a knock on her door. It was Mom and Dad.
“I hear you had a bad night,” Dad said.
“I feel so yucky inside,” Jenny said.
“How do you think you can feel clean again?” Dad asked.
Jenny thought about it. “Will you pray with me?” she asked.
“Of course,” Dad said.
Mom and Dad knelt by Jenny. Jenny prayed that she wouldn’t feel yucky anymore and asked to be forgiven for staying around things she knew she shouldn’t.
Jenny finished her prayer. She felt better. The yucky feeling was gone. She felt different from how she had been feeling all night. The Holy Ghost was helping her feel happy again. Jenny decided this was the way she wanted to feel all the time—no matter what.

And Sister Catherine A. Price of the Ammon Fourth Ward, Ammon Idaho Stake, reported that her husband, the Varsity Scouting coach for the ward, saved the life of a small girl at a baseball game. The girl had fallen backward, hitting her head and swallowing her tongue. Brother Price, a hospital corpsman at that time, said that after resuscitation attempts, the girl began to breathe and cry. “I kept praying that the Lord would help him to help her,” Sister Price said. Brother Price went with the girl to the hospital to make sure no further injuries had occurred.

Jason’s 13-year-old brother, Alex, has autism. That means he has a difficult time dealing with changes and interacting with others. “He’s smart, but he thinks slowly,” Jason explains. “He’s gentle and softhearted. He usually gives smiles and hugs.” But he can also get upset, so Jason has learned how to calm him down, and when to get help from an adult. He has also helped Alex learn to say “sorry” or “excuse me,” because sometimes he will eat too fast and burp, or bump into people without meaning to.

I remember vividly an experience I had as a passenger in a small two-propeller airplane. One of its engines suddenly burst open and caught on fire. The propeller of the flaming engine was starkly stilled. As we plummeted in a steep spiral dive toward the earth, I expected to die. Some of the passengers screamed in hysterical panic. Miraculously, the precipitous dive extinguished the flames. Then, by starting up the other engine, the pilot was able to stabilize the plane and bring us down safely.

Throughout that ordeal, though I “knew” death was coming, my paramount feeling was that I was not afraid to die. I remember a sense of returning home to meet ancestors for whom I had done temple work. I remember my deep sense of gratitude that my sweetheart and I had been sealed eternally to each other and to our children, born and reared in the covenant. I realized that our marriage in the temple was my most important accomplishment. Honors bestowed upon me by men could not approach the inner peace provided by sealings performed in the house of the Lord.

That harrowing experience consumed but a few minutes, yet my entire life flashed before my mind. Having had such rapid recall when facing death, I do not doubt the scriptural promise of “perfect remembrance” when facing judgment (Alma 5:18; see also Alma 11:43).

For many weeks I felt clean and happy. I loved talking about my baptism and how my heart seemed to be growing. My family and Primary teacher reminded me often that the Holy Ghost would help me know what was right and wrong.
A few days ago I had to take a test in school, and I was really nervous. I kept thinking how easy it would be to copy from the girl sitting next to me. I knew that cheating was wrong, but I was desperate to get a good score. Then I remembered that the Holy Ghost would help me. I said a prayer in my heart asking for strength to make the right choice.
The rest of the day, I felt as happy as I had at my baptism. After school, I ran to our car and gave Mom a hug. “I got 100 percent on my test!” I exclaimed.
“That’s great!” Mom said.
“And I didn’t even cheat.”
Mom frowned. “You wanted to cheat?”
“Well, I thought about it,” I admitted. “But I had a feeling inside that it was wrong. So I prayed for help and just tried my best.”
Mom smiled. “I’m glad you listened to that feeling.”
I’m glad too. Really glad. I always want to be worthy of my companion—the Holy Ghost.

Guy de Maupassant, the French writer, tells the story of a peasant named Hauchecorne. While walking through the public square, he caught sight of a piece of string lying on the cobblestones. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Later in the day the loss of a purse was reported. Hauchecorne was arrested and taken before the mayor. He protested his innocence, showing that it was only a piece of string that he had picked up. But he was not believed and was laughed at.
The next day the purse was found, and Hauchecorne was absolved [cleared] of any wrongdoing. But, resentful of the false accusation, he became embittered and would not let the matter die. Unwilling to forgive and forget, he thought and talked of little else. Everyone he met had to be told of the injustice. Obsessed with his grievance, he became ill and died.
In his death struggles, he repeatedly murmured, “A piece of string, a piece of string.” (See “The Piece of String,” in The Works of Guy de Maupassant [n.d.], 34–38.)

Like many young men in the Church, I had my own excuses for not reading the Book of Mormon: summer skies, winter sports, other reading, and a bit of laziness. And when I did start to read, I could not get past the fourth chapter of First Nephi. The shock of reading Nephi’s account of how he decapitated Laban delayed my further reading of the Book of Mormon until I was well into my fifteenth year. I simply could not reconcile what seemed an act of cruelty with my idea of what a gentleman was.
When I was fifteen I was called as a building missionary. The president of the Swedish Mission at the time, Alvin W. Fletcher, knew what to do with a young man whose testimony needed strengthening.
When I left for this mission, I promised myself that I would read the standard works of the Church before returning home. After several months at the Cubbangen Chapel, south of Stockholm, and an interlude at Tampere, Finland, I was transferred to Turku where, after finishing the Bible, I felt ready to grapple with the Book of Mormon.
I don’t remember much about the city, just what I saw on the daily walks back and forth to the building site in the bitter cold. Because the Book of Mormon kept me in such suspense, I couldn’t think of much else. I was eager to get home from work every day to continue my reading. This was the first time I had really hungered and thirsted for the word of the Lord. Lying on my bed night after night in a room in the meeting house, reading the words of Nephi and the other Book of Mormon prophets, I received a testimony from God that the book was true.
My favorite part of the Book of Mormon was—and still is—Third Nephi. Many times, while reading of how the resurrected Christ taught the Nephites his gospel, I have felt as if I were actually there in his presence. And for me, nothing else in the scriptures equals chapter nineteen of Third Nephi, which documents how Jesus poured out his heart to his Father in behalf of his disciples. More than once I have wept while reading it.
Now I thank God that a just man named Nephi, who at first shrank from the Lord’s command to kill Laban, obeyed God and brought about his righteous purposes. Had it not been for Nephi and the subsequent keepers of the sacred record, I could never have discovered the goodness of God in that matchless volume of scripture, the Book of Mormon.

One day at recess I was bored, so I went over to my teacher. I was surprised when she asked me about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said she went to a Christian church, so I told her about ours. I told her what the sacrament represents. She told me about her church and seemed interested in what I was saying about our church. I felt glad for doing missionary work. I’m glad I had the chance to teach my teacher.

“The Savior once asked His disciples the following question: ‘What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’ (Matthew 16:26).
“This is a question that my father taught me to carefully consider years ago. As I was growing up, my parents assigned me chores around the house and paid me an allowance for that work. I often used that money, a little over 50 cents a week, to go to the movies. Back then a movie ticket cost 25 cents for an 11-year-old. This left me with 25 cents to spend on candy bars, which cost 5 cents apiece. A movie with five candy bars! It couldn’t get much better than that.
“All was well until I turned 12. Standing in line one afternoon, I realized that the ticket price for a 12-year-old was 35 cents, and that meant two less candy bars. Not quite prepared to make that sacrifice, I reasoned to myself, ‘You look the same as you did a week ago.’ I then stepped up and asked for the 25-cent ticket. The cashier did not blink, and I bought my regular five candy bars instead of three.
“Elated by my accomplishment, I later rushed home to tell my dad about my big coup. As I poured out the details, he said nothing. When I finished, he simply looked at me and said, ‘Son, would you sell your soul for a nickel?’ His words pierced my 12-year-old heart. It is a lesson I have never forgotten.”
Elder Robert C. Gay of the Seventy

Mom had had a really busy day, and lots of things had gone wrong for her. We were eating supper when the phone rang. Some neighbors were coming over, and my toys were all over the family room. One of the neighbors used a walker, so she might have tripped on a toy. I hurried and cleaned up really fast so that when they came in, it was looking nice. I felt happy that I had helped, and I help my mom more now.

Eldon learned one of his greatest lessons from an unpleasant experience. He was 14 years old, and his father was serving as bishop. There had been a death in the ward, and his father had gone to prepare for the funeral. He asked Eldon and his brothers to do the chores while he was gone.

“We decided to ride some calves before we did what he had told us to do. We thought we would have plenty of time, but he came home while we were still riding those calves, and he called us over to him. Though he had never whipped me, I thought maybe I was going to receive a whipping at that time. But he pointed his finger at me and said, ‘My boy, I thought I could depend on you.’ That hurt me very much. I can still almost recall the exact feeling I had at that time. I made up my mind that he would never have a reason to say, ‘I thought I could depend on you.’ Right then I made up my mind that the Lord would never have reason to say, ‘I thought I could depend on Eldon Tanner.’ It has helped me greatly in my life. The things I learned while I was a boy have helped me all through my life.”

Kenji Nishibori, 17, of the Sugamo Branch, learned of the restored gospel from his older brother. “I knew he was attending meetings, but I was afraid to go to his church,” Kenji said. “Then about five months later, I ran into missionaries on my way home from school. I didn’t think I was serious about investigating, but I went to their chapel, in another part of town where my brother wouldn’t see me. As I listened to the speakers in the meeting, I found what they were saying was marvelous. Then I began to investigate in earnest, and it didn’t take long before I had a testimony of the truth. My father died 12 years ago, but now my brother and I are hoping our mother will someday join the Church.”

There is a woman who suffers with a debilitating, chronic illness that persists despite medical attention, priesthood blessings, and fasting and prayers. Nevertheless, her faith in the power of prayer and the reality of God’s love for her is undiminished. She presses ahead day by day (and sometimes hour by hour) serving as called in the Church and, together with her husband, looking after her young family, smiling as much as she can. Her compassion for others runs deep, refined by her own suffering, and she often loses herself in ministering to others. She continues steadfast, and people feel happy being around her.

Back home in Mendon, Brigham and his brother Joseph left in late November or early December, to walk through mud and snow and cold and wind, to preach the gospel. They found many people receptive to their message.
As soon as spring came, Brigham went alone preaching to and converting people. He went to Loughborough, Canada, where he and his brother had taught earlier. Brigham joined a group of converts and guided them some 960 kilometers to Kirtland. Then he walked back to Mendon.

Some classes are very humble indeed. President Kimball and I once attended a seminary class in North Dakota. We did not meet in a fine room with a blackboard and projector and special school chairs. We met in the very small bedroom in a very small house.
The teacher, Sister Two Dogs, sat on the edge of the bed. The students crowded together on the floor. It was no less a class than one held in a beautiful building. The most important ingredient, the Spirit of the Lord, was there. I attended a seminary graduation in Omaha, Nebraska. The speaker, again a young man, described this experience.
“Each morning I awoke to the sweet voice of my mother calling out, ‘John, John, time to get ready for seminary!’ The year rolled on and the mornings grew cold and wet and dark; still the happy voice of Mother would sing out, ‘John, John, time to get up for seminary!’” Then he added, “I learned to hate that sound!”
But then, choking back the tears, he thanked his mother for what she had given him. And I think only later did he realize that she had to be up first every morning.

I’m reminded of the little child who came to her daddy and said, “Give me something hard to do.” So he thought of things she could do, but she would say, “No, daddy, that isn’t hard enough. I want something hard to do.” He was carrying his briefcase into the house, and he said, “Well, carry this; this will be very hard to carry.” She grabbed hold. Oh, boy, it was heavy! She said, “I think I can.” She struggled and staggered until she finally got it to the house. We all like to feel that we have met the challenge of something hard to do.

I would like to tell you a story of a young man who sought out a wise man who was recognized far and near for his good judgment. He asked for his expert advice on how to attain new heights of achievement in his field of endeavor.
“Come with me,” said the wise man. Taking the youth to a nearby stream, he immersed him and held him under the water. When the young man was released, he was nearly drowned and came up fighting for breath, gasping, “Air, air, give me air!”
“There,” said the wise man, “that’s the first lesson. When you want to succeed as badly as you wanted air, you will attain your goal. You will succeed!”

Jonathan Wright could see a square piece of world from his bedroom window. He had seen the same square piece every day for the last year and a half. That’s how long he had been bedridden. The doctor had said that he had a rare blood disease and that he would die from it.
Jonathan had decided to take each day, each hour, each moment as special. And sacred. He also decided, after talks with his parents and his Heavenly Father, that since life and death, and life beyond death, are all a part of one great whole, it would be best to look for things to be happy about and to fill whatever time he had remaining with meaningful memories to keep him company in his lonely hours. Like memories of the smile his father gave him each day when he came home from the mill. And of the hugs his mother gave him, which soothed his very soul.
Reading the scriptures helped calm his occasional fears and strengthen his faith.
His little brother Spencer’s practical jokes—like putting his pet garden snake beneath the lid of the serving tray when his mother brought him supper—helped him to laugh. He was cheered, too, by all the little kindnesses that his family and others did for him. Spencer, for instance, saved all year to buy him a stereoscope so he could see three-dimensional pictures of faraway places.
Jonathan’s thoughts were distracted by the grinding of Mr. Walpole’s ice wagon. He always made deliveries on Tuesday. So, Jonathan thought, it must be Tuesday. And he would make it a grand Tuesday! The morning sun burnt gold off the Henry Mountains behind the small town, its misted rays stretching all the way to Jonathan’s street, Murphy Lane. It also shone on the sandlot next to Murphy’s Wagon and Automobile Garage, where each afternoon most of the children on Maple Street gathered to play ball. And it shone in Jonathan’s window—the best way for a day to start.
Jonathan wished he could help others the way he saw his father and Spencer helping Mrs. Beaufort across the street. His father was mending her picket fence. The week before, Arnold McKillop’s Model-T had crashed through it when Arnold swerved to keep from hitting Elias Stone’s three-legged dog, Tuff. Tuff had lost his leg from an infection, and Mr. Stone had yelled, “You’d like to see my dog trying to drag his leftovers around on two legs, wouldn’t you, McKillop!”
Jonathan had seen it all from his window. He looked now at Mr. Stone’s run-down house on the corner. His weed-filled yard matched the house—and Elias Stone himself, somehow. But maybe Mr. Stone has cause to look that way, Jonathan thought one day as he watched the tall, bearded man walk down the crookedy path to his mailbox. Elias jerked open the box to find nothing but blackness inside, as he always did. Then he shuffled back into his grim, paint-chipped house, the screen door whining shut behind him.
One day, Jonathan watched as Elias shooed away a child who was fetching a ball from the old man’s yard.
“Get out of my yard, you little snippety-snap!” the man bellowed. “The next time you throw your ball over here, I’ll feed it to my dog and that will be that!”
“Why is Mr. Stone so grumpy, Dad?” Jonathan had asked.
“From what I hear, Mr. Stone was the first one to move into the area,” Jonathan’s father explained. “His wife and child died when some epidemic came through town, and it changed him. As people moved in, he started shutting them out. He just sort of gave up on life and most everything else.
“Many have tried to be friendly, including your mom and me. Your mom baked bread especially for him more than once, but he refused it each time. I went over to see if I could help fix a wheel on his wagon about a year ago, and he told me to mind my own business. It’s sad, but one can only do so much. No one can force someone to change, Son. All a body can do is try.”
I haven’t tried yet, Jonathan thought. But what can I do?
The next day Jonathan saw Mr. Stone again trudge from his house to his rusty mailbox by the road and gaze into its usual black emptiness. He closed it slowly, turned up his collar against a little blast of wind that rolled a wave of autumn leaves up the street, and was about to start toward the house but then turned to regard the sight. He stared at the tumbling leaves as if they were scattered pages from a sad book, discarded, coming back to haunt him.
Suddenly the screen door was banging shut and Mr. Stone was gone again. Jonathan gazed at the shabby mailbox. “That’s what I can do,” Jonathan said out loud to himself. “I can write Mr. Stone a letter. No one else ever seems to.”
So Jonathan did. He wrote a letter introducing himself as the boy in the window. He wrote about his going to die and about how he didn’t have any time to feel bad about his circumstances, because the people he loved kept him busy feeling good about himself. He wrote that maybe if Mr. Stone let others into his heart, he could be happy too.
He ended with an invitation: “If you ever want someone to talk to, you could come and talk to me. Bring your dog if you want to. I’m always here. And if you don’t like to talk, I have lots of puzzles. One has two cowboys trying to rope a bear in the woods. Another one has a clown wiping tears from a child’s face. I live across the street in the green house. You can’t miss it.” Jonathan signed his name, folded and slipped the letter into an envelope, and asked Spencer to stamp it and take it to the post office right away.
The next day when Elias went to the mailbox, he opened it as usual and was about to close it as usual, then paused and reached inside, withdrawing an envelope. He opened it and read the letter. Then he looked across the street. Jonathan waved a tentative little wave. Elias narrowed an eye, grunted, and went back inside, the screen door closing with its customary bang!
Jonathan sighed and leaned back against the stack of pillows. Maybe writing a letter wasn’t such a good idea, after all. But mustering fresh courage, he opened his tablet and began another. Maybe, Jonathan thought, like one little match can’t melt an iceberg, one letter can’t get past all the pain of Mr. Stone’s misfortunes. But maybe two, or three, or four will.
In his second, third, and fourth letters, Jonathan wrote about how he knew that beyond the grave families could be rejoined, that if each of us tries daily to live God’s commandments the best we can and extend ourselves to others, the Lord will also help us now.
Each day Jonathan watched Elias Stone take his letter from the mailbox and read it. And each day he saw the tall man’s look softening.
One day a knock came at the door of the boy’s house. Through her surprise, Jonathan’s mother smiled pleasantly at Elias, who stood there holding up a handful of letters. Tuff sat at his feet.
“Your boy has been writing me letters!”
“I see. And you want him to stop, is that it, Mr. Stone?”
“What I want, Mrs. Wright,” he faltered, his eyes lifting slowly toward hers, “is to talk to him … if I may.”
Jonathan’s mother studied the bearded man for an uncertain moment; then, moved by a tear he quickly blinked away, she nodded and smiled again. “You may.”
“Can his dog come in, too, Mama?” Spencer, who was standing close beside her, begged.
“Of course.”
“Don’t play too rough with Tuff, boy,” Elias cautioned bluntly but not unkindly. “He can’t afford to lose another leg.”
Jonathan’s mother tapped on his bedroom door. “Someone’s here to see you.”
“OK, Mama.”
The door opened and Elias Stone edged into the little room.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Jonathan’s mother said respectfully. Elias nodded appreciatively, and she was gone.
Jonathan swallowed hard and greeted his visitor. “Mr. Stone.”
“Mr. Wright.” Elias held up a handful of letters. “I lost my wife and child many years ago,” he blurted out with a kind of embarrassed desperation.
“Yes, I know.”
“You do, do you?” Elias seemed surprised. A burning need drove out more words almost on top of one another. “You also said that you know there’s a uniting of loved ones after death. How can you say you know that, boy?”
Jonathan picked up his Bible and Book of Mormon from his bedside stand. “The scriptures tell me so, Mr. Stone,” he replied.
Late that night a light was still shining from beneath Jonathan’s door. Elias Stone had gone in at five o’clock and had not come out. When the door did open, Jonathan’s family beheld a man whose eyes were red from the scouring effect of tears working upon loosed bitterness, eyes now filled with peace. His mouth trembled with a ragged smile and these stumbling words: “Sorry to have kept your boy up so late, good people.”
Jonathan’s father struggled past his amazement. “Are you all right, Mr. Stone?”
“For the first time in years.”
After Elias Stone left with his three-legged companion, Jonathan’s family hurried, wondering, into his room. Jonathan was at the window, watching Elias’s dim form moving across the dusky street with Tuff at his side. Elias’s step seemed lighter.
“Tell us what happened, honey,” Jonathan’s mother said.
Jonathan looked back to his family, then tapped the scriptures lying open beside him on the bed. “A kind of miracle, Mama … a kind of miracle. …”