Gospel Story Finder

“The first thing is always beauty. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. I mean, there are things you can do. I mean, you can help yourself out. …”
He is blushing, all six feet three inches of him, because he is in a Young Women meeting, not in the high school gym. He is our male expert for our dating lesson today, and I think the only reason Jodi asked, “What’s the first thing that attracts a guy to a girl?” was to capture his brown-eyed attention. Only now he’s not looking at her. He’s staring at the floor, embarrassed to have been so openly honest in church.
Serves him right, I think. I don’t ask my question: What if a girl is ugly and fat but funny, smart, and considerate? Is beauty such a vital virtue that a girl can’t be considered for a date without it? Anyway, what does he know about “helping yourself out”?
I say that because I’ve been helping myself out for the past three years. I do it with a rattail brush and Sticking Pretty hair spray, with Glitter n’Glo eye shadow and Perfectly Pink lipstick. I even practice a weight-loss program called Body Be Good. But I am 16 years old, and I am just as pathetic as I was before self-help. I am five feet tall and weigh 165 pounds. My hair is 22 inches of beetle-brown seaweed. My eyes are blue BBs, legally blind, buried beneath the inch-and-a-half thick lenses of my steel-rimmed glasses. My mouth is in its fourth year of orthodontic intervention, and my face ought to be intervened with too—by a dermatologist. I imagine this is the self-help to which Dr. Dating refers.
It is noon. The lesson ends, and I plod out of the Young Women room while Jodi simpers about our stellar speaker.
All the way home, I stare out of the car and remember the first thing is always beauty. My pudgy cheeks and frazzled hair hover in the window, superimposed on all the trees and houses that we pass.
“What are you thinking about, Marie?” Dad asks when he spies me in the rearview mirror, moping at my reflection.
“Nut’uhn,” I grunt.
“What?”
I gulp, deciding it’s worth a second opinion. “Dad, what first attracted you to Mom?”
He grins over at Mom like they met yesterday. “Well, I saw her across the room at a stake young adult dance. And I thought, Wow, she’s pretty cute!”
My mouth twists. “That was it?”
“Well, what did you want?” he laughs. “Shooting stars? An angel overhead saying, ‘Hey, George, she’s the one?’”
I scowl at my shoes. Two to none. The first thing is always beauty.
“Why do you ask?” Mom asks as she turns to face me.
“Never mind,” I sulk.
Lunch is a Body Be Good banana shake. Mom and Dad and Anna eat baked potatoes and talk about Sunday School. When Mom asks me what my Laurel lesson was about, I mutter, “Datin’” and don’t clarify when she tells me to enunciate.
“Can I be excused?” is all I say.
Mom looks at Dad and nods, and I head to my bedroom.
I look at the picture of the Bountiful Utah Temple above my bed and shake my head to shoo away thoughts of self-pity.
That’s when I remember the family’s love and romance expert, my Grandpa John, who courted my grandma via the postman while he was in Europe during World War II and she was in Casper, Wyoming. Grandpa and Grandma passed away when I was little, but Mom still tells the stories about how they fell and stayed in love. Mom has all of Grandpa’s letters to Grandma. I will make it a survey. Grandpa is source number three.
The letters are in Mom’s closet on the high shelf, so I have to lug a chair to reach them. I create a clunking racket as I rummage through journals and baby books and photo albums. Mom comes in to ask me what I’m doing.
“I’m just looking for Grandpa’s letters.”
“Marie, is something bothering you?” Mom raises an eyebrow, but I’ve found the letter box. I pull the chair back to Dad’s desk and retreat to my room with the letters from the expert.
“Dear Emma,” reads the first one I open. It smells like smoky dust. “Hello beautiful. I miss the glow of your pretty face. …”
I quit there and tally the score: three to zero.
“Think beautiful,” I whisper to myself in the mirror. I’ve shed my glasses, so I have to squint with my nose an inch from the mirror to scrutinize my reflection. My eyelids are glittering. My lips are pink. My eyelashes are lengthened with Anna’s mascara. I twirl pieces of my hair onto the top of my head to configure an elegant up-do. Twisting my face from side to side, I experiment with different expressions. But even in profile, my cheeks are too pimply. My eyes are too tiny. My hair is too fuzzy.
I shake down my hair. It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. I have no beauty. I return my glasses to their perch on my nose.
The next Young Women lesson is about eternal marriage. Bishop Wright and his wife are this week’s guest lecturers. They are gentler and more profound than Dr. Dating. They do not talk about beauty, except as it exists in the house of the Lord. I feel my insides tingle. It is my deepest desire to go to the Lord’s house so I can return to live again with Heavenly Father.
Sister Wright’s eyes moisten when she bears testimony of the temple. “Girls,” she says, “we may joke sometimes about being better than men, about being better looking, smarter, or more sensitive. But the truth is neither men nor women can achieve exaltation alone. In 1 Corinthians 11:11, we read, ‘Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.’ Only with your eternal companion can you attain the highest degree of glory in the celestial kingdom.”
I feel a warmth within my chest, and I know her testimony must be true. But my stomach lurches. I have a question which I am too frightened to ask. What if a girl is ugly and fat, with no beauty to which an eternal companion will ever be attracted? I picture my reflection in my mirror under the up-do, and I shudder, and it’s not because I feel the Spirit.
Mom has told me ever since I could read that I can always find answers in the scriptures. I have never wanted an answer as badly as I want one now. When we get home from church, I tell Mom that I feel funny, and I don’t want lunch. I shut myself in my room. Frantically, I look up all the scripture weddings I can remember: Rebekah, Rachel, Esther. They are numbers four, five, and six in my first-thing-that-attracts-eternal-companions survey. I devour the words.
“And the damsel was very fair to look upon. … And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her” (Gen. 24:16, 67).
Four to zero.
“Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured. And Jacob loved Rachel; … And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her” (Gen. 29:17, 20).
Five to zero. My heart squeezes Spandex-tight.
“And he brought up … Esther … and the maid was fair and beautiful; … And the king loved Esther above all the women” (Esth. 2:7, 17).
Six to zero.
It isn’t fair. No beauty, no hope, no exaltation.
My door creaks, and in steps Mom. “Marie, what’s the matter?” She sees my scriptures and my watery eyes. “What are you doing, honey? What’s wrong?”
It splutters out of me all at once. “Boys will only love you if you’re beautiful. It’s always the first thing. They aren’t attracted unless you’ve got beauty. They don’t get attracted, you don’t get married. You don’t get married, no exaltation. I took a survey. You and Grandma and Rebekah, Rachel, and Esther. And I’m never getting married! I’m never going to be able to live with Father in Heaven! Look, look at this verse. “I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white. … A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins … bearing a child in her arms” (1 Ne. 11:13, 15, 20).
Mom touches my arm gently and lifts my scriptures from my hands, “Bearing a child,” she slowly repeats and looks at me with soft eyes. “Marie, may I read you another scripture about that child?”
She doesn’t wait for a response. “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: … he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:2–4).
She pauses while I lower my chin into my chest.
“Maybe … maybe you’re right, Marie. Maybe men only love and desire that which they think is beautiful. After all, they didn’t love our Savior. They despised Him. They crucified Him.”
I shake my head slowly. “But He was the most beautiful of all.”
Mom doesn’t respond. Her eyes are expectant. She wants me to say more.
“They just …” I pause. “They just couldn’t tell.”
“Why not?”
“Well, they didn’t recognize it. They couldn’t tell that it was beauty. He was beautiful because …” I blow a frustrated gust of air through pursed lips. “I can’t explain it. He was beautiful in the way you just can’t see.”
Mom nods in agreement and reads, “‘Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am’ (3 Ne. 27:27). Marie, you don’t have to look like Grandma or Esther or Rachel or Rebekah. For all we know, their kind of beauty was as invisible as our Savior’s. The only beauty you have to cultivate is His. If you can be beautiful like He was beautiful, you won’t have to worry about winning an Isaac or Jacob. Men who saw no beauty in our Savior may also not see your beauty. But men of Christ, acquainted with His grief, will come to love you and say, ‘She is the most beautiful of all.’ There may be pain caused by those who don’t know you, but you will draw closer to the Savior as you emulate Him. And until your Isaac or your Jacob comes, you will know that Christ has borne your grief and carried your sorrows. And He will comfort you.”
She places my scriptures back in my lap, squeezes my hand, and drops me a tissue for my sniffling nose. Then she slips out of my bedroom and closes the door. After a minute, I wipe tears and mascara and Glitter n’Glo off my eyelids. In my heart I feel a beauty that I know must be His.

During the January 2017 worldwide devotional for young adults, I challenged those watching to increase their testimony of the Savior by taking time each week to:
Study everything Jesus said and did as recorded in the Old Testament.
Study His laws as recorded in the New Testament.
Study His doctrine as recorded in the Book of Mormon.
Study His words as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants.
I promised those listening that if they would proceed to learn all they can about Jesus Christ, their love for Him and for God’s laws would grow beyond what they could currently imagine.
What I didn’t mention during this address was that I knew this promise was true because I was in the midst of completing this very same assignment myself for the first time.
On December 1, 2016, I obtained a new set of scriptures and proceeded to begin the same assignment that I would later extend to young adults in January. When I finished the assignment six weeks later, I had looked up and marked more than 2,200 citations from the four books of scripture.1
After six weeks of study, President Nelson completed his assignment.
For me, to be able to accomplish this assignment was just thrilling!
Something I found to be most insightful was that the Savior was telling us about Himself through these various periods of time—Old Testament, New Testament, the Restoration period, and our day. In all books of scripture, the story is the same and the Storyteller is the same.
I have devoted much of my 93 years to learning about the Savior, but rare are the occasions when I have been able to learn as much as I did over this six-week study period. In fact, I learned so much about Him from this study that I am planning to share much of it in other upcoming addresses that I am currently preparing.2
Upon beginning this assignment, I didn’t expect that this study would help me to receive a new testimony of the divinity of the work of Joseph Smith—but it did! The revelations recorded by Joseph Smith and the insights found in the Bible are amazingly consistent. It was so enlightening for me to see this in my study.
Joseph Smith wouldn’t have possibly had time to correlate and cross-reference with the Bible at the rapid rate at which he was translating the Book of Mormon—but it’s all here!
So not only do I now have a greater testimony of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but I also have a reaffirmation of my absolute conviction that the system Joseph Smith had for translating the Book of Mormon was a gift from God.
President Nelson studied over 2,200 scriptures about Jesus Christ and His teachings.
Now, I realize some of you are probably thinking to yourselves that you couldn’t possibly have time to complete an assignment like this.
I know how you feel. I thought the same thing of myself—that there’s no way I can have time to do all of this. I needed to remind myself that a comment like this is not a faith-promoted comment. A faith-promoted comment would be “I know I don’t have time for this, but I’m going to make time for it. And I’ll fulfill it with what time I have.”
Each of us who takes this challenge will finish in our own time frames. For me, much of the joy of this came from getting it all done in just six weeks. This intense study over a relatively short period of time allowed me to appreciate the complementary nature of the learnings to be found in the Old Testament, the Book of Mormon, the New Testament, and the Doctrine and Covenants.
To those of you who feel you don’t have time, if you will make a sacrifice, you will be well rewarded and very, very grateful for the change of perspective, increased knowledge, and improved depth of your conversion. I know this is true because I have seen the same rewards in my own life.

When I was a mission president in Australia, I once said to those of my missionaries in Tasmania: “Tomorrow we shall climb Mt. Wellington and hold our missionary meeting on the top. We shall there seek to commune with the Lord and partake of his Spirit.”

We made the climb, and while on top of the peak we visited a television broadcasting station. A bright young man explained to us in words I had never heard, and using principles I could not and do not understand, how the sounds and scenes of television were broadcast into the valley below.

That night, back in the city of Hobart, my two young sons and I sat before a television set that was tuned to the proper wave band, and we saw and heard and experienced what had been described to us in words.

Now I think this illustrates perfectly what is involved in the receipt of revelation and the seeing of visions. We can read about visions and revelations in the records of the past, we can study the inspired writings of people who had the fullness of the gospel in their day, but we cannot comprehend what is involved until we see and hear and experience for ourselves.

“Isaac, Isaac.” It was his mother’s voice. “Your father needs you at the corral.”
Isaac raised his head and looked out the window. Sure enough, the sun was coming up, and that meant it was time for chores. Isaac stumbled out of bed and reached for his shirt. He could hear the oxen mooing.
As he went out the kitchen door, he saw Papa leading old Taurus through the gate.
“Where are you going so early, Papa?” Isaac asked.
“Just over to the fence. I need you to hold the grain bucket so Taurus will stand still.”
The ox bellowed, as if asking, “What is going on this morning?” But as Isaac held the bucket under his nose, Taurus calmed down and began licking up the grain with his long tongue. While the ox ate, Papa tied the halter rope securely to the fence.
When Mama stepped out the front door, Papa asked her, “I have a special project, Emeline. Will you please bring me the wide carpenter pencil from the desk?”
When Mama came back with the pencil, Papa laid some boards on the ground. Then, after looking carefully at Taurus, he began drawing on the smooth yellow wood.
“What are you doing, Papa?” Isaac asked.
“Brother Fordham and I have been given an important assignment for the temple,” Papa explained. “We are going to help make the 12 oxen statues to hold up the font in the baptistry. I am drawing the pattern, and Taurus is my model.”
Hearing his name, Taurus raised his head, then went back to his breakfast.
Isaac watched his father sketching long, wide lines. “That is beginning to look just like Taurus,” Isaac said. “But why did you choose him?”
“Because he is strong and the best ox I have ever seen. See how he stands? He seems to be aware of his importance. Taurus is obedient too.”
“This project is a very special calling, Papa. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, Son, it is. I am thankful I have been asked to help.”
Isaac stroked Taurus’s neck. He could feel the ox’s strong muscles. “What an honor for you, old boy,” he whispered.
Isaac finished his chores quickly. He even made his usual two dozen wooden clothespins faster than usual. He knew when he finished he would have time to do as he wished.
Today Isaac wanted to draw. His parents had given him permission to draw on the fireplace hearth, using pieces of charcoal from the burned logs. The charcoal washed off easily, and he could use it to make wide or narrow lines.
As Isaac drew Taurus, he thought about his father and the beautiful temple being built in Nauvoo. If Isaac was strong and obedient like Taurus, maybe the Lord would choose him to work on the temple, just like his father.

“Hello, Sheri! Are you there?” a friendly voice crackled from the shortwave radio. Australia’s School of the Air classes were ready to begin.
Sheri North sat up straight, arranged her school books a little, and adjusted the radio dial labeled squelch.
“I’m here, Mr. Walker,” she told her teacher.
Mr. Walker sat in an almost empty classroom a hundred miles away at Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia.
Sheri listened attentively while Mr. Walker finished calling the roll. Then she heard a horse whinny and her mind wandered outside to where Jumper, her pinto pony, pawed the parched earth of his pen. She glanced at the calendar above her desk—December 22—two more days and she’d be free for Christmas vacation. Though it was only nine o’clock, the hot, dry air told her the day would be another scorcher.
It’s funny, she thought, how my cousin in the United States always sends Christmas cards showing ice and snow. She’d probably be surprised to know that south of the equator we have summer in December and winter in July.
“Sheri! Sheri North! Come in!” an anxious voice shouted.
Sheri’s daydreams were shattered by Mr. Walker’s call over the radio.
“Oh! I’m sorry, Mr. Walker,” Sheri said as she pressed the microphone switch. “I guess my mind wandered.”
“Thank heavens you’re still there! I thought for a minute that you had disappeared too.”
“What do you mean too?” Sheri asked.
“Do you know Donny Fisher? He lives about ten miles north of you.”
“Sure, he’s a little red-haired boy my cousin sometimes plays with. He’s the only other eight-year-old in the whole neighborhood.”
“Well, he doesn’t answer his radio this morning; and he hasn’t missed a single day of class since we started this term. Do you think your father could drive over and see if the family is having some kind of trouble?”
Sheri tried to stifle her fears for a moment as thoughts of danger flashed through her mind. She knew families living in Australia’s outback (isolated rural countryside) had to be self-sufficient—modern-day pioneers, her father always called them. They were so isolated from each other, they even held church services over the shortwave radio.
Sheri’s father insisted that all his children learn to use a fire extinguisher, for there were no fire engines available. He taught them to shoot a rifle to drive off the dingos (wild dogs) that sometimes frightened the cattle with their wolf-like howling. Even her two-year-old brother was beginning to ride a horse, for horses were the only sure transportation across the parched, dry desert where cars and trucks habitually broke down.
“My father is out with the sheep,” Sheri explained. “He’s been gone three days and we don’t expect him home until tomorrow.”
“What about your mother?” Mr. Walker asked. “Could she go see if they need help?”
“I’ll ask, but I don’t think so. The baby is feverish and my mother can’t leave her when she’s so sick.”
“Then you’ll have to go,” Mr. Walker said in a firm voice. “It’s quite a responsibility, Sheri, but you’re the oldest in your family. People must grow up fast out here if they expect to survive.”
Sheri gulped hard. It wasn’t the ten miles that bothered her so much—she could ride that far in less than two hours—what worried her most was how she could help when she arrived. What if their house has burned down and they’re all dead? What if they’ve been attacked by outlaw aborigines or by a pack of dingos? What could I possibly do to help?
“All right . … I’ll go if my mother says it’s OK,” she hesitantly agreed. “But I want you to know I’m plenty scared! I don’t know what I’ll do when I get there.”
“Look. You just radio me, and if they’re sick or hurt, I’ll send a flying doctor over in a plane to help out. You won’t be alone for long,” Mr. Walker consoled.
“Just one more thing,” Sheri added. “You won’t mark me absent from school, will you?”
“No, I’ll give you full credit,” Mr. Walker chuckled. “Now skedaddle and get moving. Don’t forget to take a canteen, and don’t ride too fast. You can wear out a horse in no time at all in this heat.”
“I’ll be careful,” Sheri assured him.
Within minutes Sheri had saddled and mounted Jumper. Her mother slung a pair of heavy saddlebags behind Jumper’s saddle. Then she smiled and patted Sheri’s knee.
“There’s a first-aid kit in this side,” Mother explained, pointing to one bag. “I’ve packed a lunch in the other one and also a pistol. Don’t use it unless you have to!”
“Don’t worry, Mother, I won’t. I hate the loud bang and the way it kicks,” Sheri said, nudging her horse and trotting away.
“Radio me when you get there so I can stop worrying,” her mother called.
Sheri waved, but didn’t look back. Her mind was on the problems ahead. She rode past scattered dwarf acacia trees, saltbush shrubs, and tough spinifex grass growing in large clumps in the sandy areas.
Suddenly, Jumper pulled up short, rearing on his hind legs so quickly he almost threw Sheri from the saddle.
A large red kangaroo leaped from a bush in front of them. He was followed by another and then two more.
Sheri sighed, then called after them, “G’wan home you crazy wallaroos!”
The sun was high when the Fisher Sheep Station (ranch) appeared on the horizon. Sheri spotted a man on horseback and Jumper broke into a gallop.
Approaching the jackaroo (apprentice sheepherder) and his dog, Sheri was puzzled to see everything appearing pretty much as normal.
“Hold up there, young lady!” the man called. “What’s the big rush?”
“I rode over to help save the Fisher family,” Sheri said.
“Save ’em?” The man looked confused. “Save ’em from what? The ants or the lizards?”
“No! You don’t understand.” Sheri didn’t appreciate his dry sense of humor. “Mr. Walker, my teacher, sent me over to save them when Donny didn’t answer the radio at roll call this morning. I’ve got to help!”
The man burst out laughing, but stopped when he saw a tear run down Sheri’s cheek. “Hey, look, miss, if you really want to help and you don’t mind getting your hands greasy, you can ride over there to the tool repair shop and help Mr. Fisher fix the electric generator. He’s been working on it since late last night, and I’m sure he’d be happy to have all the help he can get.”
“You mean Donny didn’t answer the radio because there’s no electricity?”
“Kind of seems that way, doesn’t it?” the man said, his eyes twinkling. “And you’ve had an unexpected day off from school.”

Evan’s grandmother was my first-grade teacher, back in the days when the first, second, and third grades were all in one room. She was strict and demanding, but she loved us and helped us do the very best we could.
Once when another boy fell asleep in class, Evan and I tried to get her to let us awaken him by pouring water on his head.
“Oh, we couldn’t do that!” she said. “You wouldn’t want him to do that to you, would you?”
I did not know that she was teaching me the Golden Rule. But Evan did. “She was right, you know,” he said to me that afternoon as we walked home from school. Maybe his clearer understanding of truth was one of many reasons the Lord needed him so early.

I could hardly keep my voice steady as I said good night to Ben. Tears were already streaming down my face as I shut the door and flopped down on the living room floor.
I was glad everyone had gone to bed; that way I wouldn’t have to tell them about the prom or why I was crying.
I should have known it would be horrible, since I hadn’t even been my date’s first choice. He had wanted to take Amy, my best friend, but she was already going with Chad. So Ben had done the next best thing—he’d asked me and suggested we double.
It was an awkward situation from the moment we all climbed into Ben’s old station wagon. I don’t think he said anything to me as we drove to the restaurant; he was too busy staring at Amy in the rearview mirror. She didn’t notice. She was too entranced by Chad—star basketball player, student body vice-president, and the most popular guy in school—to notice anything. It was driving Ben crazy.
That’s why he forgot to help me with my chair at the restaurant. He tried to pull out Amy’s chair and bumped into Chad. In the confusion, he must have forgotten about me because he just turned and sat down.
All through dinner Ben played “Name That Tune” with the background music, and I tried to hide my anger. I knew he was feeling as miserable as I was, but why did he have to take it out on me? I didn’t want him to fall in love with me; I just wanted him to treat me like a human being.
I don’t know how we made it through the rest of the evening. At the school neither of us was very anxious to dance, so we had our pictures taken first. Even that didn’t go smoothly. Ben was too tall to stand next to the wicker chair where I was to sit, so we had to trade places. I think we both wanted to die.
Since neither of us wanted to dance the slow dances, we used his height and my shortness as an excuse to sit them out. “Just one more hour,” I thought as I watched his eyes follow Amy around the room. For the first time in my life I was grateful for my curfew.
An hour later, I walked into my living room and dropped onto the floor. All I could think, over and over, was, “What’s wrong with me?” I hardly ever dated and when I did, it always seemed to go like this.
Suddenly the living room light blinked on and I sat up. I must have looked pretty pathetic, lying there in my taffeta dress with mascara smeared all over my face. Dad suppressed a smile.
“So it wasn’t the best date you’ve ever been on, huh?” he said.
“Not even close. But some things never change,” I mumbled, straightening my dress.
He kind of chuckled as he sat down beside me. I couldn’t stand it any more—I had to ask.
“What’s wrong with me, anyway?”
He looked up. “There’s nothing wrong with you, why?”
“Then what’s wrong with the guys?”
He shook his head. “Heck, I’m a guy and I don’t even know.”
I had expected something a little more profound. Why doesn’t he at least say, “Sorry you’re such a social misfit,” and get it over with? I thought. But he just sat there. I gave up.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said weakly as I stood up and headed towards my bedroom. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He couldn’t possibly understand how I felt.
“Christie,” he called after me, “don’t make yourself miserable over something you can’t control. You know, sometimes you just have to be patient and things get better.”
I didn’t answer. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. More than anything, I wanted to believe that if I said the right thing or looked a certain way, the guys would beg for a date with me. I just had to figure out what I was doing wrong.
Then one night I read a scripture that reminded me of my dad’s words: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Eccl. 3:1). It said there was a time to cry, a time to laugh—and even a time to love.
Maybe I’ve been rushing things a little, I thought. One thing was certain: more than I wanted a boyfriend, I wanted to be happy and feel good about myself again.
I only had two dates the rest of the year, and one of them was a girls’ choice. But when I started to feel depressed, I reminded myself that it wouldn’t last forever. I filled up my time with school, Church, and my family and tried to be patient.
Nothing changed—until after graduation. I don’t know how it happened—maybe it was because I met hundreds of new people at college. All I know is that I had dates. Not tons, but enough. I dated regularly for three years, served a mission—and then I met Sam.
On my wedding day, as I knelt at the altar and looked into Sam’s eyes, I knew that everything was right—the right person, the right time, and the right place.
Like my dad had said, there was never anything “wrong” with me in the first place. I didn’t need to change; what I really needed was time.

The world looked as fine, Nathan Gunnerson thought, as God Himself might have imagined it when He began His glorious work of creation. On the sprawling valley floor below Nathan, a sea of yellow wildflowers washed up the shores of the redrock hills like gilded ocean waves. And above him, in the topless blue sky, wings on winds were softly blown. Then why, Nathan wondered, do I feel so miserable?
He plopped his twelve-year-old body down beside his dog, Biscuit, on a rocky ledge and gazed across the valley through his father’s old Civil War spyglass. The dusky red buttes loomed in the distance as formidable in appearance, Nathan decided, as his present problems.
His father’s challenge had come about as a result of a family conversation at the supper table some three weeks before. Nathan’s parents had been discussing the importance of, and ways of coping with, life’s everyday challenges, and his father had asked him what he thought his greatest possible challenge might be.
Nathan had promptly responded, “Cory Atwood!”
Cory seemed to take great pleasure in making Nathan’s life difficult. Ever since Nathan and his family had moved to the small town of Red Rock Springs in the summer of ’76, Cory had resented him. Name calling, pushing and shoving, then a bloody nose came as a result of Nathan’s declining a dare. Cory had said, “You’re a new kid, and every new kid has to prove himself around here if he expects to get along.”
Nathan had replied that he didn’t have to prove anything to anyone except maybe his Heavenly Father, and he most likely had to be alive to do that. Walking the trestle across Devil’s Gorge didn’t seem to Nathan the best way of insuring a long and fruitful life. Besides, his father had taught him that a real coward is one who abandons or compromises his principles for the sake of “getting along” with others. “Being true to the Lord and yourself,” his father said after Nathan had confided in him concerning Cory’s dare, “is of far greater importance and consequence than appeasing the whims of a town bully.”
Now Nathan stood, brushed red rock dust off his trousers, and started down the hill, still despairing of meeting the challenge his father had issued at the end of that suppertime conversation. “Find something good about Cory Atwood,” his father had counseled, “to replace all those negative feelings you have toward him. Carrying bad feelings around only serves to drown out positive ones. It profits no one. Sweep some of that emotional refuse out of your heart, and you’ll have more room for happiness.”
“You’re asking me to love my enemy?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything the Lord wouldn’t do.” Nathan’s father had smiled and continued. “I’m not saying that you should love what Cory does to you. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t spend what little time we have on this earth in finding fault or living with negatives but in looking for the good in others. I want you to find something good about Cory.”
His mother had added softly, “If rain can make the flowers grow, honey, why not the rest of us too?”
Nathan kicked at a pebble and watched it roll down the hill in front of him and disappear into a clump of scrub oak. What did Mother mean, he wondered. And how can I find something I like about a kid who calls me names and gives me bloody noses? “Besides,” he added aloud to Biscuit ambling along at his side, “I’ve tried for over two weeks to find something good about him, and I’m getting tired of trying!”
Nathan kicked at another rock, hardly noticing the sky filling with dark, ominous clouds that began to barge their way in front of the sun. He’d much rather plow the field at home with a three-legged horse, he thought as he neared a large wash that preceded the valley floor, than try to find something good about someone he was sure there wasn’t anything good about! He’d even rather help his mother on wash day, and that was an all-day chore!
Thunder was booming like cannon fire, and rain was beginning to pour down fast and hard, when Nathan spotted someone hunched over what appeared to be a struggling animal near the center of the wash. He stepped beneath a rocky overhang to escape the downpour, took out his spyglass, and strained to get a closer look through the rain. It was a struggling animal, a raccoon caught in a steel jaw trap. And was that Cory Atwood trying to set it free?
Nathan wiped the rain from his disbelieving eyes. It was Cory! He was trying to save the helpless raccoon from a slow, painful death. But his efforts seemed to be in vain—his strength wasn’t sufficient to pry open the steel jaws and release the small creature’s leg.
Right in the middle of Nathan’s disbelief, he heard what sounded like distant thunder up above him in the high gorges. But the sound was continuous and began to grow louder and nearer. “It’s a flash flood, Biscuit!” Nathan gasped. “It’s coming down the wash!”
He screamed a warning to Cory, but his voice was lost in the noise of pounding rain and flood water. And Cory was so busy trying to free the animal that he wasn’t aware of his danger.
Nathan bolted away from the overhang and down along the edge of the wash as the thunderous sound grew nearer still. He dropped beside a surprised Cory, pointing with alarm up the hill. “Cory! A flash flood’s coming down the wash!”
Cory’s face registered equal alarm, but his rain-blurred eyes also flashed concern for the raccoon. “I can’t leave this animal here to die,” he yelled above the din.
“I’ll help, but let’s hurry!” Nathan yelled back.
Working together, the two boys were able to open the jaws of the trap. The raccoon pulled itself free and started to hobble up the embankment. The youths followed quickly, helping each other up the red mud and loose shale, glancing worriedly over their shoulders at the grimly awesome sight of a wall of reddish brown water raging down the wash toward them at an incredible speed.
They took refuge under the rocky ledge where Nathan had seen Cory through his spyglass. For a long moment they sat shaking at their near encounter with the deadly wall of water. Then for an equally long moment they stared at one another. Suddenly Nathan understood his mother’s words—good things often blossom and grow out of difficulty, out of effort. Like understanding. Like faith in a father’s counsel. Like the flowers after a rain. And if one looks past his dislikes, looks beyond the rain, he’ll find much good.
Cory’s eyes fell; then they lifted again and settled on Nathan’s, beseeching forgiveness. They found it in Nathan’s smile. No words were spoken. None were needed.

Not many young women set a turkey trot race as their goal—but Debbie and Lori Wright of the Orem 47th Ward, Orem Utah Windsor Stake, did. They decided to accept the challenge of running the 4.25-mile race with their Laurel adviser, Lorraine Gaufin. Since neither of the sisters had raced before, they set up their own jogging schedules, trained on their own, and even got matching T-shirts with “Lorraine’s Laurels” printed on the back. The race was long enough to discourage them. It wasn’t the easiest goal they’ve ever achieved, but they ran a good race, They both finished the course, and Debbie brought home a turkey she won in the post-race drawing.

Karen and Susan Jacobs of Walnut Creek, California, found it fun and rewarding. It started when Karen was in the fifth grade at the American School in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was looking for a subject for a rather ambitious American history report. The teacher called for footnotes, bibliography, note cards, and oral reports—you know, the works. Her biggest hurdle was to choose a subject. Her parents suggested that she do her report on the Mormon trek westward.
“Why not?” she said.
Once started it was an easier topic to write on than most, with all that help at home, her interest, and her background on the subject from Primary and Sunday School.
Few in the class knew much about the Mormons, and the oral report, laced with interest-raising points, created a lively discussion for months afterwards. She got an A grade too!

Although Virgilio gave up his governorship to stay true to his testimony, he was able to pass on another legacy to the next generation: that of serving the people by establishing the gospel among them. He lived to see Wilson serve a full-time mission and then return to Guayacana to marry his wife, Ruth, and have children. Some years later, Virgilio died faithful in the Church. His wife, Maria Juana Apa, has lived to witness their son’s calling, in 2014, to serve as branch president in Guayacana.

Mía was excited. It was her first time at church! The missionaries told her family about this church. They decided to come.
Mía looked around. She saw a white cloth on a table. Something was under it.
“What’s under that cloth?” Mía asked one of the missionaries.
Sister Hanson smiled. “It’s the sacrament.”
Sacrament. That was a big word. Mía had heard the missionaries telling Mommy and Daddy about it. But she wasn’t sure what it was.
Everyone sang a song. Two men lifted the white cloth. Trays of bread were under it! Mía watched them break the bread into pieces.
After the song a man said a prayer. Other men passed the bread to everyone.
“The bread helps us remember Jesus’s body,” Sister García whispered.
Mía took a piece of bread. She pictured Jesus standing in front of her.
Then there was another prayer. The men passed trays with tiny cups of water.
“The water helps us remember Jesus’s blood,” Sister García whispered. “He died for us because He loves us.”
Mía took a cup of water. She thought about how much Jesus loved her. She felt like He was giving her a big hug.
Later Sister Hanson gave Mía a little picture of Jesus. “We eat the bread and drink the water to remember Jesus and promise to follow Him.” She smiled. “What did you think of the sacrament?”
Mía looked at the picture of Jesus. She remembered the warm feeling she had. She smiled. “It was great! I love Jesus.”

For their efforts in saving the life of Levi Tapp, Sand Tapp and David Bos received Boy Scout National Council certificates of Heroism.
In a televised presentation, the two 11-year-olds received gold medals for risking their lives to save another’s. The three boys were walking along the bank of a lake close to their home. Levi slipped in the mud and fell through the ice at the edge of the lake. Sand and David crawled out to Levi, and with one holding the legs of the other, grabbed Levi and inched him up onto solid ice. Sand wrapped Levi in his coat and carried him the half mile to his home.
The boys are from the Second Ward, Springfield Missouri Stake.

Thanksgiving wouldn’t have been Thanksgiving without a turkey in the oven. But a 14-pound (6-kg) turkey would be too much for me, so I invited several students who were from other countries and faraway states to join me. I wanted to share a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, but I invited them to contribute. I asked each to bring a favorite dish from home. Our Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be a delightful and memorable meal—egg rolls and all.

“Mom! It’s so cold!”
Jacob, one of my seven-year-old twins, stood with river water lapping at his ankles.
My three other kids were having a similar reaction. With my husband away on a hunting trip, I’d joined my extended family for what I hoped would be a fun trip to some hot springs. So far, the “hot” springs were not living up to their name.
Steam rose from a little pond above the river. I moved closer and felt its warmth. “This must be a hot spring,” I thought.
“Can we swim in this?” I asked my aunt, whose children were also in the river.
“I don’t know.”
We looked for a sign that might indicate what the pond was for, but we couldn’t find anything. One by one, our shivering kids moved from the cold river to the pond. My aunt and I stood on the shore, watching and talking as they played.
An older boy appeared near the edge of the pond. “I’m letting the pool out!” he hollered. He cranked a big wheel, and water poured into the pond.
The kids shouted with excitement as the surge of water entered the pond. I was grateful I’d insisted they wear their life vests. I smiled as the rising current carried them toward the left side of the pond.
Jacob broke away from them, fighting the currents to swim to the right side of the pond. He stopped, and a look of serious surprise crossed his face. “Mom, I’m stuck!”
Without another thought, I jumped in and caught his arm to pull him to safety. He wouldn’t budge. Was he stuck on something? I kept pulling, but I couldn’t get him free. The water level continued to rise.
“You guys, he’s stuck! Someone, help me!” But I knew they were too far away.
A splash sounded, and my uncle appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed Jacob, tugging and pulling.
The water was almost over Jacob’s head. Was the life vest hooked on something? I grabbed a strap with shaking hands. By the time I got one buckle undone, the water covered Jacob’s head. “Oh, help!” I prayed.
My uncle yanked backward with all his might. Jacob popped free, and my uncle moved him to the bank.
I scrambled beside Jacob and gathered him in my arms.
“There’s a culvert,” my uncle said, pointing to a 24-inch pipe that we hadn’t noticed. Water was forcefully pushing through it into the river. Jacob’s life vest was most likely all that stopped him from being dragged through it.
With alarm, my uncle and I turned toward the rest of our family. “Everyone, get out!”
As the kids climbed out, I took off Jacob’s life vest and looked him over. He hadn’t swallowed too much water and didn’t have any scrapes or bruises.
“You were being so brave, buddy. Were you scared?”
“No, I just kept holding my breath,” he said. Suddenly I was so grateful for all the time he’d spent practicing holding his breath in the swimming pool.
“How did you know to come?” I asked my uncle as he joined us on the rocks.
“I felt a prompting to come see what everyone was doing,” my uncle said. “So, I came.”
When the others joined us, we looked at the edges of the pond again, and this time, we saw a fallen warning sign that blended in with the rocks and dirt at the side of the pond.
Everyone was shaken up, so I took the kids back to the camping trailer. “Let’s thank Heavenly Father for helping us,” I said. As my kids joined me in prayer, the reality of what had happened hit me.
I knew there were others in similar circumstances who faced a very different, devastating outcome. I didn’t know why Jacob had been saved, but I knew it was a miracle. As I drew my children closer, I was grateful for the time I had with them and the blessing of our eternal family. I knew Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were aware of us and that They had sent a miracle when we missed the warning signs of danger.

The summer before Elder Mark D. Eddy’s senior year of high school, a seminary teacher invited him and other members of their seminary student council to read the Book of Mormon. He had read it many times with his family, but this was his first time by himself.
He decided to pray before and after he read each day. He hoped that a clear answer regarding the book’s truthfulness would come within a week or two. After reading for more than two months, he still had not received his anticipated confirmation.
Hours before a “welcome back” seminary devotional in which he was asked to bear his testimony, Elder Eddy arrived early to help set up. Then he found a quiet place to read the Book of Mormon and pray.
“I then received that clear and unmistakable feeling that it was true,” he said. “It came just in time for me to bear my testimony that evening. The feeling took enough work to receive and lasted just long enough for me to never forget.”

Let me mention one personal experience that stays with me, an experience with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which I first heard when I was 13 years old. I visited Salt Lake City then with my mother, who was a good musician and who wanted to hear that great organ and the choir. The memory of that sound has stayed with me; it was overwhelming.

I had the great opportunity, through the kindness of the choir itself, to lead it once, on June 27, 2007. They were at the Ravinia music center in Highland Park, Illinois, outside of Chicago. A few days prior to the concert, I received a call from the choir’s music director, Dr. Craig Jessop, who asked whether I would consider assuming the conductor’s podium at the end of the performance and lead the choir in an encore number. Never had I been asked to do something like that! I seized the occasion, and, after a brief lesson from Craig at the dress rehearsal, I got up and faced the choir with a tremendous feeling of awe and power and great satisfaction. There was silence as this marvelous choir was looking at and waiting for me. If that doesn’t give you something of an ego trip, I don’t know what would! I paused for a moment, and then I gave the downbeat, according to Craig’s instruction. All of a sudden, that vacuum of expectant silence was filled with this magnificent, overpowering sound, all in unison, all in harmony. I thought to myself, “I’m doing better with the Mormons than I am with the Catholics!” I have a lot harder time getting them to sing together!

In a discussion at a widely known theological seminary in the East, I was asked, “What is the Mormon understanding of God?” I struggled to testify. Then three of the most learned of their teachers, not with acrimony but with candor, said, “Let us explain why we cannot accept this. First of all, you people talk of God in terms that are human—all too human.” (That’s a phrase, incidentally, from Nietzsche.) “But the second problem is worse. You dare to say that man can become like God.” And they held up a hand and said, “Blasphemy.” Well, that hurts a little. I was led to ask two series of questions. (Mind you, I’m telling you the story. I’m not sure they would tell it the same way. I’ve had a chance to improve it in the interim.)

The first was a series of questions about the nature of Christ. “Was he a person?”
“Yes.”
“Did he live in a certain place and time?”
“Yes.”
“Was he embodied?”
“Yes.”
“Was he somewhere between five and seven feet in height?”
“Well, we hadn’t thought of it, but, yes, we suppose he was.”
“Was he resurrected with his physical body?”
“He was.”
“Does he now have that body?”
“Yes.”
“Will he always?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any reason we should not adore and honor and worship him for what he has now become?”
“No,” they said, “he is very God.”
“Yes,” I said, “what then of the Father?”
“Oh no, oh no.” And then they issued a kind of Platonic manifesto—the statement out of the traditional creeds which are, all due honor to them, more Greek than they are Hebrew. “No, no, the Father is ‘immaterial, incorporeal, beyond space, beyond time, unchanging, unembodied, etc.’”

Now, earlier they had berated me because Mormons, as you know, are credited—or blamed—for teaching, not trinitarianism, but tritheism—the idea of three distinct personages. And I couldn’t resist at that point saying, “Who has two Gods? You are the ones who are saying that there are two utterly unlike persons. The religious dilemma is how can I honor the Father and seek to become like him (for even the pronoun ‘him’ is not appropriate) without become unlike the Christ whom you say we can properly adore and worship and honor.” Well, the attack at that point was that I didn’t understand the Trinity. And I acknowledged that was true.

But now the second set of questions: “Why,” I dared to ask—and it’s a question any child can ask—“did God make us at all?” There’s an answer to that in their catechism. Basically, it is that God did so for his own pleasure and by his inscrutable will. Sometimes it is suggested that he did so that he might have creatures to honor and worship him—which, if we are stark in response, is not the most unselfish motive one could conceive. Sometimes it is said that he did so for our happiness. But because of the creeds it is impossible to say that God needed to do so, for God, in their view, is beyond need. And then the bold question I put was “You hold, don’t you, that God has and had all power, all knowledge, all anticipatory wisdom, and that he knew, therefore, exactly what he was about and could have done otherwise?”
“Yes,” they allowed, “he could.”
“Why then, since God could have created cocreators, did he choose to make us creatures? Why did God choose to make us his everlasting inferiors?”
At that point one of them said, “God’s very nature forbids that he should have peers.”
I replied, “That’s interesting. For us God’s very nature requires that he should have peers. Which God is more worthy of our love?”

I’d like to tell you a true story about a young boy who didn’t have the opportunity of going to school for very long. His father died, leaving little money for the boy’s family. One day the boy became very ill with smallpox and had to miss a lot of school.

Slowly his health improved, and he was glad to be able to go to school again. But he was back in school for just one year, completing the seventh grade, when he had to stop going altogether. He and his brother then had to find jobs to help earn enough money to buy food and clothing the family needed.

The boy worked very hard, grew up strong, and learned a lot through his experiences. He read books whenever he could, and was interested in learning the things he had missed by not going to school. Often he would say how sad he was not to have had a formal education. He was a wonderful man and worked hard to develop himself. And he kept hoping that someway he could get back to school again. But he never had that chance. This little boy who grew up wanting to continue his schooling was my father.

After they reached Clay County, Missouri, news arrived that a mob of nearly four hundred men were preparing to destroy them. When Joseph heard the news, he knelt beneath the clear blue summer sky and prayed for divine protection.

Not far off, gunfire sounded. The men of Zion’s Camp wanted to fight, but Joseph counseled them to wait and see what God would do.

Suddenly a small black cloud appeared in the west. It moved eastward, growing bigger as it moved, until it filled the heavens with darkness. The first ferryboat of mobbers had crossed the Missouri River south of Zion’s Camp and was returning for another load, when a violent burst of wind hit the boat. Rain poured and the wind soared so hard that the members of Zion’s Camp ran from their tents and found shelter in an old Baptist meetinghouse nearby. Safely inside, Joseph told them that God was in that storm.

The horizon filled with the snaking of lightning bolts—not one after another, but atop and beside each other so that the sky was continually lit, and the thunder roared without stopping. Large hailstones broke branches from trees and destroyed crops. Torrents of rain soaked the mobbers’ ammunition and made it useless. The sights and sounds of the storm frightened the mobbers’ horses away, leaving the mobbers to find their way home, wet, horseless, and frightened.

The next morning, Fishing River, which had been only ankle deep, was more than forty feet (12.2 m) deep. One of the mobbers told Joseph Smith that he knew that God was protecting the Mormons.