Gospel Story Finder

Remember a few years ago when devastating fires burned out of control in Southern California? As fierce winds blew, the public was restricted from the area by police. A few families were allowed to remain and try to save their homes.

Soon a van arrived at one house, filled with brethren from the quorum, carrying their shovels. They were asked, “How did you get past the police barricade?” Response: “It was easy. We just told them our brother lives here.”

The count was soon up to thirty-nine brethren who were helping dig a trench for fire protection. A curious police officer appeared and said, “I just want to meet the man who has thirty-nine brothers!”

Hela lifted the large basket of produce to his head and took a deep breath, hoping the air would fill him with courage. It didn’t. It wasn’t so much that he feared the task before him as that he hated it. He just didn’t want to take the vegetables to sell in the city.
Tilling the soil and watching the rich black earth soften and crumble under the hoe always filled Hela’s heart with gladness. And watching the crops begin to send up green messages of life was exciting. Hela even enjoyed digging out the weeds as the plants grew.
But after watering and weeding and growing, the vegetables must be taken to market. That task had once been Hela’s favorite, but now he could barely force himself to go.
For more than five years—ever since Samuel the Lamanite prophet had stood on the city wall and called the people to repentance—the persecution had gotten worse. Each month, each week, each day, the nonbelievers became bolder in tormenting the people who believed that Christ would come.
Everyone at the marketplace knew that Hela, who bore the name of his father, was a follower of Nephi the prophet. And they knew that Hela’s father taught people about Christ’s coming. So they spat on Hela and swore at him. Sometimes they even beat him when he went to the marketplace. But Hela said nothing about his tormentors because he knew his family needed the money from the sale of the vegetables. He also knew that his father would probably take the produce to market himself to protect his son, and then his father would not be able to teach the gospel.
“Are you leaving for the market now, my son?” Hela’s mother asked.
“Yes,” Hela said, taking one more deep breath.
“Such a son!” his mother said, clapping her hands together. “Only twelve years old and doing the work of three men!”
Hela smiled. His mother always exaggerated about him. “Now, Mother,” he protested.
“Well, maybe only the work of two men. But still, such a son!” The twinkle in her eyes danced happily as she clapped Hela’s cheeks between her hands and kissed his forehead, almost causing the basket to tumble from his head. Hela blushed and hurried along the dusty road, expertly balancing the large basket without ever touching it with his hands.
As the sun began peeking through the trees in the east, the road became crowded with people and animals on their way to market. Hela moved swiftly through the noise and commotion until he neared the city wall. “Zarahemla,” he whispered to himself, “what will I find within your gates today?” Saying a silent prayer, he passed through the city gate.
By now the noise was almost deafening—people calling, shouting, bartering; animals bleating, cackling, barking. Swiftly he moved in and out of the crowd, balancing the basket with one hand now.
“He is here again!”
Hela heard the coarse grating voice of Laman and thought, Today will be no different from the others.
“We thought perhaps you would be joining your father in frivolous pursuits and daydreams,” the man taunted him. “But if a father must play away his time, a son must do the work. Is that not so, my friends?” Laman jeered, and the other men laughed loudly.
As Hela turned to go, someone threw a vegetable that hit him just above the shoulder blade. He didn’t look back or acknowledge that he had been struck, but from the smell he knew that the vegetable was rotten. Quickly finding a place against the wall, Hela set his basket down. He hoped the produce would sell fast so that he could go home soon.
“If it isn’t Hela, the dreamer!” Hela looked up to see Ammah, Laman’s son, a boy his own age, standing with both hands on his hips. “What is a dreamer doing in the marketplace? Can’t dreamers eat their dreams?” Ammah laughed as if this was the greatest of all jokes. “Are you still waiting for the Christ to come?”
Hela ignored the boy, but soon others gathered. Once when they were small, they had all been friends and had played in the marketplace while their fathers sold their wares. Hela felt the familiar stab of sorrow as the derision continued.
“If the Christ were coming, He would have been here by now!” Ammah shouted. “It is past the five years Samuel predicted.” Ammah laughed loudly, and the other boys joined him. “Yes, and why would He go to Jerusalem and not come here? Are we not a better people?”
Hela knew the boys were only repeating the things they had heard their fathers say, but he felt so helpless. What will happen to these boys, who used to be my friends, when the Christ comes? he wondered.
After a while the boys grew tired of their reviling, and they left. The produce finally sold, and with a sigh of relief, Hela picked up his basket and hurried away.
As he neared his adobe home, he was greeted by the bleating of the goat and the clucking of the chickens. Hela smiled. How nice they sounded, how peaceful after all he had heard in the marketplace. Suddenly he saw his father’s donkey tethered to the fence. Dropping his basket, he hurried to the house.
“Is something wrong?” Hela cried out as he threw open the door. Instead of finding his father hurt and his mother crying, Hela saw his parents sitting quietly at the table, their faces filled with a peace and joy that he had not seen for a long, long time. Confused, he shut the door and waited for them to explain.
“Come in, my son,” his father said quietly. “How did the marketplace fare today?”
“Fine, Father,” Hela answered.
“I cannot believe that,” Hela’s father said, adding with a heartwarming smile, “You are a good son, Hela. I know of the things that are said and done at the marketplace, and I know that you have suffered for me and for the gospel.”
Hela did not reply. All the while he had been keeping his secret, it had never occurred to Hela that his father must know.
“My son, I appreciate all you have done. If it had not been for you, I would not have been able to do my work.”
“Please, Father,” Hela said carefully, not wanting to interrupt but unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “Why are you home so early?” Hela knew from the look on his parents’ faces that nothing was wrong, but he wanted to know what had happened.
“Nothing is wrong. As a matter of fact, something is very right.”
“What is it?” Hela asked.
“Come, sit here,” his mother invited.
As Hela started for the chair, a great commotion sounded from the road. Hela and his parents ran to the window.
“Hela! Hela, the dreamer!” shouted a deep voice from a large mob of people. “We want Hela, the dreamer, the teacher of dreams and fables.”
“False dreams and lies!” someone else shouted.
Quickly Hela’s mother bolted the door while his father fastened the shutters over the windows.
The noise from the crowd became so loud that Hela could no longer make out what anyone was saying. But he could feel and hear the anger in their voices. His heart pounded, and his knees felt weak.
Slowly his father opened a little door in one of the shutters, then waited for the noise to die down. When it was quieter, he called out, “What is it you want?”
“We want you, dream teacher.”
“And what do you want with me?”
“We have decided that we have had enough of your tales and your lies. The five years Samuel spoke of are long past. We will give you only three days more. If the signs you teach of do not come to pass by then, we are going to rid ourselves of your company.”
Hela shuddered. He had felt their hatred; he had even felt the sting of a whip or a hand across his back, but he had not realized that the people hated so much that they would kill.
“If it is me you want, take me now. There is no need to harm my family,” Hela heard his father answer.
“No!” Hela whispered through clenched teeth.
Hela’s mother put her arms around him. “Do not be frightened, my son,” she whispered. “God will protect us.”
“It is not just you we want,” a man in the mob was yelling. “We want all believers in such lies. In three days Nephi will have no followers. We will be free of your false prophecies and teachings. We will kill all of you and put an end to this foolishness.”
“It is not foolishness. The Savior will come,” Hela’s father called back.
“For your sakes He had better!” The man laughed, and the crowd joined in.
Suddenly someone threw a rock against the house. The heated mob seemed to pulse with renewed anger as they all began throwing rocks and cursing. The small house trembled and echoed from the pelting, and the awful shouting seemed like a tremendous storm.
Hela covered his ears and hid his face against his mother’s shoulder. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his father’s face. Despite all that was happening, the expression of peace and love on his father’s face was unchanged.
Suddenly the people began banging the walls of the house with cudgels. “Oh, Father!” Hela cried. “What more can happen?”
Hela’s father patted his son’s hand and said something to him, but for all the banging, Hela could not make out the words. Then he heard a great crashing, ripping sound over the din of the mob as the door buckled and fell onto the floor.
Framed in the broken doorway was Laman. “You would not come out to us, so we came in to you!”
(To be concluded.)

The coming days would try the Saints, including the Whitneys. In a nationwide economic downturn and banking panic, many turned against the Church and the Prophet. Commanded to move to Missouri, Newel hesitated. He had poured his life into his store in Kirtland. Much of the wealth it made sustained the Church. How could he just walk away?

The Lord chastised him for paying too much attention to worldly things and for “littleness of soul” (Doctrine and Covenants 117:11). Newel repented and obeyed. He settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, where he continued serving as bishop and later as Presiding Bishop.

Three children of the Goodman family of Sandy, Utah, were killed in an automobile accident a few weeks before Christmas last year. As I attended the funeral for these children, my heart was touched by the outpouring of love and support from the Goodmans’ ward and stake. More than 1500 people attended the funeral. They are a remarkable family, and the children were remarkable. The twelve Goodman children and their parents have sung together in many parts of the world, sharing their message of love and the importance of the family. Three other family members were seriously injured in the accident. The Goodmans said that the outpouring of love and kindness from others helped them through this tragedy. The love and help that the Goodman family received is an example of people following the Savior’s teaching: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Keeping a journal is not easy. We often tell ourselves that we are too busy or too tired or that our lives aren’t exciting enough to write about. I realized a few years ago that journal-keeping wasn’t meant to be hard and that I could grow to love it.
I began by writing one thing a day. It didn’t matter if it was really long or exciting; I just wrote whatever was on my mind or whatever had happened that day. It has already blessed my life.
One day someone in my family was struggling and I wasn’t sure what to say to her, but then I was prompted to read her one of my journal entries. I was able to share a little piece of me that I had recorded in that little black journal, and I saw the way that it helped lighten her heart. (See lds.org/go/rememberNE10.)
I guarantee if you will start by writing one thing down a day, it will bless your life. No matter how small or how big, writing down the blessings in your life can help you to remember them.
Gentry W., Utah, USA

Seventeen years ago today, during the Sunday afternoon session of general conference, I responded to President Hinckley’s assignment that I represent the six newly called Seventy in accepting our calls. As I awaited my turn at the midpoint of the session, I stood between two great Apostles: Elders Marvin J. Ashton and Bruce R. McConkie. I felt their love and support as I gazed with no little trepidation at the congregation of Saints gathered in the Tabernacle. Incidentally, we’re four times greater today. Elder Ashton, sensing my feelings, whispered, “I know it’s an awesome sight, but they’re all your friends.” As I stood that first time to speak, I felt the love of the Saints washing over me. Since then, in all the places to which worldwide assignments have taken us, Shirley and I have felt that same love and tried to return it.

One woman who stopped attending church at a young age shared the following experience of how her family continued loving her. In her large LDS family, missions were celebrated in a visible way. Photographs of all the missionaries in the family adorned her grandmother’s living room wall. It was “the epicenter of our family’s universe,” she said. She knew she would never serve a mission, and she felt that no matter what good she did in the world, she would never earn a place on her grandmother’s wall.
At age 30 she decided to serve in the United States Peace Corps. She journeyed to Madagascar and devoted all her energy to serving there. Partway through her experience, she learned that her grandmother had included her photo on the wall. When the Peace Corps term ended, grandmother and granddaughter embraced and shed tears. “Service is service,” her grandmother explained. Whether or not we have a missionary wall in our homes, there are still plenty of ways we can show all our family members they are loved and valued.

Home teachers and priesthood group leaders immediately set out to see if any ward members had been injured or needed help. As they canvassed the neighborhoods, they made sure everyone had turned off the gas, electricity, and water and helped those who hadn’t. Within two hours most families in the ward had been contacted.
“There were people here within 15 minutes asking if we were okay,” reported Denise Woolsey, a 16-year-old Laurel. “I said to my nonmember girlfriend, ‘See, that’s our Church members coming around to see if we’re all right.’ It made me feel safe knowing that the Church was there.”
Shari Vanlandingham, 14, and a convert of eight months, said she feels that being a member of the Church makes a big difference during a time of calamity. “I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have all this help. After the quake they had a meeting at the Church and asked what everybody needed. Whatever you needed, they would help you get. Everybody was helping everybody.”
Janel Woolsey, 14, agreed. “The Church made a lot of difference. The evening of the quake the church was opened for anybody who needed food or a place to sleep. People just came by to see if they could help.”

“I’m afraid to share my testimony with nonmembers because:
“They might not be prepared to hear it.”
“They might reject it, and then I would feel rejected.”
“I’m not sure what to say or how to express my testimony.”
During the second week of our member-missionary class, I recognized a marvelous opportunity to share my testimony of the plan of salvation with a nonmember friend who had just had her first baby. By putting my trust in the Lord, I was able to express my testimony of God’s love. It was a wonderful experience that led to tears of joy and an undeniable feeling that God does love us. I followed up later by sharing a copy of the Book of Mormon with her, which she welcomed and agreed to read.

I remember a few seasons ago we invited a photographer to come into our home to take our Christmas picture. He looked like a Latter-day Saint, and we didn’t discuss religion with him. He came and took several poses in our home and outside. As I went a week or so later to pick up the proofs. I looked around his home and began to conclude that he wasn’t a member of the Church. I then began to ask him questions that I hadn’t before. I asked him if he had lived in Salt Lake City all of his life. He said, “No, I’ve been here about seven years.” I said, “How do you enjoy living among the Mormons?’” And he said, “Well, they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them. The home teachers haven’t even come by to see me.” And then he said, “In fact, no one has ever spoken to me about the Church.” And here he had been in our midst for seven years! Somewhere in our neighborhoods there may be someone living this Christmas season whom we could select as our gift for the Savior. There might be something we could do with that person that would bring him closer and better prepare him to hear the gospel taught by the missionaries.

Tim Connors took a big bite of his after-school peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich and considered his problem. The Caped Avenger doesn’t really exist, not even in books. How can I do a book report on a book that doesn’t exist?
He wished he’d been paying attention in class. Then when the teacher asked who his favorite character was, he wouldn’t have blurted out, “The Caped Avenger.”
“Tell us about the Caped Avenger,” said the teacher.
“He fights evil,” Tim said, “and has lots of adventures—like the time the mad scientist had a laser gun pointed at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.”
“Sounds serious,” said the teacher. “What did the Caped Avenger do?”
“He went up on top of the Capitol dome and set up a special mirror to reflect the laser back at the bad guy,” Tim explained. That adventure was one of his brother Mikey’s favorite Caped Avenger stories.
“Boy,” said Norman with a sly grin, “I’d sure like to see that book. Why don’t you bring it in, Tim?”
“I think everyone would like to see it,” the teacher agreed. “Bring it in tomorrow and do a book report on it, Tim.”
Now Tim understood why Norman had grinned. Norman knew that there was no such book and that the Caped Avenger was just a character in the stories Tim told Mikey at bedtime. Norman knew, too, that Tim would be too embarrassed to tell his teacher. If he did, the whole class would laugh at him.
Tim looked at his sandwich. As usual he’d eaten the crusts first. The round, white sandwich looked a little like the spaceship whose occupants the Caped Avenger had foiled when they tried to take over the earth. Mikey hadn’t liked that story as well as the one in which the Caped Avenger had captured the dragon that ate all the ornaments off the Christmas tree. Tim had told his brother that story last year after Mikey had accidentally broken a whole box of glass ornaments.
Carefully Tim bit the sandwich into a rectangle so that it looked like a white book with brown pages. If the Caped Avenger were real, he’d probably consult his book of magic spells to find out how to turn wicked witches into toads—or sandwiches into books for boys who needed them for book reports! Or maybe the Caped Avenger would merely write the book himself. …
Write the book himself! “I’ll do it!” said Tim. “That’ll show Norman.”
When Mom and Mikey came home from the store, Tim was hard at work, cutting out magazine pictures that would illustrate a new Caped Avenger story.
“What’s it about?” asked Mikey, looking at the pictures of a big explosion, an airplane, and a scientific laboratory. “And where are you going to get pictures of the Caped Avenger?”
Tim paused. He shuffled the pages of the notebook that already had some pictures taped in it, just waiting for the story. Mikey was right. There were no pictures of the Caped Avenger in magazines or anywhere else. Tim knew exactly what he looked like, but he also knew that he could not draw such a daring hero. Suddenly he brightened. “The Caped Avenger has a new cape,” he explained. “It makes him invisible.”
Mikey’s eyes grew big. “Please, Tim, tell me the story.”
“Not right now, Mikey. I have to write the whole story for a book report for school tomorrow.”
The title page was beautiful. THE CAPED AVENGER AND THE BOMB and BY TIM CONNORS were in big, bold letters. But writing the story would have been much easier for the Caped Avenger than it was for Tim. Words that fit together in his mind seemed to get muddled on the way to the paper. His notebook pages became so smudged and sticky that he kept crumpling them up and starting over.
Tim was still struggling with his book when Mikey sadly went to bed without a story. Tim felt bad. He wished that he could just tell Mikey the story without having to write it down. Telling stories was easier.
Tim sat up straight. He ran upstairs, rummaged in his closet, then tiptoed into Mikey’s darkened bedroom. “What are you doing?” Mikey asked sleepily.
Tim put something on the dresser. “Telling you a story. It’s about how the Caped Avenger saved the world when the bad guys stole plutonium. They said they’d blow the earth’s crust apart unless the government gave them eighty spaceships.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Mikey happily.
Being careful to speak clearly, Tim launched into his story. By the time the Caped Avenger had been thanked again by a grateful nation, Mikey was asleep.
Tim took his tape recorder off Mikey’s dresser and carried it downstairs. He rewound the tape and played it back. “Silent and invisible, the Caped Avenger crept past the guards into the secret laboratory,” said his voice. He turned it off and picked up his pencil. Smiling, he wrote it all down, listening to a sentence or two at a time. There would be a book to take to school after all. Tim and the Caped Avenger had won another victory!

Some days, Ray relied on the power of prayer to keep going. “On Saturday morning, [he] was feeling sick again,” Sister Gamble reports. “We said a prayer with Ray in the car and again he perked up almost immediately and was able to move forward with sealings.”
Referencing President Russell M. Nelson’s invitation to think celestial, the sealer said, “doing sealings is just about as close to thinking celestial as one can get in this life.”
Ray was sealed first to his parents, and then his mother was sealed to the grandparents who raised him. In total, 96 family ordinances were performed throughout the week. The group had many tender mercies and felt very close to the Spirit.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how idyllic it was for me to be introduced to the temple for the first time,” Ray said. “It was a joy unimaginable. I’m so looking forward to many more such visits… If only the same joy could be felt in absolutely every other location throughout the world and every single person could focus on the exquisite experience and peace of our Heavenly Father’s presence, there could not be any room for the hurt and devastating destruction that we learn about so constantly in our world.”

In my first general conference message, I briefly shared how the transformative power of the Savior’s Atonement changed my father.
Today I would like to tell you a little more about how that change began. My father hit a very low point in his life when two ministering brothers began to visit him. One of them invited my father to come with him and his wife to the temple. He accepted the invitation. Each week they picked him up and drove to the next city to worship and serve in the house of the Lord. This continued for three years. Then my dad decided to become a temple worker.
I remember seeing changes in my father during that time. He became aware and attentive to the needs of others. He took better care of his health. He began to care about His relationship with God and subsequently all the relationships in his life. The change was real. He now had the Spirit with him, and I felt it.
Bless this ministering couple for helping my dad. They didn’t judge him for where he was in his life. They walked with him and helped him to develop his relationship with God. They are still my father’s closest and dearest friends.
Because these humble and devoted disciples of the Savior quietly ministered to a seemingly lost and dejected man, my family and I have been eternally blessed.

However, many of us put ourselves in situations like that of Ruben, who took pride in the communication techniques he had learned from his sales training. Knowing of his wife’s unhappy childhood, he earnestly tried to get her to talk whenever she became upset. Unfortunately, because Ruben was rather mechanical and scrutinizing, relying more on technique than on the love he felt for his wife, he intimidated rather than encouraged her. As she would tense up, he would press harder, applying probing techniques until them was very little heart-to-heart communication.

The solution lay almost totally with Ruben. He learned to care enough about his wife to recognize that often she needed respect more than she needed to talk. As he allowed his love for her to guide him, he learned to watch for nonverbal nuances. If he asked a question and she did not respond immediately, he did not press her for an answer. On more than one occasion, he went days without pressing issues, confining himself to simple courtesies, thoughtful actions, and words such as “please” and “thank you.” As he concentrated on creating a climate of respect instead of trying to get his wife to open up, she responded with increasing trust, and their communication improved steadily.

As volleyball tryouts approached for my senior year in high school, I couldn’t believe the thought that was running through my head: I wasn’t supposed to play volleyball. I’d played volleyball since seventh grade—why should this year be any different?
Not seeing the sense in quitting, I ignored the feeling and continued to participate in summer volleyball events. After a while the feeling came back, so I decided that if I really wasn’t supposed to be on the team, my coach would just cut me during tryouts.
Then one night at the gym, I couldn’t focus on the game at all. I felt terrible and restless inside. I came home frustrated with my team and with myself. I sat next to my mom and sister and cried. I told them how confused I was, and my mom told me to pray and ask Heavenly Father what He wanted me to do. I went up to my room and began to pray. I told Heavenly Father how I felt, then I asked Him to help me feel peace if I was not supposed to continue playing volleyball. I felt His peace in my heart and knew that I needed to quit.
I’m still not sure all the reasons why that was the right decision, but I know that it’s what the Lord wanted me to do, and that’s a good enough reason for me.
The next morning I told my coach and my teammates that I wasn’t going to be playing. Even though it was incredibly hard, I knew I was doing the right thing.

The Christmas season of 1837, however, was not pleasant for Joseph. The national financial panic of that year had helped cause the crash of the Saints’ own banking institution, the Kirtland Safety Society. Many members, some in high places, turned against the Church. Returning from a trip to Missouri on 10 December 1837, Joseph found that some of the opposition planned to deprive him of his presidency, and even kill him. On 12 January, 1838, Joseph and Sidney Rigdon left Kirtland for safety among the Saints in Missouri.

In 1952, super-athlete Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia won both the 10,000 and 5,000-meter races. To celebrate his victory, he announced he would enter the marathon, even though he had never run the 26-mile event before.
“Do you really think you can win?” a newsman asked.
“If I didn’t think I could win, I wouldn’t have entered,” Zatopek replied.
At the 15-mile mark, Zatopek was side-by-side with Jim Peters of Great Britain, the prerace favorite.
“Don’t you think we should be going a bit faster?” Zatopek asked, then took off. He was grinning when he broke the tape.

This story about the Aaronic Priesthood begins with a young woman, 16-year-old Lauren DellAquila of the Cary Second Ward, Apex North Carolina Stake. Lauren hadn’t come to Church for years. She had never been baptized and confirmed, “but I just knew in my heart that the Church was true.”
She also knew David Christison, 16, and Andrew Hill, 15, who attend the same school, are Latter-day Saints. “I’m in marching band with David and had a couple of classes with Andrew last year,” she says. And she knew they stood by their beliefs. “It meant a lot to see their example, because most teens at our school don’t have values like they do,” Lauren explains.
Then one day after band, some other classmates were making unkind comments about the Church. Lauren told them if they really wanted to know the truth, they shouldn’t repeat rumors; they should find out for themselves. Afterward, David thanked her and asked how she knew so much about the Church. “She said that when she was really young she went to Church, but then her parents divorced and she stopped coming,” David says. “So I invited her to come again.”
“People had tried to get me to come back before, but for one reason or another it had never happened,” Lauren explains. “But when I told David and Andrew that I did want to try again, they were excited. I started coming to meetings, and they introduced me to the bishop, the missionaries, and the young women in the ward. They helped me feel at home.”
Soon Lauren was baptized and confirmed, and today she’s a happy, confident Laurel who recently gave a sacrament meeting talk about the importance of the priesthood. “If the gospel had not been restored,” she says, “I wouldn’t have seen two young men honoring their priesthood. And I wouldn’t have had the opportunities I have had to make covenants and to draw close to the Savior.”
It’s a similar story for Hope Riner, an 8-year-old in the same ward. She benefited from the good example of her 17-year-old half-brother, Andrew Roberts. He joined the Church a little over a year ago and was recently ordained a priest, which meant he could baptize her. “I felt great about it, because we have a strong bond already,” Hope says. “I was glad my brother could use the priesthood to help me.”
“It was an incredible experience,” Andrew says. “I know I need to be an example to my sister, not only as a brother, but also as an example of the kind of young man she should have as friends and the kind of man she will marry one day. By my example, I’m preparing her to understand how the priesthood can bless her life.”
Both Lauren and Hope know that the young men in their ward—as well as in the Cary Third Branch (Spanish speaking), which is dependent on their ward—take the priesthood seriously. “They don’t just talk about it,” Lauren says. “They live it.”
Maxwell Guerra, 13, is another example. He’s a member of the branch but serves as the deacons quorum president of the ward. On any given Sunday, he’s meeting with the presidency and the quorum adviser to keep track of the quorum members, plan activities, and make sure all the deacons needed will be there to pass the sacrament. After church on a recent fast Sunday, he helped another deacon collect fast offerings and then visited Alma Parraga, who is about to turn 12 and will soon be joining the quorum.
Andrew Hill, mentioned earlier, is president of the teachers quorum, and he loves the fellowship he finds there. “It’s more than just getting along with each other,” he stresses. “We strengthen each other and learn from each other.” Any assignment, he has found, is easier with teamwork, and that includes home teaching. “One of the great things we do in the Church is to look after each other,” he says. “It’s a powerful thing when an Aaronic Priesthood holder and a Melchizedek Priesthood holder become a team, with a responsibility to watch over families and individuals.”
The teachers also spend time preparing the sacrament, and Andrew says that has special significance for him. “Priests bless the sacrament,” he says, “and deacons pass the sacrament. But teachers set a tone of reverence by having everything ready before the meetings begin.” Being involved with something so sacred is a great privilege for the Aaronic Priesthood, Andrew says.
Of course, the bishop of the ward is the president of the Aaronic Priesthood. In the Cary Second Ward, Matthew Watkins is the first assistant to Bishop Charles N. Anderson. Matthew says he feels one of the most important things the priests do is to study the gospel together. He is grateful when the bishop helps the priests to understand gospel principles. “The priests help teach each other, too,” he says. “Each Sunday I feel like I understand more and more.” In particular, he remembers a lesson about fasting. “It helped me see how important it is to get close to the Spirit.” He also enjoys providing music for priesthood meeting. “Music is another way of getting close to the Spirit,” he explains.
Another priest, Erick Wells, 18, recently ordained his younger brother, Michael, 12, to the office of deacon. “I wanted Erick to ordain me,” Michael says, “because he’s one of the greatest examples in my life. He never does anything wrong that I’ve noticed, so everything he does, I know I can do too.”
Erick smiles at the tribute. “I really enjoyed being able to use my priesthood to confer it on Michael,” he says. “I feel a great responsibility to be an example not only to my family but to other people as well so that I can share in the gospel with all of them.”
Erick says the goal of all young men in the Church should be “to obtain both the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods, make covenants in the temple, be missionaries, prepare for a lifetime of service, and live faithfully with their families so that they can be together with Heavenly Father again.” Matthew agrees. “The Aaronic Priesthood lifts us to a higher sense of what we need to be doing,” he says.
And that’s what’s happening in the Cary Second Ward. Ask these young men who is using the priesthood to make a difference right now, and they can truthfully answer, “We are!” Ask them who is using the priesthood to prepare for the future, and the answer is the same.
How has the priesthood made a difference in your life? E-mail your experience to us at newera@ldschurch.org.

When Heber J. Grant was a young man, he worked for an insurance agent, Mr. H. R. Mann. He treated Heber like a son.
Mr. Mann: Heber, why don’t you go to the baseball game this afternoon and then come tell me about it during supper?
Heber: Thanks, Mr. Mann!
Besides working for Mr. Mann, Heber earned money writing greeting cards and wedding invitations. He stayed at the office late into the evening, spreading his greeting cards on his large office desk to let the ink dry.
On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Mann’s partner, Mr. Wadsworth, found Heber still busy at the office writing greeting cards.
Mr. Wadsworth: Heber, what on earth are you doing?
Heber: Getting my cards ready to sell tomorrow.
Mr. Wadsworth: You are the only one I’m going to give a New Year’s present to. You seem to enjoy work while most of the other boys watch the clock to see how soon they can leave.
Heber: Wow! A hundred dollars?
Heber later said that knowing he had earned the confidence of his employer meant much more to him than the money. It inspired him to succeed in business and in the community.
As prophet, he taught young people to be hard workers too.
Heber: Be inspired with a desire to labor and learn, and you will achieve success in the battle of life.

His promise reminded me of another experience. I met 12-year-old Charlotte Hlimi near Carcassonne, France, in 1990 while serving as a mission president. The Hlimis were a faithful family living in an apartment with eight children. They had a picture of the Savior and of the prophet on the wall. In the interview for her patriarchal blessing, I asked Charlotte if she paid an honest tithe. She responded, “Yes, President Andersen. My mother has taught me that there are temporal blessings and spiritual blessings that come from paying our tithing. My mother taught me that if we always pay our tithing, we will want for nothing. And President Andersen, we want for nothing.”
In giving me permission to share her story, Charlotte, now 45 and sealed in the temple, commented: “My testimony of tithing was very real at the time, and it is even stronger now. I am deeply grateful for this commandment. As I live it I continue to be abundantly blessed.”