Gospel Story Finder

By then, running had become a way of life. She challenged herself more, pushed herself harder, and then, in 1978, faced the two greatest challenges of her life. One challenge was to run completely across the United States. The other was to accept the message of the Mormon missionaries.

Standing on the steps of the Los Angeles City Hall on 12 March 1978 she knew she was facing “the greatest challenge of my life” both spiritually and physically. “It was my greatest ambition, but I felt so apprehensive. Would I really be able to do it? What lay ahead of me? Was I strong enough? Had I prepared properly? I wished I’d had enough sense to have stayed at home.”

Then the clock struck nine and she was off. Followed by two vans, Mavis ran fourteen hours a day, starting at 4 A.M. and stopping only for meals. She ran through thirteen states, through four time zones. She took six million footsteps, one at time. She wore twenty-five pairs of shoes in rotation, and had repairs made forty times.

The weather, almost systematically, hit her with every variation. For four weeks she slogged through intense heat. For the next four weeks, she struggled through gale-force winds—that literally blew her off her feet more than once—and bitter cold, staggering along under the weight of two tracksuits, a soft, flat cap with no visor, gloves, and a lightweight jacket the wind can’t blow through. Then it rained without stopping for seven days. One raincoat would keep her dry for exactly one hour; she wore two. Together, they kept her dry for four hours.

The weather was not her only challenge. “The traffic was frightening,” she exclaimed. At one dangerous stretch, cars were whizzing past every seven seconds. She stopped running only one day—the thirty-third—when shin splints made it impossible to continue. The next day, teeth gritted and literally dragging her right foot, she was back on the road.

“I prayed often for courage to bear the pain,” she remembers. “I didn’t ask God to take it away, but just to help me bear it.” She prayed often throughout the journey: “‘Please God, give me the stamina to fight the wind, the endurance to continue the distance I need to go, the willpower to keep going.’ At no time did I ever doubt that I would finish the distance, but I can assure you that there were times when I didn’t know how I could finish the day or even the next hour. And then I prayed, in the words of John Henry Newman’s beautiful hymn, ‘Please, God, I do not ask to see the distant scene. One step enough for me.’” (“Lead Kindly Light”, No. 112).

Finally the weather relented, and “the last two days were the most beautiful imaginable.” She trotted into New York and landed at the city hall just before noon on May 20, the only woman in history to have run from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast across the U.S.. Exhilarated from the run, after sixty-nine days, two hours, and forty minutes, she was surprised that it was over, “It came too suddenly,” she said.

Was it worth it? “Yes! I grew beyond my wildest dreams. I learned that nothing is impossible if you’re prepared to work hard enough. Age is irrelevant. There are no barriers and no handicaps. And you must do it yourself. No one can run for you. I also learned that failure is important. From it we learn discipline, patience, perseverance, and the ability to accept disappointments.”

There came to my desk recently a bulletin issued by the Utah Boys Ranch. It included the story of a boy named Mike. A judge of the juvenile court wrote concerning him:
“Mike, at the age of 9 years, was sleeping in cars, associating with gangs and involving himself with dangerous weapons. No state agency could help this young boy turn his life around. The Utah Boys Ranch stepped forward and offered their help. The Boys Ranch saved his life. They gave him a place to live and taught him values and standards. His environment and world changed and now he is out of the Juvenile Justice system.”
Included also was a letter from Mike himself, which reads:
“Hi. This is Mike. I had a bad childhood where I grew up. I was in a gang that was bad. I came to this place. I’m glad that I came to this place ’cause if I didn’t come here I would still be in gangs and getting in trouble. I was so glad that I came here ’cause I met some good people like Chris and Delpha. But now I have a family and I am doing good” (Utah Boys Ranch, New Beginnings Round-up, fall 1996, 1).

Six months after my mission, I held my mother’s hand as she took her last breath. Decades later, my wife, Lisa, found a letter from my parents in an old box. Dad had written it to me during my mission but died before sending it.
“Our hearts were and are and always will be full of love for you. I realize that things have not always been perfect, but that is life. … Christ did not say, ‘Follow me and it will be easy.’ He said, ‘Take up [your] cross, and follow me’ [Matthew 16:24]. He carried the cross, but we all have our splinters. Perhaps our place in heaven will depend upon how we handle ours. Son, we love you very much.”
Growing up, I was rough on my parents, but I never doubted their love. Since finding the Church, I have worked hard to thank them and honor them.

The Brethren gathered in that meeting listened with anticipation, for a number of vacancies among the General Authorities were to be filled at the approaching conference. The First Presidency called a new member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Elder Boyd K. Packer, and then Joseph heard, to his amazement, his own name. The Lord had called him to serve as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve. He looked up with surprise and wondered if he had heard correctly. All the Brethren were looking at him—the men whom he had felt it an honor to serve—and realized that he was now to be numbered with them. “Nothing was further from my mind,” he said later.

Another example of unfairness stems from a situation my wife, Ruth, encountered as a child. One day Ruth learned that her mother was taking a younger sister, Merla, to buy new shoes. Ruth complained, “Mom, it’s so unfair! Merla got the last new pair of shoes.”

Ruth’s mother asked, “Ruth, do your shoes fit?”

Ruth replied, “Well, yes.”

Ruth’s mother then said, “Merla’s shoes no longer fit.”

Ruth agreed that every child in the family should have shoes that fit. Although Ruth would have liked new shoes, her perception of being treated unfairly dissipated when she saw the circumstances through her mother’s eyes.

David discovered an interesting person sitting behind the main character in one of his cartoons.
The guy didn’t have a name, but he was just the sort of person David was looking for. In learning to be a cartoonist, David had been fiddling with different drawing styles. Then when he was drawing the background people in a cartoon, suddenly he found he had drawn a guy with just the right look. He had a pudgy nose, no forehead, his mouth in danger of sliding down his neck, and a soft slouching body. And the expression on his face was one of being slightly amused at life’s absurdities. He was the perfect model for the character in David’s new cartoon strip called Larger Than Life.
“I liked him more than the main guy,” said David Gallagher, a young cartoonist whose low-key sense of humor comes out in his cartoon strip. His characters, who find themselves caught in some odd moments, usually have a slightly dumbfounded look. “The emotions and expressions are always toned down,” said David. “I thought it would be funnier just to be subtle about things in my cartoons.”
It’s working. A growing number of people are finding that David’s quick wit and quick pen do tickle their funny bone.
While in college, David is putting to good use the doodling habit he has had since he was a little boy. Growing up in Massachusetts, David and his childhood friends loved the animated movies. At eight, his goal in life was to become an animator. “I learned about animation cells by reading books about Walt Disney,” he said. “I drew my own animation cells. I’d draw on acetate with a marker, and then I’d paint the back of it. My favorite character was one I called Foxy Fox.” Just for fun, he would draw comic books and give them to friends at school.
By the time he was in high school, David gave up on cartoon characters. He used his artistic talent in more realistic drawing. “I never thought I’d be a cartoonist,” said David, “because you have to be a comedian. I was shy, and never very funny. I was serious growing up and hated to be called silly.” The bemused look on David’s face could be a mirror of one of his cartoon characters as he pauses, then laughs, “Nothing like I am now.”
After a mission to Germany and a semester abroad at the BYU Jerusalem Center, David’s interests seemed miles away from art and cartoons. He began an intensive study of the Arabic language and changed his major to Near Eastern studies.
But hidden somewhere in his brain was that pudgy, chinless, slouching character waiting to make an appearance. David started thinking about cartooning again when a friend encouraged him to do a couple of cartoons and take them to BYU’s student newspaper. The publisher liked the cartoons and began running them twice a week. David was kept busy coming up with new ones.
When David had enough cartoons for a portfolio, he began sending them to cartoon publishing syndicates, hoping to sell them to other newspapers. He got some good feedback, but no takers. That’s when David and his wife, Sage, decided to try syndicating his cartoons on their own. They had brochures printed up with some sample cartoons and mailed them out to hundreds of regional and college newspapers. So far, his cartoons are running in 17 newspapers. Not enough to make a living, but a start.
How does he come up with his ideas for cartoons? “That’s the number one question people ask,” said David. “To meet my deadline, I have to come up with one every day. I’m never quite sure if they are funny until the next day or the next week when someone reacts. The worst thing is having to explain a cartoon. It takes all the humor away.”
In developing an idea, David first starts with something that strikes him as odd. When he runs across a funny sign or hears a phrase that interests him, he’ll write it in a calendar he keeps in his back pocket. Then when he’s ready to do a cartoon, he looks over those ideas. He works on the caption first. Only when the wording is exactly right does he start to draw.
For example, David thought there might be something funny about the signs he sees on doors that say, “This door must remain unlocked during business hours.” Then he tried to imagine a situation where that sign would be funny.
“I had an inmate at a prison write this on a sign,” said David, “and post it on the prison door with a guard reading it and unlocking the door. The caption said, ‘Mel knew it was a long shot, but somehow it worked.’”
Another idea. David noticed a treat that people make by dehydrating fruit puree, called fruit leather. It was only a small humor leap to have his pudgy character browsing through a rack of brand-new fruit-leather jackets.
The hard part is coming up with one good idea after another, day after day. A cartoonist doesn’t get a vacation unless he can create cartoons in advance. It’s tough, but David has taken on even tougher challenges in his life.
As a teenager, David was the only consistently active member of the Church in his family. He has an older brother and sister and a younger brother. “Having to stay active alone can either push you away or pull you in. I guess it pulled me in.”
David said, “I looked up to several people in my ward. I wanted to be around people who understood the gospel. To me the Book of Mormon is so obviously good and right. It just exudes this goodness. When you read it you feel like the Lord is right there and nodding his head. I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching, but I felt like I had the testimony to see me through.”
His interest in the gospel also led to his college major. He wanted to learn more about the ancient land of the prophets, but during his stay in Jerusalem he became more interested in the modern Middle East. “I get very emotionally involved when I hear reports from the Middle East. It’s a powerful place, and it has its own beauty. I find the Arabic language an incredible challenge,” said David.
That challenge might be the thing that leads David away from cartooning. He presently works for a computer firm specializing in Arabic software. And he would love to continue his Near Eastern studies into graduate school.
But right now there’s this slope-shouldered, big-nosed, bemused fellow with no forehead that keeps popping up in the strangest places. And he’s making a lot of people laugh.

I hold in my hand a first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon. It was printed in 1830 on a hand-operated letter press at the E. B. Grandin Company in the village of Palmyra, New York.
In June of 1829, Joseph Smith, then 23 years old, called on 23-year-old Mr. Grandin in company with Martin Harris, a local farmer. Mr. Grandin had three months earlier advertised his intent to publish books. Joseph Smith provided pages of a handwritten manuscript.
If the content of the book did not doom it to remain obscure, the account of where it came from certainly would. Imagine an angel directing a teenage boy to the woods where he found buried a stone vault and a set of golden plates.
The writings on the plates were translated by use of a Urim and Thummim, which is referred to a number of times in the Old Testament and described by Hebrew scholars as an instrument “whereby the revelation was given and truth declared.”
Before the book was off the press, pages of it were stolen and printed in the local newspaper, accompanied by ridicule. Opposition was destined to excite mobs to kill the Prophet Joseph Smith and drive those who believed him into the wilderness.
From that very unlikely beginning to this day, 108,936,922 copies of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ have been printed. It has been published in 62 languages, with selections of it in another 37 languages, and 22 more translations are in process.
Now 60,000 full-time missionaries in 142 countries pay their own way to devote two years of their lives to testify that the Book of Mormon is true.
For generations it has inspired those who read it. Herbert Schreiter had read his German translation of the Book of Mormon. In it he read:
“When ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
“And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.”
Herbert Schreiter tested the promise and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In 1946, released as a prisoner of war, Herbert returned to his wife and three little daughters in Leipzig, Germany. Soon thereafter, he went as a missionary to Bernburg, Germany. Alone, without a companion, he sat cold and hungry in a room, wondering how he should begin.
He thought of what he had to offer the war-devastated people. He printed by hand a placard which read, “Will there be a further life after death?” and posted it on a wall.
About that same time, a family from a small village in Poland came to Bernburg.
Manfred Schütze was four years old. His father had been killed in the war. His mother, with his grandparents and his mother’s sister, also a widow, and her two little girls, were forced to evacuate their village with only 30 minutes’ notice. They grabbed what they could and headed west. Manfred and his mother pulled and pushed a small cart. At times, the ailing grandfather rode in the cart. One Polish officer looked at the pathetic little Manfred and began to weep.
At the border, soldiers ransacked their belongings and threw their bedding into the river. Manfred and his mother were then separated from the family. His mother wondered if they might have gone to Bernburg, where her grandmother was born, perhaps to relatives there. After weeks of unbelievable suffering, they arrived in Bernburg and found the family.
The seven of them lived together in one small room. But their troubles were not over. The mother of the two little girls died. The grieving grandmother cried out for a preacher, and asked, “Will I see my family again?”
The preacher answered, “My dear lady, there is no such thing as the Resurrection. They who are dead are dead!”
They wrapped the body in a paper bag for burial.
On the way from the grave, the grandfather talked of taking their own lives, as many others had done. Just then they saw the placard that Elder Schreiter had posted on the building—“Is there further life after death?”—with an invitation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At a meeting, they learned of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
The book explains:
The purpose of mortal life and death;
The certainty of life after death;
What happens when the spirit leaves the body;
The description of the Resurrection;
How to receive and retain a remission of your sins;
What hold justice or mercy may have on you;
What to pray for;
Priesthood;
Covenants and ordinances;
The office and ministry of angels;
The still, small voice of personal revelation;
And preeminently, the mission of Jesus Christ;
And many other jewels that make up the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They joined the Church. Soon their lives changed. The grandfather found work as a baker and could provide bread for his family and also for Elder Schreiter, who had given them “the bread of life.”
Then help came from the Church in the United States. Manfred grew up eating grain out of little sacks with a picture of a beehive on them and peaches from California. He wore clothes from the welfare supplies of the Church.
Soon after I was released from the air force, I went to the welfare mill at Kaysville, Utah, to help fill bags of wheat for shipment to the starving people in Europe. I like to think one of the bags of grain that I filled myself went to Manfred Schütze and his mother. If not, it went to others in equal need.
Elder Dieter Uchtdorf, who sits with us on the stand today as one of the Seventy, remembers to this very day the smell of the grain and the feel of it in his little-boy hands. Perhaps one of the bags I filled reached his family.
When I was about 10, I made my first attempt to read the Book of Mormon. The first part was easy-flowing New Testament language. Then I came to the writings of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. I could not understand them; I found them difficult to read. I laid the book aside.
I made other attempts to read the Book of Mormon. I did not read it all until I was on a troop ship with other bomber crew members, headed for the war in the Pacific. I determined that I would read the Book of Mormon and find out for myself whether it is true or not. Carefully I read and reread the book. I tested the promise that it contained. That was a life-changing event. After that, I never set the book aside.
Many young people have done better than I did.
A 15-year-old son of a mission president attended high school with very few members of the Church.
One day the class was given a true-or-false test. Matthew was confident that he knew the answers to all except for question 15. It read, “Joseph Smith, the alleged Mormon prophet, wrote the Book of Mormon. True or false?”
He could not answer it either way, so, being a clever teenager, he rewrote the question. He crossed out the word alleged and replaced the word wrote with translated. It then read, “Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, translated the Book of Mormon.” He marked it true and handed it in.
The next day the teacher sternly asked why he had changed the question. He smiled and said, “Because Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon; he translated it. And he was not an alleged prophet; he was a prophet.”
He was then invited to tell the class how he knew that.
In England, my wife and I became acquainted with Dorothy James, the widow of a clergyman who lived at the Close of Winchester Cathedral. She brought out a family Bible which had been lost for many years.
Years before, the possessions of a family member had been sold. The new owner found the Bible in a small desk that had remained unopened for over 20 years. There were also some letters written by a child named Beaumont James. He was able to find the James family and return the long-lost family Bible.
On the title page my wife read the following handwritten note: “This Bible has been in our family since the time of Thomas James in 1683 who was a lineal descendant of Thomas James first librarian of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, who was buried in New College Chapel August 1629. [Signed] C. T. C. James, 1880.”
The margins and the open pages were completely filled with notations written in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. One entry particularly touched her. From the bottom of the title page, she read, “The fairest Impression of the Bible is to have it well printed on the Readers heart.”
And then this quote from Corinthians: “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in the tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:2–3).
My Book of Mormon also has many notes in the margins and is heavily underlined. I was in Florida once with President Hinckley. He turned from the pulpit and asked for a copy of the scriptures. I handed him my copy. He thumbed through it for a few seconds, turned and handed it back, saying, “I can’t read this. You have got everything crossed out!”
Amos prophesied of “a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”
In a world ever more dangerous than the world of little Manfred Schütze and Dieter Uchtdorf, the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ has the nourishing power to heal starving spirits of the world.
Manfred Schütze is now a member of the Third Quorum of Seventy and supervises our seminaries in Eastern Europe. His mother, now 88, still attends the temple at Freiberg, where Herbert Schreiter once served as a counselor to the president.
With Elder Walter F. González, a new member of the Seventy from Uruguay, I attended a conference in Moroni, Utah, a town with a Book of Mormon name. There is no doctor or dentist in Moroni. They must leave town to shop for groceries. Their students are bused to a consolidated high school across the valley.
We held a meeting with 236 present. Lest Elder González see only ordinary rural farmers, I gave this sentence of testimony: “I know the gospel is true and that Jesus is the Christ.” I asked if someone could repeat it in Spanish. Several hands went up. Could someone repeat it in another language? It was repeated in:
Japanese
Chinese
Finnish
Spanish
Tongan
Maori
German
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Tagalog
Korean
Russian
Dutch
French—15 languages
Again in English: I know the gospel is true and that Jesus is the Christ.
I love this Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Study it and one can understand both the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Bible. I know it is true.
In this 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, printed by 23-year-old Egbert B. Grandin for 23-year-old Joseph Smith Jr., I read from page 105: “We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.”
And that, I assure you, is exactly what we do. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

1. Mathan’s great-grandma always had interesting things in her big purse. If Mathan was hungry, she had a treat. If Mathan was bored, she pulled out a pad of paper for him to draw on. And if Mathan got hurt, she always had a bandage. But the thing that he loved the most was Great-Grandma’s bottle of lotion.
2. Great-Grandma often took out her lotion and rubbed it on her hands. She said it helped keep her hands smooth and soft. Mathan thought this was important because he knew that Great-Grandma did a lot with her hands. She made delicious grape jelly, she sewed soft baby blankets, and she played the piano.
3. Sometimes Great-Grandma shared her lotion with Mathan. When he was feeling restless or unhappy, she would take his hands in hers and squeeze out the cool lotion. Then she would gently rub it on his fingers, the backs of each hand, and then the palms. The sweet smell of the lotion and the touch of her soft hands made him feel calm and content. “There now,” she would say. “That’s just what you needed.” And it was just what Mathan needed.
4. Over time, Great-Grandma got very old. She couldn’t make jelly or sew blankets or play the piano. She no longer carried her big purse full of treats, pads of paper, bandages, and lotion. Most of the time she didn’t even look at Mathan. She just sat in her wheelchair with her hands in her lap. Mathan thought she looked unhappy and tired. It made him feel sad.
5. One day when Mathan went to visit Great-Grandma, he brought a bottle of lotion with him. While she was sitting in her wheelchair, Mathan gently took her wrinkled hands in his and squeezed out the cool lotion. He gently rubbed it on her fingers, the backs of her hands, and then the palms.
6. When Mathan was finished with her hands, he carefully removed her slippers and rubbed the lotion on her feet. After he replaced her slippers he looked up to see Great-Grandma’s bright blue eyes looking at him. “Thank you, Mathan,” she whispered. “That’s just what I needed.”

One of the things that has shaped Matt’s life is diabetes, discovered when he was 12. He had to spend Easter in a hospital, badly dehydrated. How has it shaped him? “There’s a scripture that I like that could explain it better than I can. It’s in Ether, chapter 12, verse 27: ‘I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; … for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.’” Matt sits in thought for a minute. The night has deepened and warm, yellow light from the kitchen spills onto the porch. In the pasture below the house, a horse whinnies softly. The talk turns to the qualities of wood again—about the problems with the big knots in wood like pine, how hard and brittle they are and how difficult they make it to shape the wood. And how difficult it must be for the Lord to shape us if our hearts are hard and brittle. Matt sees the process of shaping people as a joint effort between the Lord and the individual. “You live your life and live the principles you have been taught, and the Lord will take you and show you things that you wouldn’t otherwise think He could do.” Each of Matt’s carvings starts out pretty rough. But bit by bit, piece by piece, he turns it into something. “I have a vision of what I want it to be. And I make the rough cuts. And when I get it carved out, I change a couple of things to make it better. And then I make a few more coarse cuts and make it still better.” And so the process goes. But it takes patience. “Sometimes you can get really involved in a piece and you ruin it because you haven’t stopped to look at what you are doing. You have to stand back, be patient, and wait,” Matt says. It’s like the experience he had with some of his investigators in the mission field. For example, one woman didn’t think she could give up smoking. “We had to be patient with her and give her blessings. But in the end, she made it and she, her husband, and their son and daughter were baptized.” Thinking back, Matt speaks fondly of his mission presidents and how they helped to shape him as a missionary, making him a sharper tool in the Lord’s hand. “I had a lot of spiritual guidance,” he says. And the people he helped the Lord shape? “I think about them a lot, and about how they are doing. I miss the people, the interaction with them.” Considering how much he cares about people, it’s no wonder Matt has been teaching sculpting at an area art center, even as his future is still being shaped. After all, a piece of wood is still just a piece of wood. But a life—now that’s a real work of art.

At an amusement park, my friend and I went on one ride while my mom and my sister went on another ride. After the ride was over, my friend asked if I wanted to go on the roller coaster. I said no because my mother had said to come right back after the ride. He said he would pay me if I went on the ride with him. I said no. He kept adding more and more money. He even said he would pay me $100. I said no. Later, I told my mom what had happened. She was proud of me for obeying her. I felt good that I followed the commandment to obey my parents.

A few years ago, my family didn’t go to church. Then one day, my friend Cory asked me if I wanted to go to church with him.
I went for a couple of weeks and then asked my mom to go, too. Pretty soon, Mom was called to work in the Primary.
After church, we told my dad about what we learned. My little brother, Kasey, reminded my dad of the Word of Wisdom.
I kept asking my dad to go to church with us. Then one day, he surprised me by saying, “I’m going to go to church.”
Now we are sealed in the temple.

In the spring of 1835, Rosetta and Leonora went to Kirtland, Ohio, where other Latter-day Saints lived. They returned with stories about the Church, the priesthood, and great spiritual manifestations. Five years had passed since the time Eliza first heard about Joseph Smith. The accounts of her mother and sister brought Eliza an undeniable witness of the truth. She had waited until she knew it was true. “My heart was now fixed,” she wrote. She decided to be baptized.5

May I share, as best I can recall it, an experience I had several years ago. I was teaching a large institute class during the hippy era. One evening, partway through the class, a student, whom I knew but who had not attended class before, walked in. I was surprised to see her. She had with her a young man. The young man came wearing a pair of bib overalls, no shirt, no shoes and had long, unkempt hair. The two sat down in the back of the room and the minute class was over they were gone. I thought that was probably the last I would see of her for awhile and I would probably never see him again. To my surprise they attended the next few classes. In one particular class the lesson was on prayer. As you know it can be intimidating to be called on to pray at the end of a lesson on prayer. You want to say it just right. As we were about to conclude the lesson I felt I should call upon this young man to pray and I thought, “that is crazy.” But the impression was there and so without the courage to even look at the young man, I announced that he would give the closing prayer. To my surprise, he stood. I cannot duplicate his prayer nor should I try, but I would like to give you a feel, from my perception, of what happened. He closed his eyes and said something like this, “God, I guess that’s your name, this is strange, I’m not even sure you are there, but I hope you are, I would like to believe you are. I’m not quite sure what all this is about. You know I’ve been lost and confused and I really do not understand much about life. I have felt something really different and wonderful here and I would like to know if you are really there and if I really am your son. Is it possible for you to let me know that?”

I don’t need to tell you there wasn’t a dry eye in the class. I don’t know that I had ever heard anyone talk to God as openly and honestly as this young man did. It wasn’t very long before he had a testimony and asked to be baptized. At his baptism he bore his testimony. It wasn’t an eloquent testimony in terms of the words or the length. He simply said something like, “I know there is a God, I know He loves me, I have never been happier and I am excited to be baptized.”

A couple of weeks later as I was walking down the hallway of the Church on a Sunday morning, I could see this young man coming toward me. He was wearing a dress coat, a shirt, tie, (none of which matched very well) and had a missionary type hair cut. He came running up to me and said, “Today is one of the most exciting days of my life. Do you know why?” I said “No, tell me.” He said, “Today I am going to get the priesthood. Brother Moore, do I look like a priesthood man?” Despite the mismatched clothes, he looked like a priesthood man to me. The spiritual knowledge this young man had come to know completely changed him and the direction of his life.

In 1959, I received that invitation. I did not even know of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At a dance, I met a young lady who was raised in the gospel. I was attracted to her. She said to me, “You know, I could never consider marrying you unless it were in the temple.” I responded to that invitation and was taught the gospel. She is now my eternal companion. I will ever be grateful that that was the invitation she extended to me, for it transformed my life.

I was reminded of this when my wife and I visited the Frederiksborg castle in the town of Hillerød north of Copenhagen, Denmark, together with some fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints visiting from abroad.
We started our tour of the castle with our friends by first going to the prayer room to see the original Carl Bloch paintings. After pointing out the paintings, I went on to the neighbouring rooms to continue the tour of the castle. However, nobody followed me, so I went back to find the others.
When I came back to the prayer room, I found our friends still looking at the paintings, being deeply moved by what they saw. I realised to my own embarrassment that I had come to show our friends some beautiful paintings almost like a tourist guide, but they had stopped and taken the time and effort to see beyond what Carl Bloch had painted so beautifully on copper. Thus, they saw the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and they were moved by the messages of our Saviour.
After joining our friends again, we had a memorable time together looking at each of the 23 paintings separately, and talking about each event in His life and the messages we can learn. We started with the painting depicting the visit of the angel to Mary, telling her “Fear not Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David”.
After some time, we ended with the last painting depicting the resurrected Jesus Christ. This picture is a reminder for me of what Jesus Christ accomplished for all of us. This is summarised so well by Nephi in his joyous message: “I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell”.
The experience in the Frederiksborg castle in front of the Carl Bloch paintings, which I have seen many times, was an important reminder to me. We can look at paintings of Jesus Christ, or we can read stories of Jesus Christ, but we need to take the time and effort to contemplate the messages of His teachings and relate them to our life. This way we will better be able to “learn more about His Atonement, His love, His mercy, His doctrine, and His restored gospel of healing and progression” and find the answers to our questions and problems.

Imagine that one morning, you wake up and realize there’s a cloth blocking your vision. You try to pull it off, but your attempts are in vain, and ultimately you give up and accept that you’re destined to live your life in darkness. Hopelessly, you let your head fall in defeat. Then suddenly you hear a voice—someone is telling you to take his hand, saying that he can help you if you will only believe and trust him to lead you. Could you put your full trust in him?

That was a lesson for Katelyn. She had had difficulty seeing this kind of potential in herself. As a Beehive, she looked up to the other young women, but she didn’t feel like she had anything to contribute to her Beehive class. At school she felt pressure to try to be popular and fit in. “It’s hard when other people try to tell me what I am supposed to look like, act like, and do well at.”

One night for Mutual each young woman received a piece of paper with a name on it. The paper was passed around the room and each young woman wrote talents, abilities, or admirable traits about the young woman whose name was on the paper. As Katelyn read the kind words that the other Beehives wrote about her, she realized that the other girls saw talents and gifts that she had never seen in herself. That experience, coupled with her efforts visiting the hospital, “have taught me a lot about my role here.”

One of the missionaries who served with me had a difficult time getting along with companions. I was required to transfer them frequently because they could not take it. Finally, I asked one of my finest missionaries to become his companion, urging him to do all he could to help his fellow missionary love his work. As I approached a conference in the city where they were laboring, I feared he, like his predecessors, would ask for a transfer. To my surprise, when I asked how he was getting along with his companion, he responded: “We are doing great! We discovered we had something in common. Neither of us has been to Africa!”

The afternoon I came home from my mission I paused before the plaster cast goshawk on the buffet in our dining room. Something fierce, unrelenting, in its eyes held me. Exquisitely wrought, the bird looked as if it were alive. I was home seven months early; a medical situation had cropped up, and the doctors thought I should live near Salt Lake for remedial treatments. The decision to cut the mission short was mine. The oncologist in Portland assured me I would not die. He said the chemotherapy should be administered near home where I could rest and be watched over by our family doctor. The situation was, the doctor in Portland insisted, in remission. The specialist at the University of Utah said it would be better in the long run not to step into another missionary experience near home right off, maybe in a few months or more. So the decision to come home early had left me shaken.
Everything in American Fork was the same: the steady whoosh of traffic on the freeway, our unfolding lawn, the orange-covered wicker couch in the sunken TV room—even Mom’s smile and Dad’s sport shirt. Yet the goshawk affronted me with what I thought was contempt. I touched its cold, beaked head.
“He’s about the size of a small Cooper,” said Dad, our resident ornithologist, “yet this bird has to flap his wings all the time. The larger hawks soar. These guys are not well known, but I like this kind of hawk, don’t you?”
“Never heard of one before,” I said.
“These little critters are tough. They’re survivors.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“There’s not many around. They’re not endangered or anything. Mostly you’ll find these birds up in Canada. Mr. Crafton, the old man, made it for me. Do you like it?”
“Sure, but the eyes don’t let up on you.”
“Don’t you catch a real sense of dignity about it?” Underneath, the goshawk was whitish, its preened wings specked with dashes of blue, green, and white, its ebony eyeballs intense.
In his disarming way, Dad said, “There’s something special about it.”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“You know, they have to keep flying all the time.”
“So do I,” I thought.
Two weeks later I sat in the same place I did that afternoon I came home. I sat on the veranda in the white wrought iron chair under the magnificent spreading honey locust tree. At times I would figure I had it made. At other times it was like being in a dark woods without any path out. I had made the tough decision to come home—I knew it was right—but now I had to live with it. When I left the mission, I was a few weeks into leading a zone in Gresham, Oregon. The missionaries in the zone threw a small party: in one of the apartments the elders strung crepe paper streamers and the sisters cut two cherry pies. It was over in 20 minutes. At one point the whole mission had fasted and prayed for me. But under doctor’s orders I couldn’t fast. I did not get tired of sitting under the locust tree and remembering the past months. For days as I passed the goshawk I let it catch my eye, its stare still fierce, wise, penetrating.
One evening Dad and I lounged around in the TV room without much to do. Nothing was on TV. He hadn’t said much since I came home. Lying back in his recliner Dad balanced his ice cream bowl on his lap and watched me. Behind him, in the other room, above him, sat the goshawk in the dim shadows.
“A little over a year, Dad. That’s all I was out. I feel incomplete, unfinished, without direction.” My own half-eaten bowl of ice cream melted beside me.
“You’re at loose ends,” he said.
“There’s no way to make up seven months.”
Spooning his ice cream carefully, he kept an eye on me. “Your mission was—and still is—to save souls, not to spend a certain amount of time.”
“Yeah, I have my whole life ahead of me. Sure. I know.”
“Well, you do, don’t you?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“President Terhune called me, and we talked for quite awhile. He said you were a good missionary and had it in you to see this thing through. You’ll be a lot better off for facing up to it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I looked up. The goshawk peered at me. His eye caught me, brought me to attention. His presence became a kind of conscience, reminding me of all that was left undone.
Dad spoke of the missionary experience as if it were a leaf that fell off a tree and was left on the path. I had loved the sense of certainty in living the mission rules. I wanted to do everything the right way. It irked me when a companion came up with ways to make himself comfortable with the rules. I eventually learned to relax and let down on preparation day. But as I became more fatigued, it was hard to be limited and not able to do it all.
Finally the end of my mission had come to a heart-rending session with President Terhune in the Church parking lot at North Vancouver. There I had made my final decision. I had to do it myself. I hadn’t been able to fast, but I had prayed a lot. President Terhune didn’t say anything, for which I was grateful. He had held me a long time in his embrace, then simply said, “You’ll continue on.”
“In life or death,” I thought. There was no running from it. Osteosarcoma. The word sounded like poetry—a lethal poetry of death in my bones. It was okay now, but it could get worse. Why does Father allow dark woods?

I learned to swim in the swift currents of Utah’s beautiful Provo River. The “old swimming hole” was in a deep portion of the river, dangerous with its depth of 16 feet, its current, which moved swiftly against a large rock, and the sucking action of the whirlpools below the rock. It was not a place for an inexperienced swimmer.
One warm summer afternoon when I was about 12, I took a large, inflated inner tube from a tractor tire, slung it over my shoulder, and walked barefoot up the railroad track which followed the course of the river. I entered the water about a mile above the swimming hole and enjoyed a leisurely float down the river. The river held no fear for me, for I knew its secrets.
That day the Greek-speaking people in Utah held a reunion at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon, as they did every year. Native food, games, and dances were the order of the day. But some left the party to try swimming in the river. When they arrived at the swimming hole, it was deserted, for afternoon shadows were beginning to envelop it.
I was about to enter the swiftest portion of the river, just at the head of the swimming hole, when I heard frantic cries, “Save her! Save her!” A young lady swimmer, accustomed to the still waters of a gymnasium swimming pool, had fallen from the rock into the treacherous whirlpools. None of the party could swim to save her. I saw the top of her head disappearing under the water for the third time, there to descend to a watery grave. I stretched forth my hand, grasped her hair, and lifted her over the side of the tube and into my arms. At the pool’s lower end, the water was slower as I paddled the tube, with my precious cargo, to her waiting relatives and friends.
They threw their arms around her and kissed her, crying, “Thank God! Thank God you are safe!” Then they hugged and kissed me. I was embarrassed and quickly returned to the tube and continued my float down to the Vivian Park bridge. The water was frigid, but I was not cold, for I was filled with a warm feeling. I realized that I had participated in the saving of a life. Heavenly Father had heard the cries, “Save her! Save her,” and permitted me, a deacon, to float by at precisely the time I was needed. That day I learned that the sweetest feeling in mortality is to realize that God, our Heavenly Father, knows each one of us and generously permits us to see and to share His divine power to save.