Gospel Story Finder

In just four days from now, on November 9, it will be 150 years since the ill-fated Willie Handcart Company pioneers struggled into the Salt Lake Valley. They had waded through much suffering and death. The storms and their weakened condition had claimed many—the rescuers had saved many more.

Levi Savage was among those arriving that day. History records his faithful and dogged labors to save the Saints and bring them safely to the valley. But his noble service did not begin on the snowbound plains of Wyoming. This was but another chapter, perhaps the crowning one, in a consecrated life of service.

Levi was baptized in June 1846 at 26 years of age. Answering the prophet’s call to move west, he noted that
we prepared as well as we could for a long journey into a strange and to us wholly unknown country. . . . We bid adieu to the old homestead . . . and directed our course westward, not knowing the place of destination, only we expected to locate somewhere in the western wilds of the Rocky Mountains.19
On July 16, 1846, he, with other valiant men, again responded to the prophet’s urging, enlisted in the Mormon Battalion, and marched approximately 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California, and then on to Los Angeles. Here they were discharged from government service. Though they knew nothing of the whereabouts of their homes and families, they began their trek to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The route Levi Savage traveled was an additional 1,300 miles over rugged and hostile terrain, but he finally arrived in the Salt Lake Valley.

Here Levi pioneered, fought crickets, married, had a son, and buried his wife some months following the child’s birth. Ten months after his wife’s death, in the October conference of 1852, he and several other faithful brethren were called by the prophet to open a gospel mission to Siam (today’s Thailand).

This time they journeyed by team and wagon back to lower California and the Pacific Ocean. In time, they sailed from San Francisco to Calcutta, bound for their mission to Siam. Levi’s journal entry of January 29, 1853, provides us a glimpse into the hearts of these early missionaries. He wrote:
Our gallant ship, propelled by a gentle breeze, steered her course across the boisterous deep for our places of destination; leaving behind us our much loved native land. . . . Each sought his own place for meditation, and there reflected upon the comforts of his home, the affections of his beloved wife and children or friends. . . . But now he was called to take up his abode in the remote parts of the earth, and for what? For the sake of heaping up gold and silver, or to secure for himself the honors, pomp and splendor of this world? No, verily no! But in obedience to the commands of the Lord to carry the message of truth and . . . salvation to the benighted and superstitious nations. Soon after, each retired to his cot for rest and repose. But whether asleep or awake, his mind continued to wander upon the realities of the past, and the prospects of the future.20

Following his mission, Levi sailed home by way of Boston, Massachusetts, made his way to his place of birth in Greenfield, Ohio, and noted upon his arrival there, “I have circled the globe.”21 He joined the Willie Handcart Company in Iowa City, Iowa, which began a saga of eternal importance to him, his family, and the entire Church. His works in that epic crowned a life of sacrifice and service. Of these pioneers, the benchmark shows: Their faith and works were a beacon in an unbelieving world, their service a pattern for each of us to follow.

I can’t tell you how much I have learned through the special Young Women issue of the New Era. My family and I have had a lot of problems the past few months. Mom and Dad separated. Then my brother went into the navy. I really miss him. For a long time I didn’t think much of life. I thought it was ruined. Then I thought, why don’t I read my Young Women New Era. It really has helped me a lot. Each time I get down on myself, I start reading, and I feel so much better. I start thinking of how special I really am, even though things at home are not so good.

“I have a surprise!” Ema (Mom) said when she picked Rasmus up from school. They walked together down the narrow streets lined with colorful buildings.
“Rosolje for dinner?” Rasmus guessed hopefully. They had eaten it just last week for his seventh birthday. But he could always eat more beet-and-potato salad with pickled herring!
Ema shook her head with a smile. “I met two young women on the bus this morning. Missionaries. They’re coming to visit tonight to talk about their church.”
Rasmus looked up curiously. He had never met missionaries before.
He was in his bedroom playing with his fire truck when the missionaries came. “Tere! Tere! Hello!” they greeted Ema as they walked into the apartment. They removed their heavy boots and put on the house slippers Ema kept for visitors. Ema led them to the orange couch. But Rasmus hung back by the door.
The taller woman noticed him and smiled. Her black name tag said Õde Craig (Sister Craig). “Your mother told us you just had a birthday,” she said. “We brought you something.” She held out a small card. Rasmus looked at it closely.
It was a picture of a man. He wore a white robe, and his hand was stretched out.
“Do you know who that is?” Õde Craig asked.
Rasmus didn’t know the man’s name. He had never seen this picture before. But the man looked kind and powerful. “I think he’s a king!” Rasmus said.
Both missionaries smiled. “Yes, He is! He is the King of kings! His name is Jesus Christ.” Õde Craig pulled out a book with a blue cover. “And this is a book that teaches about Him, the Mormoni Raamat. The Book of Mormon.”
He and Ema began reading the Book of Mormon every day before he went to school. During school, Rasmus and his class went on nature walks and then took a nap. After school, he and Ema often met with the missionaries. They talked with the missionaries about what they had read in the Book of Mormon. Sometimes Ema fed everyone kringel, braided cinnamon bread. On weekends he and Ema rode bikes or picnicked on the beach. Sometimes they took long walks in the forest or along their favorite river.
On one of those forest walks, Ema told him she wanted to be baptized. Rasmus grinned. The missionaries had asked Ema to pray about whether or not to get baptized. It sounded like she had gotten her answer!
“And I know just where I’m going to be baptized,” she told him with a smile. “Can you guess?”
Rasmus thought about the missionaries’ lesson on baptism. They had held up a picture showing Jesus with John the Baptist in a river. …
“The river!” he exclaimed. “Our favorite river.”
One week later, Rasmus stood on the riverbank with the missionaries and some other people from church. Ema was ready to be baptized. She went all the way under the water, just like Jesus did. When she came up, she was smiling. Rasmus wanted to remember this moment forever—the blue water, the white wildflowers in the green grass, and his mother’s smile.
“What did getting baptized feel like?” he asked later, when everyone was eating cookies the missionaries had brought.
“Wonderful,” she told him. “I wanted to stay in the river forever. I feel so new!” She hugged him tight.
“For my next birthday, I want to be baptized, just like you and Jesus,” he told her. “I want to feel new too!”

On a personal note let me share with you an experience in which I witnessed selflessness that brought tears to my eyes and helps prove my point of finding the greatest personal serenity through a selfless service to others.

A while ago I was involved in a voluntary mental health project to take care of the hungry, the less clothed, the sick, and to address the spiritual and temporal needs of homeless people on the leeward side of this island. We were to walk the beach and bush areas in the Waianae area and seek out individuals that were homeless. In my assignment I met many troubled individuals but none more memorable than a small middle aged Hawaiian woman living in the bush and tree area next to the Waianae Boat Yard. This area is a well- known homeless site here on Oahu. I was introduced to this sweet troubled woman by another woman that I will refer to as Ruth (This is not her real name). She would not want me to draw attention to her by using her real name. Ruth, who I grew to admire and care a great deal about that week, was a woman who once was a Catholic nun but had left the nunnery to work more directly with the under privileged citizens of Oahu. Ruth was a perfect example of living a life of contentment. Everywhere we went that week everyone knew her and I can say seemed to love her. I could almost immediately understand why she was so loved. She was heavenly. She was far from financially wealthy. She seemed happy and was very interesting to talk with. We talked a lot about religion those days and nights. Ruth was saintly in my opinion. She was selfless in her service.

My experience with this small troubled Hawaiian woman that Ruth took me to would probably not have happened without Ruth’s guidance. Ruth led me one night through literal darkness and bush to reach this poor woman. This dark journey could not have been more symbolic to me. Ruth and I learned from this troubled Hawaiian woman that she had been homeless for the last two years. She did have a tent that I stood by with my flashlight in the dark of the evening, but she commented to me where not to sit down because of the stinging spiders. This spider spot was approximately eight feet from her tent lodging. She shared information with us because we were interviewing her for placement into more suitable housing and care. In our medical interview she reported that she had been raped and had become HIV infected from the rape. Because of her confirmed HIV infection she was turned away from several housing opportunities. She was most gracious and loving in a grandmother type manner to Ruth and myself. We established this woman eligible for suitable housing and I am sure for more nourishment with food and clothing. I don’t believe I will ever be more humbled and certainly more blessed than I was trying to serve this sickly woman. I don’t know how selfless I was during this experience but I do know the spirit was with me at a very high level. I could not have been more fulfilled after that evening assisting this poor woman.

Amanda had many friends who watched videos after school. Some of the videos had scenes that Amanda wasn’t sure Heavenly Father or her parents would like, and she wondered if she should watch them.
____ Being with her friends was fun. The videos weren’t that bad, and she would be a part of the group. If she didn’t watch the videos, she might not have anything at all to do after school.
____ Amanda chose to watch the videos with her friends.
____ She prayed to know if her decision was right.
____ Amanda felt uneasy about her decision to watch the videos.

Through grace, participants regain the hope they have lost. One participant, Edward, grew up in the Church, but his childhood insecurities left him feeling that he wasn’t as good as other people. He says, “I didn’t understand the Atonement, and I didn’t love myself, so nothing really mattered.” When he was in his 20s, he started drinking and using drugs in an attempt to dull his negative feelings—a pattern that continued for 20 years.
When he was arrested a second time for drunk driving, he was ordered to get treatment. In the Church’s program, he learned that receiving forgiveness and regaining a sense of self-worth were possible. He attended church every Sunday, studied the 12 steps, and applied these gospel principles and actions to his life. He became willing to turn his life over to Heavenly Father and, in the process, learned how to love himself and how to let the Atonement work in his life. “I couldn’t overcome all these things by myself,” he says. “The Savior can do for me what I can’t do for myself.”

As a young bishop, I learned of forgiveness when my stake president, Bruce M. Cook, shared the following story. He explained:
“During the late 1970s, some associates and I started a business. Although we did nothing illegal, some poor decisions, combined with the challenging economic times, resulted in our failure.
“Some investors filed a lawsuit to recover their losses. Their attorney happened to be a counselor in my family’s bishopric. It was very difficult to sustain the man who seemed to be seeking to destroy me. I developed some real animosity toward him and considered him my enemy. After five years of legal battles, we lost everything we owned, including our home.
“In 2002, my wife and I learned that the stake presidency in which I served as a counselor was being reorganized. As we traveled on a short vacation prior to the release, she asked me whom I would choose as my counselors if I were called as the new stake president. I did not want to speak about it, but she persisted. Eventually, one name came to my mind. She then mentioned the name of the attorney we considered to have been at the center of our difficulties 20 years earlier. As she spoke, the Spirit confirmed that he should be the other counselor. Could I forgive the man?
“When Elder David E. Sorensen extended to me the call to serve as stake president, he gave me an hour to select counselors. Through tears, I indicated that the Lord had already provided that revelation. As I spoke the name of the man I had considered my enemy, the anger, animosity, and hate I had harbored disappeared. In that moment, I learned of the peace that comes with forgiveness through the Atonement of Christ.”
In other words, my stake president did “frankly forgive” him, like Nephi of old.7 I knew President Cook and his counselor as two righteous priesthood leaders who loved one another. I determined to be like them.

My sister has Down syndrome. I try to help her and love her. One thing that helps me spend even more quality time with her is reading the New Era with her. We have lots of fun reading the articles, and she points out her favorite pictures. She sees things in them that I had never seen before. I love my sister, and I love the New Era. Thank you for the time and effort that is put into every wonderful issue.Kalia Robinson, Aurora Ward, Springfield Missouri Stake

In the spring of 1955, when I was fifteen, my family moved to Anchorage, Alaska. This was an exciting adventure for a young boy who loved the outdoors, and it was made all the more so when I obtained a rifle and began to look forward to hunting large game.
One day, when visiting my father’s office, I saw a beautiful new gun case on his desk. I had previously asked him to get a new case for my rifle, and assumed that this was it. Therefore, when he stated that it was not necessarily mine, that he had many men under his supervision for whom he had to purchase rifles and gun cases, I was extremely disappointed and angry, and expressed my discontent.
Later that evening, my mother came into my bedroom where I was sulking and explained that the gun case was really mine, but that my father had not wanted to say so in the office lest those persons under his supervision get the idea that he could order such items for their own personal use. Mother suggested that I owed dad an apology. I decided that I would do so the next morning when I saw him at breakfast.
But I did not see my father at breakfast—I did not seem him ever again. He left the house early that morning to supervise an air drop. The airplane he was in crashed into a mountain and he was killed. My last hours on earth with my father had been spent in my tantrum over a simple and unimportant matter. The guilt I felt over my behavior rested heavily upon my conscience.

Looking back, I see that my life in the ghetto was difficult and that a person could make it harder by making wrong choices. There was little opportunity for progression. But I wanted something worth living for. When the opportunity came to leave the ghetto with part of my family, I decided this was my chance.
Many of the girls I grew up with never left the ghetto. I could not have made it without following the desires of my heart and trusting in my Father above to lead me. I was blessed with the chance to leave the ghetto, be baptized a member of this church, gain an education, and fulfill a mission. I know Heavenly Father loves us all and is mindful of our circumstances, no matter where we are. He desires above all things that we find true happiness.

I have a valise which was owned by Robert Redford. (I don’t mean the movie star; I mean my grandfather.) When Grandfather Redford died, Mother and her brothers and sisters gathered together to distribute his personal belongings. Each family member was given a first-choice selection. Unknown to us, Mother prayed that she could have Grandfather’s temple clothes, which he carried in a black valise with the initials R.R. printed on it. Grandfather spent his last years as a temple worker in the Logan Temple.
Mother got her wish.
As a teenager, I thought it strange that Mother would prefer that little black bag to furniture or other items of worldly value. But then I thought of how my mother had taught me the sacredness of the temple long before I could fully understand its meaning. Her attitude about going to the temple and her handling of the temple clothing first caught my attention. Mother was always happy to visit the house of the Lord. What happened inside the temple wasn’t talked about specifically; but I heard parts of the temple vocabulary spoken with great respect, words like sacred, holy, spiritual, pure, celestial, endowments, sealing, the veil.
When I finally went to the temple as a missionary to receive my own endowments, Mother gave Grandfather’s temple clothing to me.
It would be difficult for me to describe my first experience in the temple. It was beyond anything earthly I had witnessed. I didn’t comprehend all that I was taught that night, but the deep feelings instilled in me were sublime. Clothed in the inheritance from my grandfather and accompanied by my mother, I began what was to be a continuum of incomparable spiritual visits to the holy temple. Based upon those experiences, I would like to share with you what I have learned about the temple and what it can mean in your own lives.

Dad said no sacrifice by the family would be too great for the privilege of supporting me in the mission field, and he meant it. He knew what that kind of sacrifice was. I remember how the family had spread margarine on the bread and then scraped most of it off again while my older brother Ron was in the mission field. I also sensed Dad’s special gratitude when occasionally I was able to spare a few dollars of the earnings from my part-time job to add to what was sent to Ron.

Yes, I knew it would mean sacrifice, gladly offered. I also knew I had to do all I could.

I took a firmer grasp on the handle, holding it a little lower this time to get a better weight advantage from the heavy steel head. Several more strokes, and now I could feel myself becoming angry. How could I strike any harder? Why didn’t the cement break?
“I hope he doesn’t get back before I’ve shown some kind of progress,” I said to myself, glancing toward the tool shop.
When I had told the boss on Monday morning that I had quit school to work for a few months so I could go on a mission, I had hoped he would be kind of proud of me. Instead he had said, “Why do you want to waste your time like that?” Ever since then he had seemed bent on going out of his way to make snide comments about the Church and other crude remarks that, I suspected, were designed to shock me. But he was the boss and the one who would let me stay or let me go.
I had been much more comfortable last week when I first got this job and was helping Bert Godfrey lay a brick wall to replace an old wooden one that had burned down. How could I help but like that leather-faced but kind-hearted man who had served three missions, two of them building missions.
The company had hired me for ten days, mostly to help build that wall. But Bert and I had worked so well together that we had finished it in a week. He didn’t seem to mind that I was a bit clumsy and lacked experience. He knew I was trying and he knew why. He just kept talking to me about serving the Lord.
Bert hadn’t told me that the real boss was on vacation, and it had come as a surprise when I showed up for work the next Monday morning. So far, though, my strategy seemed to be working. Although I was earning more than I had ever earned before, I figured that if I worked so hard that I was worth still more than they were paying me, maybe the boss would feel he just couldn’t afford to let me go.
I looked again at the long I-beam rail with 13 steel legs extending from it like a giant comb with most of its teeth missing. It had long ago served as a bumper guard, preventing cars in the parking lot from hitting the adjacent building. It had been installed by digging 13 large holes in the ground in a straight line, spaced at eight-foot intervals. A steel post was cemented into each hole, and the connecting bumper rail welded to each post. Recently the entire rail had been removed by having two large “hysters” extract the whole thing in one piece, and it was lying in the driveway with each post encased in a barrel-sized cement block.
As I heard boots scuff the loose gravel on the asphalt pavement leading from the tool shop, I let loose a wild flurry of blows. I was glad that a few beads of sweat had formed on my forehead. “Here, try this,” the boss said as he handed me a heavier sledgehammer. That wasn’t quite the kind of help I had in mind.
I smiled as I traded him the smaller hammer, but I could tell that he sensed it wasn’t a completely honest smile. He watched me for a few minutes more, and then without further comment, turned away to supervise the crew working on the remodeling project in the steel fabrication plant.
“The only difference between the hammers is that this one is heavier and harder to lift,” I grumbled silently as the steel head collided with the stone-hard cement. Finally one small chunk broke off. After several more strokes my arms started to ache, but the cement still remained intact.
At this rate I knew it would take me three days to complete the job. I also knew that if I didn’t show substantial progress by noon, I’d be out of a job and back standing in the labor lines at the Employment Security Office taking any kind of work available. Three days of that had made me especially anxious to keep this job.
Besides, it was 1954, and thousands of striking workers with families to feed were looking for short-term, full-time employment. How was a 20-year-old youth going to compete with them for the few jobs available?
It took only a few more hard but unsuccessful strokes to persuade me that I had reached my limit and that it was time for me to treat the problem as one needing more strength and wisdom than I possessed.
Resting the heavy hammer on the ground and trying to compose my anger and frustration, I felt the need and desire to discuss the problem with the Lord. Without either kneeling or closing my eyes, I started praying aloud to the Lord and explaining the task I faced. In a conversational but sincere way I reminded him that I wasn’t asking for the money so I could buy a yellow convertible. He had called me on a mission, and I knew he wanted me to go. This job had already been an answer to my prayers, but I needed to keep it. I didn’t expect him to send a host of angels from heaven with sledgehammers, but I knew he could help me.
Never in my life has a prayer been answered more immediately or clearly. Suddenly my mind was filled with a thought so lucid and strong that my heart started pounding. It was a simple solution, as I later considered it. To brighter or more experienced minds it might have occurred earlier, but to me it came as a direct answer to my prayer.
The compelling instruction said to me, “Instead of striking the cement, strike the steel.”
Still not fathoming exactly why, I raised the hammer and brought it crashing down five or six times on the steel post right next to the cement. As a large section of the cement cracked into big chunks and fell off, I realized that the blows to the steel had started a series of strong vibrations that were transmitted all along the steel shaft.
I quickly forgot the weight of the hammer. With new energy I struck the steel again and again, then moved on to the next post, amazed at the magnification of my efforts as the steel vibrated and the cement cracked.
Less than two hours later I had removed the cement from all 13 posts and stacked the large chunks in a pile. With the sledgehammer on my shoulder and a prayer of gratitude in my heart, I went to find the boss.
“I’ll need some help moving the railing out of the driveway,” I said, trying to conceal the excitement I felt inside. Thinking I was giving up on the project, he motioned me to follow him to the parking lot.
As we rounded the corner of the building and he saw the railing and the pile of cement, he stopped quite suddenly. His eyes blinked and opened wide. His chin started to drop a bit. For a full minute he stood silently, looking first at the railing, then at the cement. After a moment more he turned, motioned me to follow him again, and said, “Come on, I’ll give you another job.”
Nothing more was said about the incident, but the following morning when I arrived for work, he simply said, “Lloyd, you’re welcome to stay on as long as you like.”
I worked there for nearly three months before entering the mission home. He then let me come back to work again for another ten days until I departed with my group for the mission field. Never after that memorable morning did he, in my presence, make a disparaging remark about the Church or my plans to serve a mission.
Many times since that day the Lord has helped me strike the steel instead of the cement in solving other problems. But as I departed for the mission field in late November 1954, I knew that I was called of the Lord. I knew that he was listening to my prayers. And I knew for myself that he would give no commandment save he would prepare a way for it to be accomplished.

Sidney Harris tells us of a tremendous example of this very thing in French history: “One of the loveliest examples is a note that Corot, the painter, sent to his friend, Daumier, who was nearly blind and facing eviction on his 65th birthday. ‘Friend, I have a little house at Valmondois which I could not for the life of me think what to do with. Suddenly, I thought to give it to you. Liking the idea, I have had your ownership legally confirmed. I had no idea of doing you a good turn. The whole scheme was carried out to annoy your landlord. Ever yours, Corot.’ And Daumier wrote gratefully in reply. ‘You are the only man from whom I could take such a present and not feel humiliated.’” We must always leave a person’s self-respect intact.

While some laborers at the quarry were supported through the Church’s Public Works Department, other workers supplied their own housing and donated their time. A Danish immigrant, John Nielsen, recalled, “I contributed one dollar each month for a long time toward paying the men who were working in the Temple Square, cutting rock for the walls of the Temple. I also worked some in the rock quarry up in the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. While doing this I boarded myself, furnished my own bedding, and donated my work.”

The first thing you can do is talk to them. It may not be easy at first, but it will be worth it. “My dad and I talked,” says a teenage school student I know, “but we never really sat down and had serious talks about what’s going on in my life, about problems I had, or things I wanted to accomplish. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever had a serious talk with my dad was when he was a bishop and had to interview me on my birthday.
“That interview really helped me see that I could improve our communication if I made the effort to help him. Things didn’t change from one day to the next, but since then, he and I both have tried harder to find the time to sit down together once in a while and talk.”

While a lot of good things were happening in his life at Dixie, like joining the Church and being named the National Junior College Player of the Year in 1991, some hard things were happening. Kalin’s father, whom he never knew well, died. Then three months later his mother passed away from cancer. It shook Kalin. “During her worst time, I wasn’t there to comfort her. It helped out an awful lot that I knew I would see her again, but it was still very hard. Both my parents are gone, and I don’t have any blood brothers or sisters. I’m the last of my immediate family.”
During this time, Kalin was adopted by Wendell and Joyce Donahoo. He met the family while playing with their son Kelly in high school. “They have been great to me,” says Kalin. “They are a great family.”

Amy Adams of Washington, USA, was trying to decide which activities would be best for her three young children when a conversation with her mother changed her mind. “What if you gave your children something better than training in sports or dance?” Amy’s mother asked. “What if by staying home, they could learn to feel the Spirit more?” Then her mother reminded her of what President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, has taught about the power of focusing on life’s basic relationships (see, for example, “Of Things That Matter Most,” Liahona and Ensign, Nov. 2010, 19–22).
Amy and her husband, Brett, prayed about and pondered this counsel and felt it would be a good idea for their family to spend more time together at home. For one year, they chose to forgo dance and sports; instead they prepared meals, learned Primary songs, visited museums, and played outdoors. “Our children were able to feel the Spirit … because we took the time to stop and listen,” Amy says. Their children may not be the top sports and dance stars, she says, “but they have a testimony of the Savior.”
Amy and Brett prayed to know how they should personally follow the counsel of modern prophets, and doing so allowed them to receive inspiration for their family. Amy says this inspiration led to her “proudest moments as a mother.”

Some years ago, as Sister Gong and I met a lovely family, their young daughter, Ivy, shyly brought out her violin case. She lifted out the violin bow, tightened and put rosin on it. Then she put the bow back in the case, curtsied, and sat down. A new beginner, she had just shared all she knew about the violin. Now, years later, Ivy plays the violin beautifully.

Like little Ivy and her violin, we are in some ways still beginning. Truly, “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” In these times, we can learn much of God’s goodness and our divine potential for God’s love to grow in us as we seek Him and reach out to each other. In new ways and new places, we can do and become, line upon line, kindness upon kindness, individually and together.

The boy watched his father’s horse plunge away into the frigid whiteness. Then he started back toward his tepee, anxious to share the story of his first coup with his mother, grandfather, and little sister. But he had only gone a few steps when someone pulled at his arm. It was Yellow Fox, a village boy. “Your pony is gone too,” he said excitedly. “I saw it run away when the Shoshones first came!”
“My father will find it, with the others,” Little Wind responded confidently.
“He’ll not find your pony!” Yellow Fox insisted. “I saw your horse go toward the high rock county. Your father and the others rode off in another direction. They’ll not find your pony. But maybe a Shoshone will.”
Little Wind gazed anxiously toward the great mountains veiled in glacial mist. His pony had been given to him as a gift by his father before the big hunt. It was priceless to him. He had to find it before the next storm or he might never see it again. If he hurried, he could be back before his mother even knew he was gone. If he waited for his father to return with the horses, it might be too late. I’m well dressed against the weather in this big otter coat Mother made me, he assured himself. Besides, my pony probably hasn’t gone very far.
Little Wind pulled his wrappings snugly around him, gave a quick glance toward his tepee, and hurried off in the direction of the hoofprints in the snow.
What Little Wind did not know was that a new storm was gathering just beyond the mesas. Hidden behind the fog, it crouched like some huge, nameless beast ready to lunge across the sky and engulf anyone or anything careless enough to leave the fires of home.
(To be concluded.)

Several years ago I visited an isolated oasis deep in the Gobi Desert in China. Some 80 miles from the nearest town, the oasis was in a small canyon that had been occupied by a handful of Buddhist monks for hundreds of years. In this incredibly isolated spot, the monks could avoid the temptations of the world and focus only on Buddhist teachings. In Latter-day Saint terms, these monks were trying to flee Babylon.
Most of us have elected not to dwell in total isolation but to live in the civilized world. This decision requires us to interact daily with the world and to face the challenge of doing business in Babylon even as we attempt to follow the Lord’s command to “go . . . out . . . from Babylon, from the midst of wickedness” (D&C 133:14).