Gospel Story Finder

We usually feel overwhelmed by the lack of time; this is especially true for married students with young children. Mike and I faced the same challenges that many of you do or will encounter later on in life. Instead of using time limitation as an excuse for unsatisfactory performance at school, work, or even church callings, Mike and I searched for possible solutions.

We got together with two other families to work out a plan which helped us to more effectively manage our demanding schedules. At the time, each family had one child and all the parents were full-time students and also working. Rather than having one parent from each family care for their own child, we put all the children together to play and each parent took a turn watching them. The children enjoyed having friends to play with and the parents had more time for school work or other responsibilities.

Mike and I later found out that these two families that we had shared time with have also managed to complete their advanced degrees. They are Peter and Joyce Chan, who are both teachers on this campus, and the other family is Allen and Tracy Cheung, where Allen is a faculty member at the Hong Kong Institution of Education. Two years ago, when we returned to Hawaii and again met with Peter and Joyce, the first thing we talked about was this special learning experience we had shared.

My testimony today is one of gratitude.
At a family gathering a few nights ago, we discussed the fact that today is the anniversary of our mother’s birth.
I thought that night how much the generations owe each other, how much we learn from each other, how we should love and appreciate each other. One of mother’s grandsons said he had watched with wonderment as his tiny daughter paged through her storybook, moistening her first finger to turn the pages as she had seen her daddy do as he read his books. Actually, she was moistening the finger on her left hand and turning the pages with the finger on her right hand! But that only served to emphasize both the power of example and the fact that she, like all the rest of us, is yet learning.
As I observed two of our lovely grown daughters that night an incident from the past came to mind that forms the burden of my brief message today. I still think of it with a tendency to tears. Another little girl had joined our family and was of course much loved. Occasionally I had called her older sister “Princess,” but had thought about that, and, since the second young lady was equally deserving of royal treatment, had concluded that it would be well for her to share the title, if it were used at all.
So one day I called to her, “Come on, Princess. Let’s go to the store for mother.” She seemed not to hear. “Honey,” her mother said, “daddy is calling you.”
“Oh,” she answered, with a quiet sadness that hurt my heart, “he doesn’t mean me.”
In memory I can still see the resignation on her innocent child face and hear it in her voice, when she thought that her father didn’t mean her.

MORRIN: And he's also engaged to be married soon. So, Clayton, I really appreciated what you shared on the discussion board. Would you mind sharing with us your experience?
BRASSFIELD: So when I returned home from my mission, the very first job that I had was at a lumber mill. And working at the lumber mill was a lot different than any job I'd ever had. It was a lot harder, and I had no experience. When I first started, I was really, really terrible at my job. I had a lot of times where I just wanted to give up, because I knew that the guys that I worked with didn't like me because I was so bad. I knew that if I didn't get better, I could lose my job. One thing that always helped me to persevere and to finish this job and not quit when I wanted to or when I had other opportunities for other jobs was asking myself the question of how I could expect my future children to persevere in hard things when I couldn't do it myself. And when I thought about that, it helped me to continue on, and I eventually became really good at my job and became one of the best employees that they had. And now when I'm off track or not at school, they allow me to come back and work, even if it's just for a week at a time.
MORRIN: Thank you, Clayton. Like I shared with you earlier, I really appreciated the long-term perspective you had when you were trying to figure out what you were going to do and if you were going to continue in this job that was really hard at the time, that you looked forward to the future and considered your own future family. So thank you for sharing that.

The story is told how Brigham Young, driving through a community, saw a man building a house and simply told him to double the thickness of his walls. Accepting President Young as a prophet, the man changed his plans and doubled the walls. Shortly afterward a flood came through that town, resulting in much destruction, but this man’s walls stood. While putting the roof on his house, he was heard singing, “We thank thee, O God, for a prophet!”

On a beautiful Sunday morning in the fall of 1841, my great-grandfather, William Minshall Evans, then sixteen years of age, was walking down the streets of Liverpool, England, on his way to church. Suddenly he heard singing that thrilled him beyond anything he had ever heard before. He followed the sound down an alley and up some rickety stairs into a room where a few people were holding a meeting. John Taylor, who later became President of the Church and who had a beautiful tenor voice, was the singer. The song he sang was so beautiful that William remained to hear the sermon.
Upon returning home, William was reprimanded by his elder brother, David, for being absent from his accustomed place in the choir. When asked to give an account of himself, William replied, “I have been where you should have been and I shall not be satisfied until you all hear the wonderful truth I have heard this morning.”
Before long, William and David were converted to the gospel, and then helped convert other members of their family. Three of the brothers and their parents emigrated to Utah between 1848 and 1850. William’s mother died of cholera in Kanesville, Iowa, and her husband was so brokenhearted that he had no desire to continue on to Utah and so returned to England.
The boys experienced all of the hardships and trials of those early pioneer days, but remained true and faithful to the gospel. William had twelve children and passed on a great heritage to his posterity.
I never sing the hymns of the Church without remembering that it was the singing of a hymn that opened the door to the gospel for my family and made it possible for me to enjoy all the blessings that have followed.

This point struck me several years ago when I realized that my wife and I have done several things we never intended to do! These things were never part of our plans—short or long term. For example, we never planned to settle in Houston, Texas. I never intended to be a financial consultant or to start a business. We did not set out to have nine children. We never envisioned serving seven years in Brazil—as mission president and then in the Area Presidency. As a matter of fact, it was a surprise to be called as a stake president, then a mission president, an Area Seventy, and especially a General Authority.

On the other hand, we had firm plans that I would do the joint JD/MBA program after graduation from college. I had been accepted to Harvard Business School to start that four-year program. The new J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU was not even on the radar screen. But in the end I attended and graduated from BYU Law School! I have never done the JD/MBA program.

Once I was in the financial consulting business, I found it so flexible that my plan was to never retire but just slow down to an acceptable level. As it turned out, I retired at age fifty-nine. In that business I learned about the tax advantages of a mortgage. As a result, we decided never to pay off our house. But a few years ago, with the counsel of prophets reminding us, we asked the Lord for guidance, and He directed us to pay off the mortgage. We did it as quickly as possible.

So how did all of this happen?

Decision Points

Each time my wife and I came to a decision point, we would think it through, counsel together, and make a decision. Then we would pray to seek the Lord’s confirmation. We always followed the promptings of the Spirit. If the Lord was silent, we would do what seemed best to us in light of what we already knew.

On a daily basis we asked in our prayers for the Lord to guide and direct us. We emphasized, as did Jesus, not our will but Thine be done (see Luke 22:42). Sometimes direction would come when we didn’t even realize we were at a decision point—such as when we paid off our home mortgage.

Our experiences have taught us over and over again that God knows best. For example, we succeeded in paying off that mortgage in 1998. It was on January 21, 1999, that President James E. Faust telephoned us in Houston with the call to be a mission president in Brazil. Because our home was debt free, we had the option to keep it while we served. We much prefer to do things the Lord’s way.

Tita was born 1 April 1958 to Milton Henriques da Paixao and Walstir Queiroz da Paixao. His father was Catholic and, before her marriage, his mother was active in the Methodist church. It was through one of his mother’s brothers, Walter Guedes de Quieroz (former Brazil Porto Alegre Mission president) that the family was introduced to the Church. Eleven-year-old Tita was baptized in 1969 together with his mother and two brothers.

His interest in sports found its outlet in soccer and he participated in Church and school tournaments. His activity with a soccer little league brought him to the attention of the “Flamengo” club and he signed with the Rio de Janeiro-based team. He was drafted to play for the national team in 1979.

A favorite of the fans, Tita’s ability on and off the field has earned him favorable press coverage. But Tita has used his fame not to promote himself but his religion. For example, he used the publicity surrounding his recent marriage in the Sao Paulo Temple to explain that he and his wife-to-be had to live specific standards to be worthy to be married in the temple and enter into an eternal covenant. Among the standards, he told the press, were the principles of the Word of Wisdom.

Tita, a member of the Tijunca Ward, Rio de Janeiro Andarai Stake, said that he and his wife want to be worthy of the eternal covenants they have made. His other goals include living the commandments and being a good example to those with whom he comes in contact, taking advantage of missionary opportunities, and harmonizing his professional life with the standards of the Church.

Let me close with a simple—but, for me, ­powerful—example of what can happen when students view themselves not just as isolated individuals pursuing their own individual career goals but as part of a covenant community gathered together in a compact society to realize their full potential as children of God.

As many of you know, law school can be very competitive. At most law schools, including BYU’s, students are literally ranked in order by their grades, and employers often make the initial hiring decisions based primarily on that ranking. It is an environment rife with competition—which, as C. S. Lewis taught, is at the core of the sin of pride. To add to the tension, in most law-school courses the seemingly all-important grade is determined solely on the basis of the final examination. As you might imagine, the stress levels at the law schools are quite high during finals.

A few years ago, after finals but before grades had come out—before students knew how they had done—I was involved in a discussion with a group of law students about how to avoid pride and animosity toward their fellow students in that kind of highly competitive, zero-sum setting. During that discussion, a first-year law student—who had recently been through the soul-trying experience of the first set of law-school finals but who still did not know how he had done—related the following experience, which I share with his permission:

When I came to BYU Law School, I immediately developed a big, fat crush on my entire 1L class: they were the nicest, smartest, most interesting people that I had ever been around. . . . [Even though] I realized right away that I was outgunned, outsmarted, and outpaced in every class . . . , I didn’t resent the successes of my peers; they were . . . my friends, and I liked them. . . .

As classes ended, [however,] and our 1L class threw all its weight, collectively and individually . . . , toward finals, I was anxious. The anxiety grew and turned black. I studied hard and long, but I felt more insecure the more I studied.

The student went on to say that he began to stay away from his classmates because each interaction with them increasingly convinced him that they knew more about the subject than he did and that he was, therefore, destined to fail. He became isolated and alone. He then related:

I was praying early one morning about finals, asking for help to do my best [or even to just pass the class], and I began describing the bleak feelings I harbored, and I asked for help. After a few minutes, I [suddenly] found myself [praying] not [just] for myself but for my classmates, and not just for those few that I knew . . . struggled [with the material,] as I did, but for the gifted and the talented as well. I prayed that they would do their best, that they would have peace and clarity. As I prayed for them . . . , I felt a surge of love for the classmates I had admired and had liked so much in the beginning.

He then began to reengage with his fellow students, not just to learn from them but with the thought that he might actually have something he could offer to them. At that point his stress level dropped dramatically, his learning increased considerably, and his view of law school—and of the true purpose of a BYU education—was transformed. He was no longer involved in an individual contest against every one of his classmates. He was part of a loving, caring compact society that had been gathered together to help each member succeed.

Soon after the Kasues arrived in Chyulu, a branch was organized and Brother Kasue was called as branch president. The Church grew rapidly under his leadership, and religious and community leaders became alarmed when converts left their denominations to join the Church. Soon there was considerable opposition to the Church and its followers.
As the Church had not yet been officially recognized by the Kenyan government, it was illegal for more than nine adults to attend a Church meeting. When some complaints were filed, President Kasue was arrested and detained for 12 hours. He suspected that his arrest was largely due to David M. Maluti, a prominent community and religious leader who had strongly opposed President Kasue’s church work. However, when their disagreements became public knowledge, Mr. Maluti decided he wanted to end the situation. Curious about how an intelligent and respected man such as President Kasue could follow the Church, he began asking questions about the Church. Because of Mr. Maluti’s past adversarial position, President Kasue wondered about his motives and was reluctant to answer; nevertheless, he agreed to send Mr. Maluti some literature “that would speak for itself.”
Mr. Maluti read the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and other Church books and was impressed, but he was most inspired by the pamphlet The Prophet Joseph Smith’s Testimony. He read it at least 40 times. While studying about the Church, Mr. Maluti attended a public meeting where questions were raised about the Church. He fervently defended the Church and bore his testimony to those present. When he finished there was enthusiastic applause. Within six months of their first meeting, President Kasue and Mr. Maluti became close friends, and Mr. Maluti was baptized and called to be the branch mission leader.

The influence of Heber’s mother, Rachel Ridgeway Ivins Grant, was equally as powerful. Rachel’s wealthy family in the eastern United States offered her a large income if she would renounce the gospel of Jesus Christ. But she refused and stood by her testimony. After the death of her husband, the young widow, who had been left penniless, worked sewing clothing and taking in boarders in order to provide for her son.
She taught Heber the value of hard work, and together they eked out a meager existence. In the process, Rachel and Heber grew very close. He was later to say of her: “I stand here today as one whose mother was all to him. She was both father and mother to me; she set an example of integrity, of devotion and love, of determination, and honor second to none. I stand here today as the president of the Church because I have followed the advice and counsel and the burning testimony of the divinity of the work of God, which came to me from my mother.”4

On Friday, 8 April 1853 general conference took place. President Heber C. Kimball stood at the pulpit and announced, “We have a number of elders who are chosen to go on missions.” He read the list of names, which included William Major, called to go to England.
On arriving in London, William settled in an apartment with other missionaries. In October 1854, William H. Kimball wrote his father, President Heber C. Kimball:
“On the 2nd inst., I went to see W. W. Major who has been ill for seven weeks, and at 7 o’clock last evening he departed this life, notwithstanding great faith and exertion on his part, as well as by many others. His last words to me were that he was not discouraged and wished me to administer to him. To the last his faith was good, and he desired to return to the Valley.”

When I was younger, I lived next door to an elderly lady who spent most of her time alone and seldom left her house. When she did leave, she would be gone for a long time, and that is when I went to work.
I would get a rake or snow shovel or broom and do what I could to clean up the area around her house. Sometimes I would just leave her a plate of cookies with a note. I tried so hard to be a friend to the lady who lived there, and I thought that if I did these things for her she would be nice to me.
I really enjoyed the extra work because it made me feel good inside, but I thought I would feel even better if she would only acknowledge my kindness. I would watch her come home and feel disappointed because she never made an attempt to show thanks or appreciation. I had worked so hard and never received so much as a smile.
Then one Sunday at church we had a lesson on service, and I realized that I had been performing acts of service for my neighbor with the expectation of getting something in return. I went home and asked my mother about service and she gave me a scripture to read. It was Mosiah 2:17:
“And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”
That taught me a valuable lesson about my activities. And I knew that even if my neighbor didn’t seem to care about my efforts, my Heavenly Father did care.

During my first two years of teaching seminary in Nevada, I assigned two students in each class to be what we called “seminary phantoms.” They were to do nice things throughout the year for their fellow students, without anyone knowing.
Most of the students in my early-morning class were from the same two wards, except for one freshman. His name was Clark, and every day he sat by himself near the front of the room. About three months into the year, I had the class grouped into teams. I asked one boy to let Clark be on his team, and he asked, “Who’s Clark?” It was then that I realized how few people knew Clark.
A few weeks later, as the Christmas season drew near, we geared up to do our annual seminary Christmas activity called “secret Santas.” Students who wanted to participate signed up to do nice things, anonymously, for another student during the week before Christmas break. As the sign-up list went around, nearly everyone signed up. Everyone except Clark.
After class, I pulled aside my two seminary phantoms and asked if they would do a favor for someone in the class. They both willingly agreed. I explained about Clark and asked if they would mind doing just one nice thing for him from his secret Santa.
The following Monday, Clark’s book slot was decorated with ribbons and candy. Tuesday, there were small gifts. As the class came in both days, they crowded around him to see what he had received. Again on Wednesday, there was a small surprise left for him on my desk. When Thursday came, he found a gingerbread house on his desk. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
The next morning was Friday, the last day before Christmas vacation. Clark came into class with a present of his own. It was a huge gingerbread house that must have taken him and his mother all evening to make. He asked if I would please give it to his secret Santa. When class was over, Clark was slow in leaving, hoping to find out who I would give his gift to. But I convinced him that his Santa wanted to remain a secret. As he walked down the street, a car which a few minutes earlier had appeared to drive off, turned into the parking lot again, and two girls got an early Christmas present.
Seminary became Clark’s favorite class. Throughout the remaining three years, he had some wonderful friends in seminary. I can’t help but think that it was partially the result of those two seminary phantoms. The year that he graduated from high school and seminary, I was transferred to another state.
The following summer, my family and I came back to visit. Late one evening, at the home where we were staying, we heard a car drive by. The horn honked and someone yelled, “We love you, Brother Fowler!” In the morning, I found my car “decorated” with toilet paper. Inside was a note with a copy of a mission call attached to it. It was from Clark. It read, “Seminary was the inspiration for the day and for my life. Thanks!”

Several years ago I picked up the desk pen in my office at BYU to sign a paper that had been prepared for my signature, something I did at least a dozen times each day. That document committed the university to a particular course of action we had decided to follow. All the staff work had been done, and all appeared to be in order. But as I went to sign the document, I was filled with such negative thoughts and forebodings that I put it to one side and asked for the entire matter to be reviewed again. It was, and within a few days additional facts came to light which showed that the proposed course of action would have caused the university serious problems in the future.

In order to maintain her commitment to the gospel and build her spirituality, Sister Lawson set some standards for herself when she moved to Kununurra that she has maintained ever since. She reads two or three chapters from the standard works daily, systematically working her way through each of them. She also reads every piece of Church literature she can get. “I subscribe to all the Church magazines,” she says.
Twice each month, she receives a phone call from the Relief Society president in the city of Darwin, 700 kilometers away—the center of Church activity in Australia’s vast Northern Territory. The phone calls are a welcome morale booster, as are the photocopies of lessons from the Relief Society and Sunday School manuals which are also sent.
Normally, Sister Lawson has an opportunity to take the sacrament only once every six months. When she can get the time off work, she travels to Darwin for district conference—a weekend trip that costs her an average of [U.S.] $350 for air fares. Occasionally, the mission president or another priesthood holder travels through the town, and Sister Lawson often takes that opportunity to ask for a blessing.

A few weeks ago, Ruby and I were up in Oakley, Idaho, for a couple of days, restoring our old family home. I had a phone call from Lenore Romney in Detroit, Michigan. Lenore is the wife of George Romney. She said, “George died this morning.” She wanted to know if I could arrange to attend the funeral. I told her I would be honored to come but that I would need to arrange it with those who are my superiors in the Church.
After I hung up the phone, I walked up the street from our old family home. I walked across the canal over to the area where the Romneys used to live. George’s father’s name was Gaskell Romney. My father was their bishop. I looked at the area. The house wasn’t there anymore. Then I walked along the old irrigation canal bank. I looked at the area where my father baptized me. I looked at where George and I used to swim. Swimming suits in those days were a pair of bib overalls, not the high-fashioned kind you see today but the real denim, old-fashioned bib overalls. We cut the legs off and cut the pockets out so we wouldn’t drown. That’s all we had for swimming suits. We used to sit on the canal bank in a little bit of sunshine and shiver because it was so cold. But swimming was our main recreation. George and I were about the same age. He was my friend. He was my pal.
As I walked along the canal bank, thinking about George, I thought of a poem by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benét that they had written about Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was only seven when Nancy Hanks died, and they loved each other very much. But in that tender poem, the Benéts reflected that if Nancy Hanks came back today, she might ask, Whatever happened to my boy, Abe? Did he get to town? Did he learn to read? Did he ever amount to anything? (See “Nancy Hanks,” in Edwin Markham, comp., The Book of American Poetry [New York: Wm. H. Wise and Co., 1936], pp. 791–92).
George’s mother had died while he was a teenager. She didn’t get to see what he became. At the funeral, I was honored to be there with the governor of the state of Michigan—a state of some nine million people, where George had been elected governor three times. The governor said George Romney was a great man who never allowed service to man to obscure service to God. The Detroit News said George Romney used his religion as a compass to chart his public life.

Several years after the difficult trial the Alvarez family faced, I witnessed how another faithful family dealt with great adversity. Several members of the Quero family had died in a terrible car accident. Brother Abraham Quero lost his parents, two sisters, his brother-in-law, and his niece in that accident.
Brother Quero showed an admirable attitude when he said the following:
“This was the time to show loyalty to God and to acknowledge that we depend on Him, that His will must be obeyed, and that we are subject to Him.
“I spoke to my brothers and gave them strength and courage to understand what President Kimball taught many years ago, that ‘there is no tragedy in death, but only in sin’ (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society course of study, 2006], 18) and that the important thing is not how a man died but how he lived.
“The words of Job filled my soul: ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21). And then from Jesus: ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live’ (John 11:25).
“This was one of the most spiritual experiences we had as a family—to accept the will of God under such very difficult circumstances.”

I pursued an education, both undergraduate and a law degree. I was married midway through my legal education. I had my first son the year after I passed the bar. I had babies, and my husband and I loved and nurtured them while we were both working. It was busy, sometimes hectic; we were stretched and sometimes tired. I supported him, and he supported me. Family was, and still is, our top priority. My husband and I sought inspiration in these choices and in the timing. It was what we felt impressed to do. We were trying to let God prevail.
From a financial and professional perspective, it would have made sense to put off having children until I was more established in my career. But in letting the Lord author our stories, we sometimes do things that the world can’t make sense of. I juggled pregnancy, birthing babies, nurturing children, carpools, little league, Church responsibilities, being a supportive spouse, and my professional pursuits. It was a joyful juggle I wouldn’t change. We felt confident in our course because we were letting God prevail.

We can talk, then, of the spiritual burdens he bore: how he was called over and over again to impose sacrifices on himself and on others when he would rather have not. Here is an example. Place: Kirtland. Commandment: Build a temple. The question: How? Stands here Brigham, stands here Joseph. How will we build a temple? They review the names of every Latter-day Saint they can think of who has ability in construction, and there isn’t anyone who can do it. Then Joseph Young says: “Well, I know a man up in Canada; he’s excellent in construction work. His name is Artemus Millett; but of course he’s not a member of the Church.”

At that point Joseph turns to Brigham: “Brother Brigham, I give you a mission. You are to go to Canada. You are to convert Artemus Millett. You are to bring him back to Kirtland with his family and tell him to bring at least a thousand dollars in cash.” It is a testament of the mettle of Brigham that he said, “All right, Brother Joseph, I’ll go.” Go he did. He did convert Artemus Millett and his family. They did come to Kirtland with the thousand dollars.42 Brother Millett oversaw the construction of that temple and later the Manti Temple. That is one of the up-against-the-wall impossibilities—perhaps hundreds of them in the Prophet’s life—that both wrenched his soul and stretched it.

The center of St. Petersburg, crisscrossed by canals, is full of palaces, monuments, statues, churches, gardens, and museums. For seminary students from the Obukhovskii Branch, it seemed a perfect place to talk about their love of seminary, their love for the scriptures, and their love for their city.
Julia Shaikhulina reminisces about returning from a trip to the Stockholm (Sweden) Temple. “I wondered how I’d feel coming home, since going to the temple is such a wonderful experience. But it was autumn, and as our bus drove across the city, the trees and the buildings were bathed in a golden light. It made all of the buildings look beautiful. And I said to myself, I know that I love my city. It made me feel like I wanted to share the gospel with everyone.”