Gospel Story Finder

While I waited for the outward sign that never came, my mind and heart were full of poignant memories. I remembered how proud Dad and I had both been on the day when we met with our priesthood leaders in the stake president’s office. I remembered the strength I felt in the hands as they joined in a circle around me as my father ordained me an elder after the order of Melchizedek.
“Well, Elder Rick,” they said to me afterward as they enthusiastically shook my hand, “we know that you are going to be a terrific missionary.”
As I shook my father’s hand and looked into his misty eyes, I knew that he was also sure that I would be successful.
That memory faded and was replaced with the “D” discussion I had preprogrammed myself to study. The details of the plan of salvation ran through my mind as the tears slowly dried on my cheeks.
I reviewed the premortal existence and the council of heaven and realized for the first time that my father must have been there. I knew my dad had been born to receive a body, like everybody else, and had obeyed the Lord’s commandments to the best of his ability like we all must. He was always the most selfless man I had ever known, and even though he wasn’t the most verbal individual, we always knew by the things he did that he loved Mom and us more than he could say.
Nobody enjoyed being home with his family more than my dad. About the only thing Dad would let take him away from his family was the gospel he loved so much. Few people had served in as many different capacities in the Church as my dad. I knew that he had successfully honored his first and second estates, and could surely expect a promising future with our Heavenly Father.
I tried to imagine my dad’s reunion with his earthly parents and little sister who had died over 50 years ago. It wasn’t hard to picture Uncle Lew and Uncle Vic also waiting with open arms to welcome Dad to his next field of labor, almost like a transfer in the mission field.
These thoughts brought a smile to my heart as I continued to gaze out that tiny kitchen window. I knew I didn’t have to worry about what was in store for my dad.
What about Mom, though? They had been married nearly 40 years. What would she do without him?
My stomach tightened nervously until I remembered that this was the week of the Klomp family reunion in Panaca, Nevada. All four of my older brothers and sisters and their families would be there with Mom to help her through this difficult time. She would be comforted by her children as she so often had comforted each of us. It seemed terribly fair somehow. I realized also that Mom was not a weak, ignorant, or faithless woman. She had helped me gain a better understanding of and love for the gospel of Jesus Christ and would certainly take strength from that same fountain of truth.
I don’t know how long I stood at that window, but I do remember being stiff as my eyelids began to droop again with fatigue. I stretched, still staring out the window, hoping to see something, anything which would show me that everything was all right. It wasn’t until later that I realized that my “sign” had come in the form of the Spirit speaking peace to my heart, calming my fears, and warming me with the love of a faraway family and a God who was very near.
When I finally pulled myself away from the window, I wondered whether or not I should return home, leaving my mission only half served. I remembered scriptures about putting your hand to the plow and then turning away or loving father and mother more than the Savior. I felt confident that Dad would have wanted me to stay and finish the work I had been given to do, but decided that if Mom needed me, I would go home to help her.
I kept the whole thing pretty much to myself the next day and was determined not to let it affect the work. Actually it still didn’t seem real. It seemed like a hazy dream. But I still made plans to make the phone call to my family.
After a busy morning and a quick lunch, we pedaled to the post office so I could make the call. I waited anxiously in the long-distance line. When my turn finally came, I gave the man behind the desk the right phone number, and he directed me to the appropriate plexiglass phone booth in the center of the building.
“Hello, Nancy, can you hear me?” I said when the connection was made.
“Yes, Rick. I’m so glad you were able to call. We’re all here taking good care of Mama and we want you to know that everything is fine. She wants you to do what you think is right.”
After speaking to Mom and some of the rest of the family and hearing that Dad had seemed really fulfilled and happy to have almost all his family around before he died, I knew that I wasn’t really needed at home. I was needed in Germany to do the work a prophet of God had assigned me to do. The still, small voice comforted me, and I was able to complete the second half of my mission in a way that honored my beliefs, my family, and most of all, my dad. He had endured, faithful to the end, and taught me to do the same. Did he ever quit or give up before he finished an assignment? Not my dad!

Berglind (left) with her sister Elín (right). When Berglind was in the deepest depression she had ever faced, she felt that she couldn’t go on. By opening up about her struggles to family and friends, she has found spiritual and emotional healing through the tools Heavenly Father has provided.
Mindy Selu, Photographer
I’ve been dealing with depression since I was 13. At one point, things got so bad that I tried to take my own life. I felt very hopeless at that time. I thought, “I’m never going to be happy. I’ll never achieve anything.”
There was a moment when I thought that leaving the Church was the answer to my problems because I just felt hopeless about everything. It is so easy to do what you’re not supposed to do in Iceland. The Church is so small here. It was just me and my siblings in our Church classes growing up. I felt lonely and for a while I didn’t like going to church.
Most people in Iceland push religion away. People start drinking at an early age. I got caught up in that, and I was inactive for a moment in my life. I’m not proud of that, but it’s a part of my experience and I learned from it. I studied a talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and liked what he said: “The past is to be learned from but not lived in. … When we have learned what we need to learn … , then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future.”1
One day when I was really struggling, I read my patriarchal blessing. As I read it, I realized that I do have a future. God has a plan for me, and He actually loves me. Going to church, taking the sacrament, reading the scriptures, and praying has brought so much light and happiness into my life. I soon realized, “This actually helps me.” That’s when I knew I always wanted the gospel in my life. After everything I’ve been through, I know that the gospel has saved my life, and I’m very happy about that.
Talking about my depression with family and friends has helped so much. It also led to more help. I didn’t want to take medications or go to therapy. I kept telling myself, “I have God.” But God provides many other tools, like medication and therapy, for us to use in addition to spiritual things.
As I started reading my scriptures more every day and getting closer to God through prayer, I received many blessings and revelations that my purpose is to help others. I feel like so many of us face mental health issues and we try to hide it. My depression and struggles have taught me that it’s better to open up and connect with others. My friend recently opened up to me about her struggle with depression. We talked about it and we truly understood each other.
We don’t always notice what others are struggling with, but I just walk around sometimes and look at other people and realize that God knows each and every one of us. He loves us and knows exactly what we are all going through. And we can help each other.
Through my struggles with depression, I’ve learned to ask, “What can I learn from this trial?” instead of “Why do I have this trial?” I love Ether 12:27, where it says that weak things can become strong if we have faith in Jesus Christ. This is always a comfort to me.
We all chose to come here to earth. We knew we were going to suffer through trials. And honestly that is what makes life great. Because we know there are good things to come. We know that if we follow the Savior throughout every hard phase, we can have eternal life and all these blessings that are waiting for us.
I’ve definitely noticed how I’ve changed through my depression. The Savior’s Atonement is real, my heart has been changed, and I’ve gotten stronger. I feel like I’m a different person than I once was. People notice and say, “You’ve changed.” One girl from school even said, “I see a difference and a light in you.” It’s weird because she isn’t even a member of the Church, and we hadn’t ever really talked before.
When I was in my worst depression, people would tell me, “It’s going to get better.” I would get so tired of hearing that but, as weird as it sounds, it’s true.
But you have to want to get better. I’ve learned that you can’t expect to get better by doing nothing. You have to want to be happy and believe that you have potential and a future. It’s important to remember that you are loved by so many people, including your Heavenly Father. They are all there to help you.
I never thought I would be as happy as I am now. Some days I still struggle, but with the tools Heavenly Father has given me, I can handle it. Now when I feel myself slipping into depression, I tell myself I am loved, I have people to talk to, and things will get better.
Facing depression has made Berglind more aware of how we can help each other through challenges. “God knows each and every one of us, He loves us, and He knows exactly what we are all going through. And we can help each other.”
Berglind has seen a change in herself through her challenges. “The Savior’s Atonement is real,” she says. “My heart has been changed, and I’ve gotten stronger. I feel like I’m a different person than I once was.”
“As I started reading my scriptures more every day,” Berglind says, “I received many blessings and revelations that my purpose is to help others. I love Ether 12:27, where it says that weak things can become strong if we have faith in Jesus Christ. This is always a comfort to me.”

An example of focusing on serving others when challenged is President Hinckley, as a discouraged missionary in England. He wrote, "I was not well when I arrived. Those first few weeks, because of illness and the opposition which we felt, I was discouraged. I wrote a letter home to my good father and said that I felt I was wasting my time and his money." His father's advice was "forget yourself and go to work." He followed his father's counsel and would later call this his "day of decision" that would lay a positive course for the rest of his life.[13]

While I was growing up, my father was a very busy man because he had a demanding job as a truck driver for construction projects. But he always took time for me. When I was in high school, my father would ask my five sisters when he came home from work, “Where is Benjamín?”

My sisters would come to me and say, “Father wants you.”

I would leave playing with my friends and run to ask him, “What do you need, Father?”

He would say, “Bring your scriptures, and come with me.”

Two or three times a week we would read the scriptures together like that. He was a master teacher of the scriptures. At that time we did not have seminary in Mexico. Now I think of those study sessions as my own seminary class with my father as the teacher.

While reading the scriptures and hearing my father explain them to me, I learned for myself what the Spirit feels like in my heart and in my mind. Many times the Spirit was very strong as he would explain the scriptures.

These kinds of experiences with my father were the beginning of my own testimony of Heavenly Father and the Church. I always thought that the Church was true, but just thinking so was not enough. My father took my hand and put it on the iron rod. His manner of taking care of me was the key for my testimony and my inner security in the gospel.

During those meetings, not only did I learn many things from him about the scriptures, but I learned that my father loved me in a way that I couldn’t quite understand at the time. Many other times he would invite me to a movie or to eat, and I know that I was protected by my father’s care for me. Now I am a father, and I know that he loved me in a special way.

There may be more power in your testimony than even you realize. Several years ago I met one of our sons in the mission field in a distant part of the world. He had been there for a year. His first question was this: “Dad, what can I do to grow spiritually? I have tried so hard to grow spiritually and I just haven’t made any progress.”
That was his perception: to me it was otherwise. I could hardly believe the maturity, the spiritual growth that he had gained in just one year. He “knew it not” for it had come as growth, not as a startling spiritual experience.

This was the same canal in which I was later baptized into the Church, and this is the same canal from which I hauled water to the trees and plant life about our home. I was the smallest of the boys, so I was given this work. We called the transportation a “lizard.” Did any of you ever see a “lizard”? We made it with a Y-shaped tree limb. In the center we fastened a barrel and hitched one horse to the “lizard.” I drove it to the canal, where I dipped up barrels full of canal water, then drove the horse one block to the home where I dipped out the water for the plants and flowers.
My father made a great effort to surround the new home with every kind of flower and save them in those late summer days when water was so scarce. It was also my job to drive the horses and cows to the canal for their drinking water.

I knelt with my own family, at the conclusion of a great family home evening, the night before our lovely daughter was to be married in the temple. I think she wouldn’t mind my telling you that after we had laughed and wept and remembered, she was asked to pray. I don’t recall much of her prayer, the tears and the joy and the sweetness, but I remember one thought: she thanked God for the unconditional love she had received. This life doesn’t give one very many chances to feel exultant and a little successful, but I felt wonderful that night, and thank God that she really believes and understands what she said. We cannot, my dear brethren, condition our love by a beard or beads or habits or strange viewpoints. There have to be standards and they must be enforced, but our love must be unconditional.

As early Saints reached Utah, President Brigham Young issued calls to some of them to serve missions to many nations of the world, to others to colonize areas outside the Salt Lake Valley. George Careless was prepared to accept any call he received.
“Brother George,” President Young said, “I have a mission for you. … I want you to take the Tabernacle Choir … and lay a foundation for good music in Utah.” Brother Careless accepted the call.
Born in London on September 24, 1839, George displayed musical talent early in life. His father, a woodcarver, berated his son for “wasting time” with music and told him to learn a trade. George went to work in a shoemaking company, but his heart wasn’t in it. The plant foreman, a music lover who collected violins, loaned him one of them, and George soon learned to play it.
When he was ten years old, he was offered a place in a London choir school, where boys earned their academic and musical education by singing in a church or cathedral. It was a wonderful opportunity, but George turned it down. He had recently joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was eager to participate fully in it.
George’s father never accepted his devotion to music and told him to either give it up or leave the family. So when he was thirteen, George left home.
Later, the shoe factory foreman loaned George the money to attend the Royal Academy of Music. After graduating in three years rather than the usual four, he was hired as a member of an orchestra that gave concerts in the Crystal Palace, England’s showplace for the arts. With his first earnings, he repaid the foreman.
At the same time, George worked to improve the musical activities of the Church in England. He directed a London Conference choir, earning it such a high reputation that it was invited to perform at several of London’s leading concert halls.
His career was progressing so well that Elder William C. Staines encouraged him to move to Utah before he became so famous that it would be almost impossible to leave those who went to hear him. Six weeks later, George sailed for America. On his ship, the Hudson, he led a choir composed of Saints who were immigrating to Utah. He arrived in New York City on July 19, 1864. From there he suffered illness and hunger much of the rest of the way.
Arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, George was given the depressing news that the few professional musicians already there were unable to make a living with their music. Even so, he was determined to teach music even if he starved. By the end of the next month, he had twenty-four paying pupils. The going rate for a series of lessons in the Salt Lake Valley was a hundred pounds of flour.
When President Young called him to his musical mission, George replied, “I will do the best I can with the material I can get.”
The prophet responded, “You will have to make that.”
Organizing a choir in the rough conditions of frontier living took determination and grit as well as talent. At his first rehearsal of the choir, only forty members were present. The Tabernacle, still under construction, had no heating or lighting. Choir members held a candle in one hand, their music in the other.
On October 8, 1873, the Salt Lake Tabernacle Choir joined with choirs from fourteen surrounding communities to perform at General Conference. Some of the choirs had to travel several days to reach Salt Lake City.
When Brigham Young died in 1877, George assembled a 220-member choir to perform a hymn he composed for the funeral.
After serving eleven years as director of the Tabernacle Choir, George resigned his post in 1880. His mission was to continue, though, when President John Taylor asked him to head a committee to write music for all the hymns to be included in The Latter-day Saints’ Psalmody, published in 1889. The Psalmody contained 330 hymns, three-fourths of them set to music by Mormon composers. One of Brother Careless’s compositions is the well-known sacrament hymn “He Died! The Great Redeemer Died.”
George Careless fulfilled his mission to lay a foundation for good music, not just in Utah but in the whole Church.

Throughout my life I have learned that when we follow the teachings of our prophets, we receive promised blessings. In the April 1986 general conference, President Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) promised that if families would read the scriptures together regularly, the Spirit would fill their homes.1
My dear wife and I decided to follow that counsel. We set a goal to read a chapter a day from the Book of Mormon with our three children—Jorge, 10; Susi, 9; and Luis, 3. We read every day, each of us reading one verse at a time. Even though Luis could not yet read, he wanted to participate. He sat on my lap, facing me, with the Book of Mormon between us. When it was my turn to read, we both followed my finger as I pointed to each word, and Luis repeated out loud every word I read while he looked at those words upside down.
Just before he turned five years old, Luis asked, “When is it my turn to read?”
We explained that when he was older, he would go to school and learn to read.
He responded, “I already know how to read!”
Astonished, I handed him a Book of Mormon. He opened the book upside down and began to read perfectly. He had learned to read by following along in the Book of Mormon!
When he was six years old, Luis sometimes went with me to visit Church members. I asked him to share his testimony as well as a short scripture message that I had taught him. Whenever he read from the Book of Mormon, he held it upside down and read perfectly.
Luis is now finishing his university studies and working full-time. No matter how late he gets home from work, school, or a Church assignment, he still reads a chapter from the Book of Mormon before he goes to bed. The prophet’s promise has truly been fulfilled: as a result of our reading this sacred book, our family has been richly blessed and we are more united.

My dad was an apple grower in Washington, USA, and so were my grandparents. There were all kinds of jobs to do, so I learned how to work when I was young. My grandmother lived on a hill surrounded by apple trees. At the bottom of the hill there were blackberry bushes.
In the summertime the bushes were full of ripe berries. My grandmother would give my younger brothers and sisters and me each a plastic bucket. She’d tell us to come back with buckets full of blackberries. Then she made jam and syrup and all kinds of yummy things.
It was hot, and blackberry bushes have lots of thorns. And worst of all, there were snakes! We used every excuse we could think of to not pick blackberries. But I was the oldest, so I had to be a good example. Even though it was hard, we worked. It seemed to take forever to fill up our buckets. We got distracted. We watched for snakes. We ate a bunch of berries.
When our buckets were finally full, we took them back up to my grandmother. Then we could play for the rest of the day. At dinner that night, my grandmother always served a blackberry cobbler or pie. It was delicious! We ate it hot out of the oven with a scoop of ice cream.
We learned a couple of things from our summers picking blackberries. First, everybody worked. Everyone in the family, no matter how small, could help in some way. Second, we learned that if we wanted to enjoy the blackberry pie, we had to do the work. Years later as a young missionary, I learned how important work is. Heavenly Father blesses us when we put in effort. If we work hard and keep the commandments, we will be blessed.

A few years ago, Elder David A. Bednar asked the following questions as part of his remarks: “Do we only know about the Savior, or are we increasingly coming to know Him? How do we come to know the Lord?”
As I studied and pondered, I came to the stark realization that what I know about the Savior greatly outweighed how much I really know Him. I resolved then to put forth more effort to know Him. I am very grateful for the scriptures and testimonies of faithful men and women disciples of Jesus Christ. My own journey over the last few years has taken me down many roads of study and discovery. I pray that the Holy Ghost will convey to you today a message far greater than the inadequate words that I have written.
First, we need to recognize that knowing the Savior is the most important pursuit of our lives. It should take priority over anything else.
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
Second, as we are increasingly coming to know the Savior, scriptural passages and the words of the prophets become so intimately meaningful to us that they become our own words. It is not about copying the words, feelings, and experiences of others as much as it is coming to know for ourselves, in our own unique way, by experimenting upon the word and receiving a witness from the Holy Ghost. As the prophet Alma declared:
“Do ye not suppose that I know of these things myself? Behold, I testify unto you that I do know that these things whereof I have spoken are true. And how do ye suppose that I know of their surety?
“Behold, I say unto you they are made known unto me by the Holy Spirit of God. Behold, I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things of myself. And now I do know of myself that they are true; for the Lord God hath made them manifest unto me by his Holy Spirit; and this is the spirit of revelation which is in me.”
Third, an increasing understanding that the Atonement of Jesus Christ applies to us personally and individually will help us know Him. Oftentimes it is easier for us to think and speak of Christ’s Atonement in general terms than to recognize its personal significance in our lives. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is infinite and eternal and all-encompassing in its breadth and depth but wholly personal and individual in its effects. Because of His atoning sacrifice, the Savior has power to cleanse, heal, and strengthen us one by one.
The Savior’s only desire, His only purpose from the very beginning, was to do the will of the Father. The will of the Father was for Him to assist in “[bringing] to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” by becoming our “advocate with the Father.” Hence, “though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.”
“And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind. …
“And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death … and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, … that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.
“… The Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance.”
I would like to share a simple experience that illustrates the struggle we sometimes have to embrace the personal nature of the Lord’s Atonement.
Years ago, at the invitation of my file leader, I read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover and marked the verses that referenced the Lord’s Atonement. My leader also invited me to prepare a one-page summary of what I learned. I said to myself, “One page? Sure, that is easy.” To my surprise, however, I found the task to be extremely difficult, and I failed.
I have since realized that I failed because I missed the mark and had incorrect assumptions. First, I expected the summary to be inspiring to everyone. The summary was meant for me and not for anyone else. It was meant to capture my feelings and emotions about the Savior and what He has done for me so that every time I read it, it will bring to the surface wonderful, poignant, and personal spiritual experiences.
Second, I expected the summary to be grand and elaborate and contain big words and phrases. It was never about big words. It was meant to be a clear and simple declaration of conviction. “For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding.”
Third, I expected it to be perfect, a summary to end all summaries—a final summary that one cannot and should not add to—instead of a work in progress to which I can add a word here or there as my understanding of Jesus Christ’s Atonement increases.
As a young man, I learned a lot from my conversations with my bishop. During those tender years, I learned to love these words from a favorite hymn:
I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me,
Confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me.
I tremble to know that for me he was crucified,
That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.
Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me
Enough to die for me!
Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!
The prophet Moroni invited us: “And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written.”
President Russell M. Nelson promised that “if [we] proceed to learn all [we] can about Jesus Christ, … [our] ability to turn away from sin will increase. [Our] desire to keep the commandments will soar.”
On this Easter Sunday, just as the Savior came forth from His stone grave, may we awake from our spiritual slumber and rise above the clouds of doubt, the clutches of fear, the intoxication of pride, and the lull of complacency. Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father live. I testify of Their perfect love for us. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

The antique mower just wouldn’t get the edges on that patch between the cracked, roller-coaster sidewalk and the curb. The blades kept catching on the walkway to Aunt Ella’s house. All in all, I guess it did do a pretty good job, and it made the neatest noise when I pushed it. But I always had to make two passes on the driveway between the wheel tracks.
I checked my handiwork. Not too bad for 50¢. I had taken extra care around the rhodo-whatever-it-was, and I hadn’t even knocked one bloom off the ferny “jungle path” to the backyard. I liked the jungle path; it looked like every plant in the world must be back there. It was cool and misty on hot summer days playing hide-and-seek with birds, snails, and my cousins—a dark green Africa.
Aunt Ella’s garage was all of wood. Separate from the house and ever dark, it seemed to sit and brood. It kind of scared me to put the mower away. I never put the mower in the back, always right next to the pale, pink Studebaker, warily regarding the gray-on-brown-on-rust monsters that lay deeper in the tomb.
Those pesty bees about stung me every time I walked around the bottlebrush plant to get to the back door. The jungle slowly encroached upon all mobile things there. I always wondered how Aunt Ella could keep out of its clutches while she filled her bird feeder and cracked nuts on the dirty, pink tablecloth. Why, she was already 83!
The back door creaked as usual when I went into the porch. The washboard in the sink was really starting to rust. An old ladder led to the attic, where jars of apricot jam were stored. I sometimes climbed up there to check for gold and treasure.
I liked the white porcelain handles on the sink in Aunt Ella’s kitchen (even if they were a little loose) and the deep basin. When I would get the blue porcelain plates out of the cupboard, I had to be careful because the latch didn’t work very well. But what could you expect from old wood? Aunt Ella’s fridge was the only round, white one that I’ve ever seen. At least you never hurt yourself if you bumped into it. Her bathtub had feet on it, but they looked like witch’s claws.
Aunt Ella always sat in her rocker and let me eat all the hot chocolate chip cookies I wanted. I usually wandered by the perpetually black TV set, looked at all the pictures of people I had never known on the mantle, played with her black phone with the frayed cord, and tried to catch the two little birds that zipped around free in the house. I would finally plop down in the purplish pink, overstuffed chair next to the brass lamp with the fringe on it. It tipped over easy, so I had to be careful.
I made dust clouds from the chair’s arm while listening to Aunt Ella talk and waiting for Mom to pick me up. When I heard the beep I didn’t even remind her that she forgot to pay me. I said, “Bye, Aunt Ella!” opened the creaky screen door, jumped all five steps at once, hopped in the car, and waved to Aunt Ella on her dingy white and gray porch.
Later on, Mom said that Aunt Ella was getting pretty bad. I didn’t cry at her funeral, not even out of duty as I passed her open coffin.
The other day I drove by her house. The lawn was clipped to perfection, the rhododendron was gone, and the jungle path just wasn’t there. A new car was parked in the driveway, and on the porch the fancy screen door glinted in the dusky light.
Then, I cried.

When I was a child, my family spent some summers near the ocean in northern California. My father was a high school biology teacher, and during some summers he worked as a naturalist in California state parks in the redwood forests. We enjoyed living in the redwoods and going to the ocean as a family.

One of my favorite childhood memories is digging for agates, which are small translucent stones. It was like a treasure hunt. I would sit on the beach and dig a small hole in the gravel with a piece of driftwood. When I found an agate, I would hold it up to see if the sunlight shown through it. Finding an agate was fun.

As an adult, I wanted to share this happy experience with my children. One summer we went to a beach which I had visited as a child. It is called Agate Beach because many agates can be found there. I began to dig in the gravel. However, not long after we began digging, one of my children got hit by an ocean wave. The ocean in northern California is cold, and my young daughter was wet and cold. However, I wanted to continue digging for agates, and I did. After a while Nadine told me that she was taking our daughter back to the car. I understood that it was time to leave the beach.

The agates were worth little. By contrast, my daughter was very important. But I was so focused on digging for agates that it was hard for me to pull away from it and to focus on what was most important.

“I had a great experience, and I loved my mission. The work was really going well there, and we had a lot of good missionaries,” Darrell says. “Of course, I wanted to play football after my mission, but I figured the Lord would take care of that. I had always wanted to play football, and somehow I knew it was going to work out.”
When Darrell’s mission was almost complete, he began thinking more and more about football. He knew the coaching staff at Northern Arizona had been fired, so he was an unknown commodity to the new coaching staff there. The great mystery in Darrell Bevell’s life was where he was going to go to college. Would he ever get to stand on the field and throw balls to open receivers? Would anybody offer him a scholarship?
One of his assistant coaches at Northern Arizona had taken a job as an assistant at the University of Wisconsin, and he remembered Darrell. In need of another quarterback in the program, the assistant got in contact with Darrell’s dad and asked if he thought his son would be interested in playing football in Wisconsin. Considering Wisconsin competes in one of the country’s top football conferences, and that it plays its home games in a 75,000-seat stadium, Darrell’s dad figured he might be able to persuade his son to check out the school.
After he finished his mission in October of 1991, Darrell made his recruiting trip to the University of Wisconsin and became convinced that was the place for him. “I basically decided then that I wanted to go there,” he says. He sat out the entire 1991 season and got ready for 1992.
During his freshman season of 1992, Darrell broke into the starting lineup in Wisconsin’s second game against Bowling Green State, and helped engineer a win over then number-12 ranked Ohio State in the Badgers’s fourth game. What made that victory all the better is that it was televised nationally by ESPN. Needless to say, a lot of people in Scottsdale, as well as those who knew him as Elder Bevell in Ohio, were crowded around their television sets. A shoulder injury hampered his play the remainder of the season, but he still completed 51 percent of his passes and threw for eight touchdowns. The future is extremely bright for Darrell as he prepares for his sophomore season. And the missionary work continues.

Now, brethren, we are going out now with a determined activity to bring these our brethren into activity—activity of some kind. One of the mission presidents, with a group of his missionaries back in the Eastern States some years ago, was meeting in a hall with pillars that ran down the center of the hall, and he said to one of the missionaries, “Get up and push that pillar over.”

“Well,” said the missionary, “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because the weight of that ceiling is all on top of the pillar.”

Then the president asked, “Suppose that weight were lifted off. Could you push the pillar over then?”

The missionary replied, “Why, sure, I think I could.”

Then the president said, “Now, brethren, you and I are just like one of those pillars. As long as we have a weight of responsibility in this church, all hell can’t push us over; but as soon as that weight is lifted off, most of us are easy marks by the powers that drag us down.”

I have been blessed to feel that peace every time I enter the sacred temple. I recall the first day I walked into the Salt Lake Temple. I was a young man.
I looked up at a high white ceiling that made the room so light it seemed almost as if it were open to the sky. And in that moment, the thought came into my mind in clear words: “I have been in this lighted place before.” But then immediately there came into my mind, not in my own voice, these words: “No, you have never been here before. You are remembering a moment before you were born. You were in a sacred place like this where the Lord could come.”

I served as president of the Fiji Suva Mission. One day on the island of Kiribati I was walking with two elders when a man came up to us. He was drunk. I wanted to chase him off, but he saw my name tag and called me by name. “President Tefan, I would like you and your missionaries to come to dinner at my home.”
I thought, “Uh-oh, maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I turned to the elders and asked, “How do you feel? Would you like to accept the invitation?” They said that they would like to go. I felt impressed to accept his offer.
The following night we all had a nice Chinese dinner—chicken, fish, other meats, and noodles. The missionaries were happy because it was a change from their daily menu of fish and rice. At the end of the dinner, I thanked the man and said, “Now I have a gift I would like to offer you. Would you like these missionaries to teach you the gospel of Jesus Christ?”
He said he wasn’t interested but the missionaries could teach his wife and 18-year-old son. Three months later the son was baptized. One year later the wife was baptized, and her husband started attending church. He asked me for a blessing to help him stop smoking and drinking, and he was able to quit. The last time I visited that family, the son had been admitted to Brigham Young University–Hawaii on a full-tuition scholarship and had also received a mission call to Hong Kong.
When I think back on my experience with that family, I’m glad that I didn’t chase the “drunk man” away but instead followed the prompting of the Spirit to accept the dinner invitation, open my mouth, and ask him to hear the gospel.

“As [a] man was walking past his neighbor’s house, he noticed in the middle of [the] beautiful lawn a single, enormous, yellow dandelion weed. … Why didn’t his neighbor pull it out? Couldn’t he see it? … This solitary dandelion bothered [the man] beyond description, and he wanted to do something about it. Should he just pluck it out? Or spray it with weed killer? Perhaps if he went under cover of night, he could remove it secretly. These thoughts totally occupied his mind as he walked toward his own home. He entered his house without even glancing at his own front yard—which was blanketed with hundreds of yellow dandelions. … I’m not sure why we are able to diagnose and recommend remedies for other people’s ills so well, while we often have difficulty seeing our own.”

We just received here in Brazil the great September issue. The article on unusual dates reminded me of a real fun date I had once. It started when three friends and myself were crawling around a local mine near my hometown. We knew it was safe, and many people had visited it. The idea struck me as to how we could share all the fun we were having there. We finally came on the idea of having a restaurant in the mine for our dates. So one Saturday we arranged the event. Two of the fellows would be waiters one week, and the other two would bring dates. Then we’d reverse our roles. We spent the morning hauling up tables, chairs, silverware, china, radio, and other assorted equipment. This is easier said than done—the hike was two miles from the nearest road. All the equipment was put on pack boards on our backs. Then about 4 P.M., the dates came up (for what seemed to the girls to be a regular cave exploring trip). We spent the next several hours crawling around the mine, marveling at anything from small nuggets of gold to blind crickets. We all had a good time, and all precautions were taken—hard hats, ropes, three varieties of lights.
Then, on the way out of the mine, we were suddenly met by two waiters dressed in French-style clothes. We were led to a table complete with crystal and linen, candlelight and soft music. The menu was given—five different choices that were all the same but were written in five different languages. Appetizers, soup, salad, steaks, baked potatoes, dessert, and punch. The whole thing was cooked over an open fire outside the mine. The girls couldn’t believe it, and the rest of the hike down in the moonlight was a touch of fantasy also. The girls raved about it for weeks. The whole meal cost only $5 per couple.
Elder Gary E. LewisRio de Janeiro, Brazil

During a particularly difficult time, I was feeling quite unsettled. Actually, pretty desperate for the Lord’s help. By this point in my life, I knew Jesus Christ: who He was, and what He had done for me. I had faith that He could help me and would provide comfort.
I trusted Him. So I went in prayer, utilizing the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ for relief.
Brothers and sisters, it took me a long time, well into my adulthood, to learn how the power of the Atonement works for me. But in that moment of prayer, as I asked God to lift my burden so I could set aside my grief and my concerns and focus on the tasks that I had before me, I felt immediate relief, and I felt this wise counsel, “You know where to find peace.”