Gospel Story Finder

I close with this last true story as it was given by the Reverend Bob Richards. It always touches my heart, and it may touch yours also.

Lou Little tells it about his greatest football team. They were on their way to the conference championship. One last game. He had a boy on his squad who couldn’t quite make the team for four straight years. Just before the game—three days before—Lou was given a telegram to give to this boy that his only living relative had just died. The boy looked at the telegram and said, “Coach, I’ll be back for Saturday’s game.” The morning of the game he came up to his coach and said, “Lou, I want you to put me in this game—I know I haven’t made the first team yet, but let me in for this kickoff. I’ll prove to you that I’m worthy of it.” Well, Lou could see he was emotionally disturbed and he made all kinds of excuses, but finally he thought, “Well, he can’t do much harm on the kickoff; I’ll put the boy in.”

The roar of the crowd was heard at the kickoff. The opposing quarterback took the ball on the goal line, moved up, and on the seven-yard line met with a tremendous tackle—the boy had dropped him in his tracks. On the next play Lou left him in—he made the next tackle—he was in on the next tackle—you couldn’t move him out of there. He made practically every tackle that day—terrific downfield blocking. He was the reason why Columbia won the championship. Afterwards, all the guys were pounding him on the back. When they were all done, Lou Little went up to him and said, “Son, I don’t understand it. Today you were an all-American. I’ve never seen you play like this in four straight years. What happened?” And the boy looked up at his coach and he said, “Coach, you knew my dad died, didn’t you?” And he said, “Yes, I handed you the telegram.” He said, “You knew he was blind, didn’t you?” He said, “Yes, I have seen you walk him around the campus many times.” He said, “Coach, today is the first football game my dad ever saw me play.” It makes a difference, friends, when those unseen eyes are watching. (“Life’s Higher Goals,” by the Reverend Bob Richards.)

In Santiago, Chile, a Relief Society president had the desire to help immigrants in her community who had come from Haiti. By counseling together with her priesthood leaders, she and other leaders came up with the idea to offer Spanish classes to those immigrants, helping them integrate better into their new home. Every Saturday morning, missionaries gather together with their eager students. The feeling of unity in that building is an inspiring example of people from diverse backgrounds serving with one accord.

When 10-year-old John joined the swimming team, he told his coach he could compete in the meets held on Saturday but not those held on Sunday. At the last meet of the season, John’s relay race was scheduled for Sunday. He remembered a family home evening lesson about making decisions in advance so it would be easier to do the right thing when the time came. John said: “I had made the decision not to swim on Sunday before I joined my team. That made it easier for me to tell the coach that I couldn’t swim the relay. I thought the coach would be mad at me. But at the end-of-the-year banquet, … he told the team how proud he was of me for having standards and then sticking to them.”3 John shows he knows by keeping the Sabbath day holy and setting an example of someone who follows the teachings of Jesus. Every time you keep the Sabbath day holy, you show you know.

I learned this lesson a few years ago. I spent 15 years studying and consulting in West Africa, believing that my work was unrelated to anything of a spiritual nature. From 1963 through 1978 I visited West Africa at least two or three times per year. I taught at a West African university. I served as a consultant to West African governments. I developed a strategy for their export markets. During these visits I had occasional contact with Africans interested in the Church. After investing considerable time and energy in the economics of that part of the world, I was invited to a meeting on the BYU campus in late 1977 with President James E. Faust. At the time he was president of the Church’s International Mission. He learned that I had two trips to West Africa planned for the first half of 1978 and asked if I would visit some African members. Upon my return from the second trip in May 1978, I suggested to President Faust that a fireside be held for African students at Brigham Young University. The purpose was to provide direction for African members when they returned home.

The fireside was held in May 1978, with Edwin and Janath Cannon as the speakers. Brother Cannon was a counselor to President Faust in the International Mission presidency, and Sister Cannon was a member of the Relief Society General Presidency. Two weeks later the priesthood revelation was announced. A few days later I received a telephone call from President Faust inviting me to his office. During the meeting a call was issued inviting me to escort Brother Cannon through West Africa to meet with various groups who were interested in the Church and inform them of the priesthood revelation and tell them that missionaries would arrive soon. During July and August of 1978, Brother Cannon and I toured West Africa, meeting with many groups who had waited long years for missionaries to teach them the gospel. Upon our return we wrote a report for President Faust. It was then determined that Brother Cannon and I should meet with the First Presidency and give them a report. I will never forget the instructions received from David M. Kennedy, the First Presidency’s international ambassador, just prior to meeting with President Kimball and his counselors. His instructions were: “Be succinct. Take no more than 30 minutes.” We were prepared to do just that. Two hours later we were still being interviewed by the First Presidency. President Kimball, President Tanner, and President Romney had an insatiable interest in learning as much about the Africans and their circumstances as possible.

Following the July and August 1978 trip to West Africa, my trips there ceased. I did not return to that part of the world for another nine years. From 1963 through 1978, my temporal assignments had taken me in and out of West Africa multiple times per year. During that 15-year period I believed my work in West Africa was temporal and unrelated to the Lord’s work. Looking back, I marvel at the way in which the many trips were a preparation for one special trip, and then the odyssey ended.

Was it coincidental that the African trips concluded with the 1978 journeys? Was it in the Lord’s plan to use my work in Africa as a stepping-stone to accomplish his work? Although the contribution was small and the Lord easily could have achieved his purposes in other ways, it has been a reminder of the Lord’s quiet, effective involvement in our lives.

A youth group in Missouri, USA, decided to put their culinary prowess to the test on this tasty activity. All youth were separated into groups. Then each team was given a cake, some decorating supplies, and the task of decorating the cake to depict a specific scene from the Book of Mormon. In the end, before eating the cakes, everybody had to guess the scene on each cake. “The Spirit was so strong and we were having fun,” said one of the young women. “We all got along and helped each other out.”

Brother Truman Madsen, in a devotional address here on the campus, told of three young men with the pioneers in their trek west who had the same faith as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—
Brother Huntington, Brother Grant, Brother Kimball—all only eighteen years of age, who went with the relief party the second thousand miles to help with the Martin company. On this trip they faced a stream that was swollen with ice and snow. . . . The pioneers almost hopelessly stood back, unable to go through in their weakened and emaciated condition. Those three boys carried every one of the company across and then crossed back, sometimes in water up to their waists. All three later died from exposure. When Brother Brigham heard this, he wept and then rose in the majesty of his spirit and said, “God will exalt those three young men in the celestial kingdom of God.” [Truman G. Madsen, “Power from Abrahamic Tests,” October 12, 1971, p. 4]

I was only 12 years old when the missionaries arrived for the first time to preach in the city where I was born in northern Chile. One Sunday, after I had been attending the small branch for six months, a missionary offered me the bread as he was passing the sacrament. I looked at him and softly said, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” he replied.
I told him, “Because I am not a member of the Church.”
The missionary couldn’t believe it. His eyes were shining. I suppose he thought, “But this young man is in every single meeting! How can he not be a member of the Church?”
The following day, the missionaries were in my home, and they did everything they could to teach my whole family. But since my family was not interested, it was only my weekly Church attendance for more than six months that made the missionaries feel confident enough to continue. Finally, the great moment I had been waiting for came when they invited me to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. The missionaries explained to me that since I was a minor, I would need my parents’ permission. I went with the missionaries to see my father, thinking that his loving answer would be “Son, when you are of legal age, you will be able to make your own decisions.”
While the missionaries spoke with him, I prayed fervently for his heart to be touched so he would give me the permission I wanted. His answer to the missionaries was the following: “Elders, over the past six months, I have seen my son Jorge get up early every Sunday morning, put on his best clothes, and walk to church. I have seen only a good influence from the Church in his life.” Then, addressing me, he surprised me by saying, “Son, if you will be responsible for this decision, then you have my permission to be baptized.” I hugged my father, gave him a kiss, and thanked him for what he was doing. The next day I was baptized. Last week was the 47th anniversary of that important moment in my life.
How grateful and happy I am for the decision that my father let me make 47 years ago. Over time, I have come to understand that the condition he gave me—to be responsible for that decision—meant being responsible to my Heavenly Father and seeking my own salvation and that of my fellowmen, thereby becoming more as my Father expects and wants me to become. On this very special day, I testify that God our Father and His Beloved Son live. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

“When Dad suggested that everyone in the family take a turn at giving the family night lesson, I thought that it would be funny to say, ‘Yeah, let John give the lesson next week.’ John is three years old. So Dad assigned John the lesson, and with Mom’s help, John gave one of the best family night lessons that we have ever had, and the joy on that little guy’s face was worth more than we will ever be able to give him in return.”

I apologize to those of you who have heard me tell this story before, but, as some of you know, I was raised in what we refer to in the Church as a part-member home. My mom was an Idaho farm girl who had moved to the big city, Idaho Falls, to be a telephone operator. My dad was the son of a Pennsylvania coal miner who joined the navy at 17 and was, several years later, sent to Idaho to train at the nuclear reactor facility for his assignment on the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. There they met, fell in love, and eloped to the romantic getaway of Elko, Nevada.

During those years, my dad was a wonderful father and a devoted husband, but he was not interested in my mother’s faith. My mom found herself living on a submarine base in New London, Connecticut, with four young children and a husband who was out to sea for months at a time. I wonder how easy it would have been for her to slip away from the Church, to take a week off, to make the understandable excuse that it was just too hard to get the kids to church by herself. But she never did. She cured our bouts of “Sunday sickness,” served faithfully in her callings, and never took the easy way out.

As an adult I realize that everything I became in the Church I owe to my mother. I don’t want to romanticize growing up without a father in the Church—there were difficult moments for my mom that I was oblivious to and things that I missed out on as a child. But it did free me of one all-too-common misperception in the Church: growing up the way I did, I was never burdened with the false belief that women are in any way less capable or less fundamental to the gospel plan than are men. For those of you who know Amy, you won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve relearned that lesson every day for the past 25 years.

Many of us find ourselves in situations where we fight against hopelessness, wondering why things haven’t gone the way we had them planned out when we were young. Sometimes we recognize the consequences of our own choices, and other times we suffer from the consequences of others’ choices. But there is always hope.

For 51 years my mother went to church without a husband as they moved from submarine bases on the East Coast to shore duty in Missouri to postnavy life in Colorado and then retirement in Utah to be near their kids. A few days before my father’s 75th birthday, he was baptized; when he was 76 we were sealed in the temple as a family; and now at 79 he serves with my mother in a small branch, ministering to those in a care facility in Orem. My dad is in the branch presidency, and my mom is in the Relief Society presidency. These past four years didn’t make the previous half-century easier; they just made it worth it. It’s the same for all of us—it may not be tomorrow or next month or next year, but it will be worth it.

Two years ago, Marcia and I arrived in New Zealand. We had only been there a few hours when we were given keys to a car. They told us we needed to be in Hamilton, NZ to speak at the closing ceremonies of the Church College of New Zealand. Hamilton is a two hour drive from our home in Auckland. This didn't sound like a difficult task until we got in the car and started to drive. In New Zealand, they drive on the opposite side of the car and on the opposite side of the road than we do in the United States. It required an immediate brain shift on my part and total focus. To make matters even more difficult, in New Zealand, almost every intersection is a roundabout. We don't have many of those in the western United States. So Marcia and I started to make our way to Hamilton driving on, what for us, was the wrong side of the car, and the wrong side of the road. We were spending a lot of our time in roundabouts. We noticed that you can stay in a roundabout as long as you like. There is no requirement to get out. So, as we were trying to determine directions, we found ourselves stuck in the roundabout, going in circles on many occasions. I would like to talk to you today about not getting stuck in roundabouts.

My grandma lives alone, and it’s sometimes hard for her to do everything by herself. One day she was trying to fix the bathroom faucet. She was lying on the floor on her back, reaching up under the counter trying to get a pipe to stop leaking. I was sitting by her, watching.
I said, “Grandma, let’s say a prayer so Heavenly Father can help you.” My grandma said that was a great idea. Grandma said the prayer. It didn’t take long for the pipes to seal up tight.
Grandma told me she was thankful for my faith. It helped her to be reminded by a little girl like me.Quinncy Dawne Kindall, age 3, with help from her grandmotherNampa, Idaho

Once when our children were young, I decided to test the Lord’s promise by paying our tithe, even though I didn’t know where we would get money to buy food. I didn’t mention our plight to anyone.
To my surprise, my parents soon came to visit, bringing with them enough meat, potatoes, and bread to last us a very long time. But this wasn’t all. Our oldest daughter had a work-study assignment at school. Her assigned workplace was a sandwich shop, and at the end of the week, she received permission to bring home sandwiches for the whole family!
“Now we just lack some fruit,” I thought to myself. And that afternoon, returning from biking, I saw a lady putting apples into a bag. “Would you like to have these?” she asked. Surprised, I said that I would like them very much indeed.
Just then our neighbor’s young son came by. When he saw the delicious apples, he asked, “Could I have just one?” I held the bag out to him, and he chose one. Thanking me, he hurried away, his eyes shining with happiness.
I thought afterward that the Lord must have wanted to test me too. When He had given so much to me and mine, would I also share with others? I did—and have tried to do so ever since.
Jytte Christiansen, Fredericia Ward, Aarhus Denmark Stake

Elder Oaks tells a story of a young woman who exercised that kind of faith and trust. For many months, her mother had been seriously ill. Finally, the faithful father called the children to her bedside and told them to say good-bye to their mother because she was dying. The twelve-year-old daughter protested: “Papa, I do not want my mamma to die. I have been with her in the hospital for six months; time and time again you have administered to her, and she has been relieved of her pain and quietly gone to sleep. I want you to lay hands upon my mamma and heal her.”

The father, who was Elder Heber J. Grant, told the children that he felt in his heart that their mother’s time had arrived. The children left, and he knelt by his wife’s beside. Later he recalled his prayer: “I told the Lord I acknowledged his hand in life and in death. But I told the Lord that I lacked the strength to have my wife die and to have it affect the faith of my little children” He pleaded with the Lord to give his daughter “a knowledge that it was His mind and His will that her mamma should die.”

Within an hour the mother died. When Elder Grant called the children back into her room and told them, his little six-year-old boy began to weep bitterly. The twelve-year-old sister took him in her arms and said: “Do not weep, Heber; since we went out of this room, the voice of the Lord from heaven has said to me, ‘In the death of your mamma, the will of the Lord shall be done.’”

Elder Mason had another experience just weeks after his marriage that helped him prioritize his family responsibilities. He said:
“Marie and I had rationalized that to get me through medical school it would be necessary for her to remain in the workplace. Although this was not what we [wanted] to do, children would have to come later. [While looking at a Church magazine at my parents’ home,] I saw an article by Elder Spencer W. Kimball, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, [highlighting] responsibilities associated with marriage. According to Elder Kimball, one sacred responsibility was to multiply and replenish the earth. My parents’ home was [close to] the Church Administration Building. I immediately walked to the offices, and 30 minutes after reading his article, I found myself sitting across the desk from Elder Spencer W. Kimball.” (This wouldn’t be so easy today.)
“I explained that I wanted to become a doctor. There was no alternative but to postpone having our family. Elder Kimball listened patiently and then responded in a soft voice, ‘Brother Mason, would the Lord want you to break one of his important commandments in order for you to become a doctor? With the help of the Lord, you can have your family and still become a doctor. Where is your faith?’”
Elder Mason continued: “Our first child was born less than a year later. Marie and I worked hard, and the Lord opened the windows of heaven.” The Masons were blessed with two more children before he graduated from medical school four years later.

As involved as the Drummonds are in sports, you might think their grades would suffer a bit. But not so. “They’re both on the honor roll,” says their dad. “They have to maintain B averages. That’s my rule. And no underwater basketweaving or sandwich making courses, either.” He then goes on to recite their schedules—solid, difficult classes every one, with the exception of baseball, which the Drummonds take very seriously. Of course, since Tom made the rules, he’s always there to help his kids accomplish them. It’s not uncommon to find the family studying together in the evenings.

I love this story of two young men who had been schooled in a monastery. One morning as they sought adventure, they passed a cathedral. The more righteous of the two remembered that they had not prayed that morning and said, “How can [we] hope for [God’s] blessing upon the day?”
The less righteous one responded, “My friend, I have prayed so much during the last two months … that I feel that I have [somewhat] over-prayed myself.”
“How can a man have too much religion?” asked the first. “It is the one thing that availeth. A man is but a beast as he lives from day to day, eating and drinking, breathing and sleeping. It is only when he raises himself, and concerns himself with the immortal spirit within him, that he becomes in [very] truth a man. Bethink ye how sad a thing it would be that the blood of the Redeemer should be spilled to no purpose” (Works of A. Conan Doyle [New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1988], pp. 58–59; italics added).

Many in this vast audience of priesthood bearers are holders of the Aaronic Priesthood—even deacons, teachers, and priests. Young men, some lessons in life are learned from your parents, while others you learn in school or in church. There are, however, certain moments when you know our Heavenly Father is doing the teaching and you are His student. The thoughts we think, the feelings we feel—even the deeds we do in boyhood—can affect our lives forever.

When I was a deacon, I loved baseball. In fact, I still do. I had a fielder’s glove inscribed with the name Mel Ott. He was the premier player of my day. My friends and I would play ball in a small alleyway behind the houses where we lived. Our playing field was cramped, but all right, provided you hit straightaway to center field. However, if you hit the ball to the right of center, disaster was at the door. Here lived Mrs. Shinas, who, from her kitchen window, would watch us play; and as soon as the ball rolled to her porch, her large dog would retrieve the ball and present it to her as she opened the door. Into her house Mrs. Shinas would return and add the ball to the many she had previously confiscated. She was our nemesis, the destroyer of our fun—even the bane of our existence. None of us had a good word for Mrs. Shinas, but we had plenty of bad words for her. None of us would speak to her, and she never spoke to us. She was hampered by a stiff leg which impaired her walking and must have caused her great pain. She and her husband had no children, lived secluded lives, and rarely came out of their house.
This private war continued for some time—perhaps two years—and then an inspired thaw melted the ice of winter and brought a springtime of good feelings to the stalemate.
One evening as I performed my daily task of watering our front lawn, holding the nozzle of the hose in the hand as was the style at that time, I noticed that Mrs. Shinas’s lawn was dry and beginning to turn brown. I honestly don’t know, brethren, what came over me, but I took a few more minutes and, with our hose, watered her lawn. I continued to do this throughout the summer, and then when autumn came I hosed her lawn free of leaves as I did ours and stacked the leaves in piles at the street’s edge to be gathered. During the entire summer I had not seen Mrs. Shinas. We boys had long since given up playing ball in the alleyway. We had run out of baseballs and had no money to buy more.
Early one evening, Mrs. Shinas’s front door opened, and she beckoned for me to jump the small fence and come to her front porch. This I did. As I approached her, she invited me into her living room, where I was asked to sit in a comfortable chair. She treated me to cookies and milk. Then she went to the kitchen and returned with a large box filled with baseballs and softballs, representing several seasons of her confiscation efforts. The filled box was presented to me. The treasure, however, was not to be found in the gift but rather in her words. I saw for the first time a smile come across the face of Mrs. Shinas, and she said, “Tommy, I want you to have these baseballs, and I want to thank you for being kind to me.” I expressed my own gratitude to her and walked from her home a better boy than when I entered. No longer were we enemies. Now we were friends. The Golden Rule had again succeeded.

As a newly married student at BYU I was called to serve in a BYU ward bishopric. I tried to serve the bishop as best I could, but my wife and I loved to travel to visit with our families on the weekends as much as possible. This meant getting excused from my church responsibilities.

After a few months serving this way, I noticed that while the bishop did politely excuse me, he was disappointed that I would be away again. I asked him if it was all right that we visit our families so often. His reply surprised me: “I would like to visit my family as well, but my calling is to serve here.”

I got the message. I was serving when it didn’t interfere with my plans—when it was convenient. I learned from this good bishop what it really meant to actually serve the Lord. I thought I knew how to serve before this experience, but I was wrong. Visiting my family was certainly important, but I learned I could do both. With some planning I found time to visit my family after I had completed my calling. There will always be some things you have to give up to do justice to a calling, whether it’s in the bishopric or as a home teacher. I’ve decided that we probably have enough time to do all that the Lord expects us to do—including visiting our families—but we probably don’t have enough time to do all the things we would like to do.

If this really works, it is the greatest source of happiness to be found on earth. Let me cite one more example as it was written in a recent Ensign magazine.
“In the summer of 1953 I was a sixteen-year-old apprentice actress. … Our lead actress was a pretty red-haired girl who had won the lead role in a competition (so I understood) in New York. … She and I shared a suite of rooms, and every morning when I woke up I saw [her] sitting on her bed reading. I awoke to that sight, no matter what the hour, for four months.
“The news quickly spread that she was a Mormon, and in an environment where morals simply did not exist, she was as pure as snow. No drinking, no smoking, not even in plays, and no men in her room. She loved everyone, and she was so gentle and friendly even though she was the “star.” And always in the morning she was reading and reading, not her scripts, but some other books and magazines that she had brought with her.
“She never talked to me about her religion, and I never asked her. But I never forgot her.
“Many years later, after I had married and already had two children, my husband and I became dissatisfied with our spiritual lives. We took religion courses and went to all kinds of churches, but we still were not satisfied.
“Then I remembered [her]. She had been, they said, a Mormon. We had no idea what a Mormon was, and I didn’t remember even talking about them in school history. So I went to the public library in the little Alabama town of Opelika, and checked out the only thing I could find: ‘Mormon, The Book of.’ In the back was a list of mission homes and I wrote to the nearest one, which was in Georgia, and asked if they accepted converts. The rest is part of our family history.
“I’ve never been able to find that young lady to tell her that, because she lived her religion in a way that I could not forget, thirty-seven people on both sides of our families are members of the Church. Countless others in the spirit world also have been given the opportunity.” (Ensign, Dec. 1977, p. 62.)

In May, prior to her entering the Miss Utah Pageant contest, Sally found time to enjoy a two-week foreign language tour in Mexico.
There an older Mexican friend, charmed by the stunning blonde with an Acapulco tan, exclaimed, “You seem so happy all of the time. How can I be as happy as you?” Sally answered him without hesitation, “I am happy because I know that I am a daughter of God. And you are my brother. You can be happy too if you will become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”