Gospel Story Finder

One bishop shared a similar experience with me. One Sunday, he had had an unusually heavy day of interviews, meetings, and visits. It was near 10:30 P.M. when he had a chance to walk through the chapel past the pulpit. He felt so overwhelmed with the weight of his responsibilities that he dropped to his knees in the dimly lighted chapel and plead with God for strength to carry the load. While praying, a voice came to his mind: “Bishop, you’re so tired! Why don’t you go home and go to bed?” The thought startled him at first, but as he reflected on it, he knew it was as direct an answer to prayer as the ones he received when praying about whom to call to Church positions.

On a trip to Japan it was my privilege to attend a sacrament meeting of the Naha Branch on the island of Okinawa. I was so impressed with the quality of the sacrament service and the reverence and dignity exhibited by the Aaronic Priesthood that when I was called to speak I asked one of the young men to join me at the pulpit. I asked him, “How do you feel knowing that you hold the priesthood of God?” Not tall enough to see over the pulpit, he raised on his toes so he could see the congregation, then with deep emotion responded: “It’s the greatest honor of my life!”

On the night of March 24, 1832, a dozen men stormed the Hiram, Ohio, home where Joseph and Emma Smith were staying. Both were physically and emotionally spent, not only from all the travails of the young Church at the time but also because on this particular evening they had been up caring for their two adopted twins, born eleven months earlier on the same day that Emma had given birth to—and then lost—their own twins. Emma had gone to bed first while Joseph stayed up with the children; then she had arisen to take her turn, encouraging her husband to get some sleep. No sooner had he begun to doze than he heard his wife give a terrifying scream and found himself being torn from the house and very nearly being torn limb from limb.
Cursing as they went, the mob that had seized him were swearing to kill Joseph if he resisted. One man grabbed him by the throat until he lost consciousness from lack of breath. He came to only to overhear part of their conversation on whether he should be murdered. It was determined that for now he would simply be stripped naked, beaten senseless, tarred and feathered, and left to fend for himself in the bitter March night. Stripped of his clothing, fighting off fists and tar paddles on every side, and resisting a vial of some liquid—perhaps poison—which he shattered with his teeth as it was forced into his mouth, he miraculously managed to fight off the entire mob and eventually made his way back to the house. In the dim light his wife thought the tar stains covering his body were blood stains, and she fainted at the sight.
Friends spent the entire night scraping and removing the tar and applying liniments to his scratched and battered body. I now quote directly from the Prophet Joseph’s record:
By morning I was ready to be clothed again. This being the Sabbath morning, the people assembled for meeting at the usual hour of worship, and among them came also the mobbers [of the night before. Then he names them.] With my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached to the congregation as usual, and in the afternoon of the same day baptized three individuals. [HC 1:264]
Unfortunately, one of the adopted twins, growing worse from the exposure and turmoil of the night, died the following Friday. “With my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached to the congregation as usual”!

What is interesting is that when Samuel and his friends joined their friend and brother, Charles Amoah, in The Gambia, Samuel’s interest in pursuing his goal of travelling abroad waned considerably for reasons he admits he doesn’t know and he never bothered about. Samuel eventually abandoned his desire to travel abroad from The Gambia. He had somehow found The Gambia as a home, which he now strongly feels that God knows something about that.

I often asked my parents what it means to “feel the Holy Ghost.” I had heard them talk about it, but I was not sure what the feeling was like. Mom told me it was a very good feeling, but I still wasn’t sure what that meant.
One morning my one-year-old brother was running around and accidentally hit his head on a heater. He had a big cut on his head. He cried, and he was bleeding. I was very scared and worried. My mom took care of the cut and put a bandage on it. Then she took me to school.
At school I was still scared and worried about my brother. Then I remembered that I could pray. I went into the bathroom and sincerely prayed to Heavenly Father and asked Him to bless my brother. After the prayer I was no longer scared. I felt a very peaceful feeling, and I went back to my classroom.
On the way home that day, I told my mother what had happened. She joyfully told me that the warm, peaceful feeling I had was the Holy Ghost comforting me. She said that usually the Holy Ghost does not talk to us like other people talk to us. Instead He gives us a peaceful feeling.

Whether gardening or playing, the Gándola children like being outside. They jump on their trampoline, ride bikes, and play in the trees. Shawn and Micah are great tree-climbers, and Danielle and Lucas like hunting for green pinecones. One day, their next-door neighbor pruned some branches that fell down in the Gándolas’ yard and formed a wall of leaves. Shawn made a hole through them to serve as a door, and he calls the leaf-wall his fort.

Eleven-year-old Ashley slowly made her way down a crooked path that wound through the frosted hush of the October woods. She paused in a little patch of misted light that sifted through the leafy gold canopy, softening the early morning chill. She rubbed her arms, shivering at an inner cold that the sunlight couldn’t reach, the same cold that had frozen her father’s face in a mask of sorrow.
Ashley couldn’t see the unhappiness on her father’s face, because she had been blind since birth, but she could hear it in his voice and in the silence that had replaced his laughter when her mother died. It had been almost a whole year, but still—
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden burst of wings. Something or someone had startled a large bird nearby, and it erupted skyward.
A moment later a gentle voice said, “It’s me, Ashley—Michelle.” Ashley felt Michelle’s hand slip about hers. “You should have waited for me at your cabin.” Michelle’s voice was as light and airy as the wind-spun autumn leaves that danced in the yellow wood. “I was on my way to get you.”
“It’s OK,” Ashley said. “I know this path almost as well as these trees do. I’ve been coming here every day for the past two weeks.”
Michelle glanced about at the golden silence. “It is pretty,” she admitted, “but well—since you can’t see, what is it that—” The sadness she saw in the dark, sightless eyes made her pause.
“You said that there are lots of yellows here at this time of year,” Ashley explained. “Remember when I asked you what yellow looked like? You told me it was a happy, warm color—like the sun, like a smile.” She reached through the blackness of her world and touched a yellow aspen leaf. “That’s why I come here. I keep hoping that somehow it will help me feel happy so that I can help my father smile again.”
Michelle squeezed Ashley’s hand. “It is beautiful here. But even if you could see, I don’t think all the yellows in the world could mend a heart for more than a moment.”
Ashley leaned against a leafless tree, feeling as empty as the branches above her. “You’re happy, Michelle. Why? I mean, you lost your brother in that millpond accident just last summer. And then your father’s fruit crop failed because of the late freeze, and he had to sell half his land.”
“I guess our testimonies keep us happy,” Michelle said thoughtfully.
“Testimonies?”
“Knowing that God lives,” Michelle returned simply, “that He loves us, that He allows us difficulties in our lives to help us grow. My mother says that a candle shines brightest in the blackest night.”
I know a lot about the blackest night, Ashley thought as the two girls started down the path in a rush of tumbling leaves. What she wanted to know more about were testimonies. “Tell me more,” she begged.
“They’re growing things, Ashley,” Michelle explained. “A testimony starts small, like the first light at dawn, then gets bigger and warmer like the sun at noonday, like the brightest of autumn leaves. But you have to work at it,” she added as the pair walked toward her farmhouse for a day of play. “You have to feel your way along like you do in these woods, only with your heart. All of it.”
“Will you help me get one, Michelle?”
Michelle stopped and faced her friend. “I can’t give you a testimony,” she answered kindly. “All I can do is share mine with you, and—” Michelle’s voice relayed her sudden idea. “Maybe there is a way I can help you, Ashley! Tomorrow is Sunday, and someone very special is coming to speak at our meetinghouse.”
“Who is it?”
“A prophet, Ashley. A prophet of God.”
Later, as Ashley waited impatiently for her father to return home from his job at the factory in Harperville, she listened to the wall clock tick like a tired heartbeat. At length she heard the rattle of a flatbed wagon and the snorting of spent horses outside. A few minutes later her father stood in the doorway.
“Hi, Ash, it’s me.” Papa’s voice sounded tired. “It was a long day, hon.” He sat down beside her and sighed wearily. “A long day.” He regarded his daughter in the ruddy haze of late-day window light. “What is it?”
“It’s a meeting, Papa! Tomorrow morning at Michelle’s church. Someone special is coming to talk to them. Will you take me, Papa? Please.”
Papa sighed again. “On my only day off? Not tomorrow, sweetheart. I’m so worn out I could sleep on a fence post for a week! I need tomorrow to—”
“Please, Papa?” Ashley implored again.
“Not tomorrow. Another time maybe.”
Papa patted her head, rose to his feet with a tired grunt, and disappeared into his room. “Wake me when the clock chimes again, and I’ll fix us something to eat,” he called back.
That night Ashley prayed that her father would somehow change his mind about the meeting, then drifted off into a troubled sleep.
Early the next morning, Ashley felt someone gently waking her “Ash? If we’re going to make that meeting on time we’d better get ourselves ready.”
Ashley sat up. “Papa! But I thought you were too tired.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Papa replied, “but when I woke up this morning, I felt more rested than if I had slept for a week of Sundays. So are you going to get up, or grow old in bed?” Papa ran his hand through the girl’s tangled hair, then left the room.
For a moment Ashley just lay in bed, reflecting on an answered prayer. She felt as if something was glowing inside her like the dawn’s first light streaming unseen through the curtains on her bedroom window.
At church, Ashley sat with Michelle on one side and Papa on the other, listening to a prophet’s voice. Ashley didn’t have to see the man behind the pulpit to know that he spoke with authority. She could feel it. The comfort, peace, and sweet assurance of his voice settled over her like the patchwork comforter her mother had made for her. He spoke with penetrating assuredness of the living God, the resurrection, and the reuniting of loved ones in the world to come.
Papa’s hand found hers, and squeezed it. Tears filled her sightless eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She felt her father’s body shake with emotion and knew that he was shedding tears of his own.
At that moment Ashley knew what yellow autumn leaves looked like. They were bright and beautiful, and they glowed—like her testimony. Like happy months and years ahead. Like a certain little cabin by the October woods, now even on the darkest of days.

My brother is a big role model for me, so when he decided he wanted to serve a mission, I decided I was also going to take action to strengthen my own testimony to help him prepare. I started reading my scriptures more and paying more attention in church. It’s helped me so much, and I’ve been able to gain a testimony. I now know the Church is true. Reading my scriptures every night has also made my days better and has made me want to read more and pray more to continue strengthening my testimony.
Chase G., Utah, USA

Karen Reynolds does have pioneer ancestors—who settled in Utah and in the colonies of Mexico. “I can remember having Pioneer Day celebrations on July 24, followed by pageants about the journey to Mexico. We recounted the early years there, complete with stories of living in caves dug into the river bank,” she recalls. “But I never knew how much I would benefit from the skills my parents taught me—how to work, how to preserve fruit, how to bake bread, how to sew, how to make do with what you have,” she says.

Recently, Karen’s husband had to give up a job with a good salary so they would be able to relocate and help with a family farm because of her father-in-law’s illness. “We don’t regret our choice, but our pioneering skills have really been put to the test,” she says. “Careful budgeting and wise buying have been an absolute necessity for us, not just an experiment in following a Relief Society lesson on provident living.”

“Making do” is not the only thing Karen has learned from those nineteenth-century pioneers. Last year, she and her husband lost a baby. “I thought my heart would break when we laid him in that cold grave,” she recalls. Days later, confined to bed because of medical problems, Karen was still grieving. A ward member brought her a stack of books—including one of pioneer stories. “As I read through that book, I was reminded how many of those women had left their little ones in shallow graves by the trail. My baby has a coffin and a marker, and I can visit the spot. It wasn’t easy, but I started to count my blessings. They went forward in faith, and I can, too.”

I desire to mention another special personal experience. I was teaching a class of many, many people in a chapel and adjoining cultural hall at the university. It was too large a class to permit much participation, but one night, facing maybe six or seven hundred people, I looked down and saw a face and said, “Bishop Garrett, do you have something you would like to share with us on the subject we are discussing?” This startled him for a moment, and then he said, “Yes, I think I do, Brother Hanks.”

He came to the front and spoke: “A wonderful older couple lived in our ward. I was their bishop, and I also became almost like a son to them. They had no relatives and really no close friends. For reasons not necessary to mention, they moved to a little town far from this city. We kept in touch by phone because they had so few other contacts in this country.

“Then one night, as I walked to an early meeting of my bishopric, I had a clear vision. I am not a visionary man, but in my mind I saw something that night. I saw a long, narrow, oblong room with a casket at one end and a lady standing alone by it. I had read of the husband’s death in the morning newspaper. I had said to my wife, ‘We ought to go, but I can’t. I have an important meeting that I cannot miss.’

“I rushed to the meeting that evening and told my counselors I had made a bad mistake and should be someplace else and asked them to go on without me. I drove too swiftly all the way to that small town with its small mortuary. I went inside the long, narrow room, and there inside was my vision specifically fulfilled: a single, solitary little soul standing by the casket of her beloved, her husband of many years. I went to her and held out my arms. She said, ‘Oh, Bishop Garrett, I knew you would come.’”

Well, we ended the class with a testimony and an expression of gratitude. I knew what the Lord had wanted us to learn that night.

For example, let me give you a brief incident from a family history in Hawaii. It involves sacrifice and temple blessings and true eternal perspective.

In the early 1900s, a young father and his family joined the Church in Hawaii. He was enthused about his new-found religion, and after two years of membership both he and his eldest son held the priesthood. They prospered and enjoyed the fellowship of the little branch. They anxiously looked forward to being sealed as a family for eternity in the temple soon to be completed in Laie.

Then, as so often happens, a test crossed their path. One of their daughters became ill with an unknown disease and was taken away to a strange hospital. People in Hawaii were understandably wary of unknown diseases, as such diseases had wrought so much havoc there.

The concerned family went to church the next Sunday, looking forward to the strength and understanding they would receive from their fellow members. It was a small branch. This young father and his son very often took the responsibility for blessing and passing the sacrament. This was one such Sunday. They reverently broke the bread while the congregation sang the sacrament hymn. When the hymn was finished, the young father began to kneel to offer the sacrament prayer. Suddenly the branch president, realizing who was at the sacred table, sprang to his feet. He pointed his finger and cried, “Stop. You can’t touch the sacrament. Your daughter has an unknown disease. Leave immediately while someone else fixes new sacrament bread. We can’t have you here. Go.”

How would you react? What would you do?

The stunned father slowly stood up. He searchingly looked at the branch president, then at the congregation. Then, sensing the depth of anxiety and embarrassment from all, he motioned to his family and they quietly filed out of the chapel.

Not a word was said as, with faces to the ground, they moved along the dusty trail to their small home. The young son noticed the firmness in his father’s clenched fists and the tenseness of his set jaw. When they entered their home they all sat in a circle, and the father said, “We will be silent until I am ready to speak.” All sorts of thoughts went through the mind of this young boy. He envisioned his father coming up with many novel ways of getting revenge. Would they kill the branch president’s pigs, or burn his house, or join another church? He could hardly wait to see what would happen.

Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes—not a sound. He glanced at his father. His eyes were closed, his mouth was set, his fingers clenched, but no sound. Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes—still nothing. Then he noticed a slight relaxing of his father’s hands, a small tremor on his father’s lips, then a barely perceptible sob. He looked at his father—tears were trickling down his cheeks from closed eyes. Soon he noticed his mother was crying also, then one child, then another, and soon the whole family.

Finally, the father opened his eyes, cleared his throat, and announced, “I am now ready to speak. Listen carefully.” He slowly turned to his wife and said, meaningfully, “I love you.” Then turning to each child, he told them individually, “I love you. I love all of you and I want us to be together, forever, as a family. And the only way that can be is for all of us to be good members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and be sealed by his holy priesthood in the temple. This is not the branch president’s church. It is the Church of Jesus Christ. We will not let any man or any amount of hurt or embarrassment or pride keep us from being together forever. Next Sunday we will go back to church. We will stay by ourselves until our daughter’s sickness is known, but we will go back.”

This great man had proper eternal perspective.

The daughter’s health problem was resolved; the family did go to the temple when it was completed. The children did remain faithful and were likewise sealed to their own families in the temple as time went on. Today over 100 souls in this family are active members of the Church and call their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather blessed because he kept his eyes on eternity, because he used his priesthood to bless his family, and because he recorded his feelings. How the heart of this father turned to his children, and how his children’s hearts turned to him.

I remember when I was washing the car as a 17-year-old young man, my father came out to the driveway and, with justification, began to criticize me for something I had done wrong. I became upset and turned to dad and said something like, “Hey, let up, dad. This is the first time I have ever been a teenager.”
My father, in a beautifully sensitive way, said, “Hugh, this is the first time I have ever been a parent.”
My father, perhaps unknowingly, had taught me a great lesson. As a teenager, I had responsibilities to my parents and was to be patient with them as I expected them to be patient and understanding with me.

An experience of Daniel W. Jones illustrates well the concept of being strengthened by the hand of the Lord as we wait upon Him. Daniel Jones was one of 20 men who agreed to stay at Devil’s Gate through the winter of 1856 and protect possessions left there by the immigrant pioneers I mentioned earlier. Daniel and two of the other men had come from Salt Lake City as members of the rescue party and were planning to be gone for just a few days, not the entire winter. There were only enough provisions to last about 20 days, even though there were at least five months of winter ahead. After eating the meager provisions, including the remaining 20 head of cattle, the men survived on what they could hunt. But food was scarce because the cold winter storms had driven away all the animals.
Daniel Jones related the following about their situation:
Game soon became so scarce that we could kill nothing. We ate all the poor meat; one would get hungry eating it. Finally that was all gone, nothing now but hides were left. We made a trial of them. A lot was cooked and eaten without any seasoning and it made the whole company sick. Many were so turned against the stuff that it made them sick to think of it. . . .
Things looked dark, for nothing remained but the poor raw hides taken from starved cattle. We asked the Lord to direct us what to do. The brethren did not murmur, but felt to trust in God. We had cooked the hide, after soaking and scraping the hair off until it was soft and then ate it, glue and all. This made it rather inclined to stay with us longer than we desired. Finally I was impressed how to fix the stuff and gave the company advice, telling them how to cook it; for them to scorch and scrape the hair off; this had a tendency to kill and purify the bad taste that scalding gave it. After scraping, boil one hour in plenty of water, throwing the water away which had extracted all the glue, then wash and scrape the hide thoroughly, washing in cold water, then boil to a jelly and let it get cold, and then eat with a little sugar sprinkled on it. This was considerable trouble, but we had little else to do and it was better than starving.
We asked the Lord to bless our stomachs and adapt them to this food. We hadn’t the faith to ask him to bless the raw-hide for it was “hard stock.” On eating now all seemed to relish the feast. . . . We enjoyed this sumptuous fare for about six weeks, and never had the gout.
As Daniel Jones and the other men waited upon the Lord and trusted in Him, they were strengthened by His hand. Their bodies were able to bear their burdens with ease. They were able to cheerfully endure months of freezing temperatures and near starvation without murmuring.

Youth in the Danville California Stake spent an entire summer getting to know more about the Restoration of the gospel when they performed Brother Joseph, a play about the life of Joseph Smith.
A few weeks prior to the performance, the youth took a three-part challenge to only say kind and positive things to others, to pray at least morning and night, and to keep the commandments and read their scriptures. This extra effort, in addition to their hours of rehearsals, made this a play to remember for both the audience and the cast.

Early last year I had the opportunity to travel with Carol to Jerusalem for the first time on a Presiding Bishopric assignment. After a few days of meetings at the BYU Jerusalem Center, a day was available to visit the city and the sites associated with the life of the Savior. I have a degree in history, and I am fascinated with where significant historical events took place, trying to imagine in my mind what it must have been like in that specific location. We traveled with a wonderful, knowledgeable BYU professor, and I was thrilled as we approached the first site.

As we arrived at a certain location, the professor described how this was where a specific event in the life of the Savior had occurred, and then he said something like “or somewhere nearby.” It caught me a bit off guard, as I wanted to know exactly where the event had taken place. I wanted to see the plaque in the ground stating that here is where the Savior blessed or healed or taught.

A bit disappointed, we moved on to the next site with continued anticipation. And you know what happened? I again heard the words “or somewhere nearby.” I began to be a bit irritated. When it happened a third time, I started to become annoyed. I didn’t say anything to the professor. But in an instant I received a strong correction from the Spirit. In my mind I clearly heard the words “Chris, stop it. Stop it now.” The Spirit had my attention and then continued: “It is not where it happened that is important. It is that it happened. Understand?”

This was an experience that I have not forgotten and that I have reflected upon numerous times since. It helped me understand that some things may be nice or even good to know or do, but there are other things that are absolutely essential, especially in our preparation to be ready.

Jerry was another guy who helped me shape up properly. He managed the health spa where my brothers and I used to do our weight lifting, and he often joined our workouts.
Jerry was no scrawny high school kid. He was a mountain of muscle. Any weight I could lift barely once, Jerry could easily lift ten times. I hated it and loved it when Jerry worked out with us. I hated it because he wouldn’t let us rest or loaf.
“One more! C’mon, you can do one more rep,” he’d yell when I was ready to rack the weights. “Don’t give up now. You can do it.” Then he’d stand over me as I grunted and strained to produce one more repetition. “Atta boy. I knew you could do it.”
I hated the hard work, but I loved the encouragement and motivation he added to our workouts. Jerry squeezed out the best in me, and I always made my best lifts when he was around.

Nadene Thomas, who leads the mission with her husband, shared one such experience. Two sister missionaries invited her to meet with Susi, because, like her own son, Susi’s son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
Sister Thomas said, “I believe Susi moved her feet closer to God because of the heavy burden that she was now feeling daily, keeping her son alive. Susi knew when I looked into her eyes that I understood the gravity of her new caregiver responsibility. Diabetes never sleeps. We FaceTimed Zack who was diagnosed at age three and has grown into a strong and healthy young man. As he spoke of his zest for life and talked of future goals, Susi felt hope for the future.”
Sister Thomas continued, “We opened the Book of Mormon and I shared some of my favourite scriptures that carried me through the hardest years of my life. We cried together, we laughed together, and we felt the Spirit together. The words filled us because they are the Saviour’s words and we rejoiced that we are not alone.”

The letters, diaries, and autobiographies of past Church leaders contain many descriptions of this baptism of the Spirit. One of these was written by Lorenzo Snow, later an apostle, and still later a president of the Church. Elder Snow wrote that immediately following his immersion in the waters of baptism at the age of twenty-two, he expected to receive the Holy Ghost, and to have the promise fulfilled that he would “know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.” (John 7:17.) But Elder Snow did not receive this assurance immediately. He began to worry whether he had done wrong—whether God was displeased with him. Several weeks later, while studying the scriptures, he felt depressed and disconsolate. He left the house and walked outside, tormented by uncertainty and enveloped by “an indescribable cloud of darkness.” He had been in the habit of going to a small grove every evening to have secret prayer. On this particular day he was so dejected that he “felt no inclination” to pray. “The heavens seemed like brass over my head,” he wrote. Nevertheless, he forced himself to pray, and soon he heard a sound “like the restling of silken robes” above his head:

“… immediately the Spirit of God descended upon me, completely enveloping my whole person, filling me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, and O the joy and happiness I felt! No language can describe the instantaneous transition from a dense cloud of mental and spiritual darkness into a refulgence of light and knowledge … I then received a perfect knowledge that God lives, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and of the restoration of the Holy Priesthood, and of the fulness of the gospel. It was a complete baptism—a tangible immersion in the heavenly principle or element, the Holy Ghost; and even more real and physical in its effects upon every part of my system than the immersion of water.”

God had conferred upon him, he concluded, “that which is of greater value than all the wealth and honors worlds can bestow.”1

I'd like to begin by sharing an experience I had one morning during the time my wife and I were serving in the London England Mission. A former business associate and long-time friend was passing through London, and I suggested we get together for breakfast. We had a meaningful visit where I was able to tell him about my assignment, the missionary program, and the gospel, more than I'd ever been able to share during our previous business meetings.

In the course of our exchange, he shared that he had not been brought up in a church but had long admired the devotion of those he'd known and worked with who were members of the LDS church. Towards the end of our meeting, he focused his gaze on my missionary tag, with its emphasis on the name Jesus Christ and commented thoughtfully, "That must be quite an honor and responsibility to bear that name each day." I confirmed that I could think of nothing better than to be recognized as a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.

I saw clearly then, and I propose to you now, that the blessings of being a devoted disciple are not just the blessings of eternity but also the blessings of a clear path and a straightforward purpose in dealing with the challenges and opportunities of mortality.

Years ago I visited a school in Albuquerque. The teacher told me about a youngster who brought a kitten to class. As you can imagine, that disrupted everything. She had him hold the kitten up in front of the children.

It went well until one of the children asked, “Is it a boy kitty or a girl kitty?”

Not wanting to get into that lesson, the teacher said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a kitty.”

But they persisted. Finally, one boy raised his hand and said, “I know how you can tell.”

Resigned to face it, the teacher said, “How can you tell?”

And the student answered, “You can vote on it!”

You may laugh at this story, but if we are not alert, there are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws and nature. A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. For instance, what good would a vote against the law of gravity do?