Gospel Story Finder

Joseph annually went to where the plates were buried and received further instruction from Moroni. However, in the excitement and temptation of potentially finding other valuable objects in the stone box, Joseph put down the plates in violation of the command God previously gave to him. Joseph was thrown violently to the ground; when he recovered, the angel Moroni was gone, and Joseph returned to the house “weeping with grief and disappointment.”3

This incident filled the Smith family with great uneasiness that Joseph might fail to get the plates due to his own negligence. “We therefore doubled our diligence in prayer and supplication to God,” Lucy recalled, “in order that he might be more fully instructed in his duty.”4 Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck the Smith family when the oldest son, Alvin, died. His deathbed instruction to Joseph was to keep the commandments God gave him and to do everything in his power to obtain the record. Joseph in time received the plates to translate.

When Dad was called as bishop, he reminded the stake president that he was 70 years old. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” he had said.
“How old do you think the Brethren are up in Salt Lake City?” the stake president had asked in reply. “You weren’t our first pick. You weren’t even our second pick. You were the Lord’s pick.”
Dad knew that he had been called of God, and he became a good bishop. There was nothing flashy about him. He was not an expert on the scriptures. He was just a down-to-earth man who showed a lot of empathy for ward members.
While Dad served as bishop, I served as a counselor in another bishopric in our stake. As we attended leadership meetings together, our relationship became focused on Christ, and I got to know his spiritual side.
When Dad was called as bishop in 1994, he was suffering from health problems. “Does this calling guarantee me five more years of life?” he jokingly asked the stake president. Two years after Dad was released, he passed away.

I visited my grandpa and grandma who are not members of the LDS Church. On Sunday we went to the church where my grandpa preaches. A girl invited me to go to Sunday School with her. The teacher was teaching about “Mormonism.” I knew that what she was teaching was not the truth, and I felt angry. I excused myself from class. Once I was alone I said a prayer to ask Heavenly Father for courage to bear my testimony. When I got back to class, I raised my hand and said, “I am a Mormon.” Suddenly I felt the Spirit really strong and my fear went away completely.
The teacher asked me if I could tell the class why we are called Mormons. I said, “We are called Mormons because we believe in the Book of Mormon.” A girl said that she had started to read the Book of the Mormon but she laughed at it. She asked me how I could believe such a story. Her question hurt my feelings, but I said what was in my heart: “I know it is true because I prayed to Heavenly Father and He told me it was so.” Before this happened I did not think I could share my testimony with so many people who didn’t believe in our Church, but now I know that the Spirit will always give me courage.

For the Cottonwood and Granger groups, coming to the Teton High Adventure Base was something they’d planned for all year. “We power raked lawns all summer to make money for the trip,” David Black explained, “so that everyone could go.” The Brigham City Explorers even paid for their leaders’ expenses as well as their own by pouring concrete for several months. For all the groups, the trip would be a source of memories for a long time. Like guide Bob Burk, they would remember it as the “best summer ever.” As they loaded equipment into their leaders’ cars, there was a difference in them. They’d grown from being here. When they left they were still laughing and talking about the trip.

I was 12 years old when my dad was called to serve as a mission president in Mexico. It was fun to be in a new country, but I was also sad to leave so many friends and family members, especially when Christmas came around.
In my homeland of Argentina, all of my extended family would gather together for Christmas, and I was sad that we wouldn’t get to be there. But I decided I was going to be open to creating new traditions and memories. After all, I love new adventures.
Because my sister and I were on Christmas holiday, we accompanied my parents on a tour of the mission. Seeing all the missionaries, I realized I wasn’t the only one who was going to be celebrating Christmas far away from home and family. That year, I learned that no matter where we are, the most important thing to do on Christmas is remember our Savior. The missionaries were dedicating their time to the Lord, and I thought that was one of the best things to be doing during this time of the year.
For the next three years, my family created new traditions, and my favorite one soon became spending Christmas Eve with the missionaries. We would sing and listen to Christmas songs while we made blankets to give to people in need. Our night was based on service and remembering Jesus Christ. I will never forget spending Christmas in Mexico and how close I felt to God.
Sofia S., Buenos Aires, Argentina

Last year, as some of you baseball fans may recall, we almost had another .400 hitter in Rod Carew of the Minnesota Twins; he was there for most of the season and tailed off near the end. Do you know that the last .400 hitter the Major League has produced was Ted Williams in 1941? At the beginning of the final week of that season—and I remember it well because I followed it very carefully—Ted’s batting average was over .400, as it had been for several weeks. His manager asked if he wanted to be excused from playing ball the last week in order to protect the .400 average, and Ted replied—and I have always appreciated that great champion—“If I am going to be a .400 hitter, I am going to earn the honor fair and square.”

Ted’s batting average that last week went down. Then came the final afternoon of play, and Ted’s average stood at .399955 on the last day of the season—not quite .400, but the statistics rounded out would show him as a .400 hitter. Sportswriters, baseball fans, and the manager of the team advised him not to play that afternoon. They did not want Ted to take a chance of missing out on becoming the ninth member of that wonderful club. He replied—and I remember it well—“If I’m going to be a .400 hitter, I want more than my toenails on the line.”

The baseball park in Philadelphia was jammed. Each time Ted Williams came to bat the huge crowd sat in tense silence, almost afraid to breathe for fear of upsetting him. At each hit he made, the crowd roared its approval. The noise almost rocked Philadelphia when the final game ended and Ted’s batting average registered .406. How is that for stretching a little bit further? What a great quality!

Illustration by Allen Garns
A quiet calm settled over my family and me as we walked into a barn to see a live nativity. Animals lined the stalls, and a man and woman, dressed as Joseph and Mary, stood with a baby wrapped in the woman’s arms. They were quiet and focused on the little child. The whole atmosphere was very peaceful.
My older children, my wife, and I stood while my youngest daughter sat on a hay bale in front of us. She was quiet and still, and her eyes stayed focused on the baby. When the rest of my family was ready to go, I placed a hand on my daughter’s shoulder and whispered that it was time to leave. She said she wanted to stay with baby Jesus. Her words touched my heart, and I decided to stay with her.
A few minutes later, I gently took my daughter by the hand and told her we needed to leave. She said she still wanted to stay. I put my arm around her and knelt beside her.
It didn’t take long for me to feel as if I had traveled back in time and was with Mary and Joseph. I then understood why my daughter wanted to stay. I felt the Spirit wash over me. In that place, I felt that I was in the presence of the Savior. Tears glistened in my eyes as I felt of His love. When it was finally time to leave, I picked up my little girl. As I turned toward the exit, I heard her tell baby Jesus good-bye and how much she loved Him.
That evening I shared an experience with my daughter that I will treasure for the rest of my life, and I almost missed it. That night, I was given a gift. I felt closer to God and felt His love for me. I am grateful for the Savior and the opportunity to remember His birth. I know that the Savior’s life, example, and Atonement constitute a wonderful gift of never-ending love from God to all His children. I will always cherish this gift deep in my heart.

Some years ago I sat in a departmental room to defend my doctorate thesis. I was put through great pain, trial, and frustration as a group of aggrieved senior colleagues and friends of mine in my university teamed up to prevent me from progressing with my doctoral thesis. It was their way of getting back at my supervisor. As they filed into the room, a gentle but firm voice whispered to me telling me that something was wrong but asking that I remain calm. They were united in their clandestine purpose as they clearly argued for a change of my topic—a topic that was earlier approved by the board with them in attendance. A topic that would require traveling to different regions of my country to source and collate data for the thesis. A topic that I prayed for and got confirmation of in the house of the Lord.
Unfortunately, my supervisor was absent in the room when all this happened. But when they eventually had their way, it dawned on me that I was going to spend more years, more money, more time, and embark on more journeys to gather fresh data. Uche, on her part, had also sacrificed her resources just to provide refreshments for the board, as the academe tradition required, but when this happened, I couldn’t brace up to face her to tell her that every sacrifice of ours was gone!
At that point, I cried in my heart and called upon the Lord. I could remember me saying with a broken heart, “Heavenly Father, please help me, for this load of mine is too heavy and hard for me alone to carry.” And as I closed my eyes for one brief moment, I heard a whispering voice tenderly telling me, “Get up, Son, and go look for your adversaries and make friends with them.” I obeyed the voice because it appealed to my heart, though I found the voice and invitation very difficult to do.
Trusting in Him, I navigated my way into one of their offices and, behold, they had assembled and were celebrating their success with the refreshments Uche had toiled and sacrificed to provide. I pulled a chair out and sat next to one of them as I took a drink from the tray on the table, opened it, sipped it, and asked to know what happened. “Your supervisor has been doing the same to our supervisees all these years, and we had to retaliate. Unfortunately, you happened to be the perfect person for it because of the great love she has for you”, one of them sarcastically retorted.
I lowered my head on hearing this and asked God for strength. While my head remained bowed, I received from Him the strength and power to forgive, keep peace, and reconcile with my adversaries. I had chosen peace over contention, reconciliation over enmity, healing over bitterness. As I allowed God’s will to prevail, my will was swallowed up by His, and I regained strength beyond my limits to forgive and reconcile with my adversaries and be healed from anger and vengeance. This is one of the promised blessings of covenant keeping that “as we keep our temple covenants, we gain greater access to the Lord’s strengthening power.”
Months later, as I commenced a new beginning in writing my doctoral thesis, the Lord blessed me for trusting in His word. He softened the hearts of my adversaries and helped me find favor in them and turned my afflictions to my gain. They provided me with relevant advice, materials, and guidance, which assisted me to complete my doctoral thesis earlier than I had anticipated.

I was blessed to have a mentor who modeled this combination for me when I was at Stanford. Elder Robert M. Daines, a General Authority Seventy who was then a professor at Stanford Law School, was the bishop of my young single adult ward. As his executive secretary, I saw that he walked the walk in his Church service and in his responsibilities as a father and husband.

I also worked as a research assistant for Elder Daines and took a class from him, and I saw the positive impact of his research in the academic and policy realms. In effect, even though Elder Daines was not at BYU, he was taking a double-heritage approach in teaching me—he showed me what it meant to “speak with authority and excellence” in his academic discipline while also modeling literacy “in the language of spiritual things.”

Watching this example at a pivotal time in my life had a powerful impact on my vision of who I wanted to become. Not only did Elder Daines’s life provide me with examples of laudable goals worth shooting for, but I also felt more confident setting challenging goals for myself because I had a mentor who believed in me and who had a track record of achieving excellent things himself. I felt more inspired to aim high in my academic and professional goals—and to keep my spiritual foundation strong—with someone like Elder Daines in my camp.

Sarah had a similarly influential mentor in her life when she attended BYU. As she navigated through a history major, graduate school, and her early career, Dr. Paul Kerry inspired her to seek her highest potential both in her studies and in her discipleship. Dr. Kerry—who has appointments in the BYU History Department and the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and who has held visiting fellowships at schools including Princeton, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and Oxford—has spent much of his career seeking to build bridges for the Church and BYU in the world and creating opportunities for BYU students to excel.

Wanting to recognize his far-reaching influence, Sarah calligraphed a quote for Dr. Kerry on her graduation that reads, “There comes that mysterious meeting in Life when someone acknowledges who we are and what we can be, igniting the circuits of our highest potential.” This piece still hangs in Dr. Kerry’s office today.

I am grateful that Elder Daines and Dr. Kerry are both still part of our lives, providing counsel, support, and friendship many years later.

Chris watched as a man in a Scout uniform carefully placed six cars at the top of the track. “Our car is in lane two,” Chris whispered to his dad. His stomach was aching. He wished they had stayed home.
“Which one is yours?” Sarah, his sister, asked loudly.
Chris pretended to not hear her, not wanting to draw attention to his car.
But Sarah persisted. “Chris, which one is yours?”
“It’s the one in lane two,” Dad answered her. “The yellow one with the red stripe.”
“Oh!” Sarah exclaimed proudly. She turned to her friend, Brandy, and pointed up at the cars. “That’s my brother’s car. The yellow one with the red stripe.”
Chris looked at his dad. “Will you please make her be quiet?” he begged.
Dad smiled understandingly. “Sarah,” he said, “would you and Brandy get us some cupcakes, please?”
Sarah was delighted with the assignment. She and Brandy hurried off to the kitchen.
“Thanks,” Chris muttered.
“Cheer up, Son,” Dad said, putting his arm around Chris’s shoulder. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s just the Pinewood Derby.”
Chris forced himself to smile. “You’re right, Dad. We can try again next year.”
Dad nodded. “This year is just for practice. We’ll do better next year.”
When everything was set, the crowd cheered and the races began. Chris didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help himself. He stood up to get a better look as he watched his car win the first race. “We won!” he gasped in disbelief. “Just barely, but we won!”
“I guess the car’s in better shape than I thought,” Dad said.
Sarah and Brandy returned with cupcakes for everyone. “How did your car do, Chris?” Sarah asked.
“It won!” Chris told her happily.
“Really? I thought it was broken.”
“It is,” said Dad. “And the races aren’t over yet. They race the cars six times, once in each lane. Then they average the times. We’ll see how our car holds up.”
The car didn’t hold up very well. It went slower each time it raced. In the last race, Chris’s car crossed the finish line well behind the other cars.
Brother Rogers came over. “I’ve never seen anything like it. What happened? Your car started out great.”
“I’ll show you.” Dad picked up the car and turned it over. The back left wheel was sitting awkwardly on the axle. “Our car had an accident before the race.”
“Oh?”
“My little brother, Adam, threw it,” Chris explained. “I wouldn’t let him play with it, so he grabbed it and threw it.”
“It was a pretty good throw, but a pretty bad landing,” Dad added. “It cracked the wheel and bent the axle. I managed to straighten the axle, but there was nothing I could do about the wheel.”
“And where’s Adam now?” Brother Rogers asked.
“My mom stayed home with him,” Chris said. “She said she didn’t think he would enjoy watching the races. I think maybe she was afraid he would ruin someone else’s car.”
Brother Rogers ruffled Chris’s hair. “I have a little brother. They can be a trial sometimes.”
Chris nodded his head. “That’s for sure. But it wasn’t really his fault. All he wanted to do was roll it across the floor like I was doing. If I had let him have a turn, he wouldn’t have thrown it.”
“Think of it as a learning experience,” Brother Rogers said. “Next time you’ll be more patient with him.”
Chris nodded.
The man in the Scout uniform whistled loudly. “If I could have everyone’s attention, please. We have some trophies and ribbons to award to the winners.”
Chris picked up the cupcake Sarah had brought him. “Well, I guess I’ll eat my cupcake now.”
Sarah smiled. “I’ll go get you another one if you want me to.”
“No thanks.”
“I’m sorry your car didn’t win,” Sarah said. “Maybe it will get a prize for being the prettiest.”
Chris shook his head.
Brother Rogers announced the names of the boys with the best overall times. Chris watched as each boy shook hands with Brother Rogers and took his prize. Next, there was an award for the best-looking car. Sarah shook her head sadly when Chris didn’t win.
“We have one more prize,” Brother Rogers announced. “We have a prize for the car with the single best time. And the winner is Chris.”
Chris looked up, surprised. “Me?” he asked, fearing he had heard wrong.
“Yes, you,” Brother Rogers laughed. “Your time in the first race was the fastest time all night.”
Chris hurried up to the podium, wiping the cupcake off his hands as he went. He smiled as Brother Rogers handed him the trophy.
Chris hurried to his seat. “Check it out,” he said proudly, holding the trophy out for his dad to see.
“Let me see!” squealed Sarah. As she reached for the trophy, she lost her balance and started to fall.
Chris and Dad both grabbed Sarah and held her steady as the trophy fell to the ground. It landed with a loud crack, and broke into two pieces.
Chris groaned. “Not again.”
Sarah started to cry. “I’m sorry.”
Dad picked up the pieces. “I’m sure we can glue it back together.”
“What happened?” Brother Rogers asked.
“Just another learning experience,” said Chris. He turned to Sarah. “Don’t feel bad. I know it was an accident. Anyway, it makes sense that my broken car should win a broken trophy.”
Sarah smiled through her tears. “You’re not mad?”
“No, I’m not mad. Let’s see if there are any more cupcakes. I think Adam would love it if we took him one.”

Whitman wrote: “The ice storm [that winter] wasn’t generally destructive. True, a few wires came down, and there was a sudden jump in accidents along the highway. … Normally, the big walnut tree could easily have borne the weight that formed on its spreading limbs. It was the iron wedge in its heart that caused the damage.

“The story of the iron wedge began years ago when the white-haired farmer [who now inhabited the property on which the tree stood] was a lad on his father’s homestead. The sawmill had then only recently been moved from the valley, and the settlers were still finding tools and odd pieces of equipment scattered about. …

“On this particular day, [the lad found] a faller’s wedge—wide, flat, and heavy, a foot or more long, and splayed from mighty poundings. [A faller’s wedge, used to help fell a tree, is inserted in a cut made by a saw and then struck with a sledgehammer to widen the cut.] … Because he was already late for dinner, the lad laid the wedge … between the limbs of the young walnut tree his father had planted near the front gate. He would take the wedge to the shed right after dinner, or sometime when he was going that way.

“He truly meant to, but he never did. [The wedge] was there between the limbs, a little tight, when he attained his manhood. It was there, now firmly gripped, when he married and took over his father’s farm. It was half grown over on the day the threshing crew ate dinner under the tree. … Grown in and healed over, the wedge was still in the tree the winter the ice storm came.

“In the chill silence of that wintry night, … one of the three major limbs split away from the trunk and crashed to the ground. This so unbalanced the remainder of the top that it, too, split apart and went down. When the storm was over, not a twig of the once-proud tree remained.

“Early the next morning, the farmer went out to mourn his loss. …

“Then, his eyes caught sight of something in the splintered ruin. ‘The wedge,’ he muttered reproachfully. ‘The wedge I found in the south pasture.’ A glance told him why the tree had fallen. Growing, edge-up in the trunk, the wedge had prevented the limb fibers from knitting together as they should.”

In addition to spending evenings and Saturday mornings in rehearsals, the youth also served at the temple open house. Imagine spending five weeks of your summer vacation putting on and taking off slippers, hauling water and cookies, and smiling for 150,000 open-house visitors. That’s exactly what these faithful youth did between July 23 and August 20, 2005. “People would comment on how the young people were always smiling. That’s what they noticed,” recalls Alicia Bremmer of the Garden Grove First Ward.

“I felt really special because they noticed us. It is just cool because people really appreciated it,” Krista agrees. “The visitors were really interested and curious—nonmembers and members alike.”

The youth of the Westminster Third Ward (Huntington Beach California North Stake) know the importance of education. Using half the funds they had raised for their youth conference, they donated to the Perpetual Education Fund. Their check was presented to Elder John K. Carmack, emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, who is the managing director of the PEF.
The Westminster youth responded, along with thousands of other Church members, to President Hinckley’s call to help other Church members become self-reliant and successful (see Ensign, May 2001, 51–53).

Blessed by an institute teacher who helped him learn French and prepare for a mission, Bishop Darmande Legbanon (left) encourages young people in West Africa like Alexis Ahouayito (right), now serving a mission in Zambia, to take advantage of programs like Succeed in School. He says Succeed in School will amplify their opportunities.
When Darmande Legbanon joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he could not read, write, or even speak French, the official language of Benin. But with help from his stake president, he learned French in institute by reading the Book of Mormon and went on to serve a French-speaking mission. Today, he owns a successful welding business, mentors apprentices, and serves as the bishop of his ward.
Because he gained language and life skills through the Church, Bishop Legbanon now encourages young people in West Africa to follow in his footsteps. A two-tiered educational initiative—“Succeed in School” for youth ages 11 to 18 and “Gathering Places” for young single adults—is helping young people progress academically, spiritually, and socially. Coordinated through Area Presidencies and local leaders, these two efforts are blessing thousands in West Africa and other parts of the world.
Young single adults from the Tema Ghana Stake exhibit their catering class skills for government and community leaders at a Gathering Place conference in Accra.
The after-school program Succeed in School helps youth progress in school, prepare for higher education, and become self-reliant. So far, it has been implemented in several West African nations, where the majority of the program’s approximately 30,000 students participate. It also operates in Mexico, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the southwest area of the United States.
With Succeed in School, “we’re signaling to … the youth of the Church: ‘Education matters. We care about you, and we care about learning,’” said Elder Clark G. Gilbert, Commissioner of Church Education. He and other leaders say that Succeed in School is a powerful way to help the rising generation increase their academic and spiritual capacity.
Leaders in local seminaries and institutes of religion operate the program, and stake and district leaders decide which resources will work best in their individual areas. Lessons and activities are based on global curriculum standards of education. The lessons supplement regular subjects and help students remain in school. Volunteer teachers from local stakes teach reading, writing, mathematics, and life-skills classes in local church buildings.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles attributes the success of Succeed in School to the “spiritual element” combined with academics. “We are seeing in many places in Africa [that student] scores on national exams, really, have soared just with that little extra attention that supplements in a very important way what they are getting in school.”
Another goal is to help young people pursue higher education, such as through BYU–Pathway Worldwide or vocational training.
Succeed in School classes emphasize:
Hope and faith in Jesus Christ and conversion to His restored gospel.
The importance of becoming lifelong learners.
The relevance and importance of the subjects taught.
Belonging and contributing to a collaborative learning experience.
As students improve their academic, work, and life skills, they also increase their hope in the future and develop their potential for higher education and employment.
While attending Succeed in School, Alexis Ahouayito, of the Republic of Benin, West Africa, learned skills that helped him prepare for a mission. He read the Book of Mormon every day, studied, and prayed for the Holy Spirit to be with him. He learned in the program “how to teach with the Spirit and how to teach with authority.” Now he’s Elder Ahouayito, serving as an English-speaking missionary in the Zambia Lusaka Mission.
His mentor, Bishop Legbanon, encouraged him to attend Succeed in School while he apprenticed at the bishop’s welding shop.
Another apprentice, Kodjo Dick Amenyovo, says, “The behavior our leaders show us—how they talk to us and how they teach us—motivates us to learn and to go on missions.”
When some of his apprentices began working for him, Bishop Legbanon says, some lacked the skills in French he once had lacked.
“But now it is easier for them to read and write, do mathematical calculations, and do lots of other things,” including preparing to become successful missionaries. Succeed in School has a lot of “good things in it, and it has helped my apprentices.”
“I know that our Heavenly Father thinks a lot about us young people. In addition to seminary, we have this program,” says Marie Aimée Judith Ake of the Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire Niangon South Stake.
She credits Succeed in School for helping her gain confidence.
“I am no longer ashamed to speak in front of my classmates, and I am no longer ashamed to talk about my church. I even feel the need to serve a full-time mission,” she says.
“I am no longer ashamed to speak in front of my classmates.”
Grateful the program combines spiritual and secular learning, Marie adds, “I know that this program is inspired by my Heavenly Father, and it is for our own good.”

It had been an aggravating, irritating day—one in which I felt that nobody appreciated my efforts in behalf of the family. All the packing, planning, and preparation for our family’s annual camping trip had been left to me. My husband, David, a surgeon in training, had taken it for granted that I would attend to every detail of the trip. He had stayed at the hospital long past our planned departure time.
Before we had even driven out of the city, the children were restless and bored with the confinement of the car’s back seat. When David said I hadn’t packed enough activities to keep the children entertained in the car, I made some angry remark back at him.
“She’s just angry at Dad,” explained ten-year-old Owen to his little sister. It was then that I switched on a cassette tape of Primary songs for children and sat in bad-tempered silence.
But the joy of the Primary songs was contagious. One by one each family member began to sing along, until even my own anger melted, and I couldn’t resist joining in the chorus of “Listen, Listen.” The Holy Ghost will whisper. Listen, listen to the still small voice” (Children’s Songbook, 1989, page 107). How quickly the music changed the mood of our little family on that long stretch of highway. How quickly and how timely.
“We need to turn the car around,” David said as the sound of the chorus faded.
“What for?” I asked. “What did I forget?”
“Nothing,” he laughed. “I just have this compelling feeling that we need to turn around.”
Just as we had been in harmony in our song—suddenly we all felt the need to turn around. And as crazy as it seemed at the time, we followed the prompting, turned the car around, and started back along the way we had come. Shortly afterward, we reached a parked vehicle, and its driver stood by the side of the road motioning us to stop. As we slowed the car by him, he frantically called out:
“There’s been an accident,” he said. “A young woman was driving a motorcycle, and it rolled over off the highway. I think she’s dying.” He motioned to a still body in the grass at the side of the highway—a wrecked motorcycle beside her. We parked the car, and my husband got out.
We had never carried a first-aid kit in the car, but this time we happened to have an emergency kit with us consisting of medical supplies David had picked up at a hospital sale just three weeks earlier. For the first time in our lives, we had it in the car! Feeling helpless and scared, I held the children close to me as David grabbed the kit and headed for the accident victim.
As he reached the body, my daughter said, “We should pray.” Thankful for her suggestion, we bowed our heads. “Heavenly Father,” we pleaded, “please help Daddy. Help him to know what to do to save this girl’s life. …”
As I watched my husband kneel beside the young woman and assess her condition, I was humbled. The girl was indeed dying—unconscious and not breathing. David took out the last two items he had added to the emergency kit: a tube-like device called an oral airway that opens up the air passage to the lungs, and a bag that pumps in air and allows the doctor to “breathe” for the patient. He used them both. Along with his medical skills, they probably saved her life.
When the ambulance arrived, my husband rode to the hospital with the patient. In the ambulance, he was able to talk over the two-way radio to medical personnel at the hospital, preparing everyone for their arrival.
As I drove the car behind the ambulance, my mind was filled with questions. What if we hadn’t had the first-aid kit? What if David hadn’t gone to the hospital sale? What if he hadn’t been trained for such an emergency? And most of all, what if we had continued to argue instead of sing? Would we have then heard the “still small voice” prompting us to turn the car around? Would we have recognized it?
The cassette tape in the car had continued to play throughout the entire drama. Silent and in wonder, the children and I listened:
“For all his creations, of which I’m a part[,] Yes, I know Heavenly Father loves me” (Children’s Songbook, 1989, page 229).

While my husband and I were eating lunch at a local sandwich shop, a man walked in looking disheveled, lost, and confused. When he walked toward our table, I was surprised he didn’t ask for money. He only asked for directions to Flagstaff, Arizona. My husband and I gave him directions. He thanked us and left.
After lunch we started for home. Soon I saw the man walking toward a gas station. I had a strong impression to help him and asked my husband to pull into the gas station. I found the man and introduced myself. He had sad and tired eyes. His face seemed etched with deep lines from a hard life.
I asked how he planned to get to Flagstaff. He said he was going to walk. I knew that would be impossible since Flagstaff was more than 120 miles (193 km) away. I gave him some money and told him he could go to a nearby fast food restaurant to get some food and that I would return to take him to the bus depot and buy him a ticket to Flagstaff.
I returned to the truck and told my husband what had happened. Because of his health issues, I called a friend and asked her to go back with me. She agreed. We gathered some supplies, food, and water. Then we drove to the restaurant and picked the man up.
As we headed to the bus depot, this poor man began repeating, “I want to go home.” I asked if Flagstaff was his home. It wasn’t, but his daughter, whom he hadn’t spoken to for several years, lived there. He explained that he had been released from prison two weeks earlier. He and another released prisoner had been dropped off at the bus depot and each given a ticket. The other prisoner had stolen his ticket and what little money he had. He had been wandering the streets since. Nobody would help him.
“I want to go home,” he said again.
We arrived at the bus depot. I purchased his ticket and gave him some money and the supplies we had gathered. He thanked us and sat down. As we drove away, this man’s words repeated in my mind: “I want to go home.”

Ho Jik wanted to learn about many things, so in 1950 he went to Cornell University in New York State to study nutrition. There he met Oliver Wayman, a fellow student and a Church member. Ho Jik was impressed by Brother Wayman’s clean lifestyle—he didn’t smoke, drink, or do other bad things.
When Oliver gave him a copy of The Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage, Ho Jik read it within a week and eagerly asked for more information. Soon he had finished the Book of Mormon, too, and believed it to be the word of God. He started attending Church meetings with Oliver; he also continued to attend Presbyterian services.
On the day Oliver left the university, he stopped his Korean friend in a hallway. “I then bore my testimony of the gospel and told him that it was my opinion that the Lord had moved upon him to come to America … that he might receive the gospel and take it back to his people.” He also told Ho Jik that “if he refused to do the work the Lord had for him to do, another would be raised up in his place.”
Those words had a powerful effect upon Kim Ho Jik. He read the Book of Mormon again, and the Spirit again told him it was true. In July of 1951 he was baptized in the quiet waters of the Susquehanna River, near the place where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had been baptized. As he came up out of the water, a voice said to him, “Feed My sheep. Feed My sheep.”

Very few of my ancestors left any written records of their lives, but two did, my maternal and fraternal great grandfathers. Both were converts to the Church.

In 1861, a new plant was completed for the production of paper made from old rags. Brigham Young called my great grandfather, George Goddard, on a three year rag mission for the purpose of gathering whatever could be converted into printing paper. He recorded in his journal, "This calling was a severe blow to my native pride.... after being known in the community for years as a merchant and auctioneer, and then to be seen on the streets going from door to door with a basket on one arm and an empty sack on the other, enquiring for rags at every house. Oh, what a change in the aspect of affairs....When President Young first made the proposition, the humiliating prospect almost stunned me, but a few moments' reflection reminded me that I came to these valleys of the mountains from my native country, England, for the purpose of doing the will of my Heavenly Father, my time and means must be at His disposal. I therefore answered President Young in the affirmative, and for over three years, from Franklin, Idaho, in the north, and Sanpete in the south, my labors extended, not only visiting hundreds of houses during the week days, but preaching rag sermons on Sunday. The first time I ever spoke in the Tabernacle....was a rag discourse, and President Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball backed it up with their testimony and enlarged upon it.."

"At the end of ten months, Goddard had collected 20,000 pounds of rags, and by the end of his three-year mission, he had collected more than 100,000 pounds of rags for the paper."[8]

At the conclusion of his rag mission, Brother Goddard recorded, "Many years have passed away since that rag mission was performed. I have never regretted it, and instead of its having been humiliatory in its influence among the community, it only increased their respect and confidence toward me....I therefore beg of all my young friends to hold themselves in readiness for any kind of mission they may be called upon to fill, and never say no....No matter what kind of labor any man holding the priesthood may be called to perform by the servants of the Lord, let it be done by a cheerful response, and God will sincerely bless you. Cultivate a humble and self-denying spirit, and I will promise you the yoke of Christ shall sit easy and his burden light upon you."[9]

As soon as I walked into the house, I smelled the sweet, yeasty dough. I charged into the kitchen. “Can I help?” I asked.
Mom was standing at the kitchen table, and there was a huge brown blob of dough in front of her. Her hands and arms were covered with flour, and she was pushing her hands into the dough and rolling it over and pounding it with her fists. She looked up at me and smiled. “Whew!” she said. “I’m worn out, Aaron. Hurry and wash your hands, and you can help me.”
I hung my cap on the bathroom doorknob and hollered to Jarom, “Mom’s making bread.”
Jarom was in the basement, putting together a model race car, but as soon as he heard me yell, he came thundering up the stairs and headed straight for the bathroom. “I thought I smelled something besides glue,” he panted.
A few minutes later we were both in the kitchen, dusting our hands and arms with flour and getting about as much on our shirts and faces.
“All right, Mom, can we punch it now?” I asked. Mom nodded, and Jarom and I doubled up our fists, reared back, and began punching. We pretended we were fighting the Blob from outer space.
“I think you’ve kneaded it enough,” Mom finally said. “Now we need to divide it into eight parts and pat it into loaves. We’re going to add magic to them today.”
“What’s going to be magic about them?” Jarom asked.
“You’ll see.” Mom smiled.
“Does it have magic in it yet?” I asked.
“A little bit,” Mom replied.
Nobody added anything to the dough while we shaped it, or when Jarom and I helped Mom grease the bread pans and drop the little logs of dough into each pan, or when we set them on the kitchen table to raise. Afterward, Jarom and I washed our hands and ran outside to play catch, but every few minutes we crawled up the cherry tree and peeked in the kitchen window to check our loaves of bread. Slowly each loaf began to swell and bulge. Just when it looked like they would pop, Mom put them into the oven. We didn’t see her add anything to them then, either.
The next time Jarom and I came into the house, it was filled with the smell of Mom’s magic bread. It seemed like you could grab a gob of air, spread some butter on it, and eat it. Finally the little clock on the stove jangled, and Mom took the loaves of bread out of the oven and tipped them from their pans onto a clean white dish towel spread on the table.
“Is it magic bread now?” Jarom asked, reaching out to gingerly touch the hot golden loaves of bread.
“Almost.”
“What else do you have to do to them?” I asked, scratching my head. “They look plenty good to me.”
“To make them really magic,” Mom whispered, like she was telling us an important secret, “we have to give them away.”
“Give them away!” Jarom and I gasped. “We don’t want to give them away. We want to eat them.”
“But they’re not magic if we eat them.”
“Then let’s not have magic bread. Let’s just have the regular kind,” Jarom said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We did all the work. We should get to eat the bread.”
Mom took a deep breath. “Don’t you want to give at least some of it away?”
“Maybe one loaf,” Jarom mumbled.
“All right. Take one loaf, and if you can see the magic work, maybe you’ll want to come back and give some more away.”
“How does the magic work?” I asked, getting just a little curious.
“The magic makes people happy. People who are angry or sad or ornery become happy and kind if you give them a loaf of magic bread.”
“Let’s take one to Sister Rogers,” Jarom said. “I like her.”
“But she’s always happy,” I pointed out. “We’d never know if the magic worked.” I grinned. “Now, if we gave a loaf to Brother VanGesen, we’d really find out if it was magic.”
“He’d have to eat the whole batch of bread,” Jarom said. “I wouldn’t waste any of it on him. He’s the meanest man I know. Every time our baseball goes into his yard, he yells at us and tells us he’s going to call the police.”
“Then he’s just the man who needs a loaf of this bread,” Mom said as she grabbed a loaf of warm bread, wrapped it in paper towels, and handed it to me.
“You mean I have to take it?” I cried.
Mom thought for a moment, then wrapped another loaf and handed it to Jarom. “You’re right. Each of you should take one.”
“But, Mom,” we protested.
“Run along,” she said, pretending to be stern. “Go see if the magic works.”
Jarom and I left the house, each carrying a loaf of bread. I dragged my feet, hoping that we’d never get to Brother VanGesen’s. But pretty soon we saw his house. He was on his hands and knees, pruning and digging around the rosebushes in his front yard.
When we got to Brother VanGesen’s front walk, I gulped, blinked twice, licked my lips, then started creeping up the walk. Maybe he wouldn’t see us, and we could just set the bread on one of his lawn chairs and run home.
But when we were a few feet from him, he turned around to get his pruning shears and saw us. “Well, what are you boys doing here?” he growled. “I hope you didn’t walk across my petunias.”
“No, sir, we didn’t,” I said. I could feel my heart hammering against my ribs. “We brought you some fresh bread,” I blurted, thrusting my loaf at him.
Suddenly the frown on Brother VanGesen’s lips disappeared. A smile chased it right off his face! He pulled his gloves off and reached for both loaves. “They’re still warm!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We just finished baking them.”
“You helped your mom make them?” he asked.
We nodded.
“And you wanted to give them to me?”
We nodded again. We could tell that he was surprised. And it was easy to see that he was happy. It looked like he might even do a little dance.
“It’s best if you eat it while it’s still warm,” Jarom explained. He looked at the ground. “That’s why we brought them now.”
“Well, thank you.” He beamed, then looked around, set the bread on the lawn chair, ran over to his porch, and came back with a baseball. “I found this in the bushes.” He smiled. “I don’t know whose it is, but I’ll bet that you boys do.” He handed the ball to me. “Say,” he added, “why don’t you pick a couple of roses for your mother.”
As soon as we had each picked a rose and were out of Brother VanGesen’s yard, I turned to Jarom and whispered, “That is magic bread. I’ve never seen anything like it. Did you see him smile? I didn’t even think he knew how. And he was nice too!”
“Do you suppose that magic bread will work on anybody?” Jarom asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I sure want to find out! Let’s try some on Sister Willis. All she does is sit on her porch and growl at the dogs that cut across her lawn.”
“And what about that man who just moved into the Henderson place. I’d like to see him smile.”
Soon we were galloping up our front steps, yelling, “Mom, it works! It works! We want to give away more magic bread.”
Mom was sitting at the table, waiting for us. “Don’t you want the rest for yourselves?”
We shook our heads. “We need to help our neighborhood. There are too many grumpy people in it.”
Mom got a big paper sack and filled it with the rest of the loaves of magic bread wrapped in paper towels.
We gave a loaf to Sister Willis, and she was just as happy as Brother VanGesen had been. When we took a loaf to the man in the Henderson place, he smiled and gave us each a little box of raisins. We hurried all over the neighborhood, giving magic bread away. Jarom and I had never been so excited and happy in our whole lives! The magic had rubbed off on us too!
Soon there was only one loaf left. We’d already given loaves to all the real sourpusses, so we were thinking about eating it ourselves. But just before we reached home, Barney Stubbs came by, carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder.
“Oh, no!” Jarom whispered. “Should we run?”
Barney was always pushing around anyone littler than him, including Jarom and me. “Maybe we could give him the magic bread,” I muttered.
“Maybe we could give him a punch in the nose,” Jarom countered. “Together, we’d have a chance.”
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Barney yelled at us when he was still a little way off. “And what’ve you got in the bag?”
“Something for you,” I called out, reaching into the bag and pulling out the last towel-wrapped loaf of bread.
Barney reached out and took it. “What is it?” he growled.
“Mom’s bread. We helped her make it, and we thought you’d like some.”
Barney took off the top towel, broke off a corner of the loaf, and put it into his mouth. He chewed it, broke off another piece, and stuffed it into his mouth. Slowly a smile tickled the corners of his mouth. “Hey, this is good!” he announced.
“It’s even better with butter and jam on it,” Jarom told him, still a bit anxious.
Barney nodded. “I’ll go home and get some right now.” With his bat over his shoulder and his bread under his arm, he hurried off down the street. Before he had gone far, he stopped and called back to us, “Hey, why don’t you guys meet me at the park after a while. I have a new bat we can try out.”
We nodded, and Barney headed on down the street.
When we returned home, Mom was smiling and waiting for us in the kitchen. “Did you save any bread for yourselves?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “It was too much fun watching the magic work.”
“Can you make another batch?” Jarom asked. “We’ll help again.”
“Another batch?”
“Sure,” I answered. “There are lots of people who can use some magic bread.” Then I asked, “Mom, what exactly was the magic that was added to the bread?”
Mom motioned for us to come closer, then whispered in our ears, “Love.”
“Love?” I almost shouted.
Mom nodded.
“When did we put love in?” Jarom demanded, rather confused.
“When we made it for someone else. And when you gave it away. That filled the bread with love.”

The river is spread with wisps of morning mist, and a girl with golden hair lies in her sleeping bag, her head propped in her hands. She looks for a long time as the tide flows out. Dragonflies dart in and out of the mist and a light breeze mumbles in the tules across the river. The smell of rich earth, wet reeds, and slow water hangs over her like a summer incense. Above the drowsy hum of insects, a fish now and then makes an indolent plop somewhere, and the water is brown and silver in the morning.
After a while the girl lays her head down and dozes with the others.
With no alarm clocks to make the sun an enemy, the girls slept late that morning on the Sacramento River Delta, and when they awoke, they still felt like the inhabitants of a dream.
The dream began in Danville, California, where the Mia Maids and Laurels of the Danville Ward, along with their adult leaders, met one morning under cloudy skies to load suitcases, sleeping bags, water skis, and supplies into their cars. Later, as they rolled through the lion-colored hills of a California summer, the sun seared away the clouds and burned its seal of approval onto their horizon.
There was magic in that solar endorsement because from that moment the world’s rotation appeared to slow. The three-day adventure seemed to last weeks, and contrary to all previous experience, the more fun the girls had, the longer the days lasted. It was as if time were being poured from a cruse of sunshine that could never run dry.
When they arrived at Bethel Island, the girls poured out of the cars to inspect the small summerhouse that was to be their vacation home. Behind the house was a high levee, and they poured over that also to discover a stream whiskered with docks, the warm, brown tide flowing out. They were happy to learn that this stream was just part of an 1,100 mile spiderweb of interconnecting tidal waterways that they proceeded to christen collectively “The River.” During the next three days the river became the setting for a thousand watery adventures.
The most prevalent adventure was waterskiing. Some girls performed as if they were born on skis, others as if they were likely to die on them. Some cut graceful furrows with slalom skis. Others gouged furrows with their faces; but they kept trying, and eventually everyone got up. They skied and skied under the opulent sun till everyone was bright pink and then bright red. And even then they kept on skiing.
One day they took a trip to the Meadows, a gentle backwater slough where tall, shady trees line a sandy beach. The sky there was blue enough to swim in, and the trees stood out against the sun like negatives of themselves. They nosed the boat into shore alongside tall houseboats and jumped out for a lunch of submarine sandwiches. Afterwards they lazed and floated under the sun and went exploring in the boats through green corridors of smooth water.
They glided under a high railroad bridge where unknown urchins in cut-offs clung like spiders, leaping off now and then as if on filaments of silk.
They nosed up to tangled blackberry thickets that hung over the water, picking and eating the huge berries by the handfuls.
They played king of the hill atop a giant inner tube, splashing like dying stunt men into the white cushion of reflected clouds.
They frolicked like otters among patches of water lilies.
They stood rooted in air, earth, and water, groping with their toes for freshwater clams in the luxurious mud, water to their chests. They skittered frisbees along the shallows, swam with slow, lazy strokes in the deep, and napped on the cool sand of the shore, and when they had done everything once, they started all over again. After all, they had forever. They were Californians, and the sun was their birthright. It stood still for them as if they were so many Joshuas, as if the day, the summer, and their youth would never end.
Once, in the quiet shade of the bank, Bishop Alan P. Johnson could be seen in earnest conversation with a new girl in the ward, as intent as if she were the whole Church.
Late that afternoon they returned home, towing skiers all the way. It was a fitting exit, but by no means to be compared with their entrance that morning, when they had walked on the water—thanks to a sandbar right smack in the middle of the broad Sacramento River the girls had splashed along apparently on the surface of the waves.
They spent another day on a small sandy island in the middle of a channel, boating and sunning. Some of the beginners tried their hand at skiing and hit the water like naval artillery, kicking up fountains of water and flying skis.
“I know what you did wrong,” a helpful friend on the bank called to a casualty. “You forgot to close your eyes!”
She watched as her friend tried again, this time performing a beautiful belly flop and skipping on the water like a lopsided stone. “That was better!” the coach on the shore said. “She remembered to close her eyes that time.”
Another sadistic onlooker chimed in with a word of shouted advice: “Whatever happens, don’t let go!”
When they weren’t skiing or boating, some of the girls became artists, creating lofty-towered sand castles on the beach and then watching the tide lay seige to and finally overwhelm their ramparts.
On the way home that day the girls jumped out of the boat several hundred yards from their home dock and let the tide carry them in.
One day on the river the girls visited the town of Locke, constructed originally by the Chinese laborers who built the levees and now occupied by their descendants. Here the girls explored the streets of two-story, tic-tac-toe wooden houses and mysterious passageways that were neither streets nor alleys.
Meanwhile, back at the house, there was both work and resting to do in between the playing. Three times a day the girls cooked delicious meals and then handled the cleanup efficiently. One night when a Mia Maid was called to help with the dishes, she said quietly to a friend, “Actually, it’s not my turn, but I’ve got to get over the habit of complaining,” and she went to wash the dishes. When she was gone her friend sat in silence for a moment. Then she sighed and said, “I haven’t helped wash the dishes yet. I guess I should go help even though they didn’t assign me,” and she went. Soon an assembly-line sudsfest was underway, accompanied by a spirited medley of folk songs and so much all-purpose hilarity that several more unassigned girls joined in just for the fun of it.
One evening the group dined on mouth-watering fried catfish donated by a neighbor lady. Later that night they visited the good woman and sang her a song of appreciation. Not content to leave it at that, the girls used their talented toes the next day to find her a sackful of clams for fishbait.
At night the girls filled the bedrooms, the sun room, the sun deck, the combination kitchen-dining-living room, and spilled out over the levee onto the dock, where they slept with the gentle rocking of the waves and the murmur of the moving water. A few girls even slept in the boats that were moored to the dock. These outdoor dwellers were treated to a huge moon that rode above the tules and made the river into a highway of gold, not to mention the sun that rose each morning on a tide of cricket and bird songs to burn away the mist.
“Wow! Did you see that sunrise?” one ecstatic girl asked her sleepy companion after the sleeping bags had been put away.
“Yeah,” her more prosaic friend replied. “I woke up and took a look and said, ‘Well what do you know, there’s the sunrise,’ and then I went back to sleep.”
As with any group of Mormons totaling more than one, there were some meetings too. Their first night on the river the girls enjoyed a talent night that included readings, songs, and even some magic. The second night there was a family home evening in which the girls shared ideas on the importance of being a child of God. They expressed their love for the Savior and nodded quietly, as one young lady said, “Whenever you build a wall between yourself and another human being, you build a wall between yourself and Jesus Christ.”
There was plenty to do in spare moments: sleeping, fishing off the dock, writing letters, writing in journals, scripture study, gab sessions, sailing a little two-girl boat with a sail like another white cloud under the sky, and a lot more, including first aid treatments for sunburns. And sometimes they just dived off the dock or sat watching the tide flow in or out, ceaselessly, day and night.
At least as warming as the sun was the love these young women showed toward one another. Whenever a girl was seen standing shyly apart, a kindly arm would appear around her shoulders to draw her in, When there was disagreement, it was settled by discussion rather than argument. There were no cliques, no in-groups or out-groups, no social outcasts, no cruel jests or biting sarcasm. When it was mentioned to one of the girls that they seemed surprisingly free from backbiting, she said, “How can there be backbiting? We know that there shouldn’t be.”
Another girl explained, “I’m trying to learn how to love other people. I’m learning to do things for them, to stop thinking ‘want’ and start thinking ‘give.’”
Two of the girls in the very thick of the action on the three-day adventure were nonmembers, and they appeared to be loving every minute of it. That’s not surprising considering the missionary record of the Danville young people. Half the Laurel class consists of converts introduced to the gospel by the young people of the ward. The previous year there had been ten baptisms attributed to the efforts of the young men and women, and the work was going on. They talk openly to their friends about the Church, knowing what an important gift they have to offer.
“A lot of kids at school say they don’t know who they are,” one girl said. “Well, we know who we are!”
The last evening of their stay on the river, the girls had a testimony meeting. One of the girls brought a roll of tissue and set it in the center of the group in easy reach of anyone with leaky eyes. More than one needed it as they bore testimony of the gospel and their love for the Lord and one another. A nonmember girl stood with tears in her eyes to tell of her love for the Mormon girls and their leaders although she hadn’t yet gained a testimony of the gospel. A girl who had been in the ward only a week and in the Church only a few months told how she had come on the trip homesick for her old ward and fearing loneliness and rejection. But in three days she had come to feel she had known these girls all her life.
The next morning, as four girls debated the best way to get four suitcases, four sleeping bags, four pillows and four overnight bags into the trunk of one Volkswagen, the group took their leave of the river. They said good-bye to each other as if they were not to meet again for a long while, although they were merely taking a short drive back to the same city. But they were saying good-bye not so much to one another as to a wonderful experience that would soon pass from the full color of the present to the black and white of memory.
But the color hasn’t all faded yet. There is still a girl skiing at sundown, golden in the silver wake, flinging curtains of glittering spray as she leans into each turn. There are the girls in bright bathing suits singing Mormon Tabernacle Choir songs as passing boaters look at them and wonder. There are the bright orange life preservers as the girls float with the pull of the tide.
There is the duotone image of a young girl sitting on the sun-deck in a quiet moment, reading the Book of Mormon and thinking.
And above the images, the color, the splashing and laughter and sunshine and delicious river smells is the reality that is the foundation of all the joy these young people find in life. As one young lady said, “In my last interview the bishop asked me what I had learned this year. I think what I’ve learned this year is that without the gospel nothing else in this whole world really matters.”