Gospel Story Finder

I am Sister Little, a service missionary. My story of becoming a missionary is complex, but I think it was that way for a reason.
It was January 2019 when I first started applying, although I had decided the year before that I was going to. There was a slight worry in the back of my mind about my struggles with fibromyalgia, which could prevent me from serving. Having a chronic illness that causes constant pain everywhere is difficult, although that didn’t worry me when applying. All that was going through my mind was the belief that this was the path on which I needed to go.
In September of that year, I was told I couldn’t serve a proselyting mission. There being no other options for a young missionary, I was left feeling discouraged. I continued with the belief that I would serve, but I needed to start preparing for the next stages of my life. On the outside I was coping, but internally I was still trying to process those feelings of doubt, and continually praying and asking: “What do I need to do? When will I be able to serve?”
Fast forward to the end of May 2020 and many of us were still in lockdown. I got a message that gave details of the young service missionary programme that was now being implemented in the UK. Having read the article, I was in a state of shock. I knew our Heavenly Father had a plan; I just didn’t think it would come into effect quite so quickly. It took me two days to decide to take another massive U-turn and go back to preparing myself to become a missionary. At that moment I knew that our Heavenly Father is a person of great miracles. I felt pure gratitude for the increasing opportunities for missionaries to gather Israel.
So far, during my mission, I have had the chance to get involved with the FamilySearch records operation centre project, where I have been able to add to the section called All About Me, researching fun facts that happened in certain years. I have also been able to do ‘match labelling’ (a simple activity where two historical records are reviewed and the decision is made as to whether they are a match, not a match, or can’t tell). This project is making searching FamilySearch easier. It’s also been a blessing to help with the Friendship Centre in Wembley, helping to teach English! I am impressed that I have a positive experience each week. This experience has greatly helped me with my confidence, considering I haven’t been a missionary for too long, it’s amazing.

On the final night of the performance, one of the microphones wasn’t working. “With minutes to go until the start of the show, the directors still couldn’t get this person’s microphone to work. One of the backstage managers began to walk through the halls and ask everyone in sight to say a prayer, asking for help with the technical difficulty,” Brie recalls. “Before bowing my head, I looked around me to see every single cast member humbly bowing his or her head to pray in faith to our Father in Heaven. Sure enough, as we sang the opening number and started the show, all of the microphones were working perfectly.”

I had a serious case of the “I feel worthless” syndrome. I lacked self-esteem and refused to care for or about myself.
My parents tried to encourage me, but any suggestion could cause an eruption. Talking to me was like walking on eggs. “Just leave me alone!” I would exclaim, louder and more angrily than I had intended. I knew my parents spent many sleepless nights worrying about their daughter.
One Sunday evening, my mother insisted that I go to a stake fireside with her and my father. “I don’t want to go to that stupid fireside!” I said. I was always looking for an argument, for any way to blame others for my misery.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Paige. Of course you’ll go,” my mom answered.
When we walked into the chapel, I noticed that some of my friends were already sitting—not in the pews, but on the stand. Trying to go unnoticed, I sat down.
A youth leader tapped me on the shoulder, “Paige, why don’t you sing with us?”
“I’m sorry, Sister Daines, but I haven’t been to any of the practices. I don’t even know the name of the song.”
“Don’t worry,” she said as she helped me up from my seat. “You’ll be fine.”
Before I knew it, the stake president was introducing “a vocal number by the great youth of the stake.” Panic raced through my heart.
The pianist touched the keys, and the opening bars of the song echoed throughout the chapel. Tears slowly slid down my cheeks as I began to sing. I knew the words to this song. I had all along.
“I am a child of God,” I sang. As the words came from my lips, I looked at my parents, smiling from the front row. Their eyes said, “We love you.”
Suddenly I knew I was not alone. From that moment, I have known that truly I am a child of God and that he has sent me to parents kind and dear.
The words of the song had come out of my mouth many times. Now they had finally entered my heart.

Allan’s interest in ceramics also developed at a young age. “My friend’s mother works in ceramics, and she was at one of the elementary school fairs throwing some pots. She let me try it and said, ‘This is fantastic! You really work well with your hands.’ She was so excited that I started taking lessons from her in her garage. I’ve been at it off and on since then.

I grew up in Zwickau, in the former East Germany. When I was about 11 years old, my father fell under increased scrutiny as a political dissenter, and my parents felt that the only safe choice for our family would be to flee to West Germany. It was decided that the safest plan was to leave at different times and follow different routes to the West, leaving all our belongings behind.

Since my father was at greatest risk, he took the quickest journey, through Berlin. My older brothers headed north, and each found his own way west. My sister—who would have been the age of many of you here today—together with Helga Fassmann, her teacher in Young Women, and some others took a train that passed briefly through West Germany. They paid a porter to unlock one of the doors for them, and after the train crossed the West German border, they jumped from the moving train to freedom. How I admired my sister for her courage.

I was the youngest child, and my mother decided that she and I would walk across a mountain range separating the two countries. I remember that she packed a lunch as if we were going for a hike or a picnic in the mountains.

We took a train as far as we could and then walked for long hours, getting ever closer to the West German border. The borders were tightly controlled, but we had a map and knew of a time and a place where it might be safe to cross. I could sense my mother’s anxiety. She observed the area intensely to see if we were being followed. With each step, her legs and knees seemed to become weaker. I helped carry her heavy bag filled with food, vital documents, and family photos as we climbed up one last, long hill. Surely, she thought, we had passed the border by now. When she finally felt safe, we sat down and started to eat our picnic lunch. For the first time that day, I’m sure, she breathed more easily.

It was only then that we noticed the border sign. It was still far ahead of us! We were having our picnic on the wrong side of the border. We were still in East Germany!

Border guards could show up any moment!

My mother frantically packed up our lunch, and we hurried up the hillside as quickly as we could. This time we didn’t dare stop until we knew with certainty that we had reached the other side of the border.

Even though each member of our family had taken very different routes and experienced very different hardships along the way, eventually all of us made it to safety. We were finally reunited as a family. What a glorious day that was!

Ciro Villavicencio estimates that during his first three years as a tour guide in Peru’s Cusco region, he led nearly 400 tours to Machu Picchu, the famed “lost city” of the Incas. Yet, even after his many visits, this site—included on various lists of wonders of the world—has not lost its wonder for him.
“There’s always something new to learn,” he says. Spending several hours taking a group of visitors through Machu Picchu isn’t unusual for Ciro. However, he has seen how easy it is to lose that wonder. A few of his colleagues do a whole tour in 45 minutes. “They’ve lost interest,” he says.
Ciro, a member of the Chasqui Ward and high councilor in the Cusco Peru Inti Raymi Stake, believes that understanding his colleagues’ disinterest could help Church members increase interest in another wonder of the world—the most significant one—the “marvelous work and a wonder” of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 25:17).
As Ciro watches from a ledge high above Machu Picchu, dozens of different tour groups walk among the ancient buildings. For Ciro the tragedy in the disinterest among a few of his colleagues is that it hurts not only them but those who could be experiencing wonder through them.

When Jennette was only six years old, she and her parents and brothers and sisters came to America on a large ship called the Horizon. They had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and wanted very much to live with the Saints in Utah.

Entering the United States Navy in the closing months of World War II was a challenging experience for me. I learned of brave deeds, acts of valor, and examples of courage. One best remembered was the quiet courage of an 18-year-old seaman—not of our faith—who was not too proud to pray. Of 250 men in the company, he was the only one who each night knelt down by the side of his bunk, at times amidst the jeers of the curious and the jests of unbelievers, and, with bowed head, prayed to God. He never wavered. He never faltered. He had courage.

George hurried through the woods, munching absentmindedly on a corn dodger stuffed with strips of home-cured meat. He glanced about at the bright ferns and wild flowers poking up through the forest floor as he went, but his thoughts were not on them. Ordinarily he would have stopped now and then to study a beetle crawling over a stem or to wonder why certain tiny flowers flourished in shade while others wilted without sunshine, but not today. He had someplace special to go on this Indian summer day in 1871.
George was heading toward the school in Diamond Grove, Missouri, about a mile away from where he lived with Aunt Susan and Uncle Moses. They were the white folks who had taken him in after he was orphaned. George recalled Aunt Sue talking to the neighbors about their children’s schooling, and now he was going to find out what it was all about. Though he was ten years old he had never been in a school.
George was slight for his age, and his voice was permanently damaged as the result of a babyhood illness that never quite left him. But he made up for it with his sharp, hungry mind. He wondered about everything he saw, even small things that everyone else ignored. Perhaps the boy felt that their small size, like his own, didn’t make them unimportant.
When George reached a clearing and spotted the small, dingy cabin that was used for a schoolhouse, he paused a moment. It doesn’t look like much, he thought. Then he crept quietly to the doorstep of the little building and crouched there, listening.
What George heard made his heart thump—the droning of children’s voices, interrupted now and then by the sharp voice of the teacher. The students were reading and reciting their lessons!
George sat spellbound for several more minutes; then he stole away as silently as he had come.
I want to read! George thought to himself as he slipped quietly back through the woods. Suddenly, he flopped down in the spongy moss under an oak tree and pondered a while longer. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
Back at the farm, George hurried to find Uncle Moses. The hardworking farmer was in the barn, currying one of his fine horses.
“Uncle Moses!” chirped George shrilly.
Moses Carver whirled around to face the barefooted boy.
“You startled me, boy!” he exclaimed. Then he said, “What is it?”
“Uncle M-Moses,” piped George like a little bird. Then he remembered to speak slowly so that he wouldn’t stammer so much. “When can I go to s-school, Uncle Moses? I’m big enough now! C-can I go tomorrow?”
Moses turned away for a moment, rubbing his stubbly chin. “George,” he began, “that school in Diamond Grove …” He paused painfully. “It’s for white children. You can’t go there, son.”
George stared, the shining hope in his eyes dimmed. He wanted so much to learn! He stumbled out of the barn into the bright sunlight. The bloodhounds that Uncle Moses raised for hunting yelped and bayed, but he didn’t hear them. Aunt Sue spied him from the house and called, “George! Could you help me with the jelly this afternoon?” George kept on walking. “George?” she called again.
George broke into a run. He needed to be alone—in his secret garden in the woods. This was a place where he kept many kinds of plants and flowers. He tended them carefully, seeing to their special needs. If a plant wilted in the pure, rich loam of the forest floor, he mixed in sand. If a rosebush were ailing, he tracked down the tiny insects that were nibbling its leaves and made it well. Even the neighbors had taken to calling him the plant doctor, and they brought him their plants and flowers to mend. He hardly ever lost a patient.
“That George has a way with wild things,” they’d say to one another.
Today George scarcely noticed his garden. He just sat silently, hardly aware of the woodsy sounds of twittering birds and scampering squirrels.
There in the quiet of the woods, George tried to sort things out in his mind. There were so many things he did not know, and he wanted to learn everything! I will learn to read and write! he decided. Perhaps Aunt Sue and Uncle Moses will help. There must be some reason why I’m darker than other folks. Up to now it hasn’t made any difference. But if I have to work extra hard for what I want, then that’s what I’ll do.
George started for home, skipping pebbles as he went. That very evening, he and Aunt Sue sat down and looked over an old blue-back speller she had used as a girl. By the light of a tallow dip they practiced words and letters from the book. Then Uncle Moses helped George do simple sums and write his name.
George learned quickly. The neighbors heard about his thirst for knowledge and loaned him books to read.
Uncle Moses nodded knowingly. “That boy’s going to make something of himself,” he told Aunt Sue.
George did indeed make something of himself. He went to school, although he had to leave the home of his family to do it. He wandered the country throughout the West and South, taking jobs wherever a school was located nearby. He finally managed to attend college in Iowa. After graduation and work at the agricultural experiment station there, he was asked by Booker T. Washington to teach at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The folks back home and the friends he had made everywhere he went were very proud of him.
George never stopped learning. He lived to be more than eighty years old and became known throughout the world as Dr. George Washington Carver, distinguished professor, scientist, artist, musician, and inventor. As a chemurgist (one who uses farm products for industrial purposes) he devised more than 300 different uses for peanuts, 118 for sweet potatoes, and 75 for pecans. Perhaps more importantly, he spent a lifetime working to help his people—all people, regardless of race or religious faith.
Although many had been unkind to him along the way, there always seemed to be at least one friendly face encouraging George to go on. He wanted to be that friendly face to as many others as possible. He got his wish. He was an inspiration to thousands in his own country—and to the whole world.

“I had a great experience when I graduated from Primary. Back in those days we each had a green bandalo. I had lost mine. I looked everywhere, including under my bed and through everything in the closet. Finally my mother said, ‘Why don’t you pray about it. Ask Heavenly Father to help you find it.’ So I went to my room and prayed. Even as I was praying, a voice seemed to say, ‘In the dresser, caught underneath the drawer.’ The dresser was in the hall because there wasn’t enough room in my tiny bedroom. When I pulled out the drawer and reached up inside, there it was, caught on a silver! That was the first direct answer to prayer that I can remember receiving. I was proud that I could wear my bandalo when I stood next to Bishop Rulon Sperry as he nominated me to graduate from Primary and to be ordained to the office of a deacon.

A recent, somewhat pioneering experience indicates what might be accomplished with short-term missions. Two Utah doctors spent several weeks in Bolivia during December working with local Latter-day Saint physicians to establish clinics at our Church buildings. This short-term consultation was highly successful.

Another year, I planted a variety of large pumpkin. The vines grew through the fence and produced some enormous pumpkins in the vacant lot that borders ours. I nearly ruined my back lifting those large fruit over the fence at harvest time.

By August 1830, Parley P. Pratt had moved to Ohio, married, and worked hard to turn his land into a beautiful farm. But in studying the scriptures, Parley began to feel that the Lord wanted him to become a preacher. He and his wife sold their farm and headed by boat for Albany, New York, where they had friends. While on board, Parley felt a need to leave the boat and travel by foot.
At Newark, New York, he set off, leaving his wife to continue to Albany alone. He soon met a Mr. Hamblin, who told him of a book said to have been discovered and translated by a young man named Joseph Smith. The next morning Parley went to the Hamblin home to see the book. He wrote, “I read all day; eating was a burden, … I preferred reading to sleep.
“As I read, the spirit of the Lord was upon me, and I knew and comprehended that the book was true. … I soon determined to see the young man who had been the instrument of its discovery and translation.”
Immediately Parley went to Palmyra, New York, to find Joseph Smith. When he got there, he learned that Joseph had moved to Pennsylvania. Parley met the prophet’s brother Hyrum, however, and talked with him throughout the night about the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the gospel. A few days later Parley P. Pratt was baptized in Seneca Lake.

On a stopover in Rome, President Hinckley gave Father Leonard Boyle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, a copy of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. The two men greeted each other like longtime friends. Father Boyle was impressed with President Hinckley’s knowledge of books and the techniques used to deter their aging. At the end of the meeting, the prefect observed in his thick Irish brogue, “President Hinckley is truly a very remarkable man.”

Few sights are as adorable—and as inspiring—as young children teaching a family home evening lesson. But helping children prepare lessons can be a struggle. One day as I was cleaning the house, I found a simple solution right before my eyes.
There on the floor was a hand-out one of my children had brought home from Primary. Suddenly the handout seemed like gold. It occurred to me that it—and others I had attached to the refrigerator or hidden away in drawers—could serve as springboards for lessons my children could give for family home evening!
That day I started files for each of my children in which to keep the pictures and other handouts they occasionally bring home from Primary. Now when one of my young children has a lesson assignment for family home evening, I open the appropriate file and let him or her look through it. Inevitably they find a visual aid they can use to teach our family a principle once taught them by a caring and inspired teacher.

Not long ago I was speaking to Relief Society women in North Dakota. After our Saturday morning meeting, we boarded a chartered bus with some of the sisters who had attended the leadership meeting to return for a women’s fireside in South Dakota. We expected the bus ride to take four hours. It took the rest of the day and part of the evening.
The bus broke down three times.
We spent half the afternoon at a rest stop, but after a tedious wait, the bus driver finally got the motor going.
This could have been a miserable experience. There were families anticipating their mothers’ return; there were rides waiting to take some women on the bus another three hours to their homes. It was hot.
But on that prairie ride I had both a learning and a spiritually fulfilling experience. Two hours from our destination, one of the sisters stood in the aisle at the front of the bus and bore her testimony. One after another, sisters spoke of the power of priesthood blessings in their homes, of direct answers to prayers during serious illness, of the influence of the Spirit in employment opportunities, of being guided in accepting the gospel. Through their testimonies, I saw how easily the light and truth of the gospel influenced their daily learning experiences.

I chose to have my patriarchal blessing at a time when I wasn’t quite sure where my life was leading. I figured if I was going to make something of myself, I ought to have a carefully laid out plan or some sort of Liahona to direct the course I was taking. My patriarchal blessing has helped me make a lot of crucial decisions. I’ve set my goals and priorities in life, and I’m working hard to accomplish what Heavenly Father wants me to do.
Olivia R. CodinaCebu, Philippines

by Janet Sorensen
The young members of the Church in Sao Paulo, Brazil, know how to celebrate holidays. One of the biggest holidays in Brazil is Carnaval, a three-day celebration where parades and dancing take place at all hours of the day and night. It is a time when anything goes, and morals seem to be quickly forgotten.
But the LDS youth of Sao Paulo have a better way to celebrate. Every year during Carnaval, the members plan a youth conference away from the city, so the youth can enjoy three days of recreation, learning, and spiritual activities.
Last year they went to the original Sao Paulo stake center (there are now 11 stakes there). It is located at a complex outside of the city, along with the temple and the missionary training center. The group stayed in dormitories, and though they could see the skyscrapers of the city, they were far from the drunken parties and wild people.
For Independence Day, these youth chose sites within their stake boundaries that needed to be cleaned up. All worked together to plant trees, repair curbs, and generally clean the areas. On another Independence Day, they planted more than 400 trees that were donated by the city government. It seemed an impossible task, but they finished the project in half a day because everyone helped.
These Brazilian youth know the best way to celebrate: put the teachings of the gospel into action and let the joy shine through.

“Amazed at the Love Jesus Offers Me,” p. 28: Read the section “Rejoicing in Reunion” to the point that the missionary begins to approach his family. Have members of your family guess who will be the first to rush forward to meet the missionary. After finishing the story, discuss the love parents have for their children and the love Heavenly Father has for all of us.

Not long ago, a young man I did not know approached me in a crowded place. He said quietly but with great intensity: “Elder Eyring, I have just been called as the president of my elders quorum. What advice do you have for me?” I was sure that what he needed to know and to feel I couldn’t give him there, with the people rushing past us. And so I said, “I will give you my counsel in general conference.”