Gospel Story Finder

“Today we’re going to start raising butterflies,” our den mother, Sister Sills, said.
“Butterflies!” whooped my brother, Danny. He jumped up and ran in a big circle, waving his arms as if they were wings.
“Danny,” I hissed. “Sit.”
Danny stopped and looked around. Everybody else was sitting down, so Danny sat down, too. But he kept flapping his arms.
Sometimes it’s really embarrassing to have Danny for a brother. He’s actually two years older than me, but he was born with Down’s syndrome, so he doesn’t do everything at the same age as everyone else. Danny just waits until he’s ready. That’s why he’s in my Cub Scout den.
I love him, and I try to help him, but sometimes I get mad because he’s so slow at everything. Danny never complains when I do things without him, but he looks sad. I don’t like him to be sad, so I try to be patient with him.
Sister Sills explained how we were going to raise our butterflies. Then we made butterfly houses—shoe boxes with plastic windows and air holes. We also filled clear plastic cups with chopped green leaves that Sister Sills called “caterpillar food.” We called it “green goo.”
The caterpillars were so small that Sister Sills used a paintbrush to put them into our cups. We put a lid with air holes on the cups.
“That’s a butterfly?” Danny asked.
“It will turn into a butterfly, Danny,” Sister Sills told him. “Then it will fly.”
“Wow!” Danny exclaimed.
We each took two caterpillars home. Those little things ate and ate. We had to add more chopped leaves. I couldn’t believe how fast they grew. Finally they hung upside down from the lids of their cups and shed their fuzzy skins. It was like watching someone wriggle out of a very tight snowsuit. Underneath was a smooth, green chrysalis (a covering that shelters the caterpillar while it turns into a butterfly).
We moved the lids with the chrysalises attached to them to our butterfly houses and waited and waited for nearly two weeks. Danny was the first one to notice when something happened. “I got a butterfly!” he squealed. Then he ran around the room flapping his arms. This time, I just let him.
During the next day, all four butterflies emerged. We watched them exercise their new wings, and we fed them sugar water sprinkled on flowers for three days. Then we took them outside to set them free.
At first, the butterflies didn’t know what to think of the sunshine and the wind. Then one took off, and then another and another. We watched them flutter around our yard until they were out of sight.
When we looked back down, there was still one butterfly left. I gently picked him up on my finger. “Fly,” I ordered. But the butterfly stayed perched right where he was.
“I don’t think he can fly,” Dad said, looking closely. “He’s missing part of his wing.”
Mom bent down to look. “He has only four legs,” she said. “He’s supposed to have six.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“I think we’d better keep him,” Dad said. “He’ll get eaten by a bird or something if we leave him out here. He probably won’t live very long, anyway.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Danny said.
I wasn’t sure about that. Sometimes Danny breaks things because he has a hard time being careful. I didn’t think he could take care of something as tiny as a butterfly without squishing it. But Dad said, “Let him try.”
Every day, Danny fed the butterfly. And every day he took it out for a walk. “Butterflies don’t need walks,” I said.
“My butterfly does,” Danny said. “He needs to learn to fly. Sister Sills said so.”
“That butterfly is never going to learn to fly. He’s missing half a wing,” I pointed out.
“It’s OK,” Danny said. “He’s trying.”
That’s what Danny always said when the poor butterfly waved its wings. I couldn’t believe how patient and gentle he was. Every day he took the butterfly outside on his finger to exercise its wings. Sometimes it stepped out onto a flower to eat.
Then one day, in a puff of wind, the butterfly flew off Danny’s finger and circled the apple tree twice before landing in the grass. There it fluttered helplessly until Danny picked it up. But as soon as he did, it spread its wings and tried again.
“He flew!” Danny exclaimed. “He flew! He tried and tried, and he flew!” I’d never seen Danny so excited.
Danny took the butterfly outside to fly every day until it got old and its wings lost so many scales that you could see right through them. Finally it died. Dad helped Danny bury it. I was afraid Danny would be really upset, but he wasn’t. He was smiling. “Heavenly Father will give my butterfly new, strong wings,” he said, “because he tried!”
I still get impatient sometimes when Danny is slow or he forgets how to behave or he does something really silly. But when I do, I remember how kind Danny was to that poor butterfly and I say to myself, “It’s OK—he’s trying.” I figure if I work really hard, I can be as patient and kind as Danny.

I am so thankful for “All Is Not Well” in the November 1997 issue. I, too, at one time was the only active member of the Church in my family. I know of the pain and frustration of an upset home. I found the strength to endure when I immersed myself into the gospel. Life was not easy during those years, but it was more than worth it. The struggle is worth it because today I know my Savior is real. There is hope. It took three years for my family to come back, but when we did we brought my sister-in-law as well. I want to thank the New Era for this article. The scriptures were my guide then and today I know how to use them as my guide home.
Name WithheldUtah

In February 1846, more than three thousand Latter-day Saints fled nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi River into Iowa. Many left without adequate food and shelter, and suffered terribly from cold and hunger.
One of those Saints was Aurelia Spencer. When her family had traveled only thirty miles, Aurelia’s mother died. The grieving family returned to Nauvoo to bury her before continuing their journey west.
Aurelia’s father, Orson, was called to preside over the Church in Great Britain, so she, her three sisters, and her two brothers spent the next winters in Winter Quarters with only kind neighbors to keep an eye on them. During the first, harsh, winter, their horse and seven of their eight cows died. Most of the money their father sent never reached them, and they suffered great poverty.
They left for the Salt Lake Valley in May 1848 with President Brigham Young’s company. In the Valley, they lived in a log room their uncle built for them, until their father’s return.
In 1851 Aurelia married Thomas Rogers. They settled in Farmington, sixteen miles north of Salt Lake City. There Aurelia gave birth to twelve children, only seven of whom lived to adulthood.
Concerned because Farmington’s boys were often getting into mischief, Aurelia asked Eliza R. Snow, the sister of Lorenzo Snow, if there should not be an organization to help little boys grow into good men. Sister Snow relayed the suggestion to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the governing body of the Church following the death of Brigham Young. John Taylor, the President of the Quorum, gave his approval, and Sister Rogers was called upon to organize and serve as the president of the first Primary in the Church. She wisely decided that girls should also be part of the organization, and the first Primary was held in Farmington Ward on August 25, 1878.

“Did you mow the lawn?”
Jeff huddled lower as he manipulated the joystick of his video game. Maybe if he ignored her, she would go away.
“I asked, did you mow the lawn?”
Jeff sighed. “No, Mom, I didn’t mow the lawn—OK?”
She ignored his sarcasm. “No, it isn’t OK. You need to turn off the video game now and get the lawn mowed.” She waited a few seconds, but Jeff didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
Suddenly the television clicked off.
“Hey!” Jeff griped. “What happened?” Then he saw his mom calmly slip the remote control into the laundry basket balanced on her hip.
Jeff grumbled as he stomped outside, dragged the mower out, started it up with a couple of angry yanks, and shoved it over the lawn. It took only about forty-five minutes, but he was still irritated when he finished.
“Satisfied?” he asked his mom, who was up to her elbows in bread dough. He jerked the refrigerator door open, looking for something cold to drink.
“Not really,” she replied. “Are you?”
Jeff stopped. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said, “the lawn’s mowed, but are you better for having mowed it? Are you satisfied with a job well done? Are you happy for having contributed to the family?”
“No!”
“Then you did it wrong,” she said and went back to kneading the dough.
Jeff returned to the television, but he couldn’t concentrate. His mother made no sense. The lawn was mowed, right? How could she say he had done it wrong?
Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He wandered into the kitchen. “So,” he asked, “how many ways are there to mow a lawn?”
“Not ways, really—more like reasons for doing it. Ask around,” she advised him. “Don’t ask people how they mow lawns, ask them why they do it.”
Jeff was happy to get out of the house. He wandered down the street, thinking. There could be only one reason people mowed lawns—because lawns grew and needed mowing and, in his case, because his mother made him do it. But he had the feeling his mother had something else in mind.
Down the block, Jeff saw his friend Chris whistling as he strode along. When he saw Jeff, he hollered, “I’m on my way to the store. Come on.”
Chris pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and waved it under Jeff’s nose. “The first of many, Jeff-o,” he chortled. “My lawn-mowing business is going to rake in the dough! I’ll be rich, rich, rich! Money may not grow on trees, but it does grow in lawns!”
Jeff laughed, then paused. “So why, exactly, do you mow lawns?”
Chris looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “For the money, of course. That’s the only good reason I can think of!”
They walked on, Chris bragging about the things he’d buy before summer was over. Jeff, however, was thinking. So far he’d found two reasons to mow a lawn: fear of punishment and the promise of a reward.
They were almost to the store when they heard an old mower ka-chunking through grass. As they rounded the corner, they saw Daniel finishing up the last bit of his front lawn.
“Want to go to the store with us?” Chris asked.
“Can’t,” Daniel panted. “I still have to mow the back lawn.”
Jeff grabbed the opportunity. “So why are you mowing the lawn?”
“Because grass grows.” Daniel said it very slowly, like he was answering a foolish question.
Jeff turned red. “No, I mean, do you get paid for mowing it? Or will something happen to you if you don’t mow it?”
Daniel just shrugged his shoulders. “Everyone in my family has chores, and today mine is mowing the lawn. Why fight it? I just want to get it out of the way so that I can do more interesting stuff.”
Jeff and Chris nodded in understanding, then headed on down the road.
So that’s what Mom meant, Jeff thought. You can do something because you’re afraid of being punished, or because you’ll get rewarded, or because there’s no point in arguing about it—you might as well just get it done.
Certain that he had found the answer his mother wanted, Jeff poked Chris in the ribs, and they raced each other to the store.
They were slowly heading back when they met Daniel pushing his mower down the street.
“Where are you going with the mower?” Jeff asked.
“The Merrill’s place.”
“Don’t you know that Brother Merrill’s in the hospital?” Jeff asked. “He fell off the roof last week when he was repairing shingles.”
“Yeah,” Chris added. “There’s nobody there. His wife spends every day at the hospital.”
“True,” Daniel said, pushing past them, “but the grass still grows.” He hurried on his way as his two friends stared after him.
“Uh, I have to be getting home now,” Jeff said.
Chris nodded. “Me, too. See you later.”
They did see each other later—about fifteen minutes later—when they both arrived at the Merrills’ home, pushing their lawn mowers.
Daniel was glad to see them. “I’ll do the front lawn if you guys handle the side and back. We can be out of here before Sister Merrill gets home. It will be a surprise.”
It was a hot day, and the grass was tall from more than a week of neglect. When they finished, the lawn looked beautiful. Jeff now knew what his mother had meant about satisfaction. The boys didn’t say much. They just grinned as they pushed their mowers in a line down the sidewalk, each turning with military precision when he reached his own street.
Jeff put the mower away and went inside. The smell of fresh-baked bread filled the air, and a pile of clean, neatly folded laundry was on his bed. He wandered into the kitchen where dinner was cooking and sat down at the counter, elbowing aside plates and silverware that were ready to be set out.
His mother smiled. “Where have you been?”
Jeff grinned back. “Turns out that there are four reasons to mow a lawn. You can do it because you’re afraid you’ll be punished if you don’t. You can do it because you’ll be rewarded if you do. Or you can do it because you have to and it’s easier to just do it than to complain.”
His mother nodded. “You said there were four reasons,” she prompted.
“Yeah.” Jeff looked down, then met his mother’s eyes. “I guess the last one is really the best one,” he admitted. “There’s nothing really wrong with the other reasons for mowing a lawn, but you only get that satisfaction you talked about if you do it because it’s the right thing to do—because it’s an act of service.”
His mother nodded. “And it isn’t true just for mowing lawns,” she said, giving him a hug. She turned to give the spaghetti sauce another stir. “We’ll eat when your dad gets home. Jeff, could you …”
She turned around and saw that he was gone—along with the plates and silverware. Then she heard a shout from the dining room.
“Hey, Mom, where did you hide the napkins?”

Then there is so much fun in Church service. I remember one hot summer evening when we were engaged in a ward building-fund project. We had contracted to supply the food service at a state fair. I was assigned to the dishwashing detail along with Bay Hutchings, another member of our ward. We were working across the counter from the customers who were enjoying our delicious food. There was a call from the cashier’s cage: “Dr. Hutchings, the hospital is calling you.” Suddenly all the forks were suspended in midair. The customers turned one to another and exclaimed, “A doctor washing dishes?” We had to immediately explain that this was a Church building-fund project. No one was being paid for his services. The waiters, cooks, dishwashers, and busboys were doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs—all having one great time working together for our project. We must never forget that the wealth, the strength, the security of the Church is our ability to labor together. Let us be a righteous example of this fundamental principle in our homes, our places of employment, our neighborhoods, our communities, our states, and our nations.

Lowell Tom Perry was born 5 August 1922 in Logan, Utah, to Leslie Thomas Perry and Nora Sonne Perry. His father served as bishop for the first eighteen years of young Tom’s life, and then as stake president’s counselor and stake president for the next twenty. His mother was a counselor in the ward Relief Society presidency the whole time Tom lived at home. Through their actions, they taught their six children that it was a privilege and a blessing to serve. Their secret was to involve the children in their callings.
“Mother was a great one for compassionate service,” he says. “She went around all the time helping people who were having difficulty, and she liked to take us with her. She would put us to work washing windows, dusting furniture, cleaning rugs, doing things children could do without causing any difficulty.”
His father put the family to work in his calling, too. “The ward building was our second home—we were there so frequently. I mowed the church lawns, washed down the walls, and shoveled coal into the old furnace to heat the building.” And Tom and his mother helped with the ward financial reports, too.
Work at home was also a family project. Even though their father was an attorney and was at his office much of the day, they had a large yard, a cow, and a vegetable garden. Much of the responsibility went to Tom, the oldest boy, to help with the chores, in addition to his delivering newspapers in the neighborhood.
When Saturday afternoon came, it “was not a time of working—it was a time to play!” During the summer, the family would go up into the nearby mountain canyons and fish, hike, play games—and eat. “Saturday afternoon was always ours as a family together. We could rely on it.”
Elder Perry remembers the spiritual training his parents gave him as a boy. “I guess my earliest recollection is saying my prayers at Mother’s knee before we went to bed. She was a woman of great faith. She was a teacher by profession, an expert teacher. [She had graduated from Utah State Agricultural College in 1910.] While ironing clothes, she would help us memorize the Articles of Faith or the multiplication tables.”
For one meal a day, she would turn the backs of the chairs to the table so the family would kneel in prayer before eating. “As we would kneel in family prayer,” Elder Perry says, “and listen to our father, a bearer of the priesthood, pour out his soul to the Lord for the protection of the family against the fiery darts of the wicked, one more layer was added to our shield of faith.”
Elder Perry doesn’t remember ever being without a testimony. “Growing up in the home I was in, it was hard not to have a testimony; it was woven into our lives by our parents.”
After graduating from high school, he attended a year of college and then was called to the (U.S.) Northern States Mission in 1942. Although he had read the Book of Mormon in seminary, it wasn’t until his mission that he developed his great love for it. “I started facing the challenge of people asking me questions, and I had to defend it. Then I knew I had to know it, and I started studying. I came to understand that it is another witness of Christ,” he says, “the second defender of the Savior and his mission.”

It was easy to understand why Kefa’s head was filled with ferocious tigers, leopards, mighty buffaloes, and elephants, for he had always lived in Cambodia until a few weeks ago when he moved away with his family.
One day his dreams took him thousands of miles away from his classroom until his friend Randy, who sat next to him, brought him back to class. It had begun to rain, and Randy’s nose wrinkled with disappointment as he moaned, "Oh, no!"
Miss Johnson heard Randy’s remark and smiled. She noticed Kefa’s puzzled eyes and explained, "We do not have Cambodia’s rainy season with all of the rain-filled days from April to October. When it rains here, it often means only a called-off ballgame!"
Kefa’s dark eyes were puzzled. A picture of a fat woolly caterpillar suddenly flashed through his head. He hesitated but finally asked, "What about the caterpillars?"
"Caterpillars!" exclaimed Randy, who thought this was a funny question. Everyone else thought so too, and laughter soon spread throughout the class.
Miss Johnson smiled, but Kefa was glad to see her head nod with understanding. He knew she would explain to him. But the bell rang, and there was no time.
Kefa wished there had been time. He would have liked his classmates to know that in his homeland the caterpillar, the woollier the better, was given as a present to a friend as a sign of real friendship.
The following day Kefa hoped he could tell his story. It seemed to him that everyone would want to know about the caterpillars. But no one seemed to be interested.
"There is much that boys and girls here do not understand about you and Cambodia," his father explained, "and you must not expect them to understand everything."
Kefa listened, and with a sigh decided his father was right. He would try hard to be patient.
But soon there was a big problem. Miss Johnson told the class that she was taking a leave of absence to go on a long journey, and everyone began thinking of giving her a going-away present.
"I do not know what to give my teacher," Kefa said to his father. If I were back home, I would not have a problem, he thought. He remembered the many times when he had taken caterpillars to his teacher in Cambodia—how she had bowed her head in thanks and how he had come away with a heart full of friendship and joy.
"Give what your heart tells you to give," Father wisely suggested.
Kefa’s dark eyes grew large and round. He could hardly believe that his father meant that Kefa would even dare to give his American teacher a caterpillar!
His father told him where to find a fat woolly caterpillar. "The great shade tree on the corner will surely house one or two, and so will the heads of cabbage in the garden."
Kefa decided to look first in the garden. The cabbages housed the woolliest of caterpillars!
"You are going to make a good present," Kefa told a fuzzy caterpillar, carefully setting it on a dark green cabbage leaf. He smiled, knowing the leaf would serve many good purposes—as a temporary home for his fine caterpillar, as food for it, and as a box for the present.
At school the next day, Kefa waited until his classmates placed their presents on Miss Johnson’s desk. After they were all opened, he shyly gave his gift to her.
"It’s a caterpillar," he explained softly.
Miss Johnson eyed the fuzzy caterpillar perched on the green cabbage leaf. Then she reached out for it and bowed, just as his teacher in Cambodia had done.
Miss Johnson held up her present for all to see and asked, "What is this, class?" A voice from the back of the room answered, "It’s a caterpillar, and friendship is a caterpillar!"
Kefa’s eyes sparkled. Everyone has been told about the caterpillar, he thought happily.
There was much that Kefa did not understand about boys and girls and the new country, but it was wonderful finding out!

They Care about Helping
Children from the Dartmouth Nova Scotia Stake got together to make warm, soft pillowcases for children in a local hospital. “It helped us think about how they feel,” said Ben S., age 11.
Using stencils, fabric pens, and sewing machines, everyone worked hard designing and decorating their gifts of love. “I feel happy that we are caring about others and not just about ourselves,” said Cora C., age 10.

My father was a man who suggested to his sons that they work early in life. He had a very convincing way of doing that; he would indicate that starting on such-and-such a date, we would begin buying our own clothes and shoes and other personal needs. In this way we were somewhat “pressed into service” to find some kind of a job.
At age 11, I attempted to obtain my first job working as a newspaper boy. I had just turned 11 and was an entire year away from the minimum age of 12 required for being a newspaper boy. It was difficult at first trying to convince the man that someone so young could really be an effective worker, but with the help of my dad, I talked him into giving me a try.
The Lord really blessed me as a young man because I was able to effectively carry out that important job. It was an important job to me for I learned as a young man how to collect and be accountable for money, how to deal with the public, and how to sell newspaper subscriptions. I remember the many contests and prizes that I won as a result of much effort in learning how to persuade people to take subscriptions to the afternoon newspaper I worked for. A tenth of my income was always paid willingly to the Lord as tithing.

The Holy Spirit has the power to guide. A 15-year-old girl felt that she needed to find new friends. She wrote to the Young Women office, “Now, I don’t know if you have ever had to change friends, but it honestly was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.” She decided to put her problem in the hands of the Lord, and she also counseled with her parents. She says that after several months “she wanted to just give up.”
One afternoon she was casually talking to her seminary teacher, and she confided her problem to him. Then he said, “I really don’t know why I am asking you this, but do you happen to know these girls?”
This girl answered with a yes. And then he said, “Have you ever thought about being friends with them?”
“I told him that there was no way that I could fit in with them. He then asked me if he could talk to one of the girls. I decided I would let him, if he promised not to embarrass me.
“Well, that next day I received a phone call from one of the girls. Now, you have to understand that this girl was on student council, and I hate to use the term, but she was ‘extremely popular.’ She asked if I would like to go to the basketball game with her that night. It was one of the funnest, most peaceful nights of my life. The next day at school, she introduced me to two other girls. We all instantly became friends.”
She concludes by saying, “I don’t know about you, but I would much rather have the Lord, who knows the outcome of everything, direct my life than me, who just sees things as they are at the time. He is right by our side, walking us through life, even when we feel so alone.”

On a beautiful September afternoon, my husband and I were in the temple awaiting the opportunity to participate in temple ordinances. Chris, a friend of ours, entered the room. It was great to see this young man, who had recently returned from a mission to Russia.

As the session was about to begin, a lovely young woman sat next to me. She was radiant, smiling, and filled with light. I wanted to know her, so I quietly introduced myself. She whispered her name, Kate, and I recognized her last name as a family that had lived in Michigan, where my family once lived. Kate was their grown-up daughter, who five weeks earlier had returned from her mission to Germany.

During the session the thought kept entering my mind: “Introduce Kate to Chris.” I put this prompting aside, thinking, “When, where, how?” As we were preparing to leave, Chris came over to tell us good-bye and I seized the opportunity. I pulled Kate over and whispered, “You are two virtuous young people who need to know each other.” I left the temple satisfied that I had acted upon my prompting.

Kate was seeking a holy place the night I met her in the temple. Desiring to weave tightly the eternal relationships that come through temple service, she followed the pattern set by her parents of regular temple attendance.

Not much happened the night I introduced Kate to Chris, but in seeking another holy place the following Sunday, Kate saw Chris amid hundreds of young single adults at an institute devotional. There they found out more about each other. A few weeks later, Chris invited her to watch general conference with him. They continued seeking places that invited the Spirit throughout their courtship and were eventually sealed in the temple, the holy place where they were introduced. Both are now fulfilling the sacred responsibility of parenthood, weaving their testimonies of the plan of salvation into the lives of three little boys, showing them the way on the covenant path.

That summer I went to Japan to stay with the family of our foreign exchange student for five weeks. During my stay, I went four weeks without going to church. Finally, in the very last week, we stopped by the Tokyo Japan Temple to take pictures. In a strange country where the language and customs were so foreign to me, it was the most comforting feeling to finally be in a familiar place. The Spirit there was so strong.
That Sunday we found a ward building, and I attended church. It was amazing to experience sacrament meeting and Sunday School in Japanese, but what hit me most was when I went to Young Women. Seeing those few Japanese girls rise and say the theme, I realized that the gospel was just as strong halfway across the world as it was at home. I knew that many of these members didn’t have the support from friends and family that I did, but they still believed. Again, I felt at home.

Years ago, I received a blue book with gold lettering on the cover from missionaries serving on the military base where I was receiving training for my job in the United States Navy.
As I started to read the book, someone told me that it was false because it was copied from the Bible. This caused me to doubt the book’s authenticity, but I held onto it. I read a little of it, put it in the bottom of my seabag, and then forgot about it.
Over a year later, I decided to clean out my seabag. I found the book but no longer had any interest in it, so I threw it away. But sometime later, I grew curious about what was in that blue book with gold lettering. I now believe that this feeling came from the Spirit, “which leadeth to do good” (Doctrine and Covenants 11:12).
In 2005 a newfound friend invited me to listen to the missionaries. At first, I had questions and doubts about what they taught, but the missionaries were confident and gave answers that made sense to me.
When I realized that these missionaries were like the ones I had met years before, I anxiously asked them, “Do you guys have a blue book with gold lettering?”
“Yes, we do!” one of them replied. “It’s called the Book of Mormon!”
I was excited to have the Book of Mormon again. In fact, I was so excited that I read it more than once in less than two weeks! As I read and prayed, I came to know that it is the word of God.

When I was seven years old, my grandma became very frail. Mom and Dad worried that Grandma couldn’t cook for herself. They worried that she would fall down the steps of her porch and not be able to get up. Dad said, “When people get old, sometimes their bones break easily.” Grandma was very old. That was why Mom and Dad worried about her.
One night they talked about Grandma. They talked way past my bedtime and thought that I was asleep. I couldn’t sleep because I was worried about Grandma, too. I didn’t want her to get hurt. I wanted to play old maid (a matching game played with special cards) with her as we always did.
She was the best old maid player ever. She nearly always won—except when she let me win. I knew she let me win, because she’d always say, “Everyone needs to be a winner.” One time I think I really beat her in a game of old maid. When she got the “old maid,” she squealed and laughed so hard, and she called me a “little stinker.” I laughed because it made her laugh more. I loved to hear her laugh.
“We’re moving to Grandma’s house,” Dad told me the next morning.
“Grandma’s house?” I asked.
“That’s right. We’re moving in two weeks.”
“Hurray—we’re going to Grandma’s house!” I shouted. I ran into the bedroom where my two younger brothers were still sleeping. I pulled their covers off and yelled at the top of my lungs. “We’re going to move to Grandma’s house!”
They woke up and rubbed their eyes. “Huh?” was all they said.
I hurried off to tell my baby sister. She gooed and made funny gurgling sounds. Then she squealed really loud and threw her pink piggy rattle out of the crib so that I would fetch it for her. I picked up the rattle and put it in her hand. She said “Gram-ma.” No one believed that she said it, but I know what I heard.
Grandma’s house was big enough for her and my whole family to live in. We pulled into her driveway and unloaded all our stuff. I went running into the kitchen, where she nearly always was cooking something good to eat. She wasn’t there. I ran into the living room that had Grandpa’s picture hanging above the fireplace. She wasn’t there, either. I ran out of the living room and right into Daddy’s legs.
“Hold on, sweetheart,” he said. “Where are you going so fast?”
“I’m looking for Grandma. I can’t find her.”
“Come with me, sweetheart. I’ll show you where she is.”
Dad took me to Grandma’s bedroom. She was asleep in her big shiny brass bed. I started to talk to her. “Grand—”
“Shhhh,” Daddy whispered. “Grandma needs her rest.”
“Will she be able to play old maid with me, Daddy?” I asked in my softest voice.
“I think she would like that, sweetheart. I think she would like that a whole lot.”
And that’s what we did, Grandma and I. She couldn’t get out of bed much, so I brought the old maid cards to her. I’d climb up the post of her big brass bed. Then I’d smooth out the quilt that she said was made from pieces of Grandpa’s old wool plaid shirts. Then we played old maid until we both fell asleep.
On the very last game I was ever to play with Grandma, she squealed really loud and laughed because she got the “old maid.” She called me a “little stinker.” Then she gave me a big hug and said, “You’re the winner, my little darling. You’re the winner.”

My name is Modibo Diarra. In 1981 I had the honor of being the first person to be baptized a member of the Church in my native land of Mali. It is hard to believe how much my life has changed since then, and that it all happened because my dog was sick!
Mali is in northwestern Africa. The climate is hot, dry, and dusty. Although the official language is French, many people speak Bambara, a local language. Most are Moslems. Our capital, Bamako, is a medium-sized city on the Niger River. Here our family lives in typical Malian style.
Our home consists of four square walls surrounding a large open courtyard. Small rooms open onto the yard, where the shade of a tall tree is used for family gatherings. Against one wall are pens for chickens and rabbits, and a goat wanders freely, seeking food.
One day, my dog got sick, and I thought it might be a case of rabies. At that time I was a school teacher, and one of my students told me about an American veterinarian, Dr. Jerry Zaugg, who was working in Mali. I arranged for Dr. Zaugg to come to our house and asked my wife to prepare tea for him, as is the custom here. But our guest declined to drink the tea. He said it was contrary to the teachings of his church. That interested me, and I asked him many questions.
Several good things came from that visit. First, I learned that my dog did not have rabies. But, more importantly, Dr. Zaugg asked me to tutor him in French. I agreed to do so, and after each of our French lessons, Dr. Zaugg would tell me about his church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He invited me to attend Church services with two American families who were meeting in a house. The meetings were in English, which I did not speak well then, but the Church members gave me books in French: the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and A Marvelous Work and a Wonder. The Spirit was beautiful and strong, and eventually I was converted and baptized.
After my conversion, I became a better husband and father. My wife and children could not believe how much I changed. My two oldest boys, Amadou and Gausou, began to ask about the Church and read the Book of Mormon. They were baptized in 1984. Soon they were inviting other young people to see Church films and to meet the American members who lived in Mali. We had no official branch, but I kept a history of our sacrament meetings in a green book with the word Record on the cover.
As a Church member, I received many blessings. Then came a period that greatly tried my faith. In February 1988, I lost my job as a teacher and my position as a leader in the teachers’ union. I was thwarted on all sides in my efforts to find work. My life had been dedicated to teaching. How would I now support my wife and six children? And how would I feed the eleven other relatives who, for economic reasons, were living in our home?
Everybody worked hard to bring in money. My wife took in sewing, while Amadou and Gausou used a lathe to make tools to sell. Their younger brother cleaned shoes. Even my mother opened a small business selling spices. Eventually I had to sell the family car, for which we had saved for years. I pleaded with the Lord to help me provide for my family.
During this difficult time, a package arrived from Church officials in Salt Lake City containing a simplified version of Gospel Principles, which had been translated into Bambara. They asked if I would check the translation and then translate twelve hymns. As soon as I began this work, I realized its importance and tried to do it as correctly as possible. I struggled many times to find the right word or expression. Then, at other times, my mind would open in a remarkable way—as though someone were dictating to me. (When I finished the translations, I asked them to keep most of the money they were to pay me. I considered it my tithing.) I continued to pray constantly because of our desperate situation.
Little did I guess what would happen next. In May, I received a letter from an old friend, an American doctor named James Ferwarda. I had met Dr. Ferwarda during his visit to Mali in 1985. At his request, I had accompanied him on a tour of my country. Now, to my great surprise, he was sending me a round-trip airplane ticket and inviting me to visit him at his home in the United States!
I was astonished, overwhelmed at his offer. But it seemed impossible for me to leave my family at this critical time. The Church members urged me to accept the invitation, however. Perhaps, they said, the Lord would open the way for me to go to the temple while I was in the United States. Like many members, I cherished the dream of attending the temple “someday.”
Still dumbfounded, I did go, “not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.” (See 1 Ne. 4:6.) It was incredible that someone who was barely surviving financially could make such an expensive trip. After I arrived in the United States, Dr. Ferwarda learned of my deep desire to attend the temple, which was more than 2,000 kilometers away. Although he was not a member of the Church, he told me, “I respect your opinion, and I will pay for your ticket to Salt Lake City, too.”
I visited the Church offices as soon as I arrived in Salt Lake City. I will never, ever forget that day. Elder Alexander Morrison of the Seventy ordained me an elder. Then I went to the temple and received the endowment. Everyone in the temple was so kind. The beauty and serenity there moved me deeply. I was also impressed by the young missionaries, whom I saw for the first time. Now I knew that I wanted my sons to serve missions.
The next day, I visited the offices of a humanitarian organization that sponsors a number of agricultural and educational projects in Mali. Hoping that they might need my services, I met with several administrators but returned to Mali without a job offer.
Our family’s trial of faith lasted five more months. During that time I was grateful for the temple ordinances, which strengthened me. Nevertheless, I often felt like a man who was drowning in a deep river. Daily I entreated the Lord to deliver us from our economic crisis. Then, in November, the miracle came. The humanitarian organization that I had met with in Salt Lake City sent me a telegram, notifying me that I had been hired as their new field director. I knew without a doubt that only the Lord’s hand had plucked me from the river.
My job is a challenging one, requiring negotiations with government officials, local trainers, and village chiefs. Whenever I begin something that seems impossible, someone is sure to say, “You will never accomplish that!” But I know the Lord has the power to help me. I pray, and things work out somehow. I am still not rich, but I can feed my family and the others who depend on me. And now I am able to travel to Utah on business once a year. During these visits, I go to the temple, and I am sometimes able to attend general conference.
Other things have happened, wonderful things. In 1992 my son Amadou completed his mission to French-speaking Canada. There he helped to teach and baptize many people, including African immigrants and Moslems. Now both he and Gausou are studying in the United States. Gausou, too, wants to serve a mission some day. I pray that he will, and that all the rest of my family will join the Church. I pray that all of my children will be good students and honest citizens.
I look forward to the day when the Church will be organized in Mali. As of this writing, I am the only resident member of the Church here. I sustain myself spiritually by praying in all circumstances and by reading the Book of Mormon. And I still have in my care a worn green book with the word Record on the cover. But in my heart I carry another record. I will remember forever how the Lord has poured out his blessings upon me.

When I turned 12 years old, I went on my first overnight campout with the Scouts. With eager hands I packed my hand-me-down camping gear and headed to the mountains with the troop. I ended up sleeping in a large tent with several other boys, including my older brother. Being the newest and youngest Scout, I felt somewhat intimidated by it all. It was nice to have my older brother with me. He was big and strong and older than most of the other Scouts.

As we all prepared for bed, I quietly climbed out of my sleeping bag and knelt down to say my nightly prayer. As I was praying, I could hear some of the other boys laughing at what I was doing. I was embarrassed and stopped.

My older brother came to my rescue. Responding to the teasing boys, he said in a loud voice, “If my little brother wants to pray, he’s going to pray. Anybody object?”

Not a word was said, and I went back to my prayer. I have often thought of this experience, and I’m thankful for my brother who taught me not to be ashamed to pray regardless of where we are.

When Suluya is asked about her conversion, she gladly shares the details of her Christmas Eve baptism. She beams as she remembers that day. Suluya then mentions the death of her father a few years ago. He was 47.
“Although I’ve always wanted my family to join the Church, his death has encouraged me even more to help my mom and my sister get baptized. I’m trying so hard to get them to come to church with me,” she says.
When Suluya was baptized, her family didn’t attend the service. “But they understand now that I hold sacred the covenant I made with the Lord, and they respect my decision and support me. Still, it’s hard to see families sitting together at church, and my family isn’t there. When you have something this good, you want to share it with your family.”
Suluya admits she was closer to her father than to her mother, but she says one good thing has come of his death. “It’s brought my sister and me closer to our mom. We’ve really gotten to know our mom better,” she explains.

Corrie Ten Boom, the daughter of a Dutch watchmaker, and her family courageously hid and rescued many Jews during the Holocaust. For this, she was eventually imprisoned along with her family. In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom describes some of the sufferings she endured and witnessed at the German concentration camps.[4] At one point, Corrie shares the miraculous story of how she and her sister Betsie smuggled into camp a few pages of the Bible. They sacrificed their very lives to have the words of God accompany them into this dark world.

Corrie describes Betsie thanking God for the fleas which overran their sleeping barracks. Appalled at Betsie's gratitude, Corrie questions her sister. Betsie explains that the German guards choose to bypass their infested quarters while on patrol because of these heaven-sent bugs. Thus, each evening Betsie is safe to read aloud from the Bible. Prisoners crowd around. Translators whisper the words throughout the body-packed building, sharing the messages in various languages. These verses bring hope, light, and some solace during a time of darkness, evil, and tragic disregard for human life. Betsie continued to read from these pages until illness stole her from this world. Before she returned home, she clung to Heavenly Father's words to remind her of our Savior and a better world.

Commissioner Eyring, who was also an Apostle at the time, spent much of the summer of 2001 writing and rewriting the talk President Hinckley had assigned him to give. By early September, he had the Prophet’s approval of his text.
But then the unthinkable happened. On Tuesday, September 11, terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, and more than 6,000 were injured.
Like so many others, I will never forget where I was when the awful news came. I lived in Utah at the time and was driving to Church headquarters for a meeting with the seven members of the Presidency of the Seventy. Upon entering their conference room in the Church Administration Building, I felt great gratitude for the peace that prevailed there, notwithstanding our limited knowledge of what was going on in New York and Washington. I will never forget the comfort of Elder Christofferson’s prayer to begin our meeting, which was blessed by the Spirit even in that hour of terrible uncertainty.
Upon returning home, I learned more about the devastation in New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania, as well as the cessation of all air traffic in the United States. My first thought was to call my father. By coincidence, we were both scheduled to give talks to college students the next Tuesday. I expected him to confirm my feeling that we should both cancel our addresses. My talk, on the subject of succeeding in college, seemed trivial and inappropriate under the tragic circumstances of 9/11.
But my father’s reaction was entirely different. He felt that the remarks he had prepared at President Hinckley’s direction would be perfectly appropriate at BYU-Idaho, perhaps even providentially so.
In hindsight, Commissioner Eyring couldn’t have been more right. But, to his credit, he made things work out, in several ways. First, he recognized the connection between the sweeping changes occurring at BYU-Idaho and the great uncertainty that hung over the world in consequence of the apocalyptic terrorist attacks, which seemed repeatable and even unpreventable. He optimistically decided to make the theme of change central to the address that had been in the works for months.
Though there wasn’t time to get President Hinckley’s approval of a new draft, Commissioner Eyring significantly expanded his emphasis on responding productively to change. You can hear that emphasis in this clip from his talk:
Now the other thing I was impressed with is that you were asked to raise your scriptures. I felt as you did that to make a promise to you that I know will be fulfilled because it has been fulfilled for me in the last few days. We live in a time of increasing difficulty and change. Many of us have felt some things that led us to the scriptures. In the last few days, I have found things I had never seen there before because, in my extremity, the Lord showed me things that He had prepared long ago to help me. I’ll make you a promise: If you will, in the next few hours and days, go to the scriptures, you will, as you read them (pick them anywhere that you’re led to read) see scriptures speaking to you as if it was the voice of God, as if He knew your needs and your concerns; and He will tailor that to you, and it will be a witness to you that He knows you and that in that set of scriptures that you lifted above your head is a means by which He can guide you and comfort you. I promise you, you’ll have that experience—and it will be very personal—in the next few days.
In fact, the talk “A Steady, Upward Course” uses some form of the word “change” 44 times. Ironically, not all of those references to change were planned. As if it were a dose of his own medicine, Commissioner Eyring started his talk with a change in his expectations. In those days, teleprompters were still rare. But, in an effort to be on the cutting edge of technology, BYU-Idaho audio/visual specialists Jim Croasmun, Arlen Wilcock, and Alan Young had rigged up a system using laptop computers and cables, the first-ever use of a teleprompter on this campus.
Jim, Arlen, and Alan knew that their prototype system might not work perfectly. But they had spent many days rigging and testing it. And, in the hour leading up to the devotional address, it was working well.
You can guess what happened. Minutes before the talk was to begin, the teleprompter screens went blank. Jim, Arlen, and Alan’s professional lives flashed before their eyes. Yet Commissioner Eyring didn’t miss a beat. In fact, he seemed to feel liberated by the blank teleprompter screens.
President Eyring’s teleprompter never came back on—until a few minutes after he finished speaking. To this day, Brothers Croasmun, Wilcock, and Young can’t explain why. Yet, in hindsight, it was meant to be. President Eyring ended up speaking—mostly off the cuff—for nearly an hour. And the things he said, in the spirit of prophecy, have proven invaluable to generations of BYU-Idaho students and employees.

I was born in Salt Lake City but raised in Whittier, California, a suburb about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. I was raised in a home where, during my early years, we were less active. When I turned 11, we moved to a new home and began to attend church more frequently. We were sealed in the temple when I was 13. Now my brothers and I are all active members of the Church. We have all served missions. My brothers and I were married in the temple, but these are not things you would have predicted based on our early years.