Gospel Story Finder

In yet another stake conference, a dear sister confined to a wheelchair testified of the strength that she had received from feeling the Lord’s love through reading the Book of Mormon. Earlier her devoted husband had been able to help her adjust to the crippling effects of her illness. Now he was bedridden, and she spoke of her gratitude that the Lord had empowered her with greater strength to be more self-reliant and better care for her own needs. She had even been given additional strength to minister to the many needs of her dear companion, who now tenderly cared for her and had done so for so many years. Loving family and Church associates had also been helpful so that the couple were able to remain in their own home with precious memories of earlier happy family associations.

I totally understand how you feel. I felt left out, too, because of the way I looked. First, I went to all the Church activities, even if I didn’t want to. I talked to some girls that I knew and asked them what I should do. I got to know them better, and one of them took me shopping. She helped me find clothes at reasonable prices that looked great on me. I got to know their feelings, and they gave me helpful hints on how to look better. Try to show the people at your ward your wonderful personality.
Miranda Dargan, 14Tacoma, Washington

Sometimes we do our very best to understand a question. We study it out in our mind and try every way we can to come to our best decision. At that point, we will sometimes receive additional guidance—things we hadn’t thought of, protection from dangers we couldn’t anticipate, an open pathway we wouldn’t have thought of.
Normally the Holy Ghost doesn’t tell us things that we know we should do. I’ve never had the Holy Ghost tell me to go to bed on time. I knew I was supposed to do that. Usually, the Holy Ghost helps alert us to things after we’ve done everything we can.
When I was deciding about graduate school, I had been granted a scholarship at a wonderful school. Yet, after studying things as best I could and coming to what I thought was my best decision, I had a very clear feeling that I should apply to a different school.
So I did and ended up attending a different graduate school than I had initially planned. At that critical juncture, after I had done all I could, quiet guidance took me from one set of opportunities to another that opened many possibilities and blessings I would never have anticipated on my own.

Several months ago my husband performed the baptism of a dear friend. As I sat in the service, my mind and heart raced over her years of preparation for that single event—the principles carefully taught, constantly observed, and quietly accepted, the acknowledgment of God’s hand in life events, the sweet confirmation of the Spirit as difficult, but right, choices were made. My mind recalled the past and rejoiced in the present, and I couldn’t help but anticipate the future. I hoped with all my heart that this good woman would remain actively connected to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the rest of her life—that she would continue to learn and live the gospel and experience the fulness of its blessings.
I telephoned our newly baptized friend last week to ask how things were going for her. Her response was enthusiastic: “My husband and I have been called to teach the 15- and 16-year-olds, and I’m learning so much!” I felt reassured and excited. What better place than a classroom—for her and for each of us!

Illustrations by Bradley Clark
An overnight campout with all kinds of outdoor activities had been planned for Friday and Saturday, and I was eager to accompany my son. Carl had a part-time job and had to work Friday, so I proposed picking him up Friday evening after work. We planned to park at a bridge above the campsite and then hike down.
When we arrived at the bridge, it was dark, with only a sliver of the moon and a few stars shining in the sky. The trail to the campsite was carved out of the face of a cliff that ran alongside the river. We were about 300 yards (275 m) above the river when we began our hike.
Not far down the trail our flashlight began to dim, and the trail seemed to disappear at times in the faulty light. Suddenly something told me to stop. I halted abruptly but then took two more steps forward. The feeling or voice then repeated, “Stop!”
I stopped again. Carl, close behind, almost ran into me.
“What’s going on, Dad?” he asked.
I told him about the prompting, adding that we needed to go home and that we would return in the morning.
“Dad, I can see the campfire,” he responded. “It can’t be more than a mile (1.6 km) away.”
Recognizing that the prompting had come from the Holy Ghost, I insisted that we not take another step. The flashlight had gone dead, so we cautiously hiked back up the trail. Carl was disappointed and didn’t talk much on our way home.
Early the next morning we returned to the bridge and began hiking again. At least Carl would be able to participate in Saturday’s activities. We hurried along until, all of a sudden, the trail disappeared! Then it hit us. We had arrived at the exact spot where we had stopped the night before.
“Dad, it’s at least 100 yards (91 m) straight down to the river,” Carl said. “We would have been killed!”
The cliff stretched steeply below us down to the river. In front of us there was a gap in the trail about 12 feet (3.6 m) wide, the aftermath of a recent storm.
Carl and I hugged each other as our tears flowed. Then we climbed to another trail and made our way to the campsite. We arrived just in time for breakfast.
A warning sign was supposed to have been placed on the first trail but wasn’t. Thankfully, a warning sign came to us from the Holy Ghost.

Before my mission, I had things I, too, needed to clear up with the bishop. I was afraid to talk to him at church because I thought it would look obvious. So I called him at work and said I would be playing basketball at Mutual. I asked him if he could casually ask to speak with me for a minute or two. I remember the feelings I had experienced. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I walked out of my bishop’s office feeling much better.
Name withheld

From her playhouse inside the willow thicket Hannah heard her mother call, “Where are you, dear? I need you.”
After putting her clothespin dolls in their secret hiding place, Hannah went into the house.
“I’m glad you came so quickly, Hannah,” Mother said with a smile. “I must hurry over to Sister Hansen’s house. Would you please bring some potatoes from the root cellar so I can start supper when I come back.”
“Oh, Mother!” Hannah’s skin prickled with dread. “The cellar’s full of spiders, and today I saw a toad hop out. I don’t want to go down there.”
“Sometimes we all must do things we don’t want to do. Take your little brother with you if you like,” Mother said, putting her hand on Sammy’s shoulder.
“I’ll go with you,” Sammy said good-naturedly. And standing tall and brave, he added, “I’m not afraid of anything!”
But after their mother started down the lane, her long skirt swinging and her flowered sunbonnet bright, Sammy said, “I don’t like that old root cellar much either.”
“I’ll tell Mother if you don’t come,” scolded Hannah.
Her brother poked his hands into his overall pockets defiantly and wouldn’t budge. Hannah glared at him a moment and then, trying to look brave, marched toward the slanting plank door placed at ground level behind the house. She lifted the door, then closed it quickly. Just to look at the uneven steps cut into the damp earth made Hannah shudder.
Spiders and dimness were bad enough, but yesterday she’d heard Father say to Mr. Hansen, “When we finish that irrigation ditch to my property line, I must take time to finish my root cellar. Those temporary supports propping up that dirt roof might not hold.”
If I had only remembered to tell Mother what Father said, thought Hannah, she wouldn’t want me and Sammy to go into the cellar. She turned to walk away. Then Hannah remembered how sad and weak Mother looked since the new baby died and how hard Father had to work. Hannah knew she must do her share, but she decided her brother would have to go with her whether he wanted to or not.
Hannah turned to Sammy, who had followed her. “You go down first,” she ordered.
“Not me!” his freckled face was stubborn.
“You’re just a fraidycat!”
Sammy cried, “I am not! Dumb old toads and spiders don’t scare me.” With that, he stooped and threw open the cellar door, and his sister barely managed to stop it from banging shut again.
Hannah started down the steps behind her brother, walking backward so she could prop the door open. Then Sammy’s voice, echoing in the small enclosure, mocked, “Hannah’s a fraidycat!”
Angry, she swung around, lost her hold on the door, and it banged shut, knocking her down the steps.
Hannah rose to her knees, terrified by the darkness. If toads and spiders were near, she couldn’t even see them.
“Hannah, what happened?” cried Sammy. But she didn’t answer because she was startled at the heaviness of wet earth falling on her head and shoulders.
The roof is caving in! she thought. The door banging shut must have knocked the boards loose that Father had used as props.
Nearby she heard her little brother call, “Oh, Hannah, help! I’m all covered with dirt!”
“I’ll be there in a minute, Sammy,” Hannah promised as she groped in the dark, trying to find the door to shove it open. But her searching hands clutched at only wet dirt. The entrance was blocked. She and Sammy were trapped in the root cellar.
The darkness around them was like nothing Hannah had ever imagined. Blue-dark of night with silver starlight was nothing like this brown-dark with its loamy dankness, a blackness filled with shifting dirt particles.
Sammy was crying with loud, choking sobs. I mustn’t cry, Hannah thought, even though I’m scared too. We don’t have enough air, and my chest is beginning to hurt.
She reached for her brother. When her hand touched his shoulder she struggled closer so that she could hug him.
“Don’t cry, Sammy,” she comforted. “We must try to breathe carefully so we don’t use up all the air in here.”
He gulped, “What can we do, Hannah?”
“We can pray,” she told him, and then closing her eyes Hannah began, “Heavenly Father, please help me and Sammy. We’re almost buried in this cellar and nobody’s home. Please help us get out.”
Talking hurt her throat so she said, “Amen,” silently. The air in the cellar was nearly gone.
Hannah was no longer worried about toads and spiders as she reached around the area where she and Sammy crouched. Her fingers touched a rough object. Running her hand across its surface she knew she had found a board Father had used to support the roof.
“Help me, Sammy,” she gasped. “Let’s try to poke a hole through over our heads.”
Her brother’s hands met hers. Together they grasped the splintery board, pushing it upright until Hannah felt it strike solid dirt.
“All right, Sammy. Let’s push, but be careful. We mustn’t knock any more dirt loose.”
Silent, gasping, they carefully prodded the unseen roof over their heads again and again.
Just as Sammy whispered, “I’m too tired, Hannah,” the board pushed free. They had broken through!
Sammy’s hands dropped, but Hannah, trembling, worked the board back and forth until she saw a blue circle of light. They had air, but would it be enough? There was still a tightness in her chest and Sammy, sobbing again, sounded feeble.
Hannah took a breath, then held it. “What’s that noise?” she whispered.
A steady thud, thump, thud vibrated the dirt around them. Someone is outside, but Mother wouldn’t have come back from the Hansens so soon, Hannah decided.
Suddenly an opening that let in more light and air appeared near the door and a man’s voice called, “Anybody there?”
“Yes! We’re in here.”
“You OK?”
Hannah couldn’t answer, but the man said, “Hang on. I’ll have you out in a minute.”
When a pair of hands appeared, Hannah somehow managed to push Sammy toward the opening where he could be pulled out. Then she felt strong fingers around her wrists, and she was tugged through the small opening made in the damp earth.
Hannah blinked in the bright, clean air as Brother Card looked down at her, a smile on his bearded face.
She stumbled to her feet beside Sammy just as Father’s horse clattered up. Jumping down, he ran to Sammy and Hannah and hugged them close. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
“We are now, Father,” Hannah answered, “but we nearly smothered. The roof of the cellar caved in.”
“It’s all my fault,” Father said, rubbing his forehead. “I should have fixed that roof long ago.”
Brother Card comforted, “Now, don’t blame yourself, Joseph. Every settler in town has had more work to do than he has had time for.”
“Hannah saved us, Father,” Sammy said. “We poked a hole through the roof with a board.”
“That’s what I saw when I came by, which was a mighty strange thing for me to do,” Brother Card explained. “I haven’t cut across your property in the two years we’ve been neighbors, Joseph. Wasn’t going to this afternoon either. But for some reason my feet turned this way. First thing you know I saw that board sticking through the ground, waving like a signal. Guess the Lord guided me here.”
Sammy and Hannah smiled at each other. “Brother Card, we know He did,” Hannah said quietly.

The door burst open. Cold winter air rushed into the hall with Billy. Mike, his older brother, crowded in behind, followed by Mom and Dad.
“Grandma! We’re here for dinner!” Billy shouted. He hurried into the kitchen, smelling spicy pumpkin pie, roasted turkey, and sage dressing.
Grandma smiled. “It’ll take a while to get dinner on the table, boys,” she said. “You’ll find crayons and paper on the hall table. How about a picture?”
At the table, Mike began coloring, but Billy peered into the living room. It was full of porcelain figurines, an old sugar bowl, and other treasures. Grandma called them heirlooms. Each had its own pioneer story.
Billy’s gaze fastened on a small mirror on a shelf. Billy loved the mirror most because its story was his favorite.
Billy turned away from the living room and was reaching for a red crayon when the big oval mirror at the end of the hall caught his eye. He forgot about the crayon, walked to the mirror, and stretched as tall as he could.
“What are you doing?” Mike asked.
“Trying to see a child of God.”
“Too short, huh?” Mike said. Under the mirror, a low shelf held Grandma’s prized Boston fern. “I’ll give you a boost up to the shelf.”
With Mike’s arms around him, Billy kicked his feet in search of the shelf. He found the shelf, but knocked the fern to the floor. Black dirt spilled all over the carpet. The fern was smashed and broken, its bare roots sticking into the air.
Suddenly the shelf gave way. Billy bumped heads with Mike as he fell, then landed facedown in the dirt.
“What will we do?” Billy whispered, pushing himself up.
“Sometimes the cat gets on the shelf,” Mike said. “Maybe Grandma will think the cat did it.”
“But it wouldn’t be the truth,” Billy said. “We did it, so we should tell.”
“OK, but let’s wait until after dinner.”
“Wash up and come to dinner, boys,” Mom called.
When the two boys sat down at the table, Grandpa said the blessing. Everybody started to eat, but the food tasted like rubber in Billy’s mouth.
“Is something wrong?” Dad asked.
“I don’t like peas very much,” Billy mumbled.
Dad frowned. “How did you get the bump on your forehead?”
“Excuse me,” Billy mumbled, and fled to the bathroom.
Mom and Dad followed him. “Are you sick?” Mom asked.
Billy shook his head. “I stood on Grandma’s shelf. It broke. When I fell, Mike and I bumped heads. I just wanted to see a child of God in the big mirror.” Billy’s chest heaved. “Grandma’s fern is ruined. I feel awful—not at all like a child of God.”
“I helped him get on the shelf,” Mike said in a soft voice from behind Mom and Dad. “We didn’t know it would break. I don’t feel like a child of God either.”
“We thought maybe you’d think the cat did it,” Billy said. “We decided to tell the truth after dinner.”
“Well, now,” Grandma said, joining them. “No matter what you do, you are always a child of God. But I’m glad that you chose to tell the truth.”
Grandpa looked at the bent brackets that had held the shelf to the wall. “I reckon this can be fixed,” he said. “Grandma’s fern can be repotted. It looks pretty bedraggled, but it’ll likely grow out again.”
Grandma put the broken fern into the pot. “Even if it doesn’t grow, I can get a new plant,” she said. “But I could never replace these two children of God.”
“Look,” Dad said, holding Billy up to the mirror. “See the child who was tempted to blame the cat, but didn’t? How about giving him a smile?”
Billy managed a weak smile.
Back at the table, Billy noticed that everything—even the peas—now tasted delicious.
After dinner, Billy held the little mirror as Grandma told the story of how it had comforted the girl who was his long-ago grandma.
When the story was finished, all of them took a turn telling something each was thankful for. Billy looked into the little mirror and said, “I’m thankful to be a child of God.”

A few months later, during Christmas time, Radmila began to hear more about Jesus Christ. There were shows on television about his life, and people talked about him more. She wanted to learn about him, and she remembered the Book of Mormon. She began to read it. “I couldn’t understand a thing,” she recalls. “It wasn’t that the German was too difficult for me, it was just that I didn’t understand words like repentance because I had never heard of them before.”
She decided she would call the missionaries for help. At the same time, two new missionaries were praying for inspiration about which investigators on their list to visit. They both felt that Radmila needed them. When they knocked, she opened the door and said, once again, “Oh, come in—I’ve been waiting for you.”
She still didn’t want to hear the missionary discussions, but she set up a study schedule with them. Each week she would read ten chapters in the Book of Mormon, write down her thoughts, and then discuss them with the missionaries.
“They were so patient with my sometimes provoking and unimportant questions,” she says. “One time I told them not to come in because I hadn’t read that week. They suggested that we read together. We started reading about Ammon, and then they said they had to leave. I couldn’t believe it. For the first time, I was beginning to feel the Spirit and get excited about the book. As soon as they left, I went to my room and finished the story.”

Nature provides some striking parallels. The late film producer Cecil B. DeMille shared this experience:
“One day as I was lying in a canoe, a big black beetle … climbed up to the canoe. I watched it idly for some time.
“Under the heat of the sun, the beetle proceeded to die. Then a strange thing happened. His glistening black shell cracked all the way down the back. Out of it came a shapeless mass, quickly transformed into beautifully, brilliantly-colored life. … There gradually unfolded iridescent wings from which the sunlight flashed a thousand colors. … The blue-green body took shape.
“Before my eyes had occurred a metamorphosis—the transformation of a hideous beetle into a gorgeous dragonfly. … I had witnessed … a miracle. Out of the mud had come a beautiful new life. And the thought came to me that if the Creator works such wonders with the lowliest of creatures, what may not be in store for the human spirit!”

The first reason he listed was: Karen.
Karen was a girl in his ward. They had dated for the last few months.
“Do you know when I like you most?” she had asked a few weeks ago.
“When I wear my aftershave and my sweater and get to use my dad’s car,” he answered.
“No, not then,” she smiled. “It’s in sacrament meeting when I watch you break the bread and bless the sacrament. You look so, well, clean.”
He grinned at her. “After all the money I’ve sunk for aftershave, you tell me that.”
“It must be neat to hold the priesthood, to realize that the Savior was the first one to give that prayer and that in a way you’re standing in for him.”
“I’ve never thought about it like that before,” he said quietly.
Another time he had driven her home from church. They sat in the car while she told him about her lesson that day. The bishop’s wife had come to talk to the Laurels.
“She said one thing that really impressed me,” Karen said. “‘You never know but that the guy you’re dating may some day turn out to be your bishop. It happened to me, didn’t it? You treat him like a future bishop.’ So that’s what I’m going to do, Troy.”
He wasn’t sure if he really wanted that or not, but it turned out okay. She still let him kiss her, but now only on the steps to her house, not in a parked car.

In the middle of the night, my husband and I both awoke and felt an evil presence in our home. Just as surely as I had felt the Holy Ghost in the bishop’s office, I now felt the adversary. As I lay in bed, I realized I had made Satan very unhappy by returning to the Church. I prayed with all my heart, and in time I felt the presence go away.
My husband and I didn’t have a chance to talk about the experience until the next evening, when I picked him up in a town about 48 kilometers from our house. During the ride home, he asked, “What happened last night?”
Because my husband believes that when a person sins it is between that person and God and should not be the concern of other people, I had told him the previous night that I was only going to a Church meeting. Now I told him all about what had happened in the bishop’s office, the feelings of love and comfort, and my return to full fellowship. I bore my testimony of the system Heavenly Father has set up to enable his children to repent and get their lives in order. I told him I felt the adversary was very unhappy with my actions, and that is why we had felt his influence during the night. I told him I wished I had the priesthood in my home, but I knew Heavenly Father would watch over our family. As I finished, I felt strongly that I should close in the name of Jesus Christ, so I did.
My husband didn’t say anything until we were pulling into our driveway. Then he said, “I think you’re right.”

George Hay was born in Erskine, Scotland, in 1836. His parents, Alexander and Jessie, were the first members to be baptised in Scotland on January 14, 1840. With his parents, he sailed for America from Liverpool, England, in 1841. They landed at New Orleans on October 19, 1841, from where they proceeded to Nauvoo, the Latter-day Saint city in Illinois.
Church records confirm that Alexander Hay was ordained a seventy in 1846, and Alexander and Jessie received their own endowments in the Nauvoo Temple. In September 1848, hearing of opportunities in Texas, and seeking a land free from the antagonism directed at that time to Latter-day Saints, the family started their journey with others to Texas in wagons drawn by mules. A long trip was ahead of them with all sorts of dangers and perils, but fearlessly the little band pursued their journey. George Hay was then a small boy, 12 years of age.
Their destination was Zodiac, a Latter-day Saint settlement on the Pedernales River, which they reached after nearly three months on the road. In company with a large party of Latter-day Saints, they decided to transfer their location to the county of Bandera, reaching there in March 1854. On his arrival in Bandera, George subsequently said, “This was a beautiful country then, a wilderness it is true, but inviting and offering our people wonderful possibilities.”
George Hay was appointed deputy clerk, then county clerk, and then became Judge George Hay of Bandera County, Texas—so a boy from Bishopton, in the Paisley Scotland Stake, became Judge of Bandera County, Texas.
Judge Hay says, “In 1861, when the Civil War came on, … I was commissioned a lieutenant, but being an officer made no difference to me. I went into ranks, stood guard, and performed all the duties of a private.”
He continues, “There are many thrilling incidents connected with the history of this country. Many tragedies have taken place, many hardships were endured by the first settlers, … many of our sons have gone out and won high places in the world, many of our daughters have married and raised manly sons and lovely daughters who are today filling places of usefulness in different parts of the country. I am proud that I can look back upon the sixty-nine years that I have spent here and realise the wonderful changes that have taken place, all for the betterment of mankind and the glory of American manhood and womanhood that brought these things to pass.”
Judge Hay spent his declining years at the old family homestead in Bandera, where for many years he and his good wife kept open house to travellers and entertained many distinguished visitors under their roof.
George Hay died at the age 89 on 6 February 1925 and was buried in Bandera. His wife, Virginia, passed away in Bandera on 6 November 1941 at the age of 97.
This story can be found in the Hondo Anvil Herald newspaper, Texas USA1.

When Sabrina was a freshman, Eva gave her a Book of Mormon with her testimony written in the front. As Sabrina read, she and Eva would talk about it. But another friend saw her reading it and persuaded her not to finish her reading. It took two years of talking with her LDS friends and taking the missionary discussions before Sabrina was ready for baptism. She said, “I prayed one day and I got part of my answer. I felt I was doing the right thing. Everything seemed to be right. The more I prayed, the stronger I felt it was right.”
Sabrina’s baptism affected her life in many ways. “My dad was glad because he’s seen a big change in me.” When asked how she has changed, Sabrina is a little at a loss for words. Her friends chime in with a list. “She’s a lot happier, getting better grades, involved in a lot more things, more self-confident.” Then Sabrina added a few more. “I was kind of shy, but now I’m not as much. It has changed how I feel about my friends and my family, my brothers and sisters.”
Sabrina’s friends and family aren’t the only ones who have noticed a change for the better. Sabrina says that before she joined the Church, she barely made passing grades. She will be the first one of her brothers and sisters to finish high school and the first to go on to college. “My teachers and counselors have all seen this big change. They look back at records and say, ‘What happened? What did she do that is so different?’ I was nowhere, and now I set goals.”

I rummaged through the old, dusty bin, angel in hand. I’d crocheted the angel’s head and body, but I needed yellow yarn to complete the halo and wings, and I wasn’t sure if I had any.
I’d learned to crochet when I was 11, but then I went about a decade without picking up a hook. It was only during the pandemic that crocheting had become a hobby again, and I’d gotten ambitious; I was trying to complete a full set of Nativity figures before Christmas.
Just as I was about to give up, I caught sight of a yellow swath of fabric. I tugged at the material, unearthing a large, uneven blanket. It had giant, gaudy stripes of clashing colors: orange, pink, navy blue, and yellow all crocheted together in a nauseatingly bright pattern.
The stripes were all different sizes. The stitches were loose and inconsistent. But the blanket still made me smile as I recognized it from my early years of crocheting. My focus and motivation had given out long before the project was complete, and it had been sitting in this pile of unfinished projects for years, unused and unseen.
I picked up the loose, untied end of the blanket and pulled. The blanket had never been fastened off, so I could undo several stitches at a time just with a quick tug.
I hesitated before unraveling it more. The blanket was outdated and overly bright, but it made me a little bit sad to think that I was undoing everything my young fingers had worked so hard to create. But, I realized, crocheting this blanket all those years ago had kept the material right where I needed it, now available and ready to be used for this better purpose.
So, I unraveled. I pulled and pulled until the yarn piled in a tangled heap on my lap, and then I began to crochet. My far-more-skilled hands turned the clumsy, childlike stitches of my blanket into intricately patterned angel’s wings.
As I worked, an odd thought entered my mind:
My testimony is like this little angel.
While the thought made me smile at first, the longer I thought about it, the more I realized it was true. My testimony, like my little blanket, had at first been a simple, childlike construction. Then came the unraveling, as certain things tested my faith. The loose, clumsy stitches that had formed the basis of my testimony felt like they were being pulled apart.
And finally, there was reconstruction. When I’d stopped holding so tightly to what I’d had before, started trusting the Savior, and allowed my testimony to grow and change, it had formed into something far more beautiful, something more profound and significant than what I’d been able to create as a child.
Emeritus General Authority Seventy Elder Bruce C. Hafen explained this concept when he described what he called the “simplicity beyond complexity”1—essentially the idea that if we work through the difficult questions in our lives, we will receive a new, stronger kind of simplicity. He explained that “our tunnels of ambiguity are there to teach us, not to torment us. … It is by faith that we consciously choose to grow through the complexity that lets us see with our eyes and our hearts wide open.”2
The longer I thought about it, the more I realized that not only my testimony, but my life had followed this pattern. It didn’t happen all at once, but slowly, gradually, I had transformed. Through Christ, I had changed. Through Christ, I had weathered adversity and become something new.
This crocheting project started out as just a quarantine hobby but ended up being the perfect reminder of the influence of Christ and the celebration of new life. Because that is what Christ offers us: a chance to be made into something entirely new. We celebrate the baby in Bethlehem because we know that that baby grew up to be someone who could offer us the opportunity to grow and change and be made whole.
As President Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) said: “As you and I walk the pathway Jesus walked, we will discover He is more than the babe in Bethlehem, more than the carpenter’s son, more than the greatest teacher ever to live. We will come to know Him as the Son of God, our Savior and our Redeemer.”3
While Christ’s birth was a miraculous and wondrous event, my Christmas celebration is deepened and enriched by remembering exactly why the angel’s tidings brought such “great joy” (Luke 2:10). As the angel also prophesied, “[Mary] shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
As we celebrate the birth of Christ, we can also remember the hope for new life and second chances that He brings to us. Christmas is a wonderful time of traditions and giving, and it can also be a time for strengthening, or even rebuilding, our testimonies. We can allow the Lord, with His skill and wisdom, to make us into something better than we could have imagined.
Alison Wood is an editor for the Liahona and YA Weekly. She loves good books, pickleball, playing the violin, and her husband. She has a deep belief in the gospel and the blessings it brings.

Although it often took an hour to make it through one chapter of the Book of Mormon, Cham Nap Kong didn’t get discouraged. Every Tuesday the 14-year-old Cambodian boy would struggle through a chapter of the first English book he ever tried to read outside of school.
He had received a Book of Mormon for Christmas. When summer arrived and the pressures of school were gone, he asked soft-spoken Delaures Harkness, a sister in his ward, to help him read it. When she met Cham Nap, Sister Harkness “just took a liking to him. He really wanted to study the scriptures,” she says.
“I wanted to know about Jesus and the Mormon church. I wanted to understand it,” explains shy Cham Nap in a suddenly decisive tone.
Progress was slow. It took all summer to make it through 1 Nephi.
Cham Nap’s schooling, before he came to the United States four years ago, was very limited. As a child he attended kindergarten, but political unrest in Cambodia prevented him from attending any more school. In 1979, he went to Thailand with his aunt, uncle, and cousin to escape the war. There they lived in a refugee camp. Cham Nap has not seen or heard from his mother or brothers and sisters since then.
“In Thailand I went to school for about one month and learned to read and write a little Cambodian,” he explains. That’s also where his friends first told him about Jesus Christ and the LDS church.
Before coming to America, he and his relatives were sent to Indonesia for seven months to learn English. “I just learned the first words—‘hello,’ ‘how are you,’ and a few to use in the home.”
They arrived in the United States in 1981 and settled down in Salt Lake City. Cham Nap attended school with many other Southeast Asians at South High School. He had an LDS school teacher who invited him to go to church, and then she sent the missionaries to his home.
His friends in Thailand had told him the LDS church was a good church. “I heard that Mormons didn’t drink, and they went without food and water the first Sunday every month,” he says. “The missionaries taught me about the gospel. It made me excited because it’s so good. I wanted to clean my sins and be a good person.”
He had attended other churches, but he felt strongly that what the LDS missionaries taught him was true. He was baptized on October 23, 1982, in Salt Lake City. About that time he became friends with Delaures and Harold Harkness. Brother Harkness was a counselor in the presidency of the Cambodian Branch of the Salt Lake Park Stake. Cham Nap occasionally ate dinner with them, and they often gave him a ride to church.
During the summer, he would go to their home every Tuesday, and for half an hour to an hour he would struggle to read one chapter in the Book of Mormon. “We didn’t read a lot every time because it just seemed awfully hard for him,” Sister Harkness says. “I tried to explain what the words meant as we went along. Then we’d talk about what we read. It was hard for him to grasp at times.”
When Cham Nap first started going to church, he didn’t understand anything except for sacrament meeting, which was translated into Cambodian. But he kept on going because it made him happy. “Even though I didn’t understand in the classes, I felt the Spirit and I liked to go. Afterward I’d go to Sister Harkness and ask her questions and she would teach me.”
Cham Nap now lives with a foster family in Farr West, Utah. He is an eager eighth grader who wants to perfect his English, so he takes two English classes. It is still difficult for him to read, but he studies the scriptures regularly, usually for an hour on Sundays and frequently after school. “The words I don’t understand I look up in the dictionary,” he notes.
He has three church books in Cambodian, including Book of Mormon Selections, which he studies along with the scriptures in English.
Cham Nap says he likes to study and learn more about the gospel. “I want to be a missionary and teach people and make them happy. I want to share what I have learned.” Just like Ammon, the Book of Mormon prophet he’s reading about right now.

It has been said that “nobody ever lost his shirt with his sleeves rolled up.” This theory was recently put to the test by a very ambitious group of youths from the Layton Utah West Stake. Working hard they scraped the old paint off and put the new paint on their stake farmhouse in the short space of three and a half hours.
Lights in the homes of ward members began clicking on at about 5:30 A.M. one recent Saturday, and soon Mia Maids, teachers, Laurels, priests, and their advisers were gathered together at the stake farm for breakfast. (The official passport to the scrumptious meal of ham, pancakes, and orange juice was a paint scraper!) After eating, the youths found they had more than enough energy to complete their project. Within an hour most of the old paint had been taken off by paint scrapers; in some cases, it was beaten off with the ends of brushes. Nearly three hours of brushing or rolling the paint onto the house followed, after which the young people joined together for a group picture to help them remember the morning’s work.
That evening they enjoyed themselves at a dance, but the truly memorable part of the day was summed up by Anne Rowley who said, “Our greatest sense of satisfaction came from the feeling that we were following the guidelines set down by our prophet and other Church leaders. We had made a concrete attempt to keep our community clean and orderly.”

Thank you for printing the March 1995 Mormonad about the Word of Wisdom. About a week before I received my issue, I had decided to start smoking clove cigarettes. I didn’t know much about clove cigarettes, and I had heard they were safe and had no nicotine or tobacco. I was tempted to smoke regular cigarettes, but decided not to. As I opened my issue of the New Era, I flipped right to the Mormonad. My heart literally skipped a beat. I felt that Heavenly Father had sent this message especially for me.
Name WithheldBellevue, Washington

This summer I had the opportunity of attending a high priest group meeting in a small community in southern Wyoming. The lesson that week was on justification and sanctification. It was evident as the lesson was beginning that the teacher was well prepared to instruct his brethren. Then a question prompted a response which changed the whole course of the lesson. In response to the question, the comment of one of the brethren was, “I have listened with great interest to the lesson material. The thought has crossed my mind that the information presented will soon be lost if we do not find application to put the material presented into practice in our daily lives.”

Then he went on to propose a course of action for the quorum. The night before, a citizen of the community had passed away. His wife was a member of the Church, but he had not been. This high priest had visited the widow and offered his sympathy. Leaving the home after the visit, his eyes wandered over the beautiful farm of the deceased brother. He had put so much of his life and labor into building it up. The alfalfa was ready to cut; the grain would soon be ready to harvest. How would this poor sister cope with the sudden problems now falling on her? She would need time to get herself organized for her new responsibilities.

Then he proposed to the group that they make an application of the principle that was being taught—by working with the widow to keep her farm operational until such time as a more permanent solution could be found by the widow and her family. The balance of the meeting was spent in organizing the project to assist her. The principles of the lesson found immediate application.

As we left the classroom, there was a good feeling among the brethren. I heard one of them remark as he passed through the doorway, “This project is just what we needed to get this quorum working together again.” A lesson had been taught, a brotherhood had been strengthened, a service project had been organized to assist someone in need.

One of the most trying experiences in Spencer W. Kimball’s life was losing his mother, who died when he was 11 years old. He recalled that the news “came as a thunderbolt. I ran from the house out in the backyard to be alone in my deluge of tears. Out of sight and sound, away from everybody, I sobbed and sobbed. … My eleven-year-old heart seemed to burst.”

Even at this young age, however, Spencer knew of the comfort and peace that prayer could bring. During this time of sorrow, a family friend wrote, “My children wept with [my wife and me] as we heard of the prayers of little Spencer and how the loss of his mother weighed so heavily upon his little heart and yet how bravely he battled with his grief and sought comfort from the only source.”4