Gospel Story Finder

When I was a young man, I served in the Church as a counselor to a wise district president. He was constantly trying to teach me. I remember the advice he once gave to me: “When you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble, and you will be right more than half the time.” I thought then that he was pessimistic. Now, more than 50 years later, I can see how well he understood the world and life.

I am a nonmember. Eighteen months ago, while I was living in Idaho as an exchange student from Guatemala City, Guatemala, I first learned about the Church. Since that time, I have studied and prayed about it until I received a testimony, a testimony that grows when I read the New Era. I read it from cover to cover, and I enjoy each one of its articles. I especially liked “President Kimball Speaks Out on Being a Missionary” in the May issue and “Private Battle” by Kevin Kennedy in the July issue. I am grateful for the publication of such a great magazine.
I am especially grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Dewey Jensen who gave me my subscription. They were the first two Mormons I met, and they gave me a really good example of what it means to be a Mormon. I consider them to be my second parents. I am also grateful to the missionaries who taught me the gospel. Gracias.
Ana OvandoGuatemala City, Guatemala

As a small boy, I enjoyed visiting the home of my grandmother on Bueno Avenue here in Salt Lake City. Grandmother was always so happy to see us and to draw us close to her. Seated on her lap, we listened as she read to us.

Her youngest son and his wife now occupy that same home. I visited there recently. The fireplug on the curb seemed so small compared to its size when I climbed its lofty heights those long years ago. The friendly porch was the same, the quiet, peaceful atmosphere not altered. Hanging on the kitchen wall was a framed expression which my aunt had embroidered. It carried a world of practical application: “Choose your love; love your choice.” She who prepared that message is now in frail health. Her husband, Ray, cares for her constantly and is the epitome of faithful and enduring love. She reciprocates in her own way. They live the lesson they framed.

A stake president was scheduled to meet with a young man to interview him and help him complete his mission application. The young man was a bright student and had saved money for his mission. He attended church regularly and was worthy of a temple recommend. Still, the stake president had one concern: The young man was drinking 12 energy drinks a day! In their meeting, the stake president suggested that he break the energy-drink habit before they submitted the application to the Missionary Department.
“No problem, President,” said the young man. “It’s not a habit. I can quit anytime.” They scheduled another interview a week later and the young man left. The following day he found out just how much of a habit his non-habit had become. His body was craving the drinks, and it was difficult to say no to himself. By midweek he called the stake president for a blessing. “I guess I really was more addicted than I thought,” he said. “This is really hard.”
The blessing was given, and the stake president continued to meet with the young man and monitor his progress. The process actually took months, but finally this young man felt ready to submit his application. His advice to others: “Don’t be fooled. Just because something isn’t specifically mentioned in the Word of Wisdom doesn’t mean there aren’t negative consequences.”
When the stake president asked the young man to break his dependence on energy drinks before beginning his mission, the young man found it difficult. After several months of hard work, that missionary entered the MTC and wrote the following in a letter to his stake president: “I want to thank you for all your help preparing me to serve. This place is incredible. The Spirit is so strong in all the classes and devotionals. You can even feel it when you are walking down the halls. This feeling is better than any energy drink!”

This summer I injured a shoulder and lost the use of an arm for weeks. I hadn’t realized how much one arm depends upon the other for balance, or how much less I could lift with one arm than two, or that there were some things I couldn’t do at all. This disability not only renewed my respect for those who deal so well with a physical limitation, but helped me realize how much more two arms working together can do.

I didn’t feel like I was a good learner growing up. All my siblings were really smart. They got good grades. They took the hardest classes. I kept trying out for the hardest classes, but I was never accepted. Math was very hard. So I thought, “Well, I guess I’m not smart.” I didn’t think that could change.
Then one year I had a teacher who gave me the confidence I needed. My teacher saw more talent in me than I did. She said, “Clark, you can be a good student. You just need to believe in yourself.”
So I kept trying. I studied harder. I also worked to be more organized. I learned how to keep track of my homework. Turning off the TV helped me to focus on my schoolwork. Soon, I became a better student. And my confidence grew.
When I went on my mission, I saw that I didn’t have to learn on my own. I asked Heavenly Father for help. And I listened to the Holy Ghost. As I worked hard, I was able to teach and help people. When I came home from my mission, I went to college. I prayed for God’s help in every class. I became a better student and even started to love math!
I thought that being smart meant that you knew a lot and school was easy. That isn’t true. If you are willing to involve the Lord in your learning and work hard to improve, you are smart!
If things are hard right now, remember that you are a child of God. You have incredible potential. You can do hard things. Just keep practicing. Ask Heavenly Father for help. He wants you to succeed. You can do this!

As a father I was blessed to see great futures in God’s kingdom for my daughters as well as my sons. When I prayerfully sought guidance, I was shown a way to help my daughters recognize the trust God had placed in them as servants who could build His kingdom.

When my daughters were young, I saw that we could help others feel the love of those beyond the veil, throughout the generations. I knew that love comes from service and inspires hope of life eternal.

So we carved breadboards on which we placed a loaf of homemade bread and went together to deliver our offering to widows, widowers, and families. The legend I carved on each of those breadboards read, “J’aime et J’espere,” French for “I love and I hope.” The evidence of their unique spiritual gifts appeared not just on the boards I carved but more clearly as we distributed them to those who needed, in the midst of pain or loss, reassurance that the love of the Savior and His Atonement could produce a perfect brightness of hope. This is life eternal for my daughters and for each of us.

Now, you may be thinking, “Brother Eyring, are you saying that I have to learn how to carve?” The answer is no. I learned to carve only with the help of a kind and gifted mentor, then-Elder Boyd K. Packer. What little skill I achieved can be attributed to his great gift as a carver and his patience as a teacher. Only heaven can provide such a mentor as President Packer. But there are many ways you can shape children’s hearts without carving wooden boards or height boards for them.

For example, new communication technologies allow sharing messages of faith and hope across the miles that separate us, instantaneously and at little or no cost. My wife helps me do this. We begin by talking by telephone with grandchildren or children we can reach. We ask them to share stories of their personal successes and their service rendered. We also invite them to send photos of those activities. We use those photos to illustrate a few paragraphs of text. We add one or two verses from the Book of Mormon. Perhaps Nephi and Mormon wouldn’t be very impressed by the spiritual quality of our content or the limited effort required to create what we call “The Family Journal: The Small Plates.” But Sister Eyring and I are blessed by the effort. We feel inspired in selecting the passages of scripture and the brief messages of testimony we write. And we see evidence in their lives of their hearts being turned toward us and to the Savior and upward.

There are other ways to reach out; you are already engaged in many of them. Your habits of family prayer and scripture reading will create more lasting memories and greater changes of heart than you may realize now. Even apparently temporal activities, such as attending an athletic event or watching a movie, can shape a child’s heart. What matters is not the activity but the feelings that come as you do it. I have discovered a good test for identifying activities with the potential to make a great difference in a young person’s life. It is that they suggest the activity out of an interest they feel has come to them as a gift from God. I know that is possible from my own experience.

When I became a deacon at the age of 12, I lived in New Jersey, 50 miles (80 km) from New York City. I dreamed of being a great baseball player. My father agreed to take me to see a game played in the old and storied Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. I can still see the swing of the bat as Joe DiMaggio hit a home run into the center field stands with my father sitting beside me, the only time we ever went to a major league baseball game together.

But another day with my father shaped my life forever. He took me from New Jersey to the home of an ordained patriarch in Salt Lake City. I had never seen the man before. My father left me at the doorstep. The patriarch led me to a chair, placed his hands on my head, and pronounced a blessing as a gift from God that included a declaration of the great desire of my heart.

He said that I was one of those of whom it had been said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”6 I was so surprised that a perfect stranger could know my heart that I opened my eyes to see the room where such a miracle was happening. That blessing of my possibilities has shaped my life, my marriage, and my priesthood service.

From that experience and what has followed it, I can testify, “For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.”7

By the Lord revealing to me a gift, I have been able to recognize and prepare for opportunities to exercise it to the blessing of those I love and serve.

God knows our gifts. My challenge to you and to me is to pray to know the gifts we have been given, to know how to develop them, and to recognize the opportunities to serve others that God provides us. But most of all, I pray that you will be inspired to help others discover their special gifts from God to serve.

I promise you that if you ask, you will be blessed to help and lift others to their full potential in the service of those they lead and love. I testify to you that God lives, Jesus is the Christ, this is the priesthood of God, which we hold, and God has prepared us with special gifts to serve Him beyond our fondest hopes. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

One day at school, one of my teachers taught a lesson about Utah, USA, in our geography class and said some things about the Church that were wrong. I thought, “Should I correct him in front of everyone, or should I go up to him privately after class?” In that moment, the words of my seminary teacher came to my mind. She had said, “Do not argue with or offend anyone when someone says wrong things about the Church.”
I felt that I should remain quiet and respectful during class. When I visited with him afterward, I told him that I was a member of the Church, and I corrected him on the incorrect things that he had taught in the class. He said, “I didn’t know you were a Mormon. Thank you for telling me.” Afterward he corrected his lecture to give accurate information, and he still treated me with respect. I was grateful for the counsel I’d been taught through my seminary teacher.

Sister Amy A. Wright remembers a night several years ago when she was undergoing treatment for stage 4 ovarian cancer. She was in so much pain that she was past feeling. Despite her testimony and her faith in Heavenly Father, the Savior, and the plan of salvation, she was in need.
As a young child, Sister Wright had been taught by her mother and Primary leaders that when feeling afraid, lonely, or in need of the Spirit, she should sing a Primary song.
“But that’s for children,” she thought now. “Does that really apply to me?”
Then came the answer—and the song.
“I am a child of God too,” Sister Wright remembered. “So, in my mind, I started singing, ‘Heavenly Father, are you really there?’1
“That’s as far as I got. Every fiber of my being was enveloped with the love of God. It was tangible, which was strange because I couldn’t feel anything else. I knew He was there, that He knew exactly what I was going through, and that He was a loving God.”

The Domnic family of the Hyderabad Second Branch knows something about doors, too. The three daughters—Kavitha, 15; Hema, 16; and Smitha, 18—say education is a door to the future: “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection” (D&C 130:18). They talk about seminary as a part of their eternal education. It is a door that, through the scriptures, opens upon a path to the Savior. They also talk about how the Holy Ghost can open a door to the truth of all things (see Moroni 10:5).
But one of the most memorable doors for the Domnic daughters is the gospel door that opened eight years ago for their mother, Anu, and then, with patience and prayer, for their father, Julian Francis.
“When the missionaries taught me the gospel, I knew it was true,” Sister Domnic says. “I knew the Church was a place where I could bring my daughters to find safety from worldly things. I also had a strong feeling that my husband would join and that our whole family would be blessed.” But Julian Francis would have to stop some bad habits—smoking, drinking, and cheating people out of money as a rickshaw-taxi driver.
“I didn’t want my wife and daughters to learn about the gospel,” he says. “I told them that if they wanted to join a Christian church, just go to the one on our corner. Why did they want to go to the Mormon church all the way across town?” He also feared that if his wife and daughters changed religions, they would create ill will among the extended family.
But as the gospel door opened wide for his wife and daughters, he found his own questions becoming more and more sincere, and his own behavior improving. His wife and his two oldest daughters were baptized and confirmed, and he started taking missionary lessons seriously. He sold his rickshaw taxi and found other work. He quit drinking alcohol. But he struggled to stop smoking.
Then one day he found out the elders were fasting on his behalf. “I started crying. I couldn’t believe they thought it was worthwhile to fast for me. For me!” The missionaries challenged him to quit. “They gave me some gum and told me that when I felt like smoking, to chew gum instead. They said if I could be free for an hour, then I could go for another hour, then four hours, then eight. They kept coming each day, giving me gum and encouraging me. I kept wondering why they would take so much trouble just for me, but I finally quit smoking and decided I should be baptized. From there on I have lived a righteous life, and my family and I have received more and more blessings.”
“I am so grateful for the missionaries who came to our door, and to my parents for walking through the door that led us all to Christ,” says Hema. “Now our family can walk through chapel doors, through temple doors, and someday through whatever entrance takes us back to our Heavenly Father.” Hema, like the other youth in Hyderabad, knows that such blessings start by opening the door where the Savior is knocking.

During the Vietnam War, we held a series of special meetings for members of the Church called into military service. After such a meeting in Chicago, I was standing next to President Harold B. Lee when a fine young Latter-day Saint told President Lee that he was on leave to visit his home and then had orders to Vietnam. He asked President Lee to give him a blessing.

Much to my surprise, President Lee said, “Your father should give you the blessing.”

Very disappointed, the boy said, “My father wouldn’t know how to give a blessing.”

President Lee answered, “Go home, my boy, and tell your father that you are going away to war and want to receive a father’s blessing from him. If he does not know how, tell him that you will sit on a chair. He can stand behind you and put his hands on your head and say whatever comes.”

This young soldier went away sorrowing.

About two years later I met him again. I do not recall where. He reminded me of that experience and said, “I did as I was told to do. I explained to my father that I would sit on the chair and that he should put his hands on my head. The power of the priesthood filled both of us. That was a strength and protection in those perilous months of battle.”

Seth was confused when Mom and Dad announced that they were going to read the Book of Mormon as a family. He was only four, and his brother Caleb was two. They were too little to read. So how could they read as a family?
After Seth and Caleb climbed into bed that night in early autumn, Mom and Dad sat by the bedroom door with their scriptures open.
“This is just how my mom read the Book of Mormon to me when I was little,” Mom said. “There are no pictures for you to look at in this book. But you can imagine the pictures in your minds.”
Seth’s parents took turns reading. Sometimes they stopped to explain things. They read from the Book of Mormon every night. Some nights, Seth fell asleep before they finished reading. Caleb almost always did.
“That’s OK,” Dad said. “Just listen as long as you can, and enjoy the peaceful feeling.”
Seth did feel peaceful listening to the Book of Mormon, most nights. Other times, he didn’t feel like listening. Sometimes he interrupted with stories about preschool, or ideas he had for Halloween or Christmas or his birthday in February.
“Seth,” Dad said, “you can ask questions, but they have to be about the Book of Mormon.”
Seth wanted to talk. He didn’t want Mom and Dad to do all the talking. So he started to listen and tried to think of questions to ask. He started to imagine the pictures in his mind—Nephi building a boat, Lehi blessing his sons. Soon, he realized there really were things he wanted to know.
“Who is Satan?” he asked one night.
Mom and Dad closed their scriptures and explained how Satan was a son of Heavenly Father who would not obey. He was so angry at Heavenly Father he couldn’t live with Him anymore. Then he was so mad that he wanted everybody else to feel miserable like him.
“Satan wants us to make bad choices so that we’ll feel bad inside,” Dad explained. “Sometimes he will try to tempt you to do bad things. But you can tell him no. You can choose the right.” Seth felt strong, knowing that he could tell Satan no and follow Jesus instead.
A few months later, on a rainy winter night, Seth listened to the story of the Lamanites being taught by the great missionary, Ammon. The Lamanites buried their weapons and promised Heavenly Father that they wouldn’t fight anymore. Seth thought about how he sometimes argued with Caleb, who was already asleep in his bed. Suddenly, he had an idea.
“Dad,” he asked, “how can I make a promise to Heavenly Father?”
Dad stopped reading and looked up at Seth. “You can pray to Him and tell Him you want to do better,” he replied. “You can make a promise to Him anytime. And when you are eight, you’ll make a really big promise. That’s when you’ll be baptized, and promise to try to do what’s right for the rest of your life.”
“But I can still promise now?”
“Sure you can.”
One night, after Seth’s fifth birthday, Dad started reading the story of 2,000 young men, the stripling warriors, who decided to fight to defend their parents, the people of Ammon. As Mom began to read, her voice got quiet. When Seth looked over at her, she was crying.
“Why are you crying, Mom?” he asked.
“I started reading about these boys and how good they are, and how Heavenly Father took care of them. And I looked at you listening to the Book of Mormon, and I thought about how much you want to be good and make promises to Heavenly Father.”
“And you got sad?”
“No, I got happy! I think you are like the boys in this story. You are determined to do what is right! You will have hard battles in your life. Remember how Satan wants you to feel bad?” she asked. Seth did remember. “But you will fight against him, and Heavenly Father will take care of you, just like He took care of the boys in this story.”
They read about Jesus visiting the Nephites. Seth was very quiet as Dad read about Christ taking each little child in His arms and blessing him or her. Seth had a picture in his room of Jesus surrounded by little children. He could imagine himself right there, hugging Jesus and feeling His hands on his head blessing him, just like Dad blessed him when he was sick with the flu.
Seth was so quiet that Mom thought he was asleep. “Seth, are you awake?” she whispered.
“Yes. Keep reading,” Seth replied.
Near the end of the summer, Seth’s family had a special family home evening to read the last chapter of the Book of Mormon.
“I first read the Book of Mormon when I was getting ready to go on a mission,” Dad said. “The Holy Ghost told me it was true. But you boys are learning about the Book of Mormon while you are young. You can learn that it is true right now.”
Mom said that since they had been reading as a family, she felt happier in their home. “I’ve noticed Seth and Caleb are more obedient. And I don’t feel like yelling or scolding. I think the Book of Mormon has helped our family.”
Seth remembered the stories he had heard and the pictures he had imagined. He remembered the peace he felt as he went to sleep every night listening to Mom and Dad read. He remembered being able to imagine himself with Jesus. “I feel good about the Book of Mormon,” he said.

The subject in the family relations class I taught in my ward Sunday School was how to communicate with teenagers. When I asked the class members—all parents of teenagers—to identify the most important issues or concerns they had in dealing with young people, the question at the top of the list was: “How can I get my son or daughter to talk with me? I know they are facing problems that worry and trouble them, but when I ask them ‘What is the matter?’ they respond with something like ‘Nothing,’ or ‘You wouldn’t understand.’”
These parents also identified a wide range of other issues and concerns, but the consensus was, “If we could just talk over all these things, we might be able to help our teenagers cope better with the problems in their world.”
Is there anything parents can do to improve communication with their teenagers?
First, parents need to remember that children rarely initiate discussions on matters of concern, then ask for parental advice. I asked the parents in my class how many of them, as teenagers, had gone to their parents to talk over problems. Most had never done it. I asked why. The answers: “I was afraid it would embarrass me and my parents,” “I didn’t think they would understand,” and “They would have told me that I worried too much, or that everything was going to turn out just fine.”
One father reported that he had asked his teenage son, “Why don’t you ever come to me to talk over your problems?”
The son had answered, “Did you ever talk things over with your dad?”
“No,” the man replied.
His son said: “Things aren’t so different now.”
If teens don’t come to discuss serious things with parents, what can parents do? A common strategy is to try to get the young people to “open up.” This usually results in questions they interpret as prying. “Why are you so moody?”
“What happened at school today?” “Why did you get such a poor grade on that test?”
A better approach is to find an opportunity to share your own experiences with your son or daughter. The young people may not talk much, but they will usually listen with interest if you talk about how you felt when you failed an exam, or didn’t get a date, or disliked your math teacher, or didn’t get invited to a party. Just talk and share; let them know about you and learn what they will from your experiences.
Two mothers in my class tried this, with somewhat different results. One knew her son was upset because he had not done as well as he wanted on a school project and in a musical program for which he had to play an instrument. She found occasion to talk about how miserable she had been when she got a bad grade, feeling down on herself; but she had finally accepted the fact that she could not always be perfect. She told him she knew that he probably got some of his perfectionism from her, and she hoped he would be able to deal with mistakes better than she had. Her son listened with interest and afterward said, “Thanks, Mom, that was a real help.”
The other mother said she had tried to talk with her son about some of her experiences as a teenager and had told him she had felt that sometimes her parents and teachers didn’t understand what she was going through. When she finished, her son asked, “Is that all?” She said yes, and he left without another word.
She interpreted his response as rejection and felt that what she had said to him had no impact at all. My own feeling is that he may have been impressed more than she knew; at least he listened all the way through and did not become defensive, as often happened when she asked him questions or lectured.

Counseling with my bishop. I came to appreciate my bishop’s guidance in helping me make a number of sound decisions. He checked on our family often and made sure I was all right and my family was well cared for. He was my support both temporally and spiritually.
One day the bishop called me into his office and discussed with me each of my children, one by one, to see how they were doing. We came up with a plan to make sure each of my boys received priesthood support through their quorum and auxiliary leaders. He also discussed my financial situation and made sure we had food in the house, and when Christmas came he checked again to be sure we had something to go under our tree.
Besides helping my children, he gave me priesthood blessings and helped me explore my new role as a single sister. What a comfort it was to know I had his backing.

Some years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley told “something of a parable” about “a one room school house in the mountains of Virginia where the boys were so rough no teacher had been able to handle them.
“Then one day an inexperienced young teacher applied. He was told that every teacher had received an awful beating, but the teacher accepted the risk. The first day of school the teacher asked the boys to establish their own rules and the penalty for breaking the rules. The class came up with 10 rules, which were written on the blackboard. Then the teacher asked, ‘What shall we do with one who breaks the rules?’
“‘Beat him across the back ten times without his coat on,’ came the response.
“A day or so later, … the lunch of a big student, named Tom, was stolen. ‘The thief was located—a little hungry fellow, about ten years old.’
“As Little Jim came up to take his licking, he pleaded to keep his coat on. ‘Take your coat off,’ the teacher said. ‘You helped make the rules!’
“The boy took off the coat. He had no shirt and revealed a bony little crippled body. As the teacher hesitated with the rod, Big Tom jumped to his feet and volunteered to take the boy’s licking.
“‘Very well, there is a certain law that one can become a substitute for another. Are you all agreed?’ the teacher asked.
“After five strokes across Tom’s back, the rod broke. The class was sobbing. ‘Little Jim had reached up and caught Tom with both arms around his neck. “Tom, I’m sorry that I stole your lunch, but I was awful hungry. Tom, I will love you till I die for taking my licking for me! Yes, I will love you forever!”’”

When I became a priest in the Windsor Ward, London Ontario Canada Stake, our Young Men president, Brother Sandor, encouraged us to bless and pass the sacrament and perform baptisms as a way to exercise our priesthood. In one Sunday lesson, he also taught us about giving blessings during Aaronic Priesthood ordinations. He said, “You must be bold enough to say what the Spirit prompts you to say but be humble enough not to make up your own words!”
Not long after that lesson, a young convert in our ward was sustained as a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood, and Brother Sandor asked me to be the “voice” in the ordination. I was scared. I had never laid my hands on anybody’s head before, and I felt inadequate. But then the Spirit reassured me that it would be fine for me to do it, and I was reminded of what my Young Men president had taught us.
The young man to be ordained sat down in the chair, and I stood directly behind him. When we were all ready, Brother Sandor guided me through the ordinance prayer, and I repeated every word he said. After we had finished the ordination by saying, “… and we wish to pronounce a blessing on your head at this time,” Brother Sandor looked at me and indicated that I was on my own.
At that point, the priesthood entirely changed its meaning for me. It was no longer just a title, but the actual authority to act in God’s name—and I was giving that authority to someone else. I paused and waited for the Spirit to whisper to me what I was to say. It is difficult for me to describe the feelings I had during the blessing, but I can say that I now have a stronger testimony that the power of the priesthood is real.

I am grateful to the Lord for my membership in His Church. My investigation of this Church was never through anyone but by the power of God. I and my family members had attended so many churches. Our membership would have been earlier, but rumors about the Book of Mormon scared us until I was pushed by God. I liked what the Church offered me in their classes. The lessons were according to my needs, which I extended to my family members and now, we are all members of the Church.
Before my membership, I had always returned home late, but now I have been able to overcome that so I have time to discuss with my family, teach my children, and look over their work. My family is a peaceful one now and I am grateful to the Lord for that. I know that God lives and that this is His Church, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. —Sorba Brima, Quarter Branch, Bo-Sierra Leone West Stake

A number of years ago, our son, who was four years old at the time, was involved in a serious road accident away from home. After a week or so in hospital, he was able to be transferred the 200 miles (320 kilometres) to our local hospital. When we arrived home, there was a note from a loving and caring ministering sister with details of who would collect our other four children from school, who would provide meals and who would do our laundry. During the subsequent five weeks our son remained in hospital, my wife gave birth to our youngest son. With a son in one end of the hospital, a wife and new baby in the other end, four children to care for, and a full-time job to fit in, we would not have coped without the significant help given to us by our fellow ward members. How grateful we were for their selfless ministering. We know that the common question “Can we do anything to help?” is always sincerely offered, but this wonderful, thoughtful sister went the extra mile, anticipated our needs and ministered accordingly.

First, I remember visiting an elderly widow whose health confined her to her home. With warmth, graciousness and love, she received me and appreciated that as an Aaronic Priesthood holder I was giving her a donation envelope so she could joyfully pay her fast offerings. She respected the Aaronic Priesthood I held and treated me with love and dignity. Second, the bishopric also treated me with love and dignity. They made me want to be a better person. They made me feel I needed to be worthy to participate in sacred ordinances. To this day I remember the feelings of appreciation and responsibility I felt every time I participated in blessing or passing the sacrament.

“I examined the matter studiously for two years before I made up my mind to receive that book … I wished time sufficient to prove all things for myself.” (JD, 3:91, 8 August 1852.)

On another occasion Brigham explained this reserve:
“Upon the first opportunity I read the Book of Mormon, and then sought to become acquainted with the people who professed to believe it … I watched to see whether good common sense was manifest; and if they had that, I wanted them to present it in accordance with the Scriptures … when I had fully meditated everything in my mind, I completely accepted it and not until then.” (JD, 8:38, 6 April 1860.)

After about a year and a half, he was finally moved to action. He was visited by a group of Mormon missionaries from Columbia, Pennsylvania, one of whom sat him down and bore his testimony to him:
“When I saw a man without eloquence, or talents for public speaking, who could only say, ‘I know, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith is a prophet of the Lord,’ the Holy Ghost proceeding from that individual illuminated my understanding, and light, glory and immortality were present. I was compelled by them, driven with them, and I knew for myself that the testimony of the man was true … My own judgment, natural endowments, and education bowed to this simple, but mighty testimony … It filled my system with light, and my soul with joy.” (JD, 1:90 13 June 1852.)

Brigham was baptized in Mendon on April 15, 1832 in his own little millstream behind his carpenter shop by that same missionary whose testimony had so influenced him.