Gospel Story Finder

A few summers ago, Rebekah and her dad undertook their biggest art project ever. Rebekah’s mom had always wanted a picture of the Salt Lake Temple in their home. That temple is especially important to Rebekah’s family because that is where her parents were married. Rebekah and her dad decided that they could design a tile mosaic of the temple that would be even more special because they made it themselves.
At first, the project seemed impossible. Rebekah wondered how it could be done. What materials could she use? But as they made sketches and started to gather materials, the project became very exciting to her. She and her dad visited many tile stores, going through piles of cast-off tiles and samples to find pieces with just the right colors and textures. They cut pieces off an old red brick to make the flower bed wall in the foreground, and Rebekah searched through small stones she had polished to find pieces for the angel Moroni on the top of the temple.
The original plan was to make the temple itself out of a piece of granite they had. This granite came from the same quarry where the early Saints got the rock for the Salt Lake Temple. But the granite was too coarse. Luckily, one of the ceramic tiles they had found was colored and textured to look like granite. They still used some of the granite from the temple quarry—it is included in the stones in the mosaic’s foreground.
The project was a lot of work and took a lot of time. They worked for two months, breaking tiles with a hammer and fitting the pieces together. When they needed straight cuts or defined shapes, they used a tile saw. Rebekah got very good at cutting tiles to the shapes she needed. Finally, after all of the tile pieces were in place, they applied the grout and finished the sides of the mosaic with some special granite paint.
Now this beautiful mosaic is hanging in the Nielsen home. It is a good reminder of how important the temple is. Rebekah especially likes the way the mountains turned out. Her dad pointed out verses in the Bible that show how even the mountains can help us think of the temple:
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
“And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths” (Isa. 2:2–3).
The mountains also help Rebekah remember the pioneers who came to the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young and built the Salt Lake Temple.
Rebekah loves thinking about the temple. She knows it’s a wonderful place where people can feel the Holy Spirit. She wants to be good and make good choices so that she can go inside the temple someday. Now the beautiful temple mosaic belongs to the Nielsen family, but Rebekah’s dad has promised her that one day it will be hers to hang in her own home—when she gets married in one of Heavenly Father’s temples.

I completed my mission 10 months later. The week I returned home, I got a message on social media from a 17-year-old boy named Lucas. His profile picture looked familiar.
He told me that almost a year ago, my companion and I had come to his house during a rainstorm. He was moved by what we shared, and a few weeks later, he decided to go to church. He took the missionary lessons and eventually was baptized.
A feeling of gratitude swept over me as I remembered the peaceful evening we’d shared with his family. Heavenly Father had not only comforted me during that stormy time, but He had also shown Lucas how much He loved him by sending us to his family. My life had changed in that rainstorm, and so had Lucas’s.
Today, Lucas is serving as a full-time missionary in Brazil. He’ll face storms too, probably both literal and figurative, just as my companion and I did—just as we all do. But when we recognize God’s love for us and strive to show our love by obeying Him, we can make it through any weather. We can confront the storms, brave the heavy rains, and look forward to brighter, sunnier days.

I had a friend who was a really nice girl, but she didn’t wear modest clothes. One day she was wearing a really short skirt. I decided to talk to her and find out why. At recess, I asked her why she was wearing a short skirt. She said she thought it was cute, and she didn’t have a longer skirt. I told her that short skirts aren’t modest and she could wear leggings under her skirt. The next day when my friend walked into class, I was surprised! She was wearing leggings under her skirt. I am glad I could help my friend be modest.

Thank you for the article “No Laughing Matter” (June 1994). I have had a very similar incident happen to me at school when a girl from my gym class saw me reading the Book of Mormon before school. She told a number of her friends and they all bowed to me in class and taunted me. It made me ashamed until, just like the girl in the story, I realized that it didn’t really matter as long as I was doing what was right. Thanks for the reassurance.
Debbie WilliamsSalem, Oregon

Several years ago I picked up the desk pen in my office at BYU to sign a paper that had been prepared for my signature, something I did at least a dozen times each day. That document committed the University to a particular course of action we had decided to follow. All the staff work had been done, and all appeared to be in order. But as I went to sign the document, I was filled with such negative thoughts and forebodings that I put it to one side and asked for the entire matter to be reviewed again. It was, and within a few days additional facts came to light which showed that the proposed course of action would have caused the University serious problems in the future.

When my wife started taking classes, I noticed that we started having stimulating and insightful significant discussions of the scriptures and Church matters more frequently. In one particularly significant experience, we spoke quietly with each other in the temple after a session, and she shared with me an understanding she had of the endowment ceremony. The Spirit testified of the truthfulness of what she was saying. That shared moment was a precious one in our relationship.
Now, I don’t think her classes provided this new knowledge; rather, her increased self-confidence and increased range of interests sent her prayerfully thinking into an area that she had previously thought of as “beyond her.” As a result of her spiritual insights, she elevated and broadened my knowledge of an important eternal truth.

Another time in the military a whole delegation of LDS college men went through summer training. As they moved from one field demonstration to another, each hour they endured the military instructors who began each session with a dirty joke. One NCO unintentionally prefaced the inevitable lewd story by asking, “Anyone object to a joke?” There was a split second of intense silence while the opportunity ran through the group. Then quickly from the back came a solitary but solid, “Yes.” The cadreman looked up in shocked surprise, immediately becoming defensive. Intending to intimidate such an upstart, he fired back, “Well, leave if you don’t like it.” Again a second of silence—followed by a decision. Then three-fourths of the group voted with their feet.

When asked about his picture, Ben said, “I’m so happy that the judges like my photo of a mountain hare so much.
“Winter at my local moorland is often cold and this particular day was freezing. The winter sun was out which didn’t help at all, and after walking for hours I finally spotted this mountain hare. After hours of steady approach, I was the closest I have ever been to a mountain hare. The sun was setting, and the mountain hare was fully relaxed in my presence so I was able to photograph this individual as the sun was going down.”

Once my mother taught me how to turn my face and feet to the light, she also pointed the way to the temple. I learned the powerful lesson of an example. She never had to say a word about the importance of temple work. I just watched her face and feet. She went to the temple and was sealed to my father. She walked miles from work, often in rain or snow, and placed the money in her temple fund. A few coins added up and paid for a temple trip every year and purchased documents needed to get names ready to take to the Swiss temple.

During her summer vacation, mother traveled to the temple in Switzerland, a three-day bus trip one way. After by brother and I started our lives away from home, she would work overtime as needed and then take time off to go to the temple. For years she packed her suitcase, got on a bus, then a train, and slept in a hotel to catch a morning flight from Finland to Switzerland. Once there, she took another train and a bus to the temple, where she worked a week before returning home. Imagine her joy when she could get to the temple in Sweden in less than a day. Finally, in October 2006, a temple was dedicated in Finland, only a three-hour drive from my hometown.

I remember mother describing the feeling in the temple after her first trip. Her face was shining, and she said she would like to create the feeling of temple in our home. We refined our manners and lowered our tone of voice to "temple voice." Everything in our home was orderly and beautiful. We always came home to a peaceful setting where the spirit of the Lord could be felt. As followers of Jesus Christ, we should model our behavior according to the things we learn in the temple. Our homes and our places of employment and study should reflect the light we obtain from the House of the Lord.

One experience I had with the Duty to God book was when I was working on the section titled “Doctrinal Topics.” During that time I was called as deacons quorum president. I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t know if I was qualified to hold the sacred keys of the Aaronic Priesthood. Through “Doctrinal Topics” I studied “Priesthood and Priesthood Keys.” It taught me how these keys came to the earth and how I should use them to receive revelation from Heavenly Father.
I was stunned by how much knowledge was at my fingertips. I searched many books about this topic and received many useful things from them. I eventually prayed to know if I was worthy to hold these sacred keys.
Instantly the Spirit fell upon me gently but with a strong witness that Heavenly Father loved me and that He had a work for me to do in this quorum at this time. I felt I was ready and worthy to hold the sacred keys of the priesthood. Duty to God is not just a book. It is a blessing. And I want to share this blessing with my quorum members.

I was in Idaho Falls and was the guest in a home of a typical Church family. There were a dedicated set of parents and many children. The oldest was in military duty in the dreaded South Pacific, and the hearts of the family followed him from place to place. They handed me his latest letter from the war zone. I read this:
“There have been times when we were so scared, we would tremble, but the fear went out of our minds with prayer and the knowledge that we were being guided by the Lord.
“Dad, I love my religion and I am proud that I had someone like you and Mother to teach me to pray. Then I also know that you are praying for me each morning and night. …”
Spirituality is born in the home and is nurtured in the home evenings, in the twice-a-day and oftener daily prayers, in the weekly meetings when the family goes en masse. That spirituality as the foundation of one’s life comes to his rescue when emergency strikes.
Security is not born of inexhaustible wealth but of unquenchable faith. And generally that kind of faith is born and nurtured in the home and in childhood.
Prayer is the passport to spiritual power.

When Zack and his dad drove into the Jenkins’s yard on Thanksgiving Day, he saw his cousins setting a ladder next to a tree.
“Hurry, Zack!” called Amber.
“You’re just in time,” said Penny.
Zack jumped out of the car into the soft snow. “In time for what?” he asked. He and his dad lived in an apartment far away from any relatives. They had never spent Thanksgiving with the Jenkins family before.
Penny held up the basket in her hand and said, “We’ve made all kinds of treats for the birds. It’s a family tradition.”
What’s a tradition? Zack wondered. He was about to ask, when William said, “Come on—you can be first on the ladder, Zack, since it’s your first time here.”
Zack’s dad helped William hold the ladder steady while Zack climbed up it. Penny handed Zack a popcorn-and-suet ball from the basket. Zack reached as high as he could and hung the ball on a branch.
Everyone took a turn climbing the ladder and hanging up a treat. Soon the tree looked splendid decorated with popcorn-and-suet balls, pinecones spread with peanut butter, orange and apple slices, and milk-carton feeders filled with crunchy seeds.
“Let’s go inside now and watch the birds through the window,” said Penny.
“What’s a tradition?” Zack asked as he trooped inside with the others.
“A tradition is something you do every year at the same time in the same way,” Penny said.
Grandpa Jenkins greeted them at the door. “Yes, and it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a feast for the birds,” he said.
Just then another car came up the driveway.
“Hurray!” everyone shouted. “Here comes Aunt Irene with the pies.”
“It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Irene’s pies,” said Grandpa. He took the pies and gave her a hug.
Grandma looked over from the stove. “Set them on the counter, please, next to the pickles,” she said. Her face was warm and red from basting the turkey in the oven.
Zack sniffed the savory kitchen smells. “Wow! Pumpkin pie!” he exclaimed.
“Aunt Irene makes two kinds of pie—pumpkin and apple—every year,” Amber told him.
Another family tradition, thought Zack. Traditions are great! He smacked his lips and helped the other grandchildren set the table. His dad helped the uncles bring in extra chairs. The aunts mixed the salads. William fed the dog. Outside in the tree the birds chirped over their feast.
At last dinner was ready to eat, and everyone sat down. After a blessing on the food was said, each person shared aloud some of the special things he or she was thankful for that year. While they ate, they told funny stories and laughed.
As each course was finished, the aunts cleared dishes from the table. Empty dishes began to pile up on the counter where the pies and pickles and salads had been before. When the counter overflowed with dirty dishes, the aunts stacked more in the sink. When the sink was full, they piled more on the stove.
When the last slice of pie had been eaten, Grandma smiled and sighed as she put her apron back on.
“Now for the ‘dirty dish disaster,’” Aunt Nora muttered, echoing Grandma’s sigh.
But Penny, Amber, William, Grandpa, and all the uncles put on their jackets and caps and mittens.
“What’s going on?” asked Zack.
“It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a walk in the park after dinner,” said Grandpa, patting his full stomach.
“The river is frozen hard enough to walk on. It’s fun. Grab your jacket and come with us, Zack,” said William.
Zack ran for his jacket. In the kitchen he stopped. Grandma and Aunt Nora were at the sink. It was spilling over with sticky dishes and dirty pots and pans. The other aunts were putting leftovers in the refrigerator and pantry. “Aren’t you going on the walk?” Zack asked them.
Grandma shook her head. “We stay here and attack the dirty dishes,” she explained.
“We always do,” said Aunt Nora.
“We have plenty of practice,” said Aunt Irene.
Penny and William and the others waited at the door for Zack and his dad.
Some people go for a walk. Others stay and do the dishes. Is this a tradition, too? wondered Zack.
“Aren’t you coming, Zack?” asked Penny.
Zack walked slowly over to the sink. “Dad and I do the dishes every night. I guess that’s our tradition,” he said as he took off his jacket and picked up a dish towel.
Zack’s dad nodded and rolled up his sleeves.
Then Amber took off her coat and said, “I can dry too.”
William took off his jacket. “I was on the dish-scraping crew at summer camp.”
Grandpa gave a little cough. “I suppose it won’t matter if we delay the walk a bit.”
Soon Zack, his dad, and all the rest of the Jenkinses were busy in the kitchen, scraping and washing and drying dishes. Grandpa put them away because he knew where they belonged in the cupboards.
“Well, I never!” Grandma kept saying.
When the kitchen was all cleaned, the sun was beginning to set. The blue sky was streaked with red and orange. Many of the birds were gone. Zack was worried. “Did we break your after-dinner Thanksgiving tradition?”
“You sure broke the ‘dirty dish disaster’ tradition,” said Aunt Nora, helping Grandma on with her coat, “and it’s about time!”
“Yes, you’ve helped us replace it with a better one!” declared Aunt Irene.
Zack gave a happy grin as they all went out in the fresh November air for their walk together—a new Jenkins family tradition.

First, my mom is a speech-langauge pathologist. Basically, she helps little kids talk better. That also means that as part of her job she works with a variety of kids with developmental and cognitive delays. She works in special educaiton classrooms. For most of her life in the church, she's been called to the Primary. And she's always given the class that no one else can control. Once she had a class of twelve kids, three of whom had ADHD. And she was their teacher for two years because no one else could handle them. When a boy with Down's syndrome arrived in the nursery, Mom was put in nursery. And when he moved to Sunbeams, so did she. That's happened to her so many times, she's lost track. But because of her degree, her training, she's better able to serve in the chruch.

None of the changes described above, of course, needs to happen all at once. Neuroscientist Alex Korb writes that “one small change at a time” can reverse the course of depression by creating an “upward spiral.” I once visited with a family whose depressed teenager felt unable to commit to anything except getting a little more sunshine. After two weeks of getting outside more to play sports with his father, this young man felt enough energy to experiment with adjustments to his diet, which triggered other improvements and a new momentum of gradual healing. This reflects “the aggregation of marginal gains” that Elder Michael A. Dunn of the Seventy recently emphasized.18

In late 1979, Agbortabot Ako Moses of Mamfe was first introduced to the Church by a friend. Intrigued by what he heard, Ako wrote to the International Mission asking for additional information and to request the establishment of the Church in Cameroon.
“The letter was received by them,” Ako wrote later, “and a favorable response sent to me.” Included in the letter were the addresses of the mission presidents in Ghana and Nigeria and a promise that he would soon receive a copy of the Book of Mormon. When the book did not arrive, Ako wrote again, asking if another copy might be sent. “I think it has got lost on transit,” he wrote. “I have been expecting this noble book with much anxiety.” Shortly after, a copy arrived. “I am studying it very carefully and prayerfully,” he wrote. “I enjoy reading it much.”
Over the next 12 years, Ako wrote frequent letters to an ever-increasing circle of Church contacts outside Cameroon. Occasionally, he made long journeys to meet Church leaders on the border of Nigeria and Cameroon.
Finally, in September 1991, Paul D. and Arlene Payne, senior missionaries in the Nigeria Lagos Mission, arrived in Yaoundé. On September 28, Ako received a phone call from the Paynes inviting him to attend a meeting there, nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles) away. “There, we had the first meeting and were appointed to posts of responsibility in the Church,” he recalled. Although he still had not been baptized, Ako gladly accepted the assignments and, to assist the missionaries in establishing themselves in Cameroon, frequently made the nearly 12-hour journey between Mamfe and Yaoundé, changing vehicles 16 times each way. On May 8, 1992, Ako was among the first local converts to be baptized.

As a single mother working for a law firm in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Evelyn Jeffries struggled to find the time and the space necessary for home storage. Although she attended activities and meetings about food storage and tried to be obedient to prophetic counsel, like many Church members, she found it difficult to imagine what she could ever do with the hundreds of pounds of wheat she was told she needed to have for her and her daughter.
When a sister in her ward suggested a different approach, Sister Jeffries discovered the key to successful home storage: consistently and gradually increasing her food supply.
Setting aside a particular amount in her budget for home storage, she purchased a few extra items from the grocery store each week. She also purchased one basic food item like grains and beans from the Church home storage center each month.
Many years later, in October 2002, Sister Jeffries was impressed when President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) suggested that Church members adopt a simpler approach to home storage.
“We can begin ever so modestly,” President Hinckley explained. “We can begin with a one week’s food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months.”1
Sister Jeffries notes that “the beauty of this system is its appropriateness for families just starting their storage programs, as well as for those living in small homes and apartments, where space is at a premium. President Hinckley clearly recognized that change and adaptation are needed so that all of us might benefit from the Lord’s inspired program.”

Just like Esther, Joseph Smith, Joseph of Egypt, and many other scriptural figures, you can have the courage to stop your friends from speaking inappropriately about others. I was going through the same situation, and I had the courage to talk to my friends in a loving and understanding way. In the end, they accepted and understood how important it is to use pure and worthy language! Besides reading the scriptures and praying, fasting helps a lot in those situations. Pray and ask with faith that our Heavenly Father will give you the courage to speak and touch the hearts of your friends.
Paola H., 17, San Salvador, El Salvador

One day I was thinking about how I could step it up a little as a grandpa, so I asked myself what I most wanted to give to my grandchildren. The answer wasn’t financial help or more fun activities or travel to new places.
The answer was that I wanted to share with them the principles that I felt could help make their lives happy and productive and righteous. I wanted to leave a legacy based on faith in Jesus Christ and His eternal plan of happiness.1
I thought about what my grandchildren might want to know from me based on my own lived experiences. So I created a list of “Grandfather’s Principles.” The next week I read it to some of my older grandkids in hopes of engaging them in a little discussion.
It fell flat. Their looks seemed to say, “When will this lecture be over?”
I tried changing the name to “Grandfather’s Beliefs” and “Grandfather’s Tips,” but those didn’t work any better.
Then one summer at our family reunion, while I was with some of our elementary-age grandkids, I repurposed my list as “Grandfather’s Secrets,” and boom—I suddenly had their interest and their attention. I even had their curiosity!
Things got better from there. I polished my list of principles/beliefs/tips/secrets until I had 10 of them that were simple and basic but that genuinely reflected what I thought was most important and what I felt were the top-10 life guides that I wanted to share.
Nowadays, I spread out discussing these with each grandchild over a 10-year time period. When our grandchildren turn 8 (the age of accountability), they receive the first three “secrets.” When they are 10, they get one more; when 12, two more; when 14, two more; and when 18, the final two.
I give rewards and recognition for learning them. Some have memorized them. We talk about when and how they have applied them. I text back and forth about them with the grandkids who are old enough to have a phone. At reunions we have group discussions where they share examples of using them in everyday life. Older grandkids tutor younger ones on what the “secrets” mean and how they work.
Whenever I have a somewhat private moment with a grandchild or two, I ask them to give me an example of how they applied one of the secrets in the past or how they imagine they might apply one in the future. For the ones who live farther away, I text hypothetical situations they may find themselves in when one of the secrets might come into play, and I ask them to text back about what they would do.
I pray that my grandchildren will learn from pondering, memorizing, and using these secrets and that we will know each other better as we discuss them. I learned a lot about myself from writing them, and I’m still learning important things about my grandkids as I try to teach them.

As old as I am, I can well remember falling in love with my wife. It was not an easy process. I had been back from my mission for nearly a year when I first dated Marilyn. We had common friends and were friends with each other, but she was waiting faithfully for a missionary. Probably one of my first motivations to date her was to (as we called it at the time) “cut his grass.” It is to Marilyn’s credit that I had to ask her out about six times before she reluctantly agreed to go with me. It was right here on this campus. In fact, for our first date we went to a play in the Kirkham Auditorium. It was exciting to fall in love. You know how it is. Somehow you suddenly run into each other between just about every class. I remember studying in the library and having them threaten to throw me out because I kept talking to her. I am pretty sure that I was convinced that I loved her and wanted her to marry me long before she felt that way. We took classes together. I went to devotional with her. In my innocence I thought that surely no one ever felt love more intensely than I did at that time. There were challenging times along the way, and a couple of times I thought I had lost her to someone else. But through my patient persistence, she finally agreed to marry me. I guess like some of the students I visited with in preparing this talk, I reached a point where the thought of ever doing anything that would hurt her was completely abhorrent to me. I wanted to do everything I could to make her happy.

It was only after we were married that I discovered that even though love can happen naturally, it takes constant work to keep it strong. One of the important things about a marriage is that it is a living thing; it either grows or atrophies. And like any living thing, it must be nourished daily to remain healthy and strong. It takes healthy doses of hearing “I love you” or receiving unsolicited small and large acts of kindness and thoughtfulness to make a marriage strong. It is amazing what can happen if a husband helps wash the dishes or vacuums a floor or makes a bed or when a wife brings an ice cold glass of lemonade to her husband as he labors pulling weeds in the garden. That is what helps make a marriage strong.

Over the years Marilyn and I have played a game called “I love you as much as . . .” Some of my best efforts have been “I love you as much as all the dust particles in the air in Idaho on a dry, windy, summer day” or “I love you more than all the national debt.” I have learned that romantic little thoughts like these go a long way towards keeping love alive and strong.

When students come to me overwhelmed with life or studies, I often ask the question “When was the last time you took 20 minutes out of your day to do something that brings you joy?” And by joy I don’t mean excessive social media or streaming binges! Often, they respond with reasons why they are too busy. At that point, I invite them to go for a walk, a run, choose something that they enjoy doing for 30 minutes, and to return.

Students generally return relaxed. One student actually began making rice bags and giving them to people. He liked to sew and found that sewing combined with the service helped him relax and feel joy. Interestingly, when people participate in service or other “happiness enhancing strategies,” life satisfaction increases. [23]