Gospel Story Finder

After graduation, I worked for the government for eight years. I was guaranteed a lifetime job and a very good pension. It looked as if my life was comfortably laid out before me. Then the Church’s Presiding Bishopric asked me if I would be willing to move to Frankfurt and work as the area representative for Europe. I would have to give up my secure job and future pension. But when my wife and I prayed about it, we felt that it was the right thing to do. From then on, my life went in a different but very blessed direction.
My government training had prepared me for many of the things I dealt with in my new responsibility. And taking this job allowed me to serve later as a mission president, something I would never have been permitted to do if I were still working for the government.

But how, you ask, do you get this glimpse of the future that helps you to hang on? Well, for me that is one of the great gifts of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not insignificant that early in this life Joseph Smith was taught this lesson three times in the same night and once again the next morning. Moroni said, quoting the Lord verbatim as recorded by the prophet Joel:

I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids of those days will I pour out my spirit. [Joel 2:28–29]

Dreaming dreams and seeing visions. The Lord’s spirit upon all flesh—sons and daughters, old and young, servants and handmaidens. I may be wrong, but I can’t imagine an Old Testament verse of any kind that could have helped this boy prophet more. He is being called into the battle of his life, for life itself, or at least for its real meaning and purpose. He will be driven and hunted and hounded. His enemies will rail and ridicule. He will see his children die and his land lost and his marriage tremble. He will languish in prison through a Missouri winter, and he will cry out toward the vault of heaven, “O God, where art thou? . . . How long. . . .O Lord, how long?” (D&C 121:1–3). Finally he would walk the streets of his own city uncertain who, except for a precious few, were really friend or actually foe. And all that toil and trouble, pain and perspiration would end maliciously at Carthage—when there simply were finally more foes than friends. Felled by balls fired from the door of the jail inside and one coming through the window from outside, he fell dead into the hands of his murderers—thirty-eight years of age.

If all this and so much more was to face the Prophet in such a troubled lifetime, and if he finally knew what fate awaited him in Carthage, as he surely did, why didn’t he just quit somewhere along the way? Who needs it? Who needs the abuse and the persecution and the despair and death? It doesn’t sound fun to me, so why not just zip shut the cover of your Triple Combination, hand in your Articles of Faith cards, and go home?

Why not? For the simple reason that he had dreamed dreams and seen visions. Through the blood and the toil and the tears and the sweat, he had seen the redemption of Israel. It was out there somewhere—dimly, distantly—but it was there. So he kept his shoulder to the wheel until God said his work was finished.

In my gym class, we had to run the mile every Monday. We called them “Mile Mondays.” Everyone dreaded them because they were exhausting. Each Monday, one classmate was always picked on because he was a little overweight and always finished the mile a few minutes after everyone else. I felt bad for him and wanted to help him out, but I wasn’t sure how.
One day I had an idea. After I finished running the mile, I went back and ran with him until he was done. I was a little nervous because I wasn’t sure what everyone would think, but I decided that what other people think shouldn’t matter that much. I was surprised when more people joined me the next week. Every week, more people joined until eventually everyone in the class joined in! As we ran, we encouraged him by saying things like, “You can do it!” and “Only one more lap!” He began to smile while running, and people didn’t pick on him anymore. Each week he finished the mile in less time, and we cheered him on every time he beat his personal best.
I’m glad we could boost his spirit and help him do his best. It really brought our class closer together, and we were all a little nicer to one another. This experience helped me remember that we are all God’s children and of great worth, and everyone needs to be treated that way. I’m glad I decided to run a little extra, and I know that Heavenly Father gave us all added strength to help His children feel loved.

The payment of tithing also brings the individual tithe payer unique spiritual as well as temporal blessings. During World War II my widowed mother supported her three young children on a meager schoolteacher’s salary. When I became conscious that we went without some desirable things because we didn’t have enough money, I asked my mother why she paid so much of her salary as tithing. I have never forgotten her explanation: “Dallin, there might be some people who can get along without paying tithing, but we can’t because we are poor. The Lord has chosen to take your father and leave me to raise you children. I cannot do that without the blessings of the Lord, and I obtain those blessings by paying an honest tithing. When I pay my tithing, I have the Lord’s promise that He will bless us, and we must have those blessings if we are to get along.”
As a lifelong recipient of those blessings, I testify to the goodness of our God and His bounteous blessings to His tithe-paying children.

Sister Melbourne was mean and grouchy. There was no other way to describe her. Just the other day I heard her telling the bishop that children took too much time in testimony meeting. She even said that most of us didn’t understand what we were saying; we just wanted attention. I walked out of the chapel feeling very angry.
My anger didn’t last, however. It was December, and Christmas was in the air. Excitement filled me right up to the top of my head. I had to smile and laugh, or I think I would have burst. We began singing “Jingle Bells” as we rode home from church, just to let some of the excitement out.
After dinner, Mom and Dad called us into the family room. We all knew what we were going to discuss. Every year for as long as I could remember, we had chosen a family in our ward who needed some extra help at Christmastime, and we had secretly taken gifts and food to their house. It was one of our family’s favorite traditions.
When we were all together, Dad said, “It’s time we decide which family to help this year. Do any of you children have a suggestion?”
Some years it had been really easy to decide because of a particular family’s needs, but this year we couldn’t think of anyone. When none of us said anything, Dad looked at Mom. “Maybe Mom has a suggestion. Sometimes she notices things the rest of us miss.”
Mom smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do know of someone who needs our help. Before, we have always chosen a family with children, but this year I think we should help Sister Melbourne.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! “But, Mom,” I protested, “she’s not poor or sick, and she’s really grouchy. She doesn’t even like kids. I think we should choose someone else.”
“I agree with April,” said my older sister, Beth. “She really is grouchy. It wouldn’t be any fun doing something for her. She might even kick our gifts off her porch. Besides, she seems to have plenty of money. She dresses in nice clothes.”
I looked at Beth gratefully. It was comforting to have someone older agree with me. Peter spoke up. “She’s always telling me to shush, even when I’m quiet.”
Lynn and Josh didn’t say anything. They were too small to know who Sister Melbourne was.
“I know that Sister Melbourne has enough money to take care of herself,” Mom said. “And I know that she isn’t very pleasant to be around. But that’s exactly why I think she needs our help.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I listened as Mom continued: “Sister Melbourne has had an unhappy life. She was divorced before she moved here. She has three children who are married. They have children of their own but never come to see her or let her get to know her grandchildren. Perhaps she has done something to make them want to stay away. I don’t know about that, but I do know that she is very lonely and unhappy. I think she needs someone to let her know that she is loved. You see, April, you weren’t quite right when you said that she wasn’t poor.”
“You mean she’s poor in love?” I asked.
“Yes, and sometimes it’s much more painful to be poor in love than it is to be poor in money.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes. Then Dad said, “Let’s take a vote. How many of you would like Sister Melbourne to be our special family this year?”
Slowly Beth’s hand went up. Lynn and Josh raised theirs. Then Peter raised his. Looking around at everyone, I reluctantly raised mine.
Mom said that instead of buying all our gifts for Sister Melbourne from the store, we should make most of them. All the next week we cut out snowflakes, strung popcorn and cranberries, pasted together red and green chains from paper strips, and made cookies and candy. We bought apples and oranges to go with all the things we had made.
It was Dad’s job to get a box just the right size for our gifts and to decorate it. We carefully arranged everything inside the box and put on the lid. Dad added a huge red and green plaid bow on the top.
We gathered around the dining room table to have a prayer and make our final plans before we delivered the box. In the prayer, Dad asked Heavenly Father to please soften Sister Melbourne’s heart and help her to receive our gift in the spirit of love with which we were giving it. I was comforted by those words, because I remembered what Beth had said about Sister Melbourne kicking our gift off the porch, and I had visions of cookies, candy, paper snowflakes, apples, oranges, strings of popcorn and cranberries, and red and green chains strewn all over the ground.
We all put on our coats and piled into the car. Since the box was pretty big, we decided Dad would carry it to the porch. After he returned to the car, it would be my job to ring the doorbell and run back to them before Sister Melbourne opened her door.
I could feel my heart pounding with excitement as Dad parked far down the street from her house. “April and I will walk to Sister Melbourne’s house,” he said. “The rest of you must be very quiet so that you don’t attract attention.” He lifted the box out of the car and motioned for me to follow him.
“Dad,” I said, “I’m afraid Sister Melbourne will catch me and get mad.”
“She’ll never catch you!” He grinned at me. “You’re the fastest runner in our family. But if you’re really worried, I’ll wait for you behind those bushes over there on the far side of her yard. When she’s inside again, we’ll go back to the car together.”
“I’d like that,” I said, smiling gratefully up at him.
Dad carefully set the box on the porch. I waited until he was hidden behind the bushes, and then I ran up the steps, rang the doorbell, and flew down the steps and across the yard to the bushes, where I crouched down next to Dad. “Good work,” Dad whispered, putting his arm around me.
The door opened, sending a ray of light out across the snow. Sister Melbourne didn’t see the box at first, but as she was about to close the door, she saw it and stopped. She just stood there for a second. Then she bent down and read her name on the top. She lifted the lid, and once again she was very still. Finally she picked the box up and looked around the yard. She was smiling, but there were tears running down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she called out. “Thank you, whoever you are.”
Dad and I were both quiet for a few moments after she went inside and closed the door. I whispered, “I think she really liked our presents, don’t you?”
“Yes, I think she really did.”
The next Sunday as we were driving home from Church, we looked at everyone’s Christmas decorations and we began singing “Jingle Bells” again. When we passed Sister Melbourne’s house, I saw our snowflakes in her big front window, and the popcorn and cranberry strings and red and green chains on a Christmas tree that hadn’t been there the week before. “I think Sister Melbourne’s getting richer,” I said.
Mom stopped singing long enough to give me a hug. “So are we.”

When Nick Turpin was 14, the only thing he knew about the Church was that his friends Steve Andersen and Jason Farrell were members. That’s when they gave Nick a Book of Mormon with their testimonies written in the front of it. Then they invited him to seminary, telling him their teacher was cool and they wanted Nick to learn more about the Church. That was February of 2002. Nick was baptized three months later.
That may seem quick, but Nick’s testimony didn’t come from one overwhelming spiritual experience. It came quietly, gradually. He says, “It just felt right at seminary and at church.” He says he always figured there was a purpose to life, and the missionaries explained what that purpose was. Reading the Book of Mormon also helped his testimony grow, and, pointing to Steve and Jason, he says, “These guys helped me to join the Church. When I was with them before I joined the Church, it was great to know that we were doing the right thing and still having loads of fun.”
Steve says, “Our friendship wasn’t based on Nick taking the discussions. We just wanted him to know more about the Church. If he had said no, our friendship wouldn’t have changed.”
Nick’s friends introduced him to the gospel, but it was the Spirit who converted him. Nick says, “In my heart, I know that if I didn’t believe that the Church was true, I wouldn’t have joined just because my friends wanted me to.”

Dana Miller was approaching his twelfth birthday, looking forward to becoming a deacon. One evening, just prior to his birthday, the front doorbell rang. Dana’s father, a high councilor in the stake, answered the door to find three young men on the porch. “We are the deacons presidency and have come to call on your son, Dana.” Admitting these quorum leaders, Brother Miller retired to another room while the presidency sat down with Dana and outlined his duties and responsibilities as a priesthood holder. That visit had more impact on a boy’s life than hours of counseling from an adult could have. Today Dana is president of the deacons quorum. What kind of a president do you think he is with that kind of an introduction to the priesthood and example from his leaders?

If you can’t talk, can you still have a friend? Hayden Rushton has autism, which is a brain development disorder. It is very hard for him to understand and talk with others. But he has dozens of friends. They are the children in his Primary.
When Hayden first went to Primary, he cried and didn’t talk at all. He lives with his grandparents, and his grandmother had to stay with him to help him in Primary. Then his Primary leaders had an idea about how to help Hayden. And every child in Primary would get to help too.
Now Hayden goes to a class with his own teacher. The Primary children take turns going to Hayden’s class. Two older children go during senior sharing time, and two younger children go during junior sharing time. They look at books with Hayden and help him learn to do new things. They also help him learn how to get along with friends.
One of the older boys drew a picture of Hayden’s favorite animated character. Hayden loved it! One five-year-old friend has been very patient as he shows Hayden how to use things. All of the children try to be kind and helpful.
Thanks to the Primary children, Hayden has learned a lot. And thanks to them, Hayden doesn’t have just one friend—he has a whole Primary full of them!

When I was growing up, whenever we got any money, my mother would take the very best bills—the ones that were the least wrinkled or dirty—and give them to the minister of the church we went to. She did this her whole life. She said, “This belongs to God.” Those words have stayed with me ever since.
When I was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an adult, it was not hard for me to pay tithing because my mother had taught me to obey that law.

My wife and I were baptized on March 26, 1997. Three months after our baptism, our bishop called me to be Sunday School president. I resisted, saying that I could not fulfill this calling because I wasn’t prepared for it. The bishop, however, persuaded me to accept this challenge and gave me the Sunday School manual to study.
Two months later the Gospel Doctrine teacher called me during the week to tell me she could not be at church on Sunday to give her lesson on section 98 of the Doctrine and Covenants. She named three other people who could substitute for her. I contacted them, but they all had previous engagements. As I hung up the phone after the last conversation, I felt that Heavenly Father wanted me to teach this class.
I was not familiar with the Doctrine and Covenants, but with the help of the bishop’s first counselor, the ward library, and the lesson manual, I was able to prepare the lesson.
I was nervous to teach ward members who knew more about the gospel than I did. But during my short time in the Church, I had learned that if we pray to Heavenly Father, He will help us. On Sunday before the class began, I asked for peace and strength. As I entered the classroom, the brothers and sisters were smiling and receptive, and they helped me. All participated attentively, and I felt that the Spirit of the Lord had blessed me to impart that important lesson.
Afterward I had the assurance that Heavenly Father only gives us tasks that we are able to fulfill—with His assistance and help from other members.

When my sister Natalie delivered her second child, I was blessed to visit her family in Wisconsin. One night, while preparing for bedtime, I was singing “I Am a Child of God”1 with my then three-year-old niece, Amanda. She looked up at me from her bed and said, “Aunt Michelle, Heavenly Father made you and He made me.” Tears welled in my eyes as I considered the pure doctrine this toddler had expressed. At a very young age Amanda understood one of the most central truths of God’s plan: “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.”

The people of Anaa, on the other hand, came to greatly love Elder Grouard. He was the first white missionary of any religion to come to their island, and many of them accepted the truth he taught. He baptized over 600 people, organized five branches, and called local officers to serve. He wrote to Elder Pratt and asked him to come to Anaa, as there was too much work for him to do alone.
Elder Pratt responded to his companion’s invitation, and a conference of the Church was held on Anaa with more than 800 in attendance. At this time Addison Pratt decided to travel back to Church headquarters to request more missionaries to help in the work in the South Pacific. Leaving Elder Grouard behind, he traveled first to California, then to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in September 1848, one week after his wife and four daughters had arrived there from Winter Quarters.

I find in the life of my grandfather and grandmother Alexander DeWitt and Louise Vickery Christofferson an instance of such consecration. Grandpa was a strong man and was good at shearing sheep in the days before electric clippers. He got good enough, he said, that “in one day I sheared 287 sheep and could have sheared over 300, but we ran out of sheep.” During 1919 he sheared over 12,000 sheep, earning some $2,000. The money would have substantially expanded his farm and upgraded his home, but a call to serve in the Southern States Mission came from the Brethren, and with Louise’s full support, he accepted. He left his wife (then pregnant with their first son, my father) and their three daughters with the sheep-shearing money. Upon his joyous return two years later, he observed, “Our savings had lasted us throughout the two years, and we had $29 left.”

I recall being 14 years old and on vacation at my grandma and grandpa's house. In a small bedroom on the second floor of their farmhouse, I remember reading the Book of Mormon where it says that to be prosperous I had to keep the commandments. I felt the Holy Ghost whisper to me that it was true. This story is not a dramatic story, but it's one I reflect on often because it was clear to me, and it helped shape my future.

Being a member of the Church for the past 13 years, I love visiting less-active members to see how they are doing and to share with them the love of Jesus Christ for His children. I remember one Saturday, kneeling down and praying to Heavenly Father to help me to reach those who need my comfort and to understand Christ’s love for them. When I finished my prayer, I felt a prompting of the Spirit to visit one of the less-active sisters. She hadn’t been to church for a long time. When I gave her a call, she told me she was in the hospital and was diagnosed with a serious illness. Although I am blind, I decided to go by myself to visit the sister, even though I didn’t get anyone to go with me to the hospital.
When she saw me, she was filled with joy and said, “You are the first person who visited me”. I shared with her the story of Lazarus, and how, because of his faith, Christ raised him from the dead (see John 11:1–44).
A few weeks later, this sister came to church and gave her testimony about her first visit by a member of the Church. She shared how it strengthened her testimony and gave her a new hope in life to understand our Heavenly Father’s plan for His children.

We are also blessed by temple covenants and ordinances, where “the power of godliness is manifest.” I visited a woman who had lost a teenage daughter in a terrible accident, then later her husband to cancer. I asked how she could endure such loss and suffering. She replied that strength came from spiritual reassurances of an eternal family, received during regular temple worship. As promised, the ordinances of the Lord’s house had armed her with God’s power.

Johnny was unhappy. There was no one to play with him. Todd had gone to visit his grandmother. Scott was on a fishing trip with his father. Mother was in the kitchen making bread. Baby was asleep in his room.
It had rained yesterday, but now the sun had broken through the clouds. Johnny was anxious to go outside.
“May I go out to play?” Johnny asked Mother.
“Yes,” she answered, “but be back in time for lunch.”
Johnny pulled on his shoes and ran outside. He skipped down the sidewalk to a field of tall grass. Everything smelled fresh and new after the rain.
When Johnny reached the edge of the field, he turned a cartwheel and rolled to the bottom of the grassy slope.
Lying in the tall grass, Johnny pretended he was in a jungle.
Then he imagined he was in a forest in the mountains. Finally Johnny made believe he was a small worm squirming through the grass.
But playing all alone wasn’t much fun.
Johnny looked up at the sun. It seemed to be dancing through great white puffs of clouds.
The wind shaped the clouds into an elephant with big floppy ears and a long trunk.
Behind the elephant Johnny saw a roly-poly bear dancing along with the sun, a lollipop, a boat, two fish, a dog, and a car.
The car reminded Johnny that Daddy would soon be home for lunch. Johnny looked up again at the sky. The car in the clouds was gone, but he could see Daddy’s car in the driveway.
Mother was putting the baby in the high chair as Johnny came into the house. The kitchen was full of good warm smells.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Mother smiled. “Were you lonely all by yourself in the field?”
“No,” Johnny answered happily, thinking about all the things in the clouds he had seen floating through the sky. “I found some new friends today!”

Needing income, Henry and his father went downriver to St. Louis, Missouri, to find jobs. His father joined George Betts’s shoe shop, which employed 25 men. Henry took a job at a small shop belonging to three LDS shoemakers. His mother and sisters joined them in St. Louis in the spring.
Henry’s good friends from Nauvoo, Algernon and John Rigdon, visited him in his new home. Their father, who had been Joseph Smith’s counselor, had decided to leave the Church and was moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In “the last conversation that I had with them as we were saying good-bye,” Henry said, “the boys declared that they would return to the Church. … Knowing they were … sincere, I expected for some years to hear from them but was disappointed.” (John Rigdon rejoined the Church in 1904 just before he died.)

During their missions they saw each other quite often at conferences and activities. They enjoyed catching up and sharing news from their separate areas. They never dreamed that in November 2003 they would be assigned as companions. Their friendship bloomed into a relationship that will last forever. They have gone from being friends to sisters in the gospel to missionary companions.
Sister Valeria Pontelli says, “At first I was afraid that working together might damage our friendship, but that fear faded the first day. This chance to work together has only strengthened our relationship, and our friendship has helped us in the work.”
Others agree. One woman, who used to be less active but has come back to church because of the efforts of these two missionaries, says, “You can’t help but love them because you can see the love they feel for each other and for everyone around them. They are my angels.”

by Judy Knight
Kidnapped! Many of the members of the Vacaville First Ward, Fairfield California Stake disappeared on the evening of May 27th! Where did they go? What happened? Who was responsible?
The circumstances leading up to their strange disappearance can be explained by the Vacaville First Ward Laurel class and their plans for an unusual, fun-filled evening.
Shirley McMurdie and Missi Bartanen spearheaded the advertising by printing airline tickets for Zion Airlines bound to Hawaii, which included an authentic luau dinner and entertainment.
As the guests arrived at the church in their gala Hawaiian attire and in a festive mood, they were asked to be seated in the waiting room until the departure of their flight. After the last call for boarding had been given, they entered the foyer between the chapel and cultural hall, which had been decorated to simulate the interior of an airplane. Nine-year-old David Knight had provided the artistic renditions of scenery along the way, including detailed U.S. Navy ships and submarines and groups of frolicking whales.
Two stewardesses, Lori Gould and Carrie Budge, gave out flower leis and pineapple tidbits, while the pilot welcomed everyone aboard and explained details of the flight. Suddenly, two hijackers, armed with water guns, appeared, speaking rapidly in Portuguese and demanding the plane change its course. The ward members had been hijacked to Rome, Italy!
The surprised passengers found themselves guided into the Relief Society room, which had been cleverly changed to a Roman cafe. A gourmet Italian meal was provided, beginning with antipasto trays covered with cheese, salami, olives, relishes, marinated mushrooms, and cauliflower. The second course was an Italian salad and breadsticks, followed by delicious Bolognese spaghetti and garlic bread. People laughed and lingered over a pretty Palermo Cassata dessert.
As the last dishes were cleaned and put away, the exhausted Laurels agreed it had been so much fun it ought to become a tradition!