Gospel Story Finder

That trust has blessed my life and the lives of my family. Years ago I heard President Ezra Taft Benson speak in a conference like this. He counseled us to do all we could to get out of debt and stay out. He mentioned mortgages on houses. He said that it might not be possible, but it would be best if we could pay off all our mortgage debt.9
I turned to my wife after the meeting and asked, “Do you think there is any way we could do that?” At first we couldn’t. And then by evening I thought of a property we had acquired in another state. For years we had tried to sell it without success.
But because we trusted God and a few words from the midst of His servant’s message, we placed a phone call Monday morning to the man in San Francisco who had our property listed to sell. I had called him a few weeks before, and he had said then, “We haven’t had anyone show interest in your property for years.”
But on the Monday after conference, I heard an answer that to this day strengthens my trust in God and His servants.
The man on the phone said, “I am surprised by your call. A man came in today inquiring whether he could buy your property.” In amazement I asked, “How much did he offer to pay?” It was a few dollars more than the amount of our mortgage.
A person might say that was only a coincidence. But our mortgage was paid off. And our family still listens for any word in a prophet’s message that might be sent to tell what we should do to find the security and peace God wants for us.

Karla is a young mother of two. Her husband, Brent, works long hours and commutes an hour each way to work. Soon after the birth of their second little girl, she related the following experience: “The day after I received the call to serve as a counselor in my ward Relief Society, I began to feel quite overwhelmed. How could I possibly take on the responsibility to help care for the women in my ward when I was struggling just to fulfill my role as a wife and mother of a very active two-year-old and a new baby? Just as I was dwelling on these feelings, the two-year-old became sick. I wasn’t quite sure what to do for her and care for the baby at the same time. Just then, Sister Wasden, who is one of my visiting teachers, unexpectedly came to the door. A mother of grown children, she knew just what to do to help. She told me what I needed to do while she went to the drugstore to get some supplies. Later on she arranged for my husband to be picked up at the train station so that he could get home quickly to help me. Her response to what I believe was a prompting from the Holy Ghost along with her willingness to serve me were just the reassurance I needed from the Lord that He was going to help me to fulfill my new calling.”

I was born Christian and did prayers and attended church every week. However, I could not imagine the love of God and Jesus’s great sacrifice until I came across one incident. This was on January 11, 2006, when I was 22 years old. All our families were gathering to commemorate the first death anniversary of my grandfather. So I was busy arranging things necessary for the families who would be attending the event. I had no sleep for almost three days. Still, I was assigned to bring the priest from another town to solemnize the event with a gospel message and prayer. Despite my tiredness, I had agreed to bring him.
In the snowy cold winter season, I got ready after showering early in the morning. I started driving but felt drowsy. I saw one town at a distance and thought that I could make it there and have tea. However, my eyes were so heavy that unconsciously I closed my eyes. Within a fraction of seconds, my high-speed car hit a tree beside the road. My snoozy eyes could see the car colliding with the tree. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and found that I had had a major accident. I immediately stopped the running, smoky car engine. I found that the front glass was smashed and had fallen into pieces on me. But not even a single fragment of it pierced my body. I was thankful to God for that. Later, I discovered blood flowing from my mouth. I cupped my hands to get it and threw it out the window. But I realized it was not going to stop so I kept a big cloth in my mouth to overcome the blood loss. My legs were stuck underneath. While I was trying to get them free, my right leg got dislocated at femur (thigh bone) joint. So, I could not move. As it had happened early in the morning, and I could hardly find people to help. After a little while, I found someone and asked for help, but he was scared and ran away. Later, two people came and helped me get out of the car.
The car was totally crushed at the front side. It became completely useless. Eventually, people started surrounding me. Everyone was amazed at what had happened and wondering that I was still alive! I took someone’s mobile as mine was lost during mishap and phoned my father to explain the situation and urged him to take me to the hospital. My father was very much grieved when he saw me lying on the road. However, so great was God’s comfort upon me that I was able to recover very fast and started walking again in just one-and-a-half months.
That day, I was reminded of God’s gentle love when I heard the words from Psalms 119:50:
“This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.”
He truly protected me. Whenever I recall that situation, I would try to speculate how Heavenly Father must have been suffering while His beloved Son was crucified on the cross! How great was the pain Jesus bore for all of us to prepare a path so that we could all return back to our heavenly home! My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude for Him and Heavenly Father and Their unconditional love. My soul rejoices whenever I think of the truth that JESUS IS RISEN and that His divine role is successfully accomplished.

In the early days of the Church, other disciples in addition to Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith also laid down their lives for the gospel of Jesus Christ. The faithfulness of Edward Partridge, the first bishop of the Church, is noted in the Doctrine and Covenants. On July 20, 1833, Edward was sitting at home with his frail wife, who had just given birth. Three mobsters burst in and dragged him into the bedlam of the street and then into the square, where they had already taken Charles Allen. A mob of about 300 demanded through their spokesman that Edward and Charles either renounce their faith in the Book of Mormon or leave the county. Edward Partridge responded: “If I must suffer for my religion, it is no more than others have done before me. I am not conscious of having injured anyone in the county and therefore will not consent to leave. I have done nothing to offend anyone. If you abuse me, you are injuring an innocent man.” The mob then daubed Edward and Charles from head to foot with hot tar containing pearl ash, a flesh-eating acid, and then they threw feathers that stuck to the burning tar.

The Prophet Joseph Smith characterized Edward’s death a few years later at age 46 in these words: “He lost his life in consequence of the Missouri persecutions, and he is one of that number whose blood will be required at their hands.” Edward Partridge left a legacy that lives on in a large and righteous posterity.

These feelings were particularly strong as I sat as a young missionary in the England Manchester Mission, beside my trainer, listening to him teach the missionary discussions to those unfamiliar with the Church. I could identify with the Prophet Joseph Smith, after reading the passage in James, as he related the feelings that came over him, “It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart.”1 It was as if the Lord was confirming to me that I was witnessing truth being taught, that I was in the right place at the right time in my life, serving as a missionary. These experiences significantly increased my faith.

Of course I tried my luck with a little honesty. But then someone at church told me that the angels in heaven would read from my work and that my life’s deeds would be shouted from the rooftops. That was enough to make my page-long detailed description of my latest crush on the bag boy at the grocery store seem so subject to ridicule that I ripped out the page and burned it.

On 21 July 1847, Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow went down Emigration Canyon ahead of the others to scout out the area. They had only one horse, so they took turns walking and riding. A few miles from the mouth of the canyon, Erastus realized that he had lost his coat. He took the horse and turned back to find it. Orson walked on alone and was the first of the pioneers to set foot in the Salt Lake Valley. He and Erastus returned to camp, and the next day the advance company entered the Salt Lake Valley and headed north.

“Christmas was extremely special too. We weren’t allowed to go into the living room to see what Santa Claus had brought until Dad had gone in and made a fire and got things ready. Then we’d all go in together. It was a Christmas Day tradition in our neighborhood to go from one house to another to visit each other after family gifts had been opened. We spent most of the day visiting.

Young Men in the Rocklin California Stake all had a chance to learn about being a missionary during workshops taught by their leaders at the stake center. Their activity included unusual dinner plans, including eating stew and salad with chopsticks. Missionaries need to be prepared for anything, right? The young men also learned about other mission activities, including tracting, teaching, and sharing testimonies.

When we stop to think about it, we can see that ours is a powerful heritage. One young sister wrote of this realization in a letter to Sister Parkin and said that over the last few years she has learned why women talk about the history of Relief Society: “It’s because we’re a part of something great! Those early Latter-day Saint women took something and made it great. And I’m a part of all that. It’s in my blood.”

There came a time, early in my mission, when I knew that I had to know whether the Church was true and Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I felt what President Thomas S. Monson expressed so clearly in our last general conference: “If you do not have a firm testimony of these things, do that which is necessary to obtain one. It is essential for you to have your own testimony in these difficult times, for the testimonies of others will carry you only so far.” I knew what was necessary. I needed to read the Book of Mormon with a sincere heart, with real intent, and ask God whether it is true.
Listen to our Heavenly Father’s remarkable promise given through the prophet Moroni: “When ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
In order to receive what was in the Book of Mormon, I needed to read it. I started at the beginning of the book and read every day. Some receive a witness very quickly. For others, it will take more time and more prayer and may include reading the book several times. I needed to read the entire book before I received the promised witness. However, God did manifest the truth of it unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost.
In my missionary journal, I described my joy in knowing the truth as well as my personal expression of commitment and real intent to act on the truth I had received. I wrote: “I have pledged with my Father in Heaven and with myself to do my very best, to give it 100 percent for the rest of my life, whatever I am asked, I’ll do, but for now I have the rest of my mission and I am going to make it a great mission, one that I won’t feel bad about, but not for me, for the Lord. I love the Lord, and I love the work, and I just pray that that feeling will never leave me.”

Milton Soares Jr. and his wife, Irene, are gracious hosts for visitors to the house they built in Recife. They have spent much of their lives in building—building a family and building up the Church, which began here with them.
They still have the first LDS pamphlet they received, the story of Joseph Smith, with a hand-drawn missionary diagram on the inside showing a church built on the foundation of Apostles. Another well-used Church book bears a message that the missionaries who taught Milton inscribed to him as the first person baptized in Recife in this dispensation. The date was 15 May 1960. His wife and children of baptismal age followed him into the Church three weeks later.
Irene Soares was skeptical when her husband first began investigating the gospel, but knowing him to be a good man, she thought that if he could accept it, it must be right. She received her own strong witness of the truth when President Joseph Fielding Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited Recife with Elder A. Theodore Tuttle of the Seventy. “I felt in my heart the knowledge that all we had been learning was true and that [President Smith] was a prophet,” she recalls.
In the beginning, when both of their families questioned why they would join this unknown church, Milton and Irene had only their faith to cling to. His family’s feelings toward the Church softened over time. The feelings of her parents and siblings did not, but she could not give up the truths she had found.
Irene laughs when she remembers that “after just one week in the Church, I was considered an old-time member.” She felt a responsibility to meet and fellowship everyone. Her first sacrifice for the Church was to make cloths for the sacrament table. When their small branch moved to a different meetinghouse, Milton built the baptismal font and Irene found herself rounding up baptismal clothes.
Like many other Brazilians who joined the Church when it was just getting started in their area, they planted the seeds of gospel growth for their family. And as in many other Brazilian families, their example has borne fruit in succeeding generations. Their eldest son, Irajá, is just one example. After his baptism as a teenager, he quickly learned to enjoy working with the missionaries. In 1966 he became the first Brazilian elder called on a full-time foreign mission (he served in Chile). Today he serves as an Area Authority Seventy.

A woman I know was struggling with anger toward someone who had hurt her and her family. Though she told her children not to become embittered and resentful, she fought those feelings herself. After weeks of entreating her Father in Heaven, she finally felt a change. She related: “One day, in the midst of my nearly constant prayers, the healing came. I felt a physical sensation spread through my body. After, I felt a sense of security and peace. I knew that regardless of what happened, my family and I would be all right. The anger left me and so did my desire for retaliation.”
The living water is the gospel of Jesus Christ; its communicator is the Holy Ghost. My friend knew what was right. She had said the appropriate words to her family. But only when she humbled herself enough to drink of the water—to feel the Holy Spirit—could she begin to heal.

Whisper Again Stacey hated it when her parents leased the best part of their land to a camp for kids. Then their “nice” neighbor threatened to take over their land! When she takes her horse, Whisper, to rescue a camp runaway, Stacey finds the glyph to disprove the neighbor’s claim.Dorothy Nafus Morrison11–14 years

Some time later I was called to be a member of the high council and assigned to the López Arellano Ward, the ward Brother Durón now attended. One Sunday I was in Sunday School in this ward, and the teacher asked class members to share personal experiences regarding service.
I happened to be seated to the left of a sister named Adela Rosa de Santos. She started to tell how the man at her right, Brother Durón, had served as her home teacher when she and her family were new members of the Church. She told how his kind service had given them strength and encouragement when they needed it and how he had blessed their lives. She concluded by saying, “If it weren’t for you, Brother Durón, I wouldn’t be here.”

I am acquainted with a young woman who has just moved here from the eastern part of the United States after having gone through a painful divorce. She is in the process of looking for a job. One day an interviewer asked her what her goals were—where did she think she would be five years from now? She said to him, “I can’t think that far ahead. For right now I have to just take it one day at a time.” This is what we must do when faced with trials and setbacks in our lives. Enduring well is accomplished by personal discipline hour by hour and day by day, not by public declaration.

There is a tale of a certain Jewish rabbi who was enjoying the sunrise with two friends. He asked them, “How do you know when the night is over and a new day has begun?”
One of them replied, “When you can look into the east and can distinguish a sheep from a goat.”
The other then responded, “When you can look into the horizon and distinguish an olive tree from a fig tree.”
They then turned to the wise rabbi and asked him the same question. After long reflection, he replied, “When you can look into the east and see the face of a woman or the face of a man and can say, ‘She is my sister; he is my brother.’”

My grandparents gave each of their grandchildren $1 and asked us to find a way to serve someone else with it for Christmas. My mom told us that a member of our ward collected gift cards to give to needy families for Christmas. I thought that would be a great idea, but I knew that $1 wouldn’t go very far. I decided to do some extra jobs to earn money for a gift card. I cleaned windows, dusted, emptied garbage, fed dogs, pulled weeds, and vacuumed for some ward members and neighbors. I was able to buy a gift card for a family to use at a grocery store. I knew that I had made a good choice. I know that it’s important to serve and give, especially at Christmastime.

I currently serve as president of the Antananarivo Madagascar District Primary. The Primary children of our district took part in the Children’s Sesquicentennial Art Exhibit sponsored by the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City. How great was the joy of our children when they received their certificates of appreciation!

Illustration by Allen Garns
My family and I were excited to be traveling by car from Romania to Kyiv, Ukraine, for the dedication of the temple in August 2010. Knowing that this would be the temple for the Saints in the Romania/Moldova Mission, we traveled for about 14 hours just to be there. When we arrived, we met another group who had also traveled from Romania. We were all happy to be in Kyiv for this sacred event.
On the day of the dedication, our group from Romania was assigned to watch the dedication via broadcast in a room on the ground floor of the temple. Some began to express their disappointment. They had hoped to participate in the dedication with the prophet in the celestial room. Some even said that they could have just stayed at home and watched the broadcast from their chapel in Romania.
I began to pray in my heart, “Heavenly Father, how can we help these members from Romania have an unforgettable experience in Thy house?”
I still hadn’t received an answer when the dedicatory session began. Soon we learned that the prophet, President Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018), was going to come down and put the cornerstone into place. Perhaps this could be our answer! I prayed for a way for the prophet to come and greet the Romanian Saints.
“I don’t ask for this for myself,” I prayed, “but for my brothers and sisters.”
After the cornerstone ceremony, President Monson walked by our room on his way back to the celestial room. Suddenly, I felt in my heart that I should stand and invite him to come in our room.
I stood and said, “Our prophet! Come and see us. We are from Romania.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. Then, a moment later, he came back. “Romania!” he said and entered the room.
He greeted all of us and said he loved us very much. My heart was full as I watched the joyful faces of our dear members. “Thank you, dear Father,” I prayed, “for this miracle in Thy house.”
When the prophet left the room, no one was sad anymore. I felt that we were in the most blessed room in the temple. It was an experience I will never forget.