Gospel Story Finder

I was called to serve as a missionary and assigned to the Brazil Florianópolis Mission. I spent seven months there and ended up returning home early. When I was going home, I said a prayer asking Heavenly Father to not release me as a missionary. After I prayed, I felt the Spirit telling me that everything would be OK.
During my first week home, I trusted in the way I felt after I prayed at the airport. I began helping in the temple store. When I got the chance to meet with my stake president, he was very happy to hear of my service and said he wouldn’t release me. I was then assigned to be a service missionary in my home mission, the Recife Northeast Mission.
My service mission includes various assignments. During the week I help in the temple shop, the temple office, and the laundry room. There is always something to do at the temple—the missionaries never sit still there.
On Saturdays I help with institute. I participated in the institute’s missionary preparation class to share what I learned on the mission—it felt so good to share. I also help distribute food to the students after class.
In addition to my specific assignments, I use my social networks to share the gospel. I have a page I created when I was 17 years old that talks about the youth program.
The Lord has called us to serve. He knows us and our capabilities. Service missions are inspired by the Lord, and if you were assigned to serve one, it’s because the Lord needs your help in building His kingdom.
Even if I’m sad or facing difficulties, I really like it when I complete each month of my mission and can reflect on how I’ve grown and been strengthened during that time. I love my mission. It really is inspired by the Lord.

Some of my friends in school use Heavenly Father’s name in vain. It had always bothered me, but now I thought about it even more. I wondered what I could do about it. I wanted my friends to know that Heavenly Father is special. I decided to ask my mom and dad about it. I wanted to say something to my friends, but I was afraid that they would be mad at me and not play with me anymore. My parents told me two stories that helped a lot.
After hearing that, I decided I would try to be like those I had heard about and stand up for the right. The next day at school when I heard one of my friends say something bad, I asked him not to say it anymore. I was still afraid, but it turned out OK. He agreed and is still my friend. I felt good inside because I had done the right thing, just like Jesus always did.

Oftentimes we are like the young merchant from Boston who in 1849, as the story goes, was caught up in the fervor of the California gold rush. He sold all of his possessions to seek his fortune in the California rivers, which he was told were filled with gold nuggets so big that one could hardly carry them.
Day after endless day, the young man dipped his pan into the river and came up empty. His only reward was a growing pile of rocks. Discouraged and broke, he was ready to quit, until one day an old, experienced prospector said to him, “That’s quite a pile of rocks you are getting there, my boy.”
The young man replied, “There’s no gold here. I’m going back home.”
Walking over to the pile of rocks, the old prospector said, “Oh, there is gold, all right. You just have to know where to find it.” He picked two rocks up in his hands and crashed them together. One of the rocks split open, revealing several flecks of gold sparkling in the sunlight.
Noticing a bulging leather pouch fastened to the prospector’s waist, the young man said, “I’m looking for nuggets like the ones in your pouch, not just tiny flecks.”
The old prospector extended his pouch toward the young man, who looked inside, expecting to see several large nuggets. He was stunned to see that the pouch was filled with thousands of flecks of gold.
The old prospector said, “Son, it seems to me you are so busy looking for large nuggets that you’re missing filling your pouch with these precious flecks of gold. The patient accumulation of these little flecks has brought me great wealth.”

Another faithful family is that of Edwina Swartzberg, first counselor in the Sandton South Africa Stake Relief Society, a third-generation Latter-day Saint. Her explanations about Church temples to her future husband, Isaac, who was reared in an Orthodox Jewish home, assisted in his conversion. He had puzzled why the Lord, who, scripturally, always spoke to his people in temples, no longer had one on Earth. He recognized, too, prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament, especially in Psalm 22, and things fell into place for him. The Swartzbergs were later sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. They live in Pretoria where Brother Swartzberg is Church legal advisor and area director of Church public communications.

My testimony today is one of gratitude.
At a family gathering a few nights ago, we discussed the fact that today is the anniversary of our mother’s birth.
I thought that night how much the generations owe each other, how much we learn from each other, how we should love and appreciate each other. One of mother’s grandsons said he had watched with wonderment as his tiny daughter paged through her storybook, moistening her first finger to turn the pages as she had seen her daddy do as he read his books. Actually, she was moistening the finger on her left hand and turning the pages with the finger on her right hand! But that only served to emphasize both the power of example and the fact that she, like all the rest of us, is yet learning.
As I observed two of our lovely grown daughters that night an incident from the past came to mind that forms the burden of my brief message today. I still think of it with a tendency to tears. Another little girl had joined our family and was of course much loved. Occasionally I had called her older sister “Princess,” but had thought about that, and, since the second young lady was equally deserving of royal treatment, had concluded that it would be well for her to share the title, if it were used at all.
So one day I called to her, “Come on, Princess. Let’s go to the store for mother.” She seemed not to hear. “Honey,” her mother said, “daddy is calling you.”
“Oh,” she answered, with a quiet sadness that hurt my heart, “he doesn’t mean me.”
In memory I can still see the resignation on her innocent child face and hear it in her voice, when she thought that her father didn’t mean her.

It was Sunday, July 5, 1964. I had climbed the Pyramids, touched the Wailing Wall, waded in the River Jordan, trod the ancient steps of Baalbek, and stood on the Mount of Olives. Now I was ending my tour in Athens, Greece, and by tomorrow night I would be with my family again.
I dressed, had a late brunch, and, unable to find a branch of the Church in the phone book, decided to explore Athens on foot. I had taken a sightseeing tour the day before. Now I would visit the places that tourists didn’t usually see.
Toward the afternoon I found myself in the agora, the great central marketplace of classical Athens. The entire agora complex seemed too large to view from the ground, so I decided to climb a steep hill toward the south where everything could be seen at once. It wasn’t until I reached the top and looked at my map of Athens that I realized this was Mars Hill, the site of Paul’s famous sermon to the Athenians.
Sitting down on one of the outcroppings of rock with several other people who were already enjoying the view, I could easily see the ruined temples and fallen columns of the Agora below, the Acropolis on the neighboring hill, and seven miles away, the green Aegean Sea topped by a clear, blue, cloudless sky. It was a perfect day.
Then my thoughts were jarred by the cheers of some English tourists. When I asked what had happened, I was told, “Our cricket team just made six points in the test match.” They turned their radio up so I could hear, and we got into a lively discussion. Looking around, I noticed about 30 visitors, half of them English and the others Greek, mostly young married couples.
The radio station faded in and out, turned to static, and was switched off. Then a teenage girl observed, “You’re an American. How do you know so much about cricket?”
I told her I had once been a missionary for the Mormon church in England and learned to like cricket then. Another person said, “Tell us how the Mormon church differs from other churches.”
Suddenly a feeling came over me that I could not explain, one I had seldom experienced before in my life. Something told me, “Keep talking, and you’ll know what to say.” I began to speak and was asked to stand so everyone could hear.
I began hesitantly. “I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ as restored in these latter days.” Then I pointed out that the Church ought to be named for Christ, and I explained that the word Mormon is a nickname. Wondering what to say next, I looked out across Athens at the crosses on the many churches of the city, and I knew.
“You asked how our church differs from others. When Paul came to this spot, he spoke of the ‘unknown god.’ In each of those churches is an altar dedicated to the ‘unknown god,’ because they believe the mystery of God makes him God. They say if we were to know him, he would cease to be God. Is that really any different from the people who worshipped the unknown god on this spot 1,900 years ago? The scriptures say it is life eternal to ‘know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’” (John 17:3.)
Then I told them the “unknown god” had made himself known again, restored his church, and called new apostles to testify of him. I quoted the Joseph Smith story with a fervor I had never felt before and testified that it was true. I pointed out that logically only one church could be right, discussed the need for authority, and explained how this authority had been restored in the priesthood. From my wallet I removed a picture of President David O. McKay and testified he was a prophet. They agreed that such spiritual guidance was certainly needed today.
The hours flew by. They asked questions, and I explained doctrine with an enthusiasm I had never known before. It was overwhelming! The experience I had had with street meetings during my mission had convinced me that not many people were really interested in religion, and most walked away. But here were 30 people who sat, listened, and absorbed every word. They truly seemed interested in learning about the gospel.
After three hours of talking, the cool evening air forced us to conclude. I bore my testimony to everything I had said and shook more than a dozen hands.
I floated back to the hotel with tears in my eyes and opened my Bible to the 17th chapter of Acts.
“And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?
“For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.
“(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new things.)
“Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ Hill. …” (Acts 17:19–22.)
I had been privileged to catch a glimpse of a personal experience of one of the greatest missionaries of all time.

Karine Dauriat, 12, of Poitiers, talks about life before and after November 1987. “That’s when our family was baptized,” she explains. “There’s a big difference in our home since we joined the Church.”
“That’s true,” says her sister Christelle, 15. “We’re nicer to each other. I think it’s because from the first time the missionaries came, we felt a feeling of joy. We started to understand why we’re here on earth and what we should be doing.”
“We have a common goal now,” says another sister, Sandrine, who is 17. “We want to keep the commandments so we can be an eternal family.”

Like any self-respecting teenager in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I attended seminary for four consecutive years. This meant long hours of gospel learning in addition to Sunday and family study hours. It was sometimes a difficult and trying experience.
I began seminary in 2017 in our Pare Ward of the Arue Tahiti Stake. I was in 9th grade in school at the time, and I was eager to be part of this youth group.
During my first year, I woke up before 5 am every weekday to get to seminary on time. I did my readings, and I was very attentive in class. I realized seminary contributed to deepening my relationship with God. Without Him, I would not have been able to successfully pass my school’s National Certificate Exam at the end of year 9.
Over the next two years, I gradually became lax in my duties, missing seminary or arriving late more often. I lost my desire to attend seminary, so I was less consistent in my efforts.
Accordingly, my 10th year in school was difficult, but I was unaware at the time of how this was related to my performance in seminary.
In year 11, I started going out with classmates who dabbled in things our Church doesn’t recommend, like alcohol and cigarettes. I even felt a little ashamed of not being like these friends and not hanging out more with them.
Consequently, my annual grades were low and if I had to take the bachelor exam that year, I doubt I would have passed.
Then, the COVID pandemic changed our daily lives, which I thank God for. When seminary classes started up on our smartphones, it was as if to counteract the evil that is also rampant on there.
Although I still had moments of weakness, I decided to hang in there and tried to sincerely follow the lessons of seminary, to benefit from God’s help in my studies.
I am grateful for my parents. Without them, I would have dropped out of seminary and followed the same path as my nonmember friends. As my favorite seminary teachers, they watched over me, making sure I stayed connected to God.
Then, healthy social relationships with the youth of the ward became my lifeline. Our activities together renewed me each time I was not in the mood. Among these friends was Corail Sommers, who never judged but always listened and encouraged and raised me up by her example.
In their own ways, they each contributed to my personal balance.
The discipline of daily immersion in the scriptures paid off in my last year of seminary, which was also my 12th and final year of school.
My seminary study habits allowed me to be better organized. While I’m not a fan of reading, I strove to read daily. It allowed me to maintain my relationship—even a fragile one—with Heavenly Father.
That year, I passed my bachelor diploma with honors. I got my driver’s license on my first try. I received my call to serve a mission in Paris. All in all, the hand of God was in my life the whole time I was in seminary and at school.
Looking back, I testify that God will always help because He loves us.
Seminary is exactly what we need as young people to help us to trust God and to let him prevail in our lives. He always trusted me.

Suddenly there’s a dozen LDS girls she hardly knows at her bedroom door, and they’re giving her plates of cookies and smiling big, toothy grins.
“Why don’t you come to our church Sunday?” someone asks and they all nod and smile some more.
She grins back and wonders when they’ll leave.
But they don’t. They talk and laugh and eventually she realizes they’re not so obnoxious. She starts to catch their enthusiasm. And she begins to wonder if this is what it’s like to be LDS? Is it always fun? Her father was LDS once. She’d heard things about the Church, but …
DarLynn Hawkins, 14, is sitting on the couch between Amy Van Camp and Erica Egli, both 14. This is Amy’s house, north of Chicago, in a town called Gurnee. And as the girls explain, Gurnee is a quiet place, famous for only two things—its immense factory outlet stores, and its spectacular junior high school band (which, as a matter of fact, the girls all play in).
DarLynn’s a Church member now. And that all began one evening about a year and a half ago when Amy and Erica convinced their Beehive class to crowd into DarLynn’s room. It started then; it just didn’t start perfectly.
“It was really weird,” says DarLynn. “We’d just moved here and I didn’t really know anyone, and all of a sudden here were all these girls asking me to come to church. I mean I knew Amy and Erica from school band …”
“But we didn’t like each other,” Erica adds. They all laugh.
“No, we weren’t best friends or anything,” says DarLynn. “I thought they were snobs.” They laugh again. “Just kidding, but I did think I was being rushed at first.”
Amy admits that maybe they were pushy. But, as she points out, there are no instructions to follow when you want to talk to a friend about the Church, and every now and then you make a mistake. “We’d heard her father was a member once. Erica and I just got the feeling she might need the Church in her life. The standards of the Church are so high that it helps you through the tough times.”
When Erica and Amy sensed DarLynn was uneasy, they slowed things down. They became closer friends with her during a school band trip, gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon (she read parts during the summer), and invited her to Church activities (which made her more comfortable with the other members). Eventually, Amy and Erica gained the courage to ask DarLynn if she’d like to have missionaries visit her home.
Erica says it wasn’t that easy getting up the nerve to ask DarLynn such an important question. “You have to conquer the fear. We were afraid that if she didn’t accept it, it would hurt us because it means so much to us. I was afraid she would laugh at the lessons or think they were soooo boring.”
But DarLynn said yes. “And everything the missionaries said was so interesting. They really got through to me and made it fun. There was a time in every discussion where I’d almost cry. Then during one discussion the missionaries asked me to read, ponder, and pray. I did that night, and the Spirit was there. It was so cool. I started to cry, and I just knew the Church was true.”
DarLynn’s parents had watched her careful study of Church teachings, and when she asked for their permission to be baptized they were happy to give it.
While there are no rules to follow when talking to a friend about the Church, there is one common mistake many make—going to places or doing things you know are wrong with the idea you will have your friend come to a Church activity next time.
Not too bright, says DarLynn. “When I was in the sixth grade, I wanted to try everything—smoking, drinking, everything. Then I got to know Amy and Erica, and they were strong in the Church and I thought that was really cool. It made me want what they had. We wouldn’t be as close now if they had followed me and had done the things I wanted to do back then.”
And if Erica and Amy had not been examples to DarLynn, they would have missed a great ending. Erica says, “I’ll never forget …” and Amy joins in, “DarLynn’s baptism!”
“It was the best feeling as we watched DarLynn being baptized because we helped her find the truth,” Erica continues. “You could see how happy she was. After she had changed clothes, she came out and said, ‘I’m perfect, and you’re not!’”
“I was kidding,” says DarLynn.
They all laugh again—a trio in perfect harmony.

But there’s more to these brothers than sports. Their father, Don, recalls that “when Matt was serving as teachers quorum president, he took his calling seriously. He identified quorum members who didn’t attend regularly and prayed about what to do. He worked with adult leaders to organize an overnight campout he thought they would attend. One young man said he would be interested, and Matt followed up with him almost daily at school. In the end, three less-active boys came, enjoyed the association with the others, and heard the bishop make a presentation about Joseph Smith and bear testimony of the Savior.”

When Dilson Maciel de Castro Jr. lost his job in São Paulo, he and his wife moved to Recife, a major port city in northeast Brazil, so they could live with his parents. Despite Dilson’s experience in the telecommunications industry, the only work he could find in Recife was a series of odd jobs.
“Things were very difficult for us at the time,” recalls Dilson. Their challenges went from bad to worse when the couple lost everything they owned in a flood.
At that low point, Dilson, who had served in the Brazil São Paulo South Mission, met with Elder Gutenberg Amorim, an Area Seventy and institute of religion director, to talk about career and educational options. As Dilson discussed his interests, he received a spiritual prompting that he should study medicine. Thanks to the Church’s then-recently implemented Perpetual Education Fund (PEF), in 2003 Dilson turned that prompting into a profession following an 18-month course in nursing.
“Without the fund, it would have been impossible for me to take the courses I needed,” says Dilson, who works for a public hospital in Recife. Likewise, his wife, Alexsandra, would not have been able to get a loan to pay for the education she needed to become a schoolteacher.
“Six years ago we were unemployed,” Dilson says. “The PEF was essential to all we’ve been able to accomplish. It has changed our lives.”

Bruce came into the kitchen, slammed his books on the table, and announced, “I don’t want to set any table, even if it is an assignment!”
The assignment to enter a table-setting contest was given by his teacher in a marriage-preparedness class, a class Bruce had liked, until now.
“I might do it if it wasn’t sissy,” he said, staring at my lace tablecloth.
“You can make it look like a man’s table,” I told him, silently wondering how.
The day the assignment was due, Bruce gathered together what seemed to fit his idea of masculine. He placed plain white stoneware on a black leather desk pad and used a black and silver desk lamp for the centerpiece. The tablecloth he used was a piece of grey flannel I had purchased for a skirt but had not sewn. The table was accented with chrome salt and pepper shakers and a black goblet. But the clincher was the black linen napkin knotted as a man’s tie.
His table, one of 1,800 entries, was titled “The Executive Lunch.” It was original because it was masculine and exciting.
Bruce worried about his “macho image” when he entered the table-setting contest, but he participated and became more aware of the beauty of a table set with care. He does squint sometimes, looking at the sterling silver he won as first prize, imagining it in the shape of tire rims.

Yves also found a way to help several of his friends who wanted to share with each other what they were learning in the scriptures. They were attending church and seminary or institute, speaking when assigned and participating in lessons. But they wanted to talk with each other, youth to youth. So once a week they started reading the Book of Mormon together for about half an hour, and they started inviting others, especially some youth who were less active, to join them. Now they’ve been reading together for months, sometimes at one person’s house, sometimes at another’s.
“It started with my friends Larry Roseval, who’s in the Wanica Branch, and Saffira Zeegelaar from my branch. But now there are eight of us,” Yves says. “We read a chapter, talk about it, bear our testimony about it, and share something we learned during the week.”

Several years after the difficult trial the Alvarez family faced, I witnessed how another faithful family dealt with great adversity. Several members of the Quero family had died in a terrible car accident. Brother Abraham Quero lost his parents, two sisters, his brother-in-law, and his niece in that accident.
Brother Quero showed an admirable attitude when he said the following:
“This was the time to show loyalty to God and to acknowledge that we depend on Him, that His will must be obeyed, and that we are subject to Him.
“I spoke to my brothers and gave them strength and courage to understand what President Kimball taught many years ago, that ‘there is no tragedy in death, but only in sin’ (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society course of study, 2006], 18) and that the important thing is not how a man died but how he lived.
“The words of Job filled my soul: ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21). And then from Jesus: ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live’ (John 11:25).
“This was one of the most spiritual experiences we had as a family—to accept the will of God under such very difficult circumstances.”
In both of the experiences that these good families endured, pain and sorrow left because of the light of the gospel, which filled them with peace and comfort, providing the assurance that everything would be well.

My first teaching assignment was at a community college. I enjoyed it, but it was a marked contrast from the LDS environment I had been in at Ricks. I taught several subjects, but in my spare time I directed a couple of plays.

When the night of the first performance came, I found I was as nervous as ever and needed prayer. How would my cast feel about that? I went over notes with the cast before the first show and tried to summon up my courage to suggest having prayer to this nonreligious group.

Finally I said, “Ah … I don’t know how any of you feel about this, but … well … I feel we need to have a word of prayer before we start. If you don’t mind, I will offer it.”

In my prayer, I asked for all those miracles we usually ask for in preperformance prayers to make our show a success. I then took my place in a back corner of our makeshift theater, and the curtain went up on what turned out to be a very successful production.

The next day at school, no one said anything about the prayer—no complaints, no reinforcement.

That night before the second night of the play, I made my usual speech about what we needed to do to make the play work, but I couldn’t summon enough courage to suggest prayer again. I felt the cast was humoring me. I felt perhaps a private prayer away from the others would do.

After my little pep talk, I again took my place in my corner and waited for the lights to come up. I felt someone tug at my arm. It was the assistant director, one of my students.

“Mr. Eaton, we haven’t had our prayer yet,” he whispered.

I gulped hard and fought back tears as I went backstage and offered another request for the Lord to touch our spirits as we tried to entertain a community college audience.

That is not the end of the story.
The next year I had a cast of students who were by no means religious. We had our problems, and I had the feeling it might be inappropriate to ask that group of students to calm down enough for prayer. I never suggested prayer before their first opening night.

It was a terrible performance. I’m not blaming anyone. We just did a poor job.

I had the cast stay after for a line rehearsal, but it took me more than an hour to go over my notes and point out what needed to be corrected by the next night. There was no mistaking that I was upset.

As we were leaving the theater, a few of the cast members were walking to the parking lot with me. One of the least religious of the group said, “Last year I heard you had prayer before performances.”

I was stunned. “Yes,” I said, “we did.”

“How come we didn’t have it this year?”

“I didn’t think any of you would want to have prayer,” I answered.

“I would,” he said without hesitation.

“So would I,” another added.

The next night we had prayer and our performance went off without a flaw. I’m not saying prayer can overcome poor rehearsals, failure to learn lines, or lack of preparation. But it can focus what a cast has going for it. It can bring them together in a unity of purpose.

And certainly, it can comfort a nervous, tense director.

Oh no! I slept in, and I have a big exam today!
Hey! Hey! I need a ride to school!
Let’s go, then!
Seriously?
Today has been the WORST day ever, and it’s not even noon!
Last time I had a day like that, I said a prayer. My problems didn’t go away, but I felt a lot better.
Heavenly Father, please help me. Please turn this day around.
Camila! Can you come to my house? I need you to teach me how to paint for my school project! I even have ice cream.
Sure, Emi, I’d love to.
I guess this not-so-good day turned out pretty good after all.

It was Sunday, nearly forty years ago, and an important political matter suddenly needed attention. Syngman Rhee, president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), sent his secretary to find his vice-minister of education, Kim Ho Jik.
The secretary found the vice-minister teaching Sunday School in his LDS branch. “You’ll have to wait until the class is over,” Dr. Kim told the secretary.
When Dr. Kim finally arrived at the presidential palace, President Rhee scolded him for taking so long. Dr. Kim explained to the president and the others gathered there that his calling as a Sunday School teacher was important, and he had needed to finish his lesson.
President Rhee patted him on the shoulder. “Chal haesso (You did well)!”

In Tempe, Arizona, a Church member asked his neighbor if he would like help creating a family tree to show his ancestry. The neighbor accepted. The member helped the neighbor add the names of his parents and grandparents in FamilySearch. They linked to information already available, and before long the neighbor had a fan chart showing five generations of his family. This led the man to have an interest in the gospel and eventually to baptism and taking the names of his ancestors to the temple.

Illustrations by Elise Black
Krista was holding a piece of paper when her mom picked her up from Primary class.
What’s the paper for?
My teacher wants me to give a talk in Primary next week.
Good! We will help you prepare a talk.
Later, the family was eating dinner.
I want to give a talk about Heavenly Father.
That’s a great idea. I’ll help you plan your talk after dinner.
The next night in family home evening, Mom and Dad helped Krista practice her talk. Her little brother Joshua couldn’t say any words yet, but he waved his hands happily. He made her smile.
On Sunday morning, Krista put on her pink dress.
Will you and Dad and Joshua come to Primary to listen to my talk?
Of course we will.
As the family walked together to the Primary room, Krista held tightly to Dad’s hand.
When it was Krista‘s turn to give her talk, she stepped onto the small wooden box and talked into the microphone.
I look like my mommy and my daddy. I have eyes like my mommy. I have a nose like my daddy.
Krista saw her parents smiling at her, so she smiled too.
I am like my mommy and my daddy. I am also like my Heavenly Father because I am a child of God. I know that He loves me just like my parents love me.
Heavenly Father has given me a plan. I know if I obey His commandments I will return to live with Him someday. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Krista returned to her seat. A warm glow of happiness settled over her as she thought of Heavenly Father’s love for her.

My family moved into the New Brunswick Ward when I was a teenager. Sister Daines took notice of me and often expressed her confidence in my abilities and potential, which inspired me to reach high—higher than I would have without her encouragement. Once, because of a thoughtful and timely warning from her, I avoided a situation that would surely have led to regret. Although she is no longer here, Anna Daines’s influence continues to be felt and reflected in the lives of her descendants and countless others, myself included.